Pod Save the World - The Missing Peace

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

Tommy and Ben discuss the so-called “peace” deals between the UAE and Israel and Bahrain, the US/Taliban/Afghan peace talks, disturbing allegations from a whistleblower at the Department of Homeland Security, what needs to be done globally to combat climate change, the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe and an Iranian assassination plot. Then former US Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul joins to talk about the protests in Belarus and how Biden should approach Russia if he wins.

Welcome back to POT Save the World. I'm Tommy Bitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, this is like the old days when you are a world traveler. You're currently in New York City, I believe. I am. I'm visiting my parents. The first time I've left Los Angeles since, you know, the beginning of March. How's the plane? The crazy thing, right, is you know, you get in the airport and every single human is wearing a mask and being very careful. And you get on the plane, everybody's wearing a mask and people are cleaning their seats with, you know, wipes and stuff like that. And it does make you feel a bit better. It also makes you think, like, well, people clearly are able of doing this. You know, like, why are people doing this, you know, everywhere we'd have licked this thing by now. But yeah, I had a, you know, one of those, my sister-in-law's an ER nurse. So shout out to her, Teresa. And so she gave me these N95 masks, you know, that the healthcare is wear. And those are good. You feel like, I didn't take that thing off for like seven hours and you feel like nothing's getting through that thing. I hope, at least. That's great. Well, it's good to see you. I've got to tell you, like, today is one of the

first days that my throat hurts from this stupid smoke here in Los Angeles. So you were smart to escape. We got a great show today. So we're going to talk about these peace agreements in quotes between Israel and the UAE and Israel and Bahrain that were signed at the White House today. We'll talk about the recently started Afghan Taliban-U.S. peace talks happening in Qatar. Some disturbing allegations from a whistleblower at the Department of Homeland Security that did not get enough coverage, given how disturbing they are. We'll talk about what the U.S. needs to do globally to combat climate change so that I can breathe someday the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, an Iranian assassination plot and some more great topics. And then our guest today is former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Mike McFaul.

We're going to talk to him about Russia, the protest in Belarus and how Biden should approach Russia if he wins. So stick around for that. A couple quick things for the show. we have an amazing newsletter here at Crooked Media. It's called What a Day. It's like the podcast. As we head into the home stretch of the election, if you're not subscribed, trust me, it is worth it. It is written and curated by Crooked Media's own Sarah Lazarus, who is so funny and so smart. Our team curates it together. So go to crooked.com slash subscribe to check it out. Also, do not miss today's episode of

Missing America. Ben is looking at the seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, talking to two former political prisoners, Ben, it's like the White House timed these announcement today to coincide with your show. It's serendipity. Yeah, I mean, you know, actually I was going to talk a little bit about it in the context of the quote-unquote historic peace agreements. But because what we look at is that the, we try to look at this differently. We look at the intersection between the forever wars in the Middle East and the U.S. support for autocrats, because those things are interrelated and why the U.S. has this mindset that it needs to support autocrats and it needs to fight forever wars. And we hear an extraordinary story. People should tune in

just for the story of Muhammad Sultan, who is a political prisoner in Egypt, was tortured, was recruited by ISIS in his prison cell because the Egyptian government was letting those ISIS recruiters roam the prisons because they wanted to radicalize the opposition. We hear, you know, Jason resigned story of Iran. And then we hear from some great voices, Chris Murphy, Rokana, John Brennan, about how to end the Forever Wars and how to change our mindset about the Middle East. So worth checking out for sure. Absolutely. So speaking of autocrats, we had a couple of the White House today, besides the president. So the leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates in Bahrain, they all gather today with Trump at the White House. They're ostensibly there to sign a diplomatic

agreement between Israel and the UAE, an agreement between Israel and Bahrain, and then some document that all three sign. But the timing is about trying to give Trump a political win before the election. Let's just be clear about why this is happening. Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. Bahrain, they view Iran as their mortal enemy. They think Trump will let them do basically anything they want in service of stopping Iran. Ben, you know, we talked about the UAE Israel piece of this. We haven't talked about Bahrain. For those unfamiliar with Bahrain, and that's understandable, it's a tiny little archipelago in the Persian Gulf. The main island, which is like most of the landmass, which is, I think, three times the size of Washington, D.C., is connected by a highway to Saudi Arabia. So the Saudis have a lot of control over their political. affairs. It's a constitutional monarchy ruled by a Sunni royal family despite having a Shia majority state. So they are especially paranoid about Iran or the Quds Force somehow toppling their government. I think of the million and a half people in Bahrain half for immigrants, a lot of them do really backbreaking labor that is horribly unethical. The U.S., you know, we have a major interest in

Bahrain because the Navy's fifth fleet is headquarters there along with the U.S. Navy forces Central Command. So the fifth fleet is responsible for our operations in the Gulf, the Red Sea, parts of the Indian Ocean, you know, long story, short, they got a lot of hardware, and they have a lot of responsibility for a region that's basically been at war for two decades. So, you know, we haven't seen this text yet, Ben, as of starting the recording, which is annoying. The administration keeps trying to call this a Middle East peace deal, which is so dishonest. That's usually, you know, referring to Israeli-Palestian conflict. The Palestinians are completely left out of this discussion. Frankly, they feel abandoned by the

Gulf Arab countries that used to. advocate for their interests. So Ben, you know, what's your take on this deal and your response to people like Brett Stevens over the New York Times who argues that, you know, the conventional wisdom that solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem was the key to unlocking peace in the region, that has proven to be wrong. And that's what's needed now is what Brett calls, quote, an alliance of moderates and modernizers. Well, look, you were right to focus on the peace part. There's, There's no peace was made. Like there's no war was ended.

No one was at war. No conflict was concluded. Bahrain and the UAE were never a war with Israel and had been, you know, under the table friendly with Israel for some time now. It is a good thing that Israel now has two other Arab states that have agreed to normalize relations with them. That will facilitate things like travel and trade. so that's good for for Israel's greater inclusion but there's no change to the wars in the region, no change to the autocracy in the region

and no change to the status of the Palestinian. So it's really disingenuous to call us a peace agreement and I don't know, you know, the media's kind of gone along with this. And yeah, Baccaran is a country of just over a million people here. So this is not, you know, this is not the Camp David Accords. This is not Israel making peace with Egypt Jordan, its neighbors, big, important Arab countries that he had fought multiple wars with. This is Israel making normalization agreements with a couple of oil-rich autocrats, essentially,

to help Trump a foreign election. And it's just, it's not as seismic a deals. All these people like Brett Stevens trying to dunk on everybody about it is portray. And I think there's some troubling aspects to it as well. You know, there's a war that has been on going in Yemen for the last several years that should never have started with U.S. support, at least in the Obama administration, but Trump has escalated that support, that has killed over 100,000 people and tens of thousands more in a famine. None of these guys talked about that, even though they're the ones who've been in that war. The Palestinians are still without a state and are, you know, still, you know, Israel is still building settlements. Nothing is changing

