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- [00:00]
A
Most people overpay for car insurance, not because they're careless, but because switching feels like too much hassle. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant.
- [00:10]
B
Jerry compares rates side by side from.
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A
Over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI acast today. So you all look extremely professional because each of you has a very professional looking bookshelf behind you in your shots. You've got legal tomes. I see Lauren behind you. Dan probably books several, which you've probably written. I'm going to guess behind you. Tyler, you have my office behind you at the office because I'm recording from home today. Looks very professional. But then Dan picked up on something right behind you. Lauren, what do we have over there? Something a little more frivolous. What's going on?
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C
I think you might be seeing Chutes and Ladders, which is an awesome game if you are 4 years old.
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D
I was going to say nothing frivolous about it.
- [01:11]
A
Yeah, exactly. I think there's a lot of metaphors that are important for national security in the Chutes and Ladders sort of game. You know, there's never a solid state, always ups and always downs. You got to be flexible, dynamic. I think there's a lot to learn right now.
- [01:23]
B
I'll just say in Gaza we seem to be climbing up a ladder, but it might actually be a chute. Right. Like it might suddenly flip on us. And I think we can make that annoying comparison with really every foreign policy crisis in the world right now.
- [01:37]
A
Yeah, exactly. And most of the things we're going to talk about today, in fact, it's all chutes all the way down these days. It feels like. So we'll see. Exactly. We end up on this particular one.
- [01:45]
D
If only we were living in Candyland.
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A
I know that's the dream. Just gumdrop palaces left and right. For some reason, my son, we have a lot of games where his favorite game right now is one where you're dinosaurs escaping in apocal, where the island you live on is being slowly consumed by a volcano and you have to try and get dinosaurs off the island. And it's very cute and cooperative until you think about what exactly it means.
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B
Yeah, but that, that happened to a cousin of mine. So it's a very realistic game.
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C
My 4 year old yesterday said, mama, get on the plane. I said, okay, where are we going? And he goes, no, Mama, the plane is out of control. I'm like, okay. I feel that. I feel that.
- [02:34]
A
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, the podcast. We invite you to join members of the lawfare team as we sit down to try and make sense of the week's big national security news stories. Joining me today are several of my wonderful colleagues. First up, we have managing editor for Lawfare, Tyler McBrien. Tyler, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [02:52]
D
Always a pleasure.
- [02:53]
A
And joining us as well is our foreign policy editor extraordinaire and general national security maven of all sorts, Dan Byman. Dan, thank you for joining us today.
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B
Happy to be here.
- [03:04]
A
And joining us for her debut here on Rational Security is one of Lawfare's not new. I think that's not generous enough because we've really put you through the ringer over the last few weeks. At this point, you're quite the veteran, but relatively recent additions to lawfare. Here as a public interest fellow is our friend Lauren Voss. Lauren, thank you for joining us today for your debut here on Rational Security.
- [03:22]
C
Thanks. Happy to be here for my first time.
- [03:25]
A
Well, we have really had an eventful week. I see. Like I say that every week. I need to find a more creative way to say it because it is always true these days. And this last week, I have to say, is like the busiest national security week, particularly around issues that I follow and care about that I've had since the last two. It has really been a hell of a month. If you look at my calendar, you will see the sheer number of reporter talks and random questions from folks on the Hill and folks all over D.C. to talk about, like nine different topics that are happening right now in my space and in many of your spaces as well. So it's been pretty crazy, but we picked three. Three pretty big ones, I think, to talk about this week. None of that nitty, gritty, naughty tech law stuff we were dealing with last week. Now we're getting into like real geopolitics now that we got Alan back off the podcast. So I'm excited to have you guys here to dig through it with me. For our first topic today, the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland, a little throwback to my favorite TV show, Portlandia. This past week, the Trump administration made good on its threats to pursue further domestic to military deploy, this time to Portland and Chicago. Thus far, it has stuck to the same model it pursued in Los Angeles earlier this year, using troops to bolster federal immigration efforts. But President Trump has threatened to go further if his efforts are resisted, including by invoking the Insurrection act, something that hasn't happened since 1992. How seriously should we take this threat and where is it likely to lead? Topic 2 Strip Poker President Trump and his senior advisors have been engaged in serious shuttle diplomacy for the past several weeks, seemingly intent on reaching some sort of peace deal in regard to the beleaguered Gaza Strip. And while it's required him to play every card in his hand, including by pushing both Israel and Hamas into signing on, Trump appears to be on the verge of a breakthrough. How remarkable an accomplishment is this, if it is one at all? And what might it mean for the trajectory of the conflict? And topic three, the Maduro Doctrine. Media reports suggest that several senior Trump administration officials are intent on removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro from power, and that the buildup of U.S. military forces in the region over the past several weeks has, as well as the lethal targeting of alleged Venezuela affiliated narcotics traffickers, is just a prelude to a bigger military effort aimed at regime change. How likely is it the Trump administration will take such a step? And what could it mean for the region? So for our first topic, we're talking about something a little closer to home than a lot of our other foreign policy related topics, and that is the sudden decision by the Trump administration. It seems to dramatically expand its domestic deployments. We know we had the initial deployment to California in response to substantial protests. I think there's a big legal question that's currently being litigated through federal court in California as to whether it really constitutes a rebellion or adequate obstruction to the enforcement of federal law to warrant the legal authorities the Trump administration relied on to bring those troops in. But substantial protests in Los Angeles, that military operation took place for a good chunk of the summer. It's now mostly wound down, except for a few hundred California National Guardsmen that remain federalized on active duty, although many of them about to be reassigned to one of the other places that the Trump administration is about to send a domestic deployment. We then saw President Trump deploy troops to Washington D.C. but Washington, D.C. is a weird case. As we talked about in the podcast before, troops there are doing very different things, but in many ways things that are less strange in the context of D.C. and that hinge on totally different legal authorities than you would apply anywhere else in the country because of Washington DC's unique status and unique relationship to the federal government and I should say the its National Guard units unique relationship to the president. But now we're seeing the California model brought to two very different, very new contexts, at least maybe with more to come. One is the city of Portland, where we got word last week the president was planning to send federal troops. And one is the city of Chicago, where over the weekend we got word that they were sending, planning to send a couple hundred federal troops. Both deployments are substantially smaller than the initial deployment to California. That was several thousand soldiers. This is two to 300. I think in the case of the two cities, at least as an initial effort, they're also not including active military. This is just National Guard units, although notably it's not just the federalized National Guard units from those states. There's also Texas National Guard units involved in the aforementioned California National Guard personnel may yet be deployed to one of those locales as well. And this might be the tip of the iceberg. We have heard President Trump say as recently as yesterday that New York and other cities might be on the docket for further deployments, Baltimore being another one that comes up frequently in his rhetoric. Notably, these are all, of course, democratically run cities in democratically run states. We've also seen a voluntary, of a sort, at least according to state authorities, military deployment to the city of Memphis in Tennessee that's been welcomed by the Republican statewide government, but has been more coolly received, to say the least, by the mostly democratically led city government in Memphis. Lauren, I want to talk to you first about this. I know you've been following these developments closely and worked on them in government. Talk to us about how extraordinary a step this is. And in my your mind, what makes this different perhaps from the California deployments or to other context where we've seen the presidents in the past use military forces to promote stability and address civil unrest in different contexts within the United States.
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C
Yeah, I think there's a couple different things here that that makes it different. One is you've seen in the Portland situation is the facts on the ground, right? So usually when the military is deployed for civil unrest, you have significant civil unrest, you have riots, right. You have massive violent protests. And the facts on the ground in Portland just don't show that. And so what you're seeing is these deployments in Portland and potentially in Chicago based on facts that are put out that are completely unclear. One of the things you also see in the Illinois case, in the complaint that the state and the city of Chicago file is they do a lot of talking about what the president and his administration is saying that is different than the narrow pieces that go into the deployment order. So you also see a lot of rhetoric around war torn violence, domestic terrorism, crime across the entire city and almost an argument that that's the real mission. Right. And so there is actually confusion on what we are doing with these troops. Is it really just to do federal protection of in Portland, one single ICE facility or is it this wider mission against Americans and antifa and all of that? And the Illinois case like makes this argument that like you can't tell. And it has social media posts, it has interviews saying, you know, it's really unclear what are we using the military for domestically. And I think that makes it different. I mean what you see in the past, especially with the Insurrection act, is there's a requirement to make a proclamation. Right. And the presidents have been very clear. I am deploying the military because of this specific incident or series of incidents. I expect them to do XYZ in this time period. And we don't have that. There's just, just this lack of transparency about what's going on now. And I think that makes it, makes it different and makes it scary in a way that we're not used to.
