Transcript: World on the Brink?
Start of Conversation:
Danielle Pletka (00:00:00):
We need to be there. We need to do a good job there. I am hoping that we actually man up and figure out what to do to get- win in Iran. If the Iranian regime went away, oh my God, it would be transformational, and that’s a possibility.
Julia Ioffe (00:00:14):
Isn’t one of the reasons we are in the situation with Iran to begin with is we help pick a guy-
Danielle Pletka (00:00:21):
No.
Julia Ioffe (00:00:22):
... in Iran. It’s a dangerous game, right, when you start, the US from the outside starts picking and choosing leaders.
Opening Remarks
John Donvan (00:00:32):
Hello and welcome to the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival. I’m John Donvan, moderator-in-chief of Open To Debate, and I’m delighted to introduce my guests, Julia Ioffe and Danielle Pletka.
Audience (00:00:42):
Whoo!
John Donvan (00:00:46):
I’m, I’m gonna take just a minute to talk a little bit about this particular event and why it’s a little bit different from some of the others. Um, Open To Debate, some of you may know, is a debate program, the only nonpartisan debate program in the country. We’ve been going since 2006. We’ve put on more than 450 debates, and our goal is to make clear in these polarized times that we can disagree with one another, but we don’t have to end up hating each other at the end of the disagreement.
And the way that we do that is we encourage argument, but we encourage good faith argument, argument that involves listening, actually listening to the other side, not making personal attacks, uh, but actually engaging with the facts and the logic presented by an opponent, and which we think results for those of us who are listening in an ability to have a, a deeper understanding of why people disagree and what the trade-offs are.
This is not typical of our f- our normal format, uh, is an Oxford style format in which we have structured rounds and timings on a clock, uh, rebuttal sections, uh, questions from the audience. It’s very, very structured. This is gonna be much looser, but it’s still going to focus on the areas of disagreement. We wanna understand and examine the nature of the disagreement and where it comes from, and see what we can learn from listening to that, which is not to say that I’m expecting the two of you to disagree on absolutely everything. I think very likely there will be some common ground.
Um, and another thing that I’d like to say about that is we like to encourage your participation, uh, in terms of if, uh, applauding a line that you might hear, or a point that you might hear, please feel free to do that.
It adds to the energy, and I would just like to test that energy now and sort of see where you all land on the applause meter if you could give me a taste of that.
Audience (00:02:31):
Whoo! Whoo!
John Donvan (00:02:37):
Okay, that’s pretty good. I- Another point I wanna make, though, is the opposite is not true. We do, we do not want to hear booing and hissing, uh, whatsoever. So, if you disagree with a point, um, you know, a, a sarcastic snort perhaps, uh-
John Donvan (00:02:53):
... a sardonic chuckle, but we like to keep it positive as much as possible. Um, so I wanna do a little bit of introduction, uh, in more detail with our guests.
So, uh, a- as was introduced, we’re gonna be talking about, uh, the title of This Is The World on the Brink, and what we wanna be understanding particularly at the time of this war with the Iran is what its impact is, uh, both on the United States, perceptions of the United States as a world leader, perceptions of the United States on the part of our allies and as well as our enemies, uh, to understand what it’s doing to the credibility of the US.
That means also that we’ll wander into other topics, but I think a part of, a strong through line is going to be, uh, the war with Iran. And our two speakers, uh, first, I wanna welcome again Danielle Pletka. Danielle, you’re a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You teach US Middle East policy at Georgetown. You also have a podcast titled (laughs) What the Hell is Going On? (laughs) that you co-host with Marc Thiessen, who has also debated with us in the past at Open To Debate.
Julia, you’re a founding partner at Puck. Uh, you’re Puck’s Washington correspondent. As I said to you earlier, you’ve done some amazing, amazing writing, insightful writing about Russia over the years, uh, and your book is titled Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia. Uh, welcome both of you to the conversation. Um-
Danielle Pletka (00:04:17):
You’ve encouraged them.
John Donvan (00:04:19):
... just, just to give, uh, a little, a very, very brief biographical arc to each of you. Uh, I wanna ask you three questions, one at a time. Um, first question is, it’s a little bit of a questionnaire. Uh, Julia, what did you study in college or university?
Julia Ioffe (00:04:36):
History, specifically Soviet history. I was torn between majoring in... Well, I started off pre-med, that’s another story. But I was torn between majoring in comparative literature and history, and I found that the plot lines in the history department, and specifically in Soviet history, were unbeatable.