in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So this is a about autocrats coming together to do each other favors, to do Trump a favor before his election, to do Netanyahu a favor when Israel's on lockdown because of COVID again, because of his mismanagement of COVID. What's in it for the UA in Bahrain? Well, they want Trump to win. And I think if Biden wins, I think they're hoping that this might, you know, make it more difficult for a Biden administration to rethink the kind of blank check of support we've had to the Gulf. And then lastly, what are they united in? They're united in their antipathy and hatred for Iran. And so they're just going to, you know, formalizing what has been the status quo for over the last decade, which is

that these governments, Israel and the Gulf countries, apply pressure on the United States to confront Iran and to try to pursue a regime change policy in Iran, which I don't think is going to work. And I think the nuclear deal worked better. And Iran looking at this is only increasing its nuclear program, right? So there's no peace made here. There's no resolution to the autocracy issues that we talked about too. But Trump has a big photo op that he's playing up to be something that I think is not nearly as significant as he says, even if, you know, inside of this, okay, it's good that Israel has two more countries that recognize it. Yeah, I mean, it is wild that BB NetYahu jumped on a plane, given that on Friday, Israel is going to go into a second nationwide lockdown because of a huge surge of COVID cases that is, I guess, threatening to overwhelm their health care system. That means schools, businesses, restaurants are going to close. Apparently, people are going to have to stay within 500 meters of their home. So it's a pretty serious lockdown. What do you make of the suggestion that, you know, if Bahrain is willing to cut this deal with the Israelis, that means the Saudi.

tacitly approved it, which means they could be next, which I think a lot of people would see as a bigger deal given the size of the players. But, you know, there has been a suggestion in a lot of the reporting that Muhammad bin Salman is looking to do whatever he can to kind of launder or expunge his murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed in Turkey two years ago. No, there's no question that this would not be happening if MBS had not not, you know, Bahrain doesn't do anything without checking with MBS first. And the UAE too has been in lockstep with MBS. But again, this shows you the character of the people making these agreements. And these are not people interested in peace, you know. There's something

offensive about watching them use the language of peace as they wage this war in Yemen, as they repressed their own people, as they are frankly, you know, Jonzing for the United States to be in a confrontation with Iran, that's what they're interested in. And, you know, what I hate is the way these are framed in the United States. It's framed like a reality show. Like, oh, Trump had a photo op that he called the Middle East peace deal with some of these leaders. But what about the people? What about the tens of thousands of people at risk of famine in Yemen? What about the Palestinians who don't have a state? What about the people living under repression in these countries? Bahrain is a majority Shia country where the Shia,

are essentially oppressed by a small Sunni minority. I mean, the people of the Middle East are absent from any of these conversations. And the conflicts, whether it's in Iraq or Syria or Yemen, are not at all resolved by this, never mind the Palestinians. And so I just hope that we don't continually fall for the idea that this is some kind of optics show put on for, you know, an American audience. in which, you know, the Arab leaders play a role of standing there in a signing ceremony. I didn't like it, by the way, when we had kind of these Middle East peace conferences in the Obama administration where everybody got to look like they were doing something and nothing got done.

I was some of the more, you were there for those, Tommy. Those were frustrating moments for, you know, for me at the time and even more so in retrospect. So like, let's just not like over-hyped this stuff. This is, again, the best thing you can say is, two countries that Israel hadn't been at war with our normalizing ties, and that may open up some additional trade and people-to-people exchanges. The idea that these guys are the moderates and the modernizers, and that's what they've been saying about NBS for you. Remember, he was a

modernizer, a reformer, and asked Jamal Khashoggi, like, how much of a modernizer this guy is. Yeah. So the other, like, you know, major set of peace talks are actually happening, right next stored of Bahrain in Qatar. So these are the long-awaited direct talks between the Taliban and representatives of the Afghan government. They are happening because back in February, the U.S. agreed to basically get all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, or at least a timetable to do so. That deal included a prisoner swap that exchanged 5,000 Taliban prisoners for 1,000 Afghan security forces being held by the Taliban. that exchange, it took months to actually line up. It held at the start of these direct talks, but eventually happened.

The talks have also been complicated by the fact that the Afghan government has been bitterly fighting ever since their disputed election last year. So, you know, a few thoughts, Ben. First, you know, just because there are peace talks, it doesn't mean that there is peace in Afghanistan, right? I mean, there's a ceasefire between U.S. forces and the Taliban, but not between Afghan forces and the Taliban and the Afghans are taking enormous casualties. literally a week ago, 10 people in Kabul were killed by a roadside bomb that was targeting the

vice president of Afghanistan. So they're going after senior officials who are a part of these talks. Luckily, he survived. You know, second, I'm glad that the peace talks are happening. But I just want to be clear that, like, they are only politically possible because the U.S. agreed to remove our troops. And normally that kind of decision would be demagogue by people like Lindsey Graham. If Obama was president, Fox News, and the whole Republican Party would be.

accusing him of cutting and running and talking about how he brokered a deal that allowed 5,000 Taliban guys out of prison. You know, like they'll say that, you know, they're going to do everything they can to stop this deal because the only acceptable withdrawal should be conditions-based, blah, blah, right? Like to Trump's credit, he ignored those people. But we should be clear that the Republican Party has been the real impediment to, like, peace talks generally.

And then just lastly, like, there's no guarantee of success. And it's going to take an enormous amount of international. support to help rebuild Afghanistan from what it is now. I mean, I would love to hear more about what we're doing as a country to pass the hat, help these people rebuilds after like two decades of just unbelievable suffering. So I don't know, Ben, what did you make of the talk so far? What kinds of things are you looking for in terms of like success? Well, the reality is ever since we cut our deal with the Taliban, you know, the United States cut our deal with the Taliban several months ago, things have gotten worse in Afghanistan. The Taliban is not stopped fighting

and killing Afghan security forces, engaging in brutal attacks, you know, attack on a maternity ward, right? So the question I've always had since that happened is, you know, even if you just think we should remove our troops, you don't have to cut a deal that kind of empowers and elevates the Taliban on the way out. I mean, you prefer to have a deal in place between. the Taliban and the Afghan government that is real and that gives, you know, the Afghan people assay and is not thrust upon the Afghans by, you know, Mike Pompeo and the Taliban, you know. And so what I look for is whether this is something that the Afghan government and the Afghan people genuinely seem to feel comfortable with, that it assures, you know, that there'll be an end to the

fighting or at least a significant reduction in the fighting and some agreement about the country's future. And again, what's so uncomfortable watching all this, Tommy, is that, like, it feels like all of the leverage of the U.S. government is being brought to bear to generate kind of a series of photo ops before the election. And I don't say that because I don't want Trump to win the election, which obviously don't. I say that because, like, you know, we saw this bizarre Serbia-Cosso deal where they didn't even know what they were signing. It was like they've been, and then literally the Serbian government went back on what they had signed because they said they didn't know that they agreed to it. And, and, you know, today we, again, we see this massive

hype of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the least piece of it. Um, and then you see this. And, and, and you can't make you wonder, you know, are, is this a genuine effort? Or is this kind of an effort that is, is pressuring people to do things that they're not ready to do, um, or that hasn't been fully baked to create a series of photo ops before an election that, you know, after the election won't have solved the problem. So what I, what I, I, what I, what I would hoped is that the Afghans can sort this out on their own and the Afghan government has a real voice and isn't just pressured into things by us. What I worry about is that in our haste to create this photo op, we're basically, you know, potentially handing the country over to the Taliban.