- [10:47]
D
Yeah. I'd also throw into the mix, I mean just to double down on what you said about the extremely nakedly partisan nature. At least there seems to be quite a strong correlation to where these troops are headed and the party affiliation of the leaders who govern them. But also the also on the streets are often ICE agents who are masked, non identified who are also just another sort of presence on the streets in these places that are in many cases adding chaos and fear to the mix. So you throw in armed troops on top of that already precarious situation and it just feels like a tinderbox.
- [11:31]
B
I want to kind of double down on Tower's tinderbox point. Both Chicago and Portland have gotten a lot of play in right wing media. And these are not just kind of random cities, these are ones that are highlighted in different ways. Chicago is a den of crime, et cetera, et cetera. While Portland has been highlighted because of the very strong and quite real aggressive left wing protests that have at times turned violent. And so this is portrayed in different ways of kind of what's wrong with Joe Biden's America. And as a result this has a lot of resonance in some of Trump's base. And what I worry about, particularly in the Portland context, is it just takes a few individuals to, whether it's, you know, actually using weapons or throwing stuff to kind of Create a broader melee that enables greater uses of force. That's an excuse for a crackdown. And each time there's a deployment, especially in a combustible area, that risk increases.
- [12:36]
C
Yeah. On the Tinderbox comment, it's interesting to me that you could almost see this as an initiative to change the facts on the ground to make them more favorable to invoking the military. Right. By having ICE or other federal agents that are covering themselves up, not adequately, saying who they are, violently arresting people, stopping people going through entire apartment complexes, seizing Americans, doing things so that you have more protests, that you have more activity on the ground. And then you can make an argument that the military is needed in order to control this. Right. But it's all incited from the beginning. I would also just say something that makes this different is the amount of disinformation we're seeing. I spent a bit yesterday trying to find a live feed of the single ICE facility in Portland and I found a lot of news sources that said they had a live feed that were not a live feed. They were either of Chicago or they were of Portland in 2020. And this was rousing people up, saying, look at all of this. You know, people are throwing things or look at that anger. And none of it was accurate. And you're seeing a lot of that where people don't actually know what the facts on the ground are just because of the amount of disinformation that we, you know, we didn't used to have when we were using the military, you know, during the civil rights era, that we didn't have that same problem that we have today.
- [14:02]
A
Yeah, it's like a really unique and kind of challenging, maybe I don't think it's that challenging exercise for federal judges dealing with these situations. Right. Because you have a president, President Trump, who's expressly invoking a set of facts that ties into this heavy degree of disinformation that's occurring online, in particular in certain communities, and frankly ties into a rhetorical strain that has persisted, particularly about Port Portland since 2020. Like we all remember in 2020, Portland was the site of really substantial civil unrest. I think that is a fair way to describe it. Right. We had several city blocks where the police strategy was essentially, look, we're just not, we're going to let people kind of self govern these couple of blocks because there were large, dense community of protesters that had taken up long term residence there. And the city's approach was kind of like, look, we're going to try and cabin that to Certain areas, we're not going to actively contest it. And that was a real stalking horse for President Trump at the time. And we know at the time he debated wanting to invoke the Insurrection act, wanting to otherwise use a military solution to address that problem. He only got so far as doing that in Washington, D.C. and in a relatively constrained role as somebody who lives there through it. In D.C. we had a saw confrontation in Lafayette Square, a couple of other incidents. But most of the military presence in Washington, D.C. was centraled on federal facilities, monuments. The other sort of thing that in D.C. is prevalent in everywhere. Right. They weren't out there like actively arresting people, busting heads in a way that President Trump's rhetoric at the time and today kind of suggests he wants to do so. There is this kind of little bit of a switcheroo in place. And you can only get there by feeding into this misinformation system, by exaggerating these sorts of cases. But that can only get you so far. Right. I think it's really unique to me that jumps out about this case in Portland. And to some extent, I think we may see something similar in Chicago, where we have seen some significant incidents of violence, but actually the most notable one that's gotten the most press attention is actually a protester who was shot by federal agents while engaging in a potentially provocative but nonetheless not violent protest activity. But the thing that's really remarkable is that these judges now have to go and do a kind of fact finding mission. And you really heard Judge Immergut, who's the district court judge in the district court in Oregon dealing with the Portland case, really kind of go down and look at this and say, I don't know what the predicate facts here are, you're even alleging. Because while the president's willing to rely upon these other rhetoric, so far the Justice Department hasn't been right. Like, they are actually pointing to really, really discreet factual cases, I think, because they know in an adversarial system, an adversarial process before the federal court, the city is going to be able to bring real facts to bear that the courts are going to look at more credibly now, like what exactly that means in the long run, if the public, and particularly the parts of the public the Trump administration listens to most closely believes one thing and the court concludes another, obviously there's potential tension there. And it does get at this recurring issue, this recurring strategy the Trump administration leans into, which is that in areas where it know, it's generally gets deference because they control the executive branch. They're really running it to the hilt. Right. Like they're leaning on the idea. They know the courts are going to be inclined to give them a lot of deference on these sorts of questions. That worked in California. Remember, that's why the 9th Circuit stayed the preliminary injunction district court issued, because it said, well, the president gets a lot of deference on this. We can still review it, but it gets a lot of deference. As long as he makes a colorable case in good faith, that's enough for our purposes. So the panel concluded, I think Judge Immergut, who's subject to the ninth Circuit review as well, looks at that standard, says that standard, that very low bar is not met here. And she I should know, Trump appointee, you know, Republican judge. So it does strike me as like that's a real problem with this strategy the Trump administration is leaning into, I think. But am I wrong by being too rosy eyed about where the actual outcome of this is for the courts? Tyler, what do you think about that?
- [18:07]
D
Yeah, I would just say I just wanted to pick up on this split screen that we often see between what the administration is saying publicly, particularly President Trump, and what the Justice Department has to say in the courts when their feet are actually held to the fire and they have to make credible and somewhat serious arguments. And I think it's especially disturbing in this case because on one side of it, the public facing side, the military, seems to be to the Trump administration or the president, at least based on his rhetoric as just another law enforcement agency which he can deploy at will. And this sort of fundamental distinction in law between crime and war is just completely collapsed or was never there in his mind. And it's, I think, especially disturbing because what you said of how President Trump has this ability to will things into reality through rhetoric and sort of push the public opinion on certain points. And I just really fear that the court's ability to keep striking these things down will erode over time if people see the courts as illegitimate. And it just seems especially dangerous in this case.
- [19:17]
A
So, Dan, I want to turn to you on another part of this issue that's really come to the fore recently, particularly in the Portland context, because a big rhetorical angle the president has hit on in that context is the idea of antifa, the anti fascist group, whatever it may be, that the President Trump declared a domestic terrorist organization. That is not a designation that has any clear legal weight, at least as any sort of statutory or established regulatory manner, although maybe there's some significance assigned to it internally within the executive branch now. But regardless, a group that he's designated as a domestic terrorist organization referred to it in that capacity quite frequently. And it has said essentially, oh, that's part of the reason why we're going into Portland. And it's worth noting, antifa, whatever that movement may be, there's reasons to see particularly what happened in 2020 as having intersection. You had some of the protesters and public unrest expressly describing themselves as antifa. In that case here, in this case, less intersection. Although no doubt there are some because antifa is a large amorphous kind of ideological movement whose most unifying characteristic is opposition to the policies of this administration. So I kind of want to turn to you because I know you are above all else a terrorism expert and a counterterrorism expert, I should say. But you've done a lot of work over the last few years on domestic terrorism and the challenges that that presents. Talk to us about how this dynamic fits in militarized responses. I'm a product of the 1990s and I think of Waco and Ruby Ridge, where technically not military, but heavily armed, military looking, law enforcement responses to extremist communities, extremist actions were highly, highly criticized, particularly by people on the right. Yet here we're seeing a real inversion of that. In my mind, a little bit of a double standard or an evolution of views in the kind of intervening decades. Where does this cover of response fit into the broader history of extremism and responses to them in the United States, real or not?
