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- [00:00]
Boost Mobile Advertiser
If this back to school season talking to your teenager sounds like this.
- [00:06]
Joel Brunel
With.
- [00:07]
Boost Mobile Advertiser
Boost Mobile, make it sound like this. Come to your Boost store, get a line and take home a tablet for only $99.99. Perfect for staying connected and studying anywhere they're happy and you safe. Visit your nearest Booth. Store requires ID verification, new $20 per month tablet plan, and $35 device setup fee. Taxes extra.
- [00:33]
Tyler McBrien
So, Nastya, how was your super bowl viewing watching? Was it as you predicted? Were all your favorite players in it?
- [00:40]
Anastasia Lapetina
Yes. You know, it happened completely outside of my sight. I did not watch anything. I only learned about the fact that it happened because I was in a podcast the following morning and people were talking about it and I was like, oh, okay, I guess Taylor Swift is involved. Like, that's my level of understanding.
- [01:00]
Scott R. Anderson
Barely this time because Travis did not have a big game, so they didn't really have a lot of reason to bring Taylor on screen.
- [01:06]
Joel Brunel
I'll tell you, for the Peacebuilding community, Jalen Hurts, his famous phraseologies are very important for us. You know, I had a purpose before. Everyone has an opinion. I mean, if you want to sum up the global peace building community, that's a pretty good phraseology that we can all stand behind. So his victory is all of our victory. And the man is just the coolest human being who's ever existed. So, like, I think on behalf of all of us, Jalen Hurts and his full female representation team as he rocks in with his cigar. Just making sure everyone realizes that he is Steady Eddie. I mean, good for all of us.
- [01:38]
Tyler McBrien
He's the classic warrior philosopher mold of old.
- [01:42]
Joel Brunel
I mean, is he really the General Mathis of the NFL?
- [01:53]
Scott R. Anderson
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security. I am your host, Scott R. Andersen. Thrilled to be back with you for the podcast where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team and friends of Lawfare as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. And I'm thrilled to be joined by possibly the most transnational team of commentators that we have ever pulled together here on Rational Security. First, we have, of course, our managing editor, Tyler McBrien, currently located in our closest southern neighbor, the country of Mexico. Tyler, thank you for joining us away from your tropical vacation. I'm sorry to have pulled you away.
- [02:26]
Tyler McBrien
Buenos dias.
- [02:27]
Scott R. Anderson
You don't seem too sunburned or roasted, which is how I feel like I would be if I were in Puerto Vallarte right now. So the fact that you can still move your face is a big plus. You know, you've got that edge on me. Well done. Well played.
- [02:37]
Tyler McBrien
I was lathering on the SPF 50.
- [02:39]
Scott R. Anderson
That's the way you got it. 50 is where I start. You don't want to know where I end. It gets brutal. It gets stuff you can only find in dark corners of the Internet. So just be ready. That's what your late 30s and 40s do to you. And joining us as well, from the city of Kyiv, of course, our Ukraine fellow, Anastasia Lapetina. Nastya, thank you for coming on the.
- [02:57]
Anastasia Lapetina
Podcast again, Dobrevecher, since we're being all international today.
- [03:02]
Scott R. Anderson
Hey, we'll take it. We'll take it. And joining us for the first time on Rational Security, a true international man of mystery from the most exotic city of all, Chicago, Illinois, at this particular intersection, but truly a man of the world. None other than the managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham center for Middle east peace, Mr. Joel Brunel. Joel, thank you for joining us on Rational Security this week.
- [03:23]
Joel Brunel
I feel like I'm on the around the horn of foreign policy podcasts. I'm extremely excited to be with you, Scott, Anastasia and Tyler, so thank you for having me.
- [03:32]
Scott R. Anderson
I think you can truly say, you know, we founded the format of three topics, 20 minutes each, and then the random lesson at the end. Right. Nobody beat us to that. I think we're happy to have your you here on the OG of that particular podcast format because we have three big topics coming up out of the news this week. There are no small national security news stories these days, but we have a couple that are particularly up the alleys of our guests and worth talking about with you all. Topic one for this week, Mi Gaza es su Gaza. President Donald Trump shocked the world last week when at a joint press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he announced plans for the United States to own Gaza, take responsibility for reconstructing it, and ultimately renovate it into a riviera on the Eastern Mediterranean. One he later made it clear that Palestinians would no longer be allowed to live in. What of this plan is serious and what is bluster? And what impact will it have on the broader Israeli Palestinian conflict, including the delicate ceasefire that that Trump's team worked so hard to secure just weeks ago in Gaza. Topic 2 bullets for bauxite. President Trump recently reiterated his desire for a quick end to the conflict in Ukraine, a topic on which senior Trump administration and Ukrainian officials will be talking soon. But peace may come at a price. In this case, a deal guaranteeing US Access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, among other concessions. Is Trump's timeline realistic, and how is his administration's America first attack likely to impact the trajectory of the conflict? And for the record, before anybody at me on Blue sky or other social media, I know bauxite is not a rare earth mineral, but it starts with the letter B and it came to my brain. So forgive me on that one topic. Three quid pro whoa. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove took the exceptional step yesterday of directing the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York to dismiss corruption charges arising from alleged improper contributions and other relationships with foreign government officials against New York Mayor Eric Adams so that Adams could focus his energy on combating high crime and unlawful immigration. What should we make of this extraordinary step by the Trump administration, and what does it mean for the broader relationship with the Justice Department? For our first topic, I want to start with you, Joel, because you follow these developments closer than just about anyone. And I think it's safe to say the last week has been incredibly chaotic and hard to understand for a lot of folks who follow the Israeli, Palestinian kind of peace process and issue set writ large, of which I am one, even by the very high bar of chaos that usually surrounds that issue set, particularly the last few years. Because this declaration by President Trump, something that I think it's safe to say was not expected, came very unexpectedly, even though there are little hints of it, kind of littered throughout the prior Trump administration, littered through prior Trump statement statements by people like Jared Kushner, his, his son in law who was closely involved with Middle east policy during the first Trump administration. It still came kind of out of nowhere. And it's something we've seen his administration actively walk back in various regards, essentially asserting, no, we're going to own Gaza, but it's not going to involve any US Troops on the ground, waffling a little bit at times about whether Palestinians will or won't be allowed to continue to live there. Although in his most recent comments, President Trump pretty clearly seemed to signal he expected Palestinians to be resettled in places like Jordan and Egypt. And exactly what this plan is and how it fits into the broader picture and particularly the regional relationships that had been up until now such a focus of the Trump administration. Really, everyone working on this issue, trying to find some way to leverage the relationship with the Saudis in particular and the other Gulf states, and normalization with Israel being a big point of leverage over the conflict as a whole, that now seems jeopardized or at least complicated substantially by this proposal that is very controversial with, I think, Arab governments. Talk to me a little about where this come from, how surprised you were by this, and where it fits into this kind of broader picture.