John Donvan (00:04:55):
And you gave up pre-med to what level of disappointment on the part of your parents?
Julia Ioffe (00:04:59):
Uh, quite high.
Julia Ioffe (00:05:01):
But then not only to give up pre-med, but to go to Soviet history to... You know, my parents were like, “What, you’re reading Pravda on purpose?”
John Donvan (00:05:11):
Danielle?
Danielle Pletka (00:05:12):
Um, I also studied history. I, I wanted to be a doctor, but I was under no illusion that I could, uh, do the math and I also hated chemistry. So, my pathway was not entirely clear. Uh, so I did modern European history.
John Donvan (00:05:26):
Second question, um, Julia, what was your first job in journalism?
Julia Ioffe (00:05:30):
Uh, I was a fact-checker at The New Yorker.
John Donvan (00:05:34):
How did that go?
Julia Ioffe (00:05:35):
Uh, it was really hard. It was like my personal grad school and, um, they put up with me. So it was, it was interesting and hard.
It was a good job.
John Donvan (00:05:46):
... you ended up writing for The New Yorker as well.
Julia Ioffe (00:05:47):
Yes.
John Donvan (00:05:48):
And, uh, Danielle, your first jo- job out of college? In journal, I believe, right?
Danielle Pletka (00:05:52):
Uh, well, I, where I met you, I think, uh, where I was working for an old friend of yours, I was an intern at Reuters in Jerusalem, and then I worked for the Los Angeles Times in Jerusalem, and then after grad school, I worked for a magazine in Washington called Insight Magazine that doesn’t exist anymore at all.
John Donvan (00:06:09):
Did that have anything to do with your writing, or-
Julia Ioffe (00:06:11):
(laughs)
Audience (00:06:11):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:06:12):
You know, it, it... Possibly.
John Donvan (00:06:15):
I’m sure not.
Danielle Pletka (00:06:15):
(laughs)
John Donvan (00:06:16):
That was a terrible question to ask, honestly.
Danielle Pletka (00:06:18):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:06:18):
(laughs)
Audience (00:06:18):
(laughs)
John Donvan (00:06:20):
Final question. One word or one, one sentence answer from each of you. Uh, where were you born, Julia?
Julia Ioffe (00:06:25):
I was born in Moscow in a country that doesn’t exist anymore that’s called the Soviet Union.
Danielle Pletka (00:06:31):
I was born in Melbourne, Australia, country that still exists.
Audience (00:06:34):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:06:35):
Probably better.
John Donvan (00:06:36):
So, so, so there we see the, the l- lovely choreography of, um, of immigration bringing you from opposite ends of the world to where you’re both Americans commenting on America’s role in the world, and i.
S delight to have you doing that. So let’s get started. Uh, I’m gonna come up with some discreet questions that I think we’ll, we’ll work into br- blocks throughout the, the hour, and we’ll see how that works out. It might get a little bit softer in the boundary lines between questions, but we’ll see how it goes.
Um, the first question, has the US lost the Iran war, Julia?
Julia Ioffe (00:07:05):
Yes.
Audience (00:07:06):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:07:08):
Oh, um, I thought it was clear.
Audience (00:07:10):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:07:10):
Uh, well, so, you know, in the first days of, uh, the war after February 28th, when we all woke up to the news that, uh, the US and Israel had launched this war on Iran, uh, the White House’s rationale for going to war kept shifting. Uh, depending who you spoke to at what time, the answers were either we went to war to affect regime change, to get rid of Iran’s nuclear program, once and for all, uh, to degrade Iran’s military capability. Uh, so now we’re in a ceasefire, which as Trump himself said, is actually really not really a, a ceasefire, but a moderate fire. The firing, he said in a Middle Eastern ceasefire just happens at a moderate level as opposed to ceasing. Um, and not only have those three things not been accomplished, the regime is, uh, not only has not been changed, but has become... Well, it has changed.
It’s become worse. It’s become, uh, these entrenched hard line, higher GC generals. Um, we- Iran still has plenty of missiles and drones, so to the, uh, extent that we have degraded their military, it- it’s not really, it’s not clear that that’s having any kind of, um, practical effect. And, uh, Iran is even less willing to give up its nuclear program now, uh, because a fourth thing has happened is Iran has learned that they can unilaterally close the Strait of Hormuz and choke off about a quarter of the world’s, um, oil and gas supply, uh, or the, the transit thereof, and, uh, that’s even better in some ways than a nuclear weapon.