- [21:13]
B
So there's a lot to unpack here. Let me start by just talking about some terrorism trends here. There's some good news and bad news. What we've seen in the post 911 era, of course there was initial focus on jihadist terrorism. And then when President Obama is elected, we see a tremendous spike in right wing terrorism. This takes two main forms. One is white supremacist and another is what was called anti government extremism. A lot of people that rejected the authority of the federal government saw Obama as illegitimate in the fundamental sense. And right wing terrorism remained the dominant threat just in terms of body counts in the United States during the Obama period, during the first Trump period, and then under Biden in the beginning of 2025. And the social scientist in me kind of hates what I'm about to say because we're in a period, a short data window and the trend should be seen in the long term. But in this short window we've seen an increase in left wing Terrorism, now I want to stress it's from low levels, but an increase and a plummeting of right wing terrorism. And this is a tremendous shift. It's the first time in the kind of data that my CSIS colleagues and I have been collecting for the last 30 years that we've seen more left wing attacks than right wing attacks. And so with this in mind, let me talk about the good and bad news. Right. So the bad news, of course, is the increase in left wing attacks and the killing of Charlie Kirk is from what we know about the shooter seems to fit this pattern where this is a community where the extreme fringes are more agitated. And we saw anti immigrant violence being kind of a right wing hot button for many years now. Anti ice violence is a hot button issue. Identity issues were a right wing hot button. Now we're seeing it on the political left. So we're seeing that reversal. And one thing I'm often asked by reporters is, isn't this just inevitable?
- [23:26]
A
Right.
- [23:26]
B
So Democrat gets in and it's right wing. Republicans get in. It's left wing. And the answer is a pretty strong no. We didn't see a left wing surge under George W. Bush and Trump won. We didn't really see. We saw a left wing increase, but it wasn't as massive. And then when President Biden, we also see a lot of right wing terrorism under Trump 1, but I think this is a strange kind of mirror of how much more radical in many ways Trump 2 is than Trump won and how part of the reason for the right wing decline seems to be a lot of admiration for what is going on in the Trump administration. Right. The idea that there are, as Lauren was saying, that there are guys with masks who are patrolling areas and grabbing people off the streets who they think are suspected immigrants and demanding to see papers. That's awesome from their point of view. And a lot of the rhetoric is something that they favor. So there's a lot of comfort there. But what this implies is that the right wing stuff could come back easily. That if you see a change in administration, you could see a surge. If there's another, and I'll use quotes here, stone election, you could see a surge. But also notable is the difference in targeting. We've seen an increase in targeting on both sides of higher level people. Now, it's important to note that as horrible as this is, it's also a decline in the mass targeting. So when we saw the attack in 2018 on the Pittsburgh synagogue, God goes into a synagogue and he tries to mow people down, attacks on a black church, attack on a Walmart in heavily Latino area. So these are people who are trying to inflict mass casualties. And when we talk about assassination attempt against at the time then candidate Trump killing Charlie Kirk, attacks on Governor Shapiro, these are much more discreet attacks. So you're seeing fewer people die, but much higher profile. And this is something to kind of think about, because when we think about the first assassination attempt against President Trump, thank goodness the assassin failed to kill a major US Political figure, but he did shoot someone behind the president and kill them. Right. So you did see a death toll. We just tend to focus on the highest profile. To bring this back to Antifa and Portland, there's always an attempt to kind of create some organizational order that allows you to get a grasp on these tricky groups. And the left wing, like the right wing, has actually not been groups. It's been individuals who are radicalized, often as part of kind of broader networks who are tied together on social media. And with Antifa in particular, it's become a rhetorical label. But as you notice, it's not really a group, it's just an ideology. And the way I often think about groups is, is there some formal membership?
- [26:25]
A
Right.
- [26:25]
B
And with Antifa, the answer is no. And that means, you know, the four of us on this podcast could declare ourselves lawfare Antifa, and we can believe whatever we want.
- [26:36]
D
Right.
- [26:37]
B
We could believe in the, you know, primacy of Ben Wittes as the Great Leader and no. 1 Antifa.
- [26:42]
A
I prefer Al Qaeda in the Locker Peninsula personally.
- [26:46]
D
Someone's going to clip and use it against us.
- [26:50]
A
Fair enough.
- [26:51]
B
I would say conceptually, this doesn't work too well legally. As you noted, we don't have domestic terrorist organizations in a kind of strict legal sense. But it does work politically. And it's a way of saying we're serious about this because we're treating it as a terrorism problem as opposed to a crime problem or a political disorder problem. And to me, we saw that with cartels and other things where the terrorism label means you're getting serious, the calling out the military means you're getting serious. And these are kind of high profile efforts that resonate, and they resonate in good ways for Trump's base, they resonate in bad ways for people who oppose them. But I would say the political symbolism is quite real, even if some of the practical differences don't really matter much.
- [27:39]
D
I mean, I think what this empirical trend that Dan is describing is obviously, I think obviously not what Stephen Miller and others in the Administration are talking about when they say a growth in left wing violence, it's taking this maybe what was a kernel of truth and inflating it beyond recognition. So I'll just contrast everything Dan just said with a recent post on Twitter X from Stephen Miller where he said there is a large and growing movement of left wing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded and it is shielded by far left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism terror networks. I mean, what he's describing is not at all what Dan just described in terms of what the data bear out.
- [28:26]
C
Yeah, on that point. So one of the things that came up in Judge Immergut's TRO decision, her first one was you can't talk about facts that occur in different areas and use them to justify where you're going. You can't use old information. Right. So you can't use the president's June 7 memorandum. But what we saw coming out of that was a new memorandum from the President yesterday specific to Illinois in which he tries to fix those problems. Right. So one of the things he talks about is that none of this is in isolation. These different groups in different areas, they're working together, they have the same approach. And he does make the argument that we were just talking about here that there is some kind of coordination. Antifa is a thing. He doesn't use antifa, but he talks about the groups operating together. Right. And so I think that you're starting to see that social media news argument now starting to leak into the legal arguments. And we'll see what comes up in the different hearings that are on for this week in the different cases. But it does look like they're trying to argue that, okay, well, just because nothing has happened in this specific city, this increased violence around or this, you know, these violent activities and these potential domestic terrorists are all working together. And so we can use things that happen in one area to justify action in another area.
- [29:55]
A
And one thing that's really interesting and a little weird about today, or I guess yesterday's, I only saw today, Illinois specific order is something he didn't have in the California order, where he says, specifically I am mobilizing these troops, federalizing them under 10 USC 124 06. That's the statute they're using for all of this, which is not the Insurrection act, but does something kind of at least lets you mobilize National Guard troops in similar, like exigent circumstances of rebellion, unable to enforce federal law but he says until the governor of Illinois consents to a federally funded mobilization under title 32, that's the separate authority that the president has used to deploy outside National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. because it's although it would raise sovereignty issues in other states, but notably, that's the authority they're using in Memphis as well for the voluntary Tennessee National Guard mission in Memphis. I think actually some foreign National Guard outside National Guard on Tennessee may be there as well, where Title 32 means it's federally funded, but all the troops stay under state authority. And there's an argument there that for that reason they're not subject to the Posse Comitatus act limitations that restrict the use of military in law enforcement situations. So you could read this and say, you know, oh, I'm going to do this until you allow me to fund, pay for but also presumably exercise some control over a voluntary mission, which, by the way, won't be subject to basic Comitatus act limitations and therefore will be, you know, able to do law enforcement activities that my troops can't under this. Although notably the administration is arguing also 12406 they also have said is an exception to the pas de comata sacred. They've lost on that so far before the courts. And I think it's a, it's a weak argument and one they don't spend a lot of time on in the briefing. So I suspect they're not really wedded to it, but they do put that forward.
- [31:37]
C
Yeah. So they've actually, in both Illinois and Oregon, started by writing to the adjutant generals of the states and saying, I think in Oregon they had 12 hours. In Illinois they had two hours saying mobilize under title 32 or we will federalize under title 10. And so in both cases, they made that threat first and then when the governors responded no, then they went with title 10. You know, now it's it's unusual to then mobilize and say until you accept Title 2 authority. So that's like the next step in it. But it's making an argument that the governor is unwilling to deal with the problem.
- [32:16]
D
Right.
- [32:16]
A
And which feeds into kind of the underlying necessity logic of statutes like 12406, which is supposed to be addressing certain exigencies. We're almost out of time on the topic. Before we do, though, I want to come to one thing, hopefully to you, Lauren, on one thing, you've pointed out some disturbing lines you could connect one could connect in regards to some of the rhetoric about domestic terrorism and antifa and the way that the Defense Department and the executive branch have previously considered counterterrorism activities domestically, particularly domestically in the United States. Talk to us a little bit about that.