Yeah, I worry a lot about that as well, but we'll keep an eye on these talks. So this story didn't get a ton of pick up last week, Ben, because of the Woodward book and like all the other stuff going on. But I think it's actually a very big deal that we should talk about, which is, according to a whistleblower complaint released by the House Intelligence Committee, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly forced subordinates to change intelligence assessments to match things Trump said or, like, generally not make him look back. So the complaint itself was filed by a guy named Brian Murphy, who used to head DHS's intelligence and analogous department until he was let go because he collected intelligence on reporters with a small

a little constitutional issues. Here are the specific allegations. So former DHS Secretary Nielsen repeatedly and knowingly lied about the number of individuals with suspected links to terrorism who attempted to cross or did cross the southern border into the U.S., specifically lied to Congress. And if this is true, this would be perjury. Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told Murphy, the whistleblower, to alter intelligence reports about Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to make those countries appear safe.

presumably so that Trump could force asylum seekers to go there, which is horribly unethical. Chadd, your friend, Frat Chad, the acting DHS secretary, told Murphy to stop providing intelligence assessments about Russian interference and instead focus on China and Iran and their alleged interference efforts if they exist. This was reportedly relaying a demand from Robert O'Brien, the National Security Advisor, and Wolf and Cuccinelli told Murphy to downplay the threat from white supremacist groups and play up alleged threats from Antifa. So, you know, again, some people are questioning Murphy, the whistleblower's credibility because he was demoted for collecting intel on reporters. But like to me, the story feels a lot like the Atlantic piece about

Trump denigrating the U.S. military in that the existing public record backs up the allegations, right? Like, we know the administration lied repeatedly about threats at the southern border to justify the wall to try to scare voters before the midterms. We know that they had changed asylum policy to force migrants to first apply for asylum in Guatemala, El Salvador in Honduras as a way to basically shut down all immigration, despite those countries being unsafe. And we know that the White House has played down Russian interference efforts and try to do both sides it with China and Iran because Trump just can't handle hearing about Russian interference. So I don't know, this is like brazen lying in a manipulation of intelligence.

The whistleblower complaint itself coincides with news that the intel community is no longer going to give in-person briefings to members of Congress on foreign election interference. So the moment we need this kind of information most, they are suppressing it. It's like, it's just so brazen, Ben. I don't even know what to say. Yeah, and this matters to people. It should be a bigger story because this directly affects the safety of Americans because they're suppressing real information about dangerous threats to the American people,

like the threat from white supremacy and from white nationalist groups, who we have seen kill Americans and harm Americans over the course of the last several years, right? And we saw it, you know, in Wisconsin, we saw it at the Tree of Life. synagogue. We've seen it, you know, in El Paso. I mean, this is a real problem. And not only they're not dealing with it, but they're actively suppressing the information that is, because they find it politically inconvenient to them. And the same way that Russia's intervention in our election threatens the integrity and potential for a free and fair election in this country. It doesn't get more fundamental than your potential safety in your community and the potential

that a foreign power can dictate the outcome of our election. These are real things. right, that are being suppressed. And in their place, this idea that we're going to hype up, you know, caravans. I mean, it's like we're back before the midterm election, you know, that they're being directed to hype threats at our southern border to play into Trump's, you know, view of this wall. And so you have here the full resources of the U.S. government, including the tip of the spear, the organization that is meant to protect Americans, being completely weaponized to create an alternative version of reality to sue Donald Trump's policy.

at the expense of the American people's security, that's a huge deal. And, you know, nothing breaks through. But it does suggest that if, you know, Joe Biden wins, there's going to have to be a lot of work done on the wiring of the Department of Homeland Security. And I'm frankly skeptical that there's, that it can be fully salvaged. Yeah, I am, I am increasingly with you on that one. The DHS is a broken place, you know, some might ask, why do they have their own intelligence agency within DHS? And I might say, great question. They probably shouldn't. It's right for abuse. Let's turn to climate change, Ben, because we're several weeks into the state of California, literally being on fire. The amount of smoke here in L.A. varies day to day. But I saw a report

yesterday that clouds have made their way all the way to Maine. So that's great. I'm glad that we could share this with you, East Coast folks, what we're experiencing here. I can barely talk today because it's so thick. Trump was in California yesterday where his response to an urgent plea to follow the science and do something about climate change to prevent the fires we're seeing. was, quote, it'll start getting cooler, you just watch, end quote. So given that just unbelievable denialism, I wanted to quickly outline some of the contours of Joe Biden's climate plan, because it's big and it's ambitious and it's a good plan. And it's something we should all be talking about and posting on social media and sharing with our friends as we try to get them to vote for Biden

and not Trump. So the big goal is getting to net zero emissions by 2050. So that means like any carbon released into the atmosphere is offset by carbon taken out, put that goal in perspective, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the U.S. emitted 5.1 billion metric tons of energy-related carbon dioxide in 2017, so we have a lot of work to do. Some of this Biden wants to do through executive action or by using government procurement power to get 100% clean energy vehicles or 100% efficient U.S. government buildings. But he also wants Congress to pass legislation to provide sort of an enforcement mechanism for these targets. so that's why winning the Senate and keeping the House is so important.

He also wants to invest $400 billion in clean energy research. Now, the U.S. were a huge piece of the CO2 problem. We're 15% of global emissions. So that obviously leaves the rest of the world for us to be able to actually tackle the problem fully. To get at that, like the international peace, Biden has pledged to reenter the Paris Climate Accords and then immediately try to renegotiate and raise those targets so that it reduces CO2 emissions even more. Ben, you were part of negotiating the original Paris Climate Accords. What do you think needs to happen diplomatically and internationally to actually tackle climate change while we still can?

Yeah. And I have the same urgency you do, Tommy, right before I love to come out here. I remember I saw my daughter, Chloe, you know, was three. And she had a, you know, her face looked like it had a particular glow. And I thought, wow, you know, Chloe looks like she got some sun. And then I realized it was a reflection of the sky, you know. And then you're thinking she's three, what is the world she's coming up in? There are going to be fires like this every year.

You know, it doesn't get worse and worse. This is the biggest challenge to our country. To get to Paris, and this foreshadows what we have to do, so just very quickly, the way we got to Paris is the United States, particularly in the second Obama administration, did everything we could to reduce our emissions. So you had every regulation we could pass a lot of investments in clean energy. We started to turn around the ocean liner of our own economy to move in the direction of net zero, that gave us some leverage to go abroad and then make this the centerpiece of a lot of bilateral

multilateral relationships. So we're literally sitting there and getting China and India and Brazil and other countries to raise their own ambitions in order to get into Paris. The important thing about Paris is Paris is supposed to be the floor. Nobody said that was the end of the work. That's the beginning. That's the architecture. This is the agreement within which we all do things. And every five years, there was always going to be the idea that we would get more ambitious, that countries would submit new plans every five years about what their commitments were. So that's coming up next year. So as you mentioned, the first thing Biden has to do is a major investment here in the United

States along the lines of the Green New Deal to transition our economy to get to net zero through investments of renewable energy and energy efficiency. But then internationally, we have to take that and say, look, we're back. You know, we're in the agreement. We're doing more. We're raising our ambition. And then we have to go and work cooperatively with other countries to raise theirs. So China, you know, you've had some ambitious initiatives and emissions reduction targets

in China. But China's building all this infrastructure in other countries that is not carbon neutral in any way, that is, you know, building coal plants. Like, they have to bring their international objectives in line with Paris. India needs to step up its game. Brazil needs to start protecting the Amazon rainforests instead of destroying it. so there's something that can take the carbon out of the air. And so what is need is a full core diplomatic press from the Biden team to go to all these other countries to raise the collective

ambition of Paris. And what are you trying to do? Because this can seem so amorphous to people. You're trying to basically rewire the global economy so that countries are increasingly not using fossil fuels and using clean sources of energy. So that markets and investments no longer go in that direction because it looks like that's being phased out and all that money flows into clean energy technology and energy efficiency technology so that richer countries are helping poorer countries who are going to say, hey, you guys got to build coal plants when you're developing. Why can't we? We can say them, well, we're going to help you seed a solar or wind energy infrastructure in your country. There's this kind of massive effort over the next decade to give humanity

a fighting chance of dealing with it. If we don't start now, climate change has already accelerating at what appears to be an exponential rate. Four more years of moving in the wrong direction. And not only we're further behind, we just might lose the window to be able to affect this. So this has to be not just a leading domestic priority. This has to be the leading farm policy priority for every U.S. This is like the Cold War. Like this is, government has to be organized, farm policy has to be organized so that for this administration and the one after that and the one after that, that we can get this done internationally. And that means, by the way, we have to win the Senate so that you can pass legislation through Congress. And that means, by the way, you know,

Tom Cotton or whatever climate deniers put up in 2024 can't win either. This is going to have to be sustained. Yeah, agreed. It just could not be more urgent. I literally feel it every day when I step outside. Let's talk about the European refugee crisis for a minute, Ben, because the Greek island of Lesbos has become a symbol of the EU's failure to deal with the continent. refugee crisis. Over the last five years, well over a million migrants have ended up in Greece. Most were escaping conflicts like wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Libya. But as governments across the EU went from welcoming to migrants to hostile, many of them got trapped in what were supposed to be temporary camps on Greek islands. The most notorious of which is the Moria camp in Lesbos,

which was designed to temporarily house like two or three thousand. migrants, but at times had more than 20,000 asylum seekers living in these temporary shelters for months at a time. The conditions were horrible. They got even worse when COVID arrived to the point where a small group of residents started fires in protests of lockdowns, and they basically burned down what has become Europe's largest refugee camp. So now an estimated 13,000 former residents of this camp are sleeping outdoors, and it is just a truly awful situation. The Migrants don't want the camp rebuild. They want off the island.

The residents of Lesbos, some of whom were once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize back in 2016 because people in fishing boats were saving so many migrants' lives as they were trying to cross the G&C from Turkey to Greece. Those residents have now become incredibly angry about these camps. The political situation is awful. There's taken a hard right turn. So, you know, Ben, there's a lot of pieces to the story. Like there's the conflicts displacing people and fueling the migration crisis.

There's the way far-right parties have demagogue the issue and gain support across Europe. But the one constant is just the suffering of these people who have been driven out of their homes, you know, by the sort of like post-9-11 crisis. I think New York Times estimated at, what, 37 million people who have been driven out by these post-9-11 crises. So it is really, really tough. Yeah. You know, I've heard from some people in this region, including Zarlaas-Hollins-I, who we've had on this podcast who has an NGO. that works with refugees in this area, right? And what's happening is not only the deteriorating conditions because of COVID,

but as you alluded to, you know, you've got far-right movements that are obstructing aid from going to these refugees. You've got local populations who've kind of turned against the refugees. You've got vulnerable people made more vulnerable by COVID in the streets. And you've got a Greek government that has moved to the right that is doing nothing and is probably tacitly, you know, allowing this to happen. what needs to happen is the European Union needs to step up here and get this under some control and restore kind of a humane order to this in which at a minimum aid is able to reach

refugees, far right, you know, mobs are not harassing refugees, and there's a return to order. And frankly, if the U.S. changes administration, you know, we get in this game, too, of we're systematically not only providing aid, but resettling people, some here, some and other European countries, people who want to go home, is there away from them to safely get home? This is, once again, a humanitarian catastrophe that's not getting as much attention because of COVID. But a lot of intersecting trends are happening here, not just the refugee one, but the kind of far right piece of this, some of the exhaustion with this issue in Europe. But there are human lives in the middle of this, and we can't lose sight of that. And these

are innocent people who've done nothing wrong. Yeah, and it's lots of children. I mean, you know, look at some of the images. It's just lots of little kids who have been demagogued by far-right parties in the U.S. and in Europe and called terrorists when, in fact, they are babies, women and children and, you know, tiny little kids. So horrible situation. We'll try to put some NGOs you can support in the show notes if people want to donate or time or money. Let's talk about our buddy, John Bolton, for a quick minute. The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas for former Trump National

Security Advisor John Bolton's publisher and is a literary agent, which means there is now a criminal investigation into Bolton's handling of classified information in his book. Bolton himself has reportedly not received a subpoena yet. Ben, did you know that Bolton's book sold more than 780,000 copies in the first week? I had no idea. I'm very mad at everyone for buying that shitty-ass book. Can you buy my book, please? I didn't sell them in copies. 708,000 copies. So basically the White House is arguing that Bolton didn't do like the appropriate pre-publication review for classified information before publishing that stupid book.

Bolton says, yes, I did. I did appropriate revisions. The White House just sat on it because they wanted to bottle it up because they knew the publication would embarrass Trump. At a minimum, it seems like Bolton will lose the profits from this book. But this criminal element is pretty ominous for him then. That seems like a big deal. It's super ominous, and I'm no friend of John Bolton here, but is there any reporting or, you know, the book's out, right? Like, what is the thing that was revealed that was so damaging, right?

You know, like this, if 7008,000 people bought it, a lot of people read this book. And I have not seen a single news story suggesting that some source and method of U.S. intelligence collection was revealed here, right? So this has a feeling of complete bullshit. it. I mean, yeah, if he, and here's the thing, like you alluded to it, there's basically a playbook here where if somebody does ignore the process and someone does reveal stuff, you know, that they don't get access to the profits, which is a way of, I think, an appropriate way of, you know, making clear to anybody who works in the U.S. government that you can't just take all the secret knowledge you obtain because of your position and go profit off of it. But the idea of like

starting to throw people in prison or prosecute their literary agents, you know, and let's why is this happening? This is happening because it was critical of Trump. I mean, you know, there's no reason to believe that Trump cares that much about some piece of U.S. intelligence that might have been discussed in this book. He was pissed off that it was critical of him. And so it sets a dangerous precedent of not approaching this through the lens of, you know, classification issues, but through the, you know, the lens of revenge against political opponents, like everything that's happening at the Justice Department. And for, DOJ to be doing this, that's different than like the White House to be fulminating about it. That's,

you know, that's the legal arm of the U.S. government supposed to be independent of politics moving into that space yet again. Yeah, it's going to come down hard on them. This is, you know, retaliation, it seems. Speaking of retaliation, Ben, Politico reported that the U.S. intelligence community believes that the Iranian government is considering an assassination attempt against the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. So, intelligence officials believe that this is like one of a range of options Iran has been considering as a retaliation for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Kuds Force, who Trump ordered killed by a U.S. drone strike back in January, I think.

This ambassador, a woman named Lana Mark, she's not some top military or intelligence official. She's a high-end handbag designer, a Mar-a-Lago member who I guess has been friends with Trump for like 20 years, and that's why he made her an ambassador. there have also been reports that Iran wants to target the head of Centcom, although, you know, like taking out somebody who lives in Tampa and yeah, yeah, he travels with a bit of a military infrastructure that's going to harden that target. But, you look, the good news here is clearly if we're reading about it, the U.S. intelligence communities sniffed out this plot. They could take additional steps to keep her safe. Like, hopefully it won't be a problem. That said, Ben, we were told at the time that taking out Soleimani would deter future attacks on U.S. interests. But also last week, the head of Central Command told NBC News that we have had more indirect fire attacks around and against our bases the first half of this year than we did the first half of last year. In other words, General Frank McKenzie said on the record that there are more attacks in the wake of the Soleimani assassination. This also comes as the U.S. is cutting our force level in Iraq from a presence of 5200 to 3,000 by the end of September as part of this broader effort, basically, to announce that he is ending. every single war we're in before the election, which, look, I can get behind as long as these guys

come home. So, you know, kind of a wild little update there for the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. That would be scary. Yeah. Count me as dubious that we're ending all these wars. We're having photo ops about it. Yeah, me too. Me too. But I think, you know, first of all, we see that, and look, this report, you know, I'd like to see

it be corroborated, you know. But I will say, you know, Iran has, in the past, acted in third countries. Yeah. And so it's Hezbollah. There have been attacks in parts of Europe or parts in Thailand. So the idea that Iran might seek to commit some act of violence in a third country as reprisal for Soleimani is not that far-fetched. And frankly, again, we said at the time that the responses to the Soleimani killing, we're going to come in many different fronts and over many different timelines. And we see here, you know, not only were those missiles fired into Iraq that ended up wounding 100 Americans, but, you know, you've seen further attacks in Iraq. You've seen Iran accelerate its nuclear program, obviously. And there's the continued possibility of some form

of act of terrorism here. I noticed Trump tweeting about this last night. I mean, it would also be nice if he would do something about the Russian bounties on U.S. service members in Afghanistan, if it was concerned about, you know. But it's something to watch. And I think, you know, not knowing anything about the intelligence that what may be the case is that Iran is exploring different options for how to respond, which is scary, you know, and part of the cycle of escalation that has been so concerning over the last couple years. And frankly, you know, I'd rather not have entered into that cycle of escalation to begin with. Yeah, agreed. A couple more quick things. So Japan will soon have a new prime minister. In August, Shinso Abe resigned from the job

after many years because of health reasons. Now is longtime cabinet minister. Yoshihide Suga is poised to take over. The New York Times described him as, you know, the son of a farmer and a teacher who is, quote, known more for expressionless recitations of policy than charisma. I mean, it's interesting because he comes from more humble roots. Abe was, I believe, like, the grandson of a prime ministeria, the sort of a dynastic family. You know, Ben, I'm sure, like, the various intelligence communities and the State Department are all working over time to learn everything they can about this new guy. Early reports suggest that there's likely to be a lot of continuity and continuation of

Abe's policies. So just flagging this one, putting a pin in it, we'll see, I guess. Yeah, no, I, I, how I interpret this is, you know, Abe's dominated Japanese politics. for the better part of a decade. His party has dominated Japanese politics since the end of World War II. Yeah, every election except for four years. Exactly, which overlap with the beginning of the Obama administration.

And this guy is a transitional figure. I've met this guy. He's kind of the party guy, and he's older than Abe was. And my sense is, you know, they have a lot of challenges. They've got COVID. They've got an economic problem because of COVID. They've got China and North Korea that they're dealing with, and rather than have the, you know, fight over who the next generation leader is

for that party, let's go with the guy everybody knows, the kind of technocrat who can manage things for a period of time and then decide who the leader is, you know. So I see this as just kind of a as status quo and anti as Japan could have. It's worth remembering because it doesn't get enough attention, and, you know, we're part of that too. How important Japan is, you know, for sure. This is still one of the biggest economies in the world. This is our biggest, you know, in terms of size, ally in East Asia. This is a country that invests enormous amounts of money in the international system, enormous amounts of aid. Any strategy that is smart about China is going to have to incorporate Japan. So this is an important country. It bears watching. Yeah, totally

great. So, Ben, on September 11th, the Trump campaign released a new digital ad calling on everyone to support of the troops. It featured a photo that had this silhouette of the several soldiers as fighter jets flew over them. It was very dramatic, it was very patriotic. The problem been, uh, the jets were Russian-made Meg 29s and one of the soldiers was carrying a Russian-made Kalishnikov rifle. So Politico caught this little, uh, uh, stock photo error and noted that the, you know, the Meg 29 was developed to counter the American made F-15 and F-16 and has been sold since to countries like North Korea, Syria, and Iran. So Ben, I think we got them.

Campaign over. No coming back from this one. I mean, who vets these things? I mean, we've vet everything so carefully, you know. I mean... It's so easy to, like, find good stock photos of U.S. service members. Of the U.S. military. It's like they're trolling us, you know? Like, we're going to...

I mean, how do you... Who's the guy who Googled planes and came up with some Russian migs? I mean, that makes you think of Top Gun, by the way. Remember, he sees the mig, you know? Yeah. Gives him the bird. Yeah, he flips in the bird, you know? So, come on, guys. Just be better, you know.

Yeah. be better. So one last thing before we get to interview with Mike McFaul. We are now, I have dealt with a week of Bob Woodward related news cycles. Was there anything on foreign policy that really jumped out of you from the coverage? You know, there was the notable, I saved his ass comment from Trump about Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. But anything else really get your goat? Well, yeah, that did. But the other thing is he went out of his way in his kind of autocrats tribute section of the book, you know, to praise Erdogan in very specific terms and talk about how well he gets on with him. I, you know, it's not a coincidence to me that

the autocrats that he talks about the most, right? You know, with the exception of Kim Jong-un, which is a great romance, of course, are MBS and Erdogan, you know, rich autocrats, corrupt autocrats, you know, and so the, the willful choice of them, he could have picked Bolsonaro, he could have picked Duterte, he could have picked any number of these guys, he seems to have a particular desire to praise the most corrupt people. And if there is an accountability process, if Trump loses God willing, and there's a look-back effort here, I want to understand whether there are financial dealings happening, whether there's corruption we're not seeing. Because, yes, it's jarring to see him praise these people. It's alarming to think that he may be doing so

for financial reasons as well as political ones. Yeah. The only other thing I noticed were two little Jared Kushner bites. So Jared Kushner is quoted by Bob Woodward as saying, the most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots. Somehow, he is not talking about himself. He's talking about a bunch of four-star generals in Gary Cohn, who, you know, whatever you think of. He ran Goldman Sachs, he's some experience here. Cushner also was, you know, a lot of people didn't like Cushner. And I guess Rex Tillerson said he found Cushner's warm dealings with Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu as nauseating to watch, it was stomach churning, is the quote in there. So that was a fitting quote to close on on this day where you have Bibi at the White House,

getting a political win and giving one back to Trump. Did you see that Trump gave Bibi the key to the White House? Like mayors get the key. What door? Yeah, well, it's like, you know, when like a team wins the World Series and the mayor gives the key to the city, like that's an award that has never existed before. I mean, so the degree to which they're kind of sycophantic, mutually, Bibi and Trump and Jared is the go-between is nauseating is a good word for it.

I can think of some other ones, too. The key to the White House is so funny because it's like way to take a thing that just signals like little like parochial small town mayor and just like slap it on the White House and think that's cool. I'm not sure that that plays the way he thinks it's playing. Yeah. There's a lot wrong with that, but I'm not going to. I know. I know. Okay. When we come back, we'll have our conversation with former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Mike McFal. Hey, I'm Akela Hughes. And I'm Gideon Redneck. We're the hosts of What a Day, Crooked Media's daily news podcast. Look, we understand keeping up with the flooded News every day is hard. There are updates on coronavirus, Disney reopenings, Animal News. What else? So much else. But we're here to help you cut through all that. We break down the biggest news stories each day and help you understand what's important and what you can do about it, all in 20 minutes or less. New episodes of what a day come out every morning, Monday through Friday at 4 a.m. Eastern on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You don't have to get up that early to listen, though. We are now joined by the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, the director of the Freeman Spogley Institute for

International Studies at Stanford and the author of the New York Times bestselling book from Cold War to Hot Peace. Mike McFaul, Mike, is great to see it. Great to see you guys again. This is very fun. This is like the good old days in the bowels of the NSC before it was, you know, nonstop impeachment things going on in there. So I'll just kick it off. So Mike, we got some good news this morning. Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny is reportedly awake, alert, and he even posted a photo on his Instagram, despite being poisoned in late August by, you know, a Russian nerve agent, presumably by some Russian actor. His photo caption said, quote, I was able to breathe on my own for the whole day. I liked it very much,

an amazing, underestimated process by many recommended. So he hasn't lost his sense of humor despite all that's happened to him. Mike, I know you know Navalny well. Can you tell listeners a little bit about him? And like, why do you think his enemies try to poison him, again, I should say last month. Well, first of all, that was a great Instagram photo. I saw it too. With all his family, by the way, are all there, including her Stanford student, Dasha Navalnya, who decided to be in Berlin for the first week of classes instead of here. So Alexei, I've known about him for a long time. I want to make clear, because I sometimes am accused, and he is accused, that we somehow collude to FOMA and Revolution in Russia.

I think a lot of your listeners will be surprised that as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, I never once met with Alexei Navalny in a formal meeting. We only bumped into each other at some dinner, and we shook hands for seven seconds, and 50 cameras took our photo. And, you know, he had a very principled position, which I deeply respect, which is that, you know, I don't need your help, Ambassador. This is my fight. This is our fight.

The one request he had, and it's a request that another friend of mine had, always made. His name was Boris and himself. He was assassinated in 2015. He always said, this is our fight. Just please don't help our enemies. Don't aid the enemies. Because Alexei, you know, for his entire career, has basically been focused on exposing corruption by the regime. by the regime in Russia, right?

So that's how he's made himself famous, not talking about liberalism versus democracy and these kind of abstract concepts from the 90s that a lot of other political opposition leaders talk about, and I do too, and we should, but basically to expose them as stealing from Russians. And he's very savvy on various technological platforms. He has amazing resources,

and sources within the Russian government, I believe, that help him expose this, because I think that's important for people to remember not everybody, even in the Russian government, supports Vladimir Putin. And that's what makes him so dangerous. He's become extremely popular, especially with the younger people inside Russia. His movement has moved out of the big cities, so he has followers all over the small cities and medium-sized cities across Russia. And in fact, when he was poisoned, he was out in Olmsk or Tombsk, I forget which city, he landed in the other one of the two out to see some of the people that were running in local elections that were affiliated with him. And I would say he's the most organized, principled,

political leader in Russia today. So, you know, you mentioned some of Navalny's travels right before he was poisoned. I believe he was traveling to campaign before some regional elections. So I was looking at some of those results. It seems like the opposition may have had some success in some of these elections, these local elections, with what was called a smart voting strategy where basically, you know, you encourage people to align behind a single candidate, most likely to defeat the United Russia Party, Putin's party. Last month, you know, we saw some anti- Putin protests in the far east of Russia. Like, when you look at those, elections, those protests, what do you think the state of the opposition is in Russia these days?

How powerful or not are they? Well, before I answer that question, I want to remind you, and actually I'll tell it through an anecdote that I remember talking to President Obama about when we were in Russia, when he was going in to meet Putin, the two numbers that drove Obama crazy dealing with Putin was, one, how rich he was and how high his approval ratings were, right? But as you guys know better than I, Obama's a very competitive guy. And he would look at that approval rating and he'd say, come on, man, if I had all the television stations in my hand, everybody in the U.S. Congress was loyal to me. Every rich person in America was loyal to me.

Hell, I would be a 90%, right? So always remember that when you look at those opinion polls. And always remember that Russia is a very, you know, surveilled place, probably one of the most surveilled places on the planet. planet. So when, you know, Natasha out in Vladivostok gets a call from Volojia in Moscow saying, hey, I'm going to, I work with an opinion poll firm, and I just want to know what's your attitude towards Vladimir Putin, and she knows who's listening to her phone. There's one rational answer to that question, right? And in academia, there's a lot of research on these falsified preferences in totalitarian regimes. So remember that context. And yet within that context,

You're absolutely right, Tommy. There were some really big breakthroughs. First in Khabaris that you just mentioned, where LDPR leader won, a liberal Democratic Party of Russia leader run, not liberal or democratic, right? This is a nationalist party. But the Navalny smart election strategy, like you described, decided to endorse him.

He won the election. Putin, in his autocratic ways, decided, I don't really like this guy. I'll remove them. And ever since, they've had protests out there every single Sunday for months now, defying laws in a very dangerous way for the regime. They can't control those demonstrations out there in a smaller way that what's been happening in a larger way in Belarus has been constantly happening over the last two months. And then second, these regional elections, again, under all those conditions, I just described all the advantages to Putin's party, United Russia, there were a few breakthrough cities where Navalny's people won, including one of the people that he was visiting on that plane ride before he, while he was poisoned. So that suggests that all is not well, that people don't support Putin to the degree that those public opinion polls might suggest. So, Mike, you mentioned Belarus, and we've just seen these extraordinary protests be sustained

despite, you know, pretty at times brutal and arbitrary tactics by the security forces, lurking in the backdrop has been Russia, obviously, the neighbor of Belarus. And Lukashenko, the dictator really of Belarus, recently met with Putin and Sochi. And there's been this kind of concern of what would Russia do, might they intervene, might there even be something along the lines of a Ukraine situation? The meeting was kind of interesting to watch because the body language was very much Lukashenko, the supplicant, kind of meeting the man on the throne and Putin kind of looking disinterested like the godfather.

Taking notes and sweating. Yeah, exactly. But out of it, you know, you saw some announcements. You know, Putin talked about a $1.5 billion loan. There were these kind of vague comments made about the prospects for. quote, promoting integration processes within the union state, you know, so some potential blurring of the lines between Russia and Belarus. What do you think the play is here? What do you think Lukashenko was asking Putin for? What do you think Putin is willing to do to prop up

Lukashenko? And in the other direction, you know, how much might these protests in Belarus help further galvanize the Russian opposition? How do you see the interrelation between Russia in Belarus right now. Yeah, it's a great question. I don't have any ways to predict the future. We in political science are pretty bad at predicting revolutions. But I did spend five years in the government with you guys, and I would say the CIA is pretty bad at it too, just for the...

But a couple of things. Let me start with the opposition and then talk about the autocrats. So, first of all, for any listeners out there, if you have not been paying attention to Belarus, just go Google Belarus, hashtag Belarus, and be inspired. the incredible explosion of very peaceful elections every single weekend, mostly, almost exclusively led by women, by the way. The women are in charge here and getting beaten. I think 500 people were arrested in Minsk yesterday, 800 across the country, and yet they have been defying that regime.

And just remember that when you're thinking about voting or not, by the way, you know, these are people that are getting beaten, they're getting poison, just to have the, the right that all of us in America have, it's just shameful to me that some of my young people that I interact with here at Stanford are so, oh, you know, I'm not sure I can find enough time to vote in this election when I know these other people that are literally risking their lives

to have the right to vote. The other thing I wanna say, Ben, before I get to the autocrats, is, you know, in my world, and I think in policy worlds, there tends to be some stereotypes about it. people and nations and histories and cultures. Most certainly there's a hypothesis out there that, you know, the Russians, they love a strong hand and Putin is exactly what the Russians want. And the Belor Russians suffer even more from this, right?

There's this notion that they're passive and that they've never risen up for 24 years against Lukashenko. And there's all this kind of cultural determinism. And whatever happens, I think it's important to note. that all that cultural determinism is undermined by these protests, right? And the history, I think, is on the side of those fighting for democracy. We don't know when that comes, but the notion that these regimes are going to last for 20 or 30 years, I'm very skeptical about. Now, having said that, in moments like this, when I've written about it academically, it always matters, I call it

the guys with the guns, what are the people with the guns doing? And so far, there have not been splits in Belarus with the, they're called the Siliviki in Russian, the hardliners, the military folks or the intelligence folks. But they also, you know, you can arrest everybody if there's only 50 people on the square. You can arrest people if there's 500. You can't when there's 100,000, right? And so they're in a stalemate right now that they do not have enough physical force to suppress everybody. And, you know, Lukashenko seems very desperate today.

He seems, that's why he went in this very, you know, that the body language says everything. And we've both seen how Putin loves the man spread. And, you know, he used to do that with Obama too, by the way. He sits that way on purpose. But Lukashenko was basically going to beg. even called him, I think, you know, our big brother. I think he used that phrase in Russian. I don't know how it was translated in English. But Putin didn't jump at it. He was like, yeah, yeah, we're going to help you. We're going to give you a billion and a half, but we got to work

this out. So I don't think Lukashenko got the strong signal that he was hoping for, and that suggests to me that there's going to be a pretty prolonged stalemate here. You know, one of the theories kicking around, I was just on a call yesterday with the bunch of folks in Belarus, their biggest worry, you know, is winter and the snow and what happens to mobilization in that period. And I would not be surprised if this kind of goes on for a long time without a solution until the snow is the thing that comes to Lukashenko's A. Yeah, no, and you're right to, again, we've been encouraging listeners to just check out what's going on, how courageous to people in Belarus are. And Navalny announcing he's going to go back

to Russia right after he's poisoned. That guy's got more guts than I do, certainly. One of follow-up question, though, is, you know, we're watching this and Trump has been silent on it. You know, in fact, when he was asked by the volume, he pivoted off of it, Belarus, you know, leaving the statements and the actions to kind of the embassy. And I guess the question I wanted to ask, you know, because we could ask you the same question that, you know, we get asked all the time. What does Putin have on Trump? I want to ask you that. You know, Vinman, who you know, yesterday offered his opinion that, you know, Trump is kind of a useful idiot for the Russians. But I mean, what I wanted to ask you is what difference could a U.S. president make? And perhaps there'll be a new

U.S. president, hopefully after the election. What is our role here? This is obviously about the people of Belarus, the people of Russia. But what is Trump, what is he not doing that he should be doing? And what difference does that make? If we had a different president, what would you be advising them to do about these protests in Belarus in particular or about the Russian opposition? Well, first of all, just to underscore, it's, we've never had a president like Trump. I want to make sure people understand that. Democrats, Republicans, at least going back to, you know, World War II through to our history, through Obama, there's been variations as to what people have emphasized. But the United States of America has always been on the side of democracy and human rights and rule of law. I was just actually

cleaning up my photos for a piece I'm writing today, Ben, and I stumbled across a photo with President Obama in July 2009, meeting with Russian opposition leaders, including one with Boris Nemsoft, and I just sent it to Jana, just so you know, and was in touch with her this morning, his daughter, because President Obama always met with human rights leaders and always engaged with them. My last event, as a U.S. government, an official with Barack Obama was the drive. You were there, right? I was there, yeah.

From the G20 summit, we were driving to Air Force One, and we stopped at some holiday in. Barack Obama, President Obama, was the only G20 leader that did that in Russia during that time, and he stopped to meet with human rights activists, mostly LGBT activists, if you remember, in Russia, in St. Petersburg. And that's a tradition that Trump just doesn't do. I mean, I don't think he's ever met with a democracy activist from around the world. He never uses the word democracy, human rights, or rule of law. And he's, you know, as he said to Woodward, but he said it on the record many, many times.

He brags about, like, I'm the guy that interacts with the autocrats, right? And he kind of wears that as a badge of courage or something he's proud of. And just realize what that does is that undermines people in these countries because they are more vulnerable and they think that they're not protected. And there's, you know, correlation is not causation, but there's reason to believe that if you're caring about democracy and human rights, maybe Navalny doesn't get poison. Maybe Khashoggi doesn't get killed because you have a relationship with the White House and you have to think about that if they care of. about those things. That's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, we used to be the leader of the free world, and we used to be the country that would coordinate a transatlantic or global response to these kinds of things, and now we're absent. And so, you know, now it's Angela Merkel

that leads that, but we would be stronger if we were all united. And then number three, There are a couple of concrete things you can do. Number one, you can interrupt U.S. companies that do business with the Belarusian dictatorship. We now know there's a couple of them that have sold surveillance equipment and various ways to control the Internet to Lukashenko. So this goes back to what Navalny used to say and what Nassafna used to say, don't help us, just don't help our enemies. And then fourth, there's sanctions. And I think, you know, the specter of sanctions is important. And people that abuse the human rights of others don't have the right to go to Disneyland and should be sanction. But I think it's the bigger moral thing. I really do. I think that's the most

important thing. What about Mike revealing their corruption? And revealed, I'm glad you mentioned that. Without question, you know, this is what Navalny does so effectively. This is a lot of is what we need to do as a country. You know, there's a lot, there's new legislation on this. Our friend Jake Sullivan, as you know, he's written about this. And I hope if there is a new president and there's a new Biden administration that we will radically reform the ability of all kinds of creepy crawlers around the world to, you know, park their money here. So they steal their money from their citizens and then they park it. here in Palo Alto in houses and companies and Delaware in companies that we don't know.

That's just got to end. Yeah. Again, and if folks want it like a primer on U.S.-Russia relations, Mike's book from Cold War to Hot Peace is just a fantastic place to turn to. It's lots of great stories from the Obama years, lots about the frosty, maybe, relationship between Obama and Putin. But, you know, Mike, like let's all hope for one second, right, that Biden wins. What do you think needs to change in terms of our approach to Russia?

I mean, there's the obvious sort of obsequiousness and weird refusal by Trump to ever blame Putin for anything, whether it's, you know, the poisoning of Navalny or, you know, pick your millions or bizarre times he has defended Putin. But like, what do you want to see from the Biden administration? Because Obama went in, like many other presidents had, talking about resetting relations with the Russian. that changed when there was a transition of power from Medvedev to Putin. But what do we do now that like Putin seems like he's going to be around for an awfully long time? You know, Tommy, tragically, I think we got to go back to some of the lessons of the Cold War. And I would say exactly the same thing with China right now, which is to contain where we must,

engage where we can. And when we do engagement, we engage the government, but we also engage societies. That's, you know, in a nutshell, that's the strategy, right? So I'm really worried that we haven't done enough to strengthen NATO in Europe, for instance. I'm worried about what's happening in Ukraine. You know, the best way, and Ben, this gets back to a point I wanted to make about your observation in Belarus. Another thing that's a Democratic activist in Russia always tell me, there's not much you can do for us, But the best way to scare Putin and to inspire Russians is to help Ukrainian Democrats and now to help Belarusian Democrats because that undermines the myth that Putin says that we need auto, you know, because we're Slavic peoples, we need a strong autocratic hand.

And the Trump administration is, you know, instead of trying to help consolidate democracy in Ukraine, he tried to monetize and help his election campaign. his relationship with President Zelensky. I'm really worried about what's happening in Ukraine, and I hope that President Biden and his administration would re-engage there and get serious about trying to consolidate democracy there. And then third sanctions, you know, there's a lot of sanctions fatigue in Europe right now. And I hope that President Biden, I mean, I've traveled in Europe with Vice President Biden, Russia, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine.

We went to some pretty interesting places when I was in the government with him. He has a stellar reputation in Europe, and he has a really stellar reputation in Eastern Europe, right? 30,000 people came to his talk in Moldova. It was pretty exciting. I think it was pretty exciting for him, too, by the way, to have that many people cheering him. And I hope that he will translate that reputation. to help unify that, you know, the transatlantic relationship, but the democratic world, right? So that we do not just begin to relax sanctions because of, you know, Hungary or Italy or fatigue,

but that we only relax sanctions when Russia changes its position. And I actually believe that when you're in a stronger position and you're more united, that gives you more ability to actually negotiate on things. might be in America's national interest. So at the same time, we are containing Russia, we also should engage with the Russian government, for instance, to extend the New START Treaty. That is a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

And, you know, I worked with you guys in the Obama administration. I think I've only voted for one Republican of my life because he was a friend of mine, and I knew he was going to lose. So I could always face him for the rest of my life to say I voted for you. Pat, but I think actually the early Reagan years, and a guy named George Schultz, who was Secretary of State, has explained it best in his memoirs. By the way, Reagan and their administration did lots of things wrong. I want to be clear about that. If we were talking about South Africa, for instance, they were on the wrong side of history. But with respect to the Soviets, Schultz had this idea.

We're going to engage with them when it's in our mutual interest. We're going to contain them when they are being belligerent. And while engaging, however, we're not going to check our values at the door. And I think those are good lessons for how we deal with Russia and China, by the way, moving forward. Very good lessons. And we know Vice President Biden is an avid listener. So hopefully he's jotting this all down. Maybe he brings you back into government.

Mike McBow, thank you so much for doing the show. I think speak for Ben and I. We miss working with you. one of the most fun parts of the job was sitting in your office and talking for hours about stuff like this. So good to hear you. Yeah, me too, Tommy. Me too, Ben. I miss those days. But great to see you here today. And thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks again to Mike McFal for joining us today. Ben, fly safe tomorrow. Yep. Coming on tomorrow. Be back in the fire tomorrow. All right, man. We'll bring a gas mask and maybe an air purifier from New York if you can find one

there because they're all out over here. I'll ask Matt Gates if you've got a gas mask. mask, but the human frat paddle. But my wife, Anne, who's like just the best person you'd want to be in any survival of situation, was somehow located near a pierre fire. So, amazing. We have one. We're trying. I guess I'll just never leave house again.

So, sounds good. All right, guys, talk to you next week. See it. Pots Save the World is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. Pots Save the World is mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our amazing digital team, Elijah. Kone, Narmelkonian, and Milo Kim, and film and share episodes videos every week.