So, and not only did they lose leverage in... Not only did they not lose leverage in the course of this war, not only were they not put onto the back foot where they felt that they had to negotiate a deal with us, they have actually gained additional leverage, uh, and become more entrenched at, at, uh, as a result of this war.
John Donvan (00:09:12):
So D- Danielle, the question is, uh, has the US lost the Iran war?
Danielle Pletka (00:09:16):
So my answer isn’t going to be no for a very straightforward reason. The war’s not over. I don’t think we know how this comes out and, and that can be an additional criticism of the way that the president has managed, right? Because that was, you know, a lot of what you said, which is, uh, that the president has never stood up, you know, like we are sitting here, and spoken to the American people in a clear and decisive way.
When the President of the United States fails to do that, you don’t have a nice skeleton on which you can hang things, on which policymakers and military leaders can hang things. And that is a problem because the president’s been jumping around. Now, that’s a problem for our own policymakers, but it’s also a problem for our alum- allies and it’s a problem for our enemies.
That being said, I don’t think that a country that... And the Middle East is my area of specialty. This is what I, uh, what I, uh, do in, in the real world. Um, I don’t think that a country that absorbs 13,000-plus strikes is better off than it was before. Um, I don’t miss Ayatollah Khamenei. I’m not entirely sure about flat Mojtaba, uh, but, uh, but I don’t think that we can make the argument that we know who exactly is going to be in charge in Iran.
And again, you know, I think if we, if we stop right now, I feel comfortable in being very critical of this. I- Because very few wars survive the initial plan, very few wars, frankly, survive even a, a clear articulation of policy by a president, but you do have to have something you can describe as victory, and I’m not entirely sure what that would be.
I think Iran’s missile program is terribly degraded. I think they have very little access to their nuclear weapons program. At the same time, they can reconstitute it, and this question of Hormuz cannot be ignored or brushed over as if it’s nothing, because it’s very important, and we have dealt with this. We have, uh... The, the line I’ve been using, and I- I- I- I- because I find it describes this really well is that they have played a weak hand extremely well, and we have played a strong hand weakly.
John Donvan (00:11:31):
You’re just saying you can’t call it yet.
Danielle Pletka (00:11:33):
You, you can’t call it yet and, you know, Donald Trump’s capriciousness plays both ways, right? Yes, he can be putting up with all sorts of rubbish from the Iranian government, from his own interlocutors, from his own negotiators. He can do all of that. At the same time, he could decide, you know, in half an hour, “I’m not putting up with this anymore. We’re gonna go all the way.” And there is a plan to do that. He just keeps stopping the military along the way.
John Donvan (00:12:00):
Julia, in, in a, in a theore- uh, theoretical resurgence of the war around the part of the US military, do you see the potential for US success in the end?
Julia Ioffe (00:12:09):
Well, I think it depends what does success look like. Um, you know, the m- anybody who serves or has served in the military will tell you that they are a tool. They are there to, uh... The military is a means to affect an end. Uh, they are there to accomplish a political goal that cannot be accomplished through other means, and right now, we don’t know what that goal is.
Is it to reopen a body of water that was opened before the war began? Is it to, um, uh, is it to degrade their missile capabilities more? Is it to affect regime change? I don’t know how you do that without actually going in. Um, and, you know, to Danielle’s point about you can’t call it yet, and I, I agree on, on one hand you can’t because there’s a ceasefire and Donald Trump clearly doesn’t want to restart the war because he knows what it means for him politically, and every day that goes by we get one day closer to the midterms and one day closer to 2028, and he very clearly has the domestic political effects, um, in his mind as he’s making these decisions.
The problem is that we’re not at war, but we’re not not at war, which and, um, we could stay in, in this kind of weird middle ground where it’s not a ceasefire because the fire hasn’t ceased. It’s just... So, we’re in a moderate fire. And then we, if we never really call it, then we really are in this weird other kind of forever war if you think about it.
