Loading summary
Transcript71 lines
- [00:00]
Ari Tabatabai
You know Hannah and I love a good bedrotting session, reality TV snacks nearby and now I've leveled up with my self care game with this Shark Beauty Cryoglow, the number one skincare facial device in the us.
- [00:12]
Podcast Host or Advertiser
Wait, I'm obsessed with it. I've had it for a while actually and it's the only mask that combines high energy LEDs, infrared and under eye cooling. I really need this because nothing wakes me up in the morning. You could do four treatments in one better aging skin clearing, skin sustain and my favorite the under eye revive with Instachill ColdTech. You put it on and it just feels so good under your eyes. Like I actually feel like I got eight hours of sleep.
- [00:36]
Ari Tabatabai
It's truly like a luxury spa moment while you're literally horizontal. It's perfect for post workouts, Sunday scaries or when you just wanna glow while rotting.
- [00:45]
Podcast Host or Advertiser
To treat yourself to the number one LED beauty mask this holiday season, go to sharkninja.com and use promo code Giggly Squad for 10% off your cryo glow. That's sharkninja.com and Use promo code giggly squad for 10% your cryoglow.
- [01:02]
Scott R. Anderson
Are you.
- [01:02]
Advertiser or Announcer
Still running your business? With one creaky old phone system, missing calls, losing track of messages, and scrambling to keep up with your team? It's time to break up with the past and say hello to Kuo. Kuo is the number one business phone system with 4.7 stars across 3,000 reviews on G2. Quo brings all your business phone calls and texts into one app for your team. No more juggling devices or being tied to a landline. Huo's built in AI logs calls, creates summaries, automates follow ups, and can even answer and route calls. So you never miss an opportunity. Whether you're a solo operator or leading a growing team, Quo keeps you connected and helps you deliver standout customer experiences. Join over 90,000 businesses using Quo and see why it's the number one business phone system for customer satisfaction. Level up your workflow with quo. Get started free plus get 20% off your first six months at quo.com tech. That's quo spelled Q-U-O.com tech and if you have existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over for free. Quo no missed calls, no missed customers.
- [02:15]
Scott R. Anderson
Tyler, you're back in your native environments here in New York City because you've been on the road the last week or two. But I guess you are on your road in your native environments. But now you're in your not native but More recent environs back in New York City. Welcome home.
- [02:28]
Tyler McBrien
Thank you. Yeah, so, yeah, I guess for people who don't know, I've been working on this series about the Georgia guidestones with our good friends at Goat Rodeo. So keep an eye out for that.
- [02:37]
Scott R. Anderson
Not a lot for a project. Not a lot, sadly, but an exciting project nonetheless.
- [02:41]
Tyler McBrien
So, any conspiracy theorists out there? I get excited, but this reporting trip last week to Georgia was a bit rougher than past ones. There are a series of unfortunate events that I can. I can run you quickly through if that's. If you have. If you want a little schadenfreude. Basically what happened was I stayed at a hotel in Georgia. I believe it was the one near the Atlanta airport. On the trip, I lost a roll of film in a field. And so I was like, searching around, searching around. Eventually I found it. And then when I was flying home, I got. I started getting, like, really itchy arms. And so I assumed it was poison ivy, having gotten poison ivy many times before in the Georgia wilderness. As soon as I got home and I was changing, my partner was like, those are bed bug bites and you should probably leave. And so I was immediately treated like a leper. But she was right. They were bed bug bites. I ran home. I like, bagged up my. I threw stuff in the laundry, bagged up everything else. I live in a studio, so I sequestered it to the, like this one shared closet in my hallway. The next day, it was gone. I've never had anything stolen from that closet, but. But I remembered there was an airtag in it. So I pulled up the airtag. Lo and behold, it is less than a mile away. And I went there. It was a bit of a seedy place. I tried to negotiate with people in and out of the place. I kind of put a human face, I guess, to this crime. No luck.
- [04:06]
Scott R. Anderson
You should have just told them it has bed bugs. I bet they would have given it back at that point just to get their hands off of it.
- [04:11]
Tyler McBrien
I thought about it, but then, I don't know, I thought maybe it wouldn't really register or something. I told them my passport was inside, which was a lie. I had other documents and that seemed to, you know, one guy even came out and said, look, man, I really appreciate your patience. Almost like customer service interaction. Unfortunately, I left empty handed after a few hours. Then two days later, I kept an eye on it. It was still there. Two days later, it moved to a new location on my find my, you know, airtag. It was this like, industrial area between Bushwick and Ridgewood in Queens. It was on. It was 221 Varick Avenue. And I'm revealing that address because that is the dump. So I guess, yeah, it met its fate. So I think that's. That's gone and it hasn't, you know, it's in last seen like at that time. So I assume it was just pulverized by the trashman.
- [05:06]
Scott R. Anderson
Oh, my gosh, Tyler, that is an epic adventure. But, like, at least you have the universal justice of probably giving that whole house pretty vicious bedbugs, it sounds like. So you had your revenge in the end.
- [05:17]
Tyler McBrien
Exactly. And. And knock on wood. No sign of the bed bugs here. I don't think they followed me home. So we're on the men.
- [05:28]
Scott R. Anderson
Hello, everyone, and 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 headlines. I am thrilled to be joined once again by one of our most common recurring and beloved guests, that is Lawfare managing editor, Tyler McBrien. Tyler, thank you for coming back on the podcast and welcome.
- [05:49]
Tyler McBrien
Thank you for having me once again.
- [05:50]
Scott R. Anderson
And we have a first timer among our ranks, new Lawfare public interest fellow, Ari Tabatabai. Ari, thank you for coming on the podcast. Welcome.
- [05:59]
Ari Tabatabai
Thanks for having me, Scott. Really excited to be here.
