The Cosmopolicast

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  Judith Levy phones in from Israel 04.03.2026 2min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comJudith Levy is a dear friend of mine who lives in Israel. Years ago, I wrote about our friendship in a book review, which you can read here:I met Judith Wrubel in 1991 at Oxford University, where we were both graduate students in international relations. We became friends walking back to Balliol College each week, along the leafy Banbury Road, from a seminar at St. Antony’s College on the international relations of the Middle East. Both secular American Jews—the only ones in the class—we found in one another a measure of intellectual and ethnic solidarity against our classmates, who tended to view the region through the prism fashionable in academia: The violence and misery of the Middle East devolve from Israeli territorial expansionism and its abuse of the Palestinians. Once when a suicide bombing in Israel claimed the lives of a number of children under the age of 10—it is often forgotten how common an occurrence these were even during the Rabin years—a fellow student, upon hearing the news, proclaimed with satisfaction, “Good. They deserve it.” …Babies and Bombers. Claire Berlinski on Still Life with Bombers: Israel in the Age of Terrorism by David Horovitz and Babe in Arms: Dispatches from an American Mother in Israel by Judith Wrubel LevySome of you know her from our Middle East 101 discussions; others, from the articles she’s published here and her appearances on our podcasts. Some readers have kindly enquired about her well-being, so I thought they might appreciate hearing from her directly. She spent the day yesterday running in and out of bomb shelters. During one of those alerts, she gave me a call. This was the conversation that ensued. As you can hear, she’s fine, basically—but like me, worried.
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  The Ukraine and Iran Symposium 03.03.2026 3min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comThe symposium with Vladislav was a fantastic. But the video that resulted was, again, way longer than anyone could reasonably be expected to watch. It was longer, I think, than I can even upload. I’d been trying for 24 hours to upload an edited version, without success. The system only relented when I cut it down by another half hour. I just don’t have three more days keep editing this to perfection, and “perfection” would probably take me a few months, anyway, given my still-rudimentary video-editing skills. So I told the AI to edit it however it thought fit. It made some very odd creative choices. Its B-roll selections, in particular, are peculiar. (The lady sipping pineapple juice? The seat belt shot? Your guess is as good as mine. Good thing it will soon be in charge of our drones.) Midway through, it gives me zombie eyes. Maybe it was trying to compensate for the bad lighting? You’ll see. But it was so adorably proud of its choices that I couldn’t bring myself to criticize—and I didn’t have time, either. I decided that it was what it was, and I’d just put the whole thing up before the discussion was overtaken by events. From the transcript, nothing important was omitted, and that’s the main thing.Despite the juice-sipping lady, this is very much worth paying for. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I genuinely think this is a better-informed, higher-caliber discussion than you’ll find elsewhere, and if you want to understand the state of either war—and why they’re happening in the first place—this is an excellent place to start. Also, please subscribe because I’ve been working really hard. I’m doing my utmost to keep my readers well-informed—and in no way misled. I’d be very glad if you did:
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  An epochal bloodletting in Iran 14.01.2026 39min

  Here’s the promised conversation with Shay. It’s grim. For those of you who don’t listen to podcasts, a transcript is below.Updates* US withdrawing troops from key Middle East bases as precaution, American official says* Iranians arrive in Turkey through border gate as crackdown persists. The US issues a warning for citizens to evacuate Iran as protests intensify, with many Iranians seeking refuge in Turkey, crossing the Kapikoy border gate into Van Province.* Iranian Justice Minister labels “anyone in the streets” after January 8 a criminal as death toll mounts. According to HRANA, 18,434 arrests have been confirmed, along with 97 forced confessions and 1,134 people sustaining severe injuries.Pay attention to the Kurds:Armed Kurdish separatist groups have sought to cross the border into Iran from Iraq, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a sign of foreign entities potentially seeking to take advantage of instability after days of crackdown on protests against Tehran:The three sources, who included a senior Iranian official and who all spoke on condition of anonymity, said Turkey’s intelligence agency had warned the IRGC of the Kurdish fighters crossing the frontier in recent days. The Iranian official said the IRGC had clashed with the Kurdish fighters, who the official said sought to create instability and take advantage of the protests.Turkey will be highly averse to any kind of instability in Iran precisely because the scenario it most fears is the union of Iranian Kurds with Syria’s and its own.More: * Kurdish parties in Iran call for regime change as protests continue. As protests in Iran escalate, Kurdish opposition groups, including PDKI, PAK, and PJAK, call for regime change, despite ongoing violence and a deadly crackdown on demonstrators.* ★ ‘The system is in crisis’: Kurdish leader says Iran is nearing a Soviet-style break point. “What we are seeing in Iran is not simply an economic crisis. These are primarily symptoms of a deep political crisis,” said Yazdanpana. “The state, the political system, is in crisis.” … Yazdanpana said that Iran is suffering from a fundamental mismatch between the identity of the state and that of its population, drawing parallels to the crises that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and plunged Yugoslavia into war and genocide. Yugoslavia is the right parallel. This is a particularly interesting interview that will give you a sense of how dangerous this moment is for the region.Shay has been writing a lot about this over the past few weeks:US strikes on Iran must be covert and overt—and must happen soon:There are two misunderstandings about attacks on Iran. First, many of the usual suspects are giving briefings behind closed doors, warning that attacks could unite people behind the regime. This is nonsense. The current protests erupted only months after the Twelve-Day War with Israel in June. Then, the regime attempted to utilize the war to unify Iranians behind the state. For the first time, it erected statues of Iran’s pre-Islamic heroes, but the public unveilings featured more empty seats than people.The few messages my colleagues and I have received throughout the regime-imposed blackout during the protests have been unanimous: “We are doing everything we can, but we need foreign intervention to succeed. Get the US government to help us!” Foreign wars unite revolutionary regimes in their infancy, as the Iran-Iraq War did, but they weaken them domestically once they have lost popular legitimacy. Desert Storm led to a popular uprising in Southern Iraq.The second misconception is that cyberattacks suffice. Advocates view it through a military and logistical lens, rather than a political one. Cyberattacks are necessary to disrupt the regime’s command, control, and communications used for suppressing the protests. Cyberattacks might have sufficed when people were on the streets, to disrupt the crackdown, but the protests are subsiding after the regime reportedly killed 12,000 people, mostly in the first two nights of the riots.* Responsible Iranian opposition should offer Pahlavi conditional support, whatever his flaws. A constitutional monarch could keep the country together while Iranians establish institutions to allow civil society to take root/* What will the Iranian clergy’s position be in a post-Islamic Republic future? A challenge to the regime by religious leaders could deliver the coup de grâce to the Islamic Republic* Eliminate Khamenei’s family members and top regime oppressors until Khamenei surrenders. Making the fall of the regime an inevitability that even Khamenei cannot deny is a difficult task* Have Iranians learned the lessons of economic failure under both the Ayatollahs and Shah? Iran needs a leader who not only curtails corruption but also challenges the Iranian society’s fantasies about itself.* Maduro’s fall removes an exile location for the Iranian elite should the Islamic Republic topple. Trump’s show of resolve in Venezuela should make Khamenei reluctant to push his luck too far with violence against Iran’s protesters* What does Iran’s use of Iraqis and Afghans to suppress protests mean? If Arab and Afghan proxies act with the brutality they showed in 2019, Iranian security forces will further turn on the regime.* Washington’s hands-off approach to the Iranian opposition is self-defeating. The Islamic Republic’s cruelty and commitment to staying in power against defenseless Iranians make foreign assistance necessary.In related news, it looks as if Syrian security forces are now slaughtering Kurds on behalf of the Turks:Two weeks of clashes in Aleppo led to devastation in Kurdish neighborhoods, formerly controlled by local Kurdish security forces for more than a decade.There had been calls to integrate the Kurdish forces, who are linked to the Syrian Democratic Forces, with the new Syrian security forces. However, after clashes resulted in the Kurdish forces being forced out of the Kurdish neighborhoods, Kurds were left fearing that the fate of Aleppo might lead to Damascus pressing its gains by attacking the SDF in eastern Syria.The Syrian transitional government had used various methods to clear the neighborhoods Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh of Kurdish security forces, as Syria surrounded and bombarded them. The government called for the civilians to evacuate and declared the area a closed military zone. After attempts at a ceasefire, many Kurds had to flee, and the remaining Kurdish fighters left for eastern Syria. … There are also concerns about how detainees are being treated by the Syrian authorities and about the desecration of the bodies of the fallen. “In a new atrocity in Sheikh Maqsoud, Damascus government militias executed a female member of the Internal Security forces in cold blood, proceeded to mutilate and abuse her body, and then discarded it by throwing it into the upper floors, a savage act that exposes their complete disregard for humanity and the laws of war,” the SDF said.… US Central Command had also put out a statement this week saying the US was closely monitoring developments in Aleppo. It is clear that there is intense concern now that the clashes in Aleppo may be a curtain raiser for more clashes in eastern Syria.Claire: Hey, this is Claire, and I’m here speaking with Shay Khatiri. I wanted to get his sense of what’s going on in Iran, and—well, what’s going on in Iran, Shay?Shay: So almost ten days ago, around the New Year, a bunch of shopkeepers in the bazaar began closing the shops and chanting anti-regime slogans because of the collapse of the Iranian currency, the rial. And it spread and kept growing for a few days until the son of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, issued a statement for people to come to the streets and protest the regime on certain days and time. And then, in all 31 provinces, pretty much in every single city and town, millions came out and began protesting the regime.This follows a pattern that we have seen since 2017, exactly around the same time—so I remember I was at a New Year’s celebration party in 2017, going into 2018, protests were going on in Iran. That was the first major protest movement, anti-regime, since 2009. And since then, we’ve had, every two or three years, protests erupting. You had November 2019. Then you had the pandemic, which caused some delay in the two-year eruption. Instead you had 2022, three years later, the Mahsa Amini protests, and it went on for almost a year into 2023, halfway through 2023. And then two years later you had the protests come back again.Claire: Are the reports from Iran International that they’ve slaughtered 10,000 protestors credible?Shay: It is very difficult to assess whether the report is credible or not, but based on what I’m hearing—by the way, the report is between 12 to 20,000. mostly over two nights—Claire: They’ve elevated their estimate?Shay: Yeah. It’s a serious estimate. Between 12 to 20,000.Claire: So this is a Tiananmen-Square level massacre, if they’re correct.Shay: Tiananmen-Square level, but in a much smaller population. Iran is not a billion-people population. I do not know, and I don’t think anybody can assess, whether the numbers are accurate or not. However, based on videos uploaded online—and this is at a time when internet is mostly disconnected—we have verified 180 body bags. So, just keeping that in mind, based on people taking videos in different places and corpses that have been collected, it checks out for me that it would be at least 12,000, if not higher. And based on stories that I have heard from inside—I heard from one surgeon at a small private clinic in upper class Tehran. He said they brought in injured—and I emphasize, this is an upper class clinic, which has the best surgeons and best equipment, very skilled in saving life—he said they brought in poor people who were already dead upon arrival. However, there have been nearly a hundred people who were brought in shot with military grade bullets. and with their internal organs, intestines, stomachs, wombs, literally hanging out of their bodies.And he said every single one of them would have died in any large public hospital, but they managed to save all of them. Most of these people are going to large public hospitals, because they have more personnel. And they will have all died. That’s just one example of—you know, thank God that these lives were saved. But you should assume that most people in these conditions would die eventually. A lot of people were brought in on the fourth night of the protests when it had mostly subsided. They were not shot with military bullets anymore. They were shot with pellet guns, in their heads, mostly in their eyes, so blinded. The other thing to consider here is we are completely disconnected from Iran.Claire: But you were able to speak to the surgeon.Shay: It is very here-and-there. I talk to a few people, using Starlink, and if you keep calling a million times, you might eventually get one connection. The other thing I’ve seen a lot of videos that people are uploading, right? And people are just crying, posting videos: “Just please, please, please, someone from the outside world, help.” And the thing I have heard, from every single voice I’ve heard from inside Iran, every single voice is, “We’re doing everything we can, but it’s not enough. We’re willing to do whatever we can, but we need foreign help.”And it’s not just that they say that—again, it’s dozens of people, so in a country of 90 million people, I want to be careful about not saying that it’s a unanimous consensus—but it is very important to mention. Dozens of people have said this, and every single one of them has also said, everybody I have talked to also wants outside help. So it’s not just that they are telling this to me. They’re saying that everyone around me needs foreign help.There’s this idea outside that if we intervene, Iranians might rally behind the regime, which is insane to me. It’s insane. They’re literally, literally putting their lives on the line to oust this regime, but God forbid if America does something, they will go back behind the regime that’s killing them. This is insane.Claire: The regime’s propagandists are saying that in response to what they claim were violent riots, more people came out to demonstrate in support of the regime than had ever come out before. Is there any truth to that?Shay: So, no, because “than ever before” is ridiculous. Just go back and see the size of the crowds that they could turn out in the early years of the Revolution and even early years of the post-war era. No, “more than ever in recent years,” possibly, because the tensions are so high that many lazy regime supporters suddenly have the stamina and the energy to go out in support of the regime, I would not be surprised about that, but—important to mention—they might have pulled the largest pro-regime crowd in a decade or so, but they have pulled out the largest anti-regime crowd in 47 years.Claire: I’m just asking this because if that’s true, it suggests that the desire for external intervention is not universal, and there would be a significant contingent who would be further radicalized in their views [by intervention].Shay: So, how can I phrase this? It is sure that it’s not unanimous that everybody wants foreign intervention. I know one group that doesn’t want foreign intervention, and that’s people who support the regime, 10 to 20 percent of the population. As for the remaining 80 to 90 percent of the population, I don’t think that a hundred percent of that 80 to 90 percent want foreign intervention. I’d be shocked if more than 20 to 30 percent of them don’t want foreign intervention. At the end of the day, the vast majority of Iranians do want it.Claire: Tell me what kind of intervention they want and what kind you would recommendShay: Claire, Sorry, I have to add one thing—Claire: Mm-hmm.Shay: Setting the desire of Iranians aside—I grew up in Iran. I’m Persian. I never call myself Iranian because I always view myself as an American who’s ethnically Persian. Let me just really quickly focus on US interests here.Claire: Yeah, please.Shay: Whether Iranians want or don’t want foreign intervention is an important factor to consider. However, did it matter whether Syrians wanted intervention ? We didn’t intervene, and see how it turned out for us and our allies in Europe.Claire: Well, the worry is that—and this is not a worry I share—for this administration, the worry is that whatever they do will actually make things worse. And the fear is total chaos, civil war that spreads throughout the region.Shay: That’s exactly what happened in Syria without intervening.Claire: Yes, I know, I know. But—Shay: I have been banging the drums since 2022 that Iran is headed toward civil war unless we do something. Claire: Yes. What do you think we should do?Shay: So the best thing to do is not to decapitate the regime. Rather, keep Khamenei alive, and eliminate everybody around him. People he has had in his circle of trust for decades, as well as his operation and suppression commanders. People like his chief of Staff, Golpayegani, who is a cleric. Ali Larijani. IRGC Admiral Shamkhani, as well as people in the judiciary, because Iran has developed a new policy in recent years, which is, after the protests are over, they rely on footage of protests, round up people, and execute them. This time they got really bloody, but in the past, they didn’t want to risk the scenes of people shot on the streets. To avoid videos and footage like that you just hang them, behind closed doors. A lot of these protesters are going to be hanged, even if they’ve survived. Who knows? Maybe even major prison sentences for doctors who have treated them. Go into the hospital and just arrest doctors because, “How dare you treat the protesters.” Things like that. So, judiciary, judges, prosecutors need to be targeted. His son Mojtaba is the most important. Essentially, he is Khamenei’s prime minister. Eliminate Mojtaba, and that creates a fear for Khomenei, “Oh, now they’re coming after my family members, too.” And Mojtaba is not a family member. I mean, he’s a family member, he’s his son, but he’s a perfectly legitimate political target, being a political actor himself.So you need to corner  Khamenei psychologically, to [make him] understand that everybody who’s been with him for decades and defending his regime is gone now. Now it’s time to make a decision, whether he wants to keep fighting without any of his trusted lieutenants—and he’s a paranoid person—or give up power.I think there’s a scenario, it’s not a certain scenario, but there’s a scenario that he would agree to give up power to a successor. In my judgment, it should be the exiled crown prince, who he would be legitimizing. On top of this, to the extent that you can militarily attack Basij and IRGC bases that are being used for suppression, we should do that. But it’s difficult because a lot of them are in major urban areas and it would cause a lot of collateral damage. Definitely, we need to be using cyber attacks to disrupt their command, control, and communication centers.Claire: Why haven’t we done that Already?Shay: We were caught off guard.Claire: We don’t have an aircraft carrier in the region.Shay: Well, yeah. They’re in the Caribbean right now, though. They’re moving, actually. To be fair, they’re moving. And there is a huge bias in the intelligence community against doing anything, as well as [in] the military bureaucracy, by the way, unless the president mandates them for options, and gets on their bottoms to force them to provide options, They’re not going to do anything. They’re going to do everything they can to say, “Let’s not do anything. Let’s not do anything. Let’s not do anything.” I will not be surprised at all if there is a bureaucratic fight going on right now within the US government. The administration, the political appointees, are fighting with the intel and military bureaucracies.Claire: Well, there’s also an inter-administration fight.Shay: I’m less convinced about that. Based on everything we’ve seen, the jD Vance crowd has been sidelined, and—Claire: Sidelined where Venezuela is concerned. Sidelined where Latin America is concerned. But we’re getting reporting, we’re getting hints, that they’re very worried about the backlash they received after the first intervention, when we began taking out the nuclear program. And they don’t want to see that again.Shay: Let’s see what the after-action reports say. I’m not convinced about that. I think Trump has pushed himself into a corner that if he doesn’t, it’s not just the credibility of the United States, it’s his own credibility. You know, if there’s one thing I know about Donald Trump, it’s that he does not want to be Barack Obama. He does not want to repeat the Syria red line. He does not want to repeat 2009 Green Movement.Claire: Well, that’s a good thing to not want to repeat.Shay: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It might be for the wrong reasons, but in this context, I don’t care, because as long as you’re hedging against being Obama, you’re hedging toward the right thing.Claire: But here’s my question. I assume the regime is now dispersed and underground. If they know we’re coming, they’re not going to make it easy to hit them. How likely is it that we could carry out the kind of precision assassinations you’re suggesting without putting people on the ground?Shay: Israel did it.Claire: Yeah, but—Shay: They did not have personnel on the ground.Claire: Israel’s better at this for one thing, and [the regime has] also learned from that.Shay: Uh, no, I don’t think that Israel is necessarily better at that. Israel has a lot of intel on Iran that we don’t have. They can always share that intel. As far as operationalizing it, we have better pilots than Israel. Our pilots are perfectly capable of executing such strikes.Claire: My question is whether we’re capable of finding them.Shay: Israel can find them for us and share intel. And the Mossad is on the ground. By the way, Israel eliminated a third of commanders in charge of the 2022 suppression. A third. One reason it got out of hand so badly for the regime was that the experienced commanders were not there. I think that we can execute this quite reasonably.Claire: What happens after that? What do the Revolutionary Guards do?Shay: I don’t know. And that also depends on our conduct. There needs to be a lot of secret diplomacy to reach out to them. It’s not even diplomacy, really. It’s just reaching out and saying, “You have two options. Do you want to go to Moscow or do you want to go to hell? Because those are your only options.”Claire: Do you think Moscow would accept them? I mean, does Moscow want a bunch of super well-trained, experienced terrorists ?Shay: Yeah, they bring a lot of money and fall out of windows. Why not? Some of them, yes. Probably not too many of them. We will have to find a place for them to go. And if we cannot, then we don’t need to send 200 of them. The number of commanders orchestrating this is not that large. To be quite honest, that’s a problem the diaspora has been struggling to come up with an answer for, and they have not yet. What do you do with IRGC after the regime falls? You cannot integrate them into the regular army for many reasons, including that Iran cannot afford to have such a large security force after the regime is ousted. You have to push them back into the regular society that hates them.Claire: Exactly. They’re going to be torn limb from limb.Shay: Yeah. Yep. So there’s no good answer for that. There really isn’t. So, I can b******t you here, but I don’t have a good answer. I will say this though. My friend and colleague Michael Rubin has a very interesting idea, which is [that] there are going to be, possibly, parts of Iran that are going to fall out of the regime’s control and into the opposition’s hands. And every one of the regime’s senior leaders has children living in the United States, North America, and Europe. The Supreme leader’s most trusted advisor—one of the most trusted advisors—his daughter is teaching at, I think nursing school. I think nursing school at Emery University. It is amazing that for people who hate America so much, the children are all here. You know … love deportation. I dunno, Abadan in southern Iran or Rasht in northern Iran is liberated and “Hey Mr. Larijani, do you wanna give up power or do you want me to deport your daughter to … ”Claire: Is his daughter a citizen?Shay: I don’t believe so. You know, like, “We have your children here, we can deport them.” But anyway, you can actually technically revoke citizenship if they have lied on their papers. And I believe that—don’t quote me on this—but I don’t think that you actually could become a citizen if you’re you’re Larijani’s daughter, because you have to disclose your family members. And if you have a problematic family member, you cannot become a citizen.Claire: How many IRGC people are we talking about who need to somehow be safely defused?Shay: When you say “safely defuse,” you’re talking about the rank and file, right?Claire: Yeah.Shay: About 150,000 people.Claire: That is a hell of a lot.Shay: That is a hell of a lot. That is a hell of a lot. Listen, it’s important to point something out. A lot of people in the IRGC are not ideological monsters who joined because they wanted to kill Jews and Americans and Iranians. There’s a guy I knew growing up, the son of the lady who would clean, the housemaid, never finished high school, always troublemaking and never really had a job. My mom once asks his mother, “How’s your son doing?” And she says, “Oh, he joined the IRGC.” “What—what, what you talking about? You mean, like IRGC monsters, etcetera?”She says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, they’re monsters. He knows that. He hates them, but who else would give him a job?” A lot of people like that.Claire: I don’t think the public is going to be particularly concerned about these niceties.Shay: No, I think, actually, that they would be understanding because they are living through it themselves. And when it’s 150,000, everybody knows someone who was at the IRGC. On top of which, Iran has mandatory conscription. So most Iranian men have been around IRGC. Understand this—that most people in the IRGC, I’m not saying they’re tremendous people, but are not monsters. I actually think that most people understand this. That, I’m not worried about.Claire: But enough of them are, and enough of them have very significant motivation to not want to give up their sources of funding, that I don’t think we can expect them to go quietly.Shay: No. They’re not gonna go—we’re seeing they’re not going quietly. Senior ranks is not really my worry. You can either convince them to go quietly, or force them out of power and then tear them apart limb by limb. And I would like to fly to Iran to kill a few of them myself.The issue is the rank-and-file. Society would accept them. That’s not the problem. The problem is they are not gonna have an easy time finding jobs, and they cannot stay in the armed forces because Iran is not going to need to have such a large armed force. And military-trained men, unemployed, are a very dangerous thing. So that is my bigger worry.Claire: Perhaps we can teach them to code.Shay: So actually, that is another thing. IRGC has a huge engineering arm and spent decades on ballistic missiles, right? And there is a potential for certain industries in Iran to be kickstarted thanks to the engineering science that these people have.Claire: There’s also a potential for them to take that knowledge to other places.Shay: Well, [even] more important to keep them in Iran and find them employment. The problem is that then you have former IRGC personnel working in the aerospace industry, making a lot of money. So you are back to square one, the oppressors become the richest people in Iran and the tycoons of industry. I mean, that’s what happened in Russia.Claire: That’s one of the less bad options compared to some.Shay: Yes, but it still poses a threat. Which brings me back to: It’s best for Iran to have a monarchy after the regime falls, because this country has nothing to run itself. Nothing. It is incredibly diverse ethnically. It is polarized. It has no civil society, and no religion. Iranians have lost their moral base after 47 years of the Islamic Republic, and they don’t have religion to find it through. There’s nothing to keep the country together. It needs to be someone. I’m not talking about an absolute monarch, I’m talking about a constitutional monarch. Maybe come the day that Iran could become a republic, but it doesn’t have the conditions right now. And it is also important to consider that Iran has never been a republic. Even today it’s a monarchy. Khamenei is a monarch. Instead of a crown, he wears an ugly turban, but he’s a monarch. It’s not an Islamic Republic. It’s a Shi’ite Caliphate.Claire: Right. Do you have faith in Pahlavi’s capabilities? He’s reputed to be a bit dimwitted.Shay: No. Yes. It’s better than having someone who’s extra-capable of becoming an absolutist, right?Claire: Yeah,Shay: Yeah. As my friend [I can’t make out his name, sorry] says, if you must have a monarch, could you think of a less dangerous one?Claire: I have a few questions about how to interpret items I’ve seen in the news recently. The regime is claiming that sharpshooters killed security forces. Is that credible? And if so, how do you understand that?Shay: It’s possible. I would not be surprised if Mossad agents are shooting people or distributing rifles.Claire: Or if the regime has themselves done it in order to give them motivation to kill the protestors ?Shay: My dad was fond of saying about the regime, he would say, “They asked some guy, do snakes [hatch] eggs or give birth,” and the guy responds, “You cannot put anything past that b*****d.” It’s the Islamic Republic. Anything is possible. Some of these clerics are hanging judges who infamously hanged their own sons.Claire: Yeah. Our writer Robert Zubrin suggested airlifting and dropping a ton of small arms for the protestors to use. What do you think?Shay: That’s very dangerous, because you’re making keeping the country together extremely difficult after the regime falls. Overthrowing the regime is not difficult. Keeping the country together after is extremely difficult. I’m much more worried about that. If you put me in charge of the US government, the regime is gone within five days, without boots on the ground. But I cannot promise you that the outcome would not be a civil war or anarchy.Claire: Well, if you’re in charge of the US government, what would you do?Shay: Well, I told you. Kill a bunch of people, disrupt their command and communications center. Meet with Reza Pahlavi, say that when the regime is gone, he’s going to be the interim leader of Iran until there’s a constitutional convention and there’s a referendum on the constitution. And yeah, that’s what I would do. And force Khamenei to give up power,Claire: Assume a competent US government that’s capable of genuinely mustering as they call it, a whole-of-government response. What else would you do? For example, to try and get the economy up and running.Shay: So we’re resurrecting George H.W. Bush.Claire: The much lamented.Shay: Yeah, I know. the whole-of-government approach, I hate the term, because you’re never going to have whole-of-government approach. Even George HW Bush couldn’t really have that whole-of-government approach. Just see how much Cheney and Jim Baker and scope Scowcroft were fighting each other. And by the way, our Constitution is designed to prevent a whole-of-government approach, so we don’t have tyranny in America. But let’s say that you could have the best-case scenario. Let me actually go back. More important than whole-of-government approach is bilateral with Israel, especially through the Mossad. If I could do everything overtly myself, I’d call Netanyahu and say, “Hey, can I borrow Mossad instead of my own CIA for a few days?” That’d be good. We need to have very good coordination with Israelis on covert ops. For one, we don’t have any agents in Iran. I’m sure you’re familiar with the famous quote, I think it’s in Bob Woodward’s book about spies we had in Iraq on the eve of the invasion. And it says, “We can count them on one hand and still give someone the finger.” That’s the same with Iran. I don’t think we have even four. We have to rely a lot on the Mossad.We need to be working with our allies and partners—who have good reasons not to want to work with us right now. To not just isolate Iran, but permanently isolate it. For Europeans to say, “No matter the outcome of this, we’re never going to touch Iran again.” You need to—Claire: Well, hold on a second. At some point , if you get rid of the regime, the economy needs to be restored.Shay: Well, yeah, yeah, Yeah. By “no matter the outcome,” I mean, “if the regime survives.” That’s what I meant. Good catch. You need to say that the regime is beyond the pale for us. We’re never touching the regime again.You need to block Qatar’s number, and really Saudi Arabia, because MBS seems to be switching jerseys nowadays.Claire: Not necessarily in the direction of more cooperation with Iran, though.Shay: Yeah, he is. Claire: You think?Shay: Yeah. Claire: I mean, something’s going on in Saudi, but I don’t quite know what it is. It’s actually what you would expect if he’s beginning to worry about precisely the scenario you sketched out—of a conservative revolution.Shay: That, and also he’s got a much freer hand in foreign policy because cooperation with Israel was a necessity, and without Iran’s nuclear program, why do you need Israel anymore?Claire: I imagine he would want to cooperate to make sure Iran stays down.Shay: Stays down, but not necessarily gone, on the one hand, but also, keeping Iran down is not the [same] urgency of the nuclear program. It just is not, and Israel was there to fix the nuclear program.Another thing, by the way, [that] Europeans and Americans and Canadians need to do is kick out their children. They should not even be there. It’s insanity that they were there already. It’s even more insane that after the scandals of Londongrad, and post-Ukraine invasion, they’re still there. Have you learned nothing.Claire: No, they haven’t.Shay: No, they haven’t. And you know, you go and just look at the diaspora women—they show up with complete hijab, black cloak, everything, in certain events in Iran, Qatar, elsewhere, to defend the regime. Same woman—with sleeveless shirt, sleeveless top, in London, promoting human rights of Palestinians.Claire: Yeah, I know.Shay: Completely uncovered. And she’s a London resident. That’s just one example. Claire: Right. Shay: And there this propaganda in Iran, they call them [Saderat-e—sp?] It means exported. The regime exports these people to advance this interest. And they’re walking around in these countries. Revoke their visas. Send them back.Claire: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.Shay: But this is something that if I’m the US government, I would be emphasizing in my multilateral meetings with the Europeans and CanadiansClaire: Well, the US government right now has never had less influence on its former allies.Shay: Claire, I one hundred percent agree with that, and our approach to Europeans is insane, and really counterproductive. But also Abe Greenwald from Commentary always says, “Trump always has the right idea. He just goes way too far.” It’s completely reasonable for the US government to go to the Europeans and say, “You guys are being insane.”Claire: I agree.Shay: How they’re doing it also completely insane. However, forget about the US government. If you are going to the Europeans and saying, “Kick out these people. Isolate Iran,” it’s not like we’re asking them for a favor. We’re telling them, “Isolate a country that’s arming Ukraine, has terror cells in your countries, is violating human rights, which you allegedly stand up for.” Like, give me the pro-Iran case from European point of view.Claire: Well, I keep saying this—don’t think of Europe as a single entity. You have to look at it country by country. And usually, it’s the judicial system—the judiciary is independent in most European countries—which is the obstacle. In Britain, the judiciary is consistently an obstacle to throwing these people outShay: Well, first of all, the court is usually an obstacle to deporting refugees and migrants. That’s an issue I understand. Economic isolation, that’s not difficult. The court was not an obstacle kicking out Russians. So if you want to do it, you can do it.Claire: Yeah. There are still Russians running around all over Europe, though. And obviously, since Iran and Russia are allies, it makes sense to keep the pressure on Russia. It’s sickening to me to see these reports that—surely on Russia’s advice—the Iranians have been summoning Witkoff to tell him they want to negotiate. Which is their way of buying time.Shay: So this is a huge problem. We still have not figured out what to do with WhatsApp in our diplomatic corps. Because, once upon time, if you wanted to reach out to a diplomat, you had to send an official cable. Now you can just WhatsApp a message. And Witkoff and Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, have each others’ WhatsApp numbers, and we haven’t figured out what to do.Claire: It’s very easy. Say don’t do that.Shay: Claire, you can say don’t do that. But how are you going to—Claire: Get Witkoff out of foreign policy entirely.Shay: Claire, I hundred percent agree with you, right? However. If you have—forget about Marco Rubio, let’s say you have Secretary of State “John Allison.” I’m coming up with it randomly. And if the Secretary of State wants to WhatsApp with his counterpart, there’s no way to verify. If you say don’t do it, and he does it, how do you find out? You have to rely on media reports, if they can even do that. So it is very difficult to actually implement that. But also, they’re doing it. They’re doing it and the president doesn’t seem to mindClaire: They [Iranian regime officials] know, surely, from watching what’s happened with Russia—and from hearing it directly from the Russians—that if you dangle the prospect of a deal in front of Trump, he finds it irresistible.Shay: So far Trump seems to have resisted it.Claire: Well, not really. I mean, first he said, “We’re going to see if there’s a deal possible.”Shay: So, he said that he has already written off any diplomatic negotiation. For now, at least. He said, “Oh, I canceled all of them.” There’s that. By the way, keep in mind the Omani foreign minister was in Iran two or three days ago, it is obvious that he was carrying a message from the United States.So—oh, you asked me about Russia. Witkoff going to Russia and trying to negotiate with the United States. A friend pointed out something very interesting. He said, “Look at how Trump is messaging about Venezuela and Iran. Venezuela, every time Trump talks, it is “drugs and oil.” With Iran, it is “freedom.” From the Venezuela point of view, it’s depressingly the opposite. Donald Trump talking about freedom—that is very uncommon, let’s say.Claire: Yeah.Shay: He’s talked about—there’s a few times, not many times—but he’s talked about it a few times, he’s known Persians in the United States. He had a friend who was a businessman in Iran before the Revolution, and how much that guy likes Iran. I do think that he genuinely has a positive impression of Iranians as educated and successful people, who actually deserve to have a civilized country, that he doesn’t have about Latin Americans. And it is very depressing: I care about Venezuelans. I have a lot of Venezuelan friends. So I’m not saying it in a giddy way at all. But he seems to have that impression of Iranians, one. Two, I think that we have the benefit of Israeli influence on him. And three, Republicans. The only time I ever saw Republicans publicly and privately massively pressuring Trump was when he was negotiating with them in the spring, or trying to negotiate with them. He was negotiating on the nuclear program. Iran is such a red line for Republicans that I have not seen anything else [like it], for variety of reasons, but it is what it is. At the end of the day, the influence that congressional Republicans and Israeli have on him, as well as his own views are going to bail us out on this one. And, remains to be seen, but so far everything he’s said and done, I do not object to, right? Claire: Zelensky just made a statement saying a regime that has lasted so many years and killed so many people does not deserve to exist.Shay: Is he talking about the Islamic Republic or— Claire: Yeah. About the Islamic Republic,Shay: Or would go either way?Claire: He says right after that, “Changes are also needed in Europe. The bloodshed that Russia started and is the only one still prolonging must come to an end.”Shay: Yeah, of course. I’m surprised how long it took for Zelensky to say something. If there’s one regime, other than, Russia, that Zelensky wants to fall, it’s Iran, to win the war. So where are you, Dude? This is your fight.By the way, the four groups that are constantly talking about Iran: Americans, Jews—Israeli and diaspora—Iranian diaspora, obviously, and Afghans. And the silent crowd is the free-Palestine crowd.Claire: Mmm. Well, worse than silent. Some of them are calling for the protestors to be liquidated. Is the internet coming back on? Because there are about 50,000 Starlink dishes inside Iran, right? But the regime is jamming the GPS signals.Shay: Actually, I have a point about Starlink . But to answer your question, they are jamming GPS signals. They’re also confiscating a lot of Starlink terminals and, this is my suspicion: A lot of Starlink illicit business in Iran is run by the IRGC. Not all, a lot. Claire: Mm-hmm. Shay: So the ones they’re confiscating are the ones they sold to people.Claire: Right. So they know where they are.Shay: Who has it. Yeah.Claire: So what about direct-to-cell satellite?Shay: Now, that’s my point.Claire: Mm-hmm.Shay: Just to explain how stupid our government is: direct-to-cell requires your carrier to be compatible with Starlink. This is not a hardware issue. It’s not even a software issue really. It’s just a government regulation. When, for instance, when Hurricane Helene happened, a year and a half ago, the FCC issued a waiver. Anybody with a compatible phone could have direct-to-cell compatible, meaning if the phone had the satellite receiver, regardless of your carrier, you could have access. 15 percent of Iranian cellphone users have compatible phones. If we issue this waiver right now, within hours, 15 percent of Iranians will have internet access. And on top of that, the direct-to-cell does not work with GPS.Claire: Why the hell aren’t we doing this?Shay: Well, you tell me.Claire: I mean, that’s just unforgivable.Shay: A big part of it is the Iranian diaspora’s own fault, because they’ve been focusing on airlifting Starlink equipment.Claire: Yeah, but why is it the Iranian diaspora’s fault? The Pentagon should be aware of our tech.Shay: Well, we are where we are, and how politics nowadays work, at least currently, is you have to tell the White House what to do and give them ideas. And what the Iranians have been telling the White House has been, “We need equipment.” Why? Because they didn’t know that this regulation could be waived. They had no idea about this. I actually have the responsibility for convincing the diaspora that “Guys, this is the thing you can do,” and from three days ago, the messaging finally changed. So we’ll see if we can get something done. But yeah, the answer is our government is stupid, and the diaspora is stupid. That’s really the answer I have for you. I am talking to someone later today, so I cannot give you details about this, however, if plausible, depending on the targets, jamming centers are another good target to hit, right? If militarily possible. Claire: Right. So you haven’t been in touch with your mother at all?Shay: No.Claire: Are you worried about her?Shay: No. If there’s one thing I know about my mom, it’s that she knows how to survive, and not avoid trouble, but to survive trouble. She’s really good at that. I got my dad’s brain and my mom’s gut. In 2009, I was doing things I never thought I was capable of. And I know that’s exactly how my mom operates, so—not really.Claire: Okay. It must be taking a toll on you to see this though,Shay: So, it’s not. Because in the past, it took a much worse toll on me, for two reasons. One, I had no hope that it would get anywhere, on the one hand. On the other hand, I knew nobody was going to do anything. This time is the opposite. The suffering is much worse, but this is the first time that there’s hope that something might come out of it, on the one hand, and on the other, there seems to be help on the way. I’m quite optimistic the administration is going to do something. So the toll that it took, in the past, was that it was all in vain. It doesn’t look like it’s in vain this time, so it’s not taking at toll now. It might not go anywhere and we’ll be disappointed. Really. Or I will be. But this time is actually weirdly cheerful. And I don’t—it’s important—I don’t want to sound like I’m sitting in my comfortable chair in Scottsdale, Arizona where the weather is very nice and saying that, “Oh, people are suffering, but it’s for the best.”I have an essay coming out soon, about my experience in 2009. Claire: Mm-hmm. Shay: I was one of the very few people who was as radical as people you are seeing today. With a bunch of other guys. We actually killed A Basij member, on the street, who was shooting at us, hoping there would be more people as radical as we were. But there were not. So it failed, the 2009 movements.But my point is that I was being shot at. I was fighting armed guards with bare hands.Claire: Mm-hmm. Shay: Literally wrestling them. One of them, at least. I’m not saying this as someone who’s never done anything, and I’m not saying, “Go free your country and die.” I have done that. I don’t want to come off as coldhearted, who’s saying, “Okay, others can die for my cause.” But yeah, it is hopeful, for once.12 to 20,000 people might have died. 12,000 is twice as many Americans were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years combined. It is a huge price. It’s a price that I always knew had to be paid. I never thought the regime was going to go down smoothly. I had been prepared for what’s going on.In fact, I am prepared for much worse. I’ve been predicting a civil war. This is much less than my greatest fear.Claire: Alright. Will you please send me the articles you’ve written? I’ll post them with it?Shay: Yes, of course. Well, there are too many. If people are interested, it’s much easier, just go on my byline page at the Middle East Forum. There are like 10 articles I’ve written.Claire: Oh, I didn’t realize that. Okay. I kept checking on your Substack looking for articles.Shay: Oh no. I have been blogging for Middle East forum. That’s why you haven’t seen it.Claire: Okay. If I’d known I would’ve publicized them. Alright, is there anything else you feel people ought to understand?Shay: Yes. The IRGC—and not just the IRGC, the entire Islamic Republic state structure—is factionalized. If you go and read a book—you can translate it to Book of Politics or Story of Politics, or Letter about Politics, whatever, by Niẓām al-Mulk, a thousand years ago, he wrote this—Iranian political thinker who advises that everything, there should be two of it in the state, so you would protect yourself, as the king, against coups. Iran has two militaries, two intelligence services, two law enforcement—Basij and cops, police—within them. Again, everything is divided into two different subbranches. That’s a way to prevent coups.That’s the way, in 1979, the regular military, which still exists, announced that “top general and admirals met and said we’re surrendering to Khomenei,” and they were like, “Okay, we’re surrendering, revolution succeeded”—there’s no such mechanism today. You cannot just surrender, meaning five, 10 guys meeting and saying, “we’re surrendering. Okay. We’re surrendering, game over.” That apparatus does not exist. It is so factionalized.And most of these guys, even if they have a lower rank than the official structure, if you’re close to Khamenei, you actually have more power. Which is to say there’s no easy mechanism, other than Khamenei himself to transfer power, for revolution to succeed. But it prevents revolutions. It prevents coups. What it makes very likely, such a factionalized structure, is civil war, because then they can turn against each other. If the current state continues, and by “current state continues,” I don’t mean for the next six months, necessarily. Since 2017, every protest has been larger and bloodier, every single one of them, and more violent. If this goes away, it’s gonna come back in two or three years. When it comes back, how long before some of these commanders say, “You know what? I cannot change the regime on my own. What I can do is open the base, and tell people to come and grab guns and go shoot, right?” Or some major part of the military goes against the rest of the military—the conventional civil war, instead of an armed insurgency. How long before this happens?Claire: What’s the disposition of the army now ?Shay: The army is an irrelevant political player, has always been, but it’s always been more loyal to the regime than the IRGC because they’re always—Claire: More loyal?Shay: More loyal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they’re aware of the suspicion against them, that they’re not really loyal, and all their commanders are IRGC, actually. The IRGC commanders moved to the regular army, so they’re not trustworthy, not reliable at all. At all.Claire: Mm-hmm.Shay: But yeah, it is a structure that begs for anarchy. It is kind of, not exactly, but kind of like the old European system of nobilities who had their own militias. Those systems led to war regularly. A lot of the quote-unquote “European” wars were civil wars within Germany, within the Holy Roman Empire, or in Britain. That is kind of the structure that we have in Iran.Claire: Oy. On that note, we’ll draw it to a close. Thanks very much. I really feel I understand the situation better. I’m just horrified by the bloodletting. Just horrified. And I hope we intervene.Shay: Thanks. I do too.Claire: All right. Thank you, Shay. Of course. Take care.Shay: You too.Claire: Bye-Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  Trump supports the Iranian protesters 02.01.2026 44min

