← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Is the world a step closer to a nuclear confrontation?
00:36:17
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- [00:03]
Jamie Rubin
This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [00:08]
Christiana Amanpour
Putin has been talking up now a new and very menacing weapons system specifically designed to penetrate U.S. missile defenses.
- [00:18]
Jamie Rubin
I remember being woken up one night.
- [00:19]
Christiana Amanpour
When India did it in Washington.
- [00:21]
Jamie Rubin
When India did it, I was the spokesman of the State Department and I always hated the idea that the administration was taken by surprise.
- [00:27]
Christiana Amanpour
And indeed you were.
- [00:28]
Jamie Rubin
And I was, but I pretended I wasn't.
- [00:31]
Christiana Amanpour
There was a trip that reporters from all over the world were invited to go to North Korea because they were beginning to engage again. And on that trip, we sat on a little hill and we watched them blow up that famous cooling tower. This weekend he announced that he would militarily intervene in Nigeria if the government there did not stop what Trump said were the anti Christian attacks. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the latest episode of the X Files with me, Christiana Manpour and Jamie Rubin. I am a CNN correspondent and presenter, anchor, whatever you want. Been in the field for quite a few years, decades, and now have my own show where I try to hold leaders accountable for the maelstrom that's happening out there where I used to be reporting. So let us get started. Are we back in the cold? Is a nuclear confrontation something that is likely? Are we going to start testing nuclear weapons again? And we will also talk about Africa, because Africa is now a battleground in terms of resources and competition for influence by China and the uae. The United States seems to be a little on the side, but the president has threatened to intervene militarily in Africa. We will give you the latest on that and we will have our recommendations. So two weeks ago on this very, very podcast, my recommendation was Katherine Bigelow's latest war film, House of Dynamite, which imposited the notion of a potential nuclear strike on the United States. My question to you is, has Putin been watching it and is art or is real life now imitating art? I can't believe the coincidence, Jamie, of all, you know, Putin, Trump talking about nuclear tests again.
- [02:22]
Jamie Rubin
Well, you know, they say truth is stranger than fiction. And on the Trump era and the Putin era, truth is stranger than fiction. Look, the, the film was riveting for those who watched it. And it posed a question that has been there all the time, but people just didn't think about it. And that is the risk of nuclear war. That's the issue that I think, you know, got me politicized. I was a young man, we were roughly at the same time during the Reagan era. And I thought there was a 50, 50 chance of the world being blown up by nuclear weapons. So I got involved in studying, researching, and learning every single thing I could about nuclear weapons and nuclear arms control as a way of hopefully making some change in the world. But one thing that hasn't changed is that once nuclear weapons were tested and became part of the arsenals of Russia, the Soviet Union, the United States, China, Britain, France, the risk of total destruction of our civil has always been there. We just don't talk about it very much. And what I think Katherine Bigelow wanted was precisely this, a discussion to return. Because the premise of the film is a truthful fact. Fact. Not a truthful fact, a real fact. And that is the possibility of missile launching against the United States cannot necessarily be destroyed by any defense system. And if it did get through, the destruction would be massive.
- [03:51]
Christiana Amanpour
And not just that, Jamie, because for me, the terrifying aspect of that, one of them was that this, in whatever it was, this ballistic missile with they thought a nuclear warhead on it in the film, had penetrated American airspace and unchallenged. I mean, there wasn't an ability to stop it. And apparently Putin has been talking up now a new and very menacing weapons system that he first unveiled or was first talked about in 2018, specifically designed to penetrate US missile defenses. And he keeps, you know, sort of talking about that. And that means Russia can be an endless threat. Right? Golden dome or no golden dome, what Trump is saying. And Trump kind of in response has basically said that, you know, I think he said it on the plane home from Asia that he would order the Pentagon, he calls it the Department of War, I mean, seriously, to begin testing again on an equal basis with Russia. But I don't know what that all means because. Well, we'll get into this in a moment. But none of these countries, not China, not Russia, not the United States, has actually tested a weapon for 30 to 35 years.
- [05:07]
Jamie Rubin
Well, that's right. I think it's 1992, when the United States conducted its last underground test. Then we signed up to the comprehensive test ban under President Clinton, and we tried to get that ratified. The Senate wouldn't ratify it, but the United States and all the major countries said they would abide by its terms. The terms basically ban the testing of an actual nuclear weapon underground or in air or sea or space. The only countries that have tested since then, I think, if I'm getting this right, are North Korea. Obviously, they went nuclear. Pakistan and India then did tests. They improved their nuclear capabilities. I remember being woken up one night, I think we were together on Washington when India did it. And this is Just funny for people to hear. You know, I was the spokesman of the State Department, and I always hated the idea that journalists would write. The idea that the administration was taken by surprise, or. And indeed you were, and I was, but I pretended I wasn't.
- [06:08]
Christiana Amanpour
I know, but the whole administration was taken by surprise. How did you kind of do people believe it?
- [06:13]
Jamie Rubin
Bill Richardson had gone over there to try to persuade them not to do it. And then the CIA and others didn't think they were going to go ahead and do it, but they did it, and it surprised us. So that was another indication of the world that we're living in and that demonstrated that the threat of nuclear war in the Indian subcontinent. Remember, these were two countries that were starting to fight battles between each other. And it was one of the things, I think, under President Clinton, that was regarded as one of the most serious crises. I think it was over a place called Cargill, and there was a conventional attack back and forth. And the fact that they had tested nuclear weapons brought to the fore this fundamental question. And that fundamental question is, what do you do if one side uses nuclear weapons? Because nuclear weapons have been valuable in a sense, by deterring war between Russia and the United States, between China and the United States, between Russia and other countries. But if you have two countries that are going to war against each other, like India and Pakistan have, there's always this inherent risk that one of them might feel so threatened that they use a nuclear weapon. And then, you know, as they say, the balloon is up and God knows what, what everyone will do.
- [07:25]
Christiana Amanpour
And North Korea tested in 2017 and is known to have, you know, several nuclear weapons.
- [07:31]
Jamie Rubin
Now, I like to mention this because I think people should really understand this. During the Clinton years, we had an agreement with North Korea, the 1994 U.S. north Korea nuclear Framework Agreement. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It dealt with the plutonium path to weapons. There's always also the uranium path. We had controlled North Korea's program. It was under watch. It was in the plutonium were in big barrels in the. In a cooling pond. We knew and were able to monitor what North Korea was doing, and they weren't testing. Then George W. Bush came in and the Dick Cheney doctrine and all of the pressure they put to bear on North Korea, thinking North Korea would fold or capitulate somehow through sanctions. And instead, North Korea essentially gave the world one big middle finger and said, watch this. And they started testing again. And ever since, we faced growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.
- [08:28]
Christiana Amanpour
But I guess the Bushies at that time, the George W. Bushies at that time realized that they need to recalibrate. Because you remember in 2007 or 8, no, 8, Bush again engaged. And actually there was a trip, I think we've talked about this on previous podcasts. There was a trip that actually was a cultural trip around the New York Philharmonic that reporters from all over the world were invited to go to North Korea because they were beginning to engage again. And on that trip, myself at cnn, my colleagues at ABC and ap, we were given exclusive access, just the three of us, into Yongbyon, which is the nuclear plant, weapons and energy plant, right outside Pyongyang. We sat on a little hill and we watched them blow up that famous cooling tower. Those were the good days because they thought that this was going to get to some real good arms control. And then it didn't. And Jamie, interestingly, Trump wanted to meet Kim Jong Un again during his Asia trip, like he did in his first, first administration. And remember, they tried to get a nuclear deal and they didn't. I mean, I, they didn't get it for whatever reason. But Kim Jong Un wouldn't even meet with Trump this time, wouldn't respond to.
- [09:45]
Jamie Rubin
The invitation because he's demanding that we, the United States and the world, recognize them as a nuclear weapons power. And I'd like to get back to your point about President Bush, sorry, Trump and testing. So I don't think he knew what he was talking about testing. There's multiple ways you test things. There's the weapon system, that's what Putin was talking about, the air or the sea based system that delivers an actual nuclear weapon and that they've been busy testing. And we test ours all the time. Then there's the nuclear explosion itself, which is a nuclear explosion. We all know what that looks like, either underground or above ground. And then there's what's called subcritical testing, presumably to ensure the reliability of weapons. I think that's what Trump was talking about because there's always a debate of how much, quote, subcritical testing needs to be done. And that's where you're just testing the parts of a nuclear weapon. And the explosion is quite small and it's not an actual fission or plutonium based going critical and actually having a nuclear weapon. You're just trying to make sure everything works properly so the reliability can be tested. And if you want to, you know, get into one of these debates, you can say the Chinese and the Russians might be secretly improving their capability. But what the experts say is that the US Nuclear weapons capability was so far ahead of the Soviet Union, China and everyone else when we all stopped testing, that if everybody doesn't test, we're always going to be ahead because our capability was so far advanced compared to the Soviet Union, China and others. The good thing about Donald Trump, I don't know if you've heard this, but he calls nuclear weapons ready for this, the real N word, because he's genuinely afraid of them, like many people who grew up at our generation. And I think he's going to be responsible in this area, I pray and hope.
- [11:37]
Christiana Amanpour
Talking about our generation, you talked about how it motivated you. In the 80s, I was a student at college and didn't know much about nuclear weapons until I came to the United States, of course, read all the big, you know, famous books.
- [11:48]
Jamie Rubin
E.P.
- [11:48]
Christiana Amanpour
Thompson, Protest and Survive. Had all sorts of conversations, heated and otherwise, around our, you know, housemates dining room table about going out and protesting and campaigning against nuclear disaster. Remember Reagan, on an open mic when he was preparing for his speech, said, the bombing starts in I don't know how many minutes. But then, of course, Reagan, Reagan did get to the point where he and then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to an agreement on many things, including what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. But, and we've seen this over and again in our absolute recent history, Vladimir Putin, because I'm told the only thing in terms of parity that they have with the United States is nuclear weapons. He wants to have big discussions on everything, not just Ukraine, but business, nukes, all the rest of it. And he's been dangling the nuclear threat several times. He does it in strange, coded ways, but he's doing it. And I know it affects the US because we've talked about it before, Biden was scared of it. I'm sure President Obama and others before him were, didn't want to trigger a nuclear war.
- [12:57]
Jamie Rubin
But I should say there, Christiane, that Biden wasn't so scared that he didn't continue to send weaponry to Ukraine and that's what Putin was trying to achieve achieve. Putin was trying to scare the Europeans in the United States into not helping Ukraine by threatening that if we did continue to help Ukraine militarily, that that would be the equivalent of attacking Russia and that he has nuclear weapons. Biden was not deterred by that.
- [13:21]
Christiana Amanpour
We've talked about it before because he might not have been deterred from providing weapons, but it took a long, long time to give the okay on how to use the weapons on Longer range weapons.
- [13:31]
Jamie Rubin
Fair enough.
- [13:31]
Christiana Amanpour
On speeding up weapons. So. So I know, because there was an intelligence leak, wasn't there? The Secretary of Defense said he had to get on the phone with his Russian counterpart. Right.
- [13:42]
Jamie Rubin
The key phone call was from the Secretary of Defense to their Minister of Defense. And what it did was make clear to the Russians that the use of nuclear weapons would have severe consequences for them. And you know, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense at the time, was a pretty mild mannered fellow.
- [13:58]
Christiana Amanpour
And we're just talking about tactical weapons in Ukraine. Right. We're not talking about a nuclear war. Yeah, correct.
- [14:03]
Jamie Rubin
And not just Lloyd Austin was as firm and tough as I think he ever was and really made a difference. And that threat evaporated and Russia went about continuing its war conventionally. But before we leave this, and I know I'm going to be accused of being a China hawk again, the world should understand the dilemma we're facing now. Because as Russia has continued to have, let's say, 15, 1600 nuclear weapons deployed in strategic forces, the new factor is that China is now massively increasing their nuclear forces to go from a few hundred to have rough parity to the United States and Russia, and they are refusing to engage in nuclear arms control. The world needs to understand that's what's different about China. They won't talk about it. They won't have a discussion about their levels. They won't commit to what they have have promised in the Non Proliferation Treaty. In the Non Proliferation Treaty, the nuclear states like China committed to arms control and disarmament to reverse the direction of their buildup. And the United States and Russia have done that. China instead has increased by many, many times its capability and is continuing to do so. So one day soon we're going to have three powers with, let's say, 1500 nuclear weapons and only Russia. Putin, who we don't love, and the United States are willing to even arms control for those capabilities. That means hotlines, that means strategic stability, discussions, making sure that the kinds of things discussed in the House of Dynamite couldn't happen.
- [15:42]
Christiana Amanpour
So I want to ask you this then. When Mr. Trump made that announcement about testing on the plane back from Asia, and I'm reading from the New York Times, told reporters that he was not including China on the list of testing nations. Its last explosive test was 29 years ago, though there is some evidence the country has made preparations at Lop Nur, where Mao first demonstrated China's nuclear capabilities in the 1960s in case it decides to resume.
- [16:10]
Jamie Rubin
Right. And so this was because he, he was thinking that he just sort of made a deal with the Chinese or is about to make a deal and everything's great with the Chinese. I, I think what's going on there is that Trump had been briefed on Russia and testing at the Novaya Zemlya facility of the subcritical components of nuclear weapons and the very public testing of this, you know, doomsday weapon at sea and in the air. And so Trump was irritated by Putin doing that and was saying, I can do the same thing, watch. And then I think once it's all sorted through that we'll go back to doing what I thought.
- [16:45]
Christiana Amanpour
I would just like to say at this point before we go to a break that I feel very fortunate, frankly to have worked for the founder of a good American capitalist, Ted Turner, who made this startup, cnn, which has become such a world power. He was very much into and very committed against nuclear weapons for world peace. He set up the nuclear Threat Initiative to contain nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He did endless documentaries about the Soviet Union and the Cold War. But this is what he told me in 2010 about the state of affairs between at the time, Russia and the United States and the various test, you know, the various arms control treaties. Just listen to this.
- [17:31]
Ted Turner
We got to all get rid of them. Us, Russia, China, and they all understand that and they all voted for it last year at the Security Council. So all I'm trying to do is remind them that they've already voted for it. Let's go ahead and do it. And we've already voted for thefor, the START treaty and it carried. Now all we got to do is ratify it with the super majority of the Senate, get that ratified and get on the road towards nuclear disarmament and world peace.
- [17:59]
Christiana Amanpour
That's how Ted really, he was committed. He did incredible things.
- [18:02]
Jamie Rubin
Do you remember we had dinner with Ted and Jane, the four of us? I do. And we talked about the issue of one nuclear weapon and what it could do. And Ted was really motivated by this. It was one of his great things where he could build a multi billion dollar empire, but still do very, very.
- [18:20]
Christiana Amanpour
And the environment, of course, absolutely. Back to Russia, just because clearly at the beginning of the full scale invasion. So in March, about three weeks afterwards, I spoke to Putin's chief advisor and his spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, and I questioned him on Putin, if you remember, he, when he gave his speech about, you know, the invasion, he really, you know, dangled the nuclear threat and he was really threatening the rest of the world. And I asked seriously, is this, this really what your boss wants us to understand? And he sort of had to take a step back and then he went out again and took a further step back talking to other press. But he told me first that no, our doctrine has not changed. Only if we face an existential threat to the homeland and to our civilization and we don't is what he told me back in 2022. So let us hope that Peskov remembers that. All right, so we're going to stop this bit about nuclear weapons and take a quick break and talk about the lengthening tales of military intervention. We see what's going on in Venezuela in the Western hemisphere. But Trump this weekend said that he might intervene in Nigeria. Why? We'll be back.
- [19:36]
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- [20:11]
Christiana Amanpour
Right, we're back, Jamie and I and we want to discuss something kind of extraordinary, although I don't know how to define extraordinary anymore in this era. But after the ramping up and the continued military intervention around Venezuela against drug traffickers, according to Donald Trump and his administration, this weekend he announced that he would militarily intervene in Nigeria, one of the most populous and either the first or second economy in Africa if the government there did not stop what Trump said said were the anti Christian attacks. So this really, really upset put the, you know, cat among the pigeons. Nigerians couldn't understand what's going on. Jamie, I just happened to have been talking today at a CNN event to the former Nigerian Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi and she is now the head of the World Trade Organization. So of course I had to ask her that question and she really didn't want to answer it because she said this is a very, very sensitive topic. Know what it means? We do not know where it came from. She admitted to me, as we all know, that there are, you know, they're Christians, they're Muslims, they're all sorts of multi faiths, their tribes, their different areas geographically and the otherwise competition over resources. She said, yeah, we are not a perfect society but we have to, you know, get to the bottom of this and, and, and deal with it ourselves. And we are trying to do so. So were you surprised, Jamie, when you heard that?
- [21:45]
Jamie Rubin
No, and I'm never surprised by Trump anymore. Look, I don't think we're going to use military power in Nigeria. I think that Trump sees the world the way we've described, which is that he really can do whatever he wants in his own backyard. This is Trump's thinking. Africa is up for grabs. So I think he's happy to pose some threats out there and appeal to his constituency of evangelical Christians who are worried about the threats to Christians in Nigeria, which are very, very real. But I think this will be resol. But what it brings up is that, as a book once called it, there's a scramble for Africa between the United States, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, this tiny little Arab country which has a lot of money. And I think we've both pointed out that they've been behaving in very pernicious ways by supporting the worst actors in Sudan, which has led to the worsening of the civil war there, which is leading to real, real tragedy for the people of Sudan. And I think the United States, Russia, China are all doing what they can, try to grab something in Africa because it's not in one of those spheres of influence and that it's up for grabs. Fortunately for the people of Africa, the war in Ukraine has limited Russia's capability. The Wagner group disintegrated, and Russia's trying to revive it. But that group was doing horrible things inside Africa. They were getting paid by leaders and then actually murdering civilians, claiming to be fighting terrorism, but basically just trying to get money from African governments. That capability is reduced. But China's going big time into Africa.
- [23:27]
Christiana Amanpour
Through belt and has been for decades.
- [23:30]
Jamie Rubin
Absolutely. And the United States is sort of on the back foot because, remember, President Trump in his first term described what he thought of the people of Africa and other countries that were not white in some rather nasty language. And I think it takes a lot of effort for the Trump administration to actually focus on Africa and care about Africa and try to do something about it. Because, let's face it, what they've done is destroy the one tool that has made America great in Africa.
- [24:00]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, the soft power usaid, the great.
- [24:03]
Jamie Rubin
PEPFAR program that saved millions of lives from aids, the great health programs that have been eliminating tuberculosis and other diseases. All of that was wiped out by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, in some act of. I don't know what he called putting it in the wood chipper. He thought it was funny. And that has damaged our reputation in Africa.
- [24:26]
Christiana Amanpour
Guess what's happening? I heard at this summit, actually Chinese are just stepping right in. They say, turn to us. We'll be your Good Samaritan. Now, we understand that they don't do soft power like the United States does. It's very, very transactional. And often they do these huge infrastructure projects. They import all their workers. They, you know, it's not like they give a lot back to the African economy and they get a lot of control. But interestingly, Dr. Ngozi, former Nigerian for Foreign and Finance Minister, current WTO Minister, said that it's a big mistake for the US and, and other democratic countries and serious economies not to look at Africa and all the different economies and countries that exist there with all their different strengths and challenges like infrastructure, like corruption, like all those things that they have to, you know, clearly deal with. But she said, look, suddenly rare earths are the, you know, the, the non du jour. I mean, they literally everybody can't stop talking about rare earth. She said Africa has at least 30% of the world, world's rare earth minerals. And then she said it has between 60 and 70% of the world's arable land. So, and, and, you know, manufacturing and other such. Such things. So it's a very important marketplace. And yeah, she, she said kind of what you said, that don't just look at Africa as a bunch of countries, and I'm quoting President Trump, that is not my view. And, you know, let's actually get together and create something really good and strong and beneficial and don't cede Africa.
- [26:03]
Jamie Rubin
The drc, the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- [26:05]
Christiana Amanpour
That prime minister was there. It's a woman, she speaks French.
- [26:08]
Jamie Rubin
Right. And the president there, you know, has been back and forth working with the United States. They have real mineral capabilities, extraordinary resources. They have terrible infrastructure and that needs to be built. But I think if we were doing the. This right, we would be building our support inside Africa with soft power like aid and all the other programs, but meanwhile getting investments going so that we could pull rare earths from the ground and then produce them somewhere. Because, remember, what China does have a monopoly on practically, is production of rare earths. They have something like 90%, but there's many other critical minerals that are in that category that, that, that could hold up the world's economy, many of which zinc, cobalt, all of these, lithium, all of these capabilities are in Africa, and we should be helping them grow and helping ourselves and protecting ourselves from China. Using economic coercion against all of us. And instead, you know, we're threatening to invade Nigeria, which of course we're not going to do.
- [27:12]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, so are you. I won't say we going to invade Venezuela. Now, I heard a very interesting analysis because this just keeps carrying on. There's a huge number of warships off the coast, according to various diagrams and satellite pictures that we get to see. This former government official, and I think he was in the Bush administration, he said a couple of things. This is both domestic and foreign policy for this Trump administration. Domestic policy to show that they're cracking down on the drugs coming into the United States. But he said the problem there, going all the way back to Richard Nixon and the war on drug, is that it's always trying to attack the production and the source rather than the pull factor and the market for drugs in the United States. So that's one, you know, difficult and cognitive dissonance, if you like, there. Then he said all the ships could be also giving a signal to, let's say the Venezuelan military if they wanted to take this signal that if they perform a coup against Maduro, that the US Would be right there offshore, ready to hop over to help them if they needed it.
- [28:24]
Jamie Rubin
And remember, meanwhile, Trump is, you know, talking publicly about the supposed CIA covert operation, which is very covert if he's talking about it. And I think they're essentially trying to bluff their way to success. In other words, have a lot of ships perhaps attack some of the Venezuelan anti aircraft systems, send a message to the military, we'll work with you. And have the CIA presumably trying to penetrate the Venezuelan military and convincing them to conduct a coup. The problem is Maduro comes out of the Venezuelan military and Chavez before him came out of the Venezuelan military. They've been preparing this for years. They've gone turned their economy into crypto economy so that sanctions can't work. I'm very, very worried that we're spending all of our energy, our military, economic and political energies trying to bluff our way into regime change in Venezuela when the only way to get regime change in Venezuela, Venezuela, is to actually invade like we did back with Manuel Noriega in the first administration.
- [29:29]
Christiana Amanpour
Totally different, much smaller. There were U.S. bases there, U.S. military.
- [29:33]
Jamie Rubin
Exactly.
- [29:34]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, totally different.
- [29:35]
Jamie Rubin
This is 10 times harder, 100 times harder, a thousand times harder. And it's not likely to happen, in my opinion. So instead we're going to be embarrassed.
- [29:43]
Christiana Amanpour
You've speculated about Rubio because he's taken over the policy and actually this analyst, former government official, said it's an obsession of Rubio's. He used that word, word. As we know, Rubio is the son of immigrants from Cuba and they want to, and so does the Cuban American diaspora wants to get rid of the Castro regime, Communist Cuba. And according to this analyst, and this has been the sort of raison d' etre for many attempts to destabilize, whether it was Chavez and now Maduro, the fall of Venezuela would, in their view, inevitably lead to the fall of Cuba.
- [30:19]
Jamie Rubin
But even so, it's not worth the United States putting all their prestige, all their money, all their resources, resources to try to achieve something we probably can't do. And if we could do, we'd have to own Venezuela. Remember, if you break it, you own it. If we were to invade this country and try to overthrow it, we'd be responsible for all the consequences. Instead, let's let the Venezuelan people solve their own problems, but get a preferential deal for the United States and keep the United States focused on the real threats to our world, which are emanating, as you know, I think, from Beijing and market Moscow.
- [30:54]
Christiana Amanpour
And by the way, and we don't have time to discuss it, but apparently Maduro is begging Russia and China for help. Whether they will or not, we'll see. So let's end that segment right then when we come back, we'll have our recommendations.
- [31:12]
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- [31:46]
Christiana Amanpour
We'Re back and we're going to do our recommendations for this week. So Jamie, you want to go first?
- [31:52]
Jamie Rubin
Sure. Look, for the time we've been doing this podcast, it's during the second Trump administration, a lot of Americans and people around the world have been struggling to understand what's going on in our country and why President Trump was reelected and why he is pursuing such policies that are so troubling to so many people. And a friend of mine, an author, has written a book that couldn't be more timely. It came out some time ago, but it's worth recommending. It's called Rebellion How Anti Liberalism is Tearing America Apart Again. His name is Robert Kaplan. And his point is, and it's a very, very brilliant. It's a short book. It's one of those new short books. It explains where anti liberalism. And when he says liberal, he means normal democratic functioning, not left or right. He said, where does this come from? From? And he brings it back to the creation of the United States when much of our country was anti slavery, but some of it was pro slavery. And then he goes through the Civil War period and then he explains what happened with anti immigration fever in the early 20th century. And then he explains the crazy people during the McCarthy era and what they did to our country. And he explains how the religious and ethnic and immigration and capitalist debates have been going on and slavery obviously in our country for 200 plus years. And that that's where this current movement comes from. It doesn't explain everything, but it explains that we've been through terrible cycles before. And the reason why I like this book so much is because inside of all that is hope. Because if we've been through things that were far worse than what we're going through now, and we came through on the other side and we had the Kennedy era, we had what I call the Clinton era of peace and prosperity, you know, it's possible for us to get through and come out the other side and the world will be better for it, but we need to understand where it comes from. And that's why this book is so great.
- [33:55]
Christiana Amanpour
Well, that's really good. And I hang on to the hope thing because it leads nicely into my recommendation. Because as we sit right now, this current administration is rolling back basic civil rights laws, voting laws, women's rights, minority rights. So it is extraordinary to think that all that can be rolled back after so much progress has been made over the decades. So I was absolutely, absolutely thrilled with this new documentary. It's called the Day Iceland Stood still. And it's about October 24, 1975, when 90% of the Icelandic women essentially downed tools in the home and at work to basically show that if women didn't participate in the economy writ large, everyday life in Iceland, the country would, would grind to a, to a halt. Which in fact it did. But the, the beauty of this is it's just done with so much fun. It's done with so many people taking part, including the current female president of Iceland. She was seven when this happened. She's only the second female. But it was just so well done. The documentary and the movement itself was incredible. And it brought in so many of Iceland's men and even the children were watching what was going on. And today Iceland is number one in gender equality in the world. While sadly the United States has dropped to number 42. And I think we should really take note of that. And anybody who wants a roadmap just needs to look at this documentary and see that it can be done with hope, with fun, with determination. And not that you replace a patriarchy with a matriarchy. No, the word is equality. And I think people who are against equality feel that it's just another word for domination by another group. And I think that's where the storytelling has gone wrong. Equality means equality. Equality, everybody together.
- [35:51]
Jamie Rubin
Do you remember, wasn't it it was either Liberia or Sierra Leone where the women helped Liberia civil war where they helped stop the civil war by withholding sexual relations with their partners. The men.
- [36:04]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah. Pray the devil back to hell. That was the documentary. It was so good and it worked.
- [36:09]
Jamie Rubin
Hope reigns supreme, as they say it does.
- [36:15]
Christiana Amanpour
That is it. Now for this edition of our podcast, Christiana Monport presents along with Jamie Rubin, the X Files. And don't forget that this drops every single week. On a Tuesday and on a Thursday we have our bonus Q and A segment. We'll have a little bit of a different one this time. Jamie and I will answer some of your questions, but I'm also going to talk to Ernie Moniz. He was former US Energy Secretary but most importantly to me anyway, he is the current head of the nuclear threat Initiative which is what my form. Well, I call him my boss Ted Turner founded and I'm just going to go back into the archive of that history, how it was founded and why. So that's for this week's bonus section. Make sure you subscribe not just to the podcast but also to our YouTube channel. And make sure you submit your questions to us on email and on social media.
- [37:06]
Jamie Rubin
Well, goodbye from New York.
- [37:08]
Christiana Amanpour
Bye bye from across the the pond.
- [37:13]
Jamie Rubin
This has been a global player original.
- [37:16]
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- [37:46]
Jamie Rubin
Com.