- [06:01]
Scott R. Anderson
Tyler and I, I think, are especially excited because you are a new global affairs person here at Lawfare itself thus far has mostly been limited to me and Tyler. So excited to have somebody else here to talk about global affairs, not just national security as it relates to a. And the justice system here in Washington D.C. or in the United States. I'm so excited to have you on board. And in that spirit, we are talking about a few international headlines this week. A couple things happening in the world, near and afar, mostly afar, but a few in the nearer parts of the far away world. I don't know how to describe this exactly, but they're. Foreign affairs is what we're talking about and we're excited to get into it with you guys. So for our first topic this week, it's great apectations. President Trump is headed to Asia this week, both for a meeting of the regional Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC organization, and a one on one sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping, among other meetings. It's a moment destined to spotlight one of the more quixotic, I think it's fair to say, areas of the second Trump administration's foreign policy one that's only been complicated further by his and China's increasingly aggressive trade maneuvers, particularly around rare earth minerals, in the last few weeks. What should we expect from the meetings this week and what does it tell us about the Trump administration's Asia policy? Topic 2 Pirates of the Caribbean the US military buildup in the Caribbean has continued apace even as the Trump administration has expanded its controversial military campaign against narcotics traffickers into the eastern Pacific, even as both sets of actions have put pressure on the Maduro regime. They've also created risks within Trump's coalition, where a few legislators have begun to join Democrats in demanding more answers from the Trump administration and within the executive branch, where tensions appear to have contributed to the early retirement of the military commander in charge of the military operations, not actually specifically the targeting of narcotics traffickers, but the broader military buildup in the Caribbean. What constraints are there on how far the president can go in these military maneuvers and how far will he push them? Topic 3 to calm after the Storm Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest storms on record, made landfall in Jamaica yesterday as of the time of recording and is now hovering over Cuba, albeit and we can form on its way to the Bahamas, the devastation it is expected to have left. I think we're still waiting on full readouts of the scale of that destruction, but the expectations are that's it's pretty severe and that such damage would normally in the past have been the subject of an almost immediate and substantial US Humanitarian assistance response. But it's not clear whether that or what exactly will be forthcoming in the days to come or how effective the United States will be able to provide any assistance. Given the recent dismantling of U.S. foreign assistance agencies that in the past have headed up these efforts, how should we expect the Trump administration to respond? How effective will that response be and what could the long term consequences be for other US Foreign policy interests in the region? So for our first topic, it is a big week for people who follow Asia and Asia policy generally. And Ari, I think it's fair to count you among the ranks of those people. I know there's an area you've been watching and working on in the recent past and we're excited to have you on board in part to help us make sense of a little bit as we have a overabundance of Middle east experts and an under supply of Asia experts, although Ben and I and Tyler to some extent are freelancing a little bit more these days than we used to. So talk to us a little about this apec meeting, apec, for folks who don't know, although I think a lot of people do, is a big forum for international affairs generally in Asia. Like we see things like the Munich security conference or G7 summits that end up being these big meetings where because it involves high level leaders, it's usually a focus of effort to produce deliverables around different bilateral multilateral issues. It's kind of a forcing event in the diplomatic process that honestly is very useful. That's why you see so much happening around these summits. It's not because the leaders are actually necessarily doing that much. It's because the bureaucratic pressure is on the bureaucrats to figure out and the lower level officials, okay, we actually have to come to some agreement on this. So our bosses have something to announce essentially. In the past, we've seen a lot of things kind of get lined up here. This time we're beginning to see that a little bit. Actually, just in the last half hour, as far as I can tell, at least from the headlines I've been following, we've seen the announcement of a deal with the United States and South Korea, a breakthrough on a trade deal that's notable particularly because the Trump administration has not historically had a great relationship with South Korea, certainly during the first Trump administration, although it's a little, not quite as cool, I think, in the last this term so far than it was the first time around. But we're also expecting to see a number of major bilateral meetings. There is one most notably scheduled for later this week on Thursday, I believe, between President Trump and Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. And we've seen a lot of action leading up to that. Less on the agreement space, but more on the ramping up the cudgels that either party will bear with China, of course, imposing, as we discussed a few weeks ago, pretty substantial export controls on rare minerals and things incorporating rare minerals, among other kind of sensitive technologies on which the United States, Europe and other countries are heavily reliant and the United States responding, or at least President Trump responding with a threat of 100% tariffs on China, among other sorts of measures that so far though haven't fully been rolled out. So, Ari, talk to us a little bit about the stakes of this meeting. How is the Trump administration talking about, how are other parties talking about? What are the expectations going into it? Where do we think we're going to be a week from now when all these meetings are over? That's different from today?
- [11:17]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah. So just to level set a Little bit. You started setting the stage here. You're looking at 21 countries coming together to have both a series of bilateral meetings. And from what I can tell so far, at least from the readout that the White House put out just two days ago, that kind of captured what the administration sees as the goals for this particular trip so far. Trade is really first and foremost. There's a brief mention of the peace deal that the president says he brokered between Thailand and Cambodia. We can come back to that. But really, the trade piece of this is the driving force here. And then, of course, the president started his trip in Malaysia and then went on to Japan. This is an interesting component of the trip because you have a new prime minister who first female prime minister of Japan, who recently took office and who really pulled all the stops for the president really is trying to kind of cultivate that personal aspect of the relationship which we know about. President Trump is really key to how you kind of capture his attention and get him to work with you. Right. So they had a series of meetings, and from at least what we can tell, there's been a few agreements that have been brokered, notably on civil nuclear matters here. And then there's been some kind of chatter in the press about Ford trucks being exported to Japan. Of course, Japan is a big exporter of cars itself. So, you know, here I think the president is really looking to capture at least some of the kind of more visible pieces and pull them to be able to show something for his trip. And, you know, where there is, I think, some kind of overlap between the US Interest and the Japanese interests is the economic piece. Japan also has had a modest growth in the past year. It's experiencing rising prices. It really wants to be able to show, especially with this new government, really wants to be able to show that it is working well with the United States, especially on the economic piece, where I think there is a bit of a divergence, is that for the Japanese prime minister, security is a huge component of what she's looking at securing as well. And I can't tell that the president, that President Trump is particularly interested in having extensive conversations about sort of, you know, the alliance and the US Approach to the Indo Pacific. And we can talk about that in a second as well. And then from there, President Trump went to South Korea yesterday. I think it was North Korea, of course, you know, tested some missiles, par for the course with, with. With them, I think even President Trump.
- [13:56]
Scott R. Anderson
Trump said, but did they send love letters? I think is the real question. Because that. Because Those that were going hand in hand for a while during the first Trump administration, more or less that's true.
- [14:05]
Ari Tabatabai
President Trump did say he would be interested in meeting with Kim and he responded with, you know, missile tests. So, so do it with that what you will. And so we'll see what comes out of that as well. But again, you're looking at a fairly as at a new prime minister who took office after his predecessor had a bit of a situation with a martial, with a martial law. So he also has a lot to show domestically and there is deals to be done there that I think would boost him domestically. Two things I want to highlight brief here is one, you know, you mentioned the Trump Xi meeting on Thursday. This is kind of the, you know, big centerpiece of, of this meeting. There's a lot going on domestically in China, which maybe we can come back to. There's been the purges in the military that we've seen over the past week or so. The five year plan, the next one has been sort of the contours of it have been unveiled. So there's quite a lot going on there. And then the second piece is there is still a lot of murkiness around what the Trump administration's Asia policy will actually look like. The national defense strategy, which we are expecting at some point in the future, I don't know if it's been delayed by the shutdown, should clarify some of the tensions we're seeing in the administration. But at least so far, you know, we have an administration that is on the one hand very interested in kind of competition with China. I think that's kind of the Department of Defense school of thought. And then you have a more interventionist, a more a State Department that seems to be very interested in the Western hemisphere. And I know we'll talk about that in the kind of second and third parts of the show here. But, but, you know, I think this is also for the allies, both in Asia, but also in Europe, who are watching this trip. They're looking to see whether this trip clarifies what US Asia policy looks like. And my gut tells me that we're not really going to get that sort of clarification.
- [16:03]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah. And that gets at to me why this is such an interesting moment to watch if you've been trying to figure out exactly what the Trump administration is thinking about China. And that, of course, dictates what it's thinking about the rest of Asia to some extent the rest of the world, but particularly the rest of Asia, because it's so different than what people frankly expected going into the second Trump administration and what we saw in the first Trump administration, first Trump administration, we saw extreme inclination towards, I think, just general hawkishness on China on a lot of different fronts. Extreme rhetoric in support of Taiwan. Not, not extreme, but like strong rhetoric and support of Taiwan, strong posturing by the Trump administration, support of Taiwan. Notably, the Biden administration more or less kept up with that, to be honest. You also saw a number of cases where the president escalated, escalated, escalated with China over trade, over tariffs, but then particularly recall over the global pandemic which he very squarely put on China through a number of law enforcement measures that were aimed at really rooting out a variety of Chinese influence to an extent that people were worried it was intruding upon, you know, Asian, Chinese, American civil liberties and civil rights here in the United States. Towards the end of the Trump administration, a lot of other measures to some extent, I think that was the Trump administration channeling a more conventional, I hate the blob term, but it is useful. The more conventional foreign policy establishment views about the strategic concerns a rising China presents as a major, as not the major strategic competitor, probably the major strategic competitor to the United States. And it was being channeled through a lens of a president and of course, of advisors that favored more of an aggressive tone and whatnot. Here in the second Trump administration, even though a lot of the rhetoric during the election tended to lean in that past direction, now we're seeing frankly, a much more calibrated approach to China. China is not being put out there as the big bad. We've seen the Trump administration, particularly in the context of AI, open the doors to different types of collaboration, access to chipsets, loosen things up in a way that the Biden administration would have been shocked by and frankly would have been raked over the coals by congressional Republicans for. It's really extraordinary. I actually not sure there aren't some merit to aspects of these policies. I don't think that an instinctual escalation of tension is necessarily a good thing. And the Biden administration drifted too often in that direction. Think about the balloon controversy of two years ago. That is still one of my favorite things to talk about. But we've really shifted the opposite direction now where it's not clear how big the China competition priority is and how much it is shaping different things. Again, if you're talking about potentially giving China access to, for example, leading chipsets, which is something President Trump said in the last 24 hours, saying they're on the table going in negotiations with Xi on Thursday. That's extraordinary. I mean, AI is considered kind of the premier front by most people of strategic competition at this point. And the chipset is the United States main, if not only advantage. China has been using its edge over rare earths really aggressively. So maybe this is just acknowledging the United States doesn't have as much leverage as it has pretended it has or has tried to exercise over chipsets. But it's pretty extraordinary shift. What do you make of that, Ari? Is there a logical cohesive hole behind the Trump administration's policy towards China that's trickling into the rest of Asia? Because to me it looks really incoherent and it seems to reflect the pockets of a bunch of different peoples using the administration that that don't line up and haven't been reconciled. Whether it's people in the Defense Department where there is a. There's one strong element of people that's traditionally very hawkish on China. Think of like the Elbridge Colby's and other people who have been talking for a long time about like China should be the security focus and we should not pay attention to Europe and not think resources there so we can focus on China. Yet at the same time, I think actually Colby himself was one of the people involved in reviewing the Aukus agreement which was really a pillar of strengthening security cooperation in Asia. And we have seen security relationship with South Korea and Philippines which were a big focus of the Biden administration to shore up a bulwark against Chinese influence. Those were real points of tension during the first Trump administration. I think it's fair to say they have really gotten while I don't think they've been threatened the same way they were in the first Trump administration, they also haven't gotten a lot of tension from this administration. They've been made secondary behind all the trade negotiations, which has very little to do with the strategic competition question. So that's a long lead up. That's a lot of opinions for me. But let me put it to you. Am I off my rock rocker here as somebody who's only a part time Asia watcher, or am I right that there's a lot of pieces of China policy but it's hard to make them meet in the middle?
- [20:40]
Ari Tabatabai
Just to be clear, I'm also just a part time Asia. No, I agree with everything you just said and I do think that there are basically two axes along side which the administration is kind of divided or they're at these tensions and I don't necessarily mean it in a Bad way. There's just this push and pull in the administration. One is along the kind of traditional Republican intervention conventionist, you know, the Rubio school of thought, if you will, at least Marco Rubio before whatever happened in this administration, a little different now. A little different now. And then the more isolationist kind of approach that, you know, has captured so many, I think so many folks on, on the right, but also some on the, on the left and the aftermath of the global war on terror. And you're really seeing that play out in the kind of Western HEM approach of, you know, do we continue to dedicate assets and resources to this threat, as the administration sees it, in the Western hem, or do we really focus those efforts on countering China and competing with China in the Asia Pacific? And then the second piece of it, which kind of feeds into this, is this sort of is the priority Asia or is it the Western HEM and the homeland? And that is very much these two things are very much in tension with one another, at least so far. And I do think that there is part of it is that you have again, more interventionist, maybe team at State, one that is a bit more isolationist at dod Bridge Colby, who, you know, I think has these kind of like there is again this tension where on the one hand he wants to focus on Asia. That's been his thing for a long time. And as you noted, the Biden administration continued a lot of what he and the team and Trump one really laid out in terms of competing with China and the Biden administration. But at the same time, he is also seeing under his leadership a bit of more focus on the Western hem. And he's, I guess, unable to reconcile those two things. And he's also telling European allies, look, you need to focus on your own backyard. Do not get at least what we're hearing reported in the press is you don't need to be involved in the Indo Pacific. And there are two main issues with this. One is the that I have a lot of faith in the US Military's ability to do a lot of different things at the same time, but you can't do it all all the time. And so you do actually need allies. And that's been obviously a core strength that we've had. But second, you can't also go tell European allies, some of whom have citizens and territories in that region. You can't be involved thinking of France here or a country like the UK which has invested in Aukus, which has been working alongside us very, very closely. You know, you need to pack up and go home. And so there is again, there is these things that are in tension with one another and it is not just apparent to you and me sitting here. It's also very apparent to, I think, allies and partners in Asia, in Europe. These are all questions that just like reading the European press, you know, over the during the week, you can tell that they're watching this trip wondering what does, what is this going to Clarify about the US's policies in Asia and what does it mean for Europe if the United States is not willing to really put its money where its mouth is in terms of its interest in Asia? What does that mean for Europe, which is so clearly rhetorically not number one or number two in terms of the priorities that have been formulated by this administration?
- [24:15]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I would just add maybe two similar dynamics to this as well. Of in thinking through some of the Trump administration's posture toward China, which may seem incoherent or surprising or unexpected, I think one is that the Chinese position is much stronger than it was versus the first Trump administration. And this is attributed to, I think, China growing and strengthening, but also the US role in the world diminishing across a few facets. So I think just the, the power dynamic has shifted and along with it, I think the discourse in the blob or the foreign policy establishment around the China threat has changed as well. I think it's not as there is talk that maybe it was inflated at one point or that there is this hard nosed realization that maybe cooperation is needed rather than just direct confrontation. I think, I mean a big indicator of this or maybe I'm probably putting too much stock in it was there was a rand Corporation paper October 14th that surprised me. It was titled Stabilizing the US China Rivalry. And I think that paper from that think tank would be quite surprising five, six years ago. So I think that's one dynamic. And then of course the other dynamic is this Trump effect that we've talked about in other regions of if we think of Trump as a leader without strong convictions, ideological convictions, he's not a cold warrior. He's not he doesn't view the world like a Huntington or a Fukuyama. He sees a lot of bilateral, often interpersonal dynamics and that sort of worldview just blows open the possibilities of what the US can and cannot do versus just a year ago. So I think that opens up a lot of opportunities, but then it also opens up a lot of anxieties of past allies once these commonly held almost sacrosanct tenets of US foreign policy are destabilized. I'm getting at Taiwan now, if listeners didn't already realize subtle allusion to the big problem with that smooth transition. Scott, I really want to hear your views on whether Taiwanese anxieties here are merited. I mean, there was, I think obviously the Taiwanese leaders will put a brave face on publicly and give no reason to doubt the US's commitment to Taiwan. But I think there are very real reasons to doubt it. So, yeah, I'm curious, what would you do if you were a Taiwanese leader or a diplomat or something like that?
- [26:54]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it is a tricky situation, but it's also tricky because recent US leaders and political leaders have cast the US commitments towards Taiwan. That's something that actually isn't, which is always a difficult situation around this whole policy situation. I wrote a really long law review article about this actually like two or three years ago in Virginia Journal of International Law. You and I talked about, I think on the podcast or the other podcast law for a daily podcast at the time, Tyler, so folks can go back and listen to that. But I think the basic takeaway here is the thing to bear in mind is that since the late 1970s, early 1980s, the US posture has been one of strategic ambiguity where we cease to recognize Taiwan as representing China as a whole. So we unrecognize Taiwan as an independent state. We recognize Beijing as the government that now governs China. We did that in 1979, 1980, 1979. But we continue to say our kind of official posture is that we recognize both the view of both parties on both sides of the strait that there is one China. So kind of saying, okay, there's just one China, and we're going to recognize Beijing as the city and the government that can represent that China. Taiwan status very left unclear here. We're not recognized as a state. But then Congress enacted Taiwan Relations Act, a statute that says, but we're going to treat Taiwan as if it were a state too, literally. The law says everything Taiwan should get under the US legal system should be treated the exact same it was treated before it was derecognized. And then it goes through like a specific list. I think it's Section three of the Taiwan Relations act, if I recall. So it's this odd posture. And then strategically what the United States is that up until 1979 or actually, I think it's finally got annulled. In 1980, there had been a mutual security pact where the United States had committed, much like NATO, much like a couple of its Other regional security pacts to come to Taiwan's defense that was united withdrew from that as part of derecognizing Taiwan. So there no longer was this affirmative obligation, although again, as Even with Article 5 in NATO, the extent of that obligation is often overstated. There are not hard obligations to come to the military defense of those allies, although they're often perceived that way. And the United States often communicates an intent to do so. It's not obligated to do so by those treaties. The key point being the Taiwan Relations act came in and said, we actually are going to keep a dialogue with Taiwan. We're going to express US Interest in a mutually peaceful resolution of the status of Taiwan. We are going to keep supplying Taiwan with degrees of security assistance. And this was kind of clarified by exchanges later to a degree that it's necessary in relationship to tensions over a non peaceful resolution. Basically, as China ramps up tension, we're going to feel like we have to give security assistance to Taiwan. But there's some expectation that if China is peaceful, then we'll reduce security assistance to Taiwan. And then the United States says we're going to maintain our own capability to. It doesn't say quite this expressly, but the implication is to intervene in Taiwan if we choose to do so without committing to do so. And this is actually really deliberate. The people who wrote the Taiwan Relations act said expressly, we don't want to have a hard commit to come to Taiwan because frankly, in 1979, 1980, Taiwan was a non democratic, super problematic government that caused all sorts of regional issues and had been doing so for 30 years. And I think a lot of folks in Congress and in the Carter administration at the time looked at the situation and said, we don't want to hook ourselves hard to this or wagon to this horse. We need to keep discretion over how we actually respond. We'll keep up the capabilities to respond militarily, but we're not going to commit to do so. That's actually been our policy since that time. It's called strategic ambuity. The idea the United States hasn't made a hard commit to come to Taiwan's defense. We maintain the option to do so. However, both in terms of capabilities and politically. The problem you run into is that a Taiwan has become a democratic society. We've strengthened cultural ties, political ties with it. In a lot of ways. It's become much more economically foundational to the global economy, much more sympathetic to a lot of people. That has played into in really both political parties, maybe a Little more strongly in the Republican, but I would say pretty strongly in both. The fact that losing China has since the 1940s been a popular rhetorical point, this is something part of the reason Truman intervened at the same time the Korean War started. That's when Truman intervened first in the Taiwan Straits because he had been under criticism for potentially losing China, China, to the Communists. And Taiwan was seen as kind of the last bastion of that. So it all boils down to the strong political climb where we had President Biden basically saying, yeah, I will intervene to defend Taiwan, even though that's not what the obligation is. And then every time he said that, you would have his administration, his senior officials, I think Jake Sullivan at one point, himself, at one point walk back and say, well, we're not formally changing our position. Our position is strategic ambiguity. But the President did say that. Yeah, yeah, but our official posture is strategic ambiguity. So it's always been this messaging game. Trump's doing the opposite. He's, like, weakening that messaging game. And that is should be concerning, I think, to Taiwan, because that messaging game is something China watches very carefully. Like, I'm sometimes skeptical of people who say that micro changes in language actually matters in terms of the deterrent effect of treaty commitments or political statements. I think that can be easily overstated. Something that lawyers like to say because we write the statements and so it makes us feel more important. But I think Taiwan is one of those cases where it really does matter, because the assumption is, politically, both sides are so bound to such a narrow band of rhetoric that even substantial shifts in policy will only be communicated through small shifts in rhetoric. And Trump's shifts are actually pretty substantial. I mean, at various points, he's kind of said things that are kind of like, yeah, maybe like, we'll talk about status Taiwan as. I'm not sure if we'll come to the defense of Taiwan. And technically, that's not a change in policy. But the rhetorical inclination, particularly combined with a president who's just skeptical of foreign military intervention generally, except for Venezuela, which we're going to talk about in a minute, I don't know. It has me concerned. I don't know what Taiwan does about it, other than hope that it's not as big a shift as it is. And then maybe Taiwan begins to think, well, maybe we do need to actually come to some sort of peaceful, ratchet down tensions with mainland China and find a way to begin a dialogue to reduce the odds of a military confrontation over this. The outcome of military confrontation is going to be difficult for all parties involved. If the United States does not intervene. I think most people assume China will ultimately prevail, although frankly it will face difficulties in doing so. And that's the porcupine strategy of making Taiwan super resilient. But if Taiwan ultimately doesn't have US Backingers and confident it does, maybe it needs to find a way to kind of deescalate the situation. And honestly, maybe that's actually not a bad thing in the long run. But it's not clear that that's being pursued in a calculated way so much as a instinctual. The president is saying these things about fully understanding what they mean and signaling what ultimately matters, which is that his own personal views is that he's not personally that committed to it. The opposite way Biden did, where Biden seemed personally committed to this way more than the official US Posture was. Ari, does that make sense to you? Am I off base on this at all? Or does that do you. Does that make sense in line in with you think about this.
- [33:34]
Ari Tabatabai
I totally agree with everything. The one piece I was going to add is that zooming out a bit from Taiwan. Right. And looking at alliances more generally, I think this is one area where you have had actually a president who is been very consistent from both throughout his first and now second administrations that he is not as interested in supporting allies. He's generally kind of much more of a, you know, he likes more ad hoc kind of relationships that are based, as we said at the beginning on personal relationships first and foremost and second that are transactional in nature. And so he's been skeptical since the beginning, since his campaign, actually his very first campaign campaign, he's been very skeptical of the way we have handled alliances in general. And so if you're sitting in Taipei and you are watching what's going on, you're obviously looking at your own experience with the United States and all of the kind of shifts that Scott highlighted. But I think you're also watching the broader dynamics that we're having, even with NATO and, you know, our closest, most historical allies. And that should also give you pause. As much as I would like to not be saying this, it should give you pause if you're a Taiwanese decision maker and think about how you actually ramp up your own capabilities or as Scott said, do you kind of find a different, more creative solution to handle your security?
- [34:56]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah. And notably, you can really see that this week both in first we had the United States and Australia. I think technically last week it was finally locked down. President Trump saying, yeah, Aukus is a go. We're fine on this. Doesn't not clear. He actually got a green light from the review process that the administration was doing. But he said it's a go. And it came up when Australia agreed to a rare earth minerals deal that clearly was a response that something US prioritized after China cut off its rare earth minerals access. So you had movement on this other front Trump obviously cares about and Aukus got rolled up into that. So there's still this agreement that's there that's pretty foundational, at least from the Biden administration's view. It was seen as foundational, but it clearly got bundled with this other thing. That's actually what President Trump seems to care about more at the moment as opposed to long term strategic concerns. On the flip side, you also see this APEC conference where everyone's just flattering Trump like crazy in a really, really kind of crazy way. Like that South Korea Trump signing ceremony for the trade agreement they had. South Korea presented Trump with a giant picture of a crown, like a historical crown from stolen from the Louvre, maybe. Exactly. The royal jewels. We need to track this down. That'll be the NATO summit coming up. Perhaps the real reason behind recent activities. But it was really kind of extraordinary, not to mention like a comet confusing political message giving both the politics in South Korea right now with their own executive leadership challenge and in the United States and something I think like a medal, like a medal of honor sort of situation. It's pretty extraordinary. But because people are getting like flattering Trump's the way to do this. We've seen it work really well in the Europe context. Europe's much happier with Trump now than they were, than they have been in the past because they flattered him and he's bought into it. And now he's all of a sudden bought into their relationship and they gave him a big win over NATO defense spending. Now Asian states are going to do the same. The problem is that the United States States strategically, most people think, really needs more from its Asian allies and needs to be more reciprocal. And that's the hard part to some extent.
- [36:42]
Advertiser
Yeah.