  For a change—a big change—Donald Trump has said something that has me standing and applauding: I pray to God he means it. The Iranian people have yearned to hear those words for so very long. All hell is breaking loose in Iran as a result—so he’d better damned well mean it. Earlier today, Amit Segal wrote:… regimes fall because of guns and the people who hold them. In Iran, there’s more than one armed force—alongside the Revolutionary Guard stands the Iranian army. In Jerusalem, talk of a possible top-down coup has been growing. And if guns can’t be used on the protesters, perhaps someone else with guns could use them on someone other than the protesters.It’s impossible not to contrast this with the last American reaction to an Iranian protest movement—Barack Obama’s response during the Green Movement in 2009. Obama said he was “deeply troubled” by the violence but wanted to “avoid the United States being the issue inside Iran.”The regime understood his concern as a green light to crush the uprising.I don’t think Trump is as “deeply troubled” as Obama, but his statement is certainly more helpful.Still, the key question remains: Is Trump serious?I don’t know. But the last people who can afford to underestimate him are the Iranian leadership. The last time they didn’t take the president’s threat seriously, they ended up with smoking craters where their nuclear sites used to be.The second question may be even more consequential: Do the Iranian people believe him? Because if they do—if tonight a critical number take to the streets to test Trump’s commitment—then the guarantee of support may not even matter.I have no doubt they believe him. After Soleimani’s fortunate demise and the strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is probably the only place in the world where people are persuaded Trump’s word is his bond. Voilà:The attached podcast is an edited version of a discussion the ME201 group had with Shay Khateri a few weeks ago. There are multiple people talking, so in places it’s hard to follow, but I think if you use the transcript it should be reasonably easy to figure out what’s going on.Here’s the article in The New York Times and the videos to which I refer at the beginning of the podcast:* Outdoor concerts? Uncovered hair? Shimmying in public? Is this Iran? Young people across Iran have been leading a dramatic change in social mores in recent months. “We have a fearless young generation that is breaking taboos.”This isn’t a good sign: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  THE INVISIBLE FRONT 23.11.2025 2min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comAlex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She now lives in Brussels and writes, on Substack, about foreign influence operations:I’ve spent the last several years screaming from the rooftops about the corrosive effects of foreign influence operations on democratic societies. Now, I’ve decided to put all that information into a newsletter so that maybe you will start screaming from the rooftops, too. The more we understand how these influence operations tie into national security and corruption, the better we can arm ourselves against them.I thought it would be interesting to have her on the podcast to discuss what we’re seeing.How Russia captured a slice of the American mindAmerica’s response to Trump’s so-called peace plan proves just how successful Russia’s influence operations in America have been. The KGB’s” active measures” system, refined in the late Soviet period and later adapted into the FSB/GRU playbook, rests on three principles: 1) Exploit existing divisions; don’t create fissures; widen them; 2) Use truth, half-truth, and lies interchangeably, whatever advances the psychological objective; 3) Obscure the source: The greatest triumph is when the target population spreads your messaging for you. Russian intelligence thinks in terms of cognitive openings: Any weakness—cultural, emotional, political, historical—becomes an entry point. America has a lot of entry points.
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  A Bleak Week for Ukraine 19.11.2025 40min

  August 1968The Ogre does what ogres can,Deeds quite impossible for Man,But one prize is beyond his reach,The Ogre cannot master Speech:About a subjugated plain,Among its desperate and slain,The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,While drivel gushes from his lips.—WH AudenBelgium has suddenly gone wobbly about seizing Russia’s frozen assets, spooked by the thought of Russian lawyers. Pokrovst will fall imminently. The Kremlin is dismantling Ukraine’s electrical grid as the winter arrives. A sprawling corruption scandal is engulfing Zelensky’s closest allies, demoralizing soldiers on the frontlines, and handing Russia a matchless propaganda gift. Vladislav Davidzon joins me to discuss what this means for Ukraine and the war. From Vladislav’s daybook: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  The Weak, with Josh Rosenberg 09.11.2025 29min

  (Note: This is not Critical Conditions with Dan Perry. I just can’t figure out how to get rid of that logo.)Recently, I had an exchange with our subscriber Josh Rosenberg—who on Substack goes by the name Josh of Arc, and writes at Sic Semper Tyrannis—about the use of violence in resisting authoritarianism. You’ll remember his essay, Force and Freedom: Contemplating the Unthinkable, in which he argues that those opposing Trump have become dangerously alienated from the fundamental fact of political life: It rests upon force. Democrats may be capable of winning the most votes in the 2028 election, he writes. But this doesn’t mean they’ll retake the presidency, he continues, because they’re unprepared for Trump’s refusal to relinquish power:… Whether the GOP puts Donald Trump on the ballot as a final insult to the Constitution, nominates JD Vance, or props up another Medvedev-style supplicant, Trump’s power, freedom, and reputation will again be on the line. Do we really expect him to relinquish power peacefully? Will his rogues’ gallery of cabinet members, chosen above all for their servility, suddenly discover they are patriots willing to imperil themselves to defend the Constitution? Will other administration officials tell the truth now that Trump has signed executive orders targeting people like Chris Krebs—the DHS official who refused to fabricate evidence to support Trump’s election theft lies in 2020?He therefore offers the following advice:The opposition’s strategy should become two-fold. A peaceful resistance movement should organize aggressively, with a scrupulous commitment to non-violence. But concurrently, we must assemble a network of private militias to serve as an insurgency-in-waiting. Like any deterrent force, its purpose would be to ensure that it is never needed. And it’s mission would be to convince anyone in a position of public trust who might enable a full transition to an American dictatorship, that such a world would not be an oasis in which they would prosper, but a hellscape in which they’ll be hunted.I replied to this argument here in an essay titled Do Americans need an insurgency-in-waiting? Violence, non-violence, and getting rid of authoritarians. I am sympathetic to his moral point: I agree that if a usurper can’t be dislodged by peaceful and Constitutional means, force is permissible, and under some circumstances, morally obligatory. But I argue that we have by no means exhausted the peaceful means available to us. Not even close. Not even close to close. What’s more, if it’s true that we have a moral obligation to confront a usurper, it follows that we have an obligation to do so in the way that is most likely to be effective. The empirical evidence about this is surprisingly clear. Historically, those who employ disciplined non-violence are far more likely to succeed than those who use physical force—even when confronting the most brutal authoritarians. The benchmark study is Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. Studying an aggregate data set of all known major nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006, they found that campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as likely to achieve their political goals. This was true even under even the most brutal and repressive regimes. The findings were neither subtle nor ambiguous: If you’re in any doubt about whether nonviolence is an effective way to confront a lawless regime, this should settle it.There is a reason for this. Nonviolent movements are generally viewed as legitimate, both domestically and internationally. This allows a nonviolent campaign to attract broad public support and participation. Violent campaigns tend to be repulsive to the public. It’s extremely hard to convince a significant number to take up arms against the regime, even if it’s justified. All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Because the public recoils from violence, violent campaigns rarely achieve the numbers required to overwhelm an authoritarian government. Instead, they discredit their cause and offer the tyrant a justification for armed counterattack. Nonviolent protest can, when sustained and focused, attract a very high level of public participation. It’s the rare regime that can ignore sustained civic disruption. The key to success, usually, is shifting the loyalty of core supporters, especially the military. But violent campaigns serve the opposite purpose, bonding the regime, its supporters, and the military together.What’s more, successful nonviolent movements are more likely to lead to stable, durable outcomes. Compared to regimes that emerge from violent conflict, democracies that emerge from non-violent campaigns are less likely to regress to civil war. This is a particularly interesting finding: It seems that once people acquire a taste for settling their differences violently, they never fully lose it. Violent insurgency, Chenoweth and Stephan conclude, is therefore rarely justifiable on strategic grounds, never mind the moral arguments. Whether confronting a democratic or an authoritarian regime, a nonviolent campaign is far more likely to yield desirable outcomes.Josh wrote another essay recently titled The Weak: Freedom’s Undertakers. He observes what he describes as a “collective malaise and paralysis among liberals in the West,” and suggests that this collective paralysis lies “at the heart of our present crisis.”Western liberal elites continue to demonstrate an almost congenital inability to resist identity-inflected guilt trips, moral blackmail, character assassination, and other weapons of the weak—often wielded by low-level staffers. It’s as if, sometime around 2014, the editors of Teen Vogue stormed every newsroom in America, said “Alright, if nobody resists, nobody will get hurt”, and everyone just immediately surrendered.Theories differ as to how this happened. But it appears that the introduction of viral social media combined with the already risk-averse, legalistic culture of many of these institutions produced a supernova of neuroticism, pettiness, and crippling fear. Leadership positions increasingly involved putting out (or avoiding) fires, minimizing negative publicity, and avoiding being sued. This tended to attract and produce risk-averse, rule-following bureaucrats who live in a perpetually defensive posture; small, unserious people consumed with trivialities. Is it any wonder that such “leaders” cannot recognize when defining moments arrive—when half measures must be abandoned in favor of giant historical leaps?Consider the spectacle of the last few DNC meetings: In the midst of budding fascism they begin events with land acknowledgements, and meticulously document their compliance with official party quotas on the number of people from each marginalized identity group who must be appointed to leadership positions. A party that regards itself as the last bulwark against fascism turns the selection of its leaders into farcical public group therapy sessions that confirm every negative stereotype about Democrats and “the Left.” Can dingbats like this who cower in the face of the gender identity lobby rise to the challenge of reversing a process of authoritarian consolidation that is now well past its preliminary stages? Can people who flinch at the prospect of enforcing their own immigration laws or keeping violent criminals off the streets really summon the resolve to compel other people’s children to fight and die? This, I believe, gets to the heart of the crisis of modern liberalism. It has no answer to the following question: What’s worth dying for?What does his argument entail? What it means is selecting certain rules that tie Democrat’s hands in their ability to fight back in defense of their most basic rights, and setting them aside. … While Congress reduces itself to a useless appendage and the six “conservatives” on the Supreme Court beclown themselves in order to sanction a ludicrous interpretation of executive power that would even make Aileen Cannon do a double take, Trump now largely governs around the Constitution by declaring phony national emergencies. The military is selectively redeployed to blue cities for domestic law enforcement purposes based on a so-called “crime emergency.” Trade policy is dictated from the oval office, upended on a whim, and altered in exchange for personal bribes that nobody is even bothering to conceal at this point—all predicated on the idea that it’s an “emergency.” The regime’s rationale for their ongoing unconstitutional crackdown on free speech—which they’re now escalating dramatically in the wake of the Kirk killing—is again justified on the basis of a so-called “national emergency.” There’s a name for this form of government, and it isn’t democracy—regardless of what the credulous Mr. Fetterman may believe.Remarkably—starting with the outrageous immunity decision—the six monarchists on the court have sanctioned this anti-constitutional farce, and in so doing, have unleashed a bloodthirsty predator on the nation, completely unbound by law and empowered to use the military, the FBI, and every other part of the federal government to pursue his revenge fantasies against domestic enemies—be they individuals, corporations, or entire states. The monarchist majority has over the last 18 months, in effect, cancelled the Constitution in service to Donald Trump’s will to power and told those seeking their relief that their rights no longer apply when they collide with his royal prerogatives. Under these extraordinary circumstances that the court has created, it is time for Democrats to reject the cautious half-measures favored by unconditional liberals, accept that the monarchist majority has breached the social contract in abandoning their oaths, and embrace a bold new doctrine: There are no limits to how far blue state governors and legislatures can go to protect their citizens and their elections from the autocrat in the White House.What does “no limits” mean? It can mean many things depending on how far the regime chooses to go themselves. Currently, officials in Chicago have arranged to have ICE officials followed and monitored to ensure they do not violate the rights of citizens. This is a good start. But it leaves a lot of open questions such as: What happens when federal officials cross the line? The monarchist majority on the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that they’re worse than useless, and that they now view their jobs not as interpreting the law, but rather as serving as six glorified notaries who rubber stamp Donald Trump’s anti-Constitutional revenge presidency. So when such a confrontation occurs—and it will—whichever Democratic governor or mayor is in charge will have a critical decision to make: cave or escalate? Should they hang their citizens out to dry in deference to a Court that has shredded the social contract, doesn’t even respect itself, and can’t even be bothered to come to the defense of lower court judges who’ve been under siege and subjected to constant violent threats as a result of the regime’s rhetoric and behavior? If “no limits” is to have any meaning, then the answer has to be no. And if you’re thinking that this sounds a lot like Supreme Court nullification, then you thought right.We discuss this—and more—in the podcast. Listen, read his essays, and tell us what you think in the comments. Who wants to come on the podcast next? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
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  Hey, is that really Putin? 25.10.2025 2min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comChris Alexander, whose Substack I recommend with the highest enthusiasm, joined the Canadian foreign service in 1991. He spent six years at the Canadian embassy in Moscow: He was the deputy head of mission during the first three years of Putin’s presidency. He’s also the former Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a former Parliamentary Secretary for National Defense, a former Canadian Conservative MP, and the former Canadian Ambassador to Afghanistan and Deputy Head of UNAMA. You’ll remember him from our conversation about what went wrong in Afghanistan:For those of you who prefer audio-only, here’s a podcast version:This was another blockbuster conversation. I’ve annotated the transcript below with links, comments, and examples. Claire: Hi, this is Claire Berlinski, and you’re listening to the Cosmopolitan Globalist Podcast. And we have with us, again, Chris Alexander, former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan—but much, much more. Chris, among other things, you spent much time when you were in the foreign service studying Russia. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background there?Chris: Sure. Thanks for the chance to chat again, Claire. First, I went to university—I studied history and political science. I had learned some languages, but actually, in university, I never studied Russia directly. I really didn’t want to take international relations, because even then, I thought a lot of what was being taught was dogmatic and not very interesting. And this was end of the Cold War period and then edging into End of History time—the fall of the Berlin Wall, and so forth, when you and I were together [at Balliol College], but my experience of Russia, my learning about Russia, my knowledge of Russia is that of a practitioner.I was there starting in 1993, learned Russian in the Canadian Foreign Service before going. Worked on the desk literally weeks after I joined the Department of External Affairs. There was the coup, attempted coup, against Gorbachev. People needed to watch CNN all night and stay in touch with our embassy for updates to ministers and so forth. That was the kind of thing I was doing from day one. So my life as a diplomat was totally swamped with Russia, post-Soviet dynamics, transition from the Soviet Union to Russia, and then from Soviet institutions to Russian institutions through that difficult period that gets forgotten in 1993, when Yeltsin shot up the White House.I saw a lot of that firsthand. And because I had learned Russian, I was talking to everyone in that period of 10 or 15 years when Russians would talk to us frankly, because they weren’t afraid of the KGB, which was gone, or Putin and his repressive machinery of government, which hadn’t yet been put in place.So it was a really interesting time. A time of insight, a time of building new relationships with Russians, a time of hope. But to be honest, I never had that much hope for what was happening in Russia in the 1990s. Moscow was a city awash in organized crime. Privatization had been done in the dirtiest of ways across the country—“Sale of the Century,” Chrystia Freeland’s book has that hard- hitting title. Standards of living were in free fall for Russians. And so this democratic moment, when they actually had the chance to vote, to choose different candidates, was associated with economic disaster in the minds of Russians—which as we now know set the stage for Putin, and set the stage for Russians actually to like his strong man, anti-democratic approach right from the beginning.There was hope, but it was false hope in the 90s. But there was a drama playing out that has come to affect us all, because even if we didn’t believe in the end of history, a lot of people believed Russia was out of a central role in history, actually, in the 90s. And they weren’t.I just looked at this photo of Putin with his KGB buddies, in 1999, I think, when he’s Prime Minister, about to become president—acting president. Just a couple of months after all the apartment buildings had blown up in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, with their involvement, I would say. And they’re looking pleased as punch. On the march. They’re gonna get Russia back to where they needed it to be. And they didn’t go to war in Georgia or Ukraine for another 10, 14 years. But even then, they were plotting to build influence in our countries that would help them influence decision-making in European capitals and in Washington, and if they could, pull the rug out from under democracy in our countries, which they’re now trying to do. So they were out of history. They didn’t have a lot of formal, obvious influence in those years. But they never stopped having these grand ambitions, which are the Putin version of Marxism. They really think that if they engage in enough subversion, disinformation, enough political corruption, that the whole house of cards of US society, the US Constitution, will come crashing down. And similarly in France, Germany, the UK. And in the late 90s, early 2000s, you and I would’ve laughed at that idea. Now, we’re actually involved in trying to defend our institutions against an attack that has proven to be much more formidable than we ever imagined it could be.Claire: Yeah. I’d like to talk about—first, I want to talk about why you put “Putin” in quotation marks. Let’s just start with that. Whenever I cross-post one of your posts, my readers must be wondering, “Why does he always put Putin in quotation marks?”Chris: This is a hard issue to share with anyone because it’s a judgment that I’ve come to—I’m certainly not alone: Many Russians have come to this judgment. Many other Russia watchers have come to this conclusion. But it stems from my personal experience with Putin. In Canada, I think I’m one of the only people who actually spent quite a lot of time with Putin, speaking Russian to Putin, in person, both before he became Prime Minister and then as President.Claire: How many hours in total do you think you spent with him?Chris: I would say a couple of days. Like, in the same rooms, in the same talks. The longest time I ever spent with him was at the Kananaskis G8 Summit, 2002, just after 9/11, in Alberta—where the G7 just met again, but obviously without Putin, thankfully, replaced by Zelensky, in that case.And he was not involved in all the meetings because it was the G8, but there were still G7 meetings of leaders on financial and other issues in which Russia was not included. So he had downtime, hours of it, in fact, and he didn’t really want to talk to his own people, which was amazing. I think his real friends are that old crew from St. Petersburg, the KGB officers he came up with that have stayed with him. But they weren’t on that trip. This was the Foreign Ministry types, the G7 Sherpa types, G8 Sherpa types. He wasn’t interested in them. So we walked around in the forest in Kananaskis, literally for hours, talking about nothing in particular. I think he thought he was recruiting me; I was obviously squeezing him for everything I could. But he asked about, “Where are we on the map of Alberta? Where are the Indians, Chris?” he said, meaning First Nations. And I had to get a map and show him these things.Claire: So it was just the two of you? No translator?Chris: No, I was speaking Russian to him.Claire: Yeah. So just the two of you.Chris: Just the two of us. There were security people around. We weren’t alone, but we had long, meandering discussions about lots of things. And he sounded to me pretty dumb. Like he was asking very simple questions.Obviously, he’s not dumb. People later said to me, “Oh, he’s playing that way, Chris. That’s a KGB thing that they do.” I think the truth is somewhere in between. But suffice to say, from that occasion, from seeing him in talks and translating for our prime minister, Jean Chrétien, on a couple of occasions, doing this big Team Canada visit to Russia, where we played a hockey game, reenacting the 1972 Summit Series—which kind of influenced Putin to want to learn to play hockey, which he later did. We bonded in a way that few other international players did. Canada was there a lot. A few of us, as diplomats, were there a lot. We got to know each other in those early years. So I had a strong sense of his physical presence, how he talks, how he is in conversation. And fast forward to the pandemic—maybe even a little before the pandemic, but especially the pandemic, I haven’t seen Putin in person since 2014, when I was a Canadian minister at a commemoration of the Armenian genocide in Yerevan. So by Covid, he’s looking a bit different. He’s obviously older. Lots has happened, especially with their first invasion of Ukraine.But it becomes obvious to me that sometimes, when you see these videos and photographs that are put up by the Kremlin, it’s not Putin. It’s somebody else. And, sure enough, you start to see articles, including by authoritative journalists, saying, “The Kremlin is using a double. Maybe more than one. For security reasons.” Stalin did it. Other Russian leaders have done it. Gorbachev apparently did it. Castro did it, for security reasons and so forth. But in Putin’s case, there was an additional reason, because he seems to have been, of all world leaders, one of the most paranoid about infection, germs—Covid in particular.
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  Russia's Revenge and Afghanistan's Misery 02.09.2025 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comThis is not, actually, an episode of Critical Conditions. It’s a regular Cosmopolicast. But I haven’t yet figured out how to separate the two.In this episode, former Canadian diplomat Chris Alexander and I discuss Russia’s post-Soviet trajectory, the rise of Vladimir Putin, and the West’s repeated misjudgments in dealing with Moscow. We discuss the endu…
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  Bibi's Bad Idea 10.08.2025 1t 44min

