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- [00:00]
A
BetterHelp online therapy bought this 30 second ad to remind you right now, wherever you are, to unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders, take a deep breath in and out. Feels better, right? That's 15 seconds of self care. Imagine what you could do with more. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of therapy. No pressure, just help. But for now, just relax.
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B
I've gotten this very strange gadget that has become a really integral part of my evening routine that I may recommend as an object lesson. Maybe today, maybe some future episode, I don't know. That is essentially this like shoulder bearing harness book light that extremely over the top. It's not portable in the least, but it gives you several lights out. So when you're reading picture books to kids, it's very convenient. But it very much looks like something that Ripley would use to explore a derelict spaceship at some point, looking for the carcasses of her former crewmates or something like that. It's got this kind of gritty, 1980s James Cameron style sci fi sort of vibe. But it's become this kind of an affectionate tool of our bedtime routine that I recommend. So I don't know. That's for the other parents in the crowd, I think. Mike, that's just you. But something to think about if you do a lot of late night reading or for Tyler, Ari, if you guys are trying to read late at night around your partner, this is when you really get the full spectrum light illumination, which I really appreciate.
- [01:42]
C
I was gonna say I have a nightlight book reading nightlight too. It's just my bedside lamp. Usually my partner's a very heavy sleeper and so I, I just, just turn on the lamp.
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B
Oh, the luxury of the days. That is, that is, that is a phase where the days where my wife would pretend to be comfortable with me reading by my bedside table while she was sleeping are long gone, my friend. The relationship where the odyssey comes forward and nobody likes that, that's the true.
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C
End of the honeymoon phase.
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D
I'm happy to hear you mention Ripley, actually, because the first stuffed animal which I ever bought for my relatively newborn son was about an 18 inch plushie of the Xenomorph from Alien.
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B
My kids, my son, we got a visit to, I want to say the San Diego Zoo, maybe some other zoo or aquarium, got him a very cool legitimately plushie of a fairly large octopus. But it's a very realistic octopus right down to having like a plushy little beak kind of underneath on the underside. If you Will. And so my daughter now is too, because my son's a little too old for. Just takes it and loves to just take it and just slam it against her face like the tentacles, like, going around. And I'm like, this is kind of a terrifying vision. I'm not sure I'm supposed to feel about this, but you enjoy it. So I think we're just going to ride with this, and it's okay.
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E
It sounds like a Halloween toy that Mike would have in his. In his house. It sounds sort of terrifying.
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B
Well, Mike would spring that on his children. That's the difference here. My daughter's doing it to herself.
- [03:03]
C
I was going to say, Scott, I don't want to tell you how to raise your own kids, but I think you may be teaching the wrong lessons of how to approach an octopus in the wild.
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D
If you scare them when they're young, they become inoculated.
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B
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Rational Security. I am your host, Scott R. Andersen. Thrilled to be back with you for another episode of the podcast. We invite members of the lawfare team to join me as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. And oh, boy, what a week it has been. I think we are in one of those moments where every week we have way more stories than we actually have time to talk about. This week, certainly that is how it felt. But we have a couple of big stories that are on the front page of the newspapers as we speak. We want to spend some time on Today, so let's not waste any time. Let's get right into it with my three guests. Thrilled to be joined this week once again by Lawfare's executive editor, Tyler McBrien. Thank you for coming back on the.
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C
Podcast and thank you for promoting me.
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B
From there you go, Managing editor. I'm sorry, I've never understood why managing an executive, which one is really who is who managing and who is executiveizing? No one. No. Takes backseats. That's right. Natalie, you're out. Tyler, you're in. Apologies. Also thrilled. Exactly. Also thrilled to be joined once again by lawfare Senior editor. I think that is their proper aging and status in terms of ranking, you're not the most or least senior. You're just senior editor Michael Feinberg. Mike, thank you for coming back on the podcast as well.
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D
Thanks for having me again.
- [04:32]
B
And joining us as well is lawfare's public service fellow, one of lawfare's public service fellows, Ari Tapatabai. Ari, thank you for coming back on the podcast for your third or fourth appearance now. I think you've become a little bit of a regular character, so we're thrilled to have you back on who's Counting?
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E
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [04:46]
B
I keep careful count everywhere and I post it on a bulletin board, as you know, in the common area for competition purposes, just as I do with my children at home. With all that said, let us get into the stories because it really has been a big week full of really big stories. Topic one for this week Between Iraq and a hard place, Iran is engaged in perhaps its most serious bout of domestic unrest in a decade, perhaps several decades, spurred on by a failing economy and the seeming political weakness of the regime after its devastating military conflict with Israel and the United States this past summer. But the regime has struck back, viciously, cutting off global media and communications access to the country, even has engaged in what appears to be, from the reports, still able to get out of the country a truly vicious and violent campaign of repression that may have already led to as many between 2000 and 12,000 fatalities. We don't 100% know at this point, and that has led, among other things, to threats from the Trump administration that it may in fact intervene militarily against the regime. Though what form that might take or could take that be productive is a big open question no one has an answer to quite yet. What should we be making of this development? What does it mean for the future of Iran? And what role might the United States play in that future? Topic 2 A Slippery Slope ICE's increasingly provocative immigration enforcement actions came to a violent head last week in Minneapolis when ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed driver impossible protest participant Renee Good. While the White House has sought to frame Good as a, quote, unquote, domestic terrorist who threatened Ross, videos of the incident instead suggested her conduct did not, probably did not come up to the standard normally required for the use of lethal force in most cases, or certainly raises very serious questions in that regard. Nonetheless, the FBI is now reportedly investigating Good's widow for ties to activist groups, an effort that led several career prosecutors to quit this past week over objections to the investigation. How effective are the administration's attempts to shape the truth around this truly horrific incident likely to prove? And what will it mean for the trajectory of the administration's very aggressive, some might even say draconian immigration enforcement policies? Topic 3 Green with Envy Diplomatic representatives from Denmark and Greenland are meeting with senior administration officials as we record, to discuss a way forward on Greenland, the self governing and all but independent Danish territory that President Trump has openly coveted since returning to office, up to and including the threat of military force to acquire it. How serious should the world take these threats? And where is the competition over Greenland likely to lead, particularly for the relationship between the United States and its closest European allies in NATO? For our first topic, Ari, I want to turn to you to get us started. I know you've been following this closely. You had a really, really useful conversation on Lawford Daily, I think, two days ago, probably you recorded it. Now, I think it came out yesterday with Richard Nephew, who used to work aspects of Iran policy during prior administrations. But things have really changed on the ground already just since you recorded it. The situation has amplified, at least by some tellings, but we don't 100% know because it is such spotty access to information coming from within the country. Talk to us about what we do know about what's happening there, what sense we can make of the snippets of information in terms of fitting up broader patterns and how this fits into what has become a periodic cycle is not quite right. But a periodically recurring pattern of unrest in Iran really dating back all the way to the 2000s with the kind of green revolution earlier than that even, but at least that far. And what maybe makes this fit in that pattern and what ways it may be different?
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E
Yeah. So just by way of a bit of background, and you alluded to some of this in your topper, the protests really started at the end of December. The kind of proximate reasons why the drivers behind the protest this time around, because they've changed in the different cycles that you just described, had really a lot to do with inflation and the collapse of the currency in Iran. And somewhat unusually, the protests actually started in the bazaar. That's the kind of like the heart of the merchant class, of the economic life of Iran. And it's noteworthy that this is a faction within the country and a class that is typically part of and actually like a backbone of the regime. And so the fact that the protests started there, I think, are both noteworthy and probably a reason why the regime is feeling this pressure more so than it did, for example, in 2022 when the last round of significant protests occurred. And that had more to do with women's rights and civil rights and, and were kind of, you know, more focused in the urban areas. A lot of younger folks. This was a little different. And so within now, less than three weeks, I guess, we've seen the protests spread out to the majority of Iran's 31 provinces. They have spread out outside of as Far as we know, urban areas, that's generally a noteworthy thing when these types of protests occur. And as you said, the death toll has gone up really significantly, really drastically and in ways that we haven't seen in a really, really long time. Even going back to the green movement in 2009, which is often seen as kind of this benchmark for the types of widespread protests in Iran. So just to give folks some idea of what that looks like, in 2009, the regime killed again, reports change the numbers, But I think 100 ish individuals, and that at the time was considered really significant. Now we're talking, as you said, 2,000 to 12,000 are numbers that are being floated around and the number keeps going up. When I recorded my podcast with Richard, that was last Thursday, we were looking at numbers that were around 500. By Monday morning, I was recording a topper to update, folks. And it was at 6:50 and the morning after on Tuesday morning, the Internet started to come back up and I'll talk about that in a second as well. And we were looking at 2000 plus deaths. Now, I should also add a few other things, which is that this is not a regime that has typically been shy about killing people, torturing, arresting, rounding up, etc. But the fact that it's willing to go up to this level of violence, of massacre, and this quickly really indicates to me that they are feeling the pressure. And I want to talk about why they're feeling this pressure in a second as well. So just to kind of wrap up on this, we're seeing, I think the latest reporting I saw has placed the number of arrests at around 20,000. There is now reports that there are forced confessions taking place that they're airing that the regime is airing just to deter people from going and partaking in the protests. And there are reports that there are going to be summary executions that are going to take place again as a deterrent to protesters to send a signal. As you noted, President Trump has been responding to some of these developments and has said, listen, Iran, if you take some of these actions, we're going to be responding and we can talk about what that might look like later on. But the other thing that I wanted to kind of quickly point out is that, you know, Iran again has had a history of shutting down the Internet over the past sort of few cycles of protests just so that, you know, it can disrupt the flow of information into the country and hopefully from their perspective, deter people from coming out and also out of the country so that, you know, people don't know how many people are being killed, how many people might be arrested, etc. But the extent and the length of this shutdown was actually more than what we had seen previously. And it seemed like, at least earlier this week, the Internet was coming back up. It seems like it may be down again. So they're really trying to ensure that they can get control over the situation again and end the protest. And it seems like it's not going super well for the regime. And then the other thing I wanted to kind of quickly touch on is why the regime is feeling this pressure. And this is going to go to answering your question, question about, you know, how is this different or similar to previous rounds of protests that we've seen? To me, this is a little different. It's actually a lot different. And the reason I say this is that I do think that the regime is in a very different place than it was even in 2022, certainly in 2019 and the first Trump administration, where there were other economic protests that took place. And part of that is internal. I kind of laid out some of the reasons why that's the case, why these protests are different in themselves, but the other set reasons are external. You know, this is a regime that is feeling already pretty vulnerable, that is seeing the pressure from the United States, from Israel. It is at its weakest since probably the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s. You know, Israel having degraded the network of proxies that Iran has in the region, Lebanese Hezbollah chief among them. The Assad regime is no longer. You had, you know, the strikes that we conducted in Iran over the summer on Iran's nuclear, key nuclear facilities. And so this is a regime that feeling the pressure externally as well. And I think it's that coupled with President Trump's pretty strong kind of posture on this very strong language. I think it's the strongest language we've seen from a president of the United States in a really long time when protests have happened in Iran and when the crackdown has occurred. And he's gone as far as saying, listen, we're going to stop negotiating with Iran on all matters until and unless Iran is willing to stop what it's doing, to crack down on protests, which I think is actually the right thing to do. And so, you know, I think they're increasingly feeling that pressure. The fact that they reached out reportedly to the United States saying, we're happy to negotiate now. And the US Said, no, we're not going to do that until you stop killing people, I think, is also adding that that extra pressure. So all of this to say from the previous rounds of protests that we've seen over the past couple of decades, I think this is a bit more intense and a bit more concerning from the regime's perspective than what we've seen before.
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B
Yeah. Mike, I know you've been looking a little bit at the way the administration has been messaging around these developments. Talk to us a little bit about what you've seen and what it's kind of hinting at, the kind of ranges that the United States may take and might try and coordinate with allies on. Although, frankly, I have seen less discussion of that at this point. Yeah.
- [15:11]
D
So I've actually been thinking about this in larger terms about sort of historical protests of a similar nature that the US has chosen either to opine on or to sit out. And when I heard that President Trump made his statements encouraging the protesters, the first thing I thought of, as well as a number of my friends who are also alumni from the intelligence community raised in our discussions, was this is very reminiscent of the pronouncements from the White House in 1956 to the Hungarians rising up against the Soviet rulers. And the protesters in that case were very inspired and sort of doubled down, not only on any type of civil disobedience, but also on protests that would more sort of be grouped under the heading of direct action or conflict. And what we eventually saw, or what people who were alive at the time eventually saw, was that while Eisenhower was very encouraging of the protests tests in order to sort of destabilize the Soviet Union on the world stage, when it came to the moment where the Hungarians who were rising up actually needed some sort of assistance. And I'm not talking simply about an invasion or airstrikes. I'm talking about even just sort of COVID low key logistical support from the intelligence community. He balked, and they all got killed. Now, I am suspicious that President Trump is going to follow through with any actual assistance if these protests continue and the Iranian government doubles down. And I fear we could be seeing.
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A
A.
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D
Very unfortunate historical echo in what happened a long time ago. What I think was a better model of the US Confronting a similar situation was our response to Tiananmen Square, where we were notably silent, probably too silent, according to most critics. But there was a concerted effort behind the scenes to shelter and help exfiltrate those who were involved in the protests and needed to escape and find asylum. There's probably a healthy middle ground where we can look to the practices of the past, deploy the proper amount of rhetoric, but still reserve most of our fire for actually doing tactile actions which help the protesters we support. But I fear we are not in a place where the administration is going to be cognizant or paying attention to the most relevant historical analogies.
- [18:09]
B
Yeah, it's a really, really difficult situation. I mean, that is where I come away from this, just as I came away for the last few rounds. We've dealt with this situation in Iran and comparable situations in other contexts. And Iran's, I think, in a lot of ways is even a harder case because Iran is a prior state. Iran doesn't have the sort of global connections that other states do that could provide points of leverage. And also Iran is a large kind of patronage structure. The current regime has lots of centers of gravity, lots of independent power centers, some which are very heavily armed, some which have very real material power, particularly within the IRGC and different elements of the IRGC and security apparatus. At least as I understand it, that you aren't negotiating with just one figurehead. You might leave. We remember, as we now know, in the Venezuela context, before the US intervention there, there was an effort to say, Maduro, just take a gilded exile, leave for Turkey. Let us work with your other people who are in your regime, we think will be more pliable, and then you can ride out from this. I don't think you can really do that with Iran or it's not very plausible they would accept because a the figureh, I think, would lose so much ideological power. The regime is so ideologically centered on a particular figure and authority structure that would be hard to accept even if they did. You then have all these other regime elements that are actually, in a lot of ways, some of the more problematic actors within the country driving a lot of problematic elements of policy, of the regional posture. So how do you handle that? And I understand the temptation to say, well, maybe this is a place where anything from COVID action to airstrikes can help. But on the flip side, you also don't know what comes next in the scenario. And there's lots of scenarios where it could be something not any better or even much worse, particularly if it's complete chaos. Remember, Iran is a very centrally located country with a large population, very diverse population, diverse communities with lots of inroads to other parts of the region. It's, I think, your classic tinderbox case. If things really, really suddenly destabilize, there's Ari. Does that make sense to you? I think you spent more time watching Iran probably than I have. Other folks have what is your sense about what the factors are leading to regime stability and instability there? I'd particularly be curious, frankly, what we're hearing from the Europeans. The Europeans are one community of actors close to the United States historically. A little complicated relationship now, but certainly aligned in a lot of ways where they do have a real economic relationship with Iran. And it seems to me that they've been pretty quiet and slow to ratchet up a pressure on this on the assumption that they can free ride on the Trump administration, which has been much more ahead of them. I suspect that's part of it. This is a real moment where they could actually have some influential role, at least in terms of putting pressure on, at least economic pressure points for the regime, although who knows if it'll go anywhere. Where do you see all this headed?
- [20:58]
E
Yeah, I mean, the Europeans, and this has been a common criticism of them within US Policy circles, have always been a little shy about condemning what's been going on in Iran. Right. And yeah, I think part of it in this case and in this context, Texas, that the Trump administration has been so forward leaning that I think they're kind of taking a backseat to watch and see what happens next. I've seen some statements coming out of European capitals and Brussels stating that they would be looking into kind of, you know, designations and sanctions. And that's something that, you know, is easy for the Trump administration to support. Actually we can do. And Mike can talk about this more as well, a lot of intel sharing to kind of support building sanctions packages against irgc, internal security forces and others who are conducting a lot of this crackdown and other regime elites. But I do think that there is, given everything else that is going on, and we'll talk about one of those things in a second Greenland and kind of the general tensions and the relationship, the Europeans might be trying to figure out where to place their attention, where to go with the US where to go against the US and conduct this balancing act. The other thing is, I think part of it is also that there is so little information that is coming out, it is really hard to know exactly where is going on on the ground. What we do know is that there's a massacre going on of people protesting. But it's really hard to know watching from outside how long these protests might go on for, whether or not there might be a viable leader who can lead a movement, not just a series of protests down the line. And you know, those two things are really key to be able to see a transition of power. Right. Like, and this has been generally over the course of the past cycles of protest. This, these two factors have really been the key factors. Why we haven't seen a transitional power or regime collapse is that you typically haven't had a viable leader who's emerged. Of course, a viable leader doesn't emerge until they emerge. So, you know, that can always happen. And the second is that in the absence of a leader like that, why would people keep putting themselves out there and getting killed if the alternative is to just go back to status quoante? So I think part of it is also people are just waiting to see abroad, so in Europe, elsewhere, what is going to happen, how these protests might be different from what we've seen before and to calibrate their, their actions accordingly.
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C
Scott, you mentioned the tinderbox aspect both inside and out. And I wonder if you've seen this very recent Reuters reporting, which is slim on detail, that armed Kurdish groups have sought to cross into Iran from Iraq. I think according to a senior Iranian official who spoke with Reuters, which I think really speaks to the possibility of regional instability and should the regime fall. So I'm curious, or anyone's take really on these contingencies or these possible outcomes for Iran's neighbors as well, should there be a fall of the regime?
- [23:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, I would invite Mike and Ari to weigh in on this as well. My sense has always been that Iran, because it has a very diverse ethnic landscape, historical landscape, set of cultural ties, like so many states in the Middle east, has this element of kind of artificial borders that have emerged, not quite the same vehicle as other parts of the Middle east, but nonetheless a degree of artificiality that's been imposed. In this case, you had kind of like the revolutionary ideological superstructure that came in and before that kind of the nationalist kind of superstructure in the prior regime, that kind of was an overlay on those identities, but those identities are still very much there. I mean, you had elements, particularly with the Kurdish identity. There's a very big Kurdish population in Iran. You had Kurdish opposition movements engaging in violence against the regime. I think until the 2000 up to around 2010. 2011 is the last time I remember hearing about it. My recollection is that they struck a kind of detente with the regime and kind of shifted their focus to supporting Kurdish nationalism in other places. And the Kurdish population, while there is a unified kind of sense of Kurdish identity, very much culturally, politically, it's always been kind of fractured between different sub national groups, sometimes cooperate, sometimes compete with each other very tensely. Some have had in Iraq, including relationships with Iran that have been warmer than others at different points, meaning, like the Iranian regime. So it's a really complicated picture, but I think the key point is that if you really lose the statewide governing infrastructure, a lot of states in the region, I strongly suspect, are going to be concerned about what exactly does this mean, where does this go next? Particularly because you do have all these centers of gravity, like the irgc, like other elements in the regime, where they have real military power. Debate. And then are we looking at a situation that looks a lot like Iraq in the worst days of post 2003, 2004, except there you had US forces still occupying the place and UK force and other forces. Right. It doesn't seem like you're going to get that this time. I don't think anybody wants to take that role. And while those missions were flawed in lots of regards, they did provide some degree of stability and infrastructural capacity to the nascent and emergent. And then at a point initially the Coalition Provisional Authority, then the kind of Iraqi transitional government that came out of that. You know, it's a really, really hard scenario, and there's no easy way out. I see risks on all sides. What I think is most surprising about this, though, is that, like, this really does seem to be a shift in perspective from the Trump administration, because we have to remind over the summer, what do we see happen when they join the ongoing Israeli military operation against the Iranians, where the Israelis seem to be hitting all these targets across Iran, increasingly getting deeper into their governing infrastructure, taking a lot of steps that a lot of people were saying this is teetering closer, close to regime collapse. And the Trump administration intervened, hit the nuclear program, and then immediately said, hey, by the way, we've hit the nuclear program. Now, Israel, it's time to stop the campaign. And the military campaign more or less wound up within 48 or 72 hours. Right. I've taken that. I'm not sure I'm right about this, but this is how I've interpreted it. I interpret that to be a deliberate move by the Trump administration because they were worried about what comes next if the Israelis fully do push the regime to regime collapse and that we know their Middle east policy is heavily influenced by communications with the Gulf states. I think that's a posture many of the Gulf states are likely to reflect. I think Israel, other than Israel, I think most states in the region have reservations about that. And so it's interesting now, that line's not really there, but maybe because those concerns are still there underneath. But we're stuck in a situation where frankly, President Trump said something a few days ago where he said if you keep killing civilians, I'm going to hit you. And now he feels like, especially because they've been so viciously critical of the Obama administration over failing to enforce red lines, that they have to do something just to maintain credit ability to enforce a red line. But where does that lead? Is this going to be a useful step? I have trouble seeing how airstrikes are something that's really going to make a huge difference in this movement. Maybe it can further weaken elements of the regime. Maybe there's even arguments for that. If it means weakening the IRGC versus other elements, I'm open to that possibility. There are legal questions about whether this compliant with international law, domestic law, et cetera. But at least the policy perspective, I'm willing to entertain that. But it's just striked me as a really difficult calculus. I just don't know.
- [28:10]
E
No, and I think the, the, then the next question too is, you know, to your point, airstrikes. Okay. I think there is the Venezuela model that, you know, they, the administration could be contemplating. Right. Which would be essentially go in, take out the Supreme Leader. That obviously is a, is a huge step and it would still kind of leave elements of the regime. And Scott, I think you did a good job describing the challenges that would come with that and whether that would actually take care of the entire problem. There is kind of like a lesser version of that where you're going after IRGC nodes, command and control nodes within the internal security, the besieged militias, and really doing a lot to see the degradation of the kind of the capabilities that those forces have to crack down on the regime. And then the kind of next step from that is undertaking a bunch of irregular warfare type things that kind of allow the protest to continue. That again are aimed at making sure that the regime can't actually conduct the crackdown at the scale that it's, it's inclined to do. Unclear right now from my perspective where the administration might be going, but I don't know. What other options do you guys see if the administration is actually inclined to go in militarily or take something, you know, kind of do something that we haven't done before because, you know, again, in previous administrations were mostly focused on kind of sanctions packages, on public statements, working with allies and partners, which seems to be on a bit of a backseat here, to condemn what's going on and so on and so forth. And so if the administration is Trying to do something more than that. Yeah. What are the options?
- [29:49]
C
You mentioned the Venezuela model. And Scott, you mentioned relative restraint from the Trump administration in the summer with the last round of strikes. But I think the Venezuela model could very well have emboldened Trump to try to achieve what he thinks was the outcome in Iran as well. And I also will say it's, you know, compared to the Venezuela operation, you probably have a lot more support for something like that in Iran among more centrists, among the traditional neocon types who were came out very hard against Venezuela, don't seem to have the same problems with an Iran strike. I'm speaking very generally here, but we always speak about how other leaders are emboldened by, you know, Trump would be emboldened. Should he take Ukraine to then keep going. I think Trump is the same way. He would be. He's emboldened by what he, he sees as the success of a Venezuela strike. And I wouldn't be surprised. I will also say I want to throw in there was one statement from Carolyn Levitt, I believe maybe around January 12th or 13th, this is in ABC News where she did mention that diplomacy is always the first option for the President. But then she immediately says at the same time the president has shown he's unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary, which very conspicuous pronoun there, I would say. But I was just basically fleshing out that one option. I don't know what other options they're considering.
- [31:13]
E
And Tyler, I think your point about the Maduro, whatever you want to call it, action essentially emboldening the president, I think is right. I would also add that the strikes over the summer on Iran's nuclear facility factor in, because part of it is that and the reason no other president had done that, even though I think every president for at least 25 years had maybe contemplated military action against Iran's nuclear infrastructure, was that there were real concerns about ripple effects, second and third order effects, including retaliation by the regime. And the strikes went pretty smoothly from an operational perspective. There was no real, I mean, yes, Iran hit at kind of like buildings that we have in the region. There were no casualties as far as we know. And so I think given everything that we thought might happen that seemed like it, it went fairly well for the President. I'm not saying that strategically achieved the effects that he wanted to or that it was wise policy, but I, I think that is probably also factoring into his calculation that, hey, all these people were warning me that there will be all these, you know, that these strikes would have all these side effects and reactions and I didn't see any of that. So why wouldn't I just go ahead and do it again in a run?
- [32:34]
D
So I would actually push back against this line of analysis we're proposing wherein Venezuela emboldens the President simply because there's a real key difference between the two situations, which is that the actions in Venezuela, putting aside the legality or morality or wisdom, had a very defined objective. It was an operation that was very limited in scale, scope. And those are the sort of missions, those are the sort of operations with which the Joint Chiefs, for example, is likely to sign off on and support simply because, you know, the clarity of the goal means that you could have narrowly tailored means to get there. We're not talking about going into one building and whisking away one or two people. We're talking potentially about destabilizing even more what has for the past 50 years or so been a real tinderbox with respect to some of our other national interests. So I'd be reluctant to assume that the people who were providing sucker to a desire to go into Venezuela would do the same thing with respect to Iran. But, but I want to push back even more against sort of the underlying premise of how we're approaching the whole discussion, which is we're trying to apply some sort of almost like 1950s Kremlinology to the present day American administration where we look at comments and who's in a relative position of power within. I was going to say the West Wing at this point, I guess now it's the only wing, but I think there's an element of, if we're being polite, we could call it spontaneity or improv. If we're being impolite, it is speaking before thinking out the second and third order consequences of our statements. I'm just really reluctant to attribute motivation or do any sort of forecasting based on what could have very well have been an off the cuff comment about the President's visceral reaction to events in Iran.
- [34:53]
B
Yeah, I don't disagree with that. The one thing I will say is that there are reports the last few hours, I think since this morning, that personnel are being told to evacuate Al Udeid Air base in Qatar. That is a place that there's always a risk, a where service members have families and much more vulnerable targets than other places in the region and where you might expect Iranian potential retribution in the events of attacks. I believe something similar happened before the strikes over the summer, I would look at Embassy Baghdad to see what happens there. I would look at other regional U.S. military presences, potentially Israel also, to see to what extent they are preparing for some sort of volley, as they will probably come under target for this, like they did during the conflict over the summer. I think it does seem like the administration very well may be planning something, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens. What it looks like, if I had to put my guess on it, is that a motivation primarily is to do something, and as the administration is feeling emboldened simply by the success of its relative military ventures, to be willing to do something. I don't think it can look like Maduro or anything like that because Maduro is a very complicated operation that they planned for months. And frankly, the United States would never want to have capture of the ayatollah. That would be insane. Nor, frankly, do they probably want to target the Ayatollah. I think that would also be pretty nuts from a regional, political, historical perspective on a lot of different levels, as it is a significant religious figure for people outside of Iran and generally. So more likely, I think, is you do something what probably the US Military has been mapping for the better part of two decades since they intervened in Iraq, which is the irgc. And you hit it really in related sort of security forces, and you can hit them on whatever the scale is, from largely symbolic to something more substantial. The further you go along that scale, the bigger risk that you will trigger regime collapse. And so what the sensitivity there is, I don't know. From the administration's prior actions, my guess is that we're talking about something smaller, more symbolic, maybe designed to just take out major arms depots, other things that could be used for broader mobilization or that could pose a regional threat if there were some sort of collapse. Look at what Israel did in Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime. Like, very similar strategic logic there. We're going to take out air bases, we're going to take out things that could fall in the hands of other parties, but it's not going to solve the problem. That's the real thing. If you're going to achieve this without regime collapse, you need to have A, some sort of vision and sense of what would come in place of the regime, whatever that looks like, which I don't think anyone really seems to have a sense of right now. And then B, you need to find some sort of transition ramp where, like this is where it is, like Venezuela, you can find some element of the regime that you're comfortable keeping in place and monitoring, controlling to maintain stability while you go to some sort of bigger structure. And there are diverse political institutions in Iran. Like there have at times been Iranian government administrations and officials that the United States has been able to deal with more sensibly than others. But most of them don't have the IRGC behind them and stuff like that. So the real question is, how do you empower them? How do you empower them without completely stripping of legitimacy? It's a super complicated calculus. It's not something that anybody should rush into. But at the same time, you're at this really sensitive moment. It's an incredibly difficult policy calculus. I do not envy the White House about having to deal with this at all. But it does seem to me that it seems like they're revving up to do something. And I fully expect to see something in the next 48 hours. I just, just don't know what it's going to look like.
- [38:14]
A
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- [38:16]
D
Did I talk too much?
- [38:17]
B
Can I just let it go?
- [38:25]
A
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- [39:19]
B
Let's shift our attention to something happening on the home front. Really, really horrible story that came out this past week. A case captured on video from multiple perspectives. A case where we had an ICE officer, an individual who evidently had been in at least pretty serious encounter, arriving from protests where they had been dragged behind a car and had other negative encounters in subsequent cases. In this case was confronted by a woman, Renee Goode, driving a vehicle in a way that from the looks of the video, at least to me, it did not look extremely confrontational, but the vehicle was moving extremely slowly. Officer was in the vicinity of the vehicle and at some point opened fire, shot her three times in the head, killed her car went careening off, her spouse was there, dog in the backseat. It's a really, really vicious, awful. It's the exact sort of thing that I think people have been afraid of is going to come out of this highly militarized, highly aggressive immigration enforcement strategy the administration has been deploying around the country and particularly aggressively in pockets like Minneapolis. It's the sort of thing that in the past we would expect to see a real strong pivot point, but instead we're really seeing the administration dig in on, including through, I think, just obviously false narratives and highly exaggerated narratives about this person being. Being a domestic terrorist is language that we've seen both. I think there's a Homeland Security secretary and the vice president suggest at various points, pretty atrocious from my perspective. Mike, you are, of course, a veteran law enforcement officer. You are familiar, more than any of us, intimately familiar with a lot of what's supposed to be done in these situations, how law enforcement traditionally approaches these things. You wrote an excellent, really, really insightful piece on this that just went up on Lawfare a little bit before we recorded. Talk to us what you make of this incident. What went wrong? Wrong? What does it tell us that these things went wrong? And how is that or should that communicate to the broader endeavor on a variety of fronts, A lot went wrong.
- [41:14]
D
And I'm not saying that to be glib. I'm saying it because there are multiple avenues by which we can approach analyzing the tragedy that occurred in Minneapolis. We can look at ice's behavior before and after the gunshots are actually fired, as the piece you just referenced difference does. We can look at how ICE and this administration and the officers themselves, frankly, stimmied any chance of there ever being an actual review of whether deadly force would be justified. We can talk about what this says about the larger deprofessionalization of law enforcement in general and why the way ICE is comporting itself in various cities at various times flies in the face of lessons that were learned over a very long time and have proven to have real salutary effects for us that they're just riding roughshod over. And we can also talk about why this seeming victory for ICE, in the short term of rising to the top of the federal law enforcement period and essentially escaping consequences for all their actions is actually going to be deleteriously bad for law enforcement in the middle and long term. I just threw a lot out there. What would you like to focus on? Because I'm happy to elaborate on any of those topics.
- [42:54]
B
Well, let's talk about what this tells us about the broader endeavor. We know the administration has embraced this aesthetic, at least, if not a broader philosophy of violence. It is built into every social media message that comes out of the administration about its immigration enforcement message. It's built into the rhetoric of Stephen Miller, other current senior administration officials when they discuss it. It's just a reality. And this seems like in a lot of ways, the hinted to or alluded to consequence of that is this fact that in fact, you might have this degree of, of violent encounter. So talk to us about what this says about. Are we seeing a real willingness to embrace this sort of incident? Is that with a signal? Is this a signal that they're just not administering or trying to manage this effectively? And this is an unintended but perhaps foreseeable consequence from this. And what does that tell us about how it may replicate?
- [43:50]
C
I would also add it's a messaging of violence or an embrace of violence with impunity. You hear a lot of messaging from Trump officials about how ICE agents can act all the way up to, I believe, Vice President J.D. vance, how ICE agents can act with federal immunity or something like that. And then you see these accusations of lawlessness lodged at the protesters or whoever, or even just nonviolent passersby accusations of domestic terrorism, et cetera. So I'd also add the deployment of violence, but also with assurances of immunity or impunity with it.
- [44:28]
D
Yeah. So look, you know, J.D. vance made reference to federal immunity, which is not a concept that I have ever heard before in my life. And I scoured federal court decisions on the various immunities offered to law enforcement. And that phrase does not, not appear, I frankly can guess as to what he is talking about, but his terminology is completely wrong. Federal officers or federal employees, they don't have this blanket general federal immunity simply by virtue of working for the executive branch. There is a such thing as absolute immunity. Stephen Miller has claimed ICE officers have that, that, but they don't. Absolute immunity applies to very discreet classes of federal employees who, in order to do their jobs, really cannot face any potential civil blowback. What police officers have, what ICE officers have, is qualified immunity, which essentially says that if you are doing something in the official course of your duties, and I'm going to be simplifying and sanding down decades upon decades of jurisprudence and departmental policies, but essentially, if you are making a good faith effort to do your job and you're acting reasonably and you have probable cause to support your decision, you are going to be immune from subsequent liability. This is an incredibly controversial notion in this day and age. It has been at the forefront of almost every debate about law enforcement since the death of George Floyd, if not beforehand. And when I alluded to this being very bad for law enforcement in the long term term, what I meant is that by acting with impunity, by inflicting violence when violence is not necessary, ICE is inadvertently adding to the arguments against qualified immunity. This administration is not going to last forever. Eventually somebody is going to come into power or a court is going to get the right case that gives a critic of the doctrine the ability, ability to limit it. And by abusing it, and I should be clear, I'm somebody who supports qualified immunity. But by abusing it, ICE is very much setting up the preconditions for its demise.
- [47:22]
E
Mike, can you give an example of qualified versus absolute immunity? Because I think, you know, you mentioned this. There are all these statements that are floating around and I think there is some confusion as to what's what. And then second, you talked at the outset about how this you think is bad for law enforcement writ large. And I would love to kind of flesh that out a little bit and hear why you think that.
- [47:44]
B
Yeah.
- [47:45]
D
So I'll take the second question first. Why is this bad for law enforcement? Well, first of all, there's the reason. I already said there are a lot of controversial law enforcement practices that someone like me who worked in the field may think are, on balance, good. But many good, decent Americans with very well thought out arguments think are bad. And the more they see law enforcement abusing the powers it already has, not only are they not likely to granted additional powers in the future, but they're likely to curtail the ones that, that currently exist over the long term. So that's the first reason. You know, every time law enforcement acts poorly, whether it is on the basis of, to use a very hated phrase, a bad apple, whether it is on the basis of departmental activity that used to result in the sort of thing like a consent decree or whether it's an entire federal department, like public perception matters in terms of what sort of jurisdiction and authority you're allowed to maintain and have in the future, and every time you abuse the public trust, this space for gaining that jurisdiction and authority contracts a little. That's reason number one. Reason number two, which has really not gotten any play in the media or analytics spheres, is that law enforcement, no matter what statute they are enforcing, very much relies upon the cooperation of the polity. And I don't just mean in terms of having respect or in terms of being the operating communities. Like if you want to take down a criminal enterprise or a criminal organization, you need to be able to recruit as confidential sources is individuals who move in the same spheres of society as those organizations. The more that law enforcement alienates the communities in which criminals operate, the less likely those communities are to cooperate with investigations either covertly or as overt witnesses. And I'll just give you one example of this. This administration has repeatedly said that, that the FBI's goal for example is to crush violent crime. I wore a badge for 16 years. I can get behind that. I don't like violent crime. If we're going to be crushing something that seems like a good thing to crush, but that requires taking down violent gangs. It is just a fact of demographics that violent gangs reflect the communities in which they operate. Some of those violent gangs are gonna be populated by individuals of Hispanic heritage. If we demonize every Hispanic in the country with frankly specious arguments about their culture or their ability to become Americans or why they don't belong here, why on earth would anybody in that community, even the most law abiding citizen citizen ever rush to help law enforcement deal with the criminal element?
- [51:15]
B
It's.
- [51:16]
D
There's no forethought in any of this whatsoever.
- [51:21]
C
Yeah, I would just jump in. First of all, I just wanted. I pulled up some of recent polling data about views on abolishing ICE which are at their highest, I believe since they've been recorded. This new YouGov and Economist poll from January 9th, today 12th, 46% support abolishing ICE. The first time this plurality overtake opposing it, which is at 43%. But I bring this up also because I feel like with something like an agency like ICE that I believe is acting in such a rogue way with such widespread abuse that it's hard to or if it's detrimental to lump them in with law enforcement and speak and include them when we speak about law enforcement as a whole, when they at the same time are also not really going after criminals either. They're going after either migrants who and this should be a civil matter or at times citizens. So I wonder if we should start removing ICE from inclusion and talking about law enforcement as a whole given its mission and performance over the past year.
- [52:29]
B
This is a classic difficult around political discourse and policy prescription sort of moment. Right? Like we all remember the abolish ICE chance of like 2020, 2021. Right. And we saw similar things about various law enforcement agencies. A lot of cities we had like negotiations with law enforcement agencies. I ultimately came away from that, from the experience that that was really, really not good messaging because frankly, A particularly when talking about local law enforcement, other former federal law enforcement agents, but in the immigration context too, law enforcement is actually important and you do have core function you need people to do that is very important. B completely villainizing the whole community engaged in that endeavor is problematic because it deincentivizes and leaves less space and gives less incentive to be, to borrow a bad phrase, again, Mike's apologies, a good apple to be somebody who tries to go above and beyond and comport with best standards and best practices because you're vilified with everybody else, you lose that sort of gloss. That's the same reason when you hear about the acat, like all cops are bastards, like an acronym that gets floated around these days, I always think it's really problematic. I have a lot of reservations about a lot of the same things a lot of people who say stuff like that have. But in the end, I want to set up a system where you recognize and celebrate and incentive and provide rewards and plaudits for the law enforcement that does it really well. And so the abomination abolished discourse is so hard to reconcile with that. But then you also do have ice, which is an agency that has had problems, frankly, for a long time around some of these same issues, at least in my experience, limited experience compared to you, Mike, and other people. I do have to ask, obviously reform is needed, change is needed, but how do you frame that and approach that? What's the right way to both talk about that and actually approach it if and when we get to the point where that's a policy reality?
- [54:20]
D
So look, as some of the people on this podcast know, my original piece was much more strident and I actually had lines in there about how much I disagreed with the defund the police movement and how facile I think the ACAB meme is. So what I'm going to say might be a little surprising. 100 like it is an understatement for me to say I believe that we need law enforcement, but if you live in a house for a long enough time at a certain point as it has problems, you need to decide do you fix these problems or is the structural rot deep enough that it makes more sense to do a tear down and rebuild? And what I have seen in every piece of footage where ICE is interacting with a member of the populace, with a civilian, whether a migrant or not, whether here with legal status or not. They are acting in a manner that seems almost designed to burn down down any degree of trust that exists between the federal government and those that it claims to serve. That's at the line level. I'm not talking about Kristi Noem making outlandish pronouncements. I'm talking about people who used to be like me, carrying a badge, going out into the communities, making arrests, investigating crimes. Like they're not doing it professionally. They're not doing it in a way that shows the slightest respect for our constitutional traditions, for our rule of law norms. They are so far beyond the pale that it's really difficult for me to see how you rebuild that agency for it to ever have enough trust that it can do its job effectively in a community. So I do think you're not going to see me carrying a Defund the police sign anytime soon or ever. But I do think we do need to talk about Is it time when there is a change in administration to replace ICE with something new?
- [56:52]
B
Well, we've got a ways to go before we can get there, so I have opportunities to come back to this topic. That's powerful closing thoughts, Mike, but let's go to our third topic before we run out of time together, and that is of course the topic of Greenland. As we have been recording the meeting between the Danish Foreign Minister and Greenland Foreign Minister. I believe I have that correct. Apologies sirs, if I have your titles exactly slightly off and Vice President J.D. vance and Secretary Zay Marco Rubio appears to have wrapped up the only readouts I'm seeing so far. Hopefully we'll get more detailed ones as it comes. Essentially coming from the Danes and the Greenlanders saying we clearly have fundamental, fundamental disagreements over Greenland and the status of Greenland, but that they still hope to have had a frank exchange and have been able to work to find some sort of way forward that they can all agree on, particularly talking a lot about 1950s agreements that already give a lot of license to the United States to make military use of Greenland far greater than it's making right now, presumably put out there as a potential olive branch. Tyler, I want to come to you first on the this We've been following this Greenland conversation for a long time at Lawfare. I wrote a piece, I don't think it was our first piece on Greenland, I think back in 2019, if I recall correctly. I know it was because it was the day I moved into my new house and Ben made me turn a Twitter thread that I errantly put off during a bout of sleeplessness the night before into a Lawfare post, even though I was supposed to be unpacking my bedroom and putting things away. It's a piece that for some reason has become one of the most evergreen things I've ever written, because every year or two we have a reason to revisit the topic, which was the title of the piece, why Trump Can't Buy Greenland. And I still think that analysis is sound, but obviously the idea hasn't died or gone on ice as I thought it was going to for the longest time. Talk to us about what you make of this particular moment, where this topic, which had quieted down, which did not appear in the Trump National Security Strategy as I recall, really, you hadn't heard much about it, to the point that I believe when I wrote our the Year that Was Kind of summary post on war powers issues, I said it seemed like Greenland and Panama have pretty much quieted down and nothing could be further from the truth. In the wake of the Venezuela operation, of all things that has made this rhetoric or others pop back up, what do you make of that? Why are we suddenly having this new crisis over this topic? And what does it tell us about the dynamics about what's driving it and where it ultimately may lead?
- [59:10]
C
Yeah, you know what else seemed like it was quieting down over the past few decades? Colonial annexation of other sovereign lands. But I mean, it is funny. I was watching an interview with Stephen Miller, I believe it was on CNN or another network where he it was clearly a bad faith diversionary tactic where he said, why are you asking me about this now? It's something that the president has been clear about since his first term, which of course, there is an element of truth in it. But when Trump first raised it in the first term and even in the first month of this current administration, it seemed a bit like a joke. It seems much less so now. And I think what's really striking is something I was listening to the historian Daniel Immervar speak on the New Yorker podcast, where his entire body of work is about US Annexation, US Colonies, its network of bases around the world. But even he sees this as a break, not just in rhetoric or in rhetoric, rhetoric of which also then he reads as Trump's thinking and intentions, but of this desire to annex the land of Greenland and incorporate it into the United States. And it was especially baffling, I think, to many people, is that it's not clear what Trump wants other than to make us map bigger. It's like if we want, we have, I believe Still a now it's a space force base, I think, in Greenland. We've been able to use it militarily in terms of landing planes there. If we want its minerals, great, they're for sale. You know, it's unclear whether, you know, whether it's just the desire is a projection of power that is only through the lens of making the little, making, you know, the map bigger and increasing our territory. I'm not sure what other motivations there are that we can't offer, already get or have. But I'm curious what others make of this as well.
- [61:07]
B
Ari, what about you? I mean, you follow foreign policy, you focus the administration a lot of domains. Talk to us a little about this. I know you've been thinking about this and some of your own writings and research. Talk to us about where you see this strategically or maybe not strategically fitting into the Trump administration's picture.
- [61:26]
E
Yeah, like Tyler, I don't really see the benefits of this. I mean, I know the president has said something to the effect of psychologically, quote, unquote, I, I, we need this, we need Greenland. But in terms of practical benefits, it's hard for me to see what we're getting out of it that we're not already able to get from just having those relationships. You don't always need to, you know, take over countries or use force to be able to achieve certain, certain goals. And it seems like we are willing to kind of pay a number of costs to be able to, to do the things that we're already doing. You know, this is obviously going to. And it's already fracturing NATO from my perspective. And you mentioned I'm doing some writing on this. I think we're going to see a return to the proliferation of nuclear weapons because countries are noting that we are increasingly saying we're not really interested, interested in the way we used to do business in foreign policy, international affairs, which was, you know, providing security guarantees and assurances to allies, using a range of means to prevent adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons. And you're already seeing in countries including Sweden, which is one of the latest NATO members debates about whether or not they should be looking to acquire nuclear weapons. So, you know, I think there are a lot of downsides sides. Mike can probably talk about, you know, intel sharing and how that is going to suffer. You know, our defense relationships are going to suffer. And so that's, to me is just puzzling. The second piece, you know, I think is worth maybe noting here is that I think NATO's response, NATO member States Response. It's just so, I mean, talk about a hard thing to have to balance, right? On the one hand, NATO structurally was not designed to tackle the threat of the United States trying to take over the territory of another member state. And so that is. That is a tricky one. But on top of that, you're already seeing this fracturing relationship, the transatlantic relationship. And now a lot of our allies in Europe are having to figure out how to both stand up to the Trump administration because they don't want to see this. You know, the President follow through on his threats to take over Greenland and then who's next. But they also don't want to damage the relationship even more so than it's already fracturing, because they still do need the US and they need that relationship. So it's a really tough one for them, for them to navigate. And you're seeing that a lot in the responses we're seeing coming out of France and other countries as well. So, anyway, I'm utterly confused by this.
- [63:59]
B
Yeah, it is a wild posture. Notably, it's worth noting. We're just seeing some news reports coming out. It looks like European and potentially some Canadian troops may be sending a kind of enhanced presence to Greenland. It sounds a lot like what the United States has been doing in Taiwan the last few years, where you send a group doing exercises and training. But in reality, they're kind of a little bit of a tripwire or facts on the ground, making it more complicated for any sort of military operation to take place, because you would be potentially implicating the soldiers from another country. A kind of classic kind of positioning strategy. Countries do, but rarely in one NATO ally against others. It is really an extraordinary moment. The thing that strikes me about this is just how God awful stupid it is for the President to be handling it this way, even if this is what he wanted. Right. As far as I can tell, the impetus for all of this was that the President was feeling really high on the hog after Maduro. I really don't think there's a clear correlation to all this. Right. The President had really been quiet about Greenland for a while. That seemed to have been a conscious sort of choice. If they were asked about it, they said, yeah, our position hasn't change. We want it. But they weren't raising it proactively. They weren't really dealing with it. It was part of the reason why over the summer, I sat down and talked to Shashank Joshi, who's the defense editor for the Economist for the podcast about European perspective in the United States. And he said Europeans were pretty bullish on the second Trump administration at that point because they seem to have gotten over the Greenland thing and they were bought into the 5% plan. The Europeans came forward and had doubled down in NATO and no longer talked about withdrawing. That's. That's all gone now, or at least seriously back on ice in a complicated way. And you still have Ukraine negotiations happening in the background. But what Trump's done in this case is that he's three routes where he can do this. One is that he can try and persuade the Danes and the Europeans that this is four routes. Maybe this is a way we want to go. And along the way, you need to persuade the green lenders too, because the Europeans see the Greenlanders as having rights of self determination, and so they need to vote on it. Greenlanders seem to be highly alienated by this rhetoric, which is not surprising because that's how they reacted in 2019 and 2022. There's an opposition movement. They may have elements about this, but they just had an election this past year after some of the rhetoric from the Trump administration started. It doesn't seem to have helped the opposition in a substantial way. And the incumbent government just participated in this diplomatic engagement, just doubled down on the rhetoric, saying, we are not for sale. And we don't like this sort of rhetoric. We're open for business, but we're not for sale. That's always been their line for years now, dating back to all this rhetoric around this. The Danes and the Europeans are much more united in their front now in a way they may not have other been they have more troops deployed in Iceland, even if you want to do. Or Greenland, if you want to do it militarily, does make it more complicated and harder. The other avenue you could take is a little bit of a. Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council for Relations just published a piece in Foreign affairs about this. You could do a kind of soft occupation, right? You move in when you build economic interest, you build political interests, you build political ties, you make it hard for the Greenlanders to get on without the United States. You really double down your investment in Greenland and then eventually they come around and they join you. They vote to withdraw from Denmark. At that point, if they say they want out of Denmark, I think I have trouble seeing the Danish parliament saying, no, we're going to keep them anyway, even though technically they have the legal right to do that. And then they can end up coming back to free association. What do they want with United States? That all gets way harder because now the perspective Europe is much more willing to go in and commit to resources. They seem to be more willing to commit, and the Danes to commit to Greenland's defense. And there's much more wariness about Americans because everything American companies do now is going to be under this line saying, well, maybe this is trying to co op to some extent, control over Greenland. If you wanted to do this, you would have started that investment quietly and then you'd have a conversation about this two or three years now you pursue a honey, not a vinegar campaign and then you have this idea of military occupation, which I really do think is absurd for a variety of reasons and really, really a real reach for this administration to pursue. Not least because the president can barely keep his party in line about military action in Venezuela against the Maduro regime. I do not think even his party, he could be confident he could keep in line with as few votes as he can lose in the House and Senate around occupying Greenland. And when you occupy any place, even place as small as green Greenland, you need funding and you need authorities and it has to last forever because the Danes and the Greenlanders evidently aren't going to want it. So if you're going to do that, you need Congress on board and Congress just clearly isn't. This just strikes me as a classic example of just like the president going out on a limb, no one in the administration having the guts or frankly them properly rightly determining this president is not willing to have anyone second guess him. And so now they have the president be bad cop against the Rubio Vance, maybe good cop or medium cops with the Danes and the Greenlanders, where they say, look, the President wants this and we have to find some way to give it to him, so what can you give us? And maybe they try and put a package that they can sell to Trump to buy into. And there's lots of parts of that package. I mean, I really do think the Europeans will deliver some stuff on this. Enhanced US Military presence and cooperation on board with that. Maybe even we know Europeans are talking about on the table mineral rights concessions or exclusivity agreements with American, American companies. They seem to be putting that on the table. And then the Trump administration can claim a win and walk away from this and maybe still say, and one day we want, psychologically, I need to own Greenland, I want it to be part of us. But they can play the long game then and wait for a few years where maybe the Greenlanders come around. That's like the best case scenario if you come out of this for this administration, because the idea and all of that gets made more complicated the more the President is allowed to talk about it. It's just astounding. And you know, I cannot make sense of it other than that. That's the only way I can put the different pieces together. But Mike, tell me, tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me I'm being too pessimistic or hard on this administration.
- [69:40]
D
I don't think you're being pessimistic enough, Scott. I think we can go much lower. You know, what I'm thinking of at the moment is a few months ago we renewed weapon sales to Taiwan. We gave them some forms of military assistance that very much angered the prc and we were okay with that because there is sort of an accepted belief that crosses party lines that a conflict with China, whether hot or cold at this point is something that very well can happen. I mean, there already is a cold one to a very real extent. But look at the geography of the Pacific. In order to have the sort of force projection we would need to overcome the PRC's A2AD anti area access denial program and actually allow us to take military action, we would really need the help of a whole host of nations in the Indo Pacific region that could give us logistical support to get as close as we needed to for any military action. Now what does this have to with do with Greenland? A lot of those countries in the Indo Pacific region are not steadfast allies yet of the United States. They're not enemies. But we're not working together hand in glove. We are supposed to be working hand in glove with NATO, but we are taking actions that are not only alienating NATO but actually threatening to violate the sovereignty of one of its member states. If you are one of those nations in the Indo Pacific region or really anywhere else on the globe, why on earth would you accept an overture of an alliance from the United States if you see them violating the very concept as soon as it's convenient, like let's say best case scenario for Trump, we get Greenlands. Somehow it will have so constrained the United States's ability to project force with other nations that I just don't see how the balance sheet comes out as a profit.
- [72:04]
C
The only thing I'll add here, because I don't disagree with any of that, is I'm sure everyone has seen lots of, you know, statements from Greenlanders that they it's not for sale and etc. But I wonder if everyone has seen seen this one specific anecdote. I believe it was from AP reporting there's a Greenlander named Hans Nurgard, which is a very amazing name. He apparently he filed a police complaint in Nook, Greenland, against Trump's, quote, aggressive behavior because he said American officials are threatening the people of Greenland and NATO. And I just love the idea of walking into the police station of Nook and being like, yeah, there's this guy. He's being really aggressive. He's harassing me. His name's Donald. I have to file a complaint, but I mean, yeah, just goes to show that they are. That many Greenlanders are not on board with this.
- [72:53]
B
Wild. Well, for better or for worse, we will have opportunities to talk about this more in the future before we are ironing our 51st star onto our American flags to celebrate the addition of our latest state in Greenland. But until then, we are out of time for this episode of Rational Security. But this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over. And in the week to come, Tyler, what do you have for us?
- [73:15]
C
I was going to say I'm usually the music recommendation guy. It's a lot of pressure having Mike on the call, so I got to. I got to bring my A game. I'm going to suggest an album that I slept on last year. It's an artist named Way Dynamic. The album is called Massive Shoe. That gives you no indication of what kind of music it is, but every song is different and yet coherent. Every song I hear are different influences. There's a little bit of Nick Drake, There's a little bit of elo, Supertramp, more contemporary, like Andy Shoaf, if anyone's familiar with him. It's just an amazing album.
- [73:49]
B
Straight through.
- [73:50]
C
Highly recommend. I had never heard of this artist nor this album until last week when a friend showed me. But big fan.
- [73:56]
B
I. I had somebody else recommend this very album to me as well. I will check out. You and I, I think, are relatively similar musical tastes. I think Mike may be in a similar zone as the. As us as well. Well, so good recommendation. I'm going to be checking this out. Mike, what do you have for us?
- [74:09]
D
I'm going to spin off of something Tyler said in a slightly tangential way. And his mention of ELO made me think of the film Boogie Nights, which my wife and I watched. She had never seen it before. I had seen it many times. We watched it the other night. And so I am going to promote a forthcoming retrospect perspective for Those in the D.C. area, occurring at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring in February of every Paul Thomas Anderson film, many of which people have not had the opportunity to see on the big screen. I'm thinking of particularly his first film, which was released in slightly different versions as either hard 8 or 8 Sidney, both of which are great films. And because he wasn't well known yet, nobody saw them when they first came out. So if you're in the D.C. area, don't just go see Magnolia, don't just go see There Will Be Blood. Go check out P.T. anderson's first film. It is a gem of a movie and very much a harbinger of the talent that he was going to display to the world years later.
- [75:24]
B
Amazing. You're making me realize I still need to see one battle after another, which is the topic of our conversation. One of our, I think our end of year episode with Anna Bauer, because I have had on my list for a while, so maybe I need to check that out. I can work my way backwards through the retrospective. Arriving back at the origin for my object lesson this week is I gave a little hint to in what I suspect will end up being B roll, although we never really know what these things Jen, Jen, Jen makes her choices as she will. I'm going to recommend a little tech object. I love a weird specialized tech object. This is a particularly weird one, but I bought the oddest book light you've ever seen your entire life a couple of weeks ago. I read to my kids at night. We try and get my son, who's not a very good sleeper, to calm and sleep. So I'm usually in his bed trying to keep as dark as possible. But we're also reading usually books with pictures because he cannot quite read yet. And so we're looking at the pictures and we need a light that casts big enough light that you can see all the pictures even where I don't know exactly where his eyes are going because of course he's darting all around the page as I'm trying to keep up with the book. Regular book lights just don't cut it. We tried it. It was a constant source of tension. A lot of exasperated dad, move the light. I can't see this picture. And trying to scramble to see it better. And this light's kind of amazing. You do look, as I said in the intro, like you're in some sort of post apocalyptic wasteland or perhaps like a deep undersea explorer sort of vibe, like kind of the abyss kind of coming over with people swimming around. That's definitely what it feels like. And it looks a little ridiculous. And so, you know, wait until you're married or in a very solid monogamous relationship before wearing this one to bed because no one's going to look at you quite the same way once you have it on. But I got to say, it's great. I use it all the time. It's a highly, highly recommend. This is the, I think the one I own, although I've seen similar models are the glucouscent. I may not be calling that correctly. Book light 3 color and 6 brightness readiness. I'll put a link into the thing and supposedly last 80 hours on one back. I don't know if that's true, but it's not bad. So I highly recommend that check it out if you're a bedtime in bed reader. And Ari, bring us home. What do you have for object lesson this week?
- [77:14]
E
All right. Well, I was going to endorse Mike's object lesson. I am really on the fence about yours, so we'll see.
- [77:21]
B
Don't knock it till you try it. That's all I'm saying.
- [77:25]
E
Well, friends, it's a dark time in the world and so naturally in my household we've been re watching a lot of older movies, but movies we've seen before going back to the previous century. But the one that we watched this past week that I rewatched and, and just remembered how much I loved that was Pain and Glory by Pedro Almodovar, which stars Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, who are fantastic. They've obviously appeared in other movies by the same director. This is from 2019 and it's a movie that, that reflects on the life of a film director. It is beautiful. Exceptional cinematography, great acting. Highly, highly recommend it.
- [78:10]
B
Awesome. I love Late Stage Banderas. I feel like he's having like a little bit of an underappreciated moment as he's come back as like the elder, pretty elderly at this point. Statesman from the pictures this, which is pretty cool. Awesome. Well, wonderful recommendations. But folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to visit lawfourmedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media, wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was me of me and our music was as always was performed by Sophia Yan and we were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pacha. On behalf of my guests Ari, Mike and Tyler, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.
- [79:16]
G
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