John Donvan (00:13:48):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:13:52):
I think, uh, I think the, the, the one place where people go wrong, and, you know, none of us, neither of us are talking to, to Donald Trump, you know, every moment, although he does spend a lot of time talking to the press. Uh, but I don’t think he does care about the midterms, and that... Because I don’t think he cares about the midterms, I think if he would have, he would not have endorsed John Cornyn’s opponent if he (laughs), if he cared about the midterms, because I think he put the Senate at risk, uh, in, in so doing. Uh, I don’t think that’s first and foremost in his mind, people like to describe the president as extraordinarily self-involved and selfish, and I think that that militates against the idea that he cares about the midterms. I also think that he’s not especially worried about the House and the Senate.
Uh, I think he reckons, uh, it’s gonna come out how it comes out. He’s also said he’s not even that worried about, about the economic indicators. He may be wrong about that and he may be lying about that, but he has certainly said that. So I, I think that those are not going to be the factors that, that weigh into how he goes forward. The problem is I can’t tell you what those factors are going to be. I’m hoping that he starts to listen to people who I know who are persuading him, “We need to finish this up.”
John Donvan (00:15:02):
The two of you are really agreeing on this.
Danielle Pletka (00:15:04):
Uh-
Julia Ioffe (00:15:05):
Well, I don’t, I don’t agree that... So, um, I do... You know, as hard as it is to believe that Donald Trump would ever lie-
Audience (00:15:15):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:15:15):
... um, I think he’s lying because if, uh, if he really truly didn’t care about the midterms, he wouldn’t be spending as much time putting his thumb on the scale of various races, endorsing various opponents, having, you know, throwing his political weight behind people who haven’t been 300% loyal to him.
Uh, I think he cares, uh, the midterms in the, in, to the, uh, extent that he wants to maintain, you know, uh, his iron-fisted grip on the Republican Party. I don’t think he cares about the economic situation for the rest of us. I think he’s gonna be just fine.
John Donvan (00:15:48):
Can, can the war in Iran with Iran lead to major change in the Middle East? And I’ll let your... Middle East, as you said, is your specialty, I’ll let you define major change, and see how you answer that question.
Danielle Pletka (00:16:00):
So, look, I, I think actually, a- a- and, and I, I said this many times, I think that first of all, w- we have 50, 60 years of really good experience with what conventional diplomacy and what conventional approaches to the region have resulted in, which is, you know, not, not great. Um, and, and so in his first term, President Trump had a different approach to the region, and it resulted in the Abraham Accords. It was transformational, and I think it’s fair to call it transformational. There were a lot of us who were, you know, nerd-ly think tank experts who frowned at how he did it and who he did it with, and... But nonetheless, I think we can’t argue with the results that Israel and, uh, many Arab countries made peace, and that it was a genuine peace, right? Peace between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is better than the peace between Israel and Egypt at this point.
So, you know, it’s- there’s nothing wrong with an unconventional approach. If you think of it that way, and you say to yourself, for the last 47 years, Iran has been a malign force, not just towards its own people, and let’s not forget what happened earlier this year - 42,000 Iranians were murdered by this regime. That’s not something to sneeze at, no matter what.
John Donvan (00:17:17):
During protests.
Danielle Pletka (00:17:18):
During protests, exactly. And, uh, and so i- if you think about the possibility, right, that there wouldn’t be this regime, or that there would be a better version of this regime in the future, it would change the entire Middle East. Think about it. Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, the so-called Hashd al-Sha’bi, the popular mobilization forces that exist in Iraq. These are all disruptive, terrorists, corrupt forces that, that, that destabilize the region.
If the Iranian regime went away, oh my God, it would be transformational. Now, there’s the other side that you described, which is they end up being worse and it ends up being worse, and we do nothing, and we wipe our hands, and then... And that’s a possibility, but we do need to recognize that there is, you know, I don’t want to call it a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow because in the Middle East, there’s never a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but, you know, something that looks better.
Julia Ioffe (00:18:17):
Yeah. I mean, that all sounds wonderful in theory, and I think one of the, one of the problems has been is that there are people who sit in DC in think tanks and, uh-
Danielle Pletka (00:18:28):
And journalists.
Julia Ioffe (00:18:29):
And journalists-
Danielle Pletka (00:18:29):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:18:29):
... and who think about, you know, how- l- let’s make the Middle East better. And what if we just got rid of Saddam Hussein and, you know, and Ir- and m- turn Iraq into a flourishing liberal democracy after our own image. And then it turns out, oh my God, we just made it way worse.
