← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Q&A: Will Trump ever match Bill Clinton's global leadership?
00:35:55
Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:03]
Jamie Rubin
This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [00:09]
Christiana Amanpour
Hello everyone and welcome to a special Q and A episode of the X Files with me, Cristiana Manpour and Jamie.
- [00:16]
Jamie Rubin
Rubin, a two time official of the United States State Department under Presidents Biden and Clinton.
- [00:21]
Christiana Amanpour
And I'm a longtime CNNer. I'm actually away on holiday this week. So full disclosure. That's why you're getting an extra Q and A episode instead of one of the regular episodes this week. So thank you to everyone who's been sending in questions and who sent in questions so far. Please keep doing them and ask us anything you like, from our experiences in the field to encounters with world leaders. And you can find us all over social media where our handle is Amanpur pod. Or email us. We're@amanpourpodlobal.com so let's get started. Jamie, do you want to take the first one? These as usual are coming in from all over social media.
- [01:04]
Jamie Rubin
Yes. And this is Instagram. Ellie asks, what do you believe is the most underreported story shaping the world today?
- [01:12]
Christiana Amanpour
CHRISTIANE amanpour well, underreported is one conditional and shaping the world is another conditional. So they have to be both, I think poverty, inequality and true proper reporting of migration around the world, not just across the US Southern border, but the huge population flows and why and then I would say a big mega existential is the climate crisis. It's almost like there's so much going on right now that we've forgotten the one huge event that is shaping the world and I don't think we pay enough attention to it. What do you think?
- [01:52]
Jamie Rubin
Well, I have a little rap that I'm going to make and hopefully it won't go on too long. When I first started in this business it was nuclear weapons. We really thought in the 80s there was a risk of global thermonuclear war. I remember I used to say that I thought it was about 5050 the world was going to be blown up, which is how I got into this business. But then the Cold War ended and the 90s we had ethnic conflict which is how we met Bosnia, Kosovo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, hut Jews and Tutsis, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Irish versus the British. And that was the 90s and then the 2000s we had 9, 11 and thus the war on terrorism dominated the 2000s. I think in the 2010s climate change dominated our discussion because we began to understand the danger and also Covid obviously at the end of the 2010s. But all of these issues didn't just End when we moved on to the next decade, they were added on to the threats. We still have nuclear weapons, we still have ethnic conflict, we still have terrorism, we still have climate change, we still have Covid. But in the 2000s and this is why I was hired by the US government, I think information warfare is the newest threat in our time. And I think it's very, very difficult to cover disinformation provoked, promoted and used as a weapon of warfare by Russia, by China, individual groups, and now with AI multiplying exponentially the capabilities of information warfare, I think that's the, the newest threat of our time. And my people who used to work for me used to call it my eras tour playing off Taylor Swift that the eras of nuclear warfare, ethnic conflict, climate change, terrorism, and now information warfare. And I don't think it gets enough attention.
- [03:52]
Christiana Amanpour
I think you're right, it gets a lot of attention, but not deep attention. You know, the whole threat of AI and everything. But I think people are, you know, confasticated about it. One other, just one other thing, I think we don't report enough good news stories because I think what happens is that sometimes there are areas amongst those that we've discussed just now that there are solutions. There are actually people trying to fix things and some of them are being successful, but we don't report enough on that. So perhaps our viewers and online users, et cetera, are left with the, I think false impression that nothing can be done. So, oh, why should we try anything? I feel that a little bit right now the sort of apathy problem. Okay, Jamie, here we go. Can public opinion genuinely shape foreign policy anymore? Or are we living in an age of top down geopolitics?
- [04:44]
Jamie Rubin
I think Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping would like to think that the three of them decide everything that. You know, I always imagined that President Trump thought if he could just sit down at the table with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, they could divide up the world and run everything. And I suspect that he does think that. And I wouldn't even be surprised if such a meeting happens one day. But that's not the way the world really works anymore. One of the things that has happened since the fall of communism is that democratic change is real. We may be seeing a time in which authoritarian leaders are growing in strength, but still the world is dominated by democratic governments. India is a billion plus people democratic. The United States, Europe, Asia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, all of those countries, increasingly Africa. And so yes, it may seem that leaders just sit down and decide things but they can't do that without really reflecting the views of their people. Certainly they can't do it successfully. The short answer is that some leaders would like to think they can decide everything. But I think the realities of democratic governance mean that that can't happen without the support of the people.