  The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session today (it’s now Sunday in Paris) to discuss the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of a plan to seize Gaza City. The hostages’ families have called for a general strike over the decision. I spoke to Vivian Bercovici and Judith Deborah Levy to ask how they feel about this. In short: not good. It’s a long podcast—we had a lot to talk about—so I’ve posted a transcript below if you’re in a hurry. * Bucking IDF warnings, security cabinet approves Netanyahu plan to conquer Gaza City. Residents will have until October 7 to evacuate; proposal more limited than PM’s previously-stated intention to take over entire Strip, but official indicates IDF will later move on to other areas.* Masses rally against Gaza City takeover plan, urge soldiers to refuse, seek general strike. Tel Aviv’s Ayalon highway shut down as protesters light bonfires in the road; relatives of hostages bewail “eternal war-mongers” for choosing to “sacrifice” their loved ones.Claire: This is the Cosmopolitan Globalist. And I’m Claire Berlinski. I’m here with two North American Israeli women, and we’re going to talk about everything that’s been happening in Israel and Gaza. Vivian Bercovici is the author of the State of Tel Aviv, which I’ve cross-posted frequently. One of the best newsletters on Substack, if you’d like to keep up with events in Israel, Tel Aviv and Judith Lee-vee is a guest on our podcast—Judith: Leh-vy, Leh-vy.Claire: Leh-vy. I’m never gonna say that, Judith. I’m sorry. It’s too late. I’ve known her for, what, 35 years and I still can’t get her name right. I didn’t introduce Vivian as Ber-co-vee-chee at least.Vivian: No, but I do have to mention that I no longer live in Tel Aviv. So it’s now called State of Tel Aviv and Beyond. I moved a year ago to a kibbutz in Southern Israel near Sderot, and not too far from the Gaza border. So, that’s where I live now, Claire.Claire: So, Judith and Vivian are both long-term Israelis. How long have you both been there? Actually, Vivian, you’re pretty recent compared to Judith.Judith: I’ve been here about 24 years-ish.Claire: Vivian was the former Canadian ambassador to Israel. So she has a lot of insight into what’s going on on the Canada side of this.I just wanted to ask how you’re both doing?Judith: Oy. Um, you know. I feel like I say the same thing each time. That we are living this bizarre kind of duality where we are living our normal lives to the best of our ability. And so we go to the movies, and we make dinner, and we have friends over, and we cook, and we go to the cafe, and we—you know, like normal—but there is this underlying insanity, and despair, and terror that's right underneath.And so for me personally, it’s this wave, where sometimes what I’m constantly pushing down just comes roaring up. There are moments when it just comes roaring up and, then I really kind of … fall apart. Now, this I also think is an American thing, because all the Israeli-Israelis around me, they also are very aware of everything under the surface, everything that’s above the surface, but they don’t freak out the way I do and the way other Americans I know do. I’ve been here such a long time, and that will never change—that not having grown up with this kind of stuff. I will never, ever get used to it. So, the last time this occurred for me was when the snuff video of Evyatar David came out, the video of him being forced to dig his own grave.And I—the combination of the event itself and the reaction to it, or non-reaction to it, sent me into a complete tailspin for a couple of days, you know, and then I just have to shove it back in my mental closet and get on with life. And that’s what it’s been like for almost two years—for all of us.Claire: Vivian?Vivian: It’s so hard to articulate the agony that I think we’re all living with. I’m not sure that, Judith, your reaction has to do with being American or not, or it’s just maybe who you are. Most of my social and day-to-day interactions here are with Israelis, what I call real Israelis, unlike me, the people who, you know, the seventh-generation types, the kibbutznik types, the people who have lived here all their lives, the real salt of the earth.And privately, I find they feel every bit the same way as you do. I think that the level of, uncertainty, worry, concern, panic, fear about where this country finds itself today is unbearable. And one of the things that I try to do—I’m not just gonna deflect, Claire, and speak about Judith's reaction. I mean, my own is: I feel that I am living on truly on a knife edge every moment.I feel like a bunch of raw exposed nerves. And one of the things that is so important that I try to convey, in my writing and in my podcasts to people outside of Israel, is: Whenever there’s a crisis in the world, politicians and media and NGOs go out of their way to say, “It’s not the people of, let’s say, Iran, we have a problem with. It’s the government and the leadership with which we have a problem.” But no one seems to cut us that slack.And I would say that based on polls, over 80 percent—this isn’t me making things up; there are successive polls that have been coming out for months, really since the last hostage-release agreement in February—over 80 percent today of Israelis want the war to end now, all the hostages to be released, even if Hamas is left standing.And we’re never given that room to breathe. We’re all demonized as being these horrible, evil people. And our evil, of course extends to Jews around the world, right? So I feel like Judith. I mean, we go through our days, and sometimes, often, I find myself sitting there thinking, “How can you do this?”It happened last week. I went—actually, I moved to a new house, and I’ve been here for a year now, and I really need a dining set. And I entertain a lot and I like to cook. And I went and I chose a set. Then, in the store, I thought, “How can you do this? How can you even think of doing this?” And this was, Judith, days after, of course, we saw those horrific videos of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski.And I just—I came home. I couldn’t buy it. I mean, it sounds so stupid, but it’s very hard to live and breathe when so much is at stake.Judith: I find something that helps me with that—because I have that all the time—this kind of dissonance between the small cheerful minutiae of my day, which feel like—feel like I don’t deserve to be experiencing that because I can’t solve this greater problem.Vivian: Yeah. Judith: So something that really helps me with that is actually getting out and being with Israelis. You know, hardcore, old-school, seven-generation, real-deal Israelis, because—I’ll give you an example. A couple of months ago I got invited to—do you know what urban sketching is? It’s when a bunch of artists go to a city together and just plop themselves on benches with their watercolors and their ink, and they just draw stuff, you know, draw buildings, draw people. It’s really, really fun. It’s really fun. And so I got invited to do some urban sketching in Tel Aviv. And so we went to the city and we went to the Yemenite quarter. And this was on—Vivian: Paradise, paradise for a sketch. Okay.Judith: —Friday morning. Friday morning. And I’m telling you, the place was absolutely jam-packed. And it was like every single cafe is just spilling over with cool young people with their tattoos. It was just this vision of healthy, healthy young people everywhere, singing, like suddenly, like spontaneously getting up and dancing to the music coming from the next restaurant down.It was the most wonderful thing. And this is, of course, in the middle of what’s going on. Everyone has somehow decided, “We are going to not just find a way to push it aside, but we’re going to celebrate the life that we actually are still fortunate enough to have.”And so I look at these kids—we stopped off somewhere to get something to eat. And the staff was changing over. And the new guy coming in behind the counter was a drag queen who hadn’t gone home to change, right? And he was magnificent with his gold and his leopard skin. He was magnificent. Magnificent. And he comes in and the music is playing and everybody’s dancing and we’re all stuffing our faces with this wonderful food. And it was just so unbelievably healthy. And I thought, “You know, the world doesn’t want to believe that this is us.”The world doesn’t want to believe that—this is the kind of culture that we—we’re something entirely different from this. And I, at this point, have given up on trying to convince anybody of anything because it’s too big now. It’s just too big. And so all that I can do is just jump right into the middle of that and celebrate it along with them. It’s the best I can do.Vivian: You know, it’s so interesting for so many reasons. I want to share an experience that was very intense that I had yesterday, but before that, I had been living—after my service as ambassador—in the center of the universe, the beating heart of Tel Aviv at Gordon and Rabin Square, and was deeply involved in the protests regarding judicial reform.And then disaster struck. And it changed after October 7th. So in spite of all this kind of vitality that you’re describing, which is there, it’s, it is a shadow of what it was, Tel Aviv. People have, actually, a lot of them have left the hardcore Tel Aviv who were my friends, many journalists, artists, they've leftClaire: Really?Vivian: Mm-hmm. Since October 2nd. Yeah. Because we—those of us who were really living in it—it felt very gloomy. It wasn’t the real Tel Aviv. It became almost like a bridge and tunnel thing, you know?Judith: Mm-hmm. Right.Vivian: I know, for Canadian, I laid quite a metaphor on you, huh? But what I wanted to share with you guys is yesterday, at five o’clock, there was a gathering on a moshav in central Israel called Kfar Ahim—and it’s where the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz lives.And it was convened by the Hostage Family Forum, which of course is the main support NGO for the hostage families. And I’ve been working with them a lot since October 7th. And I sat here in my house and I was kind of tired. I didn’t sleep very well on Thursday night, ‘cause I haven't slept well since those videos came out.And I thought, “Oh, I want to stay home and cook.” And again, I’m like, “How dare you? How dare you.” There were going to be released hostages there, and family members, how do you not go? And so I called one of my neighbors and I said, “How would you like to join me?” Real Israeli, never goes to these things, works on detaching because she feels this sense of powerlessness—“What can I do?”And she said, “Sure, Viv, I’ll come with you.” And we went. It was—and I’ve been to so many events that are pulled together for so many different reasons. But there I was, standing feet away. They set up this long table and it was set with chairs, with the photograph of each hostage who remains in captivity.So 50 chairs, and a plate with a quarter piece of pita at each place. And I was literally on one side of this long table, and just across it, three feet away, four feet away, was Iair Horn who was released and torn from his brother’s arms in February. His mother Ruti who spoke with me for a brief interview, the parents of Matan Angrest, an IDF soldier, there were many others that—I’m sorry if I don't recall all the names at the moment—but there were Ohad Ben Ami, who was also released in February. And his wife.And they spoke so movingly, Ohad Ben Ami is from Be’eri. He was taken hostage in his underwear, literally. And he said, “I’m not religious. I don’t pray. I don’t do any of these things. But when I was in captivity, I did. And we all turned to faith in some way.” And this was before he did the blessing over the wine and this pita, and it was just so moving.He said, “Friday nights were the hardest for us, and also the most uplifting. And they were the hardest because of course we would all think of where we should be, and wanted to be—with our families. And yet we were in this hell. And it was the most uplifting because we all shared our favorite memories, our favorite food, how we liked the fish to be cooked, the really simple, beautiful parts of life.” And he said that that communal caring that they were able to maintain, shackled and starving underground in these tunnels, is what sustained them.But some of them are alone now, and they’ve been alone now for over 170 days. And we’ve seen Evyatar David, unfortunately. Who was digging his own grave in a video that was released last week. It’s thought that he’s not alone. He’s still with his best friend from childhood, but others are. So it was—Judith: —we didn’t see Guy [Gilboa Dalal] though. We didn’t see Guy.Vivian: No. He was behind a curtain. We think he was behind a curtain. That’s what the intelligence commentary has been saying. Okay. But the thing is, like, I’m standing there in this beautiful kibbutz, surrounded by so much pain, and I don’t want to use the word “resilience,” because I really, really cringe at that word now. I really do. We’re not superhuman here. We’re not superheroes. We’re getting ground down. And I think people need to also understand that. But my friend said, “Thank you so much for opening my eyes. Thank you for taking me.” Because we can’t run away from this. And we can’t. We all have to take it to the streets. I think millions of us have to take to the streets to end this insanity.Judith: Will it it accomplish anything though? I mean, we go to the streets and what happens? You know the nature of the system. Sorry—Vivian: Not millions.Judith: Yeah.Vivian: I think we need to—Judith: —well, the other thing that could actually force a change? If the Chief of Staff says, “You know what? I’m not doing this.” That would force a change. Because then, because all the parents of all these reservists, and all these young soldiers would say, “The Chief of Staff is saying, ‘Don’t go. Stay home.’ And that changes everything.Vivian: The Chief of Staff has said that.Judith: He didn’t say, “I’m not doing this.”He said, “I think this is a bad idea.”Vivian: Yeah. He’s come pretty close. And we know that the Chief of Staff and most of the top brass in the IDF, and this, of course—it’s important for your listeners to understand, Claire—this is a Chief of Staff appointed by Netanyahu five months ago. So it’s not like he can say, “Oh, this is one of those lefties from the other government.” No, this is his guy.And he’s not alone. And I think that it is the IDF top brass saying, “We can’t do this. They’ve said publicly, “We’re going into a black hole. We’re going into a trap. This is gonna be our Vietnam.” So we’ll see what happens. But I think that he’s been very bold, the Chief of Staff, in challenging Prime Minister Netanyahu openly.Vivian: Sorry, Claire, you were about to say something.Claire: What I was going to say was I was very struck listening to you, because obviously, when you talk about the agony you’re experiencing, one of the things that is most agonizing, clearly, is the fate of the hostages and your awareness of the hostages, at all time. I saw, the other day—do you know who Azealia Banks is? She’s a rapper.Vivian: The name is familiar, yeah.Claire: I came across a tweet in which she said, “I didn’t realize there were American hostages.”And that’s not surprising, actually, given the way the media has covered it. I just find that significant. Both as a sign of the strange way that the media has covered this, and the degree to which Americans have lost a sense of solidarity with one another. I am certain that had this happened 30 years ago, people would’ve known there were American hostages.Vivian: They were Jewish Americans.Claire: Even then.Vivian: But today, yeah—that’s because we have become the personification of all things evil. I’m sorry I can’t remember his name, no matter how much of a celebrity he is, there’s an African American podcaster, Myron Gaines, something like that, who recently had on a number of his peers, and they were just saying, you know, “Hitler was right.” And it went viral.Claire: I saw that, yes. I thought the only thing that was comforting was that they were so obviously stupid that I figure they could never pull off a genocide.Vivian: Well, they’re obviously stupid on many levels because they clearly don't understand how Hitler felt about black people. They might have actually been a lower form of life in his eyes than Jews. You know, I was—a week or two ago, I went in with the IDF spokespersons unit. They took a group of journalists. There were about 15 or 20 into just inside Gaza where they stage the aid distribution.Right. So all this aid is inspected in Israel to make sure there’s no weapons or other contraband sort of stuffed in the sacks of flour. And then it’s allowed to pass through the border to the other side. And it waits on the Gaza side for the UN—not UNRWA, other UN organizations and other NGOs. They have trucks.They’re supposed to come pick it up and take it to distribute to the population. And the big guys were there, you know, the big American media. And I use “guys” loosely because some of them, of course, were women. And one of them was obsessed. Obsessed. And she was on a major American network. With the fact that Israel allowed trucks to enter and come out.And then often they would be directed to enter again on a similar route. And this just outraged her because how could Israel do that when they knew that, you know, gangs and others were waiting to ambush and steal the food. And the real issue is, exactly how many routes do you think there are? 30 years, super- experienced journalist who’s covered every famine in the world.How many routes do you think there are from here into Gaza on which a truck can drive safely? There are three, I asked. She assumed there apparently were 300, and this became the obsessive focus of her coverage that day, which so missed the point. The point was that the food is here. It is not a food shortage. The issue is Hamas, criminal activity.Claire: So hold on a second. She allowed, however, in her report that the food was being stolen? Because recently, the media line has been, “There is no evidence that Hamas is stealing the food.”Vivian: She allowed, she didn’t specify it was Hamas. She said, you know, criminal gangs, whoever, civilians also are in desperation, ambushing these trucks, right?I mean, pick your poison. But not that I’m equating civilians with Hamas, ‘cause I’m not, or with criminal gangs. But her concern was that the trucks are being ambushed and the food aid isn’t making it to those who need it. And on that point, she’s right. But with respect to the number of passable routes available in the midst of a very kinetic war ongoing, and the fact, you know, she says, “Well, you IDF—you’re responsible. This is your war.” And it’s like, “No, actually, we’re trying to prevent the trucks from being ambushed. We are not responsible. That is the UN’s job.” And they’re the ones who liaise with Hamas—like, this effort that the media seems to make, to avoid imputing any responsibility to Hamas is just breathtaking. It’s—Claire: —it’s really spooky. It’s as if there’s some central—I’m not saying there really is, I’m saying it is as if there is some central coordinating committee sending out the new line every day. As I said just a moment ago, including, “There is no evidence that Hamas is stealing the food.”And when you read that, I’m sure it sounds perfectly plausible, if you haven’t been reading about this carefully for a while. “Well, there’s no evidence—of course, the Israelis are lying about this. They just want to starve Palestinians.” But if you’ve been paying close attention, you know that there is tons of evidence—and videos of Hamas themselves, sitting there, stuffing their faces and laughing about it and filming themselves. What more evidence do you need? So why all of a sudden does every media outlet say this? Are they repeating each other? Is that all it is?Judith: Well, it’s not exactly all of a sudden. I mean, right at the beginning of the war, at the very, very beginning of the war, one of the big machers, I can’t remember which one, said—from underground—“The welfare of the Palestinians above us is the responsibility of Israel and the UN.Claire: Yep. I remember. Judith: And everybody said, “Oh, okay.”Claire: The context in which he said that is particularly important because he was being asked, “You know, you have 500 kilometers of tunnels under there, which, you know, that’s a really good bomb shelter. Why don’t you let people take shelter under there?” “No, no. That’s for fighters. Taking care of the people up there? That’s for someone else. The fact that he said that says everything—Judith: —and the fact that it was swallowed, it was swallowed as perfectly reasonable—Claire: And the circumstances he describes, 500 kilometers worth of bomb shelters that they won’t let the civilians into—yet everyone pours scorn on the idea that Hamas is using the civilians there as human shields. I don’t know what more you could ask for as evidence of this fact—Vivian: —I don’t think—sorry, Claire—I don’t think anyone’s—there’s this collective hysteria that has just kind of taken over and seeped into so many institutional mindsets. Media. Many governments. They don’t want evidence. They don’t—in my view, it’s a different iteration, but it’s very similar to what happened in the ‘30s in Europe. There are people who know it’s wrong, but they’re scared to speak out, for all kinds of reasons. But there are many, many people who want to believe the worst of us, of Jews and Israelis.They want to demonize us, and they will believe anything that is served up that does that. I mean, that’s very fatalistic, but it’s the only conclusion I can come to, because I’m watching otherwise, you know, rational, intelligent people, like the journalists who were there. The other thing that’s lost in this, it’s really, really important, that the 30-year-veteran of famines and wars working for a major network in the US was promoting—the thing that she was not addressing is that this is the first—and I’m relying on experts, many of whom do not support Israel, who have said this—this is the first conflict where humanitarian aid is needed and the humanitarian workers are forced to operate in an active war zone. Why? Because Hamas has refused to allow the civilians to separate and to be segregated in a safe zone.They have stopped and blocked that, actively, since October 7th, and they were aided and abetted in that by UNRWA leadership: “No, no, we will not move them. They will stay in their homes.” Israel was desperate to move them to an area in southern Gaza, into Egypt. This is what happens in wars like this, even in Sudan, in the most horrible wars.There is a land area made for humanitarian safe zones, but not here. And that’s a really important point that Hamas and Pidge have blocked that. And these humanitarian workers, many, they’e heroes—Claire: Hamas and who? Vivian: Palestinian Islamic Jihad—PIJ, we call it for short.Judith: Yeah, I read that. I’m not a lawyer by any means, but according to international, humanitarian law in times of war, the two sides in a conflict agree to a safe zone called a safe zone, S-A-F-E. And the problem is that throughout the war, Hamas, exactly as you say, has refused to agree to any safe zones whatsoever for any Palestinians, anywhere in the strip. And so Israel has taken the next best thing, which is called a safer zone, which is a zone that’s declared, basically, unilaterally by only one of the parties.Now notice here, this is us declaring the safer zone for them. So it’s not to protect our people, it’s to protect their people. And then bad things happen—and it’s all our fault. I mean, we’re—Vivian: —we can’t win. We can’t. And this is a really huge issue that has been absolutely ignored by the media, by the best of the media. The other issue that’s been totally ignored is Qatar. Judith: Yeah. Vivian: Qatar hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East. Qatar finances Hamas. Qatar hosts Hamas leaders in Doha. Just this last week, Qatar spoke out and said that it did not support the goal of demilitarizing Hamas and Gaza. And yet nobody is talking about that. Nobody talks about Qatar. Qatar has donated so generously to top American universities, invested in media. I was reading something yesterday about how the Qataris own more prime real estate in London than the Royal Family. Their holdings are massive, and astonishing. And that’s just one city. But nobody talks about this. Why? Why?Claire: The formulation “Nobody talks about this” is—it’s a little bit … conspiracy theory. I think the simple answer is that foreign news coverage has almost disappeared. The only subject that ever gets covered is Israel, and—Anne Applebaum published a really well-reported piece on Sudan in The Atlantic the other day, which I want to draw everyone’s attention to. And I would be surprised if it received a tenth the attention of any of the dozen-odd articles they’ve published about Israel recently. Because once you’ve started focusing obsessively on a certain thing, people become interested in it, and they want to read more about it . People feel like they know something about this conflict.Most people, I don’t think, are—I don’t think that most people are desperately eager to view Jews as villains. I think that they’ve been reading media coverage written by people who are desperately eager to portray Jews as villains. And I think if you are an unsophisticated consumer of news, a very decent person who has other things going on in his or her life, a family, a job that has nothing to do with international news, then you see these headlines over and over and you come to the conclusion, “This is monstrous. These Israelis are starving these Palestinian children.” Judith: Well, it’s this combination of confirmation bias plus the ease of groupthink. So if you don’t know anything about something, and then somebody who is in a position of authority says X is true, then every time you see anything that seems to confirm that X is true, you say, “Well, it must be true. I mean, they said it’s true.” And then, of course, when you notice that everyone around you who is on the side of the Good, on the side of the underdog, and on the side of opposition to oppression and all, they’re all saying the same exact thing—it’s easier, it’s just easier to go along.Why do any due diligence? Why check anything? Why read anything? Why second guess? It feels good. Claire: Most people—sorry—most people don’t even know how to do that. They would have no idea where to start in thinking about, “Does this newspaper article—does it employ a framing that’s biased? Are all the facts in it correct? What facts have been omitted?” That’s not something most people can do.Judith: I read that Bibi wants to sue The New York Times for blood libel for that photograph that they put above the fold. Claire: Good luck with that.Judith: No, but I mean the louder we are about this, the better.Claire: That was a disgrace. That was a disgrace. Perhaps you should tell listeners what you’re referring to, because I’m not sure everyone knows.Judith: Okay. Um, some journalists went into Gaza and were running around looking for ways to spin the Israel-starves-Palestinian-children story. So they found a mom with a child—Claire: It was the Turkish state news agency that went in.Judith: Oh, so the New York Times used the Turkish—oh, I didn’t even know that, that’s a nice little detail. I didn’t even know that. Okay. So this poor young Palestinian mother is cradling an infant who is in very, very bad shape. You can see the bones of his spine sticking out. He is very, very, very unhealthy.Clearly, definitely, looks like a starving child. They take the photographs. The New York Times publishes this above the fold in a big picture. It’s like a quarter of the page. Huge picture. With this story about, you know, illustrating the fact that we’re starving Palestinian children. What they did not include in the article was the fact that the child had either cystic fibrosis or cerebral palsy—Claire: Cystic fibrosis.Judith: Yeah. Cystic fibrosis. Who had been in treatment. And so it was a complete fabrication, essentially. And the other other thing that they left out of the story is that the mother, when she was being interviewed, she said, “My child has cystic fibrosis. We really need help. Can you please help us? We really need help. My child has cystic fibrosis.” She’s not complicit in this scam at all. When the story was published, all of that was edited out. And it was just “Poor, tragic mom with her starving child, being starved to death by the Jews.” Claire: They also edited out the part of the photo that showed his perfectly healthy brother—Judith: —perfectly healthy brother. You know, and then there was another child, they did a similar thing with another child that looked, very, very gaunt. And this kid has another ailment, and he’s in Italy getting treated.I mean, it’s all fabrication!Claire: It was the Israelis who enabled him to get to Italy for treatment. Judith: Yes, yes. I mean, the number of times, the number of times—backing up a little, there have been reports, when the Israelis go into homes inside Gaza during this war, into terrorist homes, and they find papers from Israeli hospitals from where that family had taken their kid to be treated in the Israeli hospital. It just, it makes your head spin.Vivian: There’s one of the guards who was with the group guarding Ohad Ben Ami, and the other five, his child was treated for cancer and cured in Israel. And the former hostages said that he was the cruelest, the cruelest and most sadistic with them. I just—I have to just push back very briefly on the suggestion that I was a conspiracy theorist. I’m saying that with a smile, for people who can’t see me. With respect to my comments about Qatar, you know, why is no one covering this? And I’m going to stick to that, because Qatar is not being covered. Qatar is not being held to account by this extremely diligent media that jumps on and creates false narratives about Israel.And I think that this continued kind of refusal to cover Qatar and ask the tough questions is very revealing, with respect to that particular photograph and the disgusting story around it. Whereas Netanyahu may be correct, I actually think he should stick to his day job, and perhaps this is not widely known, develop a really capable, resourced media arm of the Prime Minister’s office in order to handle communications. Because right now there is nothing. Claire: Who in the world has not said this already! I mean, for goodness sake, everyone is telling them this. Everyone. Even people who don’t like Israel are telling them, “You can’t do this. You’re a modern nation-state. You need to have an English speaker, in a press office, who can answer journalist’s queries. What is the thinking there? What is the thinking?Vivian: Can I jump in? ‘Cause I'm pretty familiar with—Claire: —Yeah, please.Vivian: This is something that we have seen kind of develop. There’s a continuum over the period of Netanyahu’s service and tenure, and it’s become very pronounced over the last 10 years or so. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it’s very widely known, is pretty defanged. Much of the communication would come from them, in a properly, I’m going to say functioning, government. They simply have neither the resources nor the room. Okay. Also, the really important foreign relationships are all managed under the Prime Minister’s office. And so all roads really lead to two people in this government. And that’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Strategic Affairs, and Bibi’s right-hand, closest advisor, and most trusted advisor, Ron Dermer.You know, we see the outlets that they choose to meet with and the independent podcasters, and almost, I think 100 percent, they’re foreign. They are American. They do not challenge the Prime Minister when they meet with him. And he likes that. He’s very good, in his mind, at messaging. I think he’s a brilliant orator. He’s an absolute genius. And his facility with language is peerless, probably among Western leaders. Claire: It’s not a high bar.Vivian: He’s a beautiful speaker. He speaks and communicates very, very effectively. But what’s kind of veered off course, in my view, is the message. And understanding the importance of having interlocutors for the media who are independent, truly independent, obviously working with, but independent of the Prime Minister’s office, who understands media, whose first language is English, who understand the nuance of Western culture and journalism, cause it’s very different from the way it’s practiced here. And who can provide the right information. But regrettably, I think that we’ve come to a point where these two top officials in the government trust no one but themselves to do that job. And this is the outcome, unfortunately.Claire: Do they have, in your view, an understanding of what is going on in the media universe, in the social universe beyond Israel?Vivian: Do they realize what—no, no. Claire: So, they are unaware of the gravity of the problem, which means that they’re living in a total fantasy land about something—Judith: How can that be? How can it be? Bibi Netanyahu doesn’t know what’s being said about us? How can that be?Vivian: Oh, he knows. He knows what’s being said and I’m sure Dermer does as well. That’s not what I meant. Do they understand how critical it is that we develop some kind of plan to manage and respond in an organized, purposeful, strategic way? No, I think they think they can handle it. And Exhibit A, in support of my contention, is that they don’t have a media team. They do clearly seem to think that they are the answer. Judith: Well, now I’m gonna say something that really is conspiracy-theorish, which is that we also have the X factor of Sara. Because we have had Noa Tishby, we have had Eylon Levy. These people have all been—poof—vanished because she can’t stand them. So I’m just gonna throw that out there. We can move on now.Claire: We’re talking about Bibi’s wife, the execrable Sara. Do Israelis understand how serious a problem this is? Both the problem of the media coverage of Israel in the world at large, and the lack of a strategic response to it? Judith: I would say yes. Both problems. I would say the people that I’ve talked to, yeah.Vivian: I agree.Judith: I mean, we can’t—we can’t not see an entire bridge in Australia packed, heaving with people screaming jihad. I mean, we can’t not see that. And, also the fact that, like, there was an article that I read just this morning that we’re being warned about Greece, because there is now a movement, an organized movement in Greece to harass all Israeli tourists everywhere in Greece because we are all from the IDF and therefore we are all child killers.This is what I read. And so, Greece will not welcome the Jewish child killers and say—we can’t miss this. I mean, we know there’s a big problem here, a big problem.Vivian: There’s all, yeah, there have been a number of cruise ships with Israeli passengers that have been refused, not allowed to dock in at Greek ports.There have been Israeli tourists who have been beaten up. This is in Greece, but this is actually all over Europe too. This is happening, and in fact, I’m going to be traveling with my daughter, in a few weeks, to Europe. And of course, you know, we speak flawless English and have Canadian passports, but we’re also talking about how to hide the fact that we are who we are.And, you know, my children who have been raised—my father was a survivor, and my children have been raised by me to try to kind of, you know, diminish the burden that we live with, that my dad lived with, that I lived with, and to be proud. And so they look at me and they say, “You? You’re telling us to do this?”Judith: Wow. Vivian: And I’m like, listen, it’s not shameful. This is how they survived in the war. This is how people survived, as they had to be clever about where, when, if, and how they disclose their true identity. I think that it’s important to mention at this point as well, you know, regarding your question about “Do Israelis see and feel and understand this,” Claire, over 80 percent—I said this at the beginning of our discussion—over 80 percent of Israelis oppose the government’s decision- making and conduct. Even Likud supporters, the majority of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political supporters, oppose what this government is doing. And what is widely understood here, that may not be widely understood outside of Israel, is that the decision-making that has been taken since March with respect to how to handle the hostage issue, how to handle the war, they are absolutely, transparently political decisions meant to appease the right-wing nationalist extremists in his government who hold a very small number of seats in the Knesset, but wield enormous power because if they leave the coalition, they bring down the government, and Bibi cannot abide that. And so he is, you know, literally, they’ve got a knife to his throat. And he caves. And if you look at this last decision—“We’re going into Gaza, we’re gonna occupy”—and initially, you know, on Monday or Tuesday when they first said it, they were saying, “We’re going to fully occupy. We’re going to not bring in the PA or Hamas. We’re going to bring in a multilateral force led by Arabs.” It’s changed—every day it changes five different times. We’re now at the point where we’re maybe gonna, sort of, kind of, totally, somewhat occupy Gaza City and then move on here.But what’s important is, who supported that? And who supported that openly, from the outset, were Benjamin Netanyahu, Ron Dermer, and the two extreme right-wing nationalists, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Who opposed it? The IDF Chief of Staff, the head of Mossad, the Minister of— darn, it’s slipping my mind for a moment. I’m sorry. Everyone else in the security cabinet, …. the head of Mossad is not in the security cabinet. Everyone else in the security cabinet opposed it. And there was a 10-hour meeting yesterday, 10-hour meeting at which apparently there was very significant tension. And the IDF Chief of Staff said things to the effect that, “I cannot do this. I can’t lead these people. I will do what the government orders, but you must understand what you’re asking me to do here. You’re asking me to lead our soldiers into a battle that will be ruin us for us. And my oath is to protect the security of this country and the people.” And basically what he’s saying is, “You, Prime Minister, are putting me in a position where I have to choose between my oath and your political directives. Please, please, engage in some sober reflection.” Now, we know that the outcome of that meeting was inconclusive last night, so, and we know that Netanyahu has kind of pulled back. It’s really important for people in Greece and everywhere to understand that we have this government with which we profoundly disagree.Claire: What percentage of Israelis, according to polls, say that they profoundly disagree with this? Vivian: Over 80 in polls, because polls—it started at around 70 in February, March, when that big chunk of hostages was released. And I personally think there were two things that shook this country and also many Americans and foreigners to their core.One was what I call the Auschwitz weekend. I was actually on live television covering that for six hours, and that was the day that Ohad Ben Ami, Or Levy, and Eli Sharabi were released. And they looked like survivors of Auschwitz. And that was a very, very difficult moment. And in that same period, of course, the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two beautiful, orange-haired babies who had been murdered by Hamas or PIJ, we’re not sure exactly whom, with their bare hands. They had been murdered with the terrorist’s bare hands. And the return of those bodies was another just unbearable moment for this country. And those two events, coming so close to together, shook this country. And we know that they, they kind of fortified the resolve of President Trump and Steve Witkoff to do everything possible. They have been the champions of the hostages and the civilians in this country, not Benjamin Netanyahu. That is the widespread perception, understanding, feeling. The polls, immediately after the release of those three hostages—emaciated, skeletal—went to 70 percent immediately, and 60 percent, at that time, of Likud supporters said, enough. Khalas, in Arabic. Enough, we have to stop this now. That has not changed. It’s only gotten worse for the government. It’s now well over 80 percent. And Judith’s nodding as I speak— Judith: Everything you’re saying. Everything you’re saying. And also, another really important factor here is that in addition to the desperation to get the hostages back, we have a population where everyone we know has a reservist who has gone in and in, over and over and over and over—the number of soldiers I know personally who need mental health treatment now, because first of all, what they have seen is so horrible, that they have had to do this over and over and over again, that their lives that they had, they were forced to leave behind by reserve duty, have collapsed.And this is—it’s a national crisis. And this is part of Zamir’s—the Chief of Staff— this is part of his consideration and should be part of his consideration. It is not just a matter of sending more 18-year-olds in as cannon fodder, which is disgusting, and sickening enough as it is, but to say to all these reservists, “Okay, pack up again.”This is a little country, and we, the proportion of young, young men and women who have been pushed beyond their limits by this war, is much, much greater than you can imagine.Vivian: There have been men—I mean, if you’re over the age of, depending on your unit, but usually 40 for combat, 45 for some other units, you’re exempted from military service. So many men in their late 40s, in their early 50s, have shown up and are doing combat duty. And some have fallen. And so I just want to add to what you were saying, Judith, because it’s such an important point. We need 250,000 combat soldiers to support this renewed … adventure, I’m going to call it.That is most of the Reserve Army compliment in this country. And the reservists are the backbone of the army and the reservists have—they typically serve 30 to 60 days, depending on their unit a year. That’s understood. That’s part of what we call the social contract in this country. The majority of reservists have served over 500 days since October 7th.That means their businesses have gone under. They’ve lost their jobs. Their wives are left to take care of children who are beyond traumatized. It’s really incredible how profoundly October 7th and the aftermath has impacted us. And what we’re starting to talk about now is a surge in the suicide rate among reservists and newly discharged soldiers that is just starting to be spoken about. The IDF, it seems, has suppressed that data. I’m hosting on my kibbutz, very soon, 150 soldiers reservists who have served over 500 days. They’re due to be released in a few weeks. We are hosting them for a pool party here on the kibbutz that I’m working to arrange with someone else.They’re getting call up notices again. I have a friend who was just up north for a ceremony for her son, who’s in the army, who was supposed to be discharged now. And instead of discharging these kids, they handed them—they said, four months, you’re being called up for reserve duty now. You’re going back to Gaza.And what the IDF Chief of Staff is trying to make the Prime Minister understand, which he does not seem to be processing fully, is we don’t have the soldiers. We simply don’t have the soldiers. And in the meantime, we have this crisis with the ultra-Orthodox in this country. There are 70 to 80 thousand men of service age who are ultra-Orthodox, who are not being called up.And so you have the kind of combustion of this moment. Those videos, right, Judith, coming out last week. The ultra Orthodox rioting, one of the leading rabbis saying, “We will wage global war, go to war all around the world. We’ll wage war on Israel.” And the Prime Minister, in that same week, saying, “We’re going back in.”All we want is to get those hostages who are clinging to life out.Claire: I have a question. Is there any chance that this is a bluff? Because Israel’s negotiating leverage was so significantly harmed by the trio of Western leaders who announced that they would recognize a state of Palestine unless there was a ceasefire. Well, that was Keir Starmer, in particular. Which created an incentive, a positive incentive, absolutely to refuse to negotiate and release hostage. Given that, did Bibi feel, “We just need to do something to show that this isn’t going to work for them?”Vivian: First of all, it was Macron who came out first, and it was on the day that Macron made his statement, “Hey, I’m gonna recognize Palestinian state,” that Hamas said, “Yeah, we’re walking away from the table.”And then Starmer, and then Carney. And Carney, as he’s always doing, every time he tries to one up his buddies. He just takes it to the next level. Here’s the quandary with that. Is this a bluff? I don’t buy the bluff theory. And here’s another problem. Prime Minister Netanyahu talks about—and he’s right—Hamas is a suicidal death cult.They don’t give a toss about the wellbeing of their civilians. They say so themselves. They openly say that they will martyr the civilian population in order to defeat the Zionist enemy. And they celebrate the martyrs. They are the Taliban, they are ISIS, they are horrible. And they don’t care. They are completely hardened.They don’t let their own people into the tunnels to take shelter when the Israeli Air Force is bombing Gaza. Well, okay, well then you can’t turn around and say, “We’re gonna really put the squeeze on them and hammer them into submission,” because they don’t care. It won’t work.Claire: But they do have objectives, among which is they’d like to stay alive to fight another dayVivian: To remain standing. Yeah. The UN is helping them in that objective, as is Qatar. Claire: They may think that if Israel takes full control, they're not going to survive that. Vivian: They know Israel can’t.Judith: Israel will never be allowed to.Vivian: We don’t have the soldiers anymore. We, also, our logistics chains are deeply, deeply challenged.Judith: Yeah. I don’t think it’s a bluff, Claire, because Bibi himself wants the war to continue.Claire: Does he want it to continue only for political reasons, or is he—Judith: Yes.Claire. Okay. Well, the other theory which I was about to voice, but you’ve already said no, is that this is him saying, “We have achieved neither of the objectives that we set out to achieve. We have neither rid the area of Hamas nor have we rescued the hostages, which means this war is a complete strategic and moral failure. I can’t just say I give up now, because that makes the situation unredeemable and unforgivable. I have to think of something that allows me to at least realize one of those objectives, which won’t be retrieving the hostages.” Is it possible he’s thinking—Vivian: A lot of lively discussion here over the degree to which Netanyahu was ever genuinely engaged by the hostage issue, the degree to which that was a priority for this government. And I don’t just make that up out of thin air. We have senior government ministers, again, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who have stated openly, and even this week: “It’s not a priority to bring out the hostages. The priority is to fully occupy Gaza and establish Israeli settlements in the territory.” So, to your question, is this, on the part of the Prime Minister, are his actions of this week coming from a purely political place? Again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I think that the response of 80 percent of Israelis to that is, “Yes, we need to end this war.”And it’s not—I mean, the hostages are so much more than hostages. The hostages have become symbols of the social contract, of the ethos of this country, which is that this country exists on the promise that it will be safe for Jewish people. And that promise was shattered, destroyed on October 7th. Every single person who survived, and every single hostage who has returned, says the same thing: Where was the IDF? And we need to rebuild trust in the most basic, fundamental institutions that allow Israelis to cohere and to have faith. And I speak to people all the time who have young sons who are being recruited into combat units, and they do not have confidence in the IDF at this time. I stood feet away from Matan’s parents yesterday at this Kabbalah Shabbat, and they spoke, and that’s exactly what they said: Our son is an IDF soldier. He fought like a lion, and he remains there. Even after the War of Independence, when so many fighters were taken prisoner by the Arab armies, it was eight or nine months later, they were all repatriated. Every single one. This is a stain on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s tenure.And I have to—I’m sorry I have to say this because it’s really, really important—because I speak to people who are very plugged into the system, the central nervous system of this government. And a conversation over a year ago with one, and I said—this was at the time when we thought we were on the verge of getting the hostages out in June, July, 2024. And we ran into one another at an event and I said, “You guys have to stop this. It has to end. You have to bring them all home.” And this person voiced to me that, “Well, you know, the Prime Minister and his team are very concerned with his legacy that if the war ends right now, his legacy will be October 7th.”And I said, “You could conquer Mars and Saturn and his legacy will be October 7th, because he was Prime Minister on October 7th. End of discussion.” Now let me just bring that forward because right after the attack on Iran, I think it was still ongoing maybe, but near the end, and I think it’s fair to say that the Prime Minister was feeling euphoric, and perhaps justifiably so.He sat down with an Israeli journalist, finally, Ayala Hassan, and it’s an interview in Hebrew, but very, very telling. Because in that interview he spoke of himself in the arc of history, to the point that he invoked Cyrus the Great, King Cyrus of Persia from 2,500 years ago. And he said, King Cyrus, he liberated the Jews. He emancipated them, he gave them freedom. David Ben-Gurion, 2,500 years later, came along and established the State of Israel, a formidable task. I, Benjamin Netanyahu, I, by what I have just done, am liberating the Persians 2,500 years later. But not just that, I am ensuring the longevity, the survival of the Jewish state. So, I’m no psychotherapist, but—the words of the man himself.Claire: There’s a touch of grandiosity there.What do Israelis—beyond wanting the hostages back, and wanting the war to end, how do Israelis envision what would happen after that, with Hamas still in control of Gaza?Vivian: There’s a great post this morning on X, Twitter, by Peter Lerner, former IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. in the reserves, where he elaborates, very articulately and knowledgeably, on what that might look like. But what we do know is that this sloganeering of total victory is meaningless. No one knows what it means, and we simply are not very interested in continuing down this path that has not been terribly productive.And what Peter says, and I think he’s right, is that we are in a war of attrition now, and we have been for well over a year, and that requires a sea change in the thinking, strategic thinking, and planning of both the IDF and our political leaders. This is not going to be a quick war, and the truth is it’s decades of decisions that got us to the point of October 7th. These are not going to be undone in five minutes. And that is a sea change for Israelis to come to terms with, but more importantly, the leadership. I think that the people here understand that much better than the leadership does right now.Judith: Vivian, what do you think are the odds that there’s going to be a change in leadership? And if so, what do you think are Bennett’s chances?Vivian: Yeah. I don’t do … that’s a high risk sport, political forecasting. I do like high risk sports, but … nobody knows. I don’t know if it’s Bennett. I don’t—maybe it’s—there are others. There’s a lot of backroom talking, and wheeling and dealing.I think that Bennett is seen to be the most likely consensus candidate who can bring together elements of even the religious right. Even some of the ultra- Orthodox, in particular Shas, Aryeh Deri. And an interesting kind of thing about the Shas voters, typically Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent—who feel, quite rightly, that they were mistreated in the early years of the state and they were marginalized and alienated, even though many of the things that went on in the early years have been alleviated, almost totally—but Aryeh Deri is an ultra-Orthodox man from Morocco who studied in a Lithuanian Yeshiva, which is about as different from Moroccan as you can get.And his base, they’re traditional people. They observe Shabbat, they keep kosher, but they’re not extremists. They serve in the army, they work. And so he’s a very, very kind of paradoxical leader to have this base. And he’s very mindful of the fact that his base is serving and is feeling the full impact of this war.So he’s the most likely to cross over to support someone like a Bennett. And I think that the main factor is how long Benjamin Netanyahu can keep Ben Gvir and Smotrich placated, and in the coalition, and supporting the coalition. And as long as he leaves them with the belief and feeling that they will survive until tomorrow—and which he does so artfully—then we won’t have elections for some time. The best estimates that I’ve read—with kind of knowledge and backing, like intellectual backing, and knowledge of the system—is March 2026, is when we’re most likely to,Judith: Okay. Okay. Okay. And Vivian, maybe you can explain something to me that I’ve never understood, which is Smotrich, also, his constituency has paid a very, very high price in this war. So I don’t understand his lockstep alliance with Bibi and Ben-Gvir. Because his people are out there dying in Gaza. I don’t understand it.Vivian: And—so exactly, his base has taken a huge hit. And for that reason, in the polling—this has been consistent for a very long time now—Smotrich does not cross the threshold. Okay? So if there was an election held tomorrow, he’s out. Ben-Gvir, on the other hand, has increased his base significantly. And that should be concerning to all of us. So it seems that many of Smotrich’s supporters, Religious Zionist supporters, are probably moving into the Ben-Gvir camp, which is deeply concerning.So why does Smotrich stay? Because he wants to survive. You know, there have been so many red lines that have been crossed in the last while, but Judith, as you of course will recall, and Claire, I expect you were aware of this as well, about a month ago, maybe a month and a half now, it was on Shabbat, a large group of so-called Hilltop Youth, which are generally young, ultra orthodox men who are often engaged in criminal activity, who establish illegal outposts, who tend to go to Palestinian villages and burn and loot and terrorize—and there seem to be little, if any, legal consequences. And this has just, this kind of conduct has really proliferated since October 7th, because the whole country’s been distracted by Gaza. It’s horrifying. About a month and a half ago, a large group of them in, I hate to say it, white pickup trucks and motorcycles, which evokes a very different image that is horrifying, on Shabbat—so they’re breaking Shabbat—they approached an IDF base that was being staffed by reservists in the West Bank, and there were physical altercations and quite a number of youth were arrested. , And the pushback from the Smotrich camp was intense and insane. And I happen to be in a chat group where I don’t participate, but I do observe. And there are many Smotrich supporters in this chat group, and the discussion that was ongoing in those early days was horrifying. I won’t even say what it was here. But they were deeply critical—scornful—of the IDF in any way laying a finger on these men and boys, who had come to attack an IDF base. That is just crossing so many red lines. A base that was being staffed by reservists who had been doing over five hundred days of duty. And within days, the IDF was exonerated because they had video evidence of what really happened. And the Smotrich camp went quiet. But … I mean—we have allowed this really open wound to fester. And we haven’t even begun to reckon with it, because they’re the ones wielding the balance of power.Claire: It seems the only conceivable way for sane people to take power again is if … to ostracize what we could call the nationalist right, the religious right and the liberals need to be in an alliance.Vivian: I think that there is a large segment of Likud, historically, a kind of right- wing secular but very heterogeneous party, in which there were also religiously observant people. It was a big, big tent. And so I think a lot of Likud voters could support a Bennett-led government. The thing with Likud though that’s really tricky is, I hate to put it this way, but it’s kind of like mafia-level like loyalty. Loyalty in that party is insane. And it goes back to the days of the founding of the state. When Ben-Gurion went after the Irgun, and Menachem Begin, and I won’t get into all that, but it’s a real—I mean, we just saw one of the jewels of the Likud party, in my view, Yuli Edelstein, who was working terribly hard to forge some kind of agreement with the ultra-Orthodox to begin to serve in the IDF. And Yuli Edelstein, he was number two on the Likud list, just a few years ago. A former prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union, an extraordinary man. And he was dumped. He was just dumped by Netanyahu because the ultra-Orthodox say “Can’t work with the guy. He’s against us.” And Yuli Edelstein is also religiously observant.So, you know, it’s really hard. I don’t know, Judith, what you think, but like it’s really hard to gauge where the rank-and-file of Likud are. In terms of religious Zionists, I think it would be tough. I think most of them would go to Ben-Gvir over more mainstream. The religious Zionists too. They, I think, are something like 70 percent of the officers in combat units now, aren’t they?Claire: Are they?Judith: Wow. Vivian: Something—I’m gonna hedge just, but this was a stat I was told a couple years ago.Claire: That’s a really interesting figure.Vivian: It is. There aren’t quite, they’re not quite as represented, or they weren’t, a couple years ago, in the Air Force and intelligence units. These Religious Zionists, they are literalists.Judith: But if that’s the case, Vivian, if 70 percent feel this way, can you imagine, —approximately—can you imagine that they’re defying Zamir? That Zamir could end up all by his lonesome? If the officer corps—this is …Vivian: I’m gonna, I’m gonna let that question just hang in the air. Because I think there are a lot of questions that are being asked now that are hanging in the air.You know, the son of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Yair Netanyahu, who has been living in Miami throughout the war, also this week, he put out on social media and a tweet, a comment basically accusing Eyal Zamir, the Chief of Staff, of plotting a military coup. And he said it. And Zamir, in a cabinet meeting, I think on Wednesday, Bibi challenged Zamir, he said, you know, “If you wanna resign, resign, right? But don’t do it in the media.” You know, kind of being critical of him for speaking, from time to time, in the media. And Zamir reportedly—because, as you know, all cabinet meetings in Israel are leaked, and if they’re not, then we get really worried—and Zamir replied to the effect, he said something like, “Why don’t you tell your son?” Like, to tone it down and to stop critiquing me openly in social media. To which Netanyahu responded, “My son’s 33 years old, I can’t control him.” I think that if I had tweeted out something like that, I might have been arrested by now. Just sayin.’ So. There’s so much going on, so much going on. And we do know that the Likud Party is not thrilled with the way in which the son holds forth. And there were stories about him, a couple years ago, being told to just, like, dial it down. Go off social media, go into exile in Miami for a while, cool your heels.But it seems he hasn’t returned—so, who knows what’s going on there. But we do know what he’s saying publicly. And I think that there is open—I don’t think, I know there is open speculation, I was listening to it on the news last night—I don’t know if you saw it on Channel 12, but wow—about what Eyal Zamir may do.I don’t think he’s going to initiate a coup. But there are many things he could do. And the Commander in Chief, the IDF Chief of Staff, if he’s going to lead these young men and reservists, he has to do it with integrity, with this guy. We know he feels that way. He said it, and he takes his oath very, very seriously.So, I don’t know. I think that we’re all at the real, real, really pointy edge of a spear right now. What do you think?Judith: Yeah.Vivian: What do you think, Judith?Judith: This whole thing with the Chief of Staff, I mean—when he took over from the other Chief of Staff, I remember thinking at the time that honestly, my heart went out a little bit to the previous Chief of Staff, because he had the misfortune of being the Chief of Staff on October 7th, after 18 years of Bibi’s decision-making that had led to this catastrophe. And I felt that he was doing his best. It was unfortunate he had to go though this. New guy came in, didn’t know anything about him, and when—and now, it would be such a monumental thing for—even if he were to resign at a moment like this, as you say, this is the tip, the pointiest point of the spear that we’re at. I think that could have historic repercussions in terms of the response of the people.There are many things with reference to—like, we were talking about the social contract that has changed completely in this country since October 7th. One of them is not serving, which used to have a certain stigma attached to it. And now, I mean, I know parents who advocate for their kids not to, try to talk their kids out. This is unheard of. This was not … such a thing was very rare. And if it ever happened, it was not public. And now it’s a very common thing. I think, if he were to resign on principle, there could be a tremendous ripple effect in who shows up. It could be huge. And he seems to have integrity, this guy. We’ll see. We’ll see. This could be a big moment.Vivian: Yeah. I feel the same way.Claire: Okay. So we’ve been talking about what’s going on in Israel so far, but I think the people who are listening probably have a lot of questions about what’s going on in Gaza, which I certainly can’t answer because I’m not there. And you’ll have trouble answering because you’re not there. But you might have more insight.The reports from Gaza make it sound like hell on Earth, which I have no doubt it is. But I’m hearing really conflicting things about how it came to be that there’s not enough food. A lot of things I’m hearing are not getting reported in the mainstream English-language press at all, even though they should be.The prevailing attitude in the mainstream media is that, of course Israel is just starving people deliberately—which seems insane to me, but that is what people believe. And I wonder if you could both tell me what you think, what your best understanding of what happened with the food situation is. Vivian: You want me to go?Claire: Go. Vivian: So we know that there has been more than adequate food that has entered the Gaza Strip since October 7th. We know that during the ceasefire period, last winter, when hostages were released, even more food and humanitarian supplies were allowed in, with respect to food alone. The allocation was 3,000 calories per day, per person, in the Gaza Strip, which is excessive. The IDF and the government have relied on that statistic when justifying the cessation or the closure of the border in April and May. So there was a period when the ceasefire talks broke down and Netanyahu said, “Forget it. We’re going to shut the border. We’re not going to allow food in, and we’re going to try to break Hamas in that way.”We’ve already dealt with that kind of paradox, so even still—with no food going in—given what had entered the Gaza Strip, there was a surplus. People have done these calculations in and outside of Israel. Even the UN admitted this, there was a surplus of food. So where did all the food go? We know that the food is stolen by criminal gangs and by Hamas and PIJ, and we know that it’s hoarded in warehouses and there’s been video released of these warehouses.Claire: Yeah. Vivian: We also know that there is a not-insignificant population that is not receiving food, there are civilians for whom food insecurity is extreme, and that many of them are going for periods of time—1, 2, 3 days—without adequate food and water. And we have that from multiple sources. We have that from IDF sources on the ground. They’ve said it. Now, what they don’t concede is famine. There is a very specific legal, international legal definition of what constitutes a famine. There also is not a policy of starvation at the national level. There may be grotesquely insensitive comments made by political leaders like Ben-Gvir, but that does not constitute a policy of intentional starvation.And this is the thin edge of the wedge in which Israelis find themselves. understanding that notwithstanding the fact that more than adequate calorie counts and food stocks are in the Gaza Strip, there is a not insignificant number of civilians that are not receiving adequate food. And I can only speak for myself—that is absolutely intolerable.I cannot live with that in any way. I cannot live with it ethically, morally—and I am no, like, “woke leftist.” And I know that many Israelis, most Israelis feel the same way. We simply cannot bear it. So is there food? Yes. What is the problem? Distribution. Hoarding by Hamas, PIJ, and criminal gangs and, UNRWA facilitating and allowing, or looking the other way, when they were doing that, which is why Israel said, “All right, we're not working with UNRWA anymore. We’re going to set up this new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. We’re going to take all control of food away from UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency. We’re going to allow—we will work with other UN agencies that we trust, like UNICEF and World Food Program. And they can distribute”—that gets into the other problems we were discussing earlier.So the issue is distribution of food. UNRWA had over 4,000 distribution points, GHF has four. The journey to get to these aid sites is treacherous, it’s difficult. But the focus, again, has always been on, for the last two months, “Israel’s starving, Israel’s not allowing in food, Israel’s preventing distribution”—no. That is not true. And I would urge your listeners to look at the feed of my very good friend, on X, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He is fantastic. He’s been on my podcast a number of times. And we speak about this all the time. Claire: I have—I was in touch with him because I wanted him to come and speak to my class and, we’ve meant to organize that. He’s very impressive. I wonder how many more are like him.Vivian: Well, more than we think, I think. Claire: Yeah? I hope so. I hope so. Vivian: He’s extraordinary. He’s extraordinary. But there are people like Ahmed out there—and for your listeners, just so you know, he’s born in Gaza City. He was raised there. He totally by accident left when he was 15 years old on an exchange trip to study at high school in the US. It was supposed to be for one year. And for reasons he explains in one of my podcasts, it turned out to be for life. He has family there. It was just What’sApping with him this morning, I said, “Where’s your brother?” Cause his brother had been based in Gaza City. He said, “He got out, he’s in the south now. But we have family stuck there and we’re trying to figure out what to do.” I mean, he’s someone you can talk to, but he openly—and it takes tremendous courage, ‘cause he has family there—openly accuses Hamas of hoarding food and depriving civilians. He doesn’t exonerate Israel, but he’s very clear-eyed on what’s going on on the ground.Claire: What’s most remarkable—he has lost 19 family members in this war. Vivian: More. Claire: More?Vivian: More in terms of his extended family. Yeah. Big family, and they’re close, and he grew up with them. They grew up in these family compounds. They all live in each other’s houses. I think it’s over 50. It was very early on. Claire: Terrible.Vivian: Terrible.Claire: But he is a remarkable voice of clarity about what’s going on in Gaza and what Hamas has been doing, and how little Hamas cares about civilians in Gaza. And I’d really like to speak to him. Really like to have him on the podcast. He’d probably be a much better person for me to speak to about what’s going on in Gaza than—well, he hasn’t been there himself, as far as I understand. He’s getting all of this from his family, right?Vivian: Family and friends. I had him on a few weeks ago, and he spoke about seeing a friend of his, also from Gaza, in the States, saying, “My family’s desperate. They have no food. They have no money. Can you please help?” He sent $500. And he explains this whole corrupt chain of kickbacks. And by the time the money gets in their hands, it’s $330, and they buy provisions that would’ve cost $10 before the war for—like something crazy. The corruption, the exploitation of desperate civilians by people in Gaza and outside …But yes, he is in touch with all kinds of people on the ground. He has friends, he has family, and he speaks to them directly on a daily basis. So he is the best person to speak to this.Claire: The thing is, you completely dismissed the idea that Bibi could have any kind of motive beyond the utterly base and self-serving. But when you think of just declaring the war of failure, strategically … all of this suffering in Gaza has been for nothing. As is the entire world’s reaction to it. It’s leaving Hamas in place, it’s …Vivian: IDo you know what could have stopped it all? On October 8th? If the United States and all the Western governments had frozen Qatari assets.Claire: You think that would’ve stopped it? Vivian: The question is, why did they not do it?Claire: Well, I don’t rightly know, but I expect it’s because Qatar has bought off everything that’s buyable in Europe and the United States. I mean, if I say “Qatargate,” you could think of four separate scandals that would be called that. No, but literally—there are four separate scandals now being called Qatargate—the one at the seat of the European Union, the—goodness, I mean, with someone like Trump, especially, who has his hand open for bribes and kickbacks, you think he’s going to turn on Qatar? Vivian: I am just asking the question. I’m not the conspiracy theorist, I’m just asking the question.Claire: How many members of Congress do you think they own?Vivian: I’d love to know. I’d also love to know, and this apparently is not required to be disclosed, and I don’t understand why—even in private educational institutions in America—I’d love to know how much Qatar has donated. Claire: Oh, it’s a fortune. It’s an absolute fortune. They own Georgetown.Vivian: But they’re not required to disclose that. And why not? I mean, these are educational institutions. I understand they’re private, but there are a lot of blurred lines here. Claire: Mm-hmm. Vivian: You know, a friend of mine made a very, very astute comment to me a while ago. He said, “When Jewish people donate to these institutions,” which they do, very generously, and hospitals, “They love to see their names on buildings, right?” Park benches, you name it. Well, you don’t have the Sheik this and that, or this and that building—”Judith: —wing.Vivian: Exactly. What they do, the Qataris, is they endow chairs and departments, and then they dictate the kind of scholar that may sit in those chairs and the kinds of things that they may teach. And interestingly, all of those people in the West, and in America, who are so overheated about intrusions on academic freedom by the Trump administration—and I’m not carrying water for them, I’m just saying, pointing out a contradiction—they seem completely nonplused by the fact that a foreign government may be bankrolling universities and chairs and dictating what may or may not be said and taught in that capacity. And if that's not an intrusion on academic freedom, I don’t know what is.Claire: It is, although it doesn’t have the force of the state dictating what may and may not be said. I mean, it’s a voluntary—it’s just scuzzy, that’s all. It’s scuzzy and it’s deceptive, in so far as students and their parents aren’t being told, “By the way, the curriculum is going to be Qatari-approved.”Vivian: Yeah. It’s scuzzy. I think it’s also threatening the foundations of our democracy as we’ve known itClaire: The integrity of the university, certainly. And it is threatening, at the very least—it’s a threat to Jews. I mean, because kids at these schools are being taught. a version of events that is—that allows for eruptions of antisemitism like the kind we’ve seen.Judith: Almost more heartbreaking than that is I have talked to parents of college-age Jewish kids in the US whose children are turning against us. Their Jewish children are turning against us because of what they’re learning in class and what their classmates are allowed to say about us. And they’re good, good children. And they come home and they say, “Why didn’t I know? Why did you never tell me how we—the terrible things that we have done to the Palestinians,” you know, that’s where their head is—post-October 7th, post-October 7th. It’s very deep. It’s very deep. This poisoning of the academy, in the States is very, very profound.Claire: And that, I think is the source of what’s gone—a lot of the source of what’s gone wrong with the journalism. And you’ve got people coming right out of that educational environment. Judith: Yeah. Claire: And there are a lot of other things that have gone wrong with the journalism, including some that are just—that have nothing to do with antisemitism or hostility to Israel, but are just artifacts of the news business. Israel is a place where journalists are very comfy.Vivian: Mm-hmm. Claire: There aren’t a lot of conflicts as intense as what’s going on in Gaza where journalists can report on it from the comfort of a four-star hotel where they’re perfectly safe. And there’s a ton of interest in Israel, and that becomes a flywheel. So lots of—was in that really good series of articles by Matt, Matty, what is his name, Matty, he used to work for—Vivian: FriedmanClaire: Matti Friedman, where he pointed out that at the time he was working for AP, there were more AP correspondents in Israel than there were in all of China, than in the entire African continent?Vivian: Yeah. Not only, it’s not only the journalists, it’s also many of the humanitarian workers and NGO employees. Claire: Yeah. Vivian: They much prefer to be based in Tel Aviv or in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv, than in the areas where they actually do their jobs. When I began my tenure here as Canadian ambassador, in 2014, and my younger daughter was in grade 12 and she went to the American school. And the irony was just so incredible, because until grade seven, she’d been in Jewish day school in Toronto, a very liberal one. And then she was in art schools in Toronto, in the public system. And then she comes to Israel, and she’s going to the American school, and it is full of the children of diplomats, and NGO workers, and some corporate people. It’s a very, very privileged group of young people. And the environment was not terribly understanding or sympathetic towards Israel among the students. You know? So the irony of course being, you don’t go to public school in Canada, you go to Jewish day school, because there’s hostility, and there are challenges. And then you come here, where you expect to kind of just feel at home, and you’re in the environment I try to protect you from there.Claire: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot that I wish people understood, which the media could be explaining and doesn’t, about the many aid and humanitarian organizations and their relationship—their necessary relationship—with Hamas, the one they’ve had to have in order to be able to do their jobs. Vivian: Yep. Claire: Because people will tell me, “But look at this report by Amnesty! Don’t you trust Amnesty?”Judith: But there’s also this—there’s also this echo chamber of wrong information. And if you trace it back, right at the beginning of the war, [UN Secretary-General António] Gutierrez, our old friend, made a statement that 500 trucks of food are needed a day to adequately feed the population of Gaza—which has nothing to do with reality. Not remotely. The actual number is between 130 and 150, which is what they had been getting.But he put it out there, this complete falsehood—500 trucks. That number, 500 trucks, has been quoted and quoted and quoted and quoted and quoted and used as the baseline for all these studies and calculations that are done by these NGOs and that are done by—it’s unbelievable. And you could just trace it right back to a lie told right at the beginning of the war. And so it’s all self-referential. “Well, this refers to Amnesty, and that refers to Human Rights Watch, and that refers to”—and it all traces back to the same falsehood.Claire: Like a game of telephone. Judith: Yeah.Vivian: Yeah. I just wanna make a point that also, on this, that I think is really important. It was when I was serving as ambassador, and one of the hot issues at the time was a village in the West Bank, one village, and I’m sorry the name escapes me at the moment, that the Israeli government had decided to demolish, raze, for a long period of time. And it had been built illegally. And it became the cause of the moment for Western activists. This was in, like, 2014, 2015. And the State Department also put out a report on this village, and said, “This is terrible. This can’t be done. These—of course, the Obama era—this can’t be done.” And I was presented with this report by one of my staffers in the Canadian embassy, urging me to sign a letter that had been signed by all the others. And I said, “Well, I can’t do that without verifying what I’m signing. It’s making some pretty strong statements.” And this particular staff person was not overly sympathetic to Israel. And so I said, “Why don't you go and I’ll arrange for you to meet with, you know, senior people.” And they did. And, “I want you to come back and report to me what you see.” To this person’s credit, they came back and reported the truth. And the truth was that nothing that was verified in the State Department report could be verified by her. None of these assertions. I said, “Well, on that basis, I can’t sign this letter then, can I, demanding X, Y, and Z.” And I did speak to my American peers, at the time, and what shocked me was that they had been presented with the evidence by an NGO. They had not done any due diligence on it. I was shocked. Maybe I’m naive. So talking about, to Judith’s point, about the echo chamber, this information is taken as gospel, and that I had the temerity to question the State Department horrified my staff person.Judith: Mm-hmm. Vivian: But I’m a lawyer by training. That’s what we do.Judith: Well, I have read, I have actually read of cases where researchers trying to get to the bottom of famine and Gaza are criticized for simply asking the question, because to do so is contemptuous and dismissive of the suffering of the children of Gaza. And this is done with an absolutely straight face. And it has real consequences, where people can’t get their questions answered and they’re treated like pariahs within the little world of researchers. You simply can’t ask certain questions.Claire: How many times has The Washington Post or The New York Times had to issue an embarrassing retraction because they took a Hamas press release and ran with it as gospel truth? And then within days it was completely debunked. And then they do it again.Vivian: I’m not counting, but I will say this: I’m a New York Times subscriber, through it all, because I do find value in a lot of what they produce. I am about to cancel my subscription. And the reason for that is the disgraceful interview that Ezra Klein did with Mahmoud Khalil this week.Claire: Oh, I didn’t listen to that. That bad, huh?Vivian: Hen Mazzig did a very good analysis. I frankly could not listen to more than half. It was absolutely revolting. I think that interview lays bare everything you need to know about the ignorance or malevolence of that publication and people who seem determined to whitewash Hamas. … I don’t know Ezra Klein. He could be the nicest, most well-meaning person in the world. Claire: He certainly seems like it. Vivian: I’m sure he is. But he either did not have proper research done to prepare him for that interview, or he chose not to challenge outrageous statements that his interview subject was making.Claire: Perhaps for the benefit of listeners who might not know which statements were outrageous and how they should have been challenged, just give us a quick rundown, if it’s not too disgusting.Vivian: There are so many, but … perhaps the most chilling is his repeated comment that October 7th simply couldn’t be avoided. And Ezra Klein did not press him on that, and why he said that. He refused to respond in any meaningful way to the violence that was perpetrated on the 7th. And let’s not forget, it went on for a few days. It could not be avoided, and it was justified and justifiable. I could drill down into some of the things that I heard—like his continued insistence that the so-called March of Return that was this weekly exercise that was—Claire: —totally peaceful, right?Vivian: Yep.Judith: Yeah.Vivian: Totally peaceful. Yeah.Judith: All those incendiary balloons were really peaceful. Yeah.Vivian: Yeah. It was just kind of fabrication, outright fabrication after fabrication. And Ezra Klein, as I heard it, was much more concerned with demonstrating deep empathy with the Palestinian cause and with what Khalil went through when he was in ICE detention.He also—Ezra Klein—chose to allow Khalil to present all of his activity, both before arriving in America and after arriving in America, as being peaceful in nature, focused on the dignity of the Palestinian people, and not in any way intending to promote the annihilation and destruction of the state of Israel. And I think that—Hen Mazzig does a very good job of picking it apart, so no need for me to reinvent the wheel. But I think that Ezra Klein should do some reading and very, very deep soul searching.Claire: Yeah. Sounds like it. I didn’t read it, but I saw his byline over an article about how divided American Jews are and how awkward conversation was at the family table. And I’m suspecting that might be based on a personal experience there. I should read the article before discussing it. … Okay. That was a good conversation—Judith: It sure was.Vivian: I think we had a wonderful conversation.Claire: Yeah.Vivian: Very candid and very honest.Claire: I hope it gives people who are listening a sense of the real human beings about whom these headlines are written. Clearly, these are not two génocidaires.Vivian: No. Judith: Thank you.Vivian: Thank you for bringing us together, Claire. What a lovely, really cathartic and—thank you for this free therapy session.Claire: I want people to hear what people who really are going through this sound like, not the caricature.Vivian: Alright. Bye girls!Judith: Bye!Claire: Bye! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
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  Ukraine, Congo, and Trump's Nobel Peace Prize 11.07.2025 33min