- [32:52]
C
Yeah, so something that we saw after 2001 was a number of opinions coming out of DOJ, Office of Legal Counsel that were later found to be somewhat extreme. Some of them were withdrawn. But there is one specific one that was written in September of 2001 by John Yoo that talked about using the military domestically to deal with terrorism, to do counterterrorism type missions. And it talks about everything from, you know, physically attacking apartment buildings because there might be a terrorist in them, to, you know, using them on the streets for, you know, control, all those different things. But this opinion, which I will say was never fully withdrawn. There was just an opinion that came out seven years later that said you should advise caution. Some of the conclusions are wrong or overly general. But it said a number of things. The first thing that I would say, which I think is accurate, is that under the military purpose doctrine, if you're doing a military mission, Posse Comitatus doesn't apply, which is an accurate statement, but just something to be aware of. But in these situations, the argument was basically that the gloves come off. This opinion from 2001 says the Fourth Amendment won't apply to these missions. It also makes arguments about how easily you could override the First Amendment in these situations. And I look to this to just think about in times of extreme emergency, how we have seen there be legal interpretations that are just not faithful, especially to constitutional protections. As I see us continuing to talk about domestic terrorism, you know, there being an invasion. So even like, you know, everything that's happening at the border, but the domestic terrorism, the invasion, there's an argument to be made that you could see at least some of the. The previous, you know, pathways being something that they could take off the shelf and say, okay, well, we've already seen this kind of legal reasoning. We've already seen it be used. This is something we could use again. And a lot of that has to do with constitutional protections. Right. And so I think it's just something we have to keep our eyes open. As you continue to tell this terrorism narrative, what does that mean for how you might use your military? And what does that mean for the rights of American citizens?
- [35:23]
A
Yeah, it's a fair query, a fair question. You know, the one thing I'll note on this, which I thought was interesting, is I saw quotes from John Yu himself actually commenting on this and actually casting throwing a lot of Cold water on the idea that his logic from that 2001 memo should extend to the context of domestic military action against domestic targets. He really emphasized in that point that his logic in that memo and John Yoo to this day, not a shy guy about presidential authority, but he emphasized correctly, I think, that his logic in the memo was premise on an inherent constitutional authority that the president is understood to have as part of the executive power to kind of basically repel invasions and that the foreign terrorism was equivalent of an invasion. It's different if it's a domestic threat, domestic targets, particularly people with constitutional rights and other things at play. You know, John Yoo is sometimes flip flopped on these things. We'll see if he maintains that view. And this was only from a media snippet and media doesn't always capture the full nuance of someone's views on these things, but something worth flagging. I think that sort of legal view will be much more of an uphill climb than it may seem on first blush. But so would be a lot of things that Trump administration is relying on at this point, or if you'd asked me that, that's my view of them or would have been before they did. And it hasn't stopped them thus far. So I don't think we can rule it out as a possibility. That said, let us go on to our second topic because while the Trump administration has been doing some fairly questionable things and not doing very well, at least in the court so far over the last week in justifying them and succeeding at them, he's had kind of an exceptional week from a diplomacy perspective. Over the last week or two, particularly in relation to the Gaza Strip. Over the last week, we saw the Trump Administration unveil a 21 point peace plan authored substantially by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in consultation with a lot of regional stakeholders. So it was not just a Trump administration package, but appears to be as far as we can tell, although folks should feel free to correct me if you think I have this wrong. A kind of plan that Tony Blair and others had pulled together with folks in the region had a lot of buy in, particularly from the Gulf states, from a few other key actors, really. When Tony Blair brought it to the White House, the White House looked at it and said, yeah, I think this is kind of good enough and we can get there and it checks a lot of the boxes. And the administration, particularly President Trump, we know, has felt a lot of growing frustration with the Gaza conflict, a conflict he promised to end relatively shortly after enter office, which of course has not happened. If any way, it's gotten much worse and then appears to have taken this deal, taken it to the Israelis. They were allowed to negotiate little elements of it. I will say I am shocked by how little of it changed. Before they actually get Bibi Netanyahu on board, parts of it are going to require approval by his cabinet. That may be another obstacle. Frankly, it could be something that could collapse the government because some of the conditions might be a little hard for some people in Bibi's coalition to accept. But he bought into it. And it's particularly notable in my view, because that agreement, among other things, puts the Palestinian Authority eventually in charge of Gaza after some reforms and more on top of that kind of reinvigorates the two state solution by saying the PA is going to be an ongoing concern, is going to take control of Gaza. Presumably that means it's going to stick around and still have control of west bank. And it closes by saying we're going to restart the peace process. Then you saw the Trump administration also give some security assurances, executive order to Qatar. That was the one provision that fell out of the agreement before BB signed onto it, which was saying we're not going to do things like the targeted killing of Hamas leadership that Israel pursued maybe a month and a half ago now in Qatar. And now it looks like Trump is on the verge of getting Hamas on board. Hamas has said they're going to negotiate a couple of things, particularly sounds like the timetable and scope and scale of Israeli withdrawal. But they're open to the fundamental proposition, which is a quick exchange of the hostages. And a number of Gazan residents are being detained by Israel for a variety of other purposes, who, you know, may or may not be considered hostages, depending your perspective. And the exchange of remains on both sides. Both sides have been holding the substantial number of remains of deceased people. Those are gonna be exchanged. That's all gonna happen in the very early phases of this broader phased peace plan. It's kind of extraordinary in my mind. I did a long conversation with Joel Braunold of the S. David Abraham center for Middle East Peace last week about it. And I have to say I think we both were kind of shocked by the terms of the agreement in that it reflects a line that we have not seen the Trump administration walk down, but that a lot of, frankly, it's something not that different that I think the Biden administration would have been thrilled if they've gotten something like this before. To put it kind of bluntly, Dan, talk to me about your sense of this, as somebody who follows this closely, am I way too optimistic about this or way too generous to the administration? What's accomplished in the terms of this agreement and particularly what do you think it means in terms of the trajectory about where things could go from here in terms of follow through and the broader multi year really plan it lays out for how they're going to not just bring peace to Gaza, but rehabilitate it.
- [40:17]
B
So I want to stress, Scott, you mentioned the podcast you and Joe Brownell did. That was fantastic and my thinking is informed by that. So listeners who want a deeper dive, I strongly urge you to go there.
- [40:30]
C
There.
- [40:31]
B
I was initially cynical about the Trump plan and I said, you know, there are some kind of dreamy aspects that it leaves some of the tough issues in the future. There are a lot of demands for immediate action, but I've reconsidered. And you never lose money when you bet against Israeli Palestinian peace or progress in general. But that said, I think the odds have changed and I'm certainly more optimistic than I've been in quite some time. And there are a few things in favor. One is the alignment of international and domestic factors on both sides. So the Arab states, Turkey, Muslim world in general is really lining up to say to Hamas, hey, this is the deal, move forward with this. And that is balanced on the Israeli side by the United States pushing Netanyahu pretty hard and really taking advantage of, in my view, the very foolish Israeli strike on Qatar as a way of saying, look, you embarrassed us, you made us look bad and you owe us effectively. And at the same time, the domestic politics in both sides, needless to say, the people of Gaza are shattered by two years now of war with starvation and disease rampant and utter destruction. So it's not surprising there's strong pressure among Palestinians for Hamas to cut a deal. The bigger shift though is on the Israeli side where we have seen a shift towards popular support for a deal that releases the hostages, coupled with exhaustion, where there's a kind of standard line of a third of Israelis fight, a third of Israelis pay taxes and a third of Israelis work. It's just the same third. And that relatively limited group of people is really feeling the price of repeated reserve call ups. Now, to be clear, it's not that people aren't reporting for duty, right, you do have some reductions, but it's still quite impressive. But it's a tremendous drain and it's exacerbating social division. So I think you have that mix of pressures on both sides. A lot depends on whether the president will stay on this, and he seems to want the Nobel Prize, and it's made very clear if he brings peace, he deserves it. He thinks he deserves it already, but he clearly wants this, so it's possible. But he's also someone whose attention span regularly shifts. His policy positions regularly shift. And for this one in particular, a lot of the devil is going to be in the details where questions on the nature of disarmament, which of any weapons Hamas might be able to keep. When we say Israeli withdrawals, where do they withdraw to and at what pace? In particular, who gets to be the arbiter of all this? Is it Israel deciding Hamas has done enough? Is it the Europeans saying that Israel has or has not done enough? Does it all fall back on the United States? So there are huge questions and there are huge uncertainties and there are a lot of reasons to be cynical. But that said, I think the moment right now is more propitious, and I think the Trump plan is a very good step forward. Don't raise your voice to prove you're right.