- [06:04]
Christiana Amanpour
Here's my reflection on that. I think as well as that you're talking about opinion inside countries, I'm going to just broaden out to global public opinion about world events. Let's just say Ukraine, it was the pretty united and almost unanimous feelings about the Ukrainians by people all over the United States, all over Britain, all over Europe and other places that actually got their governments to go into helping Ukraine. So I think that is very, very important. Public opinion can actually work as a mover of the dial. And I remember Madeline Albright used to say call C the CNN effect. And that didn't just mean, you know, inside the United States, it meant around the world when CNN was somewhere and there was a terrible humanitarian crisis, starvation or whatever it might be, or CBS or. I'm just talking about in general, actually it did move the dial and it caused governments to, to take action. That can happen for the good, you know, to mitigate and ameliorate problems, but sometimes it can also happen for the bad. You know, some governments just double down and they don, know and they, you know, deny public opinion. So I think it's a, it's, it's, it's really interesting. But right now we're living, I think, in a combination of both. There is public opinion and there is a top down geopolitics in those three big areas, the United States, Russia and China.
- [07:32]
Jamie Rubin
Let me just add there, since it's more appropriate for me to say this, when we met in the 90s, you had done something unique in history, which is travel the world with a satellite truck often behind you. And so when you arrived in Haiti or Bosnia or Rwanda or Somalia, the satellite truck was with you. And that's why Madeleine Albright used to jokingly call you. There's 15 members of the Security Council, sometimes the 16th member of the Security Council. And there's no question in my mind that you. For cnn, John Burns for the New York Times made the world deal with Bosnia in a way they might otherwise not have done or would otherwise not have done without your coverage of that war and helped Bill Clinton eventually come to the decision necessary to end the war by using military power. And that's how I got to know you and frankly how I think the United States at the height of its power. The Economist magazine actually said that 1999, when the world stopped the genocide in Kosovo. And this is what they said was the height of European civilization, because the European powers, with the United States in the lead, decided to do something incredible, which is to prevent a genocide before it happened and to give the Serbs a chance. So you give the WHO a chance, the Serbian government, a chance to make a diplomatic agreement first and then only use force as a last resort.
- [09:10]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, look, I think that's all true, and I think it makes me feel good that we were able to do something in that regard, but it also makes me feel bad, and I don't remember public opinion at the time. And we also weren't there in as much weight as we were in Bosnia, and that's Rwanda. And, Jamie, we talked about this a lot. I mean, it remains a moment, a deep moment of shame for the United States, the United nations, all the Security Council members, not to have, with a smallish intervention, stopped the Rwanda genocide from even getting off, you know, off the ground, as the Canadian general desperately pleaded for. So I think that's very important to remember because. Because there weren't the images, there weren't the journalists, there weren't the stories. The world could kind of look away. And I always find that really difficult to talk about as a journalist because I think we failed there to tell that story, and therefore we could have no impact on public opinion or on government opinion. So I would say it works both ways.
- [10:12]
Jamie Rubin
Yes. Let me ask you the next question. By also admitting that everybody failed on Rwanda. The system failed, the world failed. Paula asks, in journalism, Christiane, has the pressure to be first ever compromised the need to be right, even unintentionally?
- [10:30]
Christiana Amanpour
The answer, Paula, is yes. And the subsequent answer is every time a yes happens, we all have to, you know, retreat a little bit, look at what happened wrong, do an after action report and apologize and be particularly transparent about what happened and why we got it wrong, and then pledge to make sure that that doesn't happen again. The good thing about most journalism that is legacy journalism, in other words, the big tested organizations, is that we do issue corrections when we are wrong. We generally admit it, it's not pleasant, but we do take that responsibility seriously, and we try to get it right all the time. And, yeah, sometimes we fall.