  I recorded this podcast with Vladislav Davidzon on Zoom on Wednesday. I thought we’d covered some interesting ground. But when I listened to it, I was horrified to discover that something was seriously wrong with the audio. Vlad’s voice was mostly fine, but mine was often inaudible. I don’t know why. I record conversations on Zoom several times a week, and this has never happened before. I spent yesterday trying to salvage the recording, but I could only improve it so much. Finally, tired and frustrated, I gave up and decided to deal with it today. Having slept on it, I decided that it didn’t merit my wasting another full day trying to fix it. Too much is happening in the world that I want to write about, and I didn’t want to see another day go down the tubes. So I’m putting it up as is, with the transcript, below—read the transcript, listen to as much as you feel like, or don’t. I also gave the transcript to Google’s NotebookLM, which created a completely new podcast, with perfect audio. in which two slightly dopey AI speakers discuss the transcript in a chirpy tone. It’s just as good as the original, really. Voilà:Claire: Welcome to the Cosmopolitan Globalist Podcast. I’m here with my friend Vladislav Davidson, who is in Amsterdam. Is that right?Vlad: I am in Amsterdam indeed, Claire. Hi.Claire: Hi! Are you coming back to Paris?Vlad: I should be back in about a week or so. I’m waiting for a meeting with a politician. As soon as he tells me what his schedule is, I should pop back in.Claire: Right.Vlad: I’ll stay with you. Don’t worry. I know you missed me.Claire: You going to be back for the 14th?Vlad: Um, possibly. What do you think, you mean the parade?Claire: Firemen’s ball. I thought it might be fun to go this year.Vlad: You're going? Do you have extra tickets?Claire: You don’t need tickets.Vlad: I only have a white jacket with me while I’m on the road. What do you think?Claire: Oh, you don’t need to dress up. It’s for the whole neighborhood.Vlad: Is it on the street? Where is it?Claire: It’s at the firehouse. It’s just across on the rue de Sévigné.Vlad: I think it’ll be nice.Claire: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.Vlad: Let me know. Actually, I’ve never done that.Claire: You absolutely should.Vlad: Right?Claire: Yeah, speaking of the 14th, they’re practicing now for Bastille Day with the planes overhead, the fighter jets, and you know, when they pass overhead, the sound terrifies the cats—they run under the bed and they can’t be coaxed out for hours. And it actually terrifies me, too. I find these sounds terrifying. Just—Vlad: I have flashbacks to the war. I can’t, even now in Amsterdam, sometimes the car back stops, sometimes it takes me a few seconds to realize I’m not in Ukraine. I’m not at the frontlines that—when some alarm goes off, I’m continuously thinking, are the Shaheds firing? So, uh—Claire: It scares me and I know that they’re not coming for me. They’re just practicing for a parade. What is it like to deal with that for real, knowing that they are coming for you night after night? It’s just—Vlad: It’s terrifying. And I have an extremely high appetite for risk, more than most people. But it’s really, really scary when you are in a situation where you’re getting bombed and you know you’re getting bombed. It’s not pleasantClaire: Night after night. It must just leave people—it must just leave people beyond exhausted, beyond, beyond empty.Vlad: Yeah. Well, that’s the point. That’s why they do it. They know that this is a way to grind down the population. They purposely do it in the middle of a night in order to wake people up and not allow them to sleep and to grind out the population’s capacity to resist.Claire: I feel so bad for everyone who's living with this. I feel bad for the people in Gaza living with this. Obviously, I’m not a great enthusiast of Gaza’s political leadership, but—Vlad: One has to have empathy for ordinary people who are caught in between the bad decisions of the leaders or the decisions of other leaders, right. I support Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas, and I also feel bad for every collateral casualty, for the suffering, by innocent people. Obviously it’s terrible. War is terrible.Claire: Yeah, I know. I—that’s not a very original observation, but I—Vlad: It’s not, it’s not.Claire: But still, I just really feel bad for everyone who’s going through this, and I don’t understand why my fellow Americans don’t seem to feel for what Ukrainians are going through.Vlad: Well, they did. They did and they still do. The polling is very obvious on this. But some people on the NatCon MAGA right have been, I wouldn’t say manipulated, but it’s become a partisan issue, and it’s easy for people not to care when they feel they're not being taken care of by the state.Claire: Well, you have to be pretty stupid to allow that to be a partisan issue. For most of American history, there was an edict that politics stopped the water’s edge. And to make this partisan issue—Vlad: It became a partisan issue because of the stupidity of some people, on both the Democratic Party and on the Ukrainian leadership side. The Ukrainians obviously have made a lot of mistakes in their dealings with Donald Trump over the last nine years.Claire: I really think you’re blaming the victim on this one.Vlad: I was a US law enforcement witness on this. I was there and I saw this, the Ukrainians got off on the wrong foot with Donald Trump from the very beginning. And obviously there was no playbook for how to deal with an insurgent Trump campaign in 2016, and the Ukrainian Embassy made some unfortunate calls in a difficult situation—I discussed this very recently with the Ukrainian ambassador at the time, and he’s very grateful to me for what I did back then.Claire: You mean by handing over the information from the Party of Regions?Vlad: That was one of the things they did. Yeah. Hmm.Claire: What else?Vlad: Uh, how discreet do I wanna be? The Ukrainians made a bad decision about, thinking that the Clinton campaign was gonna win and they made they made less effort to talk to the Trump people in the beginning, Ambassador Chaly—and I’ve told him this to his face—made a bad call with the way he published an article on The Hill in the spring of 2016, when Donald Trump was talking about Crimea as Russia—I mean, it should have been done at the level of the Foreign Ministry. It shouldn't have been the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington that made that call and wrote that op-ed.Claire: Mm-hmm. I still think you’re blaming the victim. No normal administration would pay attention to that. They would act in the American interest.Vlad: I mean, obviously he got embroiled in the Ukraine impeachment stuff. Obviously, that’s his own fault. But he did get embroiled in Russiagate, which was a lot of psychosis from the legacy media. And he saw the Ukraine stuff as an extension of Russiagate psychosis. So, he should get over it, but there’s multiple instances of things that he continuously got involved in. As a MAGA guy says to me, the Ukrainians somehow keep getting involved in Trump’s business. It’s a very vulgar but not incorrect way of explaining why Ukraine kept getting involved. And for whatever bizarre reason, as I put in one of my articles, Ukraine was fodder for presidential elections, three cycles in a row, 2016, 20 and 24, and that’s weird.Claire: I don’t want to spend all of our time on this, but I still think that you're blaming the victim. The abnormality here is—Vlad: I’m not blaming the victim because these are my people. I’m on the Ukrainian side. I think the Ukrainian leadership, before Zelensky, has a lot to answer for. Zelensky inherited a bad hand and a bad relationship. I don’t like the way they were treated. I don’t like what happened with him in the White House, that’s all terrible. But certain things happened between 2016 and 2019 that when Zelensky came into office, he already inherited a not-great relationship with the Trump administration. There’s a bad relationship, why there’s bad blood, why there’s lack of trust, you know?Claire: What are you hearing about the latest insane episode in which it was reported that Pete Hegseth and perhaps Elbridge Colby unilaterally decided to hold up arm shipments to Ukraine? Is that true?Vlad: Look, I don’t want to discuss Mr. Colby because I don’t want him to stop replying to my DMs on Twitter.Claire: At some point you’ve gotta stop DMing and report what he says, right?Vlad: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna—Claire: He doesn’t listen to this podcast.Vlad: I put a lot of effort into having conversations with those people and a lot of people told me it was a wasted effort, and it turns out—Claire: So your sources are so carefully cultivated that you can’t ever use them?Vlad: Yeah. Right, right. I don’t know, I tried, and a lot of other people tried to have conversations with the other side on this stuff, and some of them have come around, some of them have not, and I think it’s—Claire: Well, you don’t have to say anything. But if he’s responsible for it, chuckle. And if not, I—Vlad: I’ve read the same reporting that you have. Ha ha ha, ha ha.Claire: I see.Vlad: So, I really wish that wasn’t the case. They are really committed to their pivot away from Ukraine to Taiwan. They are committed to having the Europeans deal with this, and they are committed to offsetting this situation onto, NATO and European.Claire: But Colby isn’t committed to Taiwan. He’s said so, explicitly. He said that he doesn’t think Taiwan is a vital American interest, and he thinks we should reach some kind of accommodation with China. It’s all just stuff he say. He’s a total opportunist. I know you don’t want to ruin your relationship with him, So I—Vlad: Honestly, I don’t want to attack this gentleman. He has power, and there are a lot of vindictive people in the world, and people in power typically have egos and or sometimes thin egos. And I really hope that this is just a more of a kabuki game, which it very well could be. A lot of what happens with the Trump administration is kabuki games, allowing Trump to have his daily change of mood on whatever it—Claire: Trump just said something about the Russians b**********g him, to which the entire world said, “Um, yeah.”Vlad: But he knew this for months. I mean, he’s frustrated enough to actually call them out publicly on it because he knows he’s not getting anything from them. The Russians are just really stubborn, and they don’t want deal, and they don’t want anything and they’re just pushing Trump around. So at a certain point, even Donald Trump, whose policy was not to publicly criticize them and try to get them to make some sort of small concessions privately, said, “Okay, f**k these people.”Claire: So why is he trying to rescue them economically?Vlad: I mean, he has, again, a complicated relationship with Russia. He has a difficult relationship with the Russians and he obviously, like several other administrations, wants to park the Russian relationship and see if we can just get back to business as usual. Of course, there’s no going back to business as usual, and I think even he gets that, but he’s trying. Did you read my piece from December with Mark Galeotti?Claire: The one about Trump scheming to get a Nobel Prize? I read about a third of it before you called.Vlad: What’d you think of a first third?Claire: You know what, just let me tell you something interesting that I heard, which I haven't written about yet.Vlad: Yes?Claire: Actually Trump has done something important in Congo. Something thatVlad: Is that right?Claire: He could legit get the Nobel Peace Prize for if anyone paid any attention to it. You know, that is the worst armed conflict since the Second World War. And it was heating up again. I found this out—it wasn’t reported anywhere—from my cab driver. I know it’s a cliche to cite the cab driver, but what can I do, it was a cab driver who told me this. My cab driver was from Congo, and we ended up talking about it. He was kind of surprised that I knew anything about the conflict. But he said “The Americans have really helped us”— and did you know there are American troops there in quite large numbers?Vlad: When?Claire: Now.Vlad: I had no idea.Claire: No, me neither. I mean, I’ve taken this from my Congolese cab driver, I haven’t tried to find out if it’s true. But why would he make that up? That’s kind of a hard thing to be mistaken about, right?Vlad: I’m going to Google this. Immediately. US troops in Congo. I’m gonna Google this. It should be—I mean, unless it’s a secret and we’re secretly—Claire: We pushed back M23, which is a significant achievement. Negotiated a ceasefire. And apparently, Donald Trump is popular there because he’s credited with stopping the war.Vlad: Al Jazeera reported three years ago that President Tshisekedi authorized the deployment of US counterterrorism forces in the Eastern DRC. And the US Embassy says US Congo Military Cooperation continues. “A new chapter opens military cooperation.” This is on the US Embassy Congo website and “The need for US action for Democratic Republic.” Amnesty, USA. It seems that there are troops.Claire: There are indeed. I was surprised to hear that, and surprised to hear the first non-American person I have encountered, probably, who was genuinely enthusiastic about Trump.Vlad: African News has a piece on us deploying Army to secure the DRC election last summer. So it’s obviously trueClaire: —and this is a significant accomplishment. Now, obviously, the only reason, I’m sure, that we’re there is because it’s such a significant source of absolutely essential minerals. But—Vlad: —but so what? You stop a war. You stop a war.Claire: —you stop a war, you stop a war. So why isn’t Trump talking this up? Is it because he thinks his base will disapprove of sending troops to Africa?Vlad: This may not be even in his top priority list. He may not even understand how successful his own policy may be. It’s entirely possible.Claire: Well, he is a much more realistic candidate for a Nobel Prize for that achievement than for anything else.Vlad: Well, I’m not against him getting the Nobel Prize if he actually does something worthy of it. Yeah. At this point he probably deserves it more than Barack Obama did.Claire: Well, Barack Obama didn’t deserve it at all. He hadn’t done anything when he got it.Vlad: Right. And in fact, he caused wars, and caused a lot of people to die.Claire: Yeah, no. But Trump does seem to be quite obsessed with getting a Nobel prize. He’s having everyone who visits him submit his application to the Nobel Committee. He’s not going to get it, of course. And I don’t know—Vlad: I had lunch with a very prominent Anglo-American journalist the other day, and he told me that he’s talking to his Norwegian friends and Swedish friends about getting their governments to back the committee to get it. And that’s the one way that we’re going to get influence on them, is the thinking. So, some serious people have had this thought.Claire: Yeah. Pakistan came over and offered to nominate him for having negotiated a ceasefire with India, which India completely denies, and then the Israelis are nominating him for … having bombed Iran, I guess. Can you make any sense of this proposal in Gaza? I mean, what is he talking about when he talks about taking control of it and turning it into the Gaza Riviera? Does he—Vlad: Is there an actual proposal, or that was just him—Claire: —there was a press conference, a couple days ago. And I actually happen to have the transcript. Someone asked me about it. Let me just pull it up. His speech is so incoherent that it’s really hard to figure out what he’s getting at, in even the most literal sense.Vlad: Do we just annex Gaza, make it into the 51st state? Is that what you're asking?Claire: Well, he seems to be talking about “taking ownership,” which has to mean annexation, right? Or maybe it means taking ownership in the sense of “taking responsibility.” And—Vlad: Anything?Claire: Okay, here’s the transcript. Here we go. “We brought peace and stability to the Middle East like we haven't seen in decades. Together, we defeated ISIS, we ended the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, one of the worst. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”Vlad: Blah, blah, blah.Claire: “We starved Hamas,” which is a really unfortunate turn of phrase, “and other terrorist proxies. And, we starved them like they had never seen before.”Vlad: Cool.Claire: Blah, blah, blah. Says we’re going to have a lot of people signing up for the Abraham Accords very quickly.Vlad: Good.Claire: And then he says, “The horrors of October 7th would never have happened if I were president. The Ukraine and Russia disaster would never have happened if I were president”—Vlad: By the way, I agree with that. It’s actually the case. It happened because we had a very weak and brain dead cadaver in the White House, and Putin made the decision to go all in because he saw weakness. I do believe that actually if Trump had been president of the war, and that sort of—Claire: I am sure the debacle in Afghanistan was a significant part of his decision making, but I also think he felt internal pressures that had nothing to do with us. I think it was an act of regime consolidation.Vlad: Yeah, I know, but he made a decision to go thinking that, it was not gonna have any kind of—Claire: The ones he really thought were weak, compared to reality, were the Ukrainians. And that was obviously a major miscalculation.Vlad: Yeah. Obviously there were miscalculations all around. But, that doesn't mean the Biden administration doesn’t have a lot to answer for.Claire: Hey, we dispatched Bill Burns, the CIA Director, to Moscow before the war. Do you have any idea what he said to them?Vlad: No, that’s top secret. But he threatened them. Obviously. They didn’t care. They didn’t believe him or care. Yeah. So—Claire: I’m just wondering what he threatened them with. Alright, so here's what he says:“Gaza strip has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there and frankly, who’ve been really very unlucky. It’s been very unlucky. It's been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just, uh, has not been good. And it should not go through a process of rebuilding or occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it, lived there and died there, and lived a miserable existence there. Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains, which will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly, bad luck.“This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be the numerous sites, or it could be one large site, but the people will be able to live in comfort and peace and we’ll get, I’m sure, we’ll get something really spectacular done. They’re going to have peace. They’re not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed like this civilization of wonderful people has had to endure.“The only reason Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It’s right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down. They’re living under fallen concrete, and that’s very dangerous, precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.“Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job, do something different. Just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has for a hundred years. I’m hopeful that the ceasefire could be in the beginning of a larger and more enduring peace that will end the bloodshed and killing once and overall, but the same—”Vlad: Claire, okay. I’ve had enough. Claire, what are you parsing there? What are you getting out of it?Claire: I’m just trying to figure out what on earth he’s getting at. What is his idea here? Who is he talking about, even?Vlad: I think he is sending signals to whichever Sunni Arab allies of ours we're trying to blackmail into paying for it and policing it. That’s what I would guess. But who knows?Claire: Americans are not going to be happy with the idea of sending troops into Gaza.Vlad: No, no. And we shouldn’t. And I personally want nothing to do with that. And that’s a bad idea. Obviously no one needs to do that. And—Claire: On one thing, he’s right. Doing the same thing will get the same results.Vlad: It’s totally right. Yeah.Claire: It’s just—I just don’t know what he’s proposing as an alternative,Vlad: Both the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes will collapse if they take on more responsibility for it. And the other Sunni Arabs don’t want to do it and the Palestinian authority doesn’t want to do it. I don’t have an answer anymore than anybody else does to, sorry to say.Claire: I saw something—was it coming from the administration or was it just something I saw online?—about turning the Sinai into Palestine?Vlad: People have been wanting to do that for a long time, but that would lead to the collapse of Egyptian regime, one way or another. And we’ve promised our Egyptian friends that we wouldn’t make them do that. So no one serious is actually demanding that they do that because it would bring the war to Egypt.Claire: Trump doesn’t care what we promised.Vlad: He understands power dynamics extremely well. He has an extraordinarily predatory and clear-eyed understanding of power. He is the president who is most comfortable, and most understanding of, power dynamics that we’ve had in a very long time.Claire: That's why he can’t figure out how to handle Russia?Vlad: He sees Russia as having nuclear weapons and very difficult to deal with and rightly so. I mean, what are you gonna do if the Russians don’t want to make peace? What are you going to do? You could.Claire: Arm Ukraine! Give weapons to Ukraine!Vlad: Yeah, I know, I know. And that, yes—I’m calling for that, obviously, but, still. It is a difficult situation. I don’t know why I’m defending him. I mean, I just like being on the contrarian side of things. Anyways, what did you make of my piece with Galleoti, as much as you read of it?Claire: So far it was interesting. I just didn’t finish it. I mean—Vlad: Basically we predicted that he would put a lot of pressure for some of the Ukrainians and that when that wouldn’t work, he would put the pressure on the Russians, and that's exactly what happened. Sadly, it didn't happen quickly enough.Claire: He’s not putting a lot of pressure on the Russians.Vlad: No, he is not. He’s not, and he doesn’t think he has a lot of sticks.Claire: When we spoke to about this when you were here the other day, you said that Ukrainians are holding on for Russia’s economic collapse, which I think really could come quite quickly.Vlad: The system is very shaky. It’s shakier than anticipated. And the Ukrainians are extremely smart and they know what they're doing and they are really putting a lot of effort into blowing up stuff like oil refineries, right? And so they are very good at blowing up oil refineries and oil tankers and arms munition sites. So they’ve—according to Ukrainian intelligence—created US$10 billion worth of economic damage inside Russia already just with drones, right? Just a couple of days ago, the Ukrainian drones shut down all of the flights, the entire night, in one of Moscow’s four major international airports. So nobody was flying in and out of Moscow that night, and the cell phone jammers were turned on in order to jam the drones. But basically, all those people in the airport didn’t have cell phone service, so they sat there for hours waiting for their flight, which didn’t happen until maybe the next day. They couldn’t call anyone and couldn’t go home. So that’s a knock-on effect. No one likes that. You get on a plane and then you have to sit at the airport and then you have to go home, right? So the idea is to make life very difficult for the Russian population and also to blow up a bunch of stuff that the regime needs to consolidate its economic control. So do Ukrainians think they’re gonna kill every last Russian soldier? No, they don’t. But they think they can, they can wait this out. And, um, maybe they—Claire: Then what?Vlad: Then? I don’t know, honestly. We’re waiting for the regime to collapse. He’s only human. You don’t make a deal with with him, because he doesn’t want to make a deal. You just wait it out.Claire: There’s been an impressive number of Russians falling out of windows recently.Vlad: Yeah. Like three of them just over the last three days. Yeah. Regime consolidation is real.Claire: So these are people who were suspected of disloyalty in some way?Vlad: Even a former defense minister, Timor what’s-his-name, went to jail for 13 years for corruption. There is a lot of internal politics in Russia and some of the regime elites are unhappy. Some of them are looking for quiet ways of making a deal. And some of them are falling out of windows because the regime both needs to scare some of them and also to take away their assets in order to pay off others, right? The system cannibalizes its own, once in a while, and even very high-level guys, a former transport ministry guy, a former defense minister, going to jail. This is just the way they run the regime, you know?Claire: Yeah. Of the elites who aren’t happy, are there more of them who are unhappy in the direction of wanting to make a deal, or more of them who are unhappy in the direction of wanting to become more aggressive and take more risks?Vlad: Well, there are those of them who just want to keep going and keep fighting. And then there are also those who are like, “This is stupid. This isn't going anywhere,” right? I think the ones who were okay with the war have consolidated their support for a really long time, and they’ve just priced in the fact that this war’s going to go on for a long time.Claire: Who are the notable figures? Who would like to cut a deal, do you know?Vlad: No, because if we had their names, they wouldn’t be in the game anymore. So I know that people do talk to them, and I have two names that have been bandied about, but I’m told I can’t make that public. There are regime insiders who do talk to Western intelligence agencies, but if they get caught, they do get killed.Claire: So, do we have any insight to Putin’s state of mind right now?Vlad: I personally don't know. There are people who look at that all day long, but it’s very difficult. And he does sit in a bunker, and Kremlinology is real, of course, but that’s a very difficult one. So I can’t say for sure. He thinks he’s winning.Claire: Does he?Vlad: Yeah, he absolutely does. Yeah. Why wouldn’t he? He is winning on the merits of his own position. He’s kind of winning. Yeah. So why wouldn’t he think that?Claire: Certainly in the larger sense of demoralizing the West, leaving it too confused to understand the difference between its allies and its adversaries, bringing allies to power in Europe, and—Vlad: The Russian Army’s grinding—at tremendous, unspeakable, inhumane costs, 1,300 Russian men dead and wounded every single day—they are making gains, they’re making substantive gains. And the Ukrainian army will run out of men at this point. It’s just the way it is.Claire: Are Russians noticing all these wounded men coming back, do they—Vlad: Well, it’s a good question actually. The Russians have made a point of not cycling people out of the war zone. Unless you’re really terribly maimed, you’re not going to be allowed out of a war zone by the Russian authorities. They try to keep the mobilized men in the war zone or in the regions around Russia in order to keep them from going back to their hometowns in Siberia and telling everybody how terrible things are.Claire: Well, they remember 1917.Vlad: Yeah, it’s a real policy at the presidential administration level. The number of demobilized guys is tiny. Actually, most people who were mobilized since September 22 have not been demobilized. There’s no demobilization structure. All the contracts that have been signed, with exception of the six-month ones that were given to the Prighozin guys, the Wagner guys, those have been honored, but everyone else, their stop-loss stuff has prevented them from going home. So the Russian regions are sort of getting information and if 200,000 Russian men are dead, those are substantive losses and—Claire: People must have noticed that their loved ones are not in contact anymore.Vlad: There’s a lot of that, but again, people will find out how bad it is when the demobilization starts, and there are gonna be huge, huge knock-on effects to the Russian economy and Russian society for decades to come as veterans come back, and crime, PTSD-related incidents skyrocket and roil the society. But that’s in the future. In the meantime, they’re not being let out of the staging grounds. And the population of Russia doesn't really know quite how bad the war’s going for them in terms of losses.Claire: The POWs that were released recently, they didn’t even let them go home. They just sent them right back to combat.Vlad: That wouldn’t surprise me in the least. That’s Russia. Ukraine is worse. You know, there’s a new term in Ukraine. It’s called a double widow. Do you know what a double widow is? A double widow is a Ukrainian woman who lost her husband to the army, remarried after 23, and lost her second husband. Can you imagine that’s a social term?Claire: “Ukraine is worse”—not in the sense, however, of keeping people at the front so to conceal the extent of losses, I presume?Vlad: No, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, in terms of per capita dead, per capita wounded. Probably a lot worse for the Ukrainians, but the population is a quarter or a fifth of the Russian population, so it’s not the same.,Claire: It’s an utter catastrophe. An utter catastrophe for Ukraine, for Europe, for Russia too. I mean, it’s just, just—Vlad: It’s their own fault, but yes.Claire: It’s their own fault in one sense, but there’s—really, I cannot think of anything that would make a country deserve this.Vlad: The Russians put up with this regime for years and years, and actually in some ways they do deserve it, to be honest. There was a reckoning coming and they absolutely got what they deserved. Any Russian man who wound up in the war zone and was not forcibly thrown into it, with no agency of his own, deserves this in one way or another. I’m sorry to say that. I have very little sympathy.Claire: I think I’d agree with that, but I wouldn’t agree that the whole society deserves what’s coming to them.Vlad: I’ve asked soldiers, Ukrainian officers, on the front line, “Do you feel bad for anybody?” And they're like, “No. Look, you go to jail. Just say no to mobilization orders. Go to jail. Don’t kill anybody. Don't wind up dead in a ditch.”Claire: I think I would agree with that—but—Vlad: The Ukrainian officers do not have even the least bit of empathy for any Russian man who wound up there, and it’s completely normal. You have to dehumanize totally. You have to dehumanize your opponent in order to win. Obviously. That's a normal thing to do.Claire: Sure. But I cannot condemn Russian civilians for being easily propagandized and incurious about the wider world, and willing to accept things that a free society shouldn’t accept, because if I use that standard, I’d have to condemn my own country, and I’m not willing to do that.Vlad: Yeah. Yeah, no, I have more empathy for MAGA guys who see this as one more lie from an elite that has been lying to them and sending them to Iraq and Afghanistan than I do for any Russian on the frontline. I’m sorry to say.Claire: Guys who think that are not the ones who were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Those guys are actually much more aware of what’s going on and they tend to be extremely supportive of Ukraine.Vlad: No, actually I do talk to people who were in Iraq and Afghanistan who are like, “What was I there for?” Like. “This is the one more lie. This is just—”Claire: Well, I understand that bitterness about Iraq and Afghanistan for the veterans of those wars, but I don’t think that, by and large, that people who served are completely ignorant of why there’s a war in Ukraine, and who’s the bad guy.Vlad: The Americans aren’t stupid. They know what’s going on anyways. Um, anything else we can talk about in terms of—Claire: I contest that statement. I have to contest that statement.Vlad: Really?Claire: Yeah. I don’t think Americans know what’s going on. No. I think by and large Americans exhibit very little understanding of foreign relations and would be very hard pressed to answer simple factual questions about this conflict..Vlad: Well, why is that?Claire: Most people, not just Americans, but most people are not interested in international relations, or even politics. They become interested when it touches them personally. And Americans have a long history of feeling insulated from the rest of the world, different from the rest of the world, and they’re also unbelievably badly served by the media. It’s not really even the media’s fault either. We all know that the media’s been destroyed by the internet.Vlad: Well, and their own stupid decisions.Claire: A lot of them too. A lot of them too.Vlad: Yeah. Anyway, Claire, thank you so much for this. It’s been a lovely, lovely time talking to you. I’m a bit miffed by all this also, so I, I can’t really—Claire: Come back on the 14th and we’ll go to the firemen’s ball.Vlad: Yeah, lemme try it. Lemme try. Okay. Okay.Claire: A little plug for your new Substack?Vlad: Are people gonna listen to all the way to the end?Claire: You don’t want the ones who don’t as readers.Vlad: Okay, I’m Substacking about art and politics, so I really hope everyone will tune in to my Substack about art and politics. And I think I'm good at what I do. I know a lot of interesting things,Claire: Lots of lively writing and very informed commentary about both art and politics.Vlad: Yes I just had my first piece. Claire was nice enough to cross post it. Claire, what was it about?Claire: It was about the Rijksmuseum.Vlad: Oh. And, hanging out, looking at arts. Yep. Right. You, you feel like you’re on a little walk through the Rijksmuseum, in art—Claire: I left you a comment saying, “I got hung up on the word ‘garrulous’ to describe Otto Dix.” He had a fine pictorial feel for what things looked like after an exchange of artillery. You could say that.Vlad: Right? That’s right. Alright, so do I. So do I. Thank you. Thank you Claire. Okay.Claire: Alright.Vlad: Bye bye.Claire: ByeVlad: Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring 14.05.2025 1t 45min

