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- [00:00]
Scott R. Anderson
Par le tu francais hablas espanol? Parl italiano.
- [00:04]
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- [00:42]
Scott R. Anderson
So this is a real, real deep dish cast, real bears, real fried ravioli. Is that St. Louis or Chicago? I think it's both a little bit.
- [00:51]
Natalie Orbit
No, I mean, Chicago has all cuisines, Scott.
- [00:55]
Joel Brunel
Well, and also, you know, if you want to be really appropriate, tavern style. Scott.
- [01:00]
Scott R. Anderson
I know that's what everybody says. I'm still deep ditched. I'm not gonna lie. Lou Malnati's still got it. Still got it.
- [01:06]
Joel Brunel
You're the sort of person who goes to New York and thinks that you know the pizza place in time.
- [01:10]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it's the Barrows. 100%. 100%. You know, what's the other one? There's Lou Malati's and then there's the other one. What's the other big one?
- [01:17]
Joel Brunel
Well, you. It's not just. Pequods is really the place to go.
- [01:21]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, I've. I've. I. Pequods is hard to get into, as I recall.
- [01:24]
Natalie Orbit
No, no, Joel. Oh, come on. Malnati's?
- [01:28]
Joel Brunel
No, absolutely not. Pequods or by the way, Millie's Pizza in a pan. Newcomer to the scene, very popular.
- [01:35]
Natalie Orbit
I haven't tried it yet.
- [01:36]
Joel Brunel
Indeed.
- [01:37]
Natalie Orbit
Ari, I'm coming to visit you. Serve me pizza.
- [01:40]
Scott R. Anderson
I know this is a real. You are being suffused with just Chicago information now, none of which have the signature accent, which does make it very confusing and less credible, to be clear. But that's okay. If we were all talking like Mike Ditka, this would really, really a lot more the credibility as to the best deep dish pizza. But, you know, that's okay. Have you. How have you been preparing for Chicago? Are you. Are you watching the Bear? Just on loop. Are you all four Seasons in.
- [02:05]
Ari Tapatabai
I have a map of Chicago that I'm gradually filling in with just restaurants and coffee shops and bars. So Jolt.
- [02:15]
Joel Brunel
I. I got you. Ari. Once you're here, I'll. I'll sort you out with the best dive bars. I do all of my best work at Monsignor Murphy's, which is my favorite dive bar. That is where the neighborhood knows me as a psychotic British Bears fan. And it works very well for me.
- [02:28]
Natalie Orbit
This is where. This is where peace in the Middle east is going to be negotiating.
- [02:32]
Joel Brunel
You joke. Yeah.
- [02:33]
Ari Tapatabai
At Joel's local dive bar, there's a
- [02:36]
Joel Brunel
short economy that people buy shots. I do it over the phone for people. It works out very well.
- [02:46]
Scott R. Anderson
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories, whether they are in our lanes or not. We have had, as always, a big week of national security news. It is always a big week of national security news in these days. And I'm thrilled to have some of my colleagues joining me to walk through it all with you. And for you, joining me first at all for a second or third appearance. Not too many, but we're slowly roping him in. He's none other than Lawfare contributing editor, managing director of the Center Project, Joel Brunel. Joel, thank you for joining us.
- [03:19]
Joel Brunel
Scott, it's always a pleasure. I think this is my second Rational Security and deeply honored to be part of the Rational Security team.
- [03:27]
Scott R. Anderson
There you go. Usually you and I just sit together and chat for 90 minutes about national security affairs, and now we're bringing other people into the fold, for better or for worse.
- [03:35]
Joel Brunel
It's great.
- [03:35]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, we're mixing it up. Exactly. And also joining us is another Lawfare contributing editor, former public service fellow, now contributing editor, also the new Vice President of Research and Security and Defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Go Bears. Ari Tapatabai. Ari, thank you for joining us.
- [03:51]
Ari Tapatabai
Thank you for not firing me after I left as a public service fellow. Really happy to be here.
- [03:56]
Scott R. Anderson
Hey, thrilled to have you in the fold. It's still coming on the podcast. Perhaps most importantly, all from my perspective. I'm excited to have you with us. And joining us as well is mainstay, the mast on which our sales fly here at lawfare, I think is a fair way to describe is none other. I thought that would get you. Natalie. Is the Lawfare executive editor, Natalie Orbit. Natalie, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Greatly appreciated.
- [04:18]
Natalie Orbit
Well, thank you so much, Scott. I greatly appreciate the mast assignment.
- [04:24]
Scott R. Anderson
Something like that. Call it mast. Yeah, it's like it's masthead makes me think of nautical metaphors. I don't know why it just gets all together it mixes all in my head. What can you do?
- [04:32]
Natalie Orbit
We'll take it.
- [04:32]
Scott R. Anderson
We can take it. Regardless, we have a couple of big stories to talk about, so let us jump into them. Our first topic for this week, the Art of the Heel. As it approaches the 60 day mark, the war in Iran appears to have entered the war of attrition stage. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed by both Iran and the United States as each side waits to see what if the other will capitulate first. President Trump recently called off peace talks in Islamabad in part because of reported internal disarray on the part of Iran, perhaps unsurprising consequence of two month campaign of regime change. Meanwhile, the White House appears to have successfully pushed for and then extended a ceasefire in the related theater of Lebanon, but it's already under strain from ongoing Israeli strikes and a refusal on the part of Hezbollah to disarm, at least thus far. What should we make of this new equilibrium? We have a new offer that Iran has tabled just in the last 24 hours since I wrote up this little blurb. Something we'll get into as well. And does it all suggest that there may be a way out of current morass in the near future? Topic 2 Royally Falked King Charles is in the United States this week for the first state visit by a British monarch since Queen Elizabeth visited the United States in 2007. But the Trump administration's latest round of antics toward the United Kingdom and other NATO allies may overshadow the trip over the weekend. Reuters reported that an internal Pentagon email suggested that the administration should explore withdrawing US Recognition of British control over the Falkland Islands and suspend Spain's membership in NATO. Not something that's clearly possible for the record, due to their refusal to join in US Israeli combat operations against Iran. Other consequences may yet be in the offing. How seriously should we take these threats towards NATO, and how close are we to a permanent rupture in the United States Preeminent Alliance? Topic 3 Ballroom Blitz on Saturday night, President Trump was the target of a third assassination attempt of the last two years. This time, a California teacher plotted to target Trump and some of his senior advisors at the annual White House Correspondents association dinner here in Washington, D.C. in response, the administration quickly blamed Democrats for the heated, sometimes violent rhetoric they use in criticizing Trump, but in particular seemed to focus attention on pressuring a federal court to end a civil case challenging the construction of the new White House ballroom, citing security concerns. What are some of our thoughts about this past weekend's event and what does it tell us about the state of political discourse and violence here in the United States? So for our first topic, Ari, I want to turn to you. It's been an eventful couple of weeks on the Iran front in the big Iran war, which has spread into multiple theaters. It's now just an Iran war. It's a Lebanon war. It is a series of ongoing hostilities with the Houthis in Yemen to some extent, although less than some may have expected, a bunch of US Factors in play across the region, really across the world. That's a conflict that the consequences certainly economically and a lot of other fronts are being felt in lots of disparate corners of the world, really making it a global conflict to some extent. We have seen efforts to get a peace talks going last week in Islamabad by interlocutors on the part of Pakistan and Egypt and to some extent Turkey, who have been pushing for this kind of fall apart. The Trump administration pulled back its intent to send Vice President J.D. vance and Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as envoys to the participate in those talks. Basically, President Trump said over the weekend, we can do it all by phone. It's not clear who is actually calling the shots on Iran's part. They can call us when they're ready. Until then, we're going to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and continue to cut off oil exports. Of course, Strait of Hormuz is also closed on the Iranian side towards most transit. I think there are still some ships periodically able to get through, but largely shut down. Certainly nowhere near the level of traffic that will be needed and access that will be needed to restore anything like the status quo ex ante that most people want to come out of this restoration of the more conventional, normal global economy. The Iranians have now tabled an offer that the broad contours of it are being reported as. Let's just get the straight or open and then we can go on and we will commit to have some sort of talks about our nuclear program, but nothing about the substance at some later stage. The Trump administration, I don't think, has received this very warmly as of yet. They've essentially said in the past you have to if Iran locks out as a nuclear weapon, it's a non starter. Although I don't think we've actually seen a full informal response to this Iranian offer that's been tabled as of yet. Maybe I missed in the last couple hours, but I don't think we've seen a formal rejection of it necessarily by the Trump Administration, Talk to us about your sense about where we are in terms of this increasing war of attrition that seems to be breaking down around the Strait of Hormuz, where each side essentially seems to be waiting out to see which one will find it more painful to maintain the status quo until the other capitulates. Is that a fair way to characterize this and what are the. The political and diplomatic dynamics that are contributing to this?