- [11:17]
Jamie Rubin
Let me give you an anecdote that I remember vividly. So I was the spokesman of the State Department in the late 90s, and one of the most difficult things that was occurring then is that Journalism was the first profession really, to take advantage of global communications. So in the old days, spokesman would meet all the officials in the morning and at noon do their briefing, and they'd pretty much know everything that was going on that day. And they would get cables overnight from the embassy and maybe read the intelligence reports, et cetera, et cetera. But I faced this problem where I would go to the podium and I would start speaking on a subject. And a journalist, normally it was Carol Giacomo from Reuters, as I recall, would have on her table a computer which would be plugged into Reuters and all of the Reuters correspondents around the world. And very often she would ask me a question about something that just happened in Africa or in Asia where some bomb had gone off or some arrest had taken place. She would know about it instantly and want my instant comment, even though the US State Department didn't even know about it and hadn't even told me about it and certainly hadn't developed a position about it. And then my biggest fear always was that the journalists would write a phrase. The US government was caught by surprise, you know, taken aback, didn't know, because sometimes there's a false perception that the US government is all knowing and all seeing and all powerful, which of course it isn't. But journalism was able to use that tool of instant communications to pose a question. And so sometimes, knowing Madeleine Albright's inclinations, you know, I'd make it up the US response right then and there. And most of the time I was right. But occasionally I was wrong, too.
- [13:12]
Christiana Amanpour
Not often do you have an example of being wrong.
- [13:15]
Jamie Rubin
I know a famous one, you know, when. Here's. This is just a famous journalism story. It's not exactly on point, but here's what happened. There was a reporter who was very, very difficult reporter named Barry Schweid, who was the dean of the press corps. And he was very interested in the Israeli Palestinian thing. And he would always try to find some way of poking holes in something. I said. So one day we got into this dispute about something and. And the transcript came out and the Jewish American group led by a man named Mort Klein called for my resignation because he said that I had used the word Talmudic and that this was anti Semitic. Well, of course, yeah, Crazy Talmudic, of course, is a way of saying that it's very, very detailed to picayune angels in the head of a pin kind of thing. And so I didn't even remember using the word. And then finally, since it comes from.
- [14:14]
Christiana Amanpour
The Talmud, doesn't it?
- [14:15]
Jamie Rubin
I Don't know. He decided that this was anti Semitic, called for my resignation. And then the funniest thing happened is that Barry Schweid, the reporter, when I told him about this, said, you know, I think it was me who said Talmudic, not you. And so it took hours, but eventually we got the transcript. And then I got to send a very fun letter to Mort Klein at the Zionist Organization of America and say, sorry, it was one of your favorite reporters, Barry Schweid, who used the word Talmudic. And I had to watch that guy eat crow. And I didn't mind that at all, at all.
- [14:50]
Christiana Amanpour
I would just say one piece of advice I would have. When you are surprised by Carol Giacomo, who is a great reporter, of course, just say, I don't know, thanks for telling us, and I'll get back to you.
- [15:01]
Jamie Rubin
And we did. Most of the time. That's what we did.
- [15:03]
Christiana Amanpour
There you go.
- [15:04]
Jamie Rubin
Most of the time.
- [15:04]
Christiana Amanpour
Anyway, let's get back to Sammy, who asked what worries you more, censorship or apathy? So I think he's talking about the press. I think both. Censorship is an evil, evil thing. We're being censored in many, many parts of the world, either, what do they call it, pre censorship and auto censorship in many countries so as not to fall afoul of whichever leader happens to, you know, take it out on the press. So in the United States, that's happening right now. But of course, always in dictatorial countries, I would say the censorship of not being allowed to go to a war zone, for instance, Gaza, we are not allowed to go by the Israeli government. I think that's really worrying given what's. What's going on there. And I think, to be honest with you, that also can lead to apathy, because if you can't go, some people think, oh, well, nothing I can do about it. And that can be a pretty negative reaction amongst some press, but also lead to apathy again in the public opinion, because you can suddenly sort of find yourself saying, when you don't get the granular news from the ground, you can suddenly find yourself saying, oh, well, it's just another day, just another bomb, just another group of people, just another. Just another. Just another Trumpism, whatever it. Or Putinism, and think that, oh, either this too shall pass or there's nothing we can do about it. So I think both are actually quite, quite heavily linked, and both are very, very negative for our civil society and our democracies.