- [43:56]
A
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- [44:56]
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- [46:46]
D
I feel like we should also note that we're recording this on October 7th at 4:19pm Eastern because everything is so.
- [46:53]
A
Fast changing 5 everything could be fast exactly.
- [46:56]
D
I'm furiously refreshing Barack Ravid's Twitter to see if there's any new movement in the negotiations. I saw about an hour ago that there was cautious optimism among some of the US officials, which is a good sign. I will say I'm not maybe not as optimistic, and I think there's a few reasons. I mean, I also want to point out that Al Jazeera is reporting that Israeli attacks have killed 104 people in Gaza since Friday, which is when Trump called on Israel to stop the bombing. Dan, I agree with your assessment of the Israeli domestic political situation, but I also think that the formidable hard right sees this as their opportunity, especially the religious right. This is their moment to annex, I think everything from Ghass and the west bank, and they don't want to miss their opportunity. So I just see this being completely unpalatable to strong figures in Netanyahu's right flank. Similarly, I think in the 20 point plan it was Calling back to reforms that were in 2020 plan as well. And I think a lot of those in terms of the peace board that is supposedly going to govern Gaza, I can see also being completely unpalatable to Hamas who want Palestinians self governance. And then finally Scott, I'd be really curious your thoughts on this. This is really more of a question of how this all gels with growing recognition of the Palestinian state among now huge powerful countries, the US being a huge exception, how that plays a factor in making parts of this plan not make so much sense or puts up a challenge. So I have a lot of reservations. I should also say though, the end of the war and the return of hostages on both sides would be an unequivocally good thing and I hope I'm wrong. I'm just a bit cautious.
- [48:55]
B
A big question to me is what is success here? The magical success would be a two state solution that ends the conflict in some long term way or short term way. But is success an uneasy ceasefire where more aid gets through and most of the hostages are released? To say the obvious, the lower the bar the more likely in my view. I want to make sure that we're thinking about both high end and low end scenarios.
- [49:22]
A
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. The thing I will throw out there though is that I actually think the fact of this deal is itself actually revolutionary and a dramatic, dramatic change in particularly US and frankly like TrumpRepublican policy towards the Israeli Palestinian conflict. That's really pretty dramatic. We have to bear in mind that the two state solution has been on death's door for a while now for people haven't been following this. Israelis have pretty much Openly rejected since October 7th Bibi and folks around him have more or less rejected it or tried to narrow it and narrow it and narrow it further and further really for the last 20 or 30 years to kind of bring it about its death. He's said that and been quoted saying that's my intention pretty openly over the last few years. But it's been his intention longer than that. That's not a secret that he's trying to hide by any stretch of the imagination. It has very little support among Palestinians who mostly think it's a sham at this point. And the region has some buy in, particularly among kind of elites in the region. Its popularity even among Arab populations dropped down because nobody takes it seriously, much like the Palestinians themselves. They say yeah this would be great if we had it, but we haven't seen any meaningful progress in 20 years and there's no reason to think it's actually doing anything. All it is really doing instead is justifying a status quo in which Palestinians are allowed to have a second tier bus basket of rights. That's something that's not supposed to be allowed under international human rights law standard, most moral standards most countries ascribe to in the world. But it is a reality that's happening in Israel and the occupied territories now. And the reason why that's acceptable to the United States, to Europe, to other countries, is because it's seen as a temporary state headed towards an outcome where it's no longer the case. And when the two state solution dies, that becomes a real problem in the United States. The Democratic Party has been very vocal about this to the point that's been its Democratic Party platform for the last three presidential elections, really driving home that exact point. You have to recommit to the two state solution. We have to have a two state solution. Because if we don't have a two state solution and we're not on a path that's realistically leading, that the status quo today is unacceptable and that we're going to have to reach some sort of different outcome. The implication being, I would argue, means Palestinians need a broader basket of rights within Israel and a more equal basket of rights. And that's a more politically difficult thing for I think a lot of Israelis, and particularly those around BB Netanyahu to swallow than the two state solution. The Republican Party has been very quiet about this. They've stripped discussions of this into almost entirely out of the party platform to the point that really the only discussion the last election of this issue was about anti Israeli, anti Jewish, anti Semitic, pro Palestinian protests and rhetoric in the United States, criticizing it and saying that more should be done to crack down on it, particularly in the context of universities, almost no meaningful discussion. What meaningful discussion? You've seen those platforms of a lot of other public rhetoric has been backing the Israelis and saying we should back them even stronger, even harder, particularly in the context of Gaza. In that context, embracing a deal and putting credibility behind a deal that aligns with other regional actors behind reinvigorating the two state solution and expressly says we're going to accept the Palestinian Authority. And by the way, has Israel expressly disavow any intent to annex or occupy Gaza moving forward in any sort of permanent long term fashion? That is extraordinary, and it's extraordinary political move that Trump's able to force this on his own political party. Because I don't think there's Actually, a lot of inherent appetite about it. The first Trump administration would never have done anything like this. So in that context, I actually think it's kind of extraordinary on its face, because if the Trump administration sticks to it, the party's gonna have to go along with him to a substantial degree. And it means that all of a sudden you've got what looks like a stronger degree of bipartisan consensus around an approach. And it's just. It's kind of extraordinary. It's a sign of something that Joel has been saying since beginning the Trump administration, this Trump administration in particular. He says the Trump administration is a high risk, high reward proposition for peace process people, because on the one hand, he doesn't seem naturally inclined to be very sympathetic with Palestinians or with the broader idea that we need to strike a peace and it needs to have more equal terms than the status quo that Israel currently kind of dominates. It's able to dictate big swaths of. But on the flip side, he says at the same time, Trump clearly wants to make progress here. He's tied his personal reputation into it, and he's got more control over his party and frankly, has so few sacred cows in this space that he's going to be willing to push things in the direction he needs to go to get the outcome he wants. And if that outcome is peace, that's better for people in the long run.
- [53:55]
D
Scott, I was just realizing we were playing out a conversation, maybe unwittingly, that reportedly took place between Trump and Netanyahu, in which Trump, Bibi told Trump that this is nothing to celebrate, this means nothing. And Trump reportedly said, you're always so effing negative. I think you were playing the role of Trump and I was playing the role of Netanyahu.
- [54:12]
A
I mean, that's exactly right. And it was like, really, the reporting of that, I think mostly from Barack Ravid of Access, who does great reporting on this. Whoever his source was, was describing as Trump being genuinely frustrated with Bibi, that he was pushing back even on this good deal. We have now seen Bibi and people in his coalition try and spin this as a big win for the Israelis. Look at the 21 point agreement, which the Israelis had no input into, and the 20 point agreement. It is not a win for the Israelis. It is really like barely changed at all. Trump gave him very little wiggle room. And by the way, it completely repudiates stuff Bibi was saying as recently as three weeks ago, very publicly about how there will never be a pa, there will never be a Palestinian state it's really, really quite extraordinary. The follow through, like Dan said, is the hard thing, like how much of the follow through will be there. But just in case, signing on this agreement, Trump has actually really changed the alignment around a lot of the factors around this issue set, particularly in the United States. But that has ramifications for the region, particularly in Israel, because BBS hung so much on his ability to always have the United States in his back pocket. And when he loses that, as he kind of floated a few weeks ago when Marco Rubio was visiting Israel, he said maybe Israel will have to stand alone, maybe not even with the United States. I think that makes a lot of Israelis really nervous. And I think the political appetite for that is actually a little limited. So if they begin to understand that actually there's a more unified, cohesive position that's agreed upon in a bipartisan basis in the United States, then they have to start respond to that. They can't just play one party off of the other, which is what Bibi has been doing really, I think, for the last few years. Lauren, you are of course, somebody who also followed this conflict. You lived in Israel for a good chunk of time, as I recall. You know, I'm curious about your kind of assessment of this and where it comes out and particularly, you know, that sustainability standpoint, like the follow through, where are we likely to come from and how much opportunity is there going to be among Israelis or other people who may want to spoil this to do so?