  While I’m at it, here’s the conversation you missed with Sergei Cristo. He’s the hero of the podcast Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring, in which he offered evidence of a spy ring operating at the heart of the British establishment.I apologize for how long it took me to put this up. My computer wasn’t able to handle a file this big, so I couldn’t get it down from the cloud. Every time I tried, it crashed my computer. I finally broke down and bought a new computer. (It was time. My old computer had serious problems, including a broken keyboard—I could no longer type the letter “a,” which was a handicap in my line of work.) Then it took me a little while to reestablish all my files from the old computer. But I’m now good to go—and this will be followed by more video files that I haven’t been able to upload.I’m a bit puzzled, though, because while I have the whole audio transcript, I can only find the highlights of the video, below. Did I move the video file somewhere else in the hope of opening it? Sergei, I’ll keep looking for the complete video file—it’s very likely that I moved it somewhere clever, and it will come back to me what I did with it. For now, this is actually quite a good summary:UPDATE: I found the full video. I’d uploaded it to Dropbox in the hope it might open there. Here’s an AI summary:Russian Intelligence Operations in the WestSergei discussed the Russian intelligence operations in the UK and the West's readiness to accept these operations. He highlighted the growing realization of autocracies working together, regardless of their ideologies, and the need for a unified approach to confront this growing threat. Sergei also touched on his research into Western investments in oppressive regimes and how these investments damage the national security of democratic countries. He mentioned parallels between the recent history of Turkey and Russia and the importance of understanding the Gerasimov doctrine, which outlines the role of non-military means in achieving political and strategic goals.Russian Warfare and Western IntelligenceSergei discussed the Russian approach to warfare, emphasizing that they view their intelligence operations as part of a war plan. He suggested that the West's successful use of soft power in the Cold War was weaponized by Russia in an inhumane way. Claire expressed concern about persuading Western publics that Russia is at war with them, particularly regarding the 2016 US election. Robert and Arun discussed the difficulty of convincing people of the truth, even when faced with evidence. Kay asked why there hasn't been a factual reveal from their own intelligence agencies. Sergei suggested that the UK could conduct a proper review of the evidence they have.Trump’s Russian Organized Crime TiesSergei discussed the potential connections between Trump and Russian organized crime, highlighting Trump's business relationships with Russian criminals and the potential influence of the KGB. He also touched on the topic of cryptocurrency and its potential use for money laundering. Claire asked about the significance of Elon Musk's connections to the Kremlin, to which Sergei responded that while he doesn't have a definitive answer, there are potential links through new industries and the legalization of cryptocurrency. Andre Bauer asked about the connection between Alexander Lebedev and Boris Johnson, to which Sergei explained that Lebedev's father was a former KGB officer and that Lebedev himself was elevated into the House of Lords by Boris Johnson.Aaron Banks’ Russian Financial TiesThe discussion focused on Aaron Banks, a major donor to the Brexit campaign, and his financial connections to Russia. Sergei and other participants share information about Banks’s business practices, including his use of offshore companies and potential involvement in money laundering. They also discuss Banks’s Russian wife and his meetings with Russian diplomats. Xavier adds that Banks was known for laundering money for Russian oligarchs through Gibraltar. The conversation touches on the broader implications of Russian financial influence in British politics and the need for further investigation into Banks’s activities.Russian Influence on Trump’s BehaviorClaire discussed the influence of Russian operations on Donald Trump's behavior. The group agreed that Russia's influence is significant, but some participants, including Robert McTague and Robert Zubrin, expressed concerns about the public’s willingness to accept this fact. They suggested that a major incident, similar to the 9/11 attacks, might be needed to convince the public. The group also discussed the media’s role in educating the public about these issues, with some participants expressing frustration at the media’s failure to do so.Russian Influence in PoliticsRobert Zubrin discussed the dilemma faced by generals and politicians like McCarthy in acknowledging Trump’s potential ties to Russia, as it conflicts with their institutional loyalties. Sergei then shifted the conversation to Russian influence in politics, particularly focusing on the Brexit campaign and the harassment of journalist Carol Cadwalladr. He highlighted the role of Russian intelligence in orchestrating online abuse campaigns and the importance of exposing political figures with Russian connections, especially in Britain.Financial Deals and Political ManipulationSergei discussed the potential consequences of exposing the financial dealings of politicians and bloggers, emphasizing the damaging impact of populist figures. He also shared his concerns about the British government’s reluctance to investigate Brexit. Sergei suggested that the revelation of Trump's financial deals and alleged misconduct could lead to widespread disillusionment among his supporters. He also expressed his belief that the rule of law should be used while it still exists, and he criticized the lack of action from the British authorities. Claire agreed with Sergei’s points, highlighting the need for democracies to harden against manipulation while remaining open societies.Statesmanship and Sovereignty in DemocraciesRobert Zubrin discussed the importance of statesmanship in democracies, citing historical examples such as Pericles in Athens and Churchill in Britain. He emphasized the need for a patriotic political movement to reverse current trends. Sergei brought up the issue of sovereignty and foreign interference, while Arun highlighted the division in American society and the perception of Russia among Trump’s voters. Robert Zubrin clarified that the majority of Americans support Ukraine, not Russia. The discussion also touched on the role of media and the importance of understanding the difference between criminal and counterintelligence investigations.Russian Influence on US Political SystemLarissa expressed concern about the Russian influence on the US political system, emphasizing the need for new ways to maneuver in the face of changing political dynamics. Sergei discussed the potential for Russian interference in the US electoral system, particularly with the suspension of cyber defense operations against Russia. Western Investments in Oppressive RegimesSergei discussed his research on Western investments in oppressive regimes and its impact on national security. He is working on a case study of asset managers and sustainable funds, which often invest in regimes like Putin’s. Sergei is collaborating with investigative journalists and publications like The Economist and Berlin Times to publish his findings. The discussion also touched on the influence of Trump and other American politicians on European far-right parties like the AFD in Germany. Social Media’s Impact on American PoliticsThe group discussed the impact of social media and Russian influence on American politics, particularly in relation to Trump’s presidency. Robert Zubrin suggested that social media has created a “post-truth environment” that made Trump’s rise possible, rather than an increase in racism. Claire recommended Adam Garfinkle’s work on the effects of social media. The conversation concluded with Sergei emphasizing the importance of exposing crimes and the group agreeing on the need to find solutions to combat misinformation.Help Sergei expose Western investments in dictators here.And just for fun, here’s a briefing and a podcast created by Google’s new one-click AI podcast creator, which turns everything you feed it into banal but completely realistic podcast slop. It’s amazing.Listen to Google Slop’s podcast version of our conversationBriefing: Russian Intelligence Operations and Western InfluenceThis briefing summarizes the key themes and important points discussed in the provided transcript, focusing on Russian intelligence operations and their alleged influence in Western democracies, particularly the UK and the US.Main Themes:* Russian “Active Measures” as Warfare: The core theme is that Russia views its intelligence operations, including propaganda, covert influence, and disruption, as a form of warfare against the West, not merely espionage. This is linked to the Gerasimov Doctrine and a perceived lesson from the Soviet Union’s collapse and Western "soft power" success.* Historical Context of Russian Influence: The discussion places current Russian activities within a historical context, noting parallels with Soviet ideology and methods, as well as drawing lessons from the Cold War.* Targeting Western Democracies: Russia is seen as actively targeting Western democracies through various means, including exploiting political divisions, supporting populist movements, and using financial and commercial links.* Difficulty in Western Recognition and Response: A significant challenge is the difficulty in persuading Western publics and institutions of the reality and severity of Russian influence operations. There is a perceived reluctance to acknowledge being “at war” with Russia in this unconventional sense.* Specific Cases of Alleged Russian Influence: The discussion delves into specific cases, including the US elections, Brexit, and individuals like Donald Trump, Aaron Banks, Alexander Lebedev, and potentially Elon Musk, examining their alleged connections and the mechanisms of influence.* The Role of Finance and Organized Crime: The transcript emphasizes the intertwined nature of Russian intelligence operations, organized crime, and financial dealings, particularly through offshore structures and potentially cryptocurrency.* Challenges in Investigating and Prosecuting: The offshore nature of some financial activities and the political sensitivity surrounding these allegations are presented as significant obstacles to effective investigation and prosecution.* Impact on Political Discourse and Public Opinion: Russian influence operations are seen as contributing to the amplification of divisive narratives and potentially impacting electoral outcomes and public understanding of events.Most Important Ideas and Facts:* Russian “Active Measures” as Grand Strategy: According to Sergei, referencing the Gerasimov Doctrine, Russia considers intelligence operations and covert actions as the “cheapest in terms of grand strategy” and a “more effective way of achieving those goals,” making them a “part of the war plan.”* Western Democracies are “at War” from Russia’s Perspective: Sergei states, “if we're asking ourselves... in Russian's eyes, are we at war with Russia in the West, NATO with Russia? The answer is absolutely, categorically, we are because they're already conducting that war as per Gerasimov doctrine.”* GRU Involvement in US Elections: Sergey mentions that “according to CIA, what they’ve disclosed was that the part of the intelligence machinery of Russia that was engaged with the first Trump election was GRU group, which is part of which is military intelligence.”* Trump’s Relationship with Russians: Sergey suggests Trump’s trust in Putin likely stems from his “long established relationship with Russians” through his business dealings, describing it as a “fusion of the KGB, organized crime under Putin, and weaponizing Trump’s commercial links.”* Aaron Banks and Brexit Funding: Aaron Banks is highlighted as a significant figure in the Brexit campaign who received scrutiny for the source of his large donation. It’s noted that his business is structured through offshore companies and that his companies had similar names with small differences, a potential sign of illicit activity according to due diligence practices. The largest political donation in British history was Aaron Banks’s £6 million to UKIP (now Reform UK). * Alleged Russian Influence on Aaron Banks: Connections between Aaron Banks and Russian intelligence are suggested through his meetings with Russian diplomats and alleged discussions about gold and diamond investments. The use of diamonds as a historical KGB funding method is mentioned in this context. * Aaron Banks and Money Laundering in Gibraltar: A personal account from someone with connections in Gibraltar alleges that Aaron Banks and his companies were “laundering money like it was going out of fashion for the Russian mob” through Gibraltar. * Lebedev’s Elevation to the House of Lords: The elevation of Alexander Lebedev, son of a former KGB officer and owner of UK newspapers, to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson is presented as a controversial event that occurred just before the publication of the Russia report, despite leaked objections from the Security Service. * The “Bad Novel” Problem: Claire Berlinski suggests that one reason people struggle to accept the reality of Russian influence operations is that “it sounds so much like a bad novel or a bad movie makes people think it cannot be true.”* Brexit Referendum’s Legal Status: Sergei points out that the Brexit referendum was “advisory,” meaning “the same strict rules is applied to elections to see what was actually legal result of election. What could have been an illegal result in the election. Those rules do not apply to advisory referendums.”* Western Investments in Oppressive Regimes: Sergei mentions his research on how Western investments in oppressive regimes can damage national security, focusing on asset managers investing in the “Putin regime” despite it being labeled a “sustainable fund.”* Undermining NATO as a Russian Objective: The boosting of the AfD in Germany by figures like Vance and Musk is seen as making “perfect sense in terms of our operating assumption,” as undermining NATO and splitting Western alliances is a “big Russian grand, strategic, objective.”This briefing provides a snapshot of the concerns raised regarding Russian influence operations and highlights the complexity and perceived lack of preparedness in Western democracies to address this challenge.NotebookLM can be inaccurate; please double check its responses. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  India, Pakistan, and Kashmir 14.05.2025 2t 15min