- [16:38]
Jamie Rubin
You know, censorship, if it's defined as what I would call information warfare or information Manipulation. You know, we came up with various words to describe it, because, believe it or not, at some point the word disinformation became a word we couldn't use because extreme right wingers connected disinformation to the whole subject of Russia and the Ukraine war. And so we had to come up with a different phrase. And it ended up being, you know, information manipulation. But look, I think that's the biggest, as I said to the other questioner, the biggest challenge of our time, information. You know, when we were learning foreign affairs and I was in graduate school, and you learn about the phrase vital interest, what's a vital interest of a country, meaning it's. It's so important that it affects your way of life, was the phrase, and this is what FDR used when he justified beginning to confront Hitler back in World War II, that a World of fascist countries would affect our way of life. I think information warfare, including censorship, including disinformation, including what I would call, you know, information management, where you only tell one side of a story. The Chinese are brilliant at this. They have the most incredible spending all over the world on their television and radio and news services. Xinhua, their news service. Now, they don't tell lies. What they do is they fill the news with only good things about China. Only good things happen. Nothing bad has ever happened.
- [18:16]
Christiana Amanpour
Alternative facts, Jamie.
- [18:17]
Jamie Rubin
Alternative facts.
- [18:18]
Christiana Amanpour
Like Kellyanne Conway once.
- [18:19]
Jamie Rubin
Exactly. And then in the United States again, they don't often lie, but they just say the bad news. So it's true. In every city in America, one day there's something bad that's going to happen. So the Chinese fill their news service with all the worst things about the United States that are factually accurate but manipulative in the sense that they give a false picture of the country and then fill their news service with only good news from China. And that's the world that they would like the countries in small countries in Asia and Africa and Latin America to believe. And they give away their news service for free, often so that countries that don't have the money or the wherewithal to create a newsroom just use Xinhua. And then this is the worst part. It gets laundered by local journalists who take that information and then put their name on it. And so it's a, you know, edited by a Fijian, written by a Fijian, Fijian, read by a Fijian. But the news is all Chinese and all good news about China.
- [19:24]
Christiana Amanpour
Just on that thing, it's just reminded me. It's just. I yanked it out of the recesses of my memory, I will say that it was May 1992. I stand ready to be corrected. But there were the Los Angeles riots, the infamous Rodney King riots, burnings of cars and tires and smashing of shops and et cetera. And. And I was in Baghdad, Baghdad after losing the first Gulf War and under U.S. sanctions. And the Baghdad Iraqi newspapers and television bulletins were full of this. It was like, thank God, thank God. There's something awful that we can crow about going on in the United States and say, see, they're not perfect. Look at what they're doing to us now and crippling us with sanctions and this and that. And that's what's happening in this great vaunted democracy.
- [20:23]
Commercial Announcer
This Labor Day. Say goodbye to spills, stains and overpriced furniture with washablesofas.com featuring Anabe, the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget friendly pricing. Sofas start at just $6.99, making it the perfect time to upgrade your space. Anibase pet friendly, stain resistant and interchangeable slipcovers are made with high performance fabric built for real life. You'll love the cloud like comfort of hypoallergenic, high resilience foam that never needs fluffing and a durable steel frame that stands the test of time with modular pieces you can rearrange anytime. It's a sofa that adapts to your life. Now through Labor Day. Get up to 60% off site wide@washablesofas.com Every order comes with a 30 day set of satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees, every penny back. Shop now@washablesofas.com Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [21:27]
Jamie Rubin
Do you think, Bethany asks, the US is still capable of leading by example in matters of free speech and international cooperation? I do.