- [56:04]
C
Yeah, I lived in Jerusalem when I clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court. Beautiful city. But just being there for a prolonged period of time, you have a completely different view because you, you feel the heaviness, you feel the threat that the people feel, that like every day could be the last day. Right. And so that just gives you a different perspective. So I've done a lot of work on peace deals and transitional governance structures generally. And like what's good and bad. And so first I'll say, like, the agreement on the end state is huge here. And we can't, you know, if we want to talk about success, that is success in and of itself, that now the two state solution is back on the table. There's no annexation like that in and of itself is a success that we didn't, you know, if you had said this six months ago, no one would have thought was feasible. So I think that agreement on the end state, and then, you know, from the Israeli perspective, the hostages returned in a short period of time as well as remains, is something that is Incredibly important, but the follow through. Right. So there's a couple things when it comes to transitional governance structures that always seem to hold the process up. One is the territorial control handover, which is very vague here. Right. Like those standards and milestones and time frames will happen later and be agreed upon by a whole bunch of different bodies, which, you know, is unclear at this point. But the second is, is the structure and the powers of the transitional government and when and how that transitions to something permanent and longer term. Right. And when you read this, those aren't in there, right? Like these details aren't in there. You know, you have a Board of Peace that does the oversight and handles all the funding until the PA is reformed based on a variety of standards. You know, you have your isf, right, deploying to do, you know, immediate stabilization work. And then you have this transitional government that's an apolitical committee that does the day to day. But like, how that is set up, who is on that, what their powers are, and how that transitions to something permanent is absolutely critical. And where you constantly see these transitional efforts fail. And so to me, like, that is the worry when you, when you read this, yes, you absolutely have the victory on an agreement of an end state and one that is more positive than we thought feasible six months ago. But there is so much work that needs to be done on these details. And when you read it as is, you can see how different parties might read very different obligations and have very different expectations on how this is going to play out. So I'm, you know, I'm worried just, just about the role of the Board of Peace, what exactly, you know, who will be part of the ISF stabilization force and what their role will be, how funding will go to this, you know, transitional government, how those people will be selected, what powers they have, what time frame they'll be in control, all of those things. You can point to other conflicts around the world and, and why their peace deals failed. Right. And so until we have those details, there's just a lot of skepticism of what this might look like in a year or two years from now.
- [59:14]
A
Well, there's a case to be made that maybe that perhaps President Trump may, all the things being equal, had taken a few steps closer that Nobel Peace Prize. On the Middle east peace front, there's another front where perhaps he's taking some steps in the opposite direction that is a little closer to home here in the southern Caribbean and particularly in the vicinity of the country of Venezuela, a country where, according to media reports that have been frankly leaking like a sieve out of the White House for the last four weeks or so, that there is a concerted effort by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, perhaps in coordination with a few other senior administration officials, including the CIA Director Ratcliffe, a senior advisor to the President Stephen Miller in the White House, and a brother. Figures have come around on the view that Nicholas Maduro, the de facto president and head of state of Venezuela, as he has been for many, many years, although he hasn't been recognized by the United States since 2019 in that capacity, has to go and that is time for him to leave office. And that if he will not, the United States may be ready to take military steps to force him to do so. And this aligns not just with the fact that we've seen a number of lethal strikes against Trend Aragua or alleged Trend Aragua ships that are alleged to be involved in smuggling narcotics into the United States in the last few weeks in international waters in the southern Caribbean, but it's also the fact that we've seen a major, major buildup of U.S. military assets throughout the region, many of which have no reasonable correlation with any sort of counter narcotics mission that we can envision, that have been building up for weeks and have not been very quiet about it, honestly, to the extent you can be quiet about these things, it's not a secret. Analysts have been picking up, hey, there's more and more forces coming of building up in the southern Caribbean, US Military forces. It's really, really kind of an extraordinary development, not unprecedented to any extent, of course. The United States has kind of a long and challenging history of regime change and what many would describe as kind of colonialist intervention in throughout the Western Hemisphere. We have the Monroe Doctrine that kind of identifies that region as region of special interest. And the United States has kind of leaned into that legally, policy wise to do some things there that a little more than it's willing to do in other parts of the world, although it's done things like that in other parts of the world too. But it's not something that's been done in a very long time and that's not something that's remembered too fondly. Although you think of cases like Granada and Panama, that might be some of the closer parallels. They're cases that aren't remembered as big military failures, at least by the United States, which may be something that some folks in the administration are leaning in on. Dan, I want to come to you first on this. I think you're probably the one among us has Maybe the sense of perspective about what's fitting in here and how it couldn't be attributed to counter narcotics, counterterrorism to the extent those missions kind of are intermingled now in the southern Caribbean. And something else entirely, talk to us about what you're seeing in terms of what the United States appears to be doing in the region and where that you think that might be leading, how this all fits together into a picture about what the administration is trying to accomplish here.
- [62:15]
B
So in a strange way, this is an echo of the discussion about domestic military deployments and Portland, where we saw the use of the military, we saw the terrorism label, and whether or not these are effective at the specific mission of enforcing order in cities. In both cases, I'm a skeptic, but they're symbolic of getting tough. If you're using the military, you're getting tough. If you're treating drug dealers as terrorists, you're getting tough. We're seeing a shift in rhetoric and with it a shift in instruments that has a political purpose, especially at home. It's a way of really highlighting that this administration is different, and this is a true statement, is very different in its approach than its predecessors. It's also, to be clear, had some positive effects, albeit not quite in the way I think most people think, which is in Mexico, for example, Claudio Sheinbahn, she doesn't want greater US Intervention, so she's more willing to take steps to go after cartels. That the worst case outcome of the US Bombing parts of Mexico in an open way is such an utter disaster from her point of view for Mexico's interests and her political position, that she's moving towards the US Position on a number of issues more than her predecessors did under President Biden. So the course of effects matter as well. There's a big question, though, about the broader effectiveness of a lot of the strategy. So first of all, there are legal and other questions that I'll let others who are better qualified answer. But simply put, you know, will blowing up several boats affect the supply of drugs entering the United States? Or for that matter, if you want to extend this to immigration question, will it change the nature of immigration? And on drugs, at least because the market is so strong, you can affect price to some degrees. But with just a huge demand in the United States for a wide range of illegal drugs, it's very, very hard to stop this. Right? You may get different suppliers, you may have different forms of drugs that come in. You may get new networks. This can affect the cartels themselves. It changes if you will, the risk premium. But the reward is pretty high, especially in countries like Venezuela, where the economy is such a narrow disaster. The alternative in terms of the licit economy is extremely poor. Whether or not this is a prelude to something bigger, that to me is a really open question. I haven't seen that. I mean, there's been talk about Venezuela and the government orchestrating this, which the initial U.S. intelligence Committee assessment was. What was revealed in the press was that this is not the case. But nevertheless, it seems to be believed in the Trump administration and by some number of senior folks. It's plausible this could be used as an excuse for greater intervention. But I think the more limited use of the military going after these boats serves the purpose of a high demonstration effect, yet at the same time not to able embroiling the United States in a deeper intervention, which the president at least rhetorically has said is mistake, that you don't want these forever wars. And getting deep into Mexico or deep into Venezuela would be forever war, and probably a much more disastrous one even than some of the US Experiences in the greater Middle East.
- [65:43]
A
Tyler, let me come to you with kind of the same question. I mean, what is your sense about where this is all leading or might be leading and where it all kind of fits in this picture? I mean, I think Dan's note is where my instinct is too. I think I've said that this before on the podcast. Like it would be such a weird twist for the Trump administration to engage in a military invasion aimed at regime change, having spent, you know, really risen to office and made a pillar of the Mega America first movement. Criticism of US Intervention in Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan can say it's a little more complicated, but particularly Iraq. Right. The neocon idea supposed to be dead, but it's definitely getting this revival right now. In the context of Venezuela, you do have this idea. Again, I think you talk to people who support something like this. They point to Panama and Granada saying these are comparable cases and look how effectively those went. But I think those are really kind of false corollaries. Granada was just very small operation, very small country, very small area with a very narrowly insular regime that was. Was in control, that did not pose any sort of really serious military or other threat. And Panama, while you had like a substantial military coalition around General Noriega Yosu, was a country where the United States already had a substantial military presence, had substantial intelligence, had substantial local partners, was already in coordination with the actual government exile that had been in power and actually had controlled Things recently, unlike the government exile of Venezuela and then more fundamentally, was in itself in a state of complete humanitarian crisis like Venezuela is and has been really for the last 10 years. It's hard to imagine a military campaign in Venezuela that does not end in dramatically escalating the humanitarian crisis and related migrant crisis that has been coming out of Venezuela since the first Trump administration. Like you don't remedy that by starting a war in this place, particularly against Venezuela, which is like a more substantial military power than other countries. The region, not, not dramatically, but it's not Granada. I don't know how it compares to Panama in 1990. I'd have to go back and look. But my suspicion is it's not, it's a little more of a serious target there, not least because of, again, the broader humanitarian consequences that are flowing out of that. So talk to me about what's, what's they're trying to accomplish, or is it just that the idea that, you know, those consequences be damned, this is something that we may yet want do or could do.
- [68:06]
D
I mean, I think nothing about this makes sense to me, starting with the historical revisionism of the Monroe Doctrine, looking back on it fondly and explicitly wanting to bring it back doesn't make sense to me. Campaigning as a sort of almost like restraint type of candidate who will, who spoke critically of the forever wars, who campaigned on getting us out of wars and never starting them, taking every step toward the brink of calling for regime change and laying the groundwork for an attack on Venezuelan soil, but coming up short of that as of the time of recording. If you view Maduro as an illegitimate dictator and your goal is to push him out by other means, I think everything he's doing right now is likely uniting the, the people of Venezuela around Maduro against the United States and the Trump administration. That doesn't make sense to me. And then, and then finally, like you said, again, taking the wrong lessons from history. I mean, the United States has, doesn't have a strong record when it comes to protracted, low intensity conflicts with a population widely against, you know, this, the United States coming in and invading. What does make sense is a lot of what Dan was saying. If this was, this is, if viewed through the lens of political theater and wanting to look tough on crime in this case or the cartels or the drug epidemic, and seeing the military as the only way to convey to your base that you're actually finally taking something seriously, that makes sense to me in every other facet I don't understand.
- [69:49]
A
Lauren, let me come to you, where do you fit in on all this? Like what, what parts of this make sense to you? Does it, if any of it does, like where does this seem like it might be heading in your mind?
- [69:58]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think the parts that make sense to me though are the ones that about it not just being military action, but the more coordinated government action. Right. That the idea that some of what you need to do here is more law enforcement. Right. And we have seen that. We have seen more consolidated intelligence efforts and law enforcement efforts and interdiction efforts and that would all be good things to reduce the drug trade and the drug flow. Dan made a good point though, that what you have to attack is demand, right? Like there's a lot of demand in the United States for these drugs, unfortunately. And I haven't seen that effort. I think when it comes directly to the military effort, when you say it is, you know, the drug organizations are terrorists and that, you know, this is an armed conflict conflict, this helps take the restrictions off, this help take the gloves off. You can do more, right? And so you see why, you know, they, they see value in doing such a thing. I don't know that I think it's likely that there will actually be like a stated mission of regime change. I don't think it'd be the stated goal. I think what you'll see here is, you know, some type of argument underneath international law that Maduro is unwilling and unable to deal with the terrorists, right. The drug cartels. And so activity on Venezuelan soil for a number of targets is legitimate. And I think that may be the next step of what we see. What that might be targeting wise, I think is somewhat unclear. But to get back to the original question though, not that much of drugs come from Venezuela. Some transit through Venezuela, but a lot of them come from other places. So it's just I'm having trouble following the argument that these specific military attacks on these boats and if it grows to Venezuela itself proper, will actually address the problem. And I haven't seen those logical steps laid out in a way that makes me a believer.
- [72:04]
D
Scott, I'm curious what your thoughts on the legal arguments that we've seen so far. I mean to, I think to a lay reader, the idea that justifying an attack on one of these boats as an act of self defense against an imminent threat to the United States is just ridiculous. But I'm curious if there's any positive spin or I don't know what you've read of the legal justification so far. I'm just Curious what you make of them.
- [72:33]
A
I don't think there is no. I wrote a long piece of this a few weeks ago when we first discovered kind of the legal argument and it hasn't really changed. I don't think a little more information has come out. But I think my analysis pretty much is consistent with that which is essentially look under international law there's not even argument about this. These people are civilians. They're not lawful targets under any sort of conventional standard because the hostilities are claimed to be engaged in is is something that is not something the United States has ever treated hostilities before because it is not or nothing that particularly like kinetic uses of military force, which has always been the conventional standard. And that as a matter of domestic law, when you start acting in a manner that's inconsistent with traditional U.S. practice and international law, then you raises big questions about whether you fit in the public authority exception that's usually used to exempt foreign military action from domestic murder statutes, including murder statutes that applied to international waters and overseas. And while I don't think anyone's going to be prosecuted as a result of the this for a variety of reasons, it should raise real questions for executive branch lawyers and the courts if somehow they ever confronted with this. Although that's unlikely to say does the president actually have this authority because he's acting contravention of a statute. So the narcotics traffickers, I don't think there's a very strong case here displacing Maduro international law clearly unlawful like not even, not even questionable in fact obviously just by threatening the use of force as the administration is basically doing, although it's maybe been a little dodgier than that, that itself is a violation of Article 2 for the UN Charter. Right. It's not like there's a clear basis there. There's no armed attack. There's really nothing that you can really clearly do there. It's a matter of domestic law. Look, there's a much stronger case that Maduro is more directly involved in destabilizing the region doing a bunch of offensive things, illegal things, some things involving uses of force in the region or elsewhere. Some things that are look a lot more like terrorism, some which have affected Americans directly that could provide a basis for this military action. And that's why I think actually you're seeing the administration be certain careful about certain things. Right. Like we just saw a report that the Maduro regime shut down attempted terrorist attack on the basically decommissioned but still kind of maintained by a skeleton crew. US Embassy in Caracas I suspect they did that in part because they are trying to play nice with the administration. But I think they did that in part because they knew if there was a terrorist attack on the embassy, that'd be a great hook to pursue military action. So you know, you've got these sorts of pictures like I don't think the president has the constitutional authority to this either for the record of invading and removing leader foreign heads of state. But you know, the president's done it before in the context of Iraq. You don't have WMDs here, but you got other hooks and do I think it's an argument that this particular OLC that's already co signed off on the, you know, strikes on narcotics groups will have trouble reaching. I don't unfortunately, even though I think it's legally wrong. All that said, I'm just not. I still not sure exactly what this administration is trying to get at. I don't think it can. I don't think they actually seriously want to undertake a regime change military operation. I just think it's a bridge too far. Maybe certain people do, maybe Marco Rubio does. But I would be a little surprised by that, even in a serious way. One thing I will say though, this administration believes in the power of bullying. Like they really, really do believe that if you act crazy enough and act like you're really going to do something nuts, people will cave and start giving you what you want. And kind of international affairs, like it's really easy to overstate the advantage of that because there are medium to long term real negative consequences. But in the short term that's kind of right. And you already see Venezuela like playing real friendly again, shutting down this terrorist attack. They are still accepting flights of migrants back from the United States through an agreement that Rick Grinnell negotiated. They were actively negotiating with Grinnell up until a week or two ago when the Trump administration reportedly told them to basically stop top over certain US nationals that are detained in Venezuela that they're trying to resign recaine custody over. And there are a lot of other concessions. So I really think the real question here that we haven't answered and we don't know is not like will the Trump administration go to war with Israel? That is a question we don't know 100% the answer. But I think it's unlikely. I think the more realistic question is what is it driving act? What is its cost? What is the price that it wants to be paid to stop this? And that will be some policy goals, but it can also be other things like think how this administration has approached TikTok or how does it approached a million other cases that were seen as dire national security threats by the first Trump administration and the Biden administration and people in Congress. You know, chip sales to UAE and other countries. Right. What have we seen? Well, we've seen cases where there have been some compromises to address national security concerns. But oh yeah, there's also been big buy ins for the United States in terms of economic costs or sometimes in some cases even for people around the Trump administration. That's a card Venezuela has to play. They control, they control a substantial resource that has big assets in the United States. And I think it's possible that you might see some other resolution come about where they say, look, we're going to constrain some of our drug trafficking, we're going to limit some of the stuff you want, maybe we'll even let you take military strikes and we're not going to really fight you over it and we're not going to make a big deal and maybe we concede certain assets should be transferred. Petty face has to be transferred to US Control or have some other sort of US Buy in. Maybe there's a billion other sort of variables you can address. We'll take more migrant flights back. We will sign off on any sort of narrative you want about why you can, why Venezuelan nationals need to be returned. We'll ask for them to be returned, give the administration a bunch of little things and that may be enough at a certain point to say, oh, we're going to take the win, we got what we want from this and we can always start turning the dogs of war back on Venezuela again later if we want to. That's much more consistent with how this administration has approached similar problems. I kind of think that's the likely outcome. Just the weird part of it is that we don't really have a sense what that ask is yet. And maybe the administration doesn't know or maybe they're still figuring it out internally among themselves.
- [78:14]
D
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. That's the best articulation of a Trump doctrine, if there is one that I've heard in terms of these bilateral approaches. I do wonder though, in terms of the Venezuela case, specifically of the utility of bullying head of state to such an extent that Maduro just seems backed in a corner. I don't, I mean a $50 million bounty and this indictment and this, it just seems like they've given him such little room to maneuver that I don't know what his options are even in terms of concessions. But I do take your point.
- [78:51]
A
I don't disagree, except I always just think of Kim Jong Un during the first Trump administration, where literally we had President Trump threatening North Korea with military action, nuclear strikes, even in rhetorical terms, really, really heightened pressure. And then a politely worded letter really got him on the good side. And then within a year, they were basically best friends. And then Trump saw it as part of his legacy and said, oh, I can really get something out of this. I can make this a better win win solution for everybody. The guy is, in some ways, to his immense credit, actually like a constant bargainer. Like he is constantly saying, hey, I don't have any sacred cows. I will bargain away anything to get a better outcome. If we think we can come to agreement on this, and you know, that has vices that can lead to bad situations, but also has certain advantages. And I think it means in one of these situations, like jumping to the nuclear solution is pretty unlikely, or the metaphorical nuclear solution to this case, unlike in North Korea, as opposed to finding some common ground once they get some sort of channels open to do it in that regard, like the biggest problem might be the fact they're shutting down Grinnell, who was the channel for these negotiations. But, you know, it's not easy to actually keep people from talking these days. And I suspect that there's still some sort of communication happening maybe at a distance at this point.
- [80:04]
D
Then I feel it's my duty to say once again that we are recording on October 7th at. At 4:56pm, if you're listening, during the Caracas summit between Trump and Maduro on October 8th, we apologize, we do our best to stay timely, but again, we.
- [80:17]
A
Will be fucked by five on this. That is the official title of this episode, I think, is Fucked by Five. We'll see. We'll see this happens. We record late in the day. Well, folks, that is all the time we have today for our three topics. But this would not be rational security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Dan had to step away, but let us turn to him to share his recorded object lesson before we move on to our other guests.
- [80:42]
B
As folks know, I'm a fan of games and I have discovered a new game as I spent some time up in Hanover, New Hampshire, where one of the people I'm working very closely next to is a guy named Steven Raganzas, who is a postdoctoral student, but he's also a game designer and he has done a game for GMT games that looks at counterinsurgency and in particular, British counterinsurgency. So it's called the British Way, and it's about a series of kind of mini British colonial wars in Kenya, in Cyprus. And I'm going to play later today the Irgun going against the British in Mandatory Palestine. So I will highlight what I think is an excellent game called the British Way.
- [81:33]
D
Can you play as the MAU MAU?
- [81:35]
B
I should have had? The MAU MAU is number four. We will see if it holds up to the Chutes and Ladders standard. But I'm optimistic.
- [81:43]
A
I say, Dan, you're living my dream. You're living in Hanover, which is a beautiful part of the country. There's history, there's hiking every four, wonderful baked goods at King Arthur. You're playing strategy games in the evenings. It sounds amazing. So very jealous. Very jealous. Well done. Well done. Tyler, let me ask you now, what did you bring for us this week as an object lesson?
- [82:01]
D
Man, it's been a heavy week, few weeks, so I'm gonna keep it light, I'm gonna keep it fun. A nice sitcom recommendation, the English Teacher. I've been making my way through season two. It's, I would say, a smart comfort watch. It tackles a lot of social issues, but in, I think, a really smart way. And, you know, it still follows your class sitcom formula and it's a great watch. The high school students in it are uncharacteristically kind of the sane ones and the teachers are kind of the lunatics in this nice flip. But it's just a really comforting and funny watch that I've been turning to a lot these days.
- [82:47]
A
Wonderful, wonderful recommendation for my object lesson. I am feeling unoriginal, so I'm going to rehash two before, but both are kind of timely and worth rehashing. One, as I've mentioned before a few weeks ago, Katy Pruett, who I think is one of the wildly underappreciated, awesome rock artists of the last five or ten years that I've encountered, does awesome Americana kind of influence like rock. Did a whole EP of Neil Young covers that's truly amazing. Her first album, I think is really Expectations is like really one of the best albums I've heard the last five or ten years. That kind of just snuck up on me. I didn't. Wasn't even looking for it. I found out of nowhere it's great. She is playing a very small, awesome intimate venue, Union Stage here in Washington, D.C. on the 14th. That's Tuesday. Come out if you're in DC. It'll be an awesome show. She deserves a lot of support and hype. I've seen her live before, and it was great. I'm really excited to see her in a small venue as the main act. So check it out. Come out if you're in the D.C. area. If you're not in the D.C. area, I'll advise you in a different direction to an old Alan Rosenstein object lesson. Most of his object lessons are, with due respect to the man, complete garbage. But this was a very good one that came out, and that is for the show. Slow Horses on Apple. It is my favorite spy piece of cinema or TV show I think I've ever seen. If not, it's very high towards the top, and I've seen and watched a lot of them. No Shane Harris, but I do dabble in the genre, and Slow Horses is phenomenal. It's interesting, it's fascinating, it's very funny. It's very dark as really, really interesting action. It is, like, hard to wrap your head around at times. The mysteries are great, and the most important thing is that it ends every episode on the. Perfect. Perfect. What am I looking for? Cliffhanger. Perfect. Perfect. Cliffhanger that.
- [84:22]
D
You gave us a cliffhanger for the word cliffhanger.
- [84:25]
A
Yeah, I lose. Guys, again, it's almost five. This is. We're in bad state at this time of day. It is amazing to the extent that my wife and I made the mistake of trying to watch the first episode when it came out last week, I think, and then forgot that last season, we realized the right strategy is to wait for all of them to come out because you can binge watch them, because it's so frustrating to just see one and then not be able to just immediately roll over to the next one. So we are now waiting for all of them to come out before we dig into the rest of the season. But the show is amazing. I think the season's gonna be great. I'm really excited about it. So definitely check that out if you're at all interested in spy TV or movies. Lauren, bring us home for your inaugural object lesson. What did you bring for us?
- [85:02]
C
Yeah, I have a suggestion for people that want to trade out their vices. So I went to Provo, Utah, for the first time for a law of war conference, and I was introduced to Dirty Soda, which was not something I was familiar with before. So history of that is it comes from around, like, 2010, but primarily in the Mormon culture. It is a way to have a fun drink and go out that is non alcoholic, but it's soda mixed with a variety of things. So I tried a guava habit which was like Mountain Dew, guava, strawberry, coconut cream. I also had trouble making it my mind, so I also got a Spice Queen. I got two of these which was like three times my sugar content for the day. But that had pumpkin pie sauce and Coke in it.
- [85:52]
A
And so it sounds, sounds like a complete nightmare. Honestly.
- [85:55]
C
It doesn't sound good, but it tastes good. And it is a way, you know, for those that might be trying to give up alcohol or in some cases, you know, lower caffeine that you, you make up for it with sugar is the argument. But it's a really interesting like cultural phenomenon and there's like a number of stores that do this. The main one, you know, that we went to was Swig, but you know, if you feel like mixing it up and not doing alcohol alcohol, you can have a fancy dirty soda instead.
- [86:24]
D
I'm glad we're doing this on video because, Scott, your face was priceless.
- [86:29]
A
I'm really shocked by this. This reminds me of the brief lived effort to make Pepsi and milk a thing called Pilk, which I think is a dirty soda and kind of spun out of this effort, which sounds so grotesque and I forgot about it until now. So thank you, Lauren for bringing it back to the show.
- [86:42]
C
Pepsi and Coke are getting into dirty soda. It's gonna be a thing. Give it time.
- [86:48]
A
I can't, I can't drink regular soda anymore. So I will, I will pass. But, you know, good on you. I guess it's probably better than the cocktails that I drink. It may be no less weird if you don't think about it too much. Regardless, on that note, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. But Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare. So be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other phenomenal Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast, among other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo under Music as always was performed by Sophia Yan. And we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guest, Dan, Paul, Tyler and Lauren, I'm Scott Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Till then, goodbye. Hey.
- [87:54]
C
I'm Paige Desorbo and I'm always thinking about underwear.
- [87:57]
B
I'm Hannah Berner, and I'm also thinking about underwear. But I prefer full coverage. I like to call them my granny panties.
- [88:03]
C
Actually, I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John.
- [88:08]
B
Same. They're so light and so comfy. And if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.
- [88:12]
C
And the bras? Soft, supportive and actually breathable.
- [88:15]
B
Yes.
- [88:16]
A
Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery, soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night.
- [88:24]
B
That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.
- [88:27]
C
Plus, they're so cute because they fit perfectly.
- [88:30]
A
Put yourself on to Tommy John.
- [88:31]
C
Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John. Save 25% for a limited time at tommyjohn.com comfort See site for details.