  For those of you who missed it, here’s the conversation we had on Sunday with Vivek and Raja Muneeb. Here’s an AI summary of the conversation—it’s remarkably accurate:Pakistan’s Nuclear Threat and ImplicationsThe meeting involved a discussion about the potential threat of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the implications of their use. The participants discussed the possibility of Pakistan using nuclear weapons as a bluff and the potential consequences of such an action. They also touched on the issue of Pakistan's nuclear technology being sold to rogue states and the need to prevent this from happening. The conversation ended with a discussion about the stress and sleep deprivation experienced by the participants due to the ongoing tensions.India-Pakistan Tensions and Terror GroupsVivek and Raja discussed the recent developments between India and Pakistan, focusing on the events that took place in Pahalgam and the speech made by the Director General of Military Operations. They also touched on the history of Kashmir and the role of terror groups in the region. Raja explained the Pakistani military’s mindset and the political situation in Pakistan, while Vivek provided context on the formation of terror groups in the 1980s. The discussion also included the evidence of the terror attack and the reasons behind Pakistan's denial of involvement.Kashmiri Pandits’ Experiences and Historical ContextRaja shared his personal experiences and memories of the 1989-1990 exodus of Hindus from Kashmir. He described the violence, harassment, and terror faced by the Kashmiri Pandits, including extortion, rape, and murder. Raja also discussed the impact of the conflict on the education system and the economy in Kashmir. He mentioned the role of Jamat-e-Islami and other terrorist organizations in subverting the society and the government institutions. The meeting also touched upon the historical context of the Kashmir issue, including the Instrument of Accession and the role of Sheikh Abdullah.Pakistan’s Government and China’s InfluenceRaja explained that Pakistan’s government, feeling isolated internationally, has rekindled the conflict to boost its legitimacy. He also mentioned the influence of China in the region, particularly in Balochistan, where the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is facing challenges due to the Balochistan Liberation Army’s activities. Vivek added that Pakistan's economy is in trouble, and the CPEC projects have been criticized for being poorly negotiated and expensive. The group also discussed China’s interest in keeping India destabilized, as they are competitors in the Asian space.Indus Waters Treaty ConflictThe meeting focused on the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan, particularly regarding the Indus Waters Treaty. The participants discussed the treaty’s history, its implications, and the challenges it poses. They also touched on the role of the United States in mediating the conflict and the potential for de-escalation. The discussion also included the effect on the treaty on the region’s demography and the potential for a plebiscite. The participants also discussed the potential for international intervention. The conversation ended with a discussion on the economic interests of the United States in the region and the potential for a hyphenated approach to the conflict.Pakistan’s Identity and Military PowerThe group discussed the fundamental insecurities within Pakistan about its identity, stemming from its formation and the reasons behind it. They highlighted its psychological insecurity and the talk given by General Assi Muni on April 16th, which stated that only two nations were formed on the basis of the Kalma, one being Pakistan. The team also discussed the challenges faced by Pakistan in building a truly Islamic identity, the problems within the country, and the question of whether Pakistan needs to emerge from its religious mindset. They also touched upon the role of the Pakistan military and the myth of the threat from the Hindi, which has been a core reason for the army’s power. The speakers concluded that without othering India, Pakistan’s right to exist is questioned, as a large part of Pakistan shares the same gene pool, food, and practices as India.India-Pakistan Relations: Challenges and ReconciliationVivek and Raja discussed the complex relationship between India and Pakistan, highlighting the challenges in fostering peace due to Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism. They noted that India’s attempts at reconciliation have consistently been met with aggression from Pakistan. Raja emphasized that the Pakistani military’s rejection of cultural ties and its support for radical groups have hindered efforts towards peace. The discussion also touched on the role of political parties and the impact of democratic regimes in Pakistan on its relations with India.Terrorist Group Connections and FundingIn the meeting, Vivek, Raja, Robert, and Jim discussed the connections between various terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Lashkar-e-Taiba. They highlighted the complex networks and funding sources of these groups, with a particular focus on the role of ISI. The discussion also touched on the challenges of tracking and countering these groups, with Robert mentioning the division between India’s Indo-Pac Command and Pakistan’s Central Command. The conversation ended with Claire expressing interest in having Raja write about these topics. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  🎟️🎭🎼➪☛☞MONA ACTS OUT☚☜⇦🎼🎭🎟️ 28.11.2024 44min

  🎟️🎭🎼➪☛☞ BUY IT HERE☚☜⇦🎼🎭🎟️You’ve heard, I’m sure, of my famous but highly elusive brother, Mischa Berlinski. He’s the author of FIELDWORK—a finalist for the National Book Award— and PEACEKEEPING. His writing has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. He got a Whiting Writers’ Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Addison M. Metcalf Award. He’s the big family literary success. But he’s very shy, and until now, he has categorically refused to come on this podcast.However, he’s written a new book. He would very much like you to pre-order it, and so would I, because pre-ordering is hugely important: If it looks as if people are excited and eager to read a book, the algorithms will start flogging it. So, capitalizing on his desire to sell his book, I’ve managed to persuade him to introduce himself to you and tell you a bit about MONA ACTS OUT—a novel that just happens to take place over the course of a single Thanksgiving Day. We’d be ever so grateful if you were to pre-order it now. I promise you won’t regret it. It really is so good. I’ll add some extra motivation too: If you pre-order a copy today, I’ll comp you an extra month here at CG.Here’s the cover blurb:Both beguilingly approachable and intricately constructed, at once funny and sad and wise, MONA ACTS OUT is a novel about acting and telling the truth; about how we play roles to get through our days; and how the great roles teach us how to live.Celebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning to the clamor of a household of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she’s still fighting with her husband, who has not forgotten what happened last night; and in just a few weeks she is supposed to step into the rehearsal room as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. It’s the hardest role in theatre—and the first role Mona has ever attempted without her sister, who died just over a year ago, by her side. When her father-in-law starts fighting with her niece about Donald Trump, Mona bounds out the door with the family dog in tow (“I forgot the parsley!”) to find the only person she doesn’t have to act for: her estranged longtime mentor, Milton Katz, who may or may not be dying and who was recently forced out of the legendary theatre company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona’s trek turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face to face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has loved and still loves.A brilliant, highly-anticipated return of a writer of almost magical descriptive and imaginative powers.The reviews so far have been fabulous:Kirkus (Starred review):Berlinski follows acclaimed novels set in Thailand (Fieldwork, 2007) and Haiti (Peacekeeping, 2016) with a New York–based comedy of of manners and morals featuring a brilliantly imagined female protagonist, Mona Zahid, one of the stars of a Shakespearean theater troupe based in the East Village. Until recently, the company was led by legendary director Milton Katz, but an article in The New York Times, filled with accusations of misconduct from a slew of actresses, led to his disgrace. Mon herself “an out-and-out, unabashed Miltophile,” was not among the accusers. We meet her as she awakens in her Morningside Heights apartment on Thanksgiving Day to a full house—in addition to her surgeon husband, teenage son, and canine companion Barney, her in-laws and her college student niece, Rachel, are milling about. Absent is Rachel’s mother—Mona’s sister, Zahra—who died less than a year earlier, leaving Mona a stash of 150 pain pills of which there are now only six. Mona starts her day by taking two. Not long after, she hears the assembled family members begin to argue about Milton Katz and Donald Trump. She knows she should go out and save the day, but by then she has vaped some weed so strong she suspects it of being laced with “hallucinogenic toad drippings” and can only bring herself to put Barney on his leash and race out the front door, claiming she’s off to buy parsley. At this point the novel takes an amazing left turn; suffice to say, Mona will not be home for dinner. Readers who know their Shakespeare will thrill to Berlinski’s brilliant distillation of the power and relevance of the plays and characters, but those who don’t will find they can easily come along for the ride. And a great ride it is.Wonderfully constructed, witty, warm, wise, and filled with an extraordinary sense of the relation between theater and life.Publishers Weekly (Starred as well):In the sharp-witted and weighty latest from Berlinski (Fieldwork), #MeToo allegations roil an off-off-Broadway Shakespeare company, prompting a 50-something actor to reevaluate her life. Mona Zahid is already grappling with the difficult new role of Cleopatra and what it says about her career; after playing everyone from Juliet to Lady Macbeth, being cast as the Egyptian queen means she’s just about aged out of Shakespeare’s heroines. Mona’s also dreading hosting Thanksgiving dinner, especially after the death of her younger sister, Zahra, whose daughter, Rachel, will be in attendance. Recently, Mona learned that Rachel, following an internship at the theater company, was one of the women who accused its octogenarian founder, Milton, of sexual misconduct. On Thanksgiving Day, Mona escapes her cramped Upper West Side apartment for a last-minute grocery run, during which she frets over a recent postcard message from Milton, in which he claimed to be dying. She decides to make a detour to Brooklyn to see him, and on the way, she burrows deep into memories of her younger years as a player in Milton’s company, when scoring an audition at his dingy Avenue C squat was akin to “winning one of Willie Wonka’s Golden Tickets.” Mona’s thoughts are laced with scathing humor and piercing insight into the actor’s craft, resulting in a surprisingly moving exploration of the courage required to play life’s many roles. Berlinski deserves a standing ovation for this bravura performance. “Mischa Berlinski has written an instant-classic New York novel about theater, aging, sex and love, and the promise and price of life’s second acts.”—Joshua Cohen“After a few pages, I canceled my dinner plans rather than put this one down. I absolutely loved this novel’s stunning, almost alarming, insight into one woman’s longing. An unflinchingly honest exploration of the complexities of the human condition and the ambiguities of contemporary morality, MONA ACTS OUT epitomizes great comedy; deftly woven throughout its fabulously hilarious prose is significant wisdom and sorrow.”—Binnie Kirshenbaum“The delightful MONA ACTS OUT takes us where we all dream of going: away from the irritations of our present moment, into the open streets, to confront everything that still haunts us and reach, surely, hopefully, the Promised Land.”—Daniel HandlerA delightful, insightful, and critical view into the world of theater, New York City, and one woman’s reflection on her life as she enters her later years. Mona, one of the star performers in a Shakespearean troupe, struggles to reconcile her life as she lived it and the modern criticism of the mores of that time. The story asks, how will Mona reconcile her truth and experience while acknowledging that times have changed and she may be left behind if she does not change with them? Humorous, reflective, and insightful; I enjoyed taking the journey with Mona. A thank you to W.W. Morton for an advance readers copy. —Joanna on GoodreadsMona Zahid wakes up on Thanksgiving morning. Her in-laws are there, along with her husband (with whom she is unhappy), her son, and more. Mona is a skilled and experienced Shakespearean actor, soon to begin rehearsals for Cleopatra. Given her age, it is likely the last leading role she will have. She needs to have some time, so she heads out with the dog to buy parsley. This leads to an overnight ramble that brings past and present together. As a long-ago English major, I read most (maybe all) of Shakespeare’s plays. My roommate and I found the plays to be much more approachable and enjoyable by doing two-person readings. We were on the right track, but this novel explains so much more about how Shakespeare should be presented. (Does that sound horrible? It really is much more casually informative and fascinating than didactic.) In any case, this is quite a great novel that shows how much we learn from the roles we play. —Lee Cornell on Goodreads“I’m head over heels for this witty, tender, keenly intelligent exploration of art, artifice, and the human heart. Mischa Berlinski is a masterful and deeply empathetic storyteller, and MONA ACTS OUT is a pure delight.” —Antonia AngressOnly one bad review, so far—from a woman who also panned Shakespeare: First, I didn’t like Mona at all. I found her unsympathetic, annoying, and selfish. That makes for some tough reading. Next, I found all the Shakespeare unbearable. Too much with all the quotes and references. I had to stop halfway through. Too many wonderful books out there and for me, this was not one of them. —SylviaI loved this book so much that I made this collage for Mischa, for his birthday, with all of the book’s characters in it. When your copy arrives, you can check back to see how, exactly, I imagined everyone in the book. (The original is really big, so you have to look at the close-ups for the details.)Close up:Even closer:🎟️🎭🎼➪☛☞ BUY IT HERE☚☜⇦🎼🎭Once. you’re hooked, you can also read my brother’s first two novels: FIELDWORK and PEACEKEEPING. And you can read about how my brother tried to buy a Zombie in Haiti, too.Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers! Among the many things for which I’m deeply grateful today are you. It’s a joy to have readers to whom I can introduce my brother (on the very rare occasions he emerges from his cave)—and vice-versa. And should you be finding discussion around the Thanksgiving table slightly taxing this year, do not do what Mona did. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
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  From America First to Nuclear War 15.11.2024 46min