- [21:36]
Christiana Amanpour
I'm going to answer that.
- [21:38]
Jamie Rubin
You answer it and then I'll follow up.
- [21:40]
Christiana Amanpour
Yes, I am very upset that the United States is forfeiting because I know what you were going to say. You're going to say, I do believe, but right now the US has forfeited so much of its moral authority, so much of its constitutional prerogatives when it comes to the constitutional right to free speech. And you know, for the First Amendment which we, all those of us who don't have a constitutional protection like in England or whatever, we respect so much. And I think that that is something that's being wantonly wasted and unfortunately giving a lot of aid and abetting all those kind of dictators and illiberal Democrats who say, oh, my God, if the US can shut down free speech and et cetera, and international cooperation, by the way, then we can, too. Go ahead, Jamie.
- [22:29]
Jamie Rubin
Yes, look, Madeleine Albright popularized a phrase called calling the United States the indispensable.
- [22:37]
Christiana Amanpour
Nation, which we've had, which we've crossed swords over.
- [22:40]
Jamie Rubin
Yes. And I still believe that. And it doesn't mean the United States can and should do everything itself. But what it does mean, and Bosnia proved it, is that without the United States leading, nothing good's going to happen in all likelihood. And so when the United States did finally engage on Bosnia and Kosovo and many, many other issues, things happened. That's what it means to be the indispensable nation. And since I believe that this information warfare is so important, I hate the idea that it's being messed up with the concept of the First Amendment and free speech. Nobody wants the. I certainly don't. Nobody I worked with wants the US Government to be deciding what's true or not true and being a censor in that sense, or interfering with free speech. But the United States can and did for a couple of years when we were there, Under Secretary Blinken's leadership lead the world in beginning to address this new challenge because it is so complicated. It was the hardest subject I ever worked on, information warfare, precisely because you didn't want the government to be in the censorship business. So what could you do? And this is what we ended up doing. We gathered a coalition of countries, Europeans, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and began to address this problem by saying, no, we're not going to interfere with the free speech, but we want the world to know when that news story or that argument or that post or that social media thing is created in the Kremlin or created by the Communist Party of China. People need to know that. And that's all we really wanted to do. And I think when and if we come back to power and we get back to that mission, that we can begin to address this seemingly impossible challenge of information warfare.
- [24:45]
Christiana Amanpour
Yes, I would say that the U.S. government, as you say, has now got into the business of censorship by killing off that instrument that you had developed to show who was doing the disinformation, but also by going around the world. I just remember J.D. vance, the Vice president, the Munich Security Conference, essentially, in the name of free speech, saying that you must allow hate speech and all the other speeches I Mean, I'm putting words into his mouth, but, but trying to, but trying to.
- [25:19]
Jamie Rubin
Empower the people who came from Hitler's, Germany's political faction, who, Germany and Romania.
- [25:29]
Christiana Amanpour
And, and all those places. And so, you know, being on the wrong side of, of free speech, in other words, and I think that's a problem. I will also just pick you up on the indispensable nation thing because I think you just said without the US Leading, nothing good will happen. But I mean, if you flip that a little bit, the US Is the only power that can lead the democratic, you know, alliance around the world right now, the west, the transatlantic alliance. And it's not doing a good job in Israel, Palestine, and so bad things are happening. It's not doing a good job, frankly, in Russia, Ukraine yet, or enough of a good job. It did support Ukraine with a lot of weapons. But, you know, the whole changing the narrative of who's to blame for this war and how it should end, you know, that's US Leadership and it doesn't lead to good things.
- [26:18]
Jamie Rubin
Hard to argue with that. Let me ask you this question. What gives you hope that truth and diplomacy can still prevail in a fractured world? Katie asks.
- [26:28]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, well, look, it's a hard slog, Katie, and it's one of the things that breaks my heart as a journalist when people come up to me and they say, oh my gosh, I, I don't know where to get the truth. And I'm like, well, can you just turn on cnn, please, or read the New York Times or the FT or the Economist or the Wall Street Journal or. All over the world countries do actually have a few reliable news organizations.
