The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Holy Land – De-Dollarization

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates.  The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. On this week’s edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Janice and Rudyard start the show with a discussion of this week’s developments in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Why are we seeing a sudden flare-up of violence, including rocket attacks, jet strikes and a controversial protest and raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem? Friday Focus wraps up with a discussion of China’s growing efforts to advance its currency as a substitute for the U.S. dollar in global trade. What exactly is happening here, and what could it mean for the future of USD as a global reserve currency in the decade ahead? To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast, consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a few. simple clicks, triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk listeners. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. I'm joined as I am for every episode of Friday Focus by Janice Gross Stein. She's a founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, great to be in conversation with you today, the 7th of April.

Good Friday. Yes, and wishing all our listeners, happy Easter, happy Passover, and of course our Muslim listeners are in the middle of of Ramadan, so it's a very special weekend. Well, let's build on that theme of Easter weekend of Ramadan by going to the proverbial Holy Land, the Middle East. It's been a, I don't know, Janice, it's been a high-stakes, fractious week with missiles flying, planes dropping bombs, a whole flagration controversy around, you. prayer at some of the most important holy sites in Israel.

Unpack this for us. What's happening here? Is this simply seasonal? You know, there's an argument that this kind of comes around and goes around every few years, especially around the Ramadan kind of period and the holy holidays. But there's a sense here, maybe Janice, of something more, some undercurrents that are pushing towards the risk of a bigger conflict. Let me start with the good news, Redgey, if we can find any good news in this part of the

world, after the exchange of missiles that you talked about when the missiles were flying, very clear signals from everybody, from the government of Israel, working closely with the Palestinian Authority. Nobody wants escalation here. There's a lot of tacit signaling going on with Hamas. Nobody wants this to blow up and become something bigger. So that's the good news. The bigger picture, how long will they be able to contain this in the middle of probably the deepest political crisis is domestic political crisis Israel has ever experienced?

I can go back maybe to the 50s to think of anything that approaches this magnitude. And let's throw in another dimension to this, Roger, and you're not going to be surprised. An Israeli public that is worried that the government may actually take an opportunity if it's given to it to escalate to distract from the domestic political crisis. That is not a trivial issue when you think about the reservists, both in the Air Force and in the Army. that have expressed their, I'm trying to find the right words here to capture this. They are grave reservations about what the government is doing on judicial reform. So we have an unprecedented situation here of instability, really. Well, let's talk about some of the features of that instability that have come up recently.

There's been, as you know, a lot of high-profile reporting this week about videos that showed Israeli police beating and injuring Muslim demonstrators at the Alaskua Mosque, which is adjacent to these critical Jewish and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. This in turn seemed to be at least one of those sparks that ignited the rocket attacks by Hamas and then the counterstrikes by the Israeli Air Force into Gaza. What happened here is there some people are saying that, you know, again, this is a sign of a different kind of security policy under this Netanyahu government where some of these right-wing ministers, you know, Gantz in particular, have been given a mandate to push harder and go faster on protests and on demonstrations. especially when they involve members of the Israeli Muslim community and also obviously when they involve security and terrorist risks in the West Bank and Gaza.

So you're right, Richard, that there is sadly a seasonal quality to this, and it's the convergence of Ramadan, which is, of course, the fasting period for Palestinians in Israel, Passover, which started this week, and Easter, which brings Christians to the old city in very, very large numbers. And so what you get is this friction among worshippers at different, very, very congested sites that are, you have to have been there that are literally next door to each other. It's hard to convey how they're within a block. Let me put it this way, within a city block of Toronto.

So these kinds of outbursts are unfortunately not that unusual. And what triggered this one was a group of Palestinians that decided to sleep over in the Alexa Mosque, which breaks the unconven, the conventions. The risk here was that Jewish worshippers who would come to that part of this, to the wall right next door, there would be an exchange, not a polite one. Let me put it to you that way, stone throwing whatever it was. But you got this, so you got this intervention by the Israeli police. And it's those videos, which are so incendiary, frankly, Roger. they just provoke wider demonstrations every time you see them.

And that's part of why the decision was made to sleep over in the mosque. You know those videos are going to come. You know what's going to come after that. And that's why I started our conversation by saying, everybody put a lid on it very, very quickly because nobody wants this to blow. Does this tell you how hot the temperature is? Oh, boy. it sure does and as one of the one of the few Israeli newspapers said yesterday it's not a good idea to let the pyromaniacs and he was talking about those railway ministers to let the pyromaniacs in when the temperature is already so hot and that's what we're dealing with here.