  I invited Bob Holley on the podcast to discuss the article he recently published here, Fracturing the Security Map, warning that the return of Donald Trump, coupled with Ukraine’s defeat, could spark a stampede to redraw the world’s nuclear security arrangements. Discussed in the podcastThis is the remarkably prescient article by John Measheimer I mentioned: The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear DeterrentAmerica FirstI’ve been thinking about this problem since the first Trump presidency. I’ve explicated my own arguments about this risk in these and other articles:Five Alarm Fire: The 118th Congress is destroying the world our grandparents built.At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945—when a ball of fire rose in gold, violet, grey, and blue over the Jornada del Muerto desert, melting the sand into light green radioactive glass and illuminating every peak and crevasse of the nearby mountain range with a searing white light—American statesmen began a frantic, desperate effort to forestall the emergence of precisely the world we are now ushering into being.“[T]he US is basically making the case to all states that they should try as hard as they can to develop nuclear weapons,” writes the war historian Phillips O’Brien … There is nothing wrong with his logic. His observations are correct and so is his reasoning. But the same logic applies to every other power in the world that would prefer not to suffer Ukraine’s fate.The United States is pursuing a feckless, shortsighted policy that will lead to moral disgrace, generational shame, global nuclear proliferation, and an uncontrolled, multipolar nuclear arms race. We’re not pursuing it deliberately. It isn’t what we mean to do. But we could not be pursuing this policy more industriously if we had dedicated all the resources of our federal bureaucracy to the goal.America First means nuclear war. The inevitable end point of losing the world's trust is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation: … Here’s where a devout cadre of Trump’s supporters jump in on Twitter and say to me, “Great! All these freeloaders can start paying for their own defense!”No. That’s not what’s going to happen. No single country can conceivably match the power of the full NATO alliance. That’s why we had it.It would be a catastrophe if every country with the ability to do it acquired the Bomb. Never mind whether they would use them in anger, it would multiply the risk of an accident, which we already know is insanely high.But they’re going to to do it if we keep this up. Any American who owns a gun, even though rationally they grasp that fewer Americans would die if there were no guns in America, should understand the calculation other countries are now apt to make. Is it a rational thing for the world to do? No. Rationally, the world will be, objectively, less safe if everyone acts on that impulse.But the world isn’t a rational place. People want safety for themselves, even if it means putting the world at greater risk. The inevitable end point is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation. What “America First” means, in the end, is “Nuclear war.”If you missed it the other day, here is the case for believing that under these circumstances, the risk of an accidental nuclear war would be insanely high. If you’re unconvinced by this case, you may be suffering from one of these common cognitive errors. It’s HappeningThis is no longer theoretical. We’re not discussing an abstruse theory in international relations, or something that might happen. It’s happening now. The news is scarcely being reported in the United States, crowded out by discussion of Trump’s Cabinet picks, but as soon as the election was called for Trump, the world began to change:“NATO or Nukes.” Why Ukraine’s nuclear revival refuses to die:Addressing a European Council meeting in Brussels on October 17, Zelensky invoked Ukraine’s decision to surrender nuclear weapons inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security commitments from nuclear states—the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia—recorded in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. (China and France pledged similar security assurances in separate letters.) The Budapest Memorandum commitments failed spectacularly to prevent Russian aggression against Ukraine. So, how does Ukraine provide for its security? Zelensky outlined two options: “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then it will be a defense for us, or Ukraine will be in NATO. NATO countries are not at war today. All people are alive in NATO countries. And that is why we choose NATO over nuclear weapons.”On the same day, Zelensky revealed that he had delivered a similar message to presidential candidate Donald Trump during his visit to the United States in late September and added that Trump responded that his reasoning made sense … the international community cannot blame [Zelensky] for stating the obvious: NATO members, under their nuclear umbrella, are at peace while Ukraine is at war. Russia and NATO exercise restraint vis-à-vis each other based on a shared understanding that a direct conventional confrontation between two nuclear-armed adversaries would carry the inherent risk of nuclear escalation and possibly a nuclear war. Russia does not exhibit a similar restraint toward a non-nuclear, non-allied Ukraine. To add insult to injury, Russia, with its nuclear saber-rattling, has succeeded in partly influencing the timing and conditions of Western arms supplies to Ukraine, hampering Ukraine’s defense effort. In short, peace is the prerogative of those who are fortunate to benefit from nuclear deterrence. The unfortunate ones must suffer war.“I was surprised by the reverence the United States has for Russia’s nuclear threat. It may have cost us the war. They treat nuclear weapons as some kind of God. So perhaps it is also time for us to pray to this God.”Could Zelensky use nuclear bombs? Kyiv could rapidly develop a rudimentary weapon similar to that dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 to stop Russia if the US cuts military aid:Ukraine could develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb within months if Donald Trump withdraws US military assistance, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. …With no time to build and run the large facilities required to enrich uranium, wartime Ukraine would have to rely instead on using plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors. Ukraine still controls nine operational reactors and has significant nuclear expertise despite having given up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in 1996. … The paper, which is published by the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, an influential Ukrainian military think tank, has been shared with the country’s deputy defense minister and is to be presented on Wednesday at a conference likely to be attended by Ukraine’s ministers for defense and strategic industries. It is not endorsed by the Kyiv government but sets out the legal basis under which Ukraine could withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the ratification of which was contingent on security guarantees given by the US, UK and Russia in the 1994 Budapest memorandum. The agreement stated that Ukraine would surrender its nuclear arsenal of 1,734 strategic warheads in exchange for the promise of protection. “The violation of the memorandum by the nuclear-armed Russian Federation provides formal grounds for withdrawal from the NPT and moral reasons for reconsideration of the non-nuclear choice made in early 1994,” the paper states. …. Trump has pledged to cut US military aid unless Kyiv submits to peace talks with Putin. Bryan Lanza, a Trump adviser, has already said that Ukraine will have to surrender Crimea. This week Donald Trump Jr. taunted Zelensky, posting on X: “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance.”… “You need to understand we face an existential challenge. If the Russians take Ukraine, millions of Ukrainians will be killed under occupation,” said Valentyn Badrak, director of the center that produced the paper. “There are millions of us who would rather face death than go to the gulags.” Badrak is from Irpin, where occupying Russians tortured and murdered civilians, and he was hunted by troops with orders to kill him.Western experts believe it would take Ukraine at least five years to develop a nuclear weapon and a suitable carrier, but Badrak insists Ukraine is less than a year from building its own ballistic missiles. “In six months Ukraine will be able to show that it has a long-range ballistic missile capability: we will have missiles with a range of 1,000 kilometers,” Badrak said.Signatures collected in favor of stationing nuclear weapons in Latvia.The Future of the Zeitenwende: Scenario 5—Poland Becomes a Nuclear Power:… Given that Poland would have to fear Russian preemptive action, especially in a world where Washington had withdrawn from NATO, Poland’s best bet would be to hide its nuclear ambitions for as long as possible. In this regard, Poland would likely aim to present the world with a fait accompli once its nuclear weapons program has started to bear fruit. Interview with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski: “If America cannot come together with Europe and enable Ukraine to drive Putin back, I fear that our family of democratic nations will start to break up. Allies will look for other ways to guarantee their safety. They’ll start hedging. Some of them will aim for the ultimate weapon, starting off a new nuclear race.”Center-right leader Weber supports Macron’s call for European nuclear deterrent. Germany debates nuclear weapons, again. But now it’s different.Germany and a European nuclear deterrence capabilityGermany must go nuclear! With Russia inching forward in Ukraine, the US threatening to flake out as an ally and the rest of Europe in a state of paralyzed shock over Donald Trump, Germany should waste no time in pulling together a nuclear arsenal. In a nutshell, that’s the position of Germany’s atomic hawks, who have been screaming from the rooftops this week that the clock is ticking to take action before Germany finds its collective self once again staring down the barrel of der Russe (the Russian). To be sure, Germany’s nuclear debate isn’t new. In recent years it’s come up again and again. But this time, the debate is much more urgent. “We’re running out of time,“ Maximilian Terhalle, a German security and military expert  who has spent years pushing his country to reconsider its stance on nukes, tells the Bulletin. … Putin could see an opening to test the US’s resolve to protect “every inch” of NATO territory as soon as Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025 by moving into Estonia or another Baltic nation (or as Trump has been known to call them, the “Balkans.”)Iran reaffirms stance against nuclear weapons amid regional tensions:In recent months, there have been calls from certain figures within Iran to reconsider Khamenei’s fatwa in response to Israel’s nuclear capabilities and escalating tensions. In May, Kamal Kharrazi, Chairman of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that Iran could reassess its position if Israel were to threaten Iran with its nuclear weapons. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also stated that such a threat could lead regional countries to reconsider their nuclear stance.Saudi Arabia will build a nuclear bomb “as soon as possible” if Iran succeeds in developing its own.Turkey needs to acquire nuclear arms to stop Israel, urges Erdoğan’s chief fatwa giver:Hayrettin Karaman, the 90-year-old Islamic jurist and chief fatwa (religious edict) giver for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a prominent ideologue for the Turkish Muslim Brotherhood, has said Turkey must pursue nuclear capabilities to counter Israel and establish deterrence against its adversaries.In an article published September 8 in the Islamist Yeni Şafak daily, Karaman argued that Turkey’s current efforts are insufficient to stop Israel. He urged that “either the Islamic world must unite and collaborate with China and Russia, or Turkey must move forward by acquiring nuclear warheads and weapons.”Erdoğan’s nuclear itch. Why Turkey’s nuclear program is a threat to regional stability and the international nonproliferation regime:The year 2023 is an important one for observers of Turkey’s nuclear program, as that year is when the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Turkey’s first, is scheduled to come online, making Turkey’s ambitions more clear. The threat may very well come to pass as nothing but a threat. This rests upon the international community adopting several measures to reestablish confidence in the nonproliferation regime, something which looks unlikely at the moment but is necessary to prevent a new nuclear arms race. A nuclear Turkey would help realize Erdoğan’s dreams of a Pan-Turkic Empire. So long as Erdoğan continues on his revanchist path of returning Turkey to its Ottoman glory, the threat posed by Turkey gaining nuclear capabilities cannot be disregarded.Taiwan must get serious about nuclear weapons:Since its February 2022 invasion, Russia has repeatedly threatened nuclear escalation if NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Predictably, NATO has refrained from sending troops. Equally predictable is that the US would avoid sending troops to Taiwan if it believed the decision might lead to nuclear war. … Ukraine tried to deter Russia with conventional weapons, and it did not work. Instead of repeating Ukraine’s mistakes, Taiwan should learn from them. … Ukraine and Taiwan have no choice but to face their nuclear-armed adversaries alone. Their best chance of long-term survival is to acquire their own nuclear arsenals.Trump’s comeback fuels nuclear debate in South Korea: "In general, the more the Trump administration denigrates and neglects the alliance with the South and the more it shows signs of wanting to reach an arms control deal with North Korea that provides Pyongyang with nuclear weapons status, the more South Korea will entertain its intention of obtaining its own nuclear weapons.” …  That concern will be heightened if, as has been speculated, Trump pursues an agreement with the North that bans its development of the long-range missiles—the kind of missiles that could be used to threaten the US mainland with nuclear weapons—in return for the West effectively accepting North Korea as a nuclear power. Such a deal would provide no assurances to South Korea, whose capital city is only 50 kilometers from the North Korean border.Trump win fuels campaign for nuclear arms in South Korea: “Mistrust of the U.S. is growing,” said Cheong, who founded the ROK Forum for Nuclear Strategy, a group of 50 analysts, former military officials and academics who share his view that South Korea should acquire nuclear arms. …In 2020, Trump ordered the withdrawal of around 12,000 US troops stationed in Germany, calling the European nation “delinquent.” “Germany’s not paying for it,” he said at the time. “We don’t want to be the suckers anymore.” Trump has similarly dismissed the US-South Korea alliance as an unnecessary drag … As president, he canceled joint military exercises between the two countries for being “tremendously expensive” and told aides that he wanted a “complete withdrawal of US forces from South Korea”…“Rhetorically, nuclear weapons are on the table,” said Mason Richey, a professor of politics and international relations at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. “And that will be significantly affected by how the Trump administration approaches the alliance with South Korea and how it approaches the relationship with North Korea. In general, the more the Trump administration denigrates and neglects the alliance with the South and the more it shows signs of wanting to reach an arms control deal with North Korea that provides Pyongyang with nuclear weapons status, the more South Korea will entertain its intention of obtaining its own nuclear weapons.”“So much has changed since the Ukraine war, with the nonproliferation regime once managed between China, Russia, and the US having been considerably weakened. Who will tell South Korea that it can’t have nuclear weapons for its own survival?”Push for Seoul getting own nuclear arms gains steam after Trump win. … “There are a lot of concerns about former President Trump having been re-elected,” the first-time lawmaker said. “Gaining nuclear potential is going to be a long game for South Korea. But I think we can and should try to get there faster.” Retired three-star Army general Rep. Han Ki-ho, reputed as a leading military expert in the ruling party, went a step further and said South Korea getting nuclear arms may no longer be a choice given North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program. “For South Korea’s survival, nuclear armament may be the only path left to us,” he said. Within the People Power Party, a National Assembly resolution urging the government to pursue nuclear arms as a means of North Korean nuclear deterrent is underway. How Trump could push Japan, South Korea to go nuclear:“If South Korea has nuclear weapons, Japan will surely have them,” [said] the prime minister’s advisor, who had recently returned from a visit to Korea. …Technically, while South Korea can move faster politically, Japan has the fissile material already in storage—the plutonium stockpile from reprocessed spent fuel—as well as a potential long-range delivery system in its H-2 and H-3 rockets. “We have to face the sheer reality of who is leading the US,” the former senior Foreign Ministry official concluded. “We cannot change that.”The Inexorable LogicImagine that you are the defense minister of an American ally. When you open the newspaper today, this is what you see:* Russia and China: Two Countries, One Threat:The combat deployment of 10,000 North Korean troops to the battlefield near Ukraine’s border has confirmed that Russia’s war of aggression is now a multi-theater global confrontation—China’s critical role in sustaining Putin’s war machine through the supply of dual-use goods, as well as drone and missile technology, and Iran’s provision of ballistic missiles and other armaments to Russia, make it hard to argue against the de facto existence of a four nation authoritarian axis. These developments should put paid to the notion that the theaters can be neatly separated.    Pyongyang’s active engagement in the conflict, in particular, is a turning point. Not only does the transfer of North Korean military personnel to Russia represent a major escalation, it also marks yet another failure of US deterrence.  Whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, or the South China Sea, Moscow and Beijing seem increasingly keen to test US responses to their escalation. The deployment of troops to Eastern Europe by one of Moscow’s allies from Asia creates a precedent that defies residual assumptions from the Cold War era.* Trump’s secretary of defense pick is a wildly unqualified Fox News host. * The curious case of Tulsi Gabbard: Is she a Russian asset or a dupe?What would you conclude?The moments when an adversary is on the precipice of acquiring the Bomb, or a secure second-strike capability, are the most dangerous. That’s when the incentive to launch a first strike is the greatest. But rivals have incomplete information about each other’s capabilities, so the chances that one party will miscalculate, sparking a blood-soaked conventional war or a nuclear exchange, are enormous. Israel and Iran are the obvious example of this dynamic. No one should console himself with the thought that the world will be safer when our allies, or former allies, acquire the Bomb. We don’t have the ability to say that friendly countries may have nuclear weapons but hostile ones may not. The demise of the NPT will even destabilize regions that are for now tolerably stable. A global proliferation cascade will ensue. By electing Donald Trump, the United States initiated a de facto withdrawal from its treaty commitments and alliances around the globe. The effect of this will be much like that of the sudden collapse of the British or the Ottoman Empire. When empires suddenly collapse, they leave a security vacuum and chaos. There are no examples from history of such a thing proceeding peacefully. There are now superpower-sized holes in the world’s security architecture. We will very likely see multiple regional nuclear arms races, under circumstances and in configurations the world has not seen before, as a consequence. This will be a world completely unlike the one every living American has known. Many Americans believe, wrongly, that the power configuration of the world and all that implies is simply the natural order, rather than a thing we built deliberately. For people like this, the ramifications of its destruction will no doubt come as a great shock. We’re willingly embarking on a project to create precisely those circumstances most likely to give rise to terrible accidents and miscalculations. Even if the world’s luck holds, which is unlikely, we will live for the foreseeable future in a world where nuclear showdowns like the Cuban Missile Crisis regularly occur, but we will have no power to shape their outcome. No one will be looking for advice from their former security guarantor. By the time we realize what we’ve thrown away, and what it meant to have it, it will be too late. We will be hostage to other nations’ fortunes. Our power to shape our own destiny, in the most fundamental of ways, will be gone. Historians, if they survive, will be puzzled that we barely thought twice about it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
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  Why can't US learn from experience? 04.10.2024 1min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.comMy friend Ariel Cohen joined us today from Netanya, where he’s celebrating the holidays. A political analyst, Ariel focuses on Russia, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and energy policy. Obviously, we had a lot to talk about. We spoke about a question that’s maddening me: Why can’t the people who make our foreign policy learn from experience? W…
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  Polling in Exotic Places 09.09.2024 2min

  This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com“There are smart pollsters, insightful pollsters, accurate pollsters … but few are all three. Christine Quirk is. She makes people who hire her look smarter than we really are.”—Christy Quirk is a more cosmopolitan globalist than most. I met her in Istanbul about twenty years ago, where I discovered she had an interesting job: She’s a public opinion res…
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  Why Ukraine staged the Kursk offensive now 19.08.2024 27min

  Vladislav Davidzon joins us to discuss his latest article in Tablet.Ukraine defies the US to launch a showy offensive into Russia: Observing Israel’s moves in the Middle East, Kyiv gambles on an American power vacuum:… What changed in July is that the Ukrainians, like other embattled US allies, were faced with a new opportunity in Washington: The cognitively impaired president had been forced out of his reelection bid in favor of his vice president, who was now out on the campaign trail, three months before the election. With this emergent power vacuum at the White House, the Ukrainians decided to bypass both the deposed occupant of the White House as well as the staff of his hypercautious National Security Council, instead of slowly bleeding to death under rules guaranteed to produce slow-motion defeat. …Kyiv observed carefully how Israel conducted its strikes immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu returned from a triumphant speech before the US Congress. In fact, earlier this week the chair of the Ukrainian Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense, Roman Kostenko, explicitly referenced the Israeli example in a televised interview. “So Israel announced that they would take the advice of their partners very seriously but would afterward make their own decisions in the best interest of their own national security. I think that we can simply mirror that approach in our own case.”If you’re in a hurry, here’s a transcript:Claire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re back in the Elephant Cage with my guest, Vladislav Davidson. Vladislav, let’s talk about your big scoop.Vladislav: Hi, Claire. Thank you for having me on. I have a big piece out in Tablet Magazine, and a lot of other people seemed to have missed the obvious. On August 6th, the Ukrainians began their long-awaited mechanized invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast. The Ukrainians had been preparing for their annual counter offensive for a long time and picking their target of convenience. And they chose to go all in into Kursk because they saw that it was very weakly protected, and it turned out to be a very good decision. A lot of the Russian border guards and conscripts just gave up as soon as they saw Ukrainian mechanized forces and combat-ready, battle-hardened divisions. A lot of those guys just ran, to a point where the Ukrainians seemed to be taking between 100 and 200 Russian POWs a day, and times10, 12 days. They already seemed to have taken two divisions worth of Russian POW conscripts, thus refurbishing their exchange fund to the point where the Russians have, according to Ukrainian sources, initiated a POW exchange for the first time in two years.Claire: Yeah, I saw that. It’s actually quite amazing. I’ve been seeing a lot of photos and a lot of videos of Russians surrendering en masse. I have not been sure whether those photos are real, but it sounds like they are.Vladislav: I think they are real. I’ve seen a lot of those videos. Those are hard to stage. And a lot of those guys are 19, 18-year-old conscripts who are technically not supposed to be fighting outside of Russia, but they’re fully usable to defend the Russian border so the Russians throw them at the Ukrainians to stop them while they bring in better forces, Interior Ministry troops, fast response guys, national guard, hardened, battle-tested troops from inside Ukraine. While they’re trading land for time, as one does in that situation, they’re throwing conscripts with four or five, six months of training under their belts directly at these really excellent Ukrainian airborne troops. It’s Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian doctrinal policy to use airborne troops for raids. This is a textbook raid, which was transformed into a territory holding situation. The incursion is being done with the best troops, airborne troops.Claire: Tell us how the Ukrainians decided to do this. Obviously, they’d been planning this for at least three to six months. But they decided to go all in after they saw the Israelis do what they wanted to do, after Netanyahu returned from Washington, DC. On July 30th and 31st, the Israelis carried out assassinations against two high-value targets, one in Beirut, one in Tehran. These assassinations were carried out immediately upon Prime Minister Netanyahu returning from his trip to Washington, DC, where he addressed Israel, Congress, and where he had private meetings with whoever was in the White House. And he saw Harris in the White House and he saw the national security people of the Biden administration. And he nodded politely to the finger wagging that he received. And immediately upon returning to Jerusalem, he launched assassinations against high-value Hamas and Hezbollah operatives. And it was obvious that he was told to do one thing by the White House, and he did quite another thing.Claire: I don’t think that’s obvious, actually. There’s been a lot of speculation that he cleared that with the White House before doing it.Vladislav: I’m not sure he did. Why would he do this right as the Democratic Party is having its convention today? Claire: They’d do it because Haniyeh was only going to be in Iran for those days.Vladislav: And he’s not there all the time. He was there for the swearing in of a new Persian president. And he was a target of opportunity. They obviously used a lot of effort and regional resources, operatives to get that bomb smuggled into that house. And it’s not every day that you get a chance to take him out. And they had the opportunity and they took it.Claire: But what about that makes you think that he didn’t clear the White House beforehand? I don’t know whether he did or not. I’ve just seen speculation that he did. And as for Fuad Shukr, of course, we would have said, yeah, take him out. He’s responsible for the death of 242 Marines.Vladislav: Yeah, but he’d been operating for decades in Beirut.Claire: I’ve been wondering about that myself, but I just cannot imagine the Americans saying to Netanyahu, “Don’t do that.”Vladislav: Really? Just the opposite. I can’t imagine them saying, “Do it” in this situation. This is a very delicate time, and it’s a very complex situation in terms of the Americans’ internal interests, which is, obviously, this administration is carrying on the Obama-era foreign policy of normalizing relations with Tehran. They hate the Israelis. And they hate the Israelis complicating their regional foreign policy pivot, which is obviously not something the Sunni Arabs or the Israelis want.Claire: I’ve seen no evidence that the administration hates the Israelis. Biden likes the Israelis, he just doesn’t like Netanyahu.Vladislav: They see them as a problem, the thorn in their side for their big foreign policy shift.Claire: No more than every other administration always has.Vladislav: This is a really big difference. This is a continuation of Obama-era foreign policy with a lot of the same people in charge of Middle East foreign policy, people like Blinken, people like Sullivan.Claire: I don’t believe that the Biden administration is more vexed by Israel than almost every previous administration has been. Because our interest in Israeli security has always been at odds with our other interests in the region.Vladislav: There’s always been a contradiction. It’s true. But with the Obama foreign policy, there is a direct contradiction between the historical American foreign policy and what the Israelis see as their existential interests in the region of keeping Tehran boxed in. And the Obama foreign policy is to normalize Iran and bring them into the Middle East security architecture as the Americans are trying to leave the Middle East. So, this is a completely radically new situation.Claire: The radical situation is Iran’s approaching a deployable nuclear weapon. That creates all kinds of problems without easy solutions.Vladislav: Correct. That’s true.Claire: So tell me about how the Ukrainians reacted to this.Vladislav: The Ukrainians spent a few days observing the American response to the move. That is obviously not a happy situation for the White House and the National Security Council led by Mr. Jake Sullivan. The State Department under Blinken does not love it. And they made the decision that they too could run their own foreign policy, independent of their American allies’ scolding and red lines of constraint. They saw the Israelis getting away with it. Act first and apologize later, which is one of the quotes from a high level source in the Zelensky team in my piece.Claire: The people who spoke to you, they must want the administration to know what they’re thinking?Vladislav: After I reported the piece, a gentleman who is head of the Defense Intelligence and Security Committee inside the Rada went on TV and said, look, the Israelis listened very carefully, very politely, very generously, to the advice of their allies. And they said, we will act first in our own interests, and then we will answer our allies’ concerns afterwards. He said this openly. The head of a national security committee in the Ukrainian parliament, who’s one of the very few MPs inside Ukraine who knows what’s going on in terms of defense, because even Ukrainian MPs don’t know very much about operational stuff, because the army is keeping the Ukrainian parliament in the dark, most of them.Claire: Tell me how they understand what’s going on in America right now.Vladislav: They see a zombie regime in the White House and they see an overcautious National Security Council administration infrastructure, which is fulfilling the orders of a zombie regime. They see a gentleman in the White House who has Parkinson’s or dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever, and who is no longer fulfilling the president’s duties, who has given a policy to his State Department, to his Pentagon, and to his National Security Council, but is no longer making radical decisions.Claire: Is this based on their meetings with him or publicly available information?Vladislav: Why do you have to meet with them?Claire: I’m just trying to figure out where they got their information, whether they specifically met with him and came to the conclusion this guy’s not in charge anymore, or are they just reading the reporting. Have they had a personal experience with him?Vladislav: I don’t think that they’ve had a personal experience with him and they’ve had a lot less time with him because he did a lot fewer meetings. I’m not sure who the last Ukrainian to have a one-on-one with him was that the Ukrainian government decided this is a zombie situation.Claire: But this is a really important thing to know. Because we want a sense of whether other governments are likely to have decided that this is a zombie situation, therefore we’re just going to do whatever we feel like.Vladislav: But isn’t it the case that the entire world has access to this information?Claire: The entire world has a strong suspicion of it.Vladislav: But the Democratic Party made him step down from running for a second term because it’s obvious, after the debate, that he’s no longer the man that he was. Isn’t it obvious to everybody?Claire: But it’s unclear to what extent he’s capable of discharging his duties when the spotlight is not on him. For five hours a day, or whatever.Vladislav: Absolutely right. This is a very serious thing. The lame duck situation plus the fact that he’s no longer running and that Harris is trying to establish her own foreign policy credentials while getting the campaign into high gear has created a space of opportunity for American allies to no longer be constrained by American red lines.Claire: Yes, and American enemies as well. Vladislav: Yeah, American enemies and American allies, yeah. And this is a testing of red lines set forth by both Moscow and Washington, DC, one; two, this is a declaration of independence; and three, the Ukrainians know full well that they got away with it because two or three days after the start of the Kursk offensive, the Americans delivered the next tranche of US$125 million worth of previously promised assistance.Claire: And all Biden has said about it is, “Gee, that must be a very difficult situation for the Russians.”Vladislav: That legitimizes the act of crossing the border on August 6th. The fact that the Pentagon said, “Yeah, this is what we agreed to previously.” And yet, the new tranche is not being held up. The Pentagon did not stop aid on the eighth or ninth when they greenlit the next trench, which means—Claire: But Biden is still saying no use to the long-range missiles in Russian territory, right?Vladislav: Yeah. Correct. And the new reporting as of today, and today being Monday, 19th of August, shows that the Biden administration is still telling the Brits to not allow the use of long-range British rockets.Claire: But the British have actually said, go ahead. Vladislav: With some kinds of rockets, yes. With other kinds of rockets, no. And the Americans are telling them no. So the zombie policy set by the zombie president is still being carried out by the Pentagon, the State Department, National Security Council. It’s just that they really cant say no to the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians are all in and they’re winning. And everyone loves a winner. You know that.Claire: Yes, of course. Everyone loves a winner. Were the Ukrainians at all concerned that they would trigger Russia’s nuclear defense doctrine in doing this?Vladislav: This has been a concern for some time, but every time the Ukrainians go against Russian red lines, Moscow turns out to not have any red lines. First, it was bombing anything inside Russia. They did nothing. Then it was bombing inside Crimea. They did nothing. Then it was bombing the Russian Black Sea fleet inside Sevastopol dry docks. The Russians did nothing with nuclear missiles. Then it was Ukrainian troops inside Russia, which is why the Ukrainians used exiled troops, Russian proxies. Last time they did it with raids, last year, the Russians did nothing. Then this, they did nothing. Every time the Ukrainians or the Americans actually scratch the surface of these red lines, nothing happens.Claire: Do you know anything about how the Americans have really reacted? Have you heard anything about what they’re saying to each other?Vladislav: I don’t know for a fact, but they can’t be happy. Claire: I wonder. Biden has now been liberated from having to seek re-election.Vladislav: It’s interesting what he actually thinks. He has not doubled or tripled down on helping the Ukrainians, despite the fact that he is not seeking re-election, as you say. He’s not jettisoned the Sullivan Doctrine, whatever you want to call it. They’re just doing what they’ve been doing.Claire: So do you think that the Biden administration is assuming that Kamala will win and therefore they don’t need to do anything now to ensure Ukraine’s victory before Trump gets in office?Vladislav: I just think that they have, as one of my sources in the piece says, no serious policy. They’re just trying to pocket their gains. They have had gains because Ukrainians have outperformed all expectations, but they don’t have a policy and they’re just trying to muddle through and keep the Ukrainians from losing big time while also keeping the Russians from losing the war, which isn’t much of a policy at all. The Ukrainians saw that this attritional thing was not working and they decided to completely change the narrative and they did. And what’s interesting about this is they did so based on what they understood Israel was doing.Claire: Have they had any contacts with the Israelis?Vladislav: Yeah, the Israelis and the Ukrainians have a very complex and interesting relationship, which I write a lot about. Relations are closer and closer, more warm and more interesting than they have been. The Ukrainians have tried to shame the Israelis into supporting them. They’ve not been able to do that because of Netanyahu’s personal relationship with Putin and the Israelis’ calculation that they don’t need to do any more in order to look good or they don’t need to isolate themselves from the Russians and create problems.Claire: Evidence of Netanyahu’s inability to grasp the big picture. Obviously, Russia is a problem for Israel. They’re Iran’s closest ally.Vladislav: Correct. Yeah. And so he’s playing this kind of balancing game where he has input on being allowed to bomb in Syria and he has the safety of Russian Jews, their property, agreed to, but nothing much else. The Russians are making pro- two-state solution comments. They’re meeting with Hamas and Hezbollah delegations. They’re involved with the war in Ukraine, and with Iran, having closer and closer relations. Claire: If he had any kind of vision, he would be fully supporting Ukraine.Vladislav: I’m one of the people who's been saying that and pushing for that. I’m one of the people who has really wanted that to happen. But Netanyahu’s policy is what it is, and he doesn’t see any need to change it. Claire: But do you know if Ukrainians were actually speaking to Israelis? Were the Israelis saying, “Hey, you can just do what you want and ask for permission afterwards?” Or was this completely based on their interpretation from open sources of how this had gone down?Vladislav: Interpretation. I don’t think the Ukrainians trust Israeli intelligence and Israeli politics, especially with so many Russian Jews having portfolios in the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence circles. You have to remember, last summer, everybody knew about the Ukrainian offensive, and that went badly because they told everybody. So they made a decision not to tell anybody. The number of people who knew about this is very small, including a lot of my own friends in the Ukrainian parliament.Claire: In your article, you alluded to this, and you made it sound as if the Ukrainians think that something is leaking from Washington back to Russia. Is that what you meant to suggest?Vladislav: It’s leaking from everywhere. They just did not give information to anybody. Their own frontline troops have to be kept in the dark about this, let alone Washington, DC.Claire: Do they think, though, that there’s something in Washington that is leaking back to Russia?Vladislav: I asked that question and I was given no good answer, to be honest.Claire: Right.Vladislav: I just think they don’t trust anybody after what happened last time. “Stop telegraphing your intentions.” And that turned out to be the correct insight for this one.Claire: Yes, certainly. They really maintained tight security on this. Came as a total surprise to everyone.Vladislav: Including the Russians. The Russians really screwed up. Russian intelligence services had inklings of this. Some people in Russian intelligence figured it out and sent it up the pole, obviously. And the Russian command didn’t figure it out.Claire: So what do Ukrainians say is the strategic goal of this operation?They’re not. They’re not saying what the strategic goal of this operation is for all sorts of reasons, including operational reasons. They’re going to see what sticks, and then they’re going to explain what happened based on what succeeded afterwards.Claire: Is your intuition that this is an operation aimed more at Russia or at the United States?Vladislav: Both. And also, as a couple of my sources said, they really needed a peremoha. They really were starting to lose nerve, and this is the best situation in terms of morale inside Ukraine since the war started. People are over the moon. People are happy. This is really gaining another year or two of good morale for the Ukrainians. They really needed a victory.Claire: Are you in touch with people close to the Trump camp? Do you know how they’re reacting to this?Vladislav: I am in touch with Trump people. They’re obviously calculating, and Trump is obviously watching this very closely. I don’t think he himself knows what he’s going to do, but obviously this is a big issue for him. He’s stepped back from criticizing the Ukrainians in order to have more leeway for whatever he’s going to do when he comes to power. He’s obviously going to try to make a deal, but it’s not apparent whether that deal will be very good for Ukraine or very bad. It could go either way. It’s a radical situation with Trump. You can’t know what’s going to happen. He’s obviously observing. He obviously likes winners. He’s going to say whatever he needs to say in order to make this administration in the White House look bad.Claire: Yeah, I noticed that a lot of ultra-vatniks like David Sacks, the lamentable David Sacks, have been extremely quiet since this began.Vladislav: 100 percent. And that is policy in the Trump camp. The Trump people have been talking to a lot of European conservatives who’ve been making nice little trips to Mar-a-Lago. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, Orban, Lord Cameron.Claire: Tusk and Orban are going to come with very different messages.Vladislav: Correct. But he’s talking to every single European conservative. Lord Cameron went down there and he spent hours talking to him. And it seemed to me, based on my relationships with British diplomats and intelligence people, it was a very fruitful discussion. Trump does listen, weirdly enough. He’s a politician. He takes stock of the water and the polls, and he follows his instincts, which are politically pretty good. And he’s stopped attacking the Ukrainians because he sees that he could get more mileage out of making a deal when he comes to power, if he comes to power.Claire: Changing the subject a little bit, what should we make of these stories about Nord Stream? Is there anything to them? I don’t think we know what actually happened. Mr. Pancevski of the Wall Street Journal had a scoop, reported a thesis on what happened. I don’t believe that is the case. I still think that the Russians did this. I don't think that the sitting ambassador to the United Kingdom of Ukraine, the former head of the armed services of Ukraine, did this, that they felt they could get away with this. I don’t believe that the Ukrainians did this. But the Germans do now, and they asked for extradition of a Ukrainian serviceman, intelligence agent, which the Polish president and prime minister denied. I don’t know if you saw Donald Tusk’s tweet from yesterday. Donald Tusk’s excellent tweet was: “To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2, the only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet.” The Poles are neither extraditing people nor are they backing down from their narrative. The prime minister of Poland didn’t necessarily need to tweet that himself, but he did.Claire: Okay, back to Kursk. I’m trying to understand the Ukrainian endgame here, what they’re hoping for. Vladislav: The endgame is the collapse of the Russian Federation and Putin being in The Hague, that’s the best case outcome. But there is a hierarchy of outcomes, right? They are not telegraphing what their endgame is. So we can speculate and I can give you all sorts of very clever answers and I can go through different outcomes from best to worst. But ultimately, no one knows yet because the Ukrainians are keeping their cards very tight to their chest.Claire: I don’t know if you saw it: I responded to something that Garry Kasparov said yesterday on Twitter, where he was stating that the only possible explanation or at least one possible explanation that he favored for the Biden administration’s timidity and caution was they had some kind of backroom deal with Russia. And I responded that I just didn’t think that was the conclusion to which Occam’s razor would lead you. I think the Biden administration is just an exceptionally timid administration when it comes to foreign policy. What do you think?Vladislav: I agree with you. I think he was just mouthing off on Twitter. That’s just how Russian elites talk at the bar.Claire: How are Americans reacting to this? Are they even hearing the news? Because all I find in the US news, anytime I look, is the election. I never find any news of this.Vladislav: I’m hoping that my reporting will have a sobering effect.Claire: Why sobering?Vladislav: Is it good that American allies are ignoring us?Claire: Who are you hoping to sober?Vladislav: I’m hoping to sober up large swaths of the American public who should understand that American allies are just ignoring American foreign policy edicts because they’re stupid. I’d like to sober up the National Security Council, but they’re going to be out in a couple of months anyway. They could do a lot of damage in those couple of months. It’s the American public that should be sobered up, American elites.Claire: I’m not sure they’re going to take that message from it.Vladislav: Really? Claire: Yeah.Vladislav: What would they take from this?Claire: It depends where they’re already ideologically inclined. Someone like, in worst case scenario, David Sacks is going to say, “Look, these Ukrainians are risking nuclear war without our permission, using our weapons.”Vladislav: Right.Claire: And someone who’s pro-Ukraine is going to say, “Good for the Ukrainians,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean you think a different way than the way you already think. Except the one thing I take away from it is that it’s an incredibly dangerous situation to have the world wondering whether the President is compos mentis or paying attention to anythingVladislav: Yeah, it is audacious, and it’s taking advantage of the fact that there’s a gentleman in the White House who should not be in the White House. If you’re actually a proceduralist, just resign. He should not have been president for already two years or 18 months, obviously, depending on how long he’s been this out of it.Claire: It should lead the White House to be on the phone with people who can communicate to our adversaries that there’s enough intelligence at the top of the food chain in the US that we would notice if they tried to do something.Vladislav: If our allies are going against our will, why won’t China or Iran?Claire: Exactly, exactly. But they seem to be doing a reasonably good job somehow of deterring Hezbollah in Iran right now.Vladislav: They don’t actually want a full-on war because that would be very bloody for everybody. I don’t think that either the Ayatollahs, having been embarrassed not being able to protect their own guests, nor the Hezbollah brass actually want a full-on war right now. So, you know, when the Americans bring in their aircraft carriers into the Gulf and into the—Claire: That’s exactly what I mean. They don’t want to go to war because they’d be up against us. So we must have convinced them that we would be serious about using those aircraft carriers.Vladislav: It’s interesting that we’ve been able to constrain them, but maybe it wouldn’t even take that much to constrain them. Maybe they just don’t want a full-on war with the Israelis. I wouldn’t if I was them.Claire: All right. Anything else you would like to say about this remarkable story?Vladislav: I believe this is an opportunity for course correction in Washington, DC. I think they should stop constraining American allies.Claire: We should actually support our allies instead of indulging in this pathological fear of escalation.Vladislav: Correct. Correct. So thank you, my dear Claire. I will see you in a couple of weeks in Paris.Claire: Are you going to be here?Vladislav: I’m passing through in a couple of weeks on the way to Tunisia, on the way back to Ukraine.Claire: Where are you going in Tunisia and why?Vladislav: I’m going to a Berber Jewish wedding in Djerba.Claire: Oh, how nice.Vladislav: Yes. I’m taking my mother to the Middle East. Her last vacation to Israel on October 5th of ‘23, where she went down to visit her relations in Ashkelon and got on a bus on the morning of October 7th in Sderot, did not go so well.Claire: Yeah, no kidding.Vladislav: She randomly survived an attack on her bus. She got off the bus, and 30 minutes later, all other 15 people on the bus except the bus driver were executed. Okay. Thank you, Claire. I’ll see you in a bit.Claire: Thanks very much.Vladislav: Bye-bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  The Philosophical Ramifications of Artificial Intelligence 17.08.2024 53min