- [08:57]
Ari Tapatabai
Yeah, I think your summary here is pretty spot on. As we're recording. Obviously, a lot can change between now and when we go live and will probably change between now and when we go live. You know, in my mind, there's been really three potential outcomes to this conflict as of now. One is that we get some sort of a deal and we can talk about what that could look like. One is, as the President had threatened as of last week, some sort of broader escalation where we go and hit a bunch of other targets. And, you know, I mean, the President a couple of weeks ago was threatening to essentially destroy the Iranian civilization. So kind of really expanding the, the target set from military and political regime targets to potentially striking more critical infrastructure, bridges, et cetera. And then the third, which is that we kind of continue on this path until either somebody gets bored, you know, the President gets bored of this and moves on to another issue set, or, you know, some sort of kind of combination of these different potential courses of action. And it seems like we're kind of in the combination where we're continuing on this path until we potentially get a deal. And look, the fact that the Iranians have come in with some sort of sequencing proposal to try to end this actually does indicate that there is some serious thinking going into this, which is not a bad thing, I think. And I want to caution folks not to kind of get too much into the weeds of right now. There is, you know, this pause here. The vice President is going. The vice President is not going. If you start to read every tea leaf in any negotiation, you know, there's just like, there's too much that can happen. And these are complicated, complex issues. I tend to remind folks that, you know, the jcpoa, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, took about three, three years. And that's not even counting the sanctions buildup and the pressure campaign buildup to that point. And that was just on one of the issues that the administration says it wants to tackle with Iran. If you now add proxies and missiles and UAVs and naval capabilities, plus Obviously, the ongoing events and the strip of Hormuz, these are very complex issues that need to be sequenced. That will take a long time to basically to get two sides that one, have deep distrust and are very far apart from one another, not to mention the nuclear issue, to come together and actually be able to agree to some sort of framework of an agreement that they can then implement. So, you know, I think the fact that we're where we are, that Iran is proposing something, I think Secretary of State, National Security Advisor Marco Rubio had said, this is a better proposal than what we thought Iran was going to submit. I think in just the past couple of hours, the President has said he's not too pleased with what he's receiving. But there is, you know, I think we're seeing at least some. The two sides becoming a bit closer than they were just a few days ago. So, again, it's not the best place to be yet. It's not the worst place to be at. And the other piece, I should add, and we'll talk more in detail about this, is kind of how the NATO allies play into some of this. We saw, I think it was just in the past few hours, again, that Germany has said that they would be willing to contribute some minesweeping capabilities in the aftermath of a ceasefire being extended. So, you know, the NATO allies, and to your point, Scott, of this conflict that is really affecting everybody, are also trying to kind of meet the administration halfway when we know they've been very opposed to this war. There's been tensions brewing within the alliance, not just due to the war, but, you know, exacerbated by the war. So they're also taking steps to try to kind of bring the side, these two sides together and try to get some sort of solution here, which I think is all pointing in the right direction. It's probably going to take quite a bit of time. We might see some kind of little bits of escalation here and there before we get there. But I think we're on a, on a pretty decent trajectory as far as we can be in the middle of this conflict that is really spilling over all around the region.
- [13:18]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it's really fascinating because of the global pressure element seems to be entering into the calculus here. I mean, like, what is the tool that either both Iran or the United States hopes is going to push the other ones towards capitulating from the status quo? It's not changing the status quo. It's not even directly the direct economic impact on them. Well, that's significant. I mean, US And Iran does some of it. A lot of it's also the fact that the other global powers involved will bring additional pressure to bear. I'm sure the Iranians are hoping the Europeans and others will put and frankly, the domestic political situation in the United States will pressure the Trump administration to budge. And the United States is hoping China will eventually come in, which is suffering substantially, will come in and push Iran to capitulate and take some other steps, which as reportedly it did in first embracing the ceasefire. The one party that's probably not interested in seeing a cessation of any of this is Russia, which is benefiting from high oil prices and a general distraction from the war in Ukraine. Other than that, most of the international community probably would like to see a resolution of at least the Strait of Hormuz part of this. Your question then comes in, well, what does that do to the pressure brought to by different parties? But among all of this, there's another really interesting front where we have seen motion, a lot of motion, some might even call it progress of a sort, and that is in Lebanon. Lebanon, a conflict where we saw Hezbollah and Israel come to blows pretty early after the start of the Iran conflict. Israel is now occupying and pursuing operations in a good stretch of southern Lebanon where Hezbollah primarily operates. But we saw a ceasefire get negotiated. By some accounts, it seemed really kind of push on particularly the Israelis by the Trump administration. A 10 day ceasefire, I think about a little more than two weeks ago at this point, three weeks ago. And now we see an extension of that ceasefire last week announced at or near the White House. I think technically what was the former US Institute of Peace last week by the Trump administration, a three week extension. Joel, talk to us about the dynamics of the ceasefire. Why are we seeing progress on the Lebanon front when we're seeing such a lock in the Iran front of these very interrelated conflicts? And is that because of indigenous factors that make the Lebanon situation just kind of different, with different interests? Are they related somehow? And is there some degree to which progress on the Lebanon front could help on the Iran front or not?
- [15:30]
Joel Brunel
So there's a real dispute about whether there is progress on the Lebanon front. President Trump had the ambassadors and included Ambassador Mike Huckabee in it, actually meet in the White House in front of him, where he brokered it, though, on the Israeli and the Lebanese delegations. It was still at the level of ambassadors. And the reason is that President Trump is pushing for President Annon to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu, which would be a historic Meeting between the leaders. President Annon wants a conclusion of this war before he would give that to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu wants that before his election to demonstrate that he's had a historic victory vis a vis Lebanon and a breakthrough diplomatically, as I think we've mentioned before, Scott, I think last week when we spoke about Lebanon a bit more Lebanon and the role of Hezbollah is a real critical part of the Iranian conflict, both for the region and specifically for Israel. If we look at the Iran conflict being a conflict around nuclear missiles, we nuclear material, ballistic mas cells and proxies, the real proxy that still has a punch from the Iranian sense, at least in a geostrategic ability to make the region go into flames is really Hezbollah. So does Iran control the fate of the Lebanese Israeli relationship or does Beirut? And that's sort of the big question, as we mentioned last time, I actually thought it was a deft political maneuver when President Trump and the Trump administration negotiated a ceasefire through the Lebanese government with Israel rather than allowing IR to dictate terms. And whether that was just a face saving maneuver or not. And it came after horrendous blows by the Israelis in Beirut on April 8 and a few other things. But Hezbollah hasn't felt bound by this. Even though there's been an extension for three weeks, the level of missile attacks on Hezbollah and Israeli reprisals has gone up. There was some disturbing footage, I think two days ago of Hezbollah launching first person drones at Israeli targets in southern Lebanon, despite the fact that President Trump said that Israel is prohibited from blowing. We've seen Israel continue to blow up buildings in south Lebanon and in sort of what they see as a buffer area. So there's a big question about is this a ceasefire in name only while this still continues? And the Israelis are very much saber rattling saying that if Hezbollah continues, we're going to just basically fire not just north of the Latini but in Beirut again, which just shatters the whole consensus. And Prime Minister Netanyahu is under deep, deep, deep political pressure to continue the war from the north of Israel. Israel's in the election year, they'll be going to the ballots in October. And the north has been underinvested in. They felt like they've been the forgotten victims since October 8, the day after October 7, and that their kids, you know, even though the home front says that schools should be open in the north, local security councils have closed them to say it's just not safe enough given the missile. So there's a huge Domestic push. But there is another story that is going on with Lebanon that is underreported in the US Press, that I think is just as important as what's happening in Washington, and that is what's happening in Saudi Arabia. So today in Saudi, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Speaker Berry, was meeting with Prince Farhan, the Saudi Foreign minister. And what you've got behind the scenes is that the Israelis and the Saudis actually share a common interest in a strong Lebanon. Right? As in they don't want to see Hezbollah there, But the Saudis also don't want to see the Lebanese bullied into normalization with Israel absent a solution on the Palestinian file. You know, the Saudis want to very much gather the whole ar, and they also don't want the Americans and the Israelis to push strong enough that the entire terror agreement that basically has governed post civil war Lebanon comes apart. Because if you push too hard and Hezbollah feels like it needs to collapse the state in order to prevent their red lines being pushed, it could collapse Lebanon, which is very much not in anyone's interest. Though the Trump administration's general posture is push, push, push, push, push, and then say, look, we've done well. So behind the scenes, you've got the Saudis also trying to work out, also using their own back channels with the Iranians, what could be done to try and settle this down. Can we prevent an unknown Netanyahu meeting so that that's not gifted before progress on the Palestinian file, while at the same time respecting the agreement that was forged in Saudi Arabia in 1989, the terror agreement that ended the civil war, saying, look, there should be one person, one gun. We need to respect that the president of the armed forces is the president of Lebanon, and that we need to do that while also maintaining that there is still a role for the Shiite community within Lebanon without taking apart the civil civil war. And is that also a way that we can maintain a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon and not give the Iranians the ability to dictate terms, but also not allow the Trump administration and this current government of Israel to push the Lebanese so hard that it shatters the country? And so there are two different things where the objectives actually are the same, which is to create a ceasefire, but on what terms? Right. Are the terms that. And so we heard from Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, yesterday, that the Israelis are not going to get to permanently occupy southern Lebanon, and that once there is a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon, the territories and the borders will be set and that the Israelis, at least according to Marco Rubio, have no intentions of having a permanent buffer zone. So you get back to the questions, who's there and who's not. The Israelis have banned the French from these negotiations. One, they don't have a particularly good relationship with President Macron after the whole push for two states and two, they felt that the French brokered ceasefires before failed. But the French, of course acquired slightly involved. The Saudis are trying to work out will there be an international force. And the Israelis going back to international monitoring of a ceasefire, where they felt that the Hezbollah just does what it wants against UNIFIL and uses UNIFIL as a shield, isn't an answer for them. But there are sort of parallel tracks trying to work on this to keep things calm. So, Scott, to answer your question, from that very long answer, I think there is progress, but it's progress in two different ways. Is it progress the Trumpian way, which is pressure, pressure, pressure? Yes, we'll help the Lebanese armed forces, but get rid of the anti normalization. Do all these things that are very difficult in a society that is where it is, or is it also the stuff that's going around behind the scenes with the Saudis and how does that work? And who has given political gifts before said elections is gonna be an important part of this as well?
- [21:45]
Natalie Orbit
Yeah, I wanna just make a sort of general thematic comment, which is that in each of these sort of topics, subtopics that we've been talking about, the general theme is that the administration, the Trump administration, I should say, is continually moving the goalposts and re articulating what the goal is. And you know, some goals have been consistent throughout. We're going to make sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear program. But even what that means has varied somewhat depending on who's commenting. And it sort of gets emphasized or de emphasized depending on the context and the timing and what is going on in the conflict. With respect to Lebanon, it's, you know, when we're talking about a ceasefire with Israel, are we talking about the government of Lebanon, regardless of the extent to which it has real authority over what happens in Lebanon vis a vis Israel? We have a nice piece of paper signed. Does that accomplish the goal or is the goal really to disable and disarm Hezbollah? That has sort of shifted and been implied differently depending on the moment and who's talking. And then there's, you know, the pressures with allies that we will talk about in the next segment as being a symptom. Of our allies opposition to the war in Iran, but is also continuing from many other contexts, as you said, Scott, and I have to think is really exacerbated right now because one of the primary tensions that had been provoking tensions before was the US Response to the war in Ukraine, and Russia is now literally benefiting from the war in Iran. So it's not only that from the NATO allies perspective, the US Is not doing its part with respect to, to Russia's war in Ukraine. It's also that now it's legitimately benefiting and making Russia stronger, which has immediate security impacts for Europe, of course. But I think the changing goalposts, the defining the problem differently, is sort of stylistically consistent with the way that the Trump administration runs foreign affairs and even some of its domestic policies, which is if you keep changing what the problem is, you can redefine what the proper solution is. So will Iran get wrapped up when the Strait of Hormuz is opened? Whatever opened means in scare quotes. The last time I was on rational security, it was just after Trump said that we were going to go in on some deal where both Iran and the United States would benefit from the tolls that would be charged for ships to go through the state of Hormuz. Reminder, the Strait of Hormuz was only closed because the US Initiated strikes on Iran and started this whole conflict in the first place. So I think the commentary has to take into account the fact that we are dealing with moving targets all the time. And I think the continual question being, how is this going to wrap up? Feels to me like, okay, well, from whose perspective? Because from the Trump administration's perspective, I continue to think there's a very real possibility that for whatever reason, the administration wants to move off of this topic, whether it's domestic political pressures in the upcoming elections, whether it's because of the deep unpopularity generally of the war, whether it's because there are other more pressing issues that come up on the agenda. At whatever point we are in time, the problem, such as it is for any of these three things, can be redefined and thus the solution deemed a success. It's just hard to really have sophisticated analysis when it's a rhetorical exercise.
- [25:38]
Joel Brunel
Natalie, just building off that, I think we've seen now that we are God, it feels like we've been here for years, but like a year into Trump, too.
- [25:48]
Scott R. Anderson
We've got a year and four months under our belt, sir. Please don't cut us short on that.
- [25:51]
Joel Brunel
There we go. So a year and four months. I Think we're seeing a foreign policy doctrine which is extreme pragmatism with no sacred coward. If you look at when he did say we'll tax the Shay of Hormuz or we'll lift sanctions or we'll do this, you can see that even the biggest boosters of the Trump administration's actions, like Senator Graham suddenly says, well, this is gonna have to be submitted to Congress. I'm like, okay, and I have a horse to sell you. What are you talking about? President Trump doesn't feel constrained by any of the sacred cows. That means whatever it is, the easiest way, I think that it helps overcome some of the structural deficiencies that has been the US Policy in the Mideast. Just look at the embrace of alsh. Imagine another administration having done that. And one could argue actually it was the right move. I'm not going to debate that right now. But on the other hand, you don't build anything. So to build the Lebanese armed forces capacity, and you want the US to participate in that, you now have to go through US allies to do that, because the US has no capacity to do it itself. And we're seeing that whether it's on the Gaza file or Board of Peace or whatever else it might be, the traditional tools of statecraft have been hollowed out. And so it's very easy to reframe. If it's just pressure, quick hit, make a deal, move on. But if it requires a sustained effort and like a leave behind, it's not the US who's going to do that leave behind. And that's why going into the traditional allies model becomes very complicated.
- [27:12]
Natalie Orbit
Yeah, and I think the piece of that, though, as you say, it's pragmatism with no sacred cows. I think that's astute. But it's also pragmatism in the interest of a very short term goal and a goal that is changeable. And so, you know, as we've been talking about, it turns out that the situation in Lebanon is very complicated. There are all sorts of domestic, domestic political pressures, economic pressures, Hezbollah versus the Lebanese government. Turns out that's a really complicated problem that's going to require a lot of sustained engagement. We're not going to worry about that. It turns out that making sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear program is incredibly complicated. I mean, guys, this is so obvious. There is no one in their right mind who would think that this would be an easy fix, no matter what sort of show of force there would be. And that turns out to be too complicated. I mean, this should be not a surprise. To the extent it is a surprise, my God. And to the extent it's not, that just means that the short term goal, whatever it may be, is the only focus of all of this action.
- [28:22]
Scott R. Anderson
So, Ari, let's turn to that, because the nuclear file is the big outstanding issue with Iran as it has been for. For two decades now. More than two decades, probably. We know the President has said on the record that doesn't always necessarily mean that much, that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. Right. And currently Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. It's close to a nuclear weapon, or it might be, or is proximate, at least of a conventional, not of a non dirty sort. Right. So I think Natalie's point is really well taken on this one. Negotiating what it means to end a nuclear program is technically incredibly complicated because you're talking about, well, all these different capacities, some of which are dual use or have multiple uses, multiple applications, some legitimate, like civilian nuclear energy, some not. How do you evaluate them? How do you weigh them? What sort of credibility? Regimes. Inspection regimes. This is why you had. The JCPOA the Obama administration negotiated was hundreds of pages long, I think 150 pages plus annexes, as I recall, give or take, and lengthy annexes, not short annexes. It was very, very complicated as somebody who tried to figure out what was happening with it after the fact that. So it's hard to envision Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner hashing that out. But if you're really talking about stopping progress on Iran's nuclear program or having real credibility there, anything short of complete handover of nuclear material, which just does not seem like it's on the table for the Iranians, you need to have those technical details. You need to be able to assess how effective they are, or else you don't know how credible the assurances you're getting are. So what does this, this transactional moving targets dynamic that I think Joel and Natalie have captured really well mean for the nuclear file? What do you think might come out of this? And how does it compare to the JCPOA or other potential arrangements we could have had to try and rein in the genuine concern over Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
- [30:13]
Ari Tapatabai
So that's the kind of big challenge we've had since the first Trump administration. Right. President Trump withdrew from the jcpoa, which he claimed was a very bad deal, one of the worst he'd ever seen, and that was in 2018. Then his first administration basically started to build out what it called the maximum pressure campaign, which was a sanctions anchored, let's say, campaign on Iran. And at the time there was, to Natalie's point, there was a lot of back and forth about what the administration meant when it said Iran can't have a nuclear weapon and which aspects of the nuclear program that you've just described for us would be allowed and which ones wouldn't be allowed. And depending on who you asked in the administration, the narrative changed a little bit. And now we're seeing the same thing happen here where initially when the administration decided to go into Iran and following the conflict, the nuclear program wasn't really stated as an objective. It has now become part of this set of objectives, one of five ish objectives that the administration has been kind of talking about. But again, depending on the day, it changes on, you know, are we just talking about them not being able to have a nuclear weapons program? Are we talking about them not being able to have enrichment? Are they supposed to ship out the highly enriched uranium that they have in country? When the administration talks about degrading or destroying the nuclear program, what do they actually mean? We don't really know. And you know, both Joel and Natalie talked about the administration as kind of focused on these short term objectives. It mirrors its military approach. Right of, and we saw this over the summer with Operation Midnight Hammer where the administration is consistently kind of taking these tactical or operational successes which are undeniable, and then trying to frame them as big strategic successes. And they are decidedly not big strategic successes. So one of the concerns that I think I and many in the kind of non proliferation community have is that actually what we will see after the shooting stops is an Iran that is more inclined and more willing to acquire nuclear weapon than it was before. Before. Right. Because it has now been communicated to Iran via this particular campaign, via the campaign over the summer that the deterrence posture that it currently has without a nuclear weapon is not sufficient for it. And so I am deeply concerned that we have one, a much more radical regime in place than we did just six months ago or even three months ago. And two, we have a regime that has a very different threat perception than the one that was previously in place. Place. And I just want to be clear, it is the same regime. The President keeps saying it's not the same regime, it's just different individuals within the regime, just to be extremely clear about this. But what I'm concerned about is that what will happen after everything, after the dust settles is that Iran decides to actually acquire a nuclear weapon and by the way, we should also restate this, that the intelligence community under the Trump administration, led by Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence appointed by the president, had stated as of last March, this was during the hearings on the annual threat assessment, that Iran was not in the process of acquiring a nuclear weapon at that point. Right. So, you know, this is an assessment that has held for years and years at this point. So all of this to say I, you know, again, negotiations on a nuclear program are incredibly complicated, incredibly technical. To your point, Scott, when we've done these things in the past, we've had dozens of technical experts, legal experts, folks who understand Iran, folks who understand the threat perceptions and issues and interests of other partners. We've done this with other allies and partners who have similar capabilities and can contribute to that discussion. And we've replaced that whole structure with two people who have no background whatsoever in nuclear issues on Iran, on sanctions, frankly, which is another very important and very technical piece of. Of this. So it's not surprising that a couple of, you know, a few weeks ago there was reporting that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner did not understand what the Iranians were proposing, which is how we are where we are today. So there are just so many different pieces here that I think are tricky. One is that threat perception from Iran that I described. Second is that we just are not postured as a government to be able to really grapple with this problem the way it's currently staffed. And three is the fact that, yeah, these are very complex issues that take a long time and you cannot. And the President doesn't seem to have the patience for this. He wants to have a deal pretty quickly. You can't wrap up something like this really quickly, not unless you're willing to take a deal that is just not going to address all of the challenges that are associated with the nuclear program.
- [35:05]
Natalie Orbit
Ari, can I ask you one question on your point with regard to Iran's calculations after this? I've been wondering, so I remain confused about why anyone is surprised that Iran used the Strait of Hormuz as a significant point of leverage. But it does seem to me that it's been very clearly demonstrated that it is also a very complex problem and that Iran genuinely does have what I think a lot of experts expected long before this happened, a really significant ability to paralyze things that's not easily resolved, even with immense force. It's just too. The logistics of. Of it purely are just too complicated. So I've been wondering if, you know, There will always be a fear of Iran's nuclear capacities. But is what's happening now a reason that Iran may also change its security calculus for going forward to really emphasize what it can do with respect to the strait such that nuclear power becomes maybe a little bit less important, although undoubtedly not negligible. But, you know, might this be another area that it really focuses on for deterrence?
- [36:21]
Ari Tapatabai
Yeah, I think so. And you know, to your point, I think we all. We've expected for years and years we have had entire, you know, war games based on this notion that Iran would close the strait or disrupt traffic in the strait in some capacity. I think what we saw happen was actually a bit more tailored, a bit more more thought through than the scenario that we had envisioned, which was that they were just going to close the strait and that was it. And initially when they decided to disrupt the freedom of navigation and through the choke point, it was a much more tailored, with this kind of toll system that they imposed. So clearly a bit more, I don't want to say thoughtful because that has a positive connotation, but basically it was a more tailored approach to it than I think we had previously assumed. I do think that they will probably continue to refine the way weaponize the strait and will continue to incorporate it into their military doctrine. And I think that'll be part of kind of a wholesale rethinking of the military doctrine coming out of this conflict. Right. The last time they really did this was after the Iran Iraq war where they kind of. And there are volumes and volumes of studies and assessments that the IRGC put out right after the Iran Iraq war, where they rethought through what had worked and what hadn't worked during the conflict. I think we'll see something like that, that after this one where they will kind of take stock of the different kind of courses of action, the different techniques, tactics and procedures, and we'll think through what worked and what didn't work. Clearly, the strait has demonstrated and the ability to control it has demonstrated its value for them. I would say, and I would be curious what Joel thinks here, but, you know, I would say that proxies probably haven't actually been as. As effective for them. And this is largely because Israel has really been degrading the Iranian proxy network after October 7th. And so a really interesting counterfactual would actually have been what would this conflict look like if Hezbollah had the capabilities that it had three years ago? What would it have looked like if Israel hadn't actually engaged in this campaign? So I think coming out of this, I don't foresee them entirely foregoing proxies as a tool, but I think they will probably be a bit less inclined to kind of pin their security on it. They will much more interested in pursuing organic capabilities. So that does include maritime naval capabilities, but also missiles and drones to be able to protect themselves as well as, of course, the nuclear program that we've, we've talked about.
- [39:00]
Joel Brunel
You know, Ari, on the proxy point, I think that The Israeli post 10-7-security posture of destruction, rather than deterrence and acting in other states territories, if non state actors are active, there has been a success strategy against pushing back against Iranian or other state proxies. And the Israeli demand to do so, regardless of whatever else that entails, is something that I think has been a lasting mark since October 7th and has been extended for the past three years. I do think we're seeing the limit of that when it comes to, for example, Lebanon and Hezbollah, whether it's the tolerance of the region, the Trump administration, the international community and the need to also have a diplomatic solution and finding what that looks also within a domestic political context. So it'll be interesting. But this concept that Israel will not act against proxies that are being built up is, I do think, a lesson. And you know, the fact that the Iranian homeland has been hit so hard, you know, is it worthwhile doing it if the, you know, the shibboleth has been broken that you could now hit on each other's home soils? I could imagine that if there was a real feeling that for whatever constraint that Israel was feeling, and there were real serious proxies being built up close to their territory, I don't think they'd have a problem in hitting the Iranian homeland again if they felt that that was necessary to redemonstrate the lesson. I will also say that we did see reports come out of Axios two days ago of something that I was expecting to see, which is for the first time you've seen Israeli missile defenses deployed on UAE territory with Israeli soldiers operating Iron Dome. And so when you talk, these are not proxies, these are Israeli forward bases that are doing missile defense. But you could imagine a scenario, especially as the UAE and Israel further deepen their strategic cooperation after this. We saw today the UAE exiting OPEC and others that you could see Israeli forward bases far closer to Iran and what would that look like? So there has been a consequence of their regional strategy they'll have to rethink. And the last thing I'll say about the Straits of Hormuz, unlike the nuclear program, there are workarounds. So maybe not on fertilizer, but but when it comes to oil and energy, whether it's imec, whether it's other pipelines, the Turks are trying to there are very heavy logistical but solvable problems to overcome that as a strategic leverage point. And so I do think that when you look at the strategic calculus in Riyadh, in Ankara, around the gcc, excluding, I would probably say, Abu Dhabi, there is this desire to try and balance balance Tehran, Jerusalem, Ankara and Riyadh in some sort of stability. And we still don't know what that regional security compact looks like. But in many ways they're going to have to find an equilibrium that works. And even if you've got the formal ending of state to state literal bombing runs, I do imagine that the subterfuge, whether it's Israeli or Iranian intelligence or whatever else, will continue intelligence until you know there's an ideological shift one way or the other.
- [42:09]
Scott R. Anderson
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- [43:53]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, we are going to have to shift away from this topic. We're going to have more opportunities to talk about it in the future, I'm sure. But let's move to a very closely related that's already come up a bit, and that is our NATO allies, as I think it was Ari, somebody mentioned, we have the beginnings of a nascent plan for European involvement potentially in opening this trade of Hormuz, UK France are involved in discussions along these lines, potentially some willingness by Germany and other European powers who have been very reluctant and in some ways critical of the Israeli US Military operation this time around, in some departure from the earlier, more limited strikes in 2025, of which a number of at least the major European powers were more supportive of. And that's a source of tension with the Trump administration. We know Donald Trump was angry about it. We know two or three weeks ago there were reports that he was considering withdrawing from NATO as punishment. He was certainly upping the rhetoric, as were senior officials in his administration, saying what good is NATO for if they're not going to deliver here, although notably, there's no treaty obligation to do anything in this particular situation because it's not what the North Atlantic Treaty is supposed to cover, to say the least. But regardless, seeing those alliances not worth the US Costs and burden they take on now, we are hearing these new reports about there being plans to punish NATO to exact a sort of cost on NATO. About here is the consequences of at least certain, I should say, those NATO allies who were less supportive of what the United States was doing. Others were more supportive or at least passively accepting of it. US Overflights over Germany, for example, were critical to US Military operations in Iran. And Germany didn't make an effort to stop those certain other European powers did, or other more restricted measures. So, Ari, I want to turn to you because I know you have been looking at our treaty relationships and alliances for the last one. Once you were with lawfare and a lot of your research and your work, talk to us about where this idea of sanctioning certain of these NATO allies fits into the broader picture of this sort of relationship. In some ways it's a step down. Right. The administration does appear to have walked away from the idea that it's going to withdraw from NATO, at least for the moment. That really was never actually even expressly said. That is just an inference that people draw when the president starts criticizing NATO at this point. But we have these other sorts of measures including some that don't seem that realistic being discussed in the Pentagon. Again, there's no way to suspend Spain's membership in NATO that I'm aware of, having read the North Atlantic Treaty quite closely a number of times, as recently as I think yesterday. So there's nothing there in there for that that I can think of. Although notably there are actually cooperative mechanisms and implementing agreements built on the North Atlantic Treaty that you could suspend different types of cooperation, coordination. There's like a pretty dense network of theirs that is most voluntary stuff. So I think you actually could, I think you'd have to get a lot of other NATO members on board with that, though. Other things like changing recognition of the Falkland Islands. Technically in the President's authority. The president has exclusive authority of recognition. Tsivotovsky v. Kerry in 2015 Supreme Court case said that quite unequivocally. But how big a difference will that make in the end? Is it more than just a spit in the eye to the uk? I don't think Argentina is going to launch a new military offensive. I'm not sure. So talk to us about it. Ari, what's motivating these sorts of discussions of these sanctions? I guess we know what's motivating it. What does it tell us about what the actual repercussions are likely to be for the North Atlantic relationship?
- [47:15]
Ari Tapatabai
So here I should start by giving credit to my co author John Jennen, who has written a bunch of, co authored a bunch of things with me for Lawfare on this topic. And our kind of fundamental one assumption and also argument is that the Trump administration is using court and consistent coercion as a tool of alliance management with NATO in a way that no president had in the past. Right. Presidents and administrations in the past had used coercion at different points with allies. There are a few historical examples we can point to, including the Suez crisis, for example, but no administration had really used coercion in the same way with allies. And actually if you look at the scholarly literature, it's all about how we use coercion with adversaries. It doesn't really think about how you use coercion with allies because it, you know, and as you and Natalie can talk much more to this than I can, alliances have these mechanisms that are built into them to be able to manage disagreements within the alliance. Right. So typically we try to use those mechanisms instead of using coercion in the same way. That's the first piece. The second piece is the that you have an administration that actually uses coercion regardless of outcomes. In some ways, we've seen the administration use coercion with allies who were complying with its demands, as was the case with South Korea, but maybe too slow to kind of, you know, do what the administration wanted. We've seen it use coercion to go after allies like Spain, for example, who are fundamentally saying, no, we disagree with this policy position, we are not going to enable it and everything in between. And so I think if you're the allies, you're looking at this and you're thinking, I'm going to end up on the kind of, you know, on the bad list here, and I'm going to end up having coercion levied at me, so why should I comply with something? So there is that piece of it. There's a second piece where with regard to the Iran war specifically, this is again, deeply unpopular. This is not something that the administration had actually consulted the allies with. And then it came out and said, we didn't consult you, we didn't ask you about your opinions on this conflict, even though it's going to affect you in some ways more than it's going to affect us, because we do actually have quite a bit of distance with Iran. And so, you know, when it comes to potential migration, second order effects, potential, you know, range of Iranian missiles that can actually reach Europe can't really breach the United States. So it's going to affect them. And it has been affecting them in many ways more so than it has the United States. We're not going to ask your opinion on it, but we're going to come to you and say we need you to kind of chime in and help us, even though you didn't support this conflict and we didn't care what you had to say about it. So this is just kind of this broader picture right now of US Intranato tensions that started really acutely with Greenland this year. And we forget about Greenland because it now feels like so long ago. But it's not completely forgotten in Europe. It also, by the way, pokes its head out every so often. I wouldn't be surprised if we went back to another Greenland crisis after this war is over. For example, we have had the United States and this administration trying to interfere in the domestic affairs of its European allies. We saw it most recently in the case of Hungary, but it's not the only example. And then, of course, we have the tensions around this war. Now. Adding to all of this is the fact that we also have an administration that does not share Europe's threat perception when it comes to Russia. Russia, which is, you know, nominally the kind of main raison d' etre for the Allian. The chief objectives of NATO are to deter Russia and protect and defend NATO sovereignty and territory. And we have an administration that doesn't share that threat perception. So, you know, I think all of these different dynamics come together. They all of them are sort of separate, but they all feed into one another. And so where we are, and this is something that John and I talked about in one of the pieces, is that there are different scenarios that can happen happen here. One is, and Scott, you mentioned this, a collapse of the alliance, the United States withdrawing from it. That is not the likeliest, although probably likelier today than it was two months ago, and probably likelier two months ago than it was six months ago, but still not the likeliest scenario. The likeliest scenario is actually that all of these different tensions, from Iran to Greenland to domestic affairs to NAF the Falklands, all of these conditions continue to feed into the intranato dynamics and ultimately serve to make the alliance less effective when it comes to meeting its mission, both operationally and politically. And that in itself would be a really bad thing because if the alliance becomes ineffective, then it doesn't really serve a purpose. Right. And I think we are really on that trajectory. And by the way, we have another two and a half years of this administration with this approach. Approach. And my concern is that when all is said and done, that it will be actually really hard to go back to the status quo on day that we won't be able to go back to the way things were a few years ago. And this is partially why in that piece we argued that we should be really rethinking about the alliance. We should be recasting the alliance because there is just no point in trying to roll back the clock to 2024 or 2019 or 20.
- [53:00]
Scott R. Anderson
There's a lot there to break apart. And there's a compelling argument about maybe we've already passed the kind of cross the Rubicon on a fundamental change in the alliance. The alliance is a dynamic entity. NATO has served to different purposes over the years. It's had a foundational treaty purpose, but in practice has served as an organizing mechanism for things like intervention in Afghanistan and a bunch of other measures whose nexus to at least the original conception of the nation NATO mission is really quite different. And the threat it's intended to address to some extent, some evolution like that may not be unprecedented, even if maybe the outcome is particularly unprecedented. And is a little strange in a moment where Russia is much more of a real threat than it seemed to be given that was the original motivating impetus of NATO to some extent. Joel, let me come to you on this and get your sense of these things. I'd be kind of curious about your. Insofar as we are looking for the possibility is a fundamental reset on NATO, what are the indicators we would look like? I mean, we're not going to recast the treaty, right? People are either going to stay in the treaty or they're going to exit it. But the treaty is very broadly worded. There are follow on agreements that are somewhat more technical. Nobody really follows those very closely unless you're really in the weeds. It really comes down to where do people assign forces, what are the types of cooperation activities that we see. Whereas the United States have forces in Europe in particular will be particularly instrumental here. But also how other countries cooperate hosts, what the overall posture of the alliance looks like and how interconnected that is from their independent foreign policies. Do you see signs of that? Do we expect to see signs of that? And what do you think that would look like if we do see a sort of major change in the alliance?
- [54:39]
Joel Brunel
I think that it's been very clear that unlike Trump 1 NATO's not gonna snap back after Trump 2 to what it was before. And I very much agree with Ari. I think that leaders in Warsaw, in Berlin, in Paris, in Brussels, in London are not gonna allow vote ting machines in Cop county to dictate the future of their survival as a country. And in many ways they shouldn't. Right. And you could play the 12D chess, but I do think that Trump deserves credit from Trump. One about pushing people to pay their fair share. I think the free rider system was not going to survive. The American population is not willing like it was in the Cold War to make the actual necessary political space that is needed for NATO to actually function. I don't think that if you polled people in America, do they want to go to war for the Ukraine? I think Ukraine's not even a part of it. But should Russia have hit Poland as part of it and therefore technically breached the NATO treaty? Is America supposed to declare war on Russia right now? I just don't think that you would have seen the popular support. There really is a necessary underpinning to make make this work. And I think what we've seen on the Iran conflict is that having U.S. troops stationed in these far flung places is a security threat rather than a security deterrence. If you just look at the excuses that the Trump administration has made now. I think even just this past week about why we went to war in Iran, or we're calling it a significant military maneuver or whatever bizarre linguistic, legal lingo were doing. The fact that there are US Bases there made it a necessity of imminent threat rather than prevented it. My expectation is by the end of Trump too, we're seeing a withdrawal of troops from many bases from around the world. I don't think probably in Asia, but I think from parts of Western Europe and I think from parts of the Middle East. I think we finally saw the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. And my expectation is we're going to see that elsewhere and there are going to be lots of consequences. But I do think that that also fits into the wider trends. I'd argue in a bipartisan consensus. I think that when you look at the restraint crowd in the Republican Party, there was no desire to have this massive force projection everywhere because it creates a need to go to war rather than a need to restrain oneself. I think Democrats look at the size of the Pentagon budget and they're like, this is insane. This is just completely unsustainable and the best way of cutting it. And especially with new technologies and cheaper drones, why do we have tanks stationed in Frankfurt and Ramstein? Ebb. What's the point in all of this? And so I actually think that as a consequence of this administration, we're going to see a withdrawal of US Troops from many different places and the Trump administration supporters will give a 12d chest. That was always his intent and this was just how he got there. But I actually think an open space for a new re examined. Where should we really be putting our force assets? Should we be concentrating more in our own sphere of influence? Is it more about the Arctic? Is it more about Asia? Is it more about new drone technology and other things that come from that? And I think that's going to really radically change how people see this stuff. But with my own sort of expertise in the Mideast, the reason that China's mediation between, for example, Iran and Saudi or whatever else isn't seen as that serious is ultimately, there aren't aircraft carriers there. The Chinese aren't sending an aircraft carrier there. And as long as the aircraft carriers isn't there, the lack of force projection, the real player in town is the U.S. if you do remove U.S. force projection from the Mideast, what happens? We could play out the scenario and war game it in multiple different directions, but it will be a pretty radical change. And I think that given the as we spoke before about these quick hits that the administration keeps doing and slaughtering sacred cows and empowering Alshara and telling the Turks to do what they're doing and the Saudis operating their own policy and the Israelis trying to force project and the Iranians, we're scrambling a lot of the normal rules. And if you remove US Force projection from there, does it stabilize, does it unstabilize, does it force different allyships? What happens? And I think it's going to be a very confusing time. But I do think that one of the consequences of the threatening of allies in this way in a coercive mechanism is just I also think from an American tolerance, like why should we have troops in these places? Like okay, NATO will exist, but does it really prevent or does it provoke by having U.S. bases and force operating stuff, it doesn't mean that you remove the nuclear umbrella or anything else, but just having tens of thousands of U.S. troops in these places, is it just an anachronism and that it's actually not needed? And I think that's going to be a very interesting question moving forward.
- [59:20]
Scott R. Anderson
So this idea of a reset of this potentially ushering in a moment of a different sort of NATO alliance and really maybe more specifically a different sort of transatlantic relationship, both in ways that are NATO related and separate from it, although the two have always blended together, sometimes inconvenient ways. A big question comes on. The other element of the reset isn't on the US Posture. It's really kind of on the European posture. And we're really seeing signs of this already about the idea of Europe really taking early but still significant and meaningful steps towards and in greater indigenous defense capacity and interoperability among European components and less reliance upon American components of their broader security system, and to some extent remobilizing in a way that some countries haven't fully since World War II, including Germany and the Nordic countries and a number of other countries. The idea that we are actually going to have to have a military culture and that needs to be part of our defense posture moving forward, in part because America looks unreliable. So, Natalie, what I want to ask you about is what does that all mean for the nature of the bilateral relationship because the United States, the alliance with Europe, you can see it as costly from one perspective in that the United States does bear the burden of majority of security costs has historically and the risks attended with that of getting sucked into a war over Europe to some extent that maybe it would be fine without getting sucked into, although I think you can question that assumption depending on in a lot of scenarios. But there has been a payoff that people don't talk about enough, which is that European got along a lot with a lot of American weirdness. Americans just do some weird things in the world that a lot of Europeans probably don't feel the need to play along with, but they do nonetheless. I suspect the strikes on Iran last year on Iran's nuclear program fit into that bucket and were representative of the significant but still kind of constrained compared to the current Iran operation thing that even in these late stage a lot of European governments were willing to get on board with and back the United States on and cooperate on. I think the Greenland experience between the two has really served to sever the willingness to do that. I'd be curious what European posture towards this latest Iran operation would look like if there hadn't been that Greenland kick up. I suspect it still would not be wholehearted embrace, but I think it would be less confrontational than this has been or less openly a departure. So I want to put it to you Natalie, what does that look like if Europe gets an independent defense company? What is that capacity where it doesn't need to lean on the United States? What does that lack of leverage look like for the transatlantic relationship? And I guess maybe is it necessarily, might it not be a bad thing if you sometimes think the United States as a superpower, the superpower has overreached? Does maybe having a more independently minded European ally make that less likely? And maybe in some domains, maybe other domains. I'm curious what the pros and cons of this might be.
- [62:14]
Natalie Orbit
Yeah, I mean, I think I actually want to refer people to some work that ARI has done to articulate what the benefits of the alliance have been to the United States States beyond, you know, NATO has primarily with respect to affirmative uses of force benefited the United States in its weird campaigns at various stages. I think, you know, the assumption has been, and I think it's a fair one, that the primary benefit to Europe of the NATO relationship has been deterrence because the threat of the United States and all of its military might has been a significant deterrent. I don't think there's any controversy in that that. But ARI has written really well and maybe can speak here a little bit about the other sort of less visible benefits of the NATO relationship to the United States. So I think Joel's thought experiment is an interesting one of what does it look like if we just totally rethink some of the assumptions that we have, like how important is it really to have forward operating bases all over the world? Do we really need have major military installations in Germany and elsewhere in Europe? Would it actually be feasible on the international level, on the domestic level in the United States to just fully re envision that and perhaps withdraw? I mean, setting aside whether or not that's likely, I do think it's a really interesting thought experiment and I think that the costs to the United States would be really dramatic, but maybe it's hard to articulate exactly what those would be if we're thinking about them in the context of a full reset of every country and the world order's sort of security arrangements as they have been. So I sort of, frankly, now that I've talked myself in a circle, I'm not sure exactly what further analysis there is to be done in the thought experiment land. But if I return to the question of what the costs would be to the United States or what the impact would be to the United States, can I also take this opportunity to say that the President cannot withdraw unilaterally from NATO, thanks to the what I like to call Scott R. Anderson act of whatever year that legislation was passed? Because I fully credit Scott with coming up with the idea. I'm sure no one else had thought of it.
- [64:36]
Scott R. Anderson
Just say no Congress. It's a regional idea, perhaps, maybe not the most deep legal insight, but nothing else. They've got things across the plate eventually.
- [64:45]
Natalie Orbit
Exactly. But the question, as you asked, of what will happen as Europe continues to look toward building its own indigenous security apparatus and whether that will be within the auspices of NATO query or re envision NATO Query, a lessened US Role or even withdrawal from NATO versus whether it will be under the auspices of the European Union, which I think is still sort of a possibility on the table, but it's still such a early days in all of this that it's hard to know. I think there's the threshold question of what that looks like and how domestic politics in Europe feeds into that, because I think there's going to have to be a major, major cultural shift among voters, let alone the political leadership of countries and regional leadership. Because there has, I think, I mean, I'm thinking back to my somewhat anecdotal but I think representative experience when I studied abroad at Sciences Po in Paris, which is a very international affairs minded place that is a magnet for students who come in from all over the world, many, many from Europe and, you know, think big thoughts about politics and a lot of the people legitimately do go into positions of leadership and government in their country. So it's not, this is not merely academic, but there really was a widespread understanding that, frankly, I think there was an underappreciation of the effect of deterrence because there was really such a spirit of cooperation and almost this notion that the threat of military force was an outdated construct that wasn't as necessary in the modern era, which I think, you know, given the war in Ukraine, given other things that have happened since lo, those many years ago that I was at Sciences Po, I suspect that even my peers at the time have changed their opinions on that. But how much they prioritize the buildup of European defence capacity, what that looks like, what the timeline is and what obstacles they will face both domestically and purely logistically, I think is very much uncertain right now.
- [67:08]
Joel Brunel
I think it also changes, for example, the European Turkish relationship. And it also, by the way, challenges some of the posture of the EU towards Israel and towards Ukraine, like the need for having weapons manufacturing that you feel that you can rely on because the US Lead times to get some of these weapons systems is so long and you seemingly keep jumping around. So what does that mean? And it gives leverage to Turkey, where the EU has many challenges with the Turkish government, but yet we put it all aside for national security. And when people look at the doomsday scenarios about, for example, the Israelis being kicked out of the EU association agreement, given their policies towards the Palestinians, what does that mean? If the Israelis therefore also say, well, we won't sell you weapons technology, are European leaders willing to go in that direction or not? I don't know the answer to that, by the way. I'm not saying that that's a trump card that the Israelis have or not, especially if they can buy Turkish and Ukrainian technology and others. But it does say scramble. If you realize that you need to build your own domestic arsenal in a really serious way and that we're moving to a point where domestic, as you said, indigenous security doctrine requires you to have not just an umbrella but your own roof over your head. Some of the countries that make some of those weapons are not people that you have policy agreements with. And what does that mean if they therefore challenge that? And that's going to be very interesting in terms of domestic politics. And what does that look like?
- [68:30]
Scott R. Anderson
Definitely a challenge there on the road to a little more autarky in international relations. We are running low on time, but we have one more topic that would be bereft of us not to touch on that is the fact, of course, There was another assassination attempt on the President this past weekend at the so called Hinckley Hilton because of the last attempt on a president that was made there. I was actually at this hotel the weekend, the day before, actually, I think the day technically of the assassination for a different conference and, and what fortuitous time in terms of the International Law Conference last week, not quite as exciting, or the draw good and bad of the White House Correspondent association dinner. This has been kind of a weird assassination attempt, I will say, because I feel like it hasn't gotten quite the echo in the media that we've seen of other ones. In part because it was not only unsuccessful, did not appear to have killed anyone, let alone the target. One Secret Service officer was shot but was not injured, was blocked by a bulletproof vest. The suspect was detained, appears to publish a manifesto where he was skeptical of the administration and President Trump and many of his officials and clearly targeting them in part because of their policies. But it does raise this question about, okay, what does it mean when we have these sorts of actions? Now it's very interesting because this time we have heard the usual ramp up, which is people, as we saw, particularly after the Charlie Kirk assassination, where people who are sympathetic to the party that was targeted accuse the other party of using heated rhetoric that drives violence. Violence that did happen in this case, in a handful of cases, it's still happening and that always happens. It's also to some extent is often true and to some extent is always strategically overstated. I think those are fair dynamics to all extent. You can disagree about the extent of which. But I think that happens after all these sorts of incidents for reasons out of completely good faith and also sometimes strategically by people. But what's really interesting is here we saw a most immediate pivot by the administration towards a fairly idiosyncratic issue, which is the ballroom issue. Now, there is a clear nexus here, to some, to some extent at least, or maybe clear isn't quite right. There is a nexus here. The President wants the ballroom so he can do large events at the White House, larger than he's been able to do at the White House up to this point that prior presidents were able to do at this point. Notably, this is the White House Correspondence Center. This never happened at the White House, I don't believe, and has traditionally been done and independently organized by an independent organization. The President's invited to speak. And by the way, yes, the President will still be speaking at independent events, certainly as part of campaigns. So building, building a ballroom wouldn't necessarily Mean, the president wasn't at this event this past weekend, but nonetheless, there's been a clear nexus there. So let me start with you, Natalie, on this. What do you make of this? What does this tell us about the extent to which these incidents still, or don't anymore, shock the conscience that we see such an instrumental turn in the way it's being used rhetorically, even by people who are at least ideologically most likely to feel targeted or feel affected by it? Is that a sign of growing cynicism? Is it sign that we're being a little bit inoculated to these sorts of things, and is that a good thing or a bad thing?
- [71:28]
Natalie Orbit
I think it's definitely a sign that we have gotten used to this. I mean, even as you said, this is the third assassination attempt, we assume that Trump was the ultimate target here, although the suspect's manifesto didn't specifically name him, but sort of applied and was obviously very critical of Trump administration policy. But yeah, we're talking about it of like, this is the latest one, and there's definitely, as compared to the previous two attempts, much, much less in the public discussion about the urgent need to tone down rhetoric with respect to political violence and the very real threat that that poses. And realistically, realistically, the fact that it has already increased so dramatically over the last four, six, eight years, that's really missing right now. And I don't know if it's just because people feel like there's not a whole lot more to say than this is really bad, we should do something to stop it. And no one knows exactly what that looks like other than sort of, frankly, at this point, pretty pat statements from politicians saying, you know, we really need to tone this down without any real progress on that front. I think the other piece of it, if I can pivot a little bit on topic, is the shift to talking about the ballroom. I'm finding problematic for all sorts of reasons. But the first one that I just want to put out there is, as you said, there's no indication that this event would have happened at the ballroom if it were made made and in fact, if the assumption as seems to exist among those who are using it to tie this event to the necessity of having a ballroom. It's really deeply disturbing to think that the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is a celebration of what is supposed to be an independent press that is covering the presidency, that, you know, this organization comes out of the need to have an association that presses back against, against suppression by the presidency, would have its event in A ballroom at the White House. I just think that it sort of speaks to an assumption that seems to be unstated in some circles, that the best thing to do is to askance the president in an impenetrable fortress of security and have everything come to him in the interest of protecting him. And that is not what a democracy is supposed to look like. And I find that really deeply disturbing. And I think that piece of the connection people are drawing is utterly missing.
- [74:17]
Scott R. Anderson
Joel, I'd be kind of curious about your view. I mean, you spend a huge amount of your time studying in operating and interacting with people in Israel, a country that deals with political violence at a density that Americans have not quite encountered, with a frequency, not to mention many other countries in the Middle east where that's a reality. How exceptional or unexceptional does kind of the US Response to this event seem like against that broader context?
- [74:43]
Joel Brunel
I don't think we even need to go to the Middle East. We can just look at our own history. I think one of the challenges is, look, America has a ubiquity of weapons, so we don't have to go through the gun prevention, violence prevention conversation again. And I think it's very difficult to talk about turning down rhetoric when you want to create radical change. And this is not just an attack on Trumpian policy. We could see this during the civil rights era where we saw a huge uptick in political assassinations. Just think about how we'd be in our modern technology world if we had the president, the president's brother, and the leader of the civil rights movement all assassinated within sort of a two year span. I mean, the country almost did tear itself apart at the seams den and it's a very worrying time. So I think that there is always a tension where you have an angry populace on one side or the other who want to see quick and radical, radical change. And you're governing basically 50 different countries from Washington D.C. and how do you do that effectively and create that change without shattering parts of the domestic tranquility? I often say that peace isn't the absence of violence, it's a resiliency against violence. And our entire federal system is meant to design slow change because it recognizes that governing so many people in so many different spaces at the same time is a complicated situation. And so if you try and radically change, something disrupts the system. And this move to executive power enables people to think, if I just knock off the executive, then I'll stop the change. The other thing that so I do think we need to calm down the rhetoric. But then how do you do that if people are still pushing for major structural changes in the country? It's a very difficult thing. So I think there's a structural problem that I don't know how we overcome, and it's something we all need to think about more. I will say, though, on the ballroom, Natalie, going back to something we spoke about, about before, I think President Trump sees his legacy in terms of what he's built, in the physical architecture of what he's built. And I wouldn't put that aside as just a throwaway or a hysteric like, ha, ha, ha. I actually genuinely think, you know, he's not building international institutions. He doesn't have a signature policy. I mean, he's got tax cuts, but there's no. There's nothing there. That's not how he sees his legacy. Just isn't. He's renamed the Institute of Peace in the capital, Kendi Center. I would expect that to be taken down when a Democratic president comes up. What is his legacy? He's gonna have permanently changed the White House, right? He is gonna have. It will be the Trump Ballroom. He's paved over the Rose Garden. He's changed the Oval Office. And rather than being like, oh, that's just an egoism for him, I think if you look at President Trump and him as a personality, as a property developer, that is an expression of himself. So it does not surprise me that the Trump administration thing saying, this is why we need a ballroom. It's not just a vanity project, but it's actually something about is. I actually think a part of his psychology is that that's his legacy. And rather than, you know, I don't mock that. I think it's important to understand that, you know, in many ways, Dansk, he sees that as part of his legacy as well as slaughtering all of these policy cows. But how much that lasts, you know, he shifted the Overton window, but what he's foundationally built is something that every time you look at the White House, you know he was there.