- [26:53]
Jamie Rubin
Please.
- [26:53]
Christiana Amanpour
It's up to you also now to really hunt for where the truth is and where you know it is and don't just keep going down rabbit holes and bots and algorithms which are designed to build on the disinformation and on the conflict that on. So I think that for us as truth tellers and truth seekers is vital. But what about diplomacy? Can it, you know, when truth is under attack like this? What about diplomacy, Jamie?
- [27:22]
Jamie Rubin
Well, in a fractured world, diplomacy to me, you know, everybody has their own template. And one of the things I learned in the foreign policy business, like in life, your first searing experiences define you, and you develop a template for action. You understand what works and what doesn't work. And my template, I will admit, came out of the 90s when we were the indispensable nation. But we did something that has never been done again, which is Combine force and diplomacy. Well, the United States does have the strongest military in the world. When it's successful is when it takes that power and leads by example and is not just feared in the world, but is also respected and admired. And one of the things that I think Bill Clinton will always be remembered for is that he made the idea of America as a peacemaker part and parcel of what he thought America's job in the world was. Whether that was with North Korea where he under great pressure sent Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang, even though it was criticized because he thought that America's power meant that we could take a risk for peace. And he used the phrase let's get caught trying was his phrase. He obviously helped on Northern Ireland. We talked about that last week. And crucially in the Balkans, he understood the combination of force and diplomacy. Colin Powell used to say you only use force if you do it overwhelmingly force, like the first Gulf War, hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, otherwise you can't do anything. And what he understood and what he put in place and it's never really been done again properly, was what I would call limited force for working in conjunction with diplomacy to achieve an objective. And that's what the Dayton Peace Accords were. That's what we did in Kosovo and that's what what we had hoped to do in Iraq, which we didn't because we ended up the inspectors were taken out. But to combine force and diplomacy. And so when that's done right, I still believe that that is the way America can be the indispensable nation and lead in a way that people respect and admire rather than just being afraid. Right now they're just afraid of President Trump, either economically cuz he's going to throw tariffs on them or militarily because he's going to use force or diplomatically because he's to insult them. And so fear is not enough.
- [30:06]
Commercial Announcer
This Labor Day say goodbye to spills, stains and overpriced furniture with washablesofas.com featuring Annabe, the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget friendly pricing. Sofas start at just $6.99, making it the perfect time to upgrade your space. Anibe's Pet Friendly stain resistant and interchangeable slipcovers are made with high performance fabric built for real life. You'll love the cloud like comfort of hypoallergenic, high resilience foam that never needs fluffing and a durable steel frame that stands the test of time with modular pieces. You can rearrange anytime. It's a sofa that adapts to your life. Now through Labor Day, get up to 60% off site. 1@washablesofas.com Every order comes with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees. Every penny back. Shop now@washablesofas.com Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.
- [31:10]
Christiana Amanpour
Okay, so here's one for both of us. A final one is a nice one from Freya. In a time when everything feels so hopeless, what advice do you both have for remaining hopeful? I am hopeful when I turn on the TV and I see Parenthood, which is the new David Attenborough nature program about animals and the animal kingdom and how they really are parents almost. I mean, they're not human obviously, but they have so many traits that any human would recognize in terms of being a parent. Or the recent multi part series by a paleoanthropologist called Human Unreal, a huge, for me, boost of energy and optimism about the capacity of Homo sapiens, our species, to actually be amazing. And what we did early Homo sapiens, to get to the incredible brilliance of so many these days is remarkable. But with it, of course, comes the pitfalls because you can be brilliant or you can be destructive, you can construct or destruct. But anyway, I think that's for me, very hopeful. And then I guess to talk about the ongoing wars right now, I get very hopeful when I talk to let's just take Israel, Palestine, an Israeli and a Palestinian together who will say publicly and have a little debate on TV with me about how to work together to achieve a future. And I think you can transfer that across any kind of ethnic and different lines when people are in conflict. And if you can get both sides of some sort, and it's usually grassroots to say that this is how we're working on making the world a better place, first by starting to fix our part of the world and our part in it, then that for me is really a source of optimism.