- [07:16]
Joel Brunel
So you can read this multiple different ways, depending on if you think this is a master negotiation strategy or something else. So I think to give it a full understanding, let's look at it from two different perspectives. If you look at it from the perspective of those who say, look, this is shaking everything up and creating an outside of the box idea in order to shake up the region, to offer suggestions, that's one interpretation that I think think when you listen to the National Security adviser, Mike Waltz, when you listen to Secretary of State Rubio, when you listen to the White House press secretary, this is sort of the indication that they're making that President Trump shocked everyone, including me and everyone else, when in his joint press conference, he started his pitch with the US Will not rule out sending troops, and we will, as a gift to everyone, take over Gaza. We will clear out the rubble, we'll rebuild it, and it will be the riviera of the Middle east that will own. And so quickly, there were walkbacks, there was this, there was that. And it seems like the walkbacks that were really implicit were that there won't be U.S. troops and there won't be U.S. funding spent. But when you take out the threat of US Troops and you take out the potential for US Funding, the real question is, is this a bluff at all? Because if the Saudis and the Gulf, who instantaneously at 4am rejected this, if you want to call their bluff, then what you're bluffing needs to be substantial, that you stand behind it. And I think that they're aware that there is no real support for an AUMF for US Troops to go to Gaza, or even, one would argue, private military contractors to clean it out. And probably there isn't a desire to spend upwards of $50 billion in Gaza in some way. So therefore, people started around the Trump administration to say, look, this is just him shaking it up and it's forcing the region to fundamentally come back to the US With a better suggestion that if you don't have a suggestion, give us a better one. And as you heard sort of the day before Trump's press conference and the days following, Steve Witkoff, who, as we mentioned, is Trump's Middle east envoy, had managed to get the ceasefire deal. It started leaking out that this is not such a good deal. And especially in the later stages, he flew over Gaza in a helicopter and said, the whole place is a demolition site. People can't live there safely, so we need to think about something else. And so some people think, look, this is just Trump taking out the third stage of the ceasefire, which is supposed to be about reconstruction and opening up into a serious topic, and that realistically, this is about trying to pressure Hamas to give up ownership in their territory, as well as potentially forcing some Gazans to at least relocate temporarily and then maybe come back in later. And you can read into it sort of what you want, but the aim is that this is to put pressure on Hamas to realize that they need to take an exile, that not only can they not govern Gaza, but they need to be exiled. And if you want to look at it through that lens, okay, if that's the perspective you want to look at it through. Well, today the Secretary General of the Arab League, no small important figure within the region, said if it's not in the Palestinian interest for Hamas to be in charge, they need to leave, they need to give up governance. So you could say, look, there's already been shifts and that what President Trump has done is that he's changed the dynamics of the deal away from, well, Hamas are just there and we haven't managed to defeat them. So we'll just find some way to. There'll be a titular head of a new committee, but they'll still be there. He's saying, no, that's not going to happen. And that, of course, really plays with the Israeli audience. But that's sort of one reading. I think many in the region as well, as I would say Palestinians, probably Hamas and Fatah are probably all saying, like, he's not serious about actually evacuating 1.8 million Gazans, you know, good luck if you want to try. And, you know, with the Arab League support, the Egyptians already rejecting King Abdullah of Jordans in the White House today, like, and with the Saudi real solidly against this and their largesse, you know, this is probably just an open gambit that could be pushed aside. And it's really about shaking everyone up to give their own perspectives. That's one read. The flip side read is, no, he's very serious, okay? And, you know, yes, he won't use US Troops and he'll find some other way for people to own it. But every time he's asked, he doubles down. He doubles down on the aircraft, he doubles down. And he seems pretty serious about this and said he's thought it out. And the most important thing for me is that even if you want to say it's a bluff. There is one group in the world that has taken this at face value, and that is the society and the government of the State of Israel. The Israeli Cabinet just met and said just a few minutes ago that they fully endorsed Trump's vision for Gaza. The Prime Minister in the Knesset yesterday said, you wanted a vision of the day. After I agree with President Trump's vision, I brought it back from D.C. it has no PA and no Hamas, and that's my vision. And it has changed the polity and the policy options in Israel that has enabled to give the Israelis a magic button. It is a button that they can press that they don't have to do anything and that collectively, that they can just press the button and in the most powerful man in the world, in a way that he says humane, in a way that they will be voluntary, that the Gaza problem just disappears and they don't have to think about it anymore. And once you offer someone a magic button that, as President Trump said, is voluntary and humane and everything else, and they don't have to ever compromise a dream, they're going to go for the dream. And you've seen across the Israeli political spectrum sort of welcoming of this option, and even if it's not real, how you unspool that is almost impossible. And the last thing I'll say, and I know I've gone on, but it has been a complicated week, is, you know, people say this is a new idea. I mean, the concept of transfer is not new in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In many ways, it's the original idea. Right. You know, whether it's, as the Palestinians say, the Nakba, or sort of ideas that have floated in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And look, there's always been an option of transfer, but it's been pushed to the side as politically unacceptable. And President Trump's floating of this idea and adoption of it has made it acceptable, not just in terms of re energizing sort of a Smotrich Bengwehr on the far right of the spectrum, but changing the centrist part of the spectrum as well, also in diaspora communities, much to the horror and chagrin of many others and of the region. So whether this was a bluff or not, it has had a very big impact. And we haven't got into the details of the ceasefire that are also being sort of messed around. That's sort of the opening savo. Yeah.
- [13:53]
Tyler McBrien
I just want to put an even finer point on the transfer point that Joel is making. I was recently reading some old Benny Morris work. And he's a, he's a noteworthy Israeli historian. And he actually characterized, in the late 2000s, he characterized David Ben Gurion as a transferist. I don't think he was using this in a critical way. But as Joel was saying, this is, this is an idea that, you know, since the founding.
- [14:18]
Scott R. Anderson
But is it safe to say, Joel? I mean, it seems to me that among all the different interpretations of what this could be, and in a very typical Trump way, we're all, you know, have this as a Rorschach test, where we're taking the corners of this shape and projecting a lot of sense of what parts he's serious about, what parts he isn't, and seeing what we see out of it. And we all have priors that inform what we hope to see out of it, or maybe not. The part that seems to be the sticking point is the Palestinian permanent relocation possibility. That seems to be the point that if you take that out of the equation, that's part that was just reiterated by Trump in the last 48 hours, that there's a lot more ambiguity about in some of the early statements, but seemed to be pinned down in a press meeting just a couple days ago in the White House. If you take that out, it seems like a lot of the regional governments would have less of a clear concern. They may have a concern with even temporary relocation, but that's because people worry about the credibility of any assurances you can give that people will be allowed to come back. But if somehow you could get to credible assurance that they could, I'm not even sure temporary relocation would be a red line. Again, I don't know. That might be a fictional credibility that you could actually get there, but it's this idea of permanent relocation. How wedded to that is the Israeli buy in into this idea? And, and does it seem to be in the Trump conception? Because that strikes me as a line that's going to be hard to get even regional governments over. And it's hard to know where exactly it fits, how centrally it fits into this for Trump, for the Israelis. It actually seems to be a big part of the equation to some extent.
- [15:49]
Joel Brunel
I mean, Scott, the reason that President Sisi and Prime Minister Netanyahu haven't managed to have a conversation since October 7 is that the prime minister has not denied President Sisi's worry that the aim is to permanently push Gazans into Egypt. And that early on, when Secretary Blinken, just after Oct. 7, did a rotation around the region to see if countries would take them, he Heard no. And the Israelis. And it's come up again. You've had a lot. Why will no country in the region take them? This is so cruel and everything else. And part of it is there's no guarantee they can return. And the main aspect of Palestinian identity is solidly around the concept of Samudna steadfastness. And they're not going to leave the land and the ongoing catastrophe that was the creation of the state of Israel. And so you're dealing with people's sacred values here. So if you could find a way to guarantee that they could come back, and there was a pledge that would, backed up by a law in the Knesset and maybe a UN Security Council resolution and all the things that you would need. Could you temporarily relocate people? Maybe the. You know, how many Gazans would leave have been given options to go to, like, a Western country? I know. Let's assume that half a million. I'm throwing numbers out. This is not based on anything. Let's assume half a million. Okay. Those people are probably the most upwardly socially mobile of Gazan society. So what you'd have left is you would remove the middle and upper class, and then you just have people who are left. And how you rebuild a society there is also complicated in terms of what that would look like. And so if people don't want to leave, what happens? You. What, you cut off all humanitarian aid and say, well, you can stay and it's voluntary, but you'll starve? Or do you say, if you stay, we're going to assume that you support Hamas and therefore you're a legitimate target? So, like, these are all questions. But to answer your question about the permanency of it all, the prime minister hasn't endorsed it. He said it's very interesting. But what President Trump did is that he defined what total victory looks like in a way that the prime minister has never been able to do. Prime Minister Netanyahu never defined what total victory was. There was sort of, Hamas doesn't have a governing capability and they'll never threaten us again. President Trump comes in, offers this vision. Prime Minister Netanyahu is like, that's the vision I agree with. That's total victory. Now, how you can get there? Can you get there? How do you make it step back? There's lots of questions, but just quickly on the ceasefire, because it's another part of what's going on. So Hamas has these macabre demonstrations every time they release hostages, where each week they release them, and there's like a whole show Put on where they're given certificates. And in a previous one, they made a hostage, you know, declare that they're looking forward to seeing their wife and kids who had been murdered by Hamas on October 7th. And it increasingly drives the global, like a lot of people mad, but especially the Israeli population nuts as this goes on. And the Last 1, the three male hostages were incredibly emaciated and analogies were made to Holocaust victims in terms of when they were released. And each time it happens that the frustration, anger in Israel at Hamas goes up, they see that Hamas is clearly in control, that at least those masked individuals don't seem to be emaciated themselves. It challenges the stories that they've been told that Gazans are starving and they see that their hostages were starving. They hear stories about when these people came back about how they were mistreated. By the way, there are, you know, on the Palestinian media dynamic when their prisoners are being released, some of which were in administrative detention, some of which are serving life sentences, they go in their media and have stories of abuse and other things. So they're like, no one's paying attention to ours. Can you make ethical comparisons? No. And there's like a whole as everything in Israel, Palestine, you can't compare, and all the other parts. But what is this to say? President Trump is also watching and has become frustrated and basically said, you know, hamas better watch out. If they continue to do this, I'm going to put the hammer down. And then yesterday morning, so on the 10th, Hamas said, We're suspending the prisoner transfers, the hostage releases, because they say that Israel's broken the ceasefire agreement on the humanitarian axis and others. But by doing that, they open. President Trump said, fine, if you don't release all the hostages, not just the ones in the first phase, but all 72 remaining hostages by Saturday at 12, Israel should rain hellfire down on you. Basically, all hell will break loose. And the Israelis tried to figure out what their position would be. And today they just came out. Prime Minister Netanyahu, as we are recording this podcast, just came out and said, if Hamas doesn't release the nine remaining live hostages, so not all, but the nine that are part of phase one by Saturday at 12, the ceasefires of you broke it, as in Hamas broke it. And this is now the new renegotiation. And so now the question is, how do they renegotiate? But again, President Trump said all hostages. The Israeli cabinet said nine. So Bibi's now being attacked by his far right, by beng there saying it should Be all, not just nine. And why are you playing around with this? And so again, President Trump, in multiple different fashions, is taking a position far to the right of at least where the cabinet is on various different issues, moving it that way maybe for a negotiation tactic, but by doing so, he schlepped the entire Israeli polity to that space as well and pushes them up a tree. How they can come down from that tree if they want to come down from that tree, and how you can therefore get the rest of the region in, has huge effects on Saudi normalization, on Abraham accords, on the future of Gaza, on what might happen in the West Bank. And I'll finish off by saying this. President Trump loves deadlines, and he's created a triple lock deadline on March 1st. Deadline number one, it's the beginning of Ramadan, often a very difficult period of stability in other parts when it comes to Israel, Palestine. Deadline number two, he said in his press conference with Bibi that he will make a decision on annexation, whether he'll give a green light to annex the west bank in four weeks, which again corresponds with the beginning of March. Deadline number three, if the ceasefire deal technically holds, phase two begins on March 1st. Oh, and by the way, by the end of March, Israel has to pass a budget or the coalition collapses. So deadlines make actions. We are in for a truly insane period of time when it comes to Israel, Palestine for the next few weeks. And that is why you feel confused. And I think lots of people do as well.
- [22:03]
Tyler McBrien
Oh, great. I thought that we were already in an insane period. But, Scott, I'm curious your take on the international legal angle. We've been using words like transfer, relocation, but there are other words that others are using like ethnic cleansing, denial of the right of return of Palestinians. I'm curious your read on what Trump is calling for from the international legal point of view and increasingly what the Israeli polity is endorsing as well.
- [22:30]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to square any of this with any conventional understanding of international law. There are unconventional understandings that a lot of Israelis and certain supporters Israel have kind of put forward that have some grasp, but have never really taken off with most people who look at this stuff. And a lot of them apply more readily in the west bank than in Gaza potentially. But what exactly would be the basis of an Israeli claim over Gaza as a territory is really a little bit unclear. Right. They could have their same combination of it being kind of terra nullius, basically never really having been a state and therefore not something they're violating traditional international law principles of by claiming territory over which is an argument they made about the West Bank. That would have been an easier argument to make about Gaza as well, potentially up until the withdrawal. But of course Israel kind of disavowed any interest or claims in Gaza after the withdrawal, at least to some extent, at least in some statements. So what do you end up doing here? I think it probably ends up looking like the argument ends up looking a little bit more like the Golan Heights where you saw this argument that yes, this was Syrian territory, but Syria was an aggressor against us. We took it as necessary for security property. If we're acting in defensive, we're not engaging in offensive international war. We inherited this territory and over time we develop enough ties. There's some vague self defense termination threads that get tied in there with kind of the Druze population of the Golan Heights and that we're going to extend to that. And now there's this new question about this new slice of Syria Israelis has been occupying where they also have Druze community that genuinely have close ties both to Druze and communities in the Golan Heights and with the Israelis who have been providing them support under security umbrella throughout a lot of the Syrian civil war. How that argument might be extended there where you don't have this like long period of occupation and slow integration like you did with the Golan. I think that might be more of an argument. You see, none of these are arguments that the international community is going to buy into really very credibly at all. The United States is one state might that it seems like wills or the Trump administration might. How you square that? I don't know. I mean we saw the Trump administration in the last Administration revoke a 1977 Herb Hansel letter which had long established the position that settlements in the west bank are presumptively illegal under national law. Reagan administration had kind of like toned down that opinion but never rescinded it. And other than that, it had been the US position up to that point. They replaced it with an opinion written by Jennifer Newsted, who was a legal advisor at the time and State Department people, but never released it, never really gave way much details on it. We heard the Biden administration kind of do a soft revocation of that position or reversal where they started saying in press statements in their last year in office, no settlements of the west bank are presumptively unlawful under national law. But they haven't reinstated the Hansel letter. We don't know what the legal basis of it is. So, long story short, we don't know what the outer parameters of what is reasonable in the Middle east context is from the US Policy perspective. And frankly, what the first Trump administration thought. What the State Department lawyers might think may not matter that much in the end, because Donald Trump may have his views and they will come up with some argument as to why it's lawful international law, or maybe not even bother, and that might be enough. The problem with that is that it causes problems with the rest of the international community. Like, you've got to have some basis for arguing about why this is okay and legitimate, that meets some sort of standard, particularly if you're kicking the Palestinians out. That's where it gets really hard. That's like the clearer sort of thing you're clearly not allowed to do very expressly under international humanitarian law or international human rights law. Again, if you pull out that plank, then you can see ways you can reconcile a lot of this other stuff, potentially in different formats. But it's that permanent relocation that is going to be the hugest sticking point for a lot of the international community. And then what comes after that as well, which has always been the secret of this conflict that people miss. The reason why Israelis came around the two state solution eventually for a long time is because it was the one way to reconcile the treatment of Palestinians with international law and standards and general morals, which is that, yes, they're second class citizens, but it's because they are on a path to citizenship in their own state. And as long as we're on this trajectory, it's all temporary state. And we can deal with these temporary exceptions from conventional international law and human rights standards. If you have annexation, if you have of the Gaza or the west bank, and all of a sudden you have these populations that live there, but they don't have a full flight of political rights. And the reason they don't appears to be primarily some mixture of cultural, religious, historical, Palestinian kind of overlaps, all three of those. That's hard to square with how anybody thinks about anything these days. And you'll hear a lot of whataboutism about lots of other states that don't have liberal rights, lots of states in the Middle east, et cetera. And those are all fair and true. But if you start saying, well, Israel is more like those countries than European countries and other countries that buy into more robust concepts of democracy, that puts Israel in a very different camp and a very different universe of states with which the United States traditionally has relationships. I think that's actually gonna be a more bitter pill to swallow for a lot of Americans and especially for a lot of Europeans and other citizens around the world than people are really reconciling with now, whether in Israel or anywhere else.
- [27:19]
Joel Brunel
If you thought that wasn't crazy enough, yesterday the Palestinian Authority officially ended their policy of pay to slay, which has been a US Demand since the first Trump administration. It's been met with cautious optimism, even by massive critics of the pa, though not by the State of Israel that says it's all a con. You've got the Prisoners Club in Ramallah criticizing Abbas for doing it, demonstrating that it's definitely something, not just a renaming. And the Saudis are just livid from their public statement to everything, and it's just never ending. Churning of different pieces of news, of pretty seismic things that could be transformative, but each one is being subsumed into a news cycle that just doesn't stop. And it's not a news cycle that's, oh, a little bit here, a little bit there. These are like massive body blows into people's ideas, understandings about what could and couldn't be possible. And some people just tune it out and are just saying, you know, let's get the hostages back and let's end the conflict in Gaza. Others are like, no, now's the opportunity to go for broke. Others like, let's reset. You know, there was one report that said that the Palestinian Authority is willing to use the Trump deal of the century as an opening negotiation point when it comes to the Trump administration. I mean, you talk about seismic shifts. These are seismic shifts of people who work in these spaces and how that all comes down. So all I'd say is, as we sort of come to the end of this first 20 minutes, is President Trump, as he often is, is definitely redefining a lot of terms. How much will last and how much will not is unclear. But I would argue, unlike other spaces where he's, you know, threatening and then steps back and says his statements have huge implications given how the parties actually hear, adopt, and change their positions because of them. And that is different from trade, tariff, wars, and what you switch on and off, you can't put the ethnic demon back in the bottle. It's out. Right? And if I have to say, what's the most impactful thing that's happened over the past two weeks on this? It's that. It's that the policy conversation in Israel has radically transformed.
- [29:27]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, and I think that's actually a great point to zoom in on as we begin this transition to our second topic about Ukraine as well, because I want to hear both about how Ukrainians think about this and Trump's genuine approach to this and other conflicts and how it reads back in there. But it lends back to this idea. Like the justification we hear so much about Trump's freewheeling foreign policy is the disruption narrative. It's true of his domestic policy, too. Right. Like Trump as disruptor. And it's something we've seen, really, the Republican Party, particularly that wing of it affiliated with him, really take up as a pro, which is that you throw things out there. It's disrupting. He's knocking over a status quo that nobody likes. That is true to some extent. It's also incredibly low bar for approving any sort of statement.
- [30:10]
Joel Brunel
Right.
- [30:10]
Scott R. Anderson
Like, anything can be disruptive if it's just unexpected and a little off and aligned with. Doesn't align with expectations. I mean, it's good or bad. It's just disruptive. And to buy into that being a universal solvent, you have to buy into a status quo that is so irrevocably damaged and detrimental that wrecking anything and leaving no part of it standing is appropriate. And then you get in the situation where somebody is actually habitually disruptive and inconsistent in their demands and their terms and how they approach a conflict, you never actually settle into a new status quo. You don't settle into something that you can actually build on. And I find that to be really difficult. And I worry that is going to be a persistent theme in a lot of these discussions, particularly in very sensitive negotiation situations like the Middle east, where the words do matter so much. In other situations, Trump can say a lot, but people focus on what the actual legal measures are. That's not the case in a lot of international negotiations. You don't get to the legal measures until you get to the words. And the words matter a lot when they're coming from the president. Nassian, let me turn to you on that. Like, this is a weird moment for Ukraine, obviously.
- [31:12]
Anastasia Lapetina
Very much so, yeah.
- [31:13]
Scott R. Anderson
I mean, not something we didn't foresee coming, obviously. Like, we knew Trump was. Was coming for a number of months now. We know he has weird, different priors on Ukraine, although we don't 100%. I don't think we 100% knew what they were coming in because you had a lot of plans and lip service by people in Trump's orbit about how to handle the Ukraine conflict, but little from the man himself. Right. Which is tricky. So how are Ukrainians viewing the way Trump has approached, whether it's Gaza, whether it's Taiwan, whether it's a bunch of these other national situations and the lessons about that for how it is approaching these scenarios. I've actually been interested by Zelenskyy's sort of strategy and approach so far, but I'd be curious about your sense of it from there on the ground.
- [31:55]
Anastasia Lapetina
So for several months before Trump got elected, it was kind of on the top of every Ukrainian mind, civilians, the society, the government, like, what's gonna happen? Who's gonna win? And then if Trump wins, what is that gonna mean for us? And the ultimate question was, how do we make sure that he's on our side? Because that wasn't at all immediately clear that that would happen. Because, I mean, the man has said a whole array of negative things, to say the least, about Ukraine and a whole array of Putin and Russia. So it was a very scary time and very anxious time. And the Ukrainian government approach was to understand that Trump is a transactional man. He is a president who's going to come, wreak havoc, try to change everything radically. And so we saw in that an opportunity because as I've written about for Lawfare and as I've talked a lot about on our podcasts, the Ukrainians just really hated Biden, which may sound crazy to an American audience, right, because there is a lot of billions of dollars that you guys sent us, but Ukrainians have a negative view of the status quo. And so, you know, this anti incumbent wave touched this Ukraine, US Dynamic as well. In that sense, we really wanted Biden out. And so we thought the government thought that they can persuade Trump that supporting Ukraine is in his interest, be it because, you know, just abandoning Ukraine is going to look bad. And we've seen some reporting to indicate that, indeed, that's, that's a worry, right? Like they don't want a second Afghanistan or, you know, any other kind of reference. Like he doesn't want to be like Obama in 2014, who just didn't do anything and Russians just waltzed in. So, you know, there's a lot to be said about, you know, Trump needing to look strong so he can't just walk away because that certainly wouldn't make him look strong. And so another part of that was that we were looking to offer some sort of economic interest because again, he is a man of transactions and like hard economic interest. He just, he wants to see what's in there for him. And so in fall, I think it was October, President Zelensky presented his so called victory plan. And there were several points in there and one of them was this point about the joint use and investment of Ukraine's critical minerals and critical resources, rare earths, minerals, whatever. At the time that was before the American election, pretty much everyone understood that to be a Trump sweetener. Like it was obviously put in there for the Trump team and for the Republicans. And so what we're seeing now, this, you know, this Trump's interest in Ukraine's critical minerals and critical resources. So it's not a crazy idea and if anything, it's almost good news that, you know, he's biting into it like he's, he's kind of reacting to what Ukraine has been offering and what Ukraine has been talking about. So I guess that's good. And we've all kind of known that he's like that, that he doesn't actually care about Ukraine or the right and wrong side of history or any of that. But at the same time, it still doesn't make it easier when you hear him say things like, you know, Ukraine can be Russian, Ukraine may be Russian, Ukraine may not be Russian, Ukraine, like the Kremlin may be in control in Ukraine or not. Well, all I care about is that we're going to get access to their critical minerals and we're going to get the money. And I want a $500 billion deal and it doesn't really matter who's in control of that territory, which is something he said just yesterday, I think, in an interview with Fox. And so certainly that's like not nice to hear as a Ukrainian. And I've definitely seen people reacting to that, that like, I mean, we've known that he's like that, but just like hear him say that, that he doesn't care if we just lose and we're killed and tortured and raped as long as he got his lithium. It's sort of absurd. So it's like this kind of double edged sword that it's good that the Ukrainian government approach seems to be working. They've poked something that's working. But the other side is like, maybe we missed the days when this whole thing was about democracy and values and the rest of it. So it's kind of a mixed, but it's actually not only the critical minerals that Ukraine is offering. Another part of it that's quite interesting, it's not something that Trump has talked about yet, but it's something that Zelensky has talked about, is that Ukraine has a lot of underground gas storage. I think we actually have the largest amount of storage in Europe. And that would be great for the US because the US as of last year is now the top exporter of liquefied natural gas of lng. This is like for the first time in the history of the industry, as far as I understand that the US is the top exporter of lng. And that happens because Europe started weaving itself off of Russian gas after the fossil invasion. And so Ukraine is trying to also present itself as like this potential transit hub country that Americans come will store your gas for you and you can trade with the EU and make a bunch of money doing it, and it can all be great. So there is that component as well. But yeah, that's pretty much on Trump's crazy critical minerals offer.
- [37:26]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I just want to pick up on a few threads. I think it's really interesting what you said about Ukrainians being quite critical of Biden because again, I keep seeing similarities in another way to the Israel topic as well. I had the impression that most of Israeli society and the polity were quite excited about Trump's reelection or Trump's election. But from the point of view of maybe someone on the left in the United States who's quite critical of Biden's policy, they would be shocked at that. I think it's interesting painting Trump as this disruptor, but as Scott, as you were pointing out, it's not a strategy or a doctrine, it's like an anti strategy. He's really hard to predict. I'm going to quote this morning in CNN. So this was, we're recording on February 11th, the headline is that Trump said that Ukraine may be Russian someday, which sounds damning, sounds awful, but if you read the full quote, and it's still very bad, but if you read the full quote, it's a nothing statement. This is the full quote. Trump said Ukraine may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday or they may not be Russian someday. So I just, I feel for Zelensky or something because I don't know, what do you do with that? It's nothing.
- [38:47]
Scott R. Anderson
You know, it's one of those quotes that in a movie really depends on how the actor delivers it. Because it could either be saying like, ah, the sky is blue sometimes, you know, or it could be like, you know, maybe your store will get robbed, maybe your store won't get robbed. It's all about, you know, the inflection in the context that you put in it and statements like that. I tend to lean towards a latter interpretation, but others might Not.
- [39:07]
Tyler McBrien
And just to really quick, just to contrast it with Biden and Israel. Biden is someone who strikes me as a true believer in the promise of Zionism. He met with Golda Meir as a young senator. He's a true believer, he's a friend of Israel. And yet Israelis would much prefer Trump. It's just an interesting, I don't know, dynamic.
- [39:29]
Joel Brunel
Look, the bastardization of Biden's record on Israel. In Israel today, people are saying, had it not be for Biden's restraint of us, we would have done X, Y and Z.
- [39:40]
Anastasia Lapetina
Like, same. Same here, guys.
- [39:43]
Joel Brunel
Literally to the T. It's like we're living in, like a. It's. It's always easy to blame someone else. Right? Like, the aircraft carriers also helped. And you have this bizarre dynamic in Israel where the level of dependence on America is, you know, the whole thing is that Israel's strong by itself, with itself. We don't. We're not asking you to spend, you know, your blood and treasure. Even though we get military assistance, we portray and push American values and all the other different pieces. That's part of the US Israel bilateral relationship. But Israel makes its own decisions. And yet the dependency on the US in order to continue fighting the war was very high, which led to people saying, why didn't the US Use more leverage? The reason being that the leverage is limited because if it becomes existential, they'll just say no, and then where are you actually going to push the leverage onto? And then with Trump, the irony was like, he started off by pushing them into an unpopular ceasefire. You had massive critiques coming out of Israel saying, Steve Wyckoff's been hoodwinked by the Qataris and the Israelis are on a death match with the Qataris right now. Ignore. Punish the Qataris. Hit them. Hit them hard. You don't hear that coming from Trump. What they love about Trump is that he gave them lots of things before and he doesn't care about international law. When you look at, you know, as Scott said, the opponents who are on the ascendancy of any negotiation with the Palestinians also hate international law. And so the. The whole construct of might makes right. Israel right now is a very strong, mighty nation that is restrained by international norms. You know, how much are they restrained? You know, you can argue. So if you've got a president who's like, you do what the hell you want. By the way, don't bomb Iran, though, right? So, okay, they're willing to sacrifice some of these bigger things because they feel that Trump's Such a strong force that he'll prevent Iran rearming other people that they can give up on something they wouldn't have if you believed in a system of international laws that they feel and like the international world order that they feel fundamentally undercuts them and their strategic needs. They want to have a freedom of operation over all of their allies. What I find the most interesting, though, Tyler, and I'd love to hear anesthesia, your concept of this when it comes to the Ukraine, when it came to Biden, the only voice really in the Middle east he was really listening to was the Israelis. What the Syrians or Lebanese wanted, it was really irrelevant. Even if it was relevant, the actual hard power dynamics weren't. The Americans built a missile shield for Israel with its allies against the Iranians as they went backwards and forwards. When it comes to Trump, Israel is competing with the Qataris, now Lebanon, now Syria, now Turkey and a whole bunch of other stuff. And it's actually limited their freedom of operations regionally, but it's empowered them locally to have this total victory with the Palestinians. And for the Israeli average person, they're like, okay, I'll take that trade. But for Israeli strategic decision makers, the difficulty of dealing with Washington was best summed up by a prominent member of FDD that said, with Trump, you go into the casino and you could win the lottery or you could lose your house. You just roll the dice each time. So everything's very high stakes. But you could win your house, you could win your lottery, but at the exact same time, you shake the dice the other way. And it could go the other way. And it's a very hard way to deal with existential decisions. And I'll just say this whole thing that Israel makes decisions by itself, on itself, and doesn't listen to the Cabinet decision today, was hiding behind Trump. It was like, we'll do what Donald said. It's like, I mean, cool. But if you have decisions that you want to make, they're your interest, they're your citizens, you should make that decision. It shouldn't just be like, well, we like what the President said. And that disconnect is going to be really acute, especially that Donald Trump's term limited. These things aren't going to disappear in four years. You could take hatches to them, but ultimately you're going to have to deal with Democrats and the rest of the world and everything else that has that falls flat. And so that's a real complicated dynamic that I think we're all still sorting through.
- [43:42]
Tyler McBrien
He's term limited for now, sure.
- [43:46]
Joel Brunel
That's a great addition.
- [43:47]
Anastasia Lapetina
Tyler.
- [43:49]
Scott R. Anderson
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- [47:01]
Anastasia Lapetina
I mean, I know you shouldn't compare these things because there are so many differences and so much historical baggage and things like that, but if we were to compare, which is certainly something that Ukrainians do all the time, if we were to compare these two dynamics, it's very interesting because both Israel and Ukraine are, I mean, kind of inherently dependent on the US and the US military and other aid. Both Israel and Ukraine are facing a war conflict, an existential threat, and the relationship is so different in a way that Ukrainians just don't understand. And I mean, a part of it is just Ukrainians, you know, being victims of a brutal genocidal invasion and being emotional about it. But even on the level of like political scientists and journalists and people who, who should understand this, a lot of people really don't get why, you know, if Iran sends a bunch of missiles at Israel, American planes and American air defense is shooting that down. But when the same thing or worse, well, it is actually worse in terms of the consequences when that happens to Ukraine. I mean, the US is nowhere near that because Russia, nukes, etc. And so this, this dynamic, this fact that Israel can do, and this is just my opinion, whatever they want, like they can kill as many people they want, they can break as many laws as they want. You know, like they can have a terrible reputation in half of the planet and the US is still going to be a loyal ally and have a special relationship. And Ukrainians, you know, follow the international law to the table specifically so the ally support is there, right? Like our POWs get beheaded regularly and we still keep them in stellar conditions when it comes to, like the Russians that we take, the Russian soldiers that we have in prisons, we don't use a bunch of weapons that we could have. Like, we're so worried about this international standard and laws that we have to keep because we're a part of the west and we, we need to keep the allied support. And still we like don't get it to the same amount that Israel does. And it's so frustrating. And then when you hear Trump be like, oh, I'm going to support you only if you give us all of your critical minerals and critical weapons. Someone tweeted like, Israel doesn't do shit and doesn't give shit and gets everything and we have to give all of our resources.
- [49:33]
Joel Brunel
He's taking, he's taking Gaza's resources, right? So he's like, I'll just take that. Right?
- [49:38]
Anastasia Lapetina
Yeah, you're right, you're right. But you know what I mean, though.
- [49:41]
Joel Brunel
No, I understand it. I think there were two. It's a fascinating observation, but I'd say there are two really remarkable differences. Like number one is all facing a seven front wall from Iranian proxies. And their freedom of action against Iran is incredibly restricted, not just by Biden in the same way that the Ukrainians were, but also by President Trump. He said, you're not allowed to strike. The Israelis would love to go to war with Tehran. I mean, they don't want to, but like, let's decapitate this. You. In many ways, what the international community wanted Israel to do in Gaza is what they achieved in Lebanon, which is to have the maximum impact with the least amount of collateral damage through the Pedra operation and all the other things that they did. And they basically decapitated the Iranian best proxy in the region. And also has multiple different effects. I mean, I think the Ukrainian problem is that you're up against a nuclear superpower or a regional power, depending on how you see Russia today. And the Israelis are against a pre nuclear Iran that doesn't want to risk its own territory. If Israel and Iran get into a shooting war, I think that you see a far bigger restraint. The Israelis have been begging the Americans to bomb Iran since 06 and it hasn't happened. Even with the Soleimani stuff, there's negotiations. President Trump wants to have a negotiation with Iran. So the Israeli decision making is that Hamas is just an arm of the Iranians. The problem is, is that the separate conversation which the majority of the world, that's the Israeli argument, the majority world say, look, this is an Israeli Palestinian conflict. And in that case Israel being Palestine small and like, you know, therefore we'll side with the palest Palestinians versus the Israelis. The Israelis, they'll actually see it very analogously. Like we're not given freedom of action when it comes to the real threat and instead we have to wade through impossible, impossible legal and ethical waters to deal with Iranian proxies who dig in 400km of tunnels and don't care. They want Gazans to die. Because that's the strategy. The strategy is that is to, is to. Is specifically that because there's no conventional win that exists. So in many ways if they were given the freedom of action, just to say if you don't do this, we'll nuke Tehran. Right? We've got the undeclared nuclear weapons. The Israel has like they've got a ton of weapons they haven't been able to use and they're similarly restrained. But it's a fascinating that that's the way that Ukrainians see it because it once again belies the complete chasm that exists between how Israel sees what it is doing and it is fighting versus how literally everyone else in the world, maybe with the exception of Republican America sees how it's going. Which is this is really about Israel, Palestinians and yeah, the Iranians and the Yemenites and the Houthis and whatever, they're all getting involved. But it's really if there was just a two state solution it would figure itself out. And the Israelis are like, you're all nuts. Like this is very clearly an existential thing. And so I think there is actually a lot more in common.
- [52:29]
Anastasia Lapetina
It's just very similar, this disconnect that Ukrainians feel like nobody else understands how existential this is for us. And same with Israel. And then there's also this mismatch between the state of Israel and the Ukrainian government. Like there's a whole conflict there as well, you know.
- [52:46]
Joel Brunel
Yeah. Who's arming who? You know, do we throw the Iranians in because it's useful because of the backtrabbins, your guys relationship with the Turks and like separate. All this is the Palestinians who the whole Palestinian element and pro Palestinian protest movement had a huge impact or a small impact depending on who you want to argue on the presidential election. Whereas I would argue that the Ukrainian community did not, you know, in critical swing battleground states did not have a similar political heightened attention that the Arab American community and the progressive youth community had.
- [53:18]
Anastasia Lapetina
A bunch of them voted for Trump because they're white and conservative. I know those are my people I'm talking about, but that's true.
- [53:25]
Joel Brunel
I think that's part of the game. Right? Like as diasporatic politics come into this. And, you know, when you go to presidential electoral colleges, you know, there's been countless barrels of ink spilt about did the Gaza conflict affected it? Not, you know, the triumphalism after Trump's statement, you know, this is what you voted for. And you know, Kamala, people saying that. Whereas I would argue that I maybe three times during the presidential election saw, you know, how are Eastern European, you know, migrants going to vote? But it was never really a story. Whereas, like it was a constant story about how the Israeli Palestinian conflict's affecting. I think that's also a question of what's going on, who cares about what, and to what extent does this really turn votes? Because if you don't care enough about the homeland to vote for the president, right, who really they're doing foreign policy, they don't really have that much effect on your daily life as a domestic American living in Pennsylvania, wherever else. Like, if that's not enough of a motivating factor, like, I don't know what the conversation was like in the Ukrainian American community, I can tell you as a Jewish American, it was a never ending conversation about Trump's relationship versus Kamala's relationship with Israel versus don't think about anything else. And so there's interesting dynamics there at play as well.
- [54:35]
Scott R. Anderson
So before we move on to our third topic, I want to bring it back to one a little more narrow, focused policy question about Ukraine. And that's the ask, right? We know the Trump sweeteners, which is a great phrase that we all should familiar ourselves with because that is very much what the Zelenskyy peace deal that was rolled out before the election was. It was a bundle of Trump sweeteners. We talked about that on the podcast when it rolled out transparently. So almost to the point of proposing substituting Ukrainian troops in for American troops in Europe. You cannot imagine a Trumpier idea from a certain mega isolationist foreign policy perspective. Maybe there's merit to it, but it certainly appeals to that crowd more than, like just about anybody else. There's an interesting point here that to think about what Zelenskyy really wants, if he's going to give away whatever it is, rare earth, minerals, and. And from the reporting I've read so far, the closest hint we get is when it comes to security guarantees, where there is this very pointed conversation with Zelensky where he said, I can't remember who he was talking to. Actually, when I saw this conversation come, I think it was with the media, where people floated, what about just European security guarantees because you seem to have, including major European actors, the big players, Germany, France, uk You can see universe where they get on board with security guarantees way before the Trump administration ever does. And he said essentially security guarantees don't mean anything if America isn't involved. Which is actually a pretty dramatic statement, one that probably a lot of Europeans don't, don't fully appreciate. Although in some ways maybe it gives them useful cover to avoid having to have the harder conversation of is this something we go alone? And I don't even know if that was intentional or not, Zelensky's part, because you may only be able to get to Europe at a certain point in the end. So what are the big asks? Is that it, is it an American security guarantee of what form? Or something more than that. I mean security assistance has always been the main of the conversation and that's obviously like ask number one, that's kind of maintaining status quo and in all honesty, like that's something that long term is going to be less accountable in a way because it's not a one time ask, it's an ongoing ask and you're going to keep getting these sorts of requests. So like what is it that Zelenskyy wants in exchange for this sort of trumpy bargaining?
- [56:44]
Anastasia Lapetina
Zelenskyy does want a guarantee of security for Ukraine going forward. And there are broadly three ways how we can achieve that. We can get into NATO, as in do some sort of West German, Norwegian, whichever one you want. Scenario where the territory that's under our control gets into NATO, the territory that's not, doesn't. And then you do legal shenanigans of making it all look like we're not ceding anything. And you have Article 5 protection. So that's one, that's something that we're actively asking for an alternative to that given that it seems like that's not happening anytime soon, is some sort of security guarantee from the US and we don't know, there hasn't been a draft document or anything like that. But it's obvious that they're suggesting something like Article 5 of if we are under attack from Russia, the US commits to send troops to protect us. Something that would be enough to deter Russia from rearming and reinvading, which is a huge risk and it's something that Russia has done in other wars. So Ukrainians aren't making it up. It's a valid risk that that can happen. And if that's off the table, then we want our nuclear weapons back, which is also something we've actively talked about, which I know may sound like ludicrous to people, but there is a thing called the Budapest Memorandum, which is this document that Ukraine signed. And we gave up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world for the American pledge to protect us from basically a Russian invasion to protect our sovereignty. Clearly, that hasn't worked out. And so Ukraine has this history of, on the one hand, giving up its nuclear weapons and not receiving anything in return in terms of actual protection to its sovereignty. We also have history of Europeans not doing anything to protect us. When we talk about Ukraine's NATO aspirations, it was Germany and France that have been consistently blocking us from getting into NATO or getting just some sort of plan roadmap to get into NATO, because the Russian influence on Europe was very strong, has always been very strong. And so those are the three options that we have. And the Ukrainian government has said that openly. We can't just sign a deal to stop fighting and then keep on going business as usual. Because Russia isn't just going to be like, well, okay, we're done now. Russia is going to rearm and return, and we need some sort of plan to make that, to make sure that that doesn't happen. And so that could be NATO membership, Article 5, something like Article 5, that's not NATO, but, you know, like an American guarantee, just an American Article 5 kind of thing, or nukes, which we like, literally have said openly that, you know, that's the alternative. Americans said that the nukes, like, not happening naturally. NATO thing also doesn't seem to be happening because, I mean, everyone around Trump in Trump's orbit, Keith Kellogg, they've all talked about, you know, NATO provoking Russia and Ukrainian NATO membership is off the table at least until Putin is in power. So that's not happening. And so the only viable option is some sort of guarantee from Europe and from the US And Zelenskyy told in an interview with the Guardian, he said in the interview with the Guardian, either today or yesterday, he said that, yeah, guarantees without America are not real guarantees. And this came, this phrase from him, came literally like a day after Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, said that America isn't going to guarantee Ukraine anything and it's going to be squarely Europe's responsibility. So there is a very active conflict happening there. I don't know where it's going to go, but I completely understand why Ukraine is wary of European security guarantees, because Europe hasn't been able to guarantee us anything in the past. If anything, it blocked various processes of us trying to get more secure and protect ourselves from Russia. And even after the full scale invasion, the vast, vast, vast majority of everything that we get that keeps our defense going is from America. It's not from Europe. Europe, I mean, I quote this all the time. As my friend once said, it would be nice if Europe was a thing. So that's pretty much Europe's position since the full scale invasion. So I completely understand why the Ukrainian government is wary of a German or a French guarantee. And we want America's involvement. So it will be interesting to see how all of these discussions go in the next few weeks, considering that there is such a story, like stark difference in how we view this. Another problem is that we need more military aid because whatever has been pledged by Biden has already been delivered and it's running out. And so there hasn't been any new pledges since Trump took office under Biden. We used to have new packages coming out like every other week, maybe like at least once a month. And nothing has happened under Trump. And so that's a real worry. And I saw some reporting that Hexeth is going to come to the Munich Security Conference and then to the Ukraine related NATO meeting as well. And those are all events at which usually we would see some sort of big pledges, big new agreements on military aid. But the reporting suggested that Hacsis wasn't going to announce anything. So that's worrisome. It's really worrisome because again, something that a lot of people miss when they talk about the potential peace talks between Ukraine and Russia is that all of those peace talks, whenever they happen, and if they even happen, they're all going to be determined, the substance of them is going to be determined by what's happening on the battlefield. If you're in a weak position, you're not going to walk away strong from those peace negotiations. If Russia is winning on the battlefield, which they currently are, they may not even see a reason to stop. And that's a big question as well from the Ukrainian expert communities, like why would Russia stop fighting? Right now they're taking village after village because Ukraine doesn't have enough aid. And we have our own domestic problems as well with mobilization and such. But what is the incentive for Russia to stop? And so that's the key question. It's really not putting Zelensky to the table, bringing Zelenskyy to the table. It's not our critical minerals. It's not lithium. It's not anything. It's how do we make Putin come to the table and agree to something that's not a complete Ukrainian defeat or capitulation, which is what all of the previous documents that have been floating around the media, that's what they have been. All of the Istanbul talks, any sort of draft of a peace solution, they've all been extremely unfavorable to Ukraine. And we don't want to repeat that scenario going forward.
- [63:51]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, we are certainly going to have reason to revisit this in the weeks to come. I think we're going to see a very eventful few weeks on the Ukraine front, just as we are on the Gaza and Middle east front. But as we're getting close to the end of our time, let us not neglect our third topic entirely. Let us go from the rest of the world to bring question of the world home, but not without an element of the international dynamic here. Because of course, we are talking about our own city of New York City, you know, the Big Apple, where Mayor Eric Adams has been under federal indictment for the last several months precisely because of his special manner of engaging with the outside world in accepting certain types of contributions and engaging other sorts of relationships that raise a number of eyes and eyebrows at the Justice Department under the Biden administration leading to his indictment that now may be going away. Tyler, I know you've been following the story pretty closely. Talk to us a little bit about what's happened the last few days, reactions to it from folks in New York and in the broader community, folk watching this story. What is going on with Eric Adams and how big of a development is this?
- [64:52]
Tyler McBrien
Well, to quote the mayor himself, even Ray Charles can see what's going on, that it is, as you said, a quid pro quo. I mean, it's Eric Adams for the past several months has been making overtures to President Trump. It was, I think, pretty clear to most people that what he was angling for, which is either the dropping of charges, a pardon of some kind. But what happened was that the Justice Department sent a memo to SDNY essentially directing them to drop the charges, these corruption charges against Mayor Adams without prejudice, meaning that I believe that they can bring the charges again later on. And in the memo, which I encourage listeners to read it, it's only two pages, they mention that the Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories in which the case is based, rather that they've determined the dismissal is appropriate because of timing and also a diversion of Mayor Adams attention resources away from the real problems they say facing in New York City, which is illegal immigration and crime and things like that. But the reaction from across the board in New York is that Eric Adams sold out New York City for one person, and that's Eric Adams. I mean, this is obviously just red meat to Mayor Adams, Democratic primary challengers for the upcoming mayoral election. My guess is that Adams made a calculation that he's also sacrificing his reelection, but he's gonna avoid any criminal charges or further indictments. An important point here is that SDNOAC still could bring charges again, which has the added benefit, I think, to the Trump administration of being able to maintain political pressure on Adams to keep him in line. And we're already seeing the fruits of this for the Trump administration. So a local news outlet called the Citi reported that on Monday of this week. So on February 10, there was a big meeting between Eric Adams and top deputies in City hall that he has told people not to criticize Trump publicly. There are also questions of, you know, that he's. He's encouraging city officials to cooperate with ICE agents on. On. On immigration matters. So I think Quid pro Whoa was a pretty. Pretty apt title. Although, you know, everyone saw this coming. I think it's. It's less of a woe as, you know, quid pro eye roll. I don't know how it.
- [67:31]
Scott R. Anderson
But where were you when I was coming up with titles, Tyler? I mean, what I would say that's amazing about this. I mean, because there's this letter that leaked, and this is not something we usually get made public, but a memo from Emile Bove, who's Trump's former personal counsel in the New York trial, I think other trials as well, but particularly the New York criminal trial. Now acting Deputy Attorney General, kind of directing the Southern District of New York, the US Attorney's office there, that's under acting leadership. To walk back this prosecution. As worth noting, that's actually itself a pretty big betrayal of conventional norms. SDNY has traditionally operated pretty independently, even in the first Trump administration. But it does kind of interesting nod to that in a way that I wonder really what they're trying to accomplish with this, although I can come with some guesses. What they specifically say is that the U.S. attorney's office can revisit this case once they have a confirmed nominee. So not the current acting, but confirmed. Right now, they don't think they even have anybody nominated. And it says, but it will only do so following the November 2025 mayoral election, which, if I were Eric Adams would make me very nervous because after that mayoral election, he may not be that useful to the Trump administration anymore if he's not mayor and he loses. And then the question becomes, well, if they're not pursuing this prosecution because he needs time to focus on the election and to help aid immigration enforcement and fight crime, which is what this letter says, which is extraordinary in and of itself, that. Would those bases still stand if SDNY looked at this as like, no. Yeah, we actually agree with our prior conclusion. This guy broke the law, and we should bring prosecution. So I'm not sure there's a zero percent chance that this prosecution doesn't come back. It's crazy. If I were Eric Adams, I'd be kind of nervous about taking this deal. Except it's not even a deal. It's just something that's happening for him. And so I'm not sure really what to make of it.
- [69:16]
Tyler McBrien
Dan Richmond, who's a friend of Lawfare, was quoted in the New York Times, and he's essentially saying that this is. I think the Trump administration could be sending a message beyond Mayor Adams. So I'll just read quickly the sentence Dan Richmond said. It sends its own message about this administration's weaponization of the criminal process. Any official actually prosecuted for corruption has simply not groveled sufficiently to Trump. So, you know, this is. He was pointing out other of Adams allies who the Justice Department did not direct SDNI to drop charges against them. So I think it's also a. Maybe there's an intended chilling effect beyond Adams himself.
- [69:52]
Joel Brunel
I actually just want to jump in as a Chicagoan, as an Illinoisan. Okay. Because, like, there are two pieces of this story that are just fascinating looking from a different major American city, that the Trump administration has the Blagojevich of it all.
- [70:06]
Scott R. Anderson
Is what you're talking about like, oh.
- [70:07]
Tyler McBrien
This is child's play.
- [70:09]
Joel Brunel
Right. Like where, like, you know, Blagojevich, infamously one of the most corrupt politicians. This is our first governor. Four of the five previous governors have ended up in Japan. Right. Like it's a tradition like none other. And so Blagojevich getting his pardon, JB and the state issuing laws saying that if you've received a pardon from the federal government, doesn't mean you can run for re election. So I expect massive legal challenges. Does Blagorjevic want to be the next mayor of Chicago? All of these sort of interesting questions. If he's going to be the ambassador to Serbia, like the pardoning of very publicly seen corrupt officials. You know, he's not like a darling of the Illinois Republican Party here. Right. This isn't like, so there's a real. If he hadn't have been on Celebrity Apprentice, would this have happened? Like, no one knows. Right. Like, I don't mean that flippantly, but like, it's weird and like, it lands really strangely here in Illinois where Republicans make a very big deal about, you know, mannequin and the corrupt Democrats. And then like, Blagojevich has suddenly been pardoned. And it's very odd. Right. That's one the second for me, which, outside of the individual Punch and Judy show of what's happening, the concept of how sanctuary cities are being weaponized, he's out. So Chicago is another sanctuary city. And our mayor, who is a deeply, deeply unpopular figure for various different reasons, is seeing this performance that he's going to give in Congress on March 5 in front of the Government Oversight Committee as his way of trying to restore his credibility. And I'm sure that he will go thermonuclear at that committee. And what does that mean for Illinois and what does that mean for Chicago? Yes, I'm sure that there will be law cases about can you discriminate, can you not? But Chicago is not in great shape fiscally. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. We're on the verge of another's teachers strike, which I think as a CPS parent, the city's parent body will go ballistic if a Chicago teacher union mayor can't figure out how to get the Chicago Teachers Union not to strike under his watch. And so the sort of the Punch and Judy show of people using Trump either as an ally or an enemy to push up their domestic agenda, whereas people just want the city to function like, you know, and all the other bits of this and how that affects a sanctuary city. And, you know, I think there is support that if there are violent criminals that you can remove from the city, you should probably do that. And at the exact same time, no, we don't want ICE going to elementary schools and freaking out children. Like, there is a, there is a median here that is like the normal rational person, seeing as a more rational security can see if someone who is illegally in this country has shot someone, please deport them. I don't, I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. And our police should be able to do that. And I'm pretty sure, at least in the New York one, it says violent criminals can be done. And I'm hoping that the Illinois or the Chicago statute says something similar, that if you're a violent criminal and you can be deported. Let ICE deport you at the exact same time, we don't want enforcement agencies going to schools. Right. Or, like, going around neighborhoods and rounding up grandmothers and everything else. So there is, like, a happy medium that I think most people in this country can agree with. And yet when it comes to Mayor Adams or when it's going to come to Mayor Johnson, which is our fun and games, I think we're going to see, again, all of the actual needs of the community pushed aside for just like a political deathmatch where people take smacks out of each other and, like, how we square. All of that is actually very confusing and difficult as just people are trying to operate their lives and move through it and, like, stand up for their neighbors who are terrified about whether they can go to school or will their schoolmates be deported and all these other sort of difficult, hard questions versus, like, mayors trying to get their jollies off by attacking presidents or not.
- [73:56]
Tyler McBrien
Right. If the Trump administration's track record on immigration since January 20th was any different, you know, I agree that there is. There's a happy medium, but I just don't see ice's record in terms of juicing the numbers, in terms of diverting resources, you know, away from. And I'm not. This is not what you're saying, but diverting resources away from actually finding violent offenders and violent criminals just hasn't materialized. So I think it's just clearly a political stunt and it's part of a. I think the Trump administration would like us to be having this conversation of, you know, we should be deporting violent criminals, but that's just not what they're doing. So.
- [74:35]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, I also think there is an element of overreach here that's worth bearing in mind, because this letter is just so express and absurd on its face. Like it says, expressly, we are dismissing this indictment without any consideration about and any judgment on the determination that he violated the law. They said we're not second guessing any of that. We think he did. We're doing it strictly for policy reasons so that he can run for the race, for the mayor's race, because we think there was a little bit of political machination by the prior U.S. attorney. That's like the only thing that would be a more conventional factor that might enter into some of this. But it's pretty lightly developed. And because he needs to focus on violent crime and immigration, by the way, they throw in a slam on the Biden administration thing. It's a product that prior administration's policies. And they mentioned Victor Boat in a footnote, who has traded away from Brittany Grenier a decade after being convicted as part of a hostage exchange with Russia. All which is to say, if you're that express about what you're doing, that you're just using prosecution, targeting it specifically for these policy reasons that are completely independent of people's guilt and innocence. I'm not sure you don't see judicial pushback or institutional pushback, particularly like for maybe grand juries that begin to look at this.
- [75:41]
Joel Brunel
Scott I actually just want to not push back, but just sort of a note of caution to something Tyler said and something you just said. Scott it's very easy. I do this all the time in my world and everything else that we lose the wood from the trees. And I think one of the truly unique things that President Trump does very well is that he just cuts through to the very point. Tyler I don't hear Democrats pushing back, saying, well, ICE is moving money away from violent criminals to do these other things. They're just like, we don't want ice. Right. That's sort of the message that sort of resonates. Even if that's not true. That's the message that sort of cut through. And Scott, also to your point, of course, this is an absurd way to use the criminal justice system. I mean, objectively, it's bananas. And yet by putting that he wants him to focus on violent criminals, whether the statistics bear out or not, the public conversation about crime or this stuff, he's managed to take the megaphone in so many ways. And there might be institutional pushback, but as long as that's not political pushback or like in any way, public societal pushback, I think what happens is that people think there's a win, but actually there's a loss. And I go back and really think about going back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and I look at the trajectory that's happened in Israel, and you can also look in other countries where populist, sometimes authoritarian, sometimes fully authoritarian sort of take over. There's this feeling like we're going to put the institution in between the populism and the implementation of populist policy. And we think that's going to lead to a win. And what that actually does is it just decimates the institution as an elite driven function. It's something that Trump's very good at. I think that as these conversations move forward and it's very easy when it's like, oh, he's pardoning a corrupt politician, blah, blah, blah, you can clearly see it. But I think what we're seeing again and again, this desire that because there's no actual populist pushback and we're relying on elite institutions to do it, that what happens is that it basically it seems like it's the institutions against the will of the people. And I don't know when Democrats are going to pull themselves off the floor and start actually doing something effective. But my worry is if it's always just, you've got to read the footnotes. No one's reading the footnotes. And I really worry about that as a long term strategy. We are three weeks in. Okay, Three weeks in. And like it feels like the world's on fire and no one's talking back and finding that ability, whether it comes to sanctuary cities or corrupt politicians, like, why isn't the talking point. He keeps pardoning corrupt politicians, like, why isn't it that that's the thing. But instead it sort of gets moved around. So I just worry very deeply about a lot of the elite national security conversations come about institutional preservation and realistically I worry that that will actually ultimately undermine them in the long run. And I worry about that on a daily basis and I think about in my own stuff about how you actually have that conversation.
- [78:32]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, just one small push back to your pushback. The other message of the Democrats that I'm hearing also is that we ice way harder. The Biden administration deported record numbers of violent criminals. We're actually the ones who are hard on immigration. So I think also one of the problems of the Democrats though is to your point and my point is it's just convoluted.
- [78:53]
Joel Brunel
I don't even know.
- [78:53]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, it's self contradictory, self defeating.
- [78:56]
Joel Brunel
Like if we can't figure it out and we kind of watch it pretty quick, closely, I don't know how non pretty close people are supposed to figure it out.
- [79:03]
Scott R. Anderson
I buy this to a certain extent, but I also think three weeks in is not the political cycle on which pushback happens or narratives are built. And it's a little premature. Determine like Democrats need to figure out a strategy and people oppose this. Republicans as well who oppose these things need to figure out a strategy. You are beginning to maybe see people begin to do it and then they need to have media and attention opportunities and those are things that don't grow on trees that they have to find opportunities to generate.
- [79:30]
Joel Brunel
It feels like he's been president since election day and there's lots of reasons for that in terms of how the transition period was handled. And everything else. And if, if it's only three weeks in, that you're only now thinking about what a rapid response unit would look like from House Democrats or something else. I say this as not an analyst of Israel, Palestine or a practitioner in foreign policy, but just like a random American who lives in a large city in Illinois and it doesn't feel like he's been president for three weeks. It feels like he's been president for quite a long time. And you're right, three weeks in from election Day you can expect that. But three weeks in from Inauguration Day, one might expect that you kind of figured out what he was going to do and maybe there could be some pushback. And I just worry that on all of it we just say institutions, institutions, institutions. And I understand why, and I understand that's, that's a good place. But if we look in other places where the institutions corroded to the point of failure, it's because people said institutions, institutions, institutions. And that's that, that's their aim, that's the trap, that's what they want. And I just worry on a long term provision that this is a diminishing return on investment. And that terrifies me as someone who likes our institutions in America though do believe that they haven't been delivering the American promise in the same way that I think a lot of people wanted to.
- [80:49]
Scott R. Anderson
Your institutions only do your work for you if you actually use them. That's my point on that. So if you are going to ignore and say the political narrative is all that matters, which is a strong trend that people are looking for, looking for leadership, you're missing, I think that is missing the forest through the trees. Now. Institutions can't stand on their own. I totally agree. You need to have political narrative. You need to win elections, you need to do a million other things. But institutions are where these battles are going to be fought for the next 18 months until the election cycle catches up. And so you have to emphasize and think about these things. And look, when people are thinking about where do I put money, where do I do different resources, where do I put the emphasis? I think it's the people fighting it through the institutions. That is where they're going to have the impact. Right now you can give all the money you want to some ephemeral political campaign, but we just don't know what the terrain is right now. So I don't know. I think you got to accept institutions and politics are in conversation with each other. One can't stand without the other. But discounting I think you've got to see the institutional fight as being a big part of the calculus here, and particularly at this particular moment, the most important one, not least because it's how you slow things and force things to draw out the contrast with the law that is going to be part of the political response.
- [81:55]
Joel Brunel
I think my main point on this, that I don't disagree with you at all, Scott, like, genuinely like I am like the lease. I'm like constantly like working systems and stuff. I think my main point is this. There is a cost to doing it that way. I think that's my main point. And we should be conscious of that cost, of the reputational damage it does to institutions. And genuinely, I don't know the answer of how you mitigate that cost, but I hope some smart people are thinking about how we mitigate that cost, because if we don't, we can see in other countries what's happened. And I don't think we should be assuming that we're immune from that potential downside. So I don't disagree. I think institutions, of course, where the fight back is right now and to slow it down and all the other things, and you can't just be like we're fighting for the midterms or we're fighting for this special election and everything else. Fully agree. But how do we mitigate the costs? Because they are targeting things that are supposed to be beyond politics and have made them essentially political. And by doing that, you tarnish them. And so how do we. It's not like our culture where it can shift and change and do other things once our institutions are tarnished and diminished, which is part of that goal. By throwing them into the middle of the fight, they're achieving their goal. So I don't, I don't know the answer to the jiu jitsu move, but we're going to have to try and figure it out collectively because I don't know what happens if we don't.
- [83:10]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, we could talk about this for a long time, but we are, we are past our time here on rational securities. We'll have to end our conversation there. This, of course, would not be rational security if we did not leave you some object lessons to put ponder over in the week to come. Tyler Nasty. I have a feeling I know what one of your object lessons, if not both of your object lessons, might be. Does either of you want to take the lead on an exciting development we have coming from the lawfare circles in the next few weeks?
- [83:33]
Tyler McBrien
We can do it together. Can we have A shared object lesson.
- [83:36]
Scott R. Anderson
I think that's allowed if you're always up for it. If you want to have an independent one, I'll let that happen too.
- [83:40]
Tyler McBrien
Nastya, take it away.
- [83:42]
Anastasia Lapetina
Okay, so for almost a year, Tyler and I and our colleague Max Johnson from Goat Rodeo, we have all been working very hard on creating a narrative podcast about the relationship between Ukraine and the US the history of the relationship from the 90s to the present day. A lot of stuff to cover and the trailer was just released yesterday. The show is called Escalation, the favorite word for Ukrainians, and the actual show will start to be released on February 24, which is the third year anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. So look out for that. It's super exciting. The trailer is sick. I highly encourage everyone to listen and the show is amazing, if I may say so myself. I'm very proud of us. It's a lot of work and. Yeah, yeah.
- [84:36]
Tyler McBrien
And I'll just say you can check out the trailer on Lawfair's YouTube channel. There's a cool visualizer as well with it. And the feed will be the Law Fair Presents podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. So keep an eye out and we'll be. Nastya and I are going to go on something of a roadshow, so keep an eye out for events and panels and other things like that. So we're super excited. It's a lot of work, a lot in the making and it's almost here.
- [85:02]
Scott R. Anderson
I've got to listen to sneak peeks of a few of the episodes. It is really a phenomenal product. Great work. If you guys listeners have not listened to some of our prior podcasts, Tattooed our horn, which Nasty I wasn't involved in, but this project has benefited immensely from her. We've done a lot of these podcasts in the past. They're some of our favorite products we produce here. Absolutely phenomenal stuff and this one is a step above even our prior work. So if you liked Allies, if you liked the report, if you liked our other long form podcasts, do not miss Escalation coming in the next few weeks and we'll have more information on that here on the podcast feed and other places@lawfirmedia.org in the weeks to come, stay tuned. Including a live launch event in D.C. that I think folks may be able to attend.
- [85:41]
Anastasia Lapetina
It's going to be at 10am 10 in the morning on February 24, the Monday at Brookings, Brookings Institution in D.C. and we'll have more events in D.C. and in New York and potentially other places as well.
- [85:54]
Scott R. Anderson
Awesome. So keep an eye out on lawfarmedia.org and our social media for more information on those events. For my object lesson this week, I will take it to a little more personal place. I read something I thought was very touching, which is a nice relief to find something and very interesting, I should say, these days when you're so obsessed with things happening in the news that are generally pretty awful. This was a really, actually touching, interesting story about family dynamics and how they have can affect the real changes in the world and changes people's perception of the worldview. It's called How My Dad Reconciled His God and His Gay Son by Timothy White. It's one of New York Times really phenomenal kind of mixed social media piece, at least when presented online at the Think it's in print as well. Really, really interesting piece where the author's father, who is a pastor and it was kind of a committed journaler, I should say, and so kept journals about his experience reconciling his religious views with his son's sexuality over the course of several years as really touching portrait. I think even if you're not somebody who is LGBT or has LGBT people in your family, it's like a really touching portrait for also parenthood and the significance of family relationships. And really, really just phenomenal portrait and really insightful and really touching on a million different levels and I thought was really, really something. I got a lot of reading, so encourage people to check that out. Joel, as our newest attendee here at Rational Security, you get to bring us home. What do you have for us this week?
- [87:18]
Joel Brunel
You know, I'll go back to our earlier conversation about the super bowl and say, you know, Jalen Hurts is a fascinating guy, but something he said that stuck with me when he said it a few years ago was that he said that I had a purpose before everyone has an opinion. And I think that as we work on these Sophian tasks, whether it's Israeli Palestinian or Israeli Arab peace or Ukrainian Russia work or how do we defend our institutions, I think it's important to remember that before everyone has opinions on what we're doing, we had a purpose first. And that our purpose can't be dependent on other people's opinions. And I think that Jalen Hurts, proving the doubters wrong about what he managed to do this week in New Orleans in the Superdome in a remarkable way should be an inspiration for all of us who have passion and purpose before other people had opinions.
- [88:07]
Scott R. Anderson
And that's not even counting Kendrick's, you know, spiking the ball over Drake. So you know it's victories all around for unexpected combatants at this year's Super Bowl. Well, with that, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Remember, Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org for our show page with links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on lawfair's other phenomenal podcast series, including Escalation and Coming soon to a podcatcher near you. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening. And be sure to sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Noam Osband of Goat Rodeo and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Tyler, Nastya and Joel, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.
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Joel Brunel
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