- [77:54]
Scott R. Anderson
Or when he gets to the arch, then we'll really know. Then anyone coming into DC will know for sure.
- [77:58]
Ari Tapatabai
Absolutely. Same thing.
- [77:59]
Joel Brunel
Same thing.
- [78:00]
Scott R. Anderson
Absolute. We are out of time for today's episode, but this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Ari, why don't we start with you? Talk to us about what you have for us to ponder over.
- [78:13]
Ari Tapatabai
All right. I think this is the second video game I'm going to recommend on this podcast and it is a game on the Switch 2 called Split Fiction. It is a wonderful two person co op game where you enter the world of, of two fiction writers and they basically have to become the protagonists of their stories. And so you basically move from one universe to another and some are very elaborate and complex and interesting and others are just insane in the best way possible. So you go from, you know, racing each other, you know, in a sci fi kind of, you know, post modern worlds and then you are a hot dog in the the next scene and then you're dancing with this monkey king who is going to let you through if you manage to actually replicate his steps, which if you don't have any rhythm like me, is really freaking challenging. So anyway, it is a really, really fun game. Great storytelling, great gameplay and wonderful graphics and universe building. Highly, highly recommend.
- [79:21]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, I love it. We need a good video game correspondent here. Ari hopefully can continue to recruit you since Eugenia has sadly left us in that regard.
- [79:28]
Ari Tapatabai
But happy to serve.
- [79:30]
Scott R. Anderson
There we go. That's all we can ask. Natalie, what did you bring for us this week?
- [79:34]
Natalie Orbit
Okay, I'm gonna just preface by saying that I do not apologize for how enthusiastic I am about this. Ari will know what I'm talking about. There is a bakery that has opened right across the street from Eastern Market, a couple of blocks from my house. This bakery has been in the works for, I don't know, like 18 months or something. Ari is from my neighborhood too, until she relocates to Chicag, Chicago, the best city. So she has also been waiting with bated breath, I believe, for this bakery to open. And by bakery I mean a boulangerie. It is called Boulangerie St. Georges. Every time I say it, my friends judge me because I refuse to say it in not a French accent. I went there on the opening day. It opened at 8 o' clock in the morning. I got there at 8 o' clock three and the line was all the way down the block. I waited in line with my dog for an hour and a half. Again, I do not apologize because it was so good and so worth it. And even though they were out of plain croissant, I got a lot of other things and some pastries. And I have since gone back three or four times despite having been out of town for a week and a half. The people in there are all French speaking. And so I have a little moment where I feel returned to what is, I don't know. Sometimes Paris is my favorite city. But then I feel like I'm betraying Chicago, so it's very confusing, but it's a delight.
- [81:03]
Scott R. Anderson
Two cities, everyone can agree, have a ton in common.
- [81:07]
Natalie Orbit
Listen, don't get me started. There's a beautiful river that goes through both of them. Anyway, most cities, sisters say are sister cities. That's true.
- [81:15]
Scott R. Anderson
Oh, that's true. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.
- [81:17]
Natalie Orbit
So anyway, I love it so much, Ari, when you come back to visit dc, we will go together and speak pretentious French with the pretentious French people and eat our pretentious pastries that are. Oh, I forgot to say, this bakery Boncherie likes to advertise that it imports all of its butter and flour from France.
- [81:39]
Scott R. Anderson
So I don't think you've actually said the name of it yet.
- [81:42]
Natalie Orbit
Boulanger et St. Georges.
- [81:43]
Scott R. Anderson
Oh, St. Georges, you did say. Okay, okay, okay, I missed it. All right, Therehere we go.
- [81:46]
Natalie Orbit
St. George.
- [81:47]
Scott R. Anderson
St. George.
- [81:48]
Natalie Orbit
St George's for those of you who would like an American translation alliteration. It's really good. Go try it out.
- [81:57]
Scott R. Anderson
Wonderful, Wonderful. Well, for my object lesson, I will endorse some competition in the podcast department. I think competition is probably not quite what this is doing. I think two years ago or so, one of my prior object lessons was a phenomenal podcast. The folks at the Telegraph, I think the Daily Telegraph and Print, just the Telegraph Online, have thrown together on Ukraine. They did a Ukraine the Latest podcast. Not a great original title, but phenomenal daily podcast. Really really bringing up to date information with really, really great high profile interviews with people with real technical knowledge and experience. They've been doing the same thing with Iran, much to my ignorance, until a few days ago. They have a really, really good podcast. They've put together a daily basis every weekday called Iran the Latest. Again, come up with better names, guys, but it's really, really useful. I listened to a bunch of back episodes over the last few days. They had an interview, I think, on the last episode I listened to, which I think was just yesterday with David Satterfield, a legendary U.S. ambassador who I worked with briefly once upon a time. Mark Cancian, a CSIS researcher. Researcher who's done some really great work with, I think one of his research assistants on US arms supplies and the impact of the Iran conflict. Really pulling together a lot of important substantive threads in a way I have not seen done many other places. Maybe Lawfare when we try, but we can't even do Iran every day. So a wonderful inclusion in your podcast consideration. If you are working or thinking about these Issues. Check it out. Iran. The latest on the Telegraph podcast network or whatever they call it. Joel, bring us home. What do you have for you?
- [83:26]
Joel Brunel
So, firstly, Aria, I welcome you to the ubiquity of Chicago bakeries. I know that D.C. might have one decent French bakery, whether it's Filipino, French, American, we are the James Beard capital of America for this very good reason. So be prepared to eat many a good dish.
- [83:41]
Scott R. Anderson
It's all about the ratio of butter. That's the thing that Chicago Bears have most in common.
- [83:45]
Joel Brunel
Oh, by the way, you can have takboki croissants. There's everything you could possibly want in Chicago and more. So it's a very exciting, exciting food city. I'm actually, you know, I was very struck, like, for the 680,000 people who turned up to Pittsburgh to listen to the NFL read out a list of names for the NFL draft this weekend, I was struck by how many of the international fans and how much the U.S. the NFL was leading into its Mexican contingent. And we really saw pretty much in every team have like a Mexican club announce a fan. I think at the where there's been so much tension, specifically with Mexico. And, you know, I know that we've got the nightmare that will be the FIFA World Cup. By nightmare, I mean the political nightmare, not the sports nightmare. I think it is very interesting that despite everything we spoke about in this podcast, I'm always struck. But when you actually take yourselves out of the D.C. national security thought bubble, you put yourself in America's pastimes and you look at whether it's the amount of South American and Asian players in MLB or when you look at the NFL's expansion into Mexico, Americans through sports and stuff, is still a real thing and it's still an attractive thing. And people judge us more than just who our government is, just as we should be judging other countries more than just who their governments are. And I think it's very grounding that should all of our talking heads in our country also find a passionate sports time, whether it's golf, NFL, mlb, dance Olympics, whatever it may be, there's really an opportunity to understand that we are more than just our governments. And it's an objective lesson that the NFL draft, which is the most pointless sporting event, that brings so much hope. Though it could have been an email, there is no sporting event more than it could have been an email than the NFL draft that takes up, I don't know, 15 hours over three days. It reminds us that the international community is really obsessed with one of our great pastimes that bonds us and that's a good thing.
- [85:37]
Scott R. Anderson
There you go. There you go, football bringing peace one concussion inducing sack at a time. But we'll take it well with that Brings us to the end of this week's episode. But remember, Rational Security is a production of Lawfare, so be sure to visit lawfaremedia.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, among other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org our audio engineering 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 Pata. I have my guests Joel, Ari and Natalie. I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.
- [86:40]
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