- [36:43]
Tyler McBrien
I mean, we saw this also with the meeting with Japan's new leader who she said that she nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, if I'm not mistaken. I mean that's a classic move. But I also want to just bring up one, I mean, to this point of what does Trump care about and what does he want? There was this one detail in a Reuters piece from October 28. The headline was Taiwan plays Down abandonment concerns ahead of Trump Xi meeting at apec. And this one line that Trump says Xi has told him he will not invade while the Republican President is in office. So it's like, that's clearly what he's after. You know, he doesn't want a new war to start under his watch, but once his term ends, it's not like he's going to keep caring about Taiwan. I think it's really. It's that last phrase that I think should give Taiwanese leaders pause as well. It's really. It's not just these next three years to get through. It's also beyond that, because, yeah, it may not happen while Trump is in office, but it could very well happen the day he leaves or something like that. And lastly, I just want to give a big shout out to strategic ambiguity. It's my favorite foreign policy term, because you can kind of just be like, no, I'm not being confusing. I'm being strategically ambiguous.
- [37:53]
Scott R. Anderson
That's my approach with my children. Because you never want to, like, take away something you've promised to your children. But if you're a little ambiguous about how it comes about, you're like, okay, this is the way to manage it. And it's worked pretty well for me. We'll see.
- [38:04]
Ari Tabatabai
Moving forward, someone should write a piece about parenting lessons for international relations, because the number of times where parents actually bring up what works with their kids and whether it would work with international leaders is interesting to me.
- [38:16]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it's all interpersonal relations. What are you going to do?
- [38:19]
Tyler McBrien
I think there is a Machiavelli, the Prince for children. I think there's a kid's book version.
- [38:25]
Scott R. Anderson
Out there, Le Petit Prince. But not the one you're thinking of. The other one.
- [38:29]
Advertiser
Hey, folks, I want to tell you about an absolute disaster I recently had in the payroll department. You know, I have this little substack. It now has an employee, and that employee, you know, I have to do withholding for him. I gotta do multiple jurisdictions, unemployment. And I did it all myself because I'm an idiot. And it took months. I just wish I had known about Gusto. You know, let's be honest about this. Nobody starts a business for the joy of handling their own tax withholdings. And that's where gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR so that you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. And in my case, that's cause I like writing stuff. I like doing, you know, my morning live streams. I don't want to know about DC versus Maryland withholding rules and how to sign up for the kind of thing Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price. There are no hidden fees, no surprises. So if I had like a second employee, it would just be like, Enter the name, Enter the Social Security number. You're done. Get direct access to certified HR experts if you need them to help support you through any tough HR situation. It's the number one payroll software according to G2 for fall 2025, and it's trusted more than 400,000 small businesses. If only I had known. So try gusto today@gusto.com lawfare and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com lawfair one more time gusto.com lawfair.
- [40:51]
Tyler McBrien
Got a.
- [40:51]
Advertiser
New puppy or kitten? Congrats. But also yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune. Which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in. It helps you cover vet costs so that you can focus on what's best for you and your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds. Probably pro Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a'llemonade.com pet your future self will thank you. Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is this holiday Give the gift that says, let's cancel plans and just lounge. Meundies has dropped their new holiday collection, and it's made for maximum cozy we're talking soft as snow, ultra modal fashion fabric, festive prints, and loungewear so comfy your couch might get jealous. Onesies, hoodies, joggers, even delightfully quirky holiday designs. You're welcome. Knock out all your holiday gifting needs with deals up to 60% off at Meundies.com acast enter promo code acast that's Meundies.com acast code acast why choose a.
- [42:05]
Ari Tabatabai
Sleep number Smart bed Can I make my site softer?
- [42:08]
Advertiser or Announcer
Can I make my site firmer? Can we sleep cooler?
- [42:11]
Scott R. Anderson
Sleep number it does. That cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side. Your Sleep number setting Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now max out your savings the.
- [42:24]
Advertiser or Announcer
More you buy, the more you save.
- [42:25]
Scott R. Anderson
On beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on any smart bed with base limited time.
- [42:30]
Advertiser or Announcer
Check it out at a sleep number.
- [42:31]
Scott R. Anderson
Store near you or@sleepnumber.com today. Well, let's go to our second topic now, because while we've been talking about the competing kind of isolationists and interventionists views in the Asia Pacific, one camp is clearly running the show in regards to the Western hemisphere, the closer parts. I was going to say the Caribbean, but it's actually no longer just the Caribbean. In the last week or two at this point, we've seen the military campaign the Trump administration has been launching against alleged narcotics traffickers in international waters in the Caribbean expand to the western Pacific, also notably expanding beyond trend. It seems several of the new targeted ships haven't been associated with trend. Presumably they are are being associated to some sense with other cartels that have been designated with whatever designation the Trump administration has applied to them that says this is appropriate to target them with use of military force. And we're continuing to see this massive military buildup in the Caribbean. That is while SOCOM Special Operations Command appears to be running the boat strikes. Southcom, the military command that traditionally handles Western hemisphere football, southern southern path of the Western Hemisphere affairs, has been leading this big, big military build up, the biggest military buildup I think we've seen in the region in decades at this point. And we've had the admiral who heads up southcom announce that he intends to retire and is leaving at the end of the year. Several reports have linked that to tension with Hegseth Secretary of Defense Hegseth over this buildup or the boat strikes or some aspect of this collective military operation, all of which seems to be aimed at putting pressure on Nicolas Maduro, the effective president of Venezuela, although technically he's not recognized as such by the United States anymore. But the effective president of Venezuela to step down, relinquish power, otherwise remove himself in favor of someone else for some sort of easing of tension. Tyler, let me turn it over to you to get us started on this topic we talked about before. I think we talked about last time you were on the podcast, maybe a month ago or so. But we've seen little things change. It's just constantly one notch closer up this sort of bandwagon and we haven't seen any hard restrictions come back on the president yet. But we're going to see whispers of it, whether it is dissent from senior military leadership. We've seen a few members of Congress, including two or three Republicans at this point say, hey, this is actually a problem. Either we oppose this, or a few more Republicans saying, we need more information about this, you need to talk to us more and more transparency. What is the trajectory we're seeing here? Where do you see this sort of broader operation heading? And what is it intended to accomplish really, at this point? Point?
- [45:08]
Tyler McBrien
Well, I guess to answer the first part of the question, I fear that if these whispers don't get any louder or go beyond that, then we will just run, we being the US Will run headlong into this, into what will be likely a very deadly, very disastrous war, the results of which everyone can see coming. And I think what makes me feel so sort of helpless about this situation is that, that the abdication of congressional war powers has been a long and steady process, but this particular conflict seems like its apex. It's where in the past, administrations may have at least gestured toward congressional approval or done something in secret. This is happening out in the open. And all comments from Trump seem to indicate he sees no, no constraints from the other branches whatsoever on his ability to wage war. There was, I think, this comment that at a press conference, someone asked Trump, it seems likely that Congress would give you a force authorization if you asked, so why don't you ask? And he just simply said, actually, I'll say the direct quote here. He said, I'm not going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be, like, dead. So just, I mean, I think that's, it's like, it's a very Trumpian, you know, way of, like, sentence. Right. But it's, it also just shows that he just, he doesn't see any constraints, I believe, on his ability to operate in the region with a free hand, or the rest of the world, for that matter. But I know, I guess, yeah, I would want to throw it back to the two of you if I'm being too much doom and gloom or that this is inevitable in any way. It's feeling like it's gathering this inertia, and I don't see any formidable roadblocks in front of this boulder rolling down the hill.
- [47:09]
Scott R. Anderson
All right, what are your thoughts on this? I'll throw one more complicating fact. I read a really interesting account. I have to go back and check it. I think it was in Politico with a Republican strategist who made the point that you Know, the peel of the narcotics strikes, the ease of entering into those is because while, yeah, it raises all these sort of legal questions, in the end it is targeting a genuine public policy problem and it's targeting really unsympathetic people who are bad people doing bad things and are often associated with violence in real ways. And that the intersection of those two things means it's something that the Trump administration is not really worried about, meaningful political pushback because they think most Americans will be on board with that. I'm actually not sure polling 100% supports that. I've seen some polling that's actually a pretty mixed picture for the Trump administration. But that was at least their view there. Interestingly though, that says a different story between that and a Venezuela invasion. Right? Those are two really different calculus, different populations, different consequences. So I'm kind of curious, how do you see the constraints on the Trump administration operating to the extent there are any.
- [48:11]
Ari Tabatabai
So before I answer your question here, I think we talked about two of the four questions that I have, which are what are we doing? Why are we doing it? At least the stated objective. But then there are two more questions that I think are worth raising here and I don't know that I have the answers, but I think it's worth thinking about them. And the first one is what are the trade offs? And the second is are they worth it? So again, I think if we look at the kind of global footprint here, we still have an ongoing war in the EUCOM in the European command area of responsibility. We have a very fragile ceasefire in the Middle east. If we can still call it a ceasefire. I don't know. We talked about the global, the competing priorities in the Indo Pacific and now we are building up conventionally and non conventionally in the Western Hemisphere with the two stated objectives again of potentially undermining or overthrowing the Maduro regime and the counternarcotics mission. So we might have some tactical successes on the counter drug kind of piece of this, but it's not clear to me and I'm not enough of a SME. I would be interested in you guys thoughts of whether we can actually reach the goal of disrupting and degrading these transnational criminal organizations and the drug flow into the United States. That to me will answer the question of whether the trade offs are worth it. But in terms of the kind of Maduro regime and the Venezuela piece of it, there's always the follow up question of okay, we'll overthrow the regime and then what if that's what we're trying to do, right? And then what happens? What comes next and how is that going to fit into US national security interests? So, you know, the diversion of all these assets, there's now aircraft carrier that is being assigned there. There is an amphib readiness group that is being assigned there. And with all of that comes a bunch of collection platforms and a bunch of other capabilities. And I think we're going to be looking at 10,000 personnel at a minimum. Right. This is a significant buildup here. And what they're doing is also distracting them from whatever else they might be doing elsewhere. The administration likes to talk about training as a piece of what they're doing. We've seen it in the domestic deployments context. I really don't like that framing because it just makes it seem like all training is created equal. Right. That if you're sending people to go, I don't know, prevent people from doing whatever it is they're doing at Union Station, it is also going to prepare them for a Taiwan scenario. And that's not true. So I think one, clarifying the kind of objectives, but then two, thinking through the trade offs and whether they're worth it is really critical then in terms of the constraints on the administration. One thing that was really striking to me was a quote by Rand Paul and I think it's kind of worth reading it in full. He said, no one said their name, no one said what evidence. No one said whether they're armed and we've had no evidence presented. And then he said, so at this point I would call them extrajudicial killings. And this is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers. They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it's wrong. I am not enough of a SME on what it is China does with, with drug dealers. But at least in the Iran case, I have a bit of a sense and he's not wrong. It's hard to disagree with him. It is this kind of concept of, you know, not giving people due process and just saying, oh well, they're drug dealers. And you know, to. I think it was Tyler's point, or maybe it was your point, Scott. Like, you know, they're not sympathetic individuals. The second you say they're drug, they're drug traffickers, people stop paying attention a little bit. And so, you know, I think the administration is kind of replicating that a little bit. And then the last thing that, you know, I think is really interesting is, and I'm going to quote Hecseth here, he has really framed it in the language of the global war on terror, or I guess what we will be calling the global war on drugs. Gwad for short. He talked about, you know, our generation spent the better part of two decades hunting Al Qaeda and hunting ice isis. And so he's saying that what we're doing here is really similar to what we did with Al Qaeda and isis. There's a few differences, but even beyond that, like, you know, with al Qaeda and ISIS, it didn't go particularly well with after 9 11, with the global war on terror. That was, I thought, kind of a part of the origin story of Hexeth. But, you know, even without that, we had a coalition, even in Iraq that came with us. We had very solid justification, I think, at least politically. Right, right. For why we were doing the things we're doing in Afghanistan and then later on with the coalition, the d. ISIS coalition in the Middle East. And all of those things are lacking internationally. Now. This is not gaining as much traction, I think, as the kind of the post 911 wars did. But we're also in the early days. Right. These strikes started in September, so it'll be interesting to see kind of whether it gains more attention internationally or not.
- [53:22]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah. One thing I would just add about Hegseth. I don't know if he has enough influence in the administration to be someone who could really push this war and precipitate it, but he certainly will, I believe, willingly lead the DoD and the military into war with Venezuela. And I say that because there's this one line from a profile of Hegseth that came out recently in the Baffler magazine where Hexeth has said it elsewhere, but part of his own origin story or sort of self mythologizing, I guess. He talks about when he was 19, he met this Vietnam veteran of all wars who told him, like, hey, kid, whatever you do, don't miss your war. And I mean, it's very telling that a Vietnam veteran. But I think Hegseth and then parts of his biography, he sort of seems like he did sort of miss his war. War, quote, unquote. He was a little too late to, you know, to certain. To Iraq and elsewhere, you know, So I guess, you know, if one way to make sure you don't miss your war is to create a new one. And I don't, you know, this is. This is leaning too heavily into the, like, individual lens level of analysis for international relations. But, you know, I keep coming back to that little probably apocryphal anecdote yeah, it's interesting.
- [54:37]
Scott R. Anderson
You know, I was thinking about this while we were talking about our last topic. I actually think the most interesting part of this is that in prior administration the Secretary of Defense has been an actual major strategic weight in terms of articulating strategic vision. I don't think hegseth is that mostly because he doesn't seem to care. I don't think he's driving these Caribbean strikes. I think he's going along with them and he's the guy in charge of the toolkit or although obviously the President's ultimately in charge of the toolkit and willing to advance the policy's goals. But when he gives speeches, it's about what fitness beards, discipline within the military. Clearly he's a culture warrior for the inside of, of the Defense Department, for the military. That seems much more important to him. The broader strategic vision isn't something he's really articulating. I think you really see that in Asia, where the Defense Department has traditionally been one of the big forces to articulate we need to do XYZ so that five years down the road we can defend Taiwan or do whatever our strategic goal is. Right. Like that sort of long term planning is so part of the Defense Department culture. It's something that Under Secretary Clinton's State Department tried to adopt because they saw it as that kind of five year planning cycle as one of the best things DoD does. And it's a reason why DoD's voice is always spoken really heavily in these sorts of situations in the Caribbean and in frankly the National Guard deployments domestically in the past. You would expect a Secretary of Defense to maybe channel what we know are the views of senior military officials, at least the ones who have spoken publicly, formers, which is that these things are big, big sucks on government resources that we're supposed to be spending on other things. As you were channeling Ari and know, are these missions really worth it? These are not cheap. It's not cheap to deploy all these people overseas. And they're not actually getting the sorts of trainings we care about and reading wear and tear on our armaments and our vehicles. So is it really worth it? But we're not getting that voice. And you know that that is actually a real missing voice in this case, somebody who really will channel those long term strategic interests that the Defense Department has traditionally been the kind of the shepherd of.
- [56:31]
Ari Tabatabai
And Scott, I think you know the. That's exactly right. And I think part of the challenge we're having with Hexath is that he is very tactically focused. Right. We see that across the board. And so and that might be partially because of where he came from and kind of how he has, how his career has, has progressed. But he hasn't really been able to articulate on any topic a strategic viewpoint. It has always been focused on the kind of tactical, at best, operational side of things. And we're seeing it very, very clearly here. We saw it previously, you know, in the kind of in the Iran strikes context, where he was like, here is, let me point out the successes of this operation. It's like, great, but what are we doing strategically here? And that that should be part of his role. And he's not really able to do that.
- [57:16]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, particularly on the planning part because so much of Defense Department is about maintaining capabilities and options for the future. I mean, that is what 99% DOD is doing, 99% of the time is planning and legitimate logistics for tomorrow's war and not necessarily doing something today. Well, while the domestic constraints on what the President is doing may be less limited, more limited than some might think or might prefer, there is one constraint that the military operation, the Kamena, are facing this week, and that is Mother Nature, because we have seen a major hurricane, I think the largest or one of the largest hurricanes on record, at least as of yesterday, operating in the Caribbean, causing all sorts of problems for people and having made landfall on Jamaica as a Category 5 high in the Category 5 hurricane yesterday passed over the island of Jamaica, now is over or was over Cuba. I think it may have moved past it at this point at the time of recording, which is midday on Wednesday, October 29, for anyone asking, reduced to category two, still a serious storm, not quite the severity certainly, that it hit Jamaica on. We're still waiting to get clear readouts about the scope and scale the devastation of Jamaica. Projections were very, very negative that it was going to be really, really devastating, something that Caribbean nations face pretty regularly on annual hurricane season, which we're in the midst of right now, which is kind of the fall here in the Northern Hemisphere. And traditionally the United States has played a really strong leading role in responding, but it's less clear what that role will be this time around. Now, it's worth noting that the President of Jamaica, at least in some, has said he spoke to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who committed US Support or assistance. We don't haven't got any clarification on what that is yet. We know that the humanitarian assistance kind of portfolio that USAID used to manage has been transitioned the Population Refugee and Migration Bureau PRM in the State Department. That bureau itself has been cut back substantially staff wise in the latest staff cuts the State Department implemented a few months ago. So I don't know how much of that affected the humanitarian assistance staff or how exactly it's staffed up. But in the past, USAID has led a policy process that prepared for these sorts of initiatives precisely because they are predictable and fairly regular. At this point, even if you don't get something as devastating as Hurricane Melissa, you tend to get several storms that are always bad for some parties. And so USAID has set up a process of coordinating with regional partners, getting staff in the region forward, deploying different types of assistance that are usually needed in these cases to the region, and then responding quickly. I have not seen reports of any of this happening yet, nor do I have seen reports that make me confident that this process has been ongoing. And it'd be kind of hard to imagine how it is ongoing given the state to which anyone who works with USAID has been in for the last several months since the Trump administration's gone about this. So I want to kind of want to turn to you first, Ari, if that's okay on this. I don't know if you have experience with any of these disaster assistance situations you might have in other other roles in government or something otherwise, but I'm sure you've followed them like I have have on occasion from the past. Am I overly pessimistic about the odds of even if the Trump administration says I think there's good reasons for it to come out this way, saying yeah, we do want to provide assistance, that it's going to face a real capacity gap potentially in doing so at a fast pace. What is your experience about how these sorts of situations have been addressed in the past?
- [60:42]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah, I tend to agree and I think there are several things here. One, as you pointed out, pointed out the cuts over the past few months to very important portfolios that include humanitarian assistance are obviously going to leave a gap in capabilities. The second piece is I'm actually not sure what we by we, I mean the administration is willing to do. Normally you would have, you know, you mentioned the Rubio kind of statement. I haven't seen a ton out of the Department of Defense saying what they're prepared to do. As I was looking to see if they have been positioning any assets, if they've been doing any work to prepare for this. The only thing I came across was that we're preparing to relocate non mission essential personnel from the naval base in Cuba. So Guantanamo and that dependents, pets and civilians have been, not in that particular order, have been relocated to Pensacola. So that's great. We obviously have to make sure the safety of our personnel first and foremost. But it's not clear to me what else is being done to even think through and plan for this. So, yeah, it's very unclear as of right now what they're doing.
- [62:03]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I mean, echoing all that and there are more aspects of, of what a US response traditionally has been that is not clear will happen this time around. I know in past hurricanes, FEMA also often plays a fairly large coordination role. That agency has also taken a big hit since inauguration day this time around. And then I can't help but think of longer term things. So not just the immediate crisis response, but also the longer tail of rebuilding and rehabilitation. USAID's role traditionally has been fairly large. Then I'm also thinking of the US Government's traditional role in the scientific side of this. So monitoring, predicting hurricanes happening, which helps with preventing more deaths and more destruction, you know, deleting climate change studies off of government servers. And I think all of these things will also make these hurricanes harder to predict and track and therefore or prevent loss of life. So, yeah, again, I haven't been tracking as closely and I think it's been hard to tell exactly what the US has done so far. But these, I think it's safe to say that even though a lot of the humanitarian portfolio has been, let's say, transferred to State, this chaotic restructuring likely isn't helping the situation. It seems just likely that they can't rely on these paths past playbooks and therefore would have to create new systems which could slow things down as well.
- [63:38]
Ari Tabatabai
And another piece too, adding to what Tyler was saying is security, especially in Haiti. You already have a government that has been struggling. You have had a pretty dire security situation there. And we know that typically in the aftermath of these types of really significant catastrophic events, with hunger rising, the lack of medical care and so on and so forth, the security situation tends to suffer as well. And this is another area where we would normally be helping the government stabilize the situation. I am not sure if we're doing that.
- [64:15]
Tyler McBrien
I'll also just add, I think it's especially heartbreaking because the history of US intervention in this hemisphere, I would say, is troubled at best. But this is a, I think, a genuine bright spot in US Caribbean history and relations. And it doesn't seem like it's going to continue as robustly as it has in the past. And it's not like these storms are getting any weaker.
- [64:40]
Scott R. Anderson
Yeah. And the question I think you're really going to face too is how this intersects with a lot of the Trump administration's policies. I suspect we're actually going to see on the rhetorical level level and maybe even at to some extent the funding level a bit of a swing back to where prior administrations have been, both because a, there's a humanitarian cost here. I don't think people in the Trump administration are completely inured to that by any stretch of the imagination, even though they don't have as friendly a view of the region. Remember, this is the region where I think the shithole countries comment that President Trump was quoted on during the first Trump administration was in reference to one part of the world, I should say. So, you know, may not have this positive view, but there's going to be a human cost that's going to be terrible to see. I think that does affect people, including President Trump, who's been very effective by images of things in the past is relatively low hanging fruit. It's like operationally in the past has been achievable and has been relatively affordable. But perhaps more importantly here it really intersects with a lot of their interests. You have an ongoing military campaign that's highly controversial. A lot of the Caribbean nations have been relatively quiet about it. Trinidad and Tobago has actually, actually said kind of positive things about, I don't know about the government. Jamaica actually was hoping to find something on that and I didn't find it quickly enough before the episode started. But like it is something to say, you are going to want some degree of continuing support or at least relative acquiescence from regional governments if you're going to keep pursuing this military campaign against narcotics traffickers, let alone if you're going to escalate into a full on military campaign against Venezuela. And that is something that comes with foreign assistance is a better relationship and a more willingness to support or acquiesce to US Policy interests in other regards. So if you completely disregard it, it becomes a lot harder for regional governments to do. And then you have the intersection with migration. Like this is like the real intersection. Like remember, we have seen almost every presidential administration actually pursue military interventions in the Caribbean. Military or humanitarian interventions, but often military interventions because major disruptions in the Caribbean led directly to migration flows to the United States. That became a big political issue, whether it's intervening in Haiti in 1994 or Haiti again 2004 or you know, Haiti again in 2010. I think it was with the Obama administration that's working on the terrain effort. Haiti is often one of the big focuses of this, but I don't think it's impossible that Jamaica and Cuba could face similar problems. I think, you know, there are variables that would affect that. But certainly, even if it's not this storm, the broader problem it represents is the fact that you can't have things go disastrously bad just across your border and not have the repercussions really affect you at home. And that's something that I think the Trump administration, parts of it are aware of. The problem is, even if you want them to change their policy, I'm not sure they're going to be able to. And that's really kind of astounding. It is a big, it's a big potential capacity gap. And honestly, like, this is a test case. We should watch and hopefully get really detailed reporting from reporters about what's happening and how and how effective it's being. And we have lots of people who are in USAID who aren't anymore who are available to come and apply this and talk about, like, what is our capacity gap? We're really seeing in this case, we have ample case studies to compare it to under the prior status quo ante. And now we can see what's here. That's going to be really important as we figure out how to adapt to this new reality. Frankly, it's something that Trump administration should be interested in too, because these are tools it wants in its toolkit, even though it maybe have done itself no disservice and debilitating the way they've traditionally been been used.
- [68:05]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah. I've been thinking about how, how could the idea of foreign aid be resold to the Republicans or to. I think one of the best avatars of this would have been Marco Rubio of December 2024 so long ago. But I think there's this perception among the MAGA base that all USA did was spend millions of dollars on condoms for Gaza, which is just frankly not true. I mean, these are the kinds of things that it did, which was, you know, hurricane response. And it wasn't really out of goodwill necessarily. This goodwill from other countries I think was just a positive externality or something. It was really like to your point, Scott, in the interest of the United States, stability in the region, keeping migration down. And it was so clearly like shooting oneself in the foot moment when, when the dismantling of USAID began, which was one of the first things that happened in this administration.
- [69:06]
Ari Tabatabai
The other speaking of intersections of different threats. The other thing I've been thinking about a little bit, although I'm not really qualified to pontificate on it, is the intersection of climate change, poverty, political instability, and then migration. Right. Like these are all things that are coming together, threats that people have been warning about for years, for decades at this point. And, and back to Tyler's point, you know, an administration that has been actually dismantling the different parts of the government that dealt with each of these problem sets individually and then collectively. And so, you know, this is an area where, you know, unfortunately I think we're going to see more and more of these types of events and the ripple effects of them and a government that is increasingly under equipped to deal with those things.
- [69:52]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode, but this would not be rational security if we did not leave you with some object lessons two five point ponder over in the week to come. Tyler, what did you bring for us this week?
- [70:03]
Tyler McBrien
It's something that I've been really enjoying lately. I don't know if listeners recall way back in 2013 there was this viral meme from a song called Harlem Shake by an artist named Bauer.
- [70:17]
Scott R. Anderson
How could we forget such a seminal cultural moment for us all?
- [70:20]
Tyler McBrien
Well, Bauer is still around. I think he was very young when that hit like blew up. But he has been making great music ever since. But he's also now, I think he's like a Twitch streamer or something. I don't really watch Twitch, but he does clip his some of his streams and puts them on his Instagram and elsewhere. And he does this little thing where he just calls it a sample breakdown. And he has just this incredible encyclopedic music knowledge. And he's a very skilled producer, so he'll take very, you know, famous songs and break down where all the samples came from and he uses it. I think there's a website called who Sampled? And it's sort of crowdsourced. It's this great website to play around on. But he will walk you through how a sample was used or an interpolation or something like that. And it's just amazing. It makes you appreciate songs in a new way that you may have heard for so long where it's like, wow, they grabbed this 13 second clip from this Spider man movie and put it in the song and just made it. I'm like, the ideas that people have to mash up these songs are just amazing. And he's also really funny and it's A great watch.
- [71:28]
Scott R. Anderson
Nice. All right, good recommendation for my object lesson. I am going to go into the kitchen files as I so often do because I do a lot of object lessons, guys. I don't read that many books. I can't recommend something intellectual and heady every opportunity I get. But I have been doing a lot of vacuum sealing lately. A very, very middle aged dad hobby that I highly recommend anyone, especially if you're a gardener. So they always marketing these vacuum sealers that are kind of amazing devices. You like take a big tube of plastic, it's kind of like a flat bag, like a ziploc bag with no sealing on either side. You melt a strip into one side to seal it, then you flip it around, stuff all your veggies or whatever else you're trying to vacuum seal in it, seal it on the other side, sucks all the air out, locks it in. They always market these things as sous vide tools for like sous vide cooking. I, being a vegetarian, like don't have a reason to sous vide very much. I've done it a few times and like there's stuff to do with it, but it's like never really seems worth the effort if I'm being honest. I made some really good mashed potatoes once. I think that's the only time. It took like eight hours. I don't think it's really worth it. But if you garden a lot like I do and you end up with a lot of leftover produce, it's actually phenomenal because you can vacuum seal these things. You throw it in the freezer and there's no freezer frost. I've been pulling up like whole sheets of peppers and tomatillos tortillos that I froze weeks ago earlier in my harvest and they're just like perfect. And you pop them out of the freezer, no frost, no signs of anything. It takes a whaless spot. And my big freezer in the garage, which at this point is packed to the brim with things and I don't really know what to do with it. So I love this thing. I got one for my father in law. I don't think he's actually used it yet. Last time I asked him because he's a big gardener, I think it's really useful. I highly recommend it to folks. So if you are a gardener or frankly just anybody who ends up with way too many veggies from your hungry harvest or whatever you got, you don't get through them all, freeze them with this thing, stick them in your freezer and it's kind of amazing. I highly recommend it. I'm looking forward to having fresh green chili all winter, hopefully with my harvest from my peppers and my tomatillos. And you can be in the same boat. And if you have good vegetarian sous vide recipes, send them my way. I'm open to trying it. I have a sous vide device. I just haven't really found something yet. But there may be something out there. So surprise me. If you have any suggestions, please, listeners, let me know. Ari, let's turn over to you for your inaugural object lesson. What do you have for us this week?
- [73:30]
Ari Tabatabai
Well, I was debating doing something very serious to, you know, demonstrate to listeners that I'm a serious, upstanding member of society. I'm not doing that. So we're going to continue on our culinary journey here.
- [73:43]
Scott R. Anderson
Oh, good. Yeah.
- [73:44]
Ari Tabatabai
I'm going to talk about Black sesame. I have been on a black sesame kick this week, friends, and it's just such a versatile ingredient. I've been using it in cocktails. I made a simple syrup in infused with black sesame that I've been using in my coffee in the morning. You can make desserts with it. You can do a beautiful black sesame creme brulee if you're so inclined, though don't burn your hand as I did with my torch. You can do like a panna cotta. The cocktail repertoire is just unlimited. So here's my, my, you know, plug for, for Black Sesame.
- [74:19]
Scott R. Anderson
I love it. I've seen like recipes of black sesame hummus before. That looks like it's like, I don't know if it's actually the hummus or they just, just use it to make the tahini. I actually need to look at the recipe, but it looks dark pitch, kind of like black bean dip, I guess. It looks really good. I am very intrigued by this. And I've always had a flavor for the black sesame, like sweet stuffing you get in certain pastries. I feel like in particularly Middle Eastern pastries I've had in and some Asian pastries where it's like a little sweet stuffing. That's a great suggestion. Wonderful.
- [74:45]
Ari Tabatabai
We can start a settlers of Catan type exchange where you give me your peppers that you're sous videing or some, sorry, not soup eating. And I can give you some black sesame products.
- [74:55]
Scott R. Anderson
So I've already worked up one horse trade with a listener who reached out to me about trading hot sauces for my Buccalokia ghost peppers that I'm growing that I may have an abundance of a harvest of so I'm all for this, man. I got limited, I got a small kitchen. I got too much stuff growing and cooking to keep it all. So I'm all for it. So we'll figure something out. Maybe we'll set up like a message board or something to finally start the raw fair food exchange that I've been wanting to start for all these years. But until then. Folks, this is the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org for our show page with links to past episodes for our Wharton 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 LawFair 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, amongst other special benefits. For more information, visit law firmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week is Noam Osman of Goat Rodeo, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pacha. On behalf of my guests Ari and Tyler, I am Scott R. Anderson. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.
- [76:11]
Advertiser or Announcer
Blood donation is now more Inclusive More people are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross through FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross. The Red Cross is committed to achieving achieving an inclusive blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org LGBTQ that's redcrossblood.org LGBTQ.