  UPDATE: Some of you didn’t care for the sound effects, so here’s a version without them:Since I have a philosopher in the family, I thought you might enjoy hearing a conversation with my father about what it means that we’ve built machines that can think and what we might learn from them about what it means to be human. We discuss the way Large Language Models have altered our understanding of natural languages and learning algorithms, and the possibility that theoretical science may be obsolete: Perhaps it’s really data all the way down. We discuss Chomsky and Skinner, human cognition, stimulus-response models, and the parallels—if any—between biological and artificial intelligence. We also talk about the existential risks of AI, whether humans will remain the dominant species on this planet, and the broader implications for human knowledge. My father also reflects on the historical and sociological aspects of scientific innovation and the backgrounds of the key contributors to AI development.I took the opportunity to practice my podcast production skills. I experimented with a few programs I’d never used before. If the sound effects strike you as peculiar, it’s because I couldn’t quite get them to do what I wanted, but also felt I’d devoted far too much time to trying to insert the sound of a flying bird at just right point and could no longer justify the effort. Let me know what you think: Should I keep trying to master the skill of professional podcast production? Or should I just throw the raw files on your plate from now on and say, “Eat. It’s what’s for dinner?” I’m really unsure. Everyone tells me that journalists these days must have podcast and video editing skills, but acquiring them has proven awfully time consuming. On the other hand, I think probably I only have to learn once, and having learned, it won’t take nearly so much time. Then again, I could just wait another year and have an LLM do it for me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe
• 
  Russia goes full Mr. Kurtz 30.07.2024 34min

  Russia has been hard at work kicking the United States out of Africa. It’s all but chased out France, too. But anyone who imagines Russia to be a kinder, gentler superpower is out of his mind. The investigative journalist Philip Obaji has been following the activities of the Wagner group in Africa for years. He recently spent the months investigating human rights abuses by Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic, where he was abducted and tortured, only narrowly escaping alive. His reports of the way Russian mercenaries are behaving in Africa won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been studying their behavior in Ukraine. Or Syria, for that matter, or Chechnya. It appears the Russians have gone full Mr. Kurtz, mass-murdering and raping everyone in their path with impunity, hauling off the gold and diamonds from the mines, and selling them on the black market. This is how Russia manages to sustain itself despite the West’s sanctions. Their motto, writes the Sentry, is “‘leave no trace’—in other words, kill everyone, including women and children.”Because there’s so little journalism from Africa, this story is apt to be insufficiently appreciated in Western capitals. But unless you understand the African dimension of Russia’s war, you can’t understand what’s really happening and what’s at stake in Ukraine. Or vice-versa. When Ukrainians say they’re the victims of an unreconstructed colonial power, they’re absolutely right. The crimes Russia is now committing are exactly the ones for which France and the UK are incessantly apologizing. But neither France nor the UK (and certainly not the US) are committing these crimes right now. Russia is. We discuss Philip’s very brave reporting on the Russian Wagner Group’s activities in CAR, his experiences of tracking them throughout Africa, and other major stories he follows. I hope he’ll come back to talk about some of the other stories he’s covered. For those of you in a hurry, there’s a full transcript below.Articles by Philip Obaji* “Russians blindfolded us and made us dig mass graves to cover up their crimes.”Russian mercenaries dragged young men out of their homes and forced them to hide the evidence of a massacre of their friends and neighbors.* Why Putin’s private army ordered soldiers to torture me. The Daily Beast correspondent Philip Obaji Jr. was abducted and beaten by soldiers while reporting on wrongdoing by the Wagner Group.* Twins, 17: We were drugged and raped by Putin’s private army. A dozen girls have told The Daily Beast that they were kidnapped and sexually abused by Russian paramilitaries.* Putin’s private army accused of sickening new massacre. Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin may be dead, but witnesses say Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic slaughtered dozens of people to secure access to a gold mine.* Putin’s private army filmed sex assault victims in Mali. Four witnesses describe their horrific ordeal at the hands of Russian mercenaries given a free pass by Putin’s regime.* Putin’s private army accused of most heinous massacre yet. Witnesses in the Central African Republic are pointing a finger at the Wagner Group over a series of gruesome killings that allegedly involved disemboweling several women.And more here.Further reading* All eyes on Wagner: Monitoring Wagner's activities across the globe* Bois Rouge: How the Central African Republic gave away its forest to the private military group Wagner. Because of the inefficiency of the timber controls in Europe, Wagner conflict timber cannot be stopped from reaching European clients, despite existing sanctions.* Architects of terror: The Wagner Group’s blueprint for state capture in the Central African RepublicTranscriptClaire: Hi, it’s Claire Berlinski, and you’re here in the Elephant Cage with Philip Obaji, an extremely interesting Nigerian journalist who has had some remarkable experiences in the Central African Republic, which is why I’ve invited him to speak to us today. Philip, tell me a little bit about yourself.Philip: So I live in Abuja, that’s the capital of Nigeria, and I have been a contributor at The Daily Beast, a news website based in New York. I have covered war, counter insurgency, and the activities of jihadist groups in Western Central Africa for The Daily Beast since 2015. In the last couple of years, I have focused my reporting on these issues, almost entirely on the activities of the Russian Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have spread themselves across Western and Central Africa.Claire: It’s a huge story, which is getting so much less attention than it deserves. And certainly it won’t get any attention in the US right now because of the election. Nothing’s getting any attention. I wanted to ask how you became interested in the Central African Republic.Philip: So in, 2018, three Russian journalists traveled from Russia to the Central African Republic to investigate the activities of the Wagner Group. At the time, not many people had heard about the Wagner Group. The government of the Central African Republic had just reached an agreement with the Russian Federation for the supply of arms and private military instructors to the Central African Republic. And the Russian Federation had sent a group of so-called military instructors, as the Russians like to refer to Wagner mercenaries. So these three journalists went to the country to look into the activities of the group. But sadly, they were killed somewhere around Sibut, in the central part of the country. And the journalists were close friends of one of my colleagues, Anna Nemsova, at the Daily Beast. And my then-editor , Christopher Dickey—Claire: —You knew Christopher? We miss him so much here.Philip: Exactly. He was my editor, yeah. Chris asked that I look into what really happened with these three journalists. And I started to make phone calls to contacts in the Central African Republic. And then I found that there was something interesting about this group called Wagner. So, since then, I took it upon myself to continue where the three late journalists stopped, to know exactly what these Russians were up to, and then how to report on the activities.Claire: Who killed them?Philip: It’s still not known exactly who killed them. The investigations by the Central African government didn’t come up with any clear reports. So the government believes that there were local rebel gun men who assassinated the journalists, but many accusing fingers still point at the direction of the Russians, the Russian Wagner group.Claire: It wouldn’t be a surprise, but there are a lot of candidates as I understand it. Perhaps you’d start by giving our listeners a bit of an introduction to the Central African Republic, because it’s probably not a country they’re very familiar with.Philip: That’s correct. Even here in Africa, not many people are really conversant with the country. So, it’s a small country in terms of population in the central part of Africa. It borders Cameroon to the West and the Sudan to the East. And it’s a very impoverished country. And although it’s very rich in gold and diamond resources, much of its wealth has been plundered by its leaders. The country has been under a civil war since 2013, when Christian militias and Muslim rebels, fought against each other. And soon after the civil war began, the UN imposed an arms embargo on the Central African Republic.So an election was held in 2016 that ushered in the current president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra. Unfortunately for the new president, he inherited a country that was pretty much in the hands of rebels and other militia groups. Only the capital, Bangui, was under government control at the time he took office in 2016.So he had only one option, to ask the international community for help. But he knew it would be difficult to come by, and so he ran to Russia, first, to get the Russians to ensure that the UN Security Council lifted the arms embargo, second, to get Russian military instructors in the country to provide training and even arms to fight against the rebels that were almost overrunning the capital, Bangui.Claire: Two questions, excuse me for interrupting, but I just want to make sure I understand the story. The rebels, you said, are Christians and Muslims, are they fighting each other? Or are there other issues involved?Philip: No, they’re fighting each other for control of power. It’s a country divided into Christians mostly in the south, and then Muslims predominantly in the north.Claire: So did they live peacefully before the Civil War erupted, or was there some demographic change?Philip: There were always some little pockets of conflicts in the country. But it became worse after Muslims defeated the Christian presidentClaire: Which side does the government support?Philip: The government supports no side, because, as we speak currently, the rebel groups have all somewhat come together to fight against the government. So it’s more or less about the control of resources right now, because these militia groups are seeking control of gold and diamond mines, and then the sale of gold and diamonds. Claire: Is it a conflict between Christians and Muslims, or are they allied in some places on the same side?Philip: In the beginning, it was a conflict between Christians and Muslims, but now a lot of them have come together to fight against the current government. Because they want to control resources.Claire: Does the current government support one side over the other?Philip: Not really, that’s not really the case. And so much has changed since the Russians came on board because right now, you have gold mines in the country that in the past were controlled by Christian rebels or Muslim rebels or Christian militiamen. But now, we have a situation where the Russians are targeting every gold miner, every artisanal miner, and every armed group just to take complete control of this.Claire: What was France’s role in this? Because I know they were involved.Philip: Yes, France’s role was more or less, initially, it’s supposed to be like a peacekeeping role where they try to protect the local population from attacks by, any of the armed groups. That was why they got involved in the first place.Claire: And as I understand it, there was a massive information operation sponsored by Russia against France/Philip: Yes. So much of this information targeted the French troops. That went on for a long time.Claire: And this has been a Wagner pattern throughout Africa.Philip: You’re correct. We’re still seeing such campaigns, especially in West Africa, where the local media is paid to spread disinformation targeted at not just France, but the West in general. There are many people who are susceptible to this, and it’s having an effect. In many ways, in many countries, you go to Niger, you go to Togo, Burkina Faso, you meet a lot of people who will tell you what they read or what they heard, which—based on what some of us have investigated—are clear disinformation sponsored by the Russians.Claire: So the article that got my attention today, which is why I invited you on the podcast, was about some of the real atrocities that Russia has been committing in CAR, and also I know of others in Africa. And I think this is a neglected story. Have you found that people are paying attention to your reporting?Philip: Oh, if you look at social media, my post on Twitter, you’ll find thousands of retweets and likes. And I’m having a lot of people reach out to me, to collaborate. Since last year, I have received numerous phone calls from many Western outlets, CBS, NBC in the US and then, in the Gulf region, Al Jazeera and the rest. So there was some bit of attention from late 2022 to early last year, obviously, because Wagner was so much involved in the war in Ukraine, so many people wanted to know. Many outlets didn’t know exactly how this group operated in Africa. Keeping in mind that many of the mercenaries that were active in Ukraine were pulled from Africa. So a lot begun to change after the death of the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin. It didn’t seem like Wagner was so much involved, or the old elements of Wagner were so much involved in Ukraine. So there’s little attention paid to what the Russians were doing in Africa. But I’m actually very glad that of late I’m seeing a lot more interest, particularly amongst Ukrainians and some think tank groups who are focused on Russian activities here in Africa.Claire: Yeah. Now that Prigozhin is gone, is Wagner answering directly to Putin?Philip: Now they are having to take instructions from the Russian Ministry of Defense, which has taken over the operations of Russian paramilitaries in Africa.Claire: The pattern is extremely important. We have to look at Russia in Syria and in Africa to understand that Ukraine is not an isolated story. It’s a global story. And this is incredibly important to understand, because certainly, many people who are susceptible to Putin’s propaganda in the West don't appreciate this and believe that this is some Eastern European conflict. It’s not. It’s a global conflict. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about what you learned in Central African Republic about Russia’s activities?Philip: First of all, the Russians have been able to take almost full control of the security apparatus in the country. You have a national security advisor to the president of the Central African Republic who is Russian. You have the communications advisor to the president who is also Russian. And you have dozens of Russian paramilitaries training the Central African Republic Armed Forces.Claire: How many Russians are there in total?Philip: I can’t say for now how many there are, but in the beginning there were—at some point before they were in Ukraine—there were up to 2,000 mercenaries. And in some of the reporting I did in 2022, about 500 were pulled out of the Central African Republic to Ukraine. But I do also know that some were also brought from Russia to the Central African Republic within that period, so it's hard to tell exactly how many there are, but I want to believe there are more than a thousand still in the country.Claire: And based on your knowledge, how many would you guess are in Africa generally?Philip: That’s difficult to tell. The Russians are most active in the Central African Republic and in Mali. We may be looking at some 1,000-something troops, or maybe two, in the continent. I don’t know for sure about Libya. Because I haven’t covered Libya so much. I have focused a lot on Western Central Africa, but I know that they have been active in Libya for some time now. But in terms of numbers, it’s difficult to tell, in Libya. But we’re looking at over a thousand troops, maybe up to 2,000, if you put together what we’ve seen in Mali and in the Central African Republic. So that’s a rough estimate. It may be a little less than that.Claire: They’re getting a lot of bang for the buck, then, per troop. They’ve been incredibly effective with such a small force.Philip: That’s correct. That’s because oftentimes they work closely with the local forces. So you could have Russian paramilitaries storming a particular community in Central Africa, or even in Mali, with hundreds of local troops.Claire: When they arrive, they immediately target the natural resources. And they have absolutely no concern at all for the rights of any of the people they encounter.Philip: That’s exactly what we have seen them do and what we’ve heard them do. And the situation now is, when the Russians first got involved, even before they sent troops on the ground in the Central African Republic, they had reached an understanding with the government to take control of the gold and diamond mines. But the problem they face is that all these mines are situated outside of Bangui, the capital. And they have been in recent years under the control of armed groups. So you just cannot go there and then take over these mines.Claire: Why did the government agree to this? What are they getting out of it?Philip: Basically what they wanted is control of the capital. When the Russians came, only Bangui was under government control, and even like that, Bangui was fragile. It was only a matter of time before it fell to these rebels. So that’s the game. So what they fear now is that if the Russians leave, they could face bigger problems in terms of control. And also with resources, too, because they didn’t have access to the mines.Claire: They made a very short-term deal.Philip: That’s correct. May not have been so short-term, but they made a deal.Claire: And when they extract diamonds and other resources from the mines, is that staying in their hands, or is it going back to the Kremlin?Philip: I did an investigation last year about where some of this gold gets to. Sometimes gold is sold in the Middle East. And even when Russia was under sanctions by the US and EU, they still found a way to sell their gold in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. So in the black market.Claire: It’s a huge source of cash.Philip: Yes, for the Kremlin, yes, it is. and no one even knows.Claire: How much would you guess they’re managing to extract from just the Central African Republic, first, and then from Africa generally, including Sudan?Philip: We may never know exactly how much, because, this information is opaque. This deal is done in the dark. And I have seen some outlets report about maybe over 500 billion dollars, or even above the billion dollars .Claire: For a year?Philip: Yeah, in the period of maybe around the year or so. But I don’t know. These are allegations, or these are information, that I haven’t verified yet. Because it’s so difficult when you don’t have access to documents.Claire: Of course. But even if that’s ballpark correct, it explains how Russia is managing to survive the sanctions.Philip: That’s correct. That’s correct. And they have many middlemen who are helping to evade the sanctions, for the good of the Kremlin .Claire: Aren’t Africans enraged by this?Philip: If you look at West Africa, for example, you find in the Francophone Africa, over the years, the French have been present in this region. And even after decolonization in the 1950s and 60s, the French never really left. You still have a situation where the currency is still being controlled in the French central bank. So people are believing in the region that France has got some level of manipulation or whatever. And that the involvement with France has not yielded any results. And to make matters worse, in some of the fragile countries that have been in conflict where there’s been French troops, we haven’t seen any kind of tangible results. Rather, things have got even worse. In Burkina Faso, in Mali, where the French independently came in to help fight against jihadists, these countries have even become worse in terms of the number of attacks and incursion by jihadist groups. It is the belief, generally, that France, rather than help[ing], exploited these Francophone nations. And the Russians, too, haven't really helped in terms of the kind of, disinformation that they have spread across the region.Claire: So people don’t yet really understand the role that Wagner is playing.Philip: Wagner is relatively new. So they don’t really get exactly what’s going on. So for some of them, it’s “Let’s give Russia a chance, maybe they become better than France,” but we’re seeing something different. Another problem, you look at the Central African Republic, for example, internet penetration is so low. If you live away from Bangui, you don’t really get to hear too much about what’s happening. And it is only recently that with the increase in attacks on artisanal miners by the Russians, that people are getting to understand exactly what the Russians are really up to in the Central African Republic. Not many people in West Africa really have so much to say against the Russians, because they’re relatively new in these countries. And they haven’t really done too much.Claire: It’s pure old fashioned European colonialism without any disguise.Philip: You put it very well. Yes, you put it very well. That’s what’s going on.Claire: So that’s what surprises me, that people aren’t immediately able to recognize it. Have they provided any kind of security in any place they’ve been?Philip: If I have to give credit to the Russians in Bangui, they’ve done it, in terms of what the government would like, like I said earlier, if they were not there, I can tell you for sure that Bangui would have been overridden by these men. And we will have had a situation where you have a rebel as the ruler of the country. So the Russians actually, give them credit for what they did in Bangui to keep Bangui away from the rebels. Claire: And what about in other places they’ve been? Is there anywhere where they’ve made a significant contribution to local security? Because the jihadi issue in the Sahel has been terrible. Have they contributed in any way to reestablishing security?Philip: When it comes to combat, they’re only active in West Africa, in fact, in the Sahel, they’re only active in Mali in terms of combat. And I can’t really say that we’ve seen so much of gains already. What happened at the weekend when dozens of Russian paramilitaries were killed by a Tuareg rebel coalition, that shows that, as much as the government will say, “There’s some gains with the Russians being involved,” it’s not exactly what we’re seeing. When you have so many troops and so many Russians being killed by rebel fighters, just at the weekend, that shows that there’s still a hot war going on there .Claire: Tell me a little bit about the kinds of human rights outrages you’ve uncovered. I think it’s really important for people to understand just how global this is.Philip: Yes, it’s enormous, horrifying, troubling—what have you. Now, you go to many parts of Central African Republic especially in the north, you will find at least one person who would have had an experience with the Russians, whether it’s a woman being raped on her own farm, or young girls being sexually assaulted in their own compounds or young artisanal miners who are captured and brutalized by the Russians. So it happens in many forms. Most times the Russians just show up unannounced in mining communities, and just begin to open fire on anyone they see, because they have this impression that every single person in this community is a friend or an accomplice to the rebels.So they’re opening fire, killing people, arresting some others. And then torturing them to get them to confess to being members of an armed group. So it’s really torturous for the local population. And it’s so sad that even women and girls, some as young as 13, they’re getting raped, abused by the Russians. I did an investigation last year about young girls who were either taken from their compounds or rescued from rebels and then taken to the military base in Bouar. Bouar is the major town in the northwestern part of the Central African Republic. And in this military base, the Russians drug them, rape them, and administer contraceptives to these girls. There should have been dozens of girls who were victims of this Russian abuse in Bouar.Claire: Administering contraceptives suggests that this is a policy, not just something that happened with troops who are out of control. It suggests that they just consider these girls and women a bonus.Philip: Yes, you can put it that way because they’re having unprotected sex with these girls and they don’t want a situation where someone comes out the next day and say “I’m pregnant and I’m giving birth to a half caste baby.” It’d be difficult to deny.Claire: It’s just appalling.Philip: Yeah, it’s really appalling. So it becomes difficult to deny that they are the ones who are responsible. So the contraceptives are made to ensure that they don’t get pregnant.Claire: And from the articles you wrote, these girls are just traumatized beyond words.Philip: Yeah, beyond even our imagination. Because what they have faced—with not just one rapist, serial men who’ve raped them. So it’s really appalling. Horrific.Claire: Horrific. It must be really hard to report on that.Philip: Yes. Yes, the last reporting, I faced the most difficult time in my career as a journalist, because, one, myself, I was attacked, tortured by local forces who were acting on the orders of the Russians. And then also I still had to go, even with my injuries, go meet these young girls and listen to their stories. And in between, I was held for hours by rebels who thought I was a spy, so it was really very difficult, situation for me. But I have traveled too far and suffered too much to just give up, so I had to just focus and then complete the job.Claire: Where else besides the Central African Republic have you spent a lot of time reporting in Africa?Philip: Obviously in Nigeria, I started reporting in 2015 on the activities of jihadist groups, Boko Haram and Ansaru groups linked to both Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. I also reported in Cameroon on the Anglophone crisis, in Cameroon. And then, yes I have reported in Niger too, on the battle with Mali.Claire: I’m interested in all of this and I wonder if I could have you on the podcast again to discuss these stories, because these are all stories—in fact, Africa generally just gets so little coverage in the West. And it’s an absurd situation, because obviously this is the most demographically important part of the world, and it has so few journalists in it.Philip: That’s correct. And, it’s even very difficult for we local indigenous journalists here, because the funding is so poor. Oftentimes you have to depend on one fellowship to be able to do these things. When I started this, I was spending my own money on this trip just to tell the story.Claire: When you think about how many journalists are reporting on Donald Trump’s every twitch-- and what you’re doing is the real thing, it’s what journalists ought to be doing, and there are so few of you. It’s so important to fund work like this.Philip: That’s correct. That's correct.Claire: I will tell my readers that they should fund you.Philip: Yeah, that would be great because it’s very hard, I have to tell you. And my trip to Central Africa was made possible by the International Center for Journalists, who just thought they need to hear something about what’s going on. Luckily for me, I’ve got the support of the Daily Beast. When it comes to filing stories, I always get the opportunity to file stories with Daily Beast. But in terms of getting funding for these projects, it’s difficult for a project like this. And I still have a lot to report on. I haven’t really touched on Mali that much, and that’s what I’d like to look at, going forward. But it’s very difficult to find the funds to do.Claire: Do you speak French?Philip: My French is poor, so I have to rely on interpreters, which is even more expensive for me, because I have to get somebody who's interpreting, either it’s French or the local language. I’m studying, I’m going back to school to improve on my French.Claire: The French media publishes a lot more about Africa than the English language media. So that would be a good market for you if you do learn.Philip: Yeah, you’re correct about the French media publishing more than English. Yes, you're correct.Claire: My listeners, at least half of them will be American, and it’s an election year. So what do you think the United States should be doing, if anything, to counter what Wagner is doing in Africa?Philip: In an election year, a lot of focus will be on what's going on in the US. But there’s something else that the Americans should not overlook, is the fact that Russia is using Africa to try to experiment a new pattern of disinformation, and that could also be deployed ahead of the US presidential elections. We all know that in the past, the IRA, that’s Internet Research Agency, founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, deployed, was used, as a conduit and as a source for disinformation targeted at the Hillary Clinton campaign. So that could return.Claire: When you say they’re experimenting, have you noticed any experiments that we should be particularly aware of?Philip: I have seen a pattern of disinformation in all kinds. Now, they’re not just talking about the fact that France or the West is bad and Russia is good. Before now, we were seeing this information targeted completely on France. But now, in the Central African Republic, and it’s not just in Central Africa, but across the West African region, we’re seeing more paid stories targeted at the US, saying the US is bad for central Africa, US investors are killing people quietly, and they’re ripping off Africa and what have you. And when they say US, they’re referring to the current, Joe Biden administration.Claire: So they pretty much chased us out of Africa. We were forced to leave Niger.Philip: That’s correct.Claire: This is a big problem to lose your access to a whole continent. I wonder if there’s something that we could or should be doing to counter Wagner’s influence.Philip: I think the best side of it will be on countering Wagner disinformation. I remember talking about this a long time ago, how the EU in particular must come together to counter this because we’re even hearing rumors that Wagner has been helping migrants cross across the Mediterranean from Libya getting into Europe. And in countries where the EU had tried to spend money to stem this migrant flow, the Russians now have a stronghold on the government in these countries. And whatever narrative is been pushed out there in the media in Western Central Africa is targeted at the West in general. So maybe France and the EU will have to look at sponsoring some fact checking, in terms of the information people hear out there, because it’s a lot. It’s enormous. I have done some investigation about this disinformation, here in West and Central Africa, and I can tell you that the major media outlets have been used as channels for this disinformation.Claire: I didn’t see that article.Philip: No. I haven’t written about it yet, but I did the documentary for Al Jazeera last year, going to be next month in August, it’s on disinformation. So that will tell you a lot about what’s going on. It’s a big report coming up.Claire: Good. If you were to hear a foreign policy statement coming from a presidential candidate now, what would you be looking for to see if they understood the problem and see if they had any intelligent thoughts about it? If you get to interview Kamala Harris, for example, next week, what would you ask her?Philip: I would want to know what plans they have for Africa in terms of collaborations and investments. Russia and China have been promising investments in infrastructure, investments in training. And this is where the local governments have been able to fully embrace Russia or China. Because of what they’re promising, even though some of us do know that some of these promises and some of these investments are not so much in the interest of the people , especially looking long term. But the fact that African governments are able to get some bit of monies now, somehow it’s having an effect.Claire: Chinese investments are real, aren’t they? Russia’s not investing as far as I know, but China is making massive investments.Philip: Yes. China is invested in Africa, but again, people are already skeptical about these kinds of investments because they need loans. And with conditions that are very difficult for the local government to meet. But they accept it now because we deal with a lot of corruption in governments, especially across Africa, because they want to see what they can gain now. And then if you’re looking at the future, again, the Russians have come with promises to invest in central Africa, so-called investing because you have Russian companies linked to Wagner that have set up in the central African Republic and are doing business. Some are even hiring the locals.Claire: What are they doing? What kind of companies are they?Philip: The companies that work on gold mining and also on the sale of gold. We have similar companies in Sudan that was set up by Wagner.Claire: So nothing that would actually grow the economy.Philip: Basically, something that will fulfill them in future. It looked like they’re supposed to be paying taxes to the government. I haven’t seen any records that they’re paying these taxes to the government, but they are meant to be companies paying taxes and employing locals .Claire: And have you been following Wagner’s role in Sudan?Philip: Right now, because of the war, we don’t really know exactly what’s going on. But we knew that up north, before now, there was a Wagner company involved in the sale, in fact, the processing and sale of gold. But since the war begun, it’s really hard to tell exactly, how far, how much is going on there.Claire: It’s amazing that the war in Sudan is receiving so little attention internationally.Philip: It’s sad, really sad. Yeah. Really sad.Claire: And it’s just, an unspeakably brutal war.Philip: Indeed. You have many people dying from both sides and even more civilians dying than even when the war started. So it’s really sad that we’re not hearing, even here in Nigeria, where I live, people hardly talk about the war, or even the coverage is not so much there.Claire: One of the reasons, as you said, is because there are no journalists there. And it’s part of the larger problem of the disappearance of foreign news coverage. So people are barely aware that this cataclysmic conflict is underway there.Philip: Yeah, you’re correct. You put it well. And I want to see more because in Africa, we need help in terms of investments in media and investments in journalists. The media in Africa don’t have the resources to do in-depth, long term, long-form reporting. So we oftentimes rely on Western outlets for help. The one problem I’ve had in the past is the fact that, oftentimes, some Western outlets will send a correspondent from Europe or from the US to come to Africa, then spend a few minutes doing interviews, and then they go back and then report on a situation that really doesn’t tell the exact story.Claire: That’s a terrible way to do it. And I’ve seen the effects of it. They’re so inaccurate. We need to fund local journalists, not parachute someone in who’s never been there before and who tries to understand the situation in three weeks.Philip: Yeah. That’s true. That is very true. It doesn’t tell the true story, it doesn’t show the holistic picture of what’s going on there.Claire: There should be a pan-African answer to Al Jazeera—a regional, very large professional news gathering organization. And I wonder who would fund something like that. Is that something the Nigerian government might want to sponsor?Philip: The Nigerian government hasn’t shown so much of desire, even interest in funding the media. Maybe for fear that journalists will become equipped to go after the government itself,Claire: Al Jazeera doesn’t report on Qatar, but they do good reporting in a lot of the world.Philip: So you see, when government is funding you, you just cannot focus on the same government where you are getting resources from.Claire: No, but it would be a really good resource for people who are doing work in other countries in Africa.Philip: I know that the Global Investigative Journalism Network and I’m part of that network, we have come together and then we share some of our work together. And even ideas we share together. But the problem will always remain with the funding.Claire: Yeah. All right. I would love to have you on the podcast again to talk about some of these issues.Philip: I’ll be delighted. Yeah.Claire: Okay. That would be great. I’ll put links to your stories in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. And I’m very glad you’re okay because that was a terrifying experience.Philip: Yeah, the pleasure is mine. I’m lucky.Claire: All right. Speak soonPhilip: Bye bye. Have a good day.Claire: Bye bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe