Pod Save the World - Trump shreds the Iran deal

Episode Date: May 8, 2018

Trump just tore up the Iran deal. Tommy talks with Ben Rhodes about what happens next. Then Tommy talks with Russia expert Mike McFaul about his new book, From Cold War to Hot Peace, about his time working at the White House and as US Ambassador to Russia.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is Tommy B.Tor. Thank you guys for listening. I got a two-part show today. First, President Trump decided to withdraw from the Iran deal today. So I got on the phone quickly with Ben Rhodes, who you know well to talk about what it means, what the stakes are and what we should expect to happen next. Then I had a conversation with Michael McFall. He's a Russia expert who was the U.S. ambassador to Russia and wrote a book called From Cold War to Hot Peace, the inside story of Russia and America. Details his time at the White House in Moscow and the arc of U.S. relationships with Russia from the reset and the happier days at the beginning in 2009 to Putin's election to Russian interference in our elections here back home. It's a ranging set of topics and a huge news week, but I think you will find both of these guys smart and fascinating and very worth your time. So here's the interview with Ben. On the line with me is Ben Rhodes. You guys know Ben. He is the author of the new book, The World. as it is, which is available to pre-order right now and is out on June 12th, and it will tell you the story of the entire eight years of the Obama White House, including the Iran deal, which Donald Trump just exploded to trigger and own libs like us. Ben, how owned do you feel right now?

I mean, well, the sad fact, too, though, is that, like, Trump, I think has no understanding of, like, what is actually in the Iran deal and no plan for where this is going. He's just doing this. He's just doing this to own Obama people. He's just doing this because Barack Obama negotiated this deal. And the fact that that is what is motivating the President of the United States on the most serious issues we face is actually part of what is the most angering about this decision today. So let's talk about the Iran deal was. I mean, it was it was not just an agreement, right? It was seven years of putting pressure on Iran through sanctions, through regional diplomacy, through a variety of means, to get all our allies to work together, to pressure them to not continue to engage in these nuclear activities, not to

continue enriching uranium at a level that would produce a nuclear weapon, who'd involve us, the Europeans, the UN Security Council had to vote for these sanctions, right? I mean, this was like a global effort. Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump today is talking about, well, you know, we'll just put on sanctions again, when, in fact, he just blew up the international unity that we'd spend a decade, a cultivating that is necessary for sanctions. As you said, Tommy, to get Iran to the negotiating table, it took five years of patient work with Europe to get them to put in place an oil embargo on Iranian oil, China, India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, all of them to cooperate

with our sanctions, to reduce their purchases of Iranian oil, to apply the pressure that brought Iran to the table, where we then spent two years painstakingly negotiating a nuclear deal that dramatically rolled back the Iranian nuclear program, you know, that destroyed the core of a reactor that could have produced plutonium for nuclear weapon, that took out two-thirds of their centrifuges and put them under monitoring that got rid of 97 percent of their stockpile, you know, put in place inspections to verify that those things were being done. You know, this took, this isn't like we made a decision in one day, and he just got rid of it. This is the whole world, all the major powers and our closest allies working together for seven years

to achieve a deal that could prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And he just, you know, scrapped that to have a photo op, you know, at the White House. Yeah. It's got it so frustrating. So what happens next? It seems like the Europeans are going to try to encourage the Iranians not to resume nuclear activities. And I guess, you know, in exchange, they'll try to continue to encourage European countries to keep doing business with Iran. But, I mean, won't that come to a head if the United States?

states slaps back U.S. sanctions on Iran because then we'd have to sanction European businesses that work with them, right? Yeah. I mean, there are two fundamental problems here. One is Trump said he's going to reimpose the sanctions that were really done of the deal. Right. To do that, he would have to sanction Europe or China or European or Chinese entities. In other words, we actually never enforced those sanctions because we got those countries to cooperate and work with us. And so, you know, he would essentially be sanctioning some of our closest partners in the world and potentially creating significant economic negative consequences from doing that, they would probably try to resist those sanctions.

And so the notion that you could simultaneously have the Europeans trying to stay in the deal, but Trump sanctioning them for anything that they do in Iran, that's not going to work. And the second point is the Iranians would have to negotiate some better deal with us, and we just pulled out of a deal that we negotiated, that the U.S. is a party to. this is clearly going to emboldened hardliners at Iran who didn't like the deal to begin with. And it's far more likely, I think, that you see Iran beginning to walk away from the deal than somehow them capitulating to greater concessions. Yeah. And I guess we should just, again, remind people that there's no evidence to suggest that Iran had come out of compliance with the deal. The IAEA certified that they were meeting the rules rolled out in the deal.

General Mattis said the deal is in our interest. Mike Pompeo testified before Congress very recently that Iran was not cheating. So there's no argument to be made that somehow Iran forced his hand here, right? No, they spent two years, you know, or a year and a half searching for a rationale of Iranian noncompliance and they didn't find it. Yeah. And part of what is so absurd about this is not only is Iran complying with the deal, this timing is totally arbitrary, right? Because there was no Iranian violation, Trump is just randomly deciding to precipitate a nuclear crisis, an international crisis, a rift with our allies, a rift with China and Russia. At the very time, frankly, that he's already trying to negotiate

thing with North Korea. So there's no possible explanation for him taking this action, other than some antipathy to everything that Obama did or some desire to fulfill a campaign promise. You had our closest allies working, pleading with him not to do this. You had members of his own administration, including Secretary of Defense, didn't want him to do this. You had the intelligence community finding that Iran was complying. So he is, you know, bucking people in his own administration, people around the world. And in so doing, creating a crisis, you know, for no reason, around an arbitrary deadline. The only folks that seem to want him to do what he did today was Netanyahu and his closest advisors. I got in some trouble last week for saying that Netanyahu

rolled out this new intelligence that they'd found in an effort to sort of work with the Trump administration to create the impression that Iran had violated the deal when in fact the documents didn't show that. People accused me of all kinds of things. But today Trump again said, Iran, quote, is pursuing nuclear weapons and cited Netanyahu's intelligence presentation, when in fact, nothing in that presentation showed that they were pursuing those nuclear activities today. It showed past activities, right? Yeah, no, let's be clear. That's a lie. Okay, he's lying. Yeah. What Netanyahu put out was stuff that Iran did many years ago when they were pursuing a nuclear weapon. That is precisely why we put the deal in place. The inspections and verification regime

under the Iran deal is what prevents the scenario that Netanyahu was pointing to in the past. And that presentation by Nanyahu did not amount to a violation of the deal at all. It's just the ancient history of how we got to the deal in the first place. Why Iran's behavior was troubling in the first place, you take out inspectors, you take out monitoring. Suddenly, once again, you don't have the ability to see what Iran is doing. You could be back in the days that Nentnau was pointing to when you didn't have an Iran deal. So what's so absurd about this whole set of arguments is essentially the Iran deal solved the problem that Netanyahu was identifying in his presentation.

what they're doing is getting rid of potentially the constraints on Iran's program and the inspections, creating the exact scenario that they were complaining about in that presentation or, you know, that they were saying it's going to happen in 10 or 15 years. That's going to happen now. Yeah. You know, and until today, you could say, okay, until today, you could have made an argument that Trump was posturing in an effort to get the Israelis to force Iran to put in place some sort of follow-on agreement that might have limited their ballistic missile testing or that somehow forced them to stop supporting bad actors in places like Yemen or in Syria. But all that leverage is now gone, unless I'm mistaken. Yeah, no, Macron, President Macron of France offered Trump a great lifeline.

He said, look, I will negotiate on these other issues that you're worried about, ballistic missiles, some of the provisions in the deal that expire in 10 years or 15 years. The condition, though, is keep the JCPO, the Iran deal in place while I negotiate that, because it makes no sense to junk the deal and get rid of those constraints and go for a different deal. Let's build from the foundation of what's in the Iran deal. And Trump wouldn't even accept that opening that Macron offered him. And that's going to create a crisis with our European allies that we haven't seen since the invasion of Iraq. I mean, the rift between the United States, France, UK, and Germany and the EU, who are all party to this deal as well,

it risks being as severe as anything we've seen since the 2003 run up to the Iraq war. I'm frustrated at the point that it's sort of hard to articulate my feelings in a reasonable way about this. What do you think happens next? You know, it'll play out over some time. The Iranians could try to work within the processes set up by the JCPOA to say that the U.S. violated the deal. They could go to the U.N. there are any number of things that the Iranians could do to try to claim the high ground here, blame us. Then there's a question of, is Trump going to impose these sanctions? And if he does, does that mean, as we discussed, he's going to try to impose sanctions on European entities.

That will have to play out. So there will be a messy, you know, a few months here. But the problem, Tommy, is that they keep making these announcements as if they're not, you know, long-term consequences. The long-term consequence here is, if as that plays out, Iran starts resuming some of its nuclear activity and the deal falls apart, then we could be faced with an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program. That could lead to a point where the Iranians are, once again, approaching the ability to produce enough nuclear material for a weapon, and we have to decide do we start a war with Iran to stop them from getting that nuclear weapon? That's one very real

possible consequence. But there are other consequences. This consistent trashing of international agreements that the U.S. as a party to, like the Paris Agreement, like TPP, like the Iran deal, is undermining American credibility in all of our efforts to try to achieve any other international agreements. If you're sitting across the table from the United States now, you're thinking, this is a country that doesn't honor its agreements. That will be a backdrop to the North Korean negotiations, but also to any number of other negotiations. It's going to undermine our standing in the world.

We look like the outlier here. The rest of the world supports this deal, certainly the major powers that negotiated Russia, China, and the Europeans. We're now the outlier. What is the long-term consequence of the U.S. consistently being outside of the spectrum of views of our allies and the other major powers on leading and consequent, issues. And that's not to mention the fact that the Trump administration says he wants to get

tougher on Iranian behavior, well, we just fractured the international unity that you need in order to hold Iran accountable, not just on the nuclear program, but other things. So he is junking with this decision, not just potentially the constraints in the Iran deal, and not just the potential for a conflict with Iran over its nuclear program. But he's setting back America's alliances, America's credibility and negotiate agreements, America's standing in the world. And that all is going to have medium and long-term consequences that we're going to be living with for not just months, but years to come. Yeah.

And there's just, it's hard to over-emphasize the fact that they have no plan B. And no one presses them on that. I mean, you heard at the end of the news conference, someone was saying, how does this help the U.S. be more safe and more secure? And he just wouldn't answer that simple question. Well, you know, yeah, because, you know, some of the coverage here is, you know, fulfilling a campaign promise or further on doing Obama's legacy. Well, guess what? Those things don't matter in the world.

No. Like, what matters is what actually happened. You know, and I don't think anybody for the Trump administration could articulate for you what is going to happen now. No. I don't think they cannot say, here's what our plan is. Our plan is to do X and Y and the G. They're just tearing things down with no plan for what comes next. And that's an incredibly dangerous way to approach something as serious as the Iranian nuclear deal, the Iranian nuclear program.

But that kind of hostility to anything that resembles kind of competent, deliberate governance, cooperation with other countries, you know, that the consequences of that approach are going to be felt on this issue and others, you know, for a long time. Because, again, if you're sitting in London or Paris or Berlin or Beijing, you know, or any number of places around the world, then you're looking at this, you know, train wreck. I mean, you're thinking like, well, is the United States under Donald Trump, a country that, you know, I can rely on that I can make an agreement with? Do I want to follow America's leadership? And frankly, not only those governments, but the people in those countries, you know, Trump is so toxic and unpopular in Europe. And he basically just thumbed his nose at our key allies. The people in those countries are not going to want their governments to cooperate with the United States. And that's going to make it harder for us to get things done in the world. So again, this is not just about like, you know, being able to have, you know, Kelly Ann Conway go on Fox News and say, you know, he scrapped the Iran deal, he kept his promise, and Obama's bad. That doesn't matter. That's kind of irrelevant to what is actually going to happen here. Yeah, they have no argument on the merits. And one of the ways you know they have no argument on the merits is that someone, some shadowy entity, some reports say connected with the Trump White House, hired a private investigating firm of a full of former Israeli spies and members of the military,

to go after you and Colin Kahl, who is Vice President Biden's national security advisor, to try to dig up dirt on people to destroy their reputations in an effort to undercut an argument at the Iran deal because they have no argument on the merits. Well, like, yeah, I mean, a few points on this. I mean, you know, one, if the Iran deal is so bad, why do you have to go, you know, hire shadowy ex-Masad types to dig up dirt on people to discredit the Iran deal? It should be easy, right? Yeah, it should be easy, right?

But no, you don't have good arguments. You don't have the facts on your side. So what, you're going to have some massad cutouts, like investigate me and Colin Call to undermine the Iran deal? Second is, what a chilling new world we're in if, like, when you get out of government, you know, you could be faced with, like, investigations to discredit you by political opponents. maybe, you know, the people who are actually in power right now, whether it's a here or in Israel. Like, what world is that? What does that suggest to public servants? And then what does that say about what they might be doing with the NSA or the CIA or the massive ways we had to surveil people through the U.S. government?

Yeah, no, like, look, I face the anti-Iran deal crowd is really, I mean, like, I face a lot of stuff in government. They were constantly the most belligerent, personal, you know, vitriolic voices attacking me or anybody associated with the rondial but i the the notion that that would then extend to like hiring people to to spy on my family like it's so far beyond the pill it viscerates like any norm of behavior that you would expect i mean maybe nixon you know in his wildest darkest dreams might have hatched such a scheme but you know it's a really chilling thing that you know suddenly what your arguments that you're waging and in media and social media and politics aren't enough you're going to hire people to to dig up dirt on people and the

spy on people's families like that's not a country we want to live in it's it's not what you'd expect in the united states of america you know you you might hear about that happening in some authoritarian country and think that that's a terrible thing it the fact that that's happening here now and it's connected to this whole weird belligerence towards the irondial that is so outside of the mainstream. I mean, you know, it's a worrying direction for our country. This is not a scenario where they all do it. All politicians are bad. They all, you know, dig up dirt. No, no, no, no. This is totally new. This is so outside the bounds of what's acceptable. The FBI should investigate this. Congress should hold hearings on what the hell

happened here and figure out if this is tied to the Trump White House. Because if it is, that is a scandal that is massive, explosive, and they need to get to the bottom of it. Yeah, no, if anybody in the Trump White House is involved in in contracting, you know, spying on the families of their predecessors, like that goes so far beyond, you know, anything that we can kind of wrap our minds around. You know, and the fact that Black Cube, the Israeli entity involved in this, you know, they denied it, then they kind of adjusted their denial. Now they're putting out some story that like a shipping dispute. I mean, I have very little.

Give me a break. No. I have no experience in the shipping industry, Tommy. I can assure you. Yeah. But, you know, why is there some Israeli entity involved in this? You know, conspicuously, obviously, the Trump administration, the Nanyahu government, like, hate the Iran deal, and have you've been attacking me for years. Like, it shouldn't spill over. And look, I take it, right?

Like, you know, you're in government. You expect to get criticized. And sometimes the criticism can be personal. I didn't like it. But, you know, to cross that line would be, you know, a really chilling break from any past precedent in our country that. I'm aware of. Yeah. From the good people at Black Cube who tried to destroy the women who were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.

That's the hell of the pedigree. Ben, this is a depressing, awful day. Thank you for helping us understand what the hell happened and what happens next. Well, no, and I think, you know, one last point for your audience. It's important to kind of care about these issues, too. You know, like we spent rightly so so much time mobilizing around health care and immigration. but, you know, national security foreign policy, these kind of issues that aren't on top of you until they are, you know. And the consequences of decisions might not be as immediately evident as a tax cut, but they may come a year or two years from now, right?

But then you look at something like the Iraq war, you know, that costs us trillions of dollars. And that was both a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq, but think of what that money could have been spent on. Think of the priorities that could have been addressed if we weren't in Iraq for a decade. So, you know, I do encourage people like Trump is going to be increased. increasingly constrained at home, you know, by Congress, by investigations. As we saw today, the U.S. president is pretty unconstrained on national security. And so this is an area where I think people who are concerned about the direction of our country, they're going to have to focus more attention, unfortunately. I agree. All right. Thanks, man.

All right, we'll talk under happy circumstances. Okay, cool. Talk to you soon. I'm going to take a quick break, but stick around for my interview with Mike McFaul about U.S. Russia relations. My guest today is a Russia expert. He was Obama's National Security Council, Russia director. He was the U.S. ambassador to Russia for a little longer than I think he wanted at times. And now he's the author of a book called From Cold War to Hot Peace, Michael McFal. Thank you for being on the show.

Thanks for having me, Tommy. You have such a distinguished resume that I left out to Stanford of all places where you teach. Oh, yeah, that's a little thing I do on the side. Yeah. People might have heard of it. They have a pretty good football team. We do. We're going to be great next year. You are also a return guest to the show, so thank you so much for talking me again.

So I was doing all kinds of wedding, planning, and preparation and tastings and visits this weekend. And in between those times, I slipped away to read the book. And I got to tell you, it is really well done. I mean, I think not only will you hear, you know, the history of the relationships or through the Cold War till now, but you'll also hear a lot of awesome anecdotes and stories that almost only you could tell. I mean, there are times when you're one of like, what, two, three people in the room with the President of the United States, Vladimir Putin, with Dimitri and Medvedev. So I highly recommend people buy the book and check it out.

But let's start at some happier times. Okay. We're in 2009. Yeah, when I'm working with you. Yeah, man. Those are happy times. We had all just started in the White House. None of us knew our asthma or elbow, but we're trying to figure it out.

And Bill Burns, one of the most senior in respect. members of the State Department recommended that Obama do something kind of old school, that he sent a letter to Dmitri Medvedev spelling out what kind of stuff we wanted to accomplish with Russia. And then he suggested that the two of you hop on a plane to deliver it. So it's February, it's the dead of winter in Moscow, but you guys are received warmly. What was that trip like when you arrived? And what do you think it meant at that time for future relations between the United States and Russia. Well, first of all, remember, it was just like weeks into our administration, right? Literally. I showed up on January 21st, 2009, and we took that trip February 10th or 12th, as I recall.

And during the transition, we had devised a policy towards Russia. We called it the reset. Actually, the president-elect used that word first in an interview in December, and we liked it. And I remember McDenna pinging me on email. I said, that word sounds, I wrote it, I think, or somebody. We all wrote it together, right? But I remember it sticking and thinking, that sounds right. And we were just kind of getting the policy ironed out. The president had talked to Medvedev once or twice. And we had this idea that we should kind of write things down so he could look at it and read it.

And we did that. We wrote the letter. And, you know, it was weird for me. I'm a Silicon Valley guy. the idea that we would get on a plane and deliver a letter and not just put it in an email or didn't we have like an ambassador we could like send it to him and to do I remember thinking that was really old school and we didn't just hop on any plane we just hopped on some commercial plane by the way this was not mill air this was you know back of the bus

economy class that's what you do when you work at the right house as you may remember Tommy. I do. And, but Bill was right because it allowed us to meet many of the important players that would become partners with us in doing this policy. And, you know, it allowed us to begin to do other parts of the reset policy, which was to engage not just with the government, but societal leaders as well. So it was a smart move from a smart guy. So you guys sort of laid this groundwork. You get in. These meetings are surprisingly positive. I think, yes. I can't remember if it was Lavrov. who you described as sort of smiling for maybe the first and only time in a meeting during your tenure there, the foreign minister. He was extremely friendly then.

He turned on me bad, big time. But back then, he was a fan of mine, yes. So this goodwill continues. I mean, Obama and Medvedev meet at the U.S. ambassador's residence in London not too long after. And we should spend a minute to talk about how unbelievable that residence is. It's truly stunning. Pretty nice place, yeah. Yes.

Spaso House is pretty nice, too. but that London is pretty nice. Yeah, I like your description of Spasoas. I think you said you could fit your entire home in Silicon Valley or Montana within like one room. The chandelier room, yes. I would like a chandelier room. But so, you know, Miedv and Obama meet. They're in London.

They're on the fringe of a broader summit. But they quickly found common ground on arms control, the threat from Iran. Medvedev even gave Obama sort of a policy gift that allow us another way to supply our troops in Afghanistan. What was it like for you, you know, a few months earlier, you're saying, sitting at Stanford, you're teaching kids. Now you're sitting in a meeting with the president in the United States, the president of Russia, you know, not just a fly on the wall, but an active participant. What was that like for you personally? And why do you think it went so well? Well, personally, I was scared to death for most of that trip. Okay. Let's just be honest.

It was the first bi-latt, as we used to call them, right? Bilateral meeting with Medvedev. as the top guy on the National Security Council team, I was in charge of that bylat. And that means getting together our positions as a government, running the interagency process so that we're all on the same team and then writing up the talking points for that meeting. And that was, Tommy, that was really surprising to me as an outsider, how little filter there is between a senior director at the NSC and the president of the United States. And I would write down talking points and there the president was reading them. That was something surreal and that was the first time I experienced that.

And then just worrying that everything was going to work and all the jessling of who gets into the meeting or not. Remember those? You know, P plus two, plus five, plus seven. Fighting over participation, which just sounds so serious. Fighting over participation. And you may remember there was somebody rather new to our team back then. Her name was Secretary Clinton and trying to fill. figure out that dynamic of who gets in from her team versus the White House. But the meeting itself

was shockingly positive. And remember, this is a meeting we're having. It's our first meeting. Russia just invaded Georgia back in August 2008. Relations were at a pretty bad place. And Medvedev came into that meeting prepared. He wanted to make a good first impression. He had he'd actually mentioned that he read, you know, the Harvard Law Review to impress upon Obama that he knew the articles that he had edited. And remember, you know, your listeners need to remember. Medvedev is a younger guy. He's a decade younger than Putin. I did not go to KGB school. He's a lawyer, you know, fluent in English, savvy on social media. And he wanted to make an impression on another young guy lawyer about his age. And he did. And to your point, he came with. He came

with a gift for allowing us to fly our troops through Russia. We hadn't done that, I think, since World War II, by the way. And he wanted to lean in to say, we can make relations work. And that was the mood of the meeting mostly. There was one moment that made me especially nervous. As you remember, we would do pull-a-sides, right, with the president and where we'd clear out the room and they would just chit-chat among themselves. and for the pull aside, there was one sensitive piece about Iran that Obama was planning to talk to

with Mid Vietta. Remember, we were still trying to cooperate with Iran on the way to pressure. But I wanted to talk about human rights because a friend of mine had just been beaten up on the streets of Moscow literally two days before. And I snuck that in. And there was a little tension among our White House team, whether that is the right thing or not. I remember sitting in the bar, of the Churchill Hotel. That's where we're staying. And, you know, talking to Gibbs and Axe and Dennis McDonough and should this be there, should we not put it in there?

And we agreed, let's put it in there and let the president make a game time decision about whether to raise it. And after he came out of the meeting, he did raise it. And that's when I thought, okay. President Obama, he gets the full plan here about the reset. It's not just about engaging with the government, but also thinking about Russian society. And so, like, you know, that meeting was sort of shockingly positive.

But that tone and tenor of the meetings and conversations between Obama and Medvedev, and you were literally in attendance or on the phone for every single one of them, it remained positive throughout that time. I mean, there's an anecdote in the book about how you set up a meeting for them in Moscow to continue to hammer out the details of the arms control treaty called New Start. And, you know, the only sort of negative thing that came out of it was Obama letting slip that he was jealous of Dimitri's office because it was huge and the Kremlin and amazing. But how much of the reset do you think was just these two leaders hitting it off or being more generationally in line

than, say, Putin later on? Well, you're reminding me of that time walking around the Kremlin because the Kremlin is a lot more impressive than the West Wing. And I remember him saying, you know, all these ornate rooms. And I said, yes, Mr. President, but don't forget they had a revolution here because of these It's a corny room. So, and he smiled as he does. Well, it's a great question, Tommy. And it's kind of, you know, one of the big themes of the book, right? Do individuals matter or not?

Or are relations between states structured by the balance of power in the international system or history? And I firmly come down on the side that individuals matter and that you did see a shift with Medvedev and with Obama too, by the way. He was a new guy too. and it wasn't about, this was what people get confused about the reset in my view, it wasn't about, you know, let's have a nice dinner and a big piece of chocolate cake and talk about what good meeting we had, right?

It was never about that. It was always about, and you know the president as well as I do, for Obama, it was always about getting things done. And I'm using the word things instead of the S-H-I-T-S word. And so that's what it was about. It was about, you know, reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world by 30% in terms of what you could deploy. That's what we did in 2010. You know, that's a pretty big deal.

Like, what did you do in 2010? That's what we did. That's a real thing, right? Sanctions on Iran, most comprehensive set of sanctions against Iran ever. That led to the nuclear deal. Getting the NDN, an acronym, I'm sure most people don't remember, but the northern. distribution network allowed us to supply our troops in Afghanistan through Russia and Central Asia, and by doing so, reduced our dependency on Pakistan. When we came into the government,

over 90% of our supplies went through Pakistan. And as a result of reducing that, we could take the action we did against Osama bin Laden in 2011. And I just mentioned those three things, because these are not small ball things, like increasing the number of visas or things like that. We did those things too. But these are core national security interests for the United States. And I believe because Medvedev thought

that it was in his interest as well to pursue these things, those two leaders at that time and place got these big things down. I just want to give another shout out to a great podcast called Intercepted. It's hosted by Jeremy, He's a veteran war reporter, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker and the co-founder of The Intercept.

He has dug deep into all kinds of shady characters around the world, including a best-selling book of Blackwater about the mercenary company founded by Eric Prince and dirty wars about the covert wars fought by the U.S. overseas. The thing I like about Jeremy is that he does not seek objectivity or hearing out both sides and said he is focused on holding those in power accountable. Regardless of political affiliation, he demands evidence over speculative. and lying quotes and nonsense. And he gives historical context for the ever-shifting stories of the moment.

Everyone knows the old adage, trust but verify. But for Jeremy, that's not his policy. It is distrust and verify. The show features great journalists, politicians, historians, artists, musical guests. They talk about a whole range of topics, international and domestic. I highly, highly recommend it. Jeremy is smart. He's funny.

He doesn't take any shit from his guests or from politicians or from people in power. And it's worth hearing him out. So, you know, obviously things changed quickly when Putin decided to run again and when there were a whole series of protests in Moscow regarding the election, regarding his rule, et cetera. Lucky for you, this was right around the time that you went to Moscow to become our ambassador and things take a dark turn. You know, you would, in the book, you write about how you privately thought that the reset was essentially over at that point. You didn't say so publicly, but even Obama thought, you know, we need to trim our sales. But, you know, I was shocked at how bad it got for you personally. I mean, I know you don't love to talk about this because you're a guy who wants to talk about the team.

But, you know, this wasn't just accusations that you were a fomenting revolution, which were made constantly and publicly. But someone created a video suggesting you were a pedophile and circulated it. I mean, you followed and harassed in meetings. I could not believe when I read that FSB agents sat behind you at church and that someone followed your kids to school. I mean, Vatives seemed to try to say it would be okay. it would calm down, don't take it personally. But how do you not take that personally? I mean, the President of the United States is stepping in and saying,

stop harassing my guy. You know, but even that didn't seem to work, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to back up a little bit just to remind people that I didn't go to Russia and Obama didn't send me there to foment revolution or have a confrontational relationship. He asked me to go in early 2011 because we had a lot of momentum in cooperation. And as you know, most academics only spent a couple of years in government. It was time for me to go home.

My family was ready. And he was like, hey, man, you can't leave now. We got too much going on. And so he came up with this idea, working with Tom Donnellan and Dennis McDenna at the National Security Council. Let's keep McFal on the Russia account, but let's give him a job that's not as demanding on his family. And they came up with this idea. And by the way, they were right about that. I saw my family more for dinner in Moscow than I did work at the White House, partly because of the time change helped.

But I tell you that because, in fact, right as I was making the decision of whether to do this or not, March 2011, that was probably the peak of the reset. And in that moment, I traveled with Vice President Biden to Moscow and we met with Midvietta. It was a pretty funky meeting, Tommy, because normally everything's set up about who gets in the room and who doesn't. And as we're cruising into the Kremlin, there people say Medvedev wants a one-on-one with the vice president. And Tony Blinken, who was his national security advisor at the time, said under no circumstances, do you let our guy go in there one-on-one? We need to have you in the room in case something comes up that he doesn't know about, right? Because remember Obama had always been in charge of Russia, mostly, not the vice president. So I literally barged into a room in the Kremlin.

And thankfully, there was a chair. It was awkwardly like 50 feet away. But I sat there. And then later a Russian snuck in to create parity. But it was in that I know now why they wanted that privately. Because that's when Medvedev said he was going to abstain on the Security Council resolution that led to the bombing of Libya. That had never happened. in Russian or Soviet history, where he was going along with military force inside a country.

That, to me, was the beginning of the end. That's the precursor because Putin had disagreed with that. He actually publicly criticized Medvedev for the first time ever. And it was Putin's reaction to people demonstrating, right, whether it was in Egypt or Syria or Libya and then later Russia, that he blamed us for that. and blamed the CIA, blamed the Obama administration, said we're just like everybody else, even though the president had tried to convince him earlier that we were different. And so I arrived, like you just said, right as there were these massive demonstrations against Putin, and he needed an argument for his electorate to mobilize them against us and against those protesters,

and he chose me. So I literally became the poster child of all this disinformation. And I say literally because they put out posters with me. Sometimes photoshopped with me looking like I'm handing out money or looking like I'm campaigning for Navalny, one of the opposition leaders. There's a nice one of you in a dress, I believe, in the book as well. Yes, yes. I look very thin, don't I? You look great.

It's called. McFall Girls, 2012. McFall Girls, yeah, that was the calendar they put out with me and all the opposition leaders. Strange. And then it got pretty dark, like you said. I mean, the day that that video popped, suggesting that I was a pedophile, that was shocking. That was only the first month that I had been ambassador. And even mentioning it right now, I kind of hesitate because how do you deal with disinformation like that?

You say, of course, I'm not a pedophile. And they say, whoa, but maybe you are. Oh, I'm not. You know, believe me. How do you prove a false positive? And, you know, we had some friends at Google and they very kindly took it off of YouTube. but it appeared on other websites very quickly. And to this day, if you go on to the Russian search engine Yandex,

McFal, pedophile, gives you four million hits. And that disinformation, which back in 2012, I don't think a lot of Americans understood was part of the Putin playbook. Now we know it is, and we saw it play out in our own. Yeah, I mean, that's a real canary in the coal mine moment for the disinformation propaganda campaign he waged during the election. I guess what I was trying to understand, and maybe it's unknowable, is I get using you and your background and, you know, the fact that you are a democracy expert is written about revolutions. Using you as a foil politically makes sense.

I mean, like, following your kid to a game, that is just fucked up. And I don't get why they would do that to you as an individual. I struggle to get besides what's raw psychological operations. That's what it was. So it wouldn't happen all the time. I want to make that clear. It would come and go. And I want to get to some of the great things about being the U.S. ambassador, too, because on balance, it was a fantastic job.

I mean, representing the greatest country in the world, the United States of America, in Russia, driving around in a black car with Suburban's with the American flag flying. I love that. And I loved, you know, hosting the NBA and Herbie Hancock and engaging on all dimensions of society. But this stuff was serious, as were by the death threats against me. And it was psychological pressure, Tommy. I mean, they knew that this was a way to get under my skin, you know, to show up at my son's soccer game, stand behind us. And then the same two goons standing behind us as we're in McDonald's. And, you know, I have a security detail, right?

So they're identifying these people. It's not like they weren't trying to hide. I mean, at the KGB, they're called the FSB today. If they want to follow you in Russia and you not know it, they can do that. They're really good at it. Believe me. They wanted me to know because they wanted to create that psychological pressure. And when they were messing with my kids, I have to admit, that's when it was most effective in putting pressure on me.

You know, speaking of psychological pressure, Tom Donald and Obama's National Security Advisor was in Moscow or in Russia, I believe, to meet with Vladimir Putin. and you write about how at one point, and you were attending this meeting, Putin turns to you, stares you down, and accuses you of purposely seeking to ruin U.S.-Russia relations. And I was a bad thing.

I'm trying to imagine a couple of things. One, what that feels like. I mean, this is maybe the second most powerful person in the world. He can nuke us all, and he's just staring daggers at you and you have to live in his country. But then there's a broader question that you explore in the book,

which is how much of this propaganda does Putin believe? Right. When he's staring you down in that meeting and seems deadly serious about his criticisms about you or his criticisms about the U.S., did you end up thinking he meant it or that this was just politics? Yeah, that's a great question. A hard question.

I'll give you an answer, but I do want to remind you that meeting. So, I mean, you worked with Tom and you know how much preparation he puts into these meetings. You know, this was a big laydown about how we wanted to work with him. and this is President-elect Putin. This is just literally days before his inauguration. And the fact that he would meet Tom was a big deal. And Tom, as he always did, do a big strategic kind of where we're at and where we want to go in the bylaw relationship.

And remember in these meetings, Tom's the principal, as we used to call him. He's the person he's talking to. I'm the only other American in the room, but my job is to be the note-taker. I'm not a participant. And it's Putin and he has his national security advisor in the room. And out of the blue, he just turns and stares directly at me. So like Tom's not even in the line of his sight. And, you know, with those steely blue eyes, he like points at me and he says, we know what

you're doing. And, you know, we're going to, we don't like it. And the sweat was on the back of my neck. And I was trying to decide should I respond or not or just move on. And eventually, towards the end of the meeting, I did respond. But it's pretty scary. And remember, I'm at his house. My bodyguards are on the other side of the fence.

Oh, my God. His bodyguards are surrounding us. He knows how to intimidate you. And I saw it with other people that we had, but he definitely knows how to do that. And that was a scary moment. To your hard, hard question, my thinking on that has evolved. Initially, I thought it was all just PR. And, in fact, one of his PR guys told me.

He said, hey, Mike. don't take any of this personal. And I'm thinking in the back of my mind, somebody called me a pedophile. I'm not supposed to take this personal. And he said, look, we're just running a campaign. And you know how campaign guys are, Tommy. They're all kind of cynical, just we got to win,

whatever means necessary. And he's like, you were just, you know, manna from heaven for our campaign because of your background and reputation. And so we're going to hammer you now. But everything will settle down after the election and we can get back to normal. And I remember that conversation.

and things never did get back to normal because I now believe that Putin is paranoid about the West, about the United States, and about people like me, that he does believe in the deep state. He really talks about that. It's interesting. It's now become part of our discussion. But he thinks there's this deep state, the CIA and the Pentagon, that presidents come and go, but they're really running things and they're out to destroy Russia. And he considered me a part of it.

And so he does believe that there's like, you know, money running going on to the opposition people. He does believe that. But at another level, Putin's kind of right. I need to admit this about me because at some fundamental level, the United States of America, at least when we were in the government, and I hope it will continue again someday, does believe in democracy and human rights and open society. and by just living that way, I mean, I was a very engaged ambassador, right?

I was on Twitter. I was showing up at all kinds of things that ambassadors don't usually do. I became kind of a rock star at universities, literally where I would have to, you know, sign autographs before I even got to the event I was speaking at, so much so that they banned me from speaking at universities. And that, that is threatening to Putin, right? at the end of the day, just being an open American and engaging, talking about coaching my son's basketball team.

I mean, Putin never talks about his kids. We don't even know where they live. In an indirect way, the values of America and the values of democracy and representing that, as I did, is a threat to the regime that he has in place. That he has in place. I mean, that was one of the fun things about working with you on the NSC was you're a Russia expert, but you were also this sort of roving, pinch-hitting democracy expert, too, which came in very handy, especially later on during the Arab Spring. But there's a great passage in the book about how in 2009 at the UN General Assembly there was a debate over the issues you were just talking about.

How much language about democracy and human rights to include in Obama's UN General Assembly speech. Dennis McDonough and Ben Rhodes like coax you over to the Waldorf story under the pretense of getting a beer. And then basically... We eventually did make beers, but we had a little work to do. Then they toss you into a hotel room with Obama in the middle of edits to this speech, which is going live the next morning. Can you tell us that story? What was it like getting thrown into this debate over human rights in a UN General Assembly speech with Obama? And what's your argument to him or to anyone else for why talking about democracy, talking about human rights is important and should be included when a president speaks?

Yeah. So remember, it's 2009. This is his first big speech to the UN General Assembly. and, you know, a big doctrinal statement about what he's trying to do in the world. And I'm in New York, not to, you know, Kibitz on the speech, but I'm there because he has a bilat, right? Another bilateral meeting with Medvedev, which, by the way, was super important because that's when we revealed the information we had about this KOM facility where that had been secret to that point about Iran and it's, you know, trying to build nuclear weapons. So that's my day job. But my night job, and literally this night it was my night job.

You know, Rhodes would bring me in on these things because I did have, you know, and I still do, by the way, have this academic background and I write about these things. And Ben very generously would engage me when appropriate to add to these speeches. As you know, you know, he was the point person on that. And there was always a time in those email exchanges where you'd get this note from Ben and say, okay, hey, thanks, everybody. Appreciate your comments. but, you know, the president's seen the draft now and he's good. And that's a signal to stop sending your emails, to stop trying to, you know, get your one more idea in there, you know, sneaking it in and some dependent clause. And so I got that email and I thought, okay, you know, we're where we're at,

that's the end of the story. And in that speech, there were four pillars that the president talked about. I won't go through them now, but people can look them up. And we wanted to add a fifth pillar about what we then called universal values. And so we lost. the debate, that's the way it goes in the government, right? Yep. And late at night, I get a call from McDonough and, you know, in this kind of course way that it can be from time to time. It's like, you know, get your ass over here in my fall. In room, whatever. And so I showed up and I thought we were just going to go have a beer and in Walk the President. And I was like, I kind of felt a little bit Tommy like Forrest Gump.

If you remember that movie, like, why am I here? What are we doing here? And so they started, They started working on the speech. And by the way, I'm not going to say it on the record, but that's the first time I heard the president use some words that I hadn't heard him used before, which I'm sure you have, but I hadn't up to that point about some things related to other parts of this speech.

And then we got to the end. And that's when Ben said, well, Mr. President, some people think you should have something about advancing democracy abroad in this part of the speech. And that's when I realized what the game was here. And it so happens that I had just written a whole book on that subject. Title of the book is called Advancing Democracy Abroad, Why We Should and How We Can. And so for a political scientist, for an academic, to use my mother's expression,

you know, I was a pig and shit. Here I was allowed to like work through the arguments of that book with the president of the United States and two of his advisors. And you know Obama, he's a very engaging guy intellectually. He argued back, you know, we had a debate about something called the Democratic Peace, which is a theory supported by a lot of data that democracies don't go to war with each other. And that's one of the reasons why I said. That's why we should support democracy, Mr. President, because if there were more democracies in the world, we would have less adversaries. I mean, think about it. As a democracy ever attacked the United States of America? Answer to that is no. All of our enemies have always been autocracies or movements that think in

anti-democratic ways. But there's this paradox that democracies don't go to war with each other, but countries that are democratizing sometimes do become more war prone. I disagree with that argument, but it's an academic argument. And there I was, you know, arguing with the president about those theories and it was great. It was fantastic. And he then walked out and then he came back in. This time he didn't even have his shirt on. He just had a t-shirt on. He said, okay, I got one more point I want to say and talking about the rule of law. And then I said, okay, guys, I'm going to go watch ESPN Sports Center. You guys clean this up. Just a lava lamp short of the college bull session. Yes, exactly. And then 10 minutes later, I don't think I write about this in the book.

McDonough got pinged on his Blackberry as we're sitting down in the bar with one, he had one more idea. And I remember thinking, yeah, you know, he's watching Sports Center, but the guy's also thinking about this speech and thinking about the ideas. So that was a pretty cool night. It was nice to have an intellectually curious, reasonable president. Speaking of which, the last time we talked on this show, neither of us, I was re-listening to it, neither of us really wanted to touch the allegations of Russian compromise or the P-Tape. because it just seems salacious and unverified and kind of unfair. Right. A year later, things have changed.

Do you feel like the public statements and actions by this administration have been surprisingly soft on Russia to the point where you sometimes wonder, okay, do they have something on him? Is that a thought that enters your mind? Well, let me tell you what I know and then let's speculate about the last part. So what I know, unlike perhaps anybody else or very few people know, is that the Russian state has tremendous capacity to monitor everything you do in Russia. They have tremendous capacity to monitor what you do in this country, too, by the way. But in Russia, a tremendous capacity.

Every email I sent, every phone call I made, every movement I made in my own house, I had to assume that it was being recorded. Okay? Think about that last sentence just for a minute, everything. And we had a special room, a kind of room that was like, If you remember the movie, get smart, where you have to go like seven doors to get there. We had a room like that in the embassy when we headed to talk about sensitive information. And in fact, now that I remember, Tommy, when you and I traveled to Moscow, July 2009, we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, the same hotel that Mr. Trump stayed in in 2013. And to be able to have a secure conversation, you remember, usually we had those blue tents, right? We set them up and the weird music was playing and you checked your cell phones and blackberries.

And then you went into those tents to look at classified information. For Russia, we went to an extraordinary, an even more extraordinary step. We built what looked like a submarine. That's how I remember it. Part by part shipped in from Washington inside one of the suites and the Ritz Carlton so that we could go in there and brief the president before he saw Medvedev. that's the kind of precautions we did to have a conversation and literally a conversation about like what he's going to say at the press conference. I was thinking, my God, a lot of effort here just to have Gibbs and Axe go back and forth about what he's about to tell the world in 45 minutes.

But anyway, I tell you that because that's what the Ritz Carlton is. That's the capacity they have. Obviously, I don't know what Mr. Trump was doing in that hotel room, but if he did anything and said anything, the Russians have it. Yeah. Yeah. The book, again, is from Cold War to Hot Peace. Mike, the trajectory for U.S.-Russia relations aren't great right now. Putin won another contested election. He's locking up opposition figures like Alexei Navalny, I believe, just this past weekend.

Yes, and 12-year-old kids by the way, just past weekend. I mean, so despite Trump's attempts to warm relations or say nice things or, you know, not put harder sanctions on despite Congress requiring him to, things aren't getting better. Do you think it's possible to get the relationship back on track with Putin in charge? Or is that, you know, make it feel destined to be rocky for a little while? I'm not optimistic about Putin, but I'm optimistic about Russia. So let me explain that. I'm not optimistic about changing the course with Putin because at the end of the day, our debates with him right now is not about some policy issue. It is about value. and democracy and those kinds of things.

So I don't see an easy way to get over that as long as Putin is in power. And I also want to remind people that he's done a lot of nasty, horrible things, especially in the last couple of years. I mean, we thought, for instance, that annexation was something that we outlawed forever at the end of World War II. He did that in 2014. He supports one of the most horrible genocidal dictators of our time in Syria. Syria. He interfered in our elections. I mean, the audacity of that is something unprecedented. That didn't even happen during the Cold War. So I don't see a way to kind of just say, okay, let's just

forget about all that and get on to cooperating about X, Y, or Zad. I just don't see it happening. After Putin, however, I'm cautiously optimistic because I think that society, they support them now and all countries rally around the flag during a time of war. And if you, watch Russian TV. You probably don't watch Russian TV, Tommy. Don't waste your time. But I do. And I monitor it enough to know that the way we are being portrayed is that we are at war with Russia over places like Ukraine. And all patriots rally around the flag. That happens in our country, too. But that wanes over time and people care about other issues over time. And after Putin, I do think that elements of his own government, as well as elements of his society,

will want to push in a more open way, a more democratic way, a more rule of law way, and ultimately that means a more Western way. Yeah. My last question for you, and again, people should buy the book from Cold War to Hot Peace because there are an infinite number of other great stories in the book, from your time in Moscow to the White House and everywhere in between. But you wrote a piece in the Washington Post a few days ago, It said the next major battle in the international war of ideas will be upcoming elections in Ukraine.

What did you mean by that? And why is there so much at stake in Ukraine? Well, Putin wants that government to fail, right? He annexed the territory. He invaded eastern Ukraine, supported separatists there because this regime in his view is illegitimate, supported by the West. He wants them to fail. And, you know, he used some means against us to interfere in our elections. well, he has tremendous means to interfere inside Ukraine, and he's going to use those.

And so I do think this is the fight for democracy, maybe the most important country in the world, because if it succeeds and they have a free and fair election, that'll help to, A, consolidate democracy inside Ukraine. But that's also a signal for the rest of the region, including inside Russia, to say that, you know, despite our thousand-year history and our Slavic history, and all those arguments that people say, well, Russians love a strong man. If Ukrainians right next door can build democracy, that I think sends a pretty powerful signal to those very brave Democrats inside Russia fighting for a democratic future for their country. Yeah. And do you think, you know, arming them with increasingly technologically advanced

missiles and, you know, other weapons should be part of that strategy? Is that a helpful piece of this? Well, I support that, but I don't think. that's the essence of it. I think the essence is consolidating democracy and markets fighting corruption. If Ukraine can defeat its Soviet past and consolidate democracy, that's where the real focus of our energy should be because that's the way you want to defeat Putin. You want to beat Putin. Help Democratic Ukraine. Yeah. Good answer. Mike McFaul, the book is from Cold War to Hot Peace. Everyone should read it because, you know, there's a lot of fun stories in there. A lot of great times we had together, Tommy, by the way.

A lot of great times. One of the great things about writing this book was just to codify that time. And I look back up my time in the Obama administration, but especially at the White House. That was a great president. I'm truly honored to have worked where we did have this team. And as I say in the book, you mentioned it. You know, as academics, we kind of sit in front of our computer screens and we're solo artists, right? Right.

One of the great things about working with you is being on a team and a really great team. So thanks for having me today. Right back at you, buddy. Everyone should pick up the book. Good luck on the book tour. I'm sure you are going to get sick of talking about this. But it was interesting for me. Not with you.

Okay. Thanks for having me. Talked yet. Bye-bye. Thanks again, everyone for tuning to Pot Save the World. It was a packed week in foreign policy. I appreciate you guys paying attention to these issues and caring. And tell your friends about the show.

Rate and review us. All that good stuff. I'm still pretty depressed. Have a good one.