- [33:01]
Jamie Rubin
Well, it's tough to be optimistic in today's world. The only optimistic thing I popped into my head was, you know, we talked about this great failure in Rwanda that is true, that Bill Clinton apologized for that. Everyone involved apologized for who has been thinking about it. I remember going there a couple years after the slaughter, after the genocide, and watching Hutus and Tutsis reconcile and despite the fact that they knew that they had killed each other, and mostly the Hutus killing the Tutsis, I mean, let's face it, and hut Tutsi women and men forgiving their murdering members of the Hutu ethnicity being forgiven by those who had seen their family murdered. And when you see human beings able to do that, that's optimistic. And then take the country of Germany. I grew up basically hating Germans because I read about, you know, I was born in 1960, just 15 years after the Holocaust. And I, everything German was, was horrible to me. And yet because of the Marshall Plan, because of the brilliance of what I call the founding fathers of the Post World War II World, we helped Germany change and become democratic. And watching how successful Germany has been in taking responsibility for the madness and monstrous behavior of their forefathers, young Germans, especially Joshka Fischer is my favorite example of this, you know, who really turned against his country as a young man and became like an anarchist because of, of the Holocaust. But then he evolved and he became part of a movement in Germany where they wanted to use their power for good. And so those are the best reasons for optimism I can think of.
- [35:00]
Christiana Amanpour
And I also go to Nelson Mandela, who had a choice to make. Would they, because they're the majority finally liberated, take revenge on the minority who had had them under the heel of apartheid for so many, so many decades. And he decided not to because that's who he was, and tried to make this rainbow nation of everybody being able to live under one democratic South Africa. And I look at the, you know, decades and decades that go back even further, leading to the Northern Ireland and United Kingdom conflict, the troubles. And they managed to come together and see a better future for their children and for their grandchildren. And I just also, you know, in terms of the ultimate nuclear war, a nuclear. No, two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan this time 80 years ago, August, 80 years ago. And there have been a lot of testimonials in the press now going back to talk to some of the people who were victims and even some of the crewmen because they were men of the Enola Gay airplane that dropped those bombs. And they all talk about certainly the Japanese, how they had been dragged into believing that what they did, and they were in the Axis along with Germany, etc against the west, was for the greater good of the, you know, imperial family of Japan and the empire. And they realized that it was for nothing, absolutely nothing. So they come out and they're warning younger generations just to not be swayed by the very powerful voices of doom, destruction and warfare. And I think people who do stand up and risk everything to be counted, including going against their own tribe, especially going against their own tribe. I think that gives me a lot of optimism because we don't see enough of that and it has a big effect. That's a wrap for us. Thank you for listening to the X Files with me, Christiana Manpour and Jamie Rubin. And remember, of course, if you have a question for us that you want answered on just about anything as you've seen something in the news, something in our previous experience, our careers find us across all social media platforms. Our handle is Amanpur Pod. Or email us. We're at amanpur pod and global.com our next episode will be out next Tuesday. Wherever you get your podcast, remember you can always listen for free on Global Player and you can download that from the App Store or go to global player.com bye bye bye bye.
- [37:51]
Jamie Rubin
This is a Global Player original podcast.
- [37:56]
Commercial Announcer
This Labor Day say goodbye to spills, stains and overpriced furniture with washablesofas.com featuring Anabe, the only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget friendly pricing. Sofas start at just $6.99, making it the perfect time to upgrade your space. Annabe's pet friendly stain resistant and interchangeable slipcovers are made with high performance fabric built for real life life. You'll love the cloud like comfort of hypoallergenic, high resilience foam that never needs fluffing and a durable steel frame that stands the test of time with modular pieces you can rearrange anytime. It's a sofa that adapts to your life now through Labor Day. Get up to 60% off site wide@washablesofas.com Every order comes with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. If you're not in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping, no restocking fees. Every penny back. Shop now@washablesofas.com Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may appreciate.