Jerusalem is always, always, always the match you want to light because as soon as you do it, you challenge Hamas and Gassan You challenged the Palestinian Authority. You know, the Saudis rise to the opportunity to make a statement, which is what they do, because of course, Jerusalem is a holy site for Muslims all over the world. Right. The Jordanian government also condemning the so-called attacks on worshippersers at the Alaskan mosque. Jess, I guess I'm trying to put this all together and think about what is happening here to Israel domestically, but also abroad, that there had been these Abraham Accords that arguably were some of the really important kind of foreign policy accomplishments of the Netanyahu, his storied political career, which now, it's amazing to think. it now lasts decades in terms of his kind of dominance of Israeli politics, you now have those

being kind of shocked and rocked by this, the increasing level of conflict and violence between Israel and various Palestine groups, including terrorist organizations like Hamas. And then internally, we've had this constitutional conflagration in Israel kind of put on hold. It seems for, I don't know, what is it, a month here where they're going to come back possibly with modified legislation, but it's not clear yet if that'll be a significant compromise to the protesters that swarmed Israeli cities and streets in numbers that really had not been seen in, you know, the history of the Israeli state. So try to put this together for us. Is this a moment where you think that Nanyahu and Israelis will allow cooler heads to prevail because of the international costs, the deterring relationship with the United States, with these other countries like Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and others where there seemingly was a reprishmo, plus the internal costs of a weakening an economy, rising borrowing costs, falling currency. It all just seems like a perfect moment for someone to press the pause button. Boy, do we have a lot of moving pieces here, Rudyard.

I was listening to you and I thought, how reasonable that is. Where are those reasonable voices in the broader region that sound like you? It's actually hard to find them right now. Somebody who follows the logic chain all the way to the end that says, don't do this. This makes no sense. Let me just tell you two. stories here that shows, in fact, how many pieces are moving. Mohammed bin Salman, the prince of Saudi Arabia, you would expect, who, that has been the prime

target for Netanyahu to get Saudi Arabia to join those Abraham of course that he talked about. And you would expect, given what's going on, that he would be backing way, way off right now, frankly. well, he entered into a conversation with the United States in which he offered the following deal. Well, I'll join the Abraham, of course, with my other golf partners if you agree to provide some assistance to stand up nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. Now, if that doesn't tell you something about the transactional nature of these relationships, no other story will. I could only imagine the reaction of the people in the Biden administration who got that offer. Now, switch to the other side.

Of course, Netanyahu should hit the pause button permanently on this. because he risks, frankly, destruction of his own legacy, losing his leadership in Likud if he pushes this far enough, empowering people on the right that he would have nothing to do with prior to all of this. So if you use standard logic, it's very tough to understand why he's going ahead. I'm pessimistic. I think he's going to push ahead as soon as the Passover break is over, and he's going to push ahead because, and he denies this from here,

we turn it every time he's asked by anybody, because of his criminal trial, because he's charged, because he's looking for a way out. You know, there was some private whispering discussion. There's a very, very competent president in Israel, President Herzog. Very, very competent. And if you're looking for a way out, and boy, will this infuriate people, you make a deal, you pardon him, you and the crew, you're smiling. You can just imagine the outrage, right?

I can tell you to that, so I know the emails I'm going to get for saying this, but you make a deal. Um, by, by from politics, you're gone, but you, you go to your beachfront villa. You live in peace. We don't prosecute you. We don't prosecute your wife and we don't even prosecute your son. I pardon all of you. Go live your life and allow a leadership transition and include. And this would probably, it would go away.

Apparently, there were some, some offers, you know, around the margin, trial balloons. And Nathaniel turned it down. Now, let's see as this progresses. But unless cooler heads prevail here, we are going back to where we were before our passport, but more so. Because the stakes will get higher. The legislation is locked and loaded, as we say, ready to push through. One more, you know, shred of optimism here. he's down to 61 seats now.

He's lost three. How much is it going to take, this is right in your bailing. How much it's going to take to turn one more minister who understands how great the stakes are? Then the coalition is broken. I just want to remind listeners that you can catch a recent monk dialogue that I recorded with Michael Oren on our podcast.

feed. And for those of you don't know, Michael, he's a special voice to listen to from Israel. He's an internationally renowned historian and scholar of Israeli kind of military history. He's a former U.S. ambassador for Israel to Washington, Knesset member. He served as a deputy minister in a previous Netanyahu government. And I had an in-depth conversation about him with this whole situation. Again, fascinating. guy to listen to really knows exactly what's going on on the ground. And he mentioned something that really resonated with me, because I hadn't thought about this, just how successful and dominant Netanyahu has been in Israeli politics for decades now. And the combination of his

rhetorical capacities up to this point previously impressive capacities to govern, to accomplish important things to have led Israel through this period of kind of technological innovation and a real explosion and growth and the dynamism of the Israeli economy. And in some ways, like many people, Michael Oran, who knows Netanyahu personally who has served with him in government, just as people don't recognize him. They don't know who he is in a sense of what he has become. And I get a sense, Janice, that this is a moment in a sense where a country is future, its fate in some ways, is tied to one person and it's tied to their decisions. It's tied to what they'll do precisely because they've just been so incredibly successful

as a political giant that kind of sits astride so much of Israeli politics, decision-making, and policy over the last three decades. It's amazing to think about. Well, let's take a break. When we come back on the other side, we're going to talk, yeah, just a bigger kind of macro issue that we've been paying attention to over the last two years plus, and it's now kind of come to the four as a result of the Ukraine war, but also some moves that China's making. So we want to fill you in on it because it's something we think that you should have on your

radar screen as you think about geopolitics and the struggle. between China and the United States for global supremacy. So back with that analysis right after this short break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, triple-w The Monk Debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site.

Make a donation as little as $25 a year of 15. cents an episode and we'll send you not only the full-length editions of each and every Friday Focus podcast, all kinds of special offers, perks, access to events, and additional content. Again, you can do that right now by becoming a donor to the Monk Debates at triple W Monk Debates with an S.com.