Danielle Pletka (00:18:45):
No, we didn’t. 25, you know, millions and millions of Iraqis live in freedom. If you disagreed with Saddam Hussein, he would come to your house or have someone come to your house and cut your tongue out. That doesn’t happen in Iraq anymore. I’ve been in Iraq, was in Iraq last year. I- Is it, is it Jeffersonian as I would have wanted? Uh-uh, okay?
But is it much better than it was? Would 90 million people in Iran love to live under a regime like that? You bet they would. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there’s... It’s everything’s relative.
Julia Ioffe (00:19:20):
The best-made plans disintegrate the second, the opening salvo, uh, rings out, right? And I think we come up with these plans of, like, wouldn’t it be better if, in Washington, but then it turns out reality doesn’t cooperate. And yes, would it be better if there were no, uh, regime, uh, like this in Iran? 100%. They are an evil, horrible regime.
But the problem is that if you, you know, if you go to shoot the Ayatollah, you best not miss, right? Or, like, the regime. They, they didn’t mess with the Ayatollah, I will say. But, uh, but it, it didn’t make it any better. In fact, it may have made it worse. And I just think back to my neck of the woods, and I remember June 2023, so three years ago, when, uh, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military group basically launched a coup, an armed military coup and started marching toward Moscow, and at the last minute lost his nerve, and eventually-
John Donvan (00:20:20):
Lost his life.
Danielle Pletka (00:20:20):
... lost his life.
Julia Ioffe (00:20:21):
Well, probably totally coincidentally, right?
Audience (00:20:23):
(laughs)
John Donvan (00:20:24):
For, for those who-
Julia Ioffe (00:20:24):
And who among us... Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:20:25):
(laughs)
John Donvan (00:20:26):
Yeah. You should explain how he, how he passed.
Julia Ioffe (00:20:27):
So, he, he got on a plane, and it blew up, and we don’t really do... We can’t even imagine what happened.
Danielle Pletka (00:20:34):
We’ll never know.
Julia Ioffe (00:20:34):
We’ll never know. (laughs) We’re all looking for the guy who did it, you know? (laughs) So, but the point is, I remember when the coup ended, and, uh, everybody was saying, “Oh my gosh, this has terribly weakened Putin. He has never been weaker.” And I thought, well, I said, “What are you talking about?” The only other person who could have taken him out, he had a committed and vicious force of tens of thousands of battle-hardened, kind of sociopathic men who were deeply loyal to him, who were ready to, you know, their- lay their lives down and march on the Kremlin. Uh, that was the only possible countervailing force against Putin, and they just lost. So there are fewer threats against Putin regime than there were, you know, oh, a day before the regime started. So if anything, the failure of that coup strengthened Putin.
And I think we’re in a similar situation with Iran.
Going back to what we started with, uh, you know, about what the political goals are, what the political aims are, and what would victory look like for the US, how would we define it for ourselves? We can’t even define that. The Iranians have a very simple one, and it’s just to survive, and to s- and to say no, right? And, and if they survive with a few fewer missiles and a few fewer drones and a few fewer Iranians because they keep executing them, uh, as the war went on and they were under military blackout, they don’t care because they still... So in their minds, they’re winning.
John Donvan (00:22:04):
Is the lesson of the war so far that that regime cannot be removed?
Danielle Pletka (00:22:08):
No. You know, one of the things that I think we could probably all agree about, probably even in this room, is that we are, uh, really bad at predicting when regimes are going to fall, and, uh, and, and are often surprised and, and some-
John Donvan (00:22:22):
In both directions.
Danielle Pletka (00:22:23):
In both directions. And I would say, you know, as somebody who, who spent, who spent a decade in the US government with a security clearance, yeah, those guys don’t know any better either. So, uh, so, you know, I don’t, I don’t think the answer is this regime can’t survive, and I would go further than that.
Um, you know, uh, our allies in Europe who have, uh, embassies in, in Iran, and we do not have an embassy in Iran, but, for obvious reasons, but, uh, but our allies, uh, who do, their ambassadors come through Washington pretty regularly and kind of debrief with folks that they know, and they say the same thing. You know, this regime is hanging by a thread. This regime is profoundly unpopular, this re- yada, yada, yada, yada. So, you know, could it go? Yeah, it could, but it hasn’t. And, and this-
John Donvan (00:23:13):
I, I guess I’m asking, is the fact that it hasn’t, does that tell us something about its durability?
Danielle Pletka (00:23:18):
It’s, look, it’s, it’s, it’s a system. A system is different from a dictator, you know? Uh, it, it really is. The Soviet Union was a system. You know, you got rid of one guy, wasn’t necessarily all gonna collapse. And the Islamic Republic of Iran has been there for 47 years. And, you know, this is an argument that happens even among people who agree, who think we did absolutely the right thing. I did, I do think we did the right thing, but, but, who agree that, that it would be great for these guys to go. The fight was, okay, and if they go, will it be something better or something worse? And one of the lessons I’ve learned from Iraq is you really wanna have a good idea, or you wanna have a guy, you wanna have something, and this is a challenge for us.
John Donvan (00:24:00):
Same question to you about the durability of the regime there.
Julia Ioffe (00:24:03):
Um, I, I think it’s true that we don’t know, but right now, it seems quite durable. Um, it seems like it’s... It’s hard. As a former pre-med and as somebody who’s descended from a long line of doctors, my little sister, the pride of the family is an oncologist.
Danielle Pletka (00:24:20):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:24:20):
And I would say this regime is resistant to chemo so far, you know?
John Donvan (00:24:26):
Um, should US allies be supporting the US in this effort?
Danielle Pletka (00:24:31):
Sure. Of course they should. I mean, that’s what... Isn’t that what ally means?
Julia Ioffe (00:24:38):
I mean, they should and they could have perhaps if we-
Danielle Pletka (00:24:41):
And, and they are. They- And, and they are. I mean, that... We should be fair.
Julia Ioffe (00:24:45):
Well, also, which allies?
Danielle Pletka (00:24:47):
Our European allies-
John Donvan (00:24:48):
Right now, let’s focus on Europe.
Danielle Pletka (00:24:48):
... are really helping us.
Julia Ioffe (00:24:50):
Okay. Because I was gonna say, some of our allies-
John Donvan (00:24:52):
In Middle East are. Yeah.
Julia Ioffe (00:24:53):
... are. And some of our allies in the Middle East were like, “Let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s do this.” Uh, the allies in Europe, I think-
John Donvan (00:25:00):
Are, are you only talking about Israel, or are you talking about the Arab states as well?
Julia Ioffe (00:25:03):
Um, mostly talking about Israel, but I think some of the Arab states, the- some of the Gulf states were, um, supportive. But I think, I think what ally means is that it’s a reciprocal relationship, and it’s hard, you know, when... It’s hard at the very least for these allies domestically speaking when our president has been beating up on them, insulting them, uh, emasculating them every chance he gets, then launches this war without consulting with them, without bringing them on board, and then turns around, and says, “Hey, why aren’t you helping me clean up the mess I’ve made? Uh, and if you don’t, I’m gonna kick you in the teeth again.”
That’s not really allyship, that’s bullying.
Danielle Pletka (00:25:48):
I do think that indulging one’s own, you know, rhetoric and, and, and the kind of bullying that has happened, um, is useful up to a point, but at a certain moment goes too far. Um, but I would say the same for our European allies. You know, this is the problem. Uh, Donald Trump also responds to a population, right? Uh, they respond to their population. Part of the thing that, I think, irritates people like us who believe in NATO, who believe in alliances is, i- is that, that, you know, you, you have to show leadership. And when your people, you know, are, are not excited about this, then you need to tell them about why they should be excited about this. This was one of the arguments that I made about Joe Biden, and the fact that he really never gave a major speech about Ukraine.
Now, of course, we understand a little better why he didn’t, but nonetheless, he didn’t. You need to lead, you need to tell people what you’re doing. And insofar as the Donald Trump’s, uh, voting base doesn’t think that NATO is amazing, you need to show some leadership. And yes, you can get your little jollies and criticizing, and I agree that, that, that sometimes it goes too far.
On the other hand, the same is true for our European allies. But I would go further with our European allies. They are closer to Iran, right? A, so they are actually in Iran’s line of fire. We are seeing Iran now paying hoodlums, criminal gangs, and terrorists inside Europe to murder other Europeans, right? We are seeing that it- that in fact, plenty of Europeans are being held hostage by the Iranians, not to speak of the fact that the Europeans also have a stake in this so-called international order that we believe in.
There’s another problem there as well, right? Our European allies haven’t treated this alliance as an alliance, right? They have treated it as, as a dependency. And my argument has long been the US should be in NATO because it’s good for the United States, and if we end up paying more and they’re deadbeats, that’s a shame, and they shouldn’t be. And every Secretary General of the- of NATO and every President of the United States, regardless of party, has criticized them, and yet they never lived up to their, their commitments. This is part of the challenge. They are now starting to live up to those commitments, and I think his bullying is part of that. And so, you know, again, a mixed bag, but I do think that when Keir Starmer and, and Macron indulge themselves by saying, “This is against international law,” or, “We’re not going to be helping you at all.”
That’s A, obnoxious, unnecessary, even if they’re pandering to their local population, and it’s not true. They are helping us now. And that’s... So, it’s like the worst of all worlds. They’re doing the right thing, but they don’t want to own up to it. That irritates me even more.
Julia Ioffe (00:28:36):
Yeah, democracy’s kind of a bitch, huh? You have to answer to your-
Audience (00:28:38):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:28:38):
That’s what I would-
Julia Ioffe (00:28:39):
... to your voters.
Danielle Pletka (00:28:42):
... tell my friends in America.
Julia Ioffe (00:28:42):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:28:43):
Yes.
Julia Ioffe (00:28:43):
Yeah.
So look, the- great arguments, right? Iran, uh, maybe is a problem for Europe, too. And Europeans have, uh, they have some relationships with Iran that we don’t have. They could have helped on the diplomatic side. Great arguments. Would have been even better if Trump and his, uh, administration went to the Europeans and laid some of the groundwork for them to help instead of-
Danielle Pletka (00:29:07):
I mean, like the way we withdrew from Afghanistan and went to the Europeans-
Julia Ioffe (00:29:10):
Oh, that was terrible.
Danielle Pletka (00:29:10):
... [inaudible 00:29:11].
Julia Ioffe (00:29:11):
That was terrible.
Danielle Pletka (00:29:12):
Uh-huh.
Julia Ioffe (00:29:12):
That was terrible. I mean-
Danielle Pletka (00:29:12):
But it wasn’t Donald Trump who did that.
Julia Ioffe (00:29:13):
I- W- Are we talking about Afghanistan? We can talk about Afghanistan.
Danielle Pletka (00:29:14):
No, you’re just-
Julia Ioffe (00:29:15):
We can talk about Afghanistan.
Danielle Pletka (00:29:16):
... talking about democracy being a very unpleasant, difficult thing to manage.
Julia Ioffe (00:29:20):
Again, if you want to, um, and by the way, the messy with- horrific withdrawal from Afghanistan was part of the reason that Putin decided to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Danielle Pletka (00:29:32):
Absolutely.
Julia Ioffe (00:29:33):
And what the Biden administration learned from that is you have to then get your ducks in a row with your allies before, during, and after this happens. Um, again, great arguments for why Europeans should have potentially or could have potentially been on board with this operation, but you can’t just, after the fact, say, “Hey, here’s why you should help us clean up the mess we made.”
John Donvan (00:29:55):
There was a perception that, uh, that, uh, Barack Obama kind of stepped back from leadership in, uh, in the Middle East and, uh, that for a period of time, the So- the Russian, I was gonna say the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, uh, began to be resurgent in its impact there, uh, through the Syrian Civil War.
Um, i- i- in the, in the big picture now, do you see the US reasserting itself as a military presence and, I’m sorry, as a political and influential presence in the Middle East, or is this a temporary period, and some other power is gonna step in?
Danielle Pletka (00:30:27):
Who do you want to answer?
John Donvan (00:30:27):
I’ll take it to you first.
Danielle Pletka (00:30:29):
Um, uh, every president for... God. I mean, every president I can remember has campaigned, uh, as, you know, you were a veteran reporter, I remember on, you know, I’m gonna have, what is... What did Barack Obama say? Nation building here at home, or George W. Bush-
Julia Ioffe (00:30:45):
Yeah, but to
Danielle Pletka (00:30:45):
I’m gonna have a more, I’m gonna have a more humble foreign policy. And every single one of them has ended up in a war in the Middle East, right? Every single one of them, and nobody has wanted one. And the result is not so much that people think to themselves, we need to fix the Middle East, because fixing the Middle East is so bloody hard, right? (laughs) Why should I do that? And everybody who tries ends up being stymied. So, they’ve wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, right? Remember the pivot to Asia was... The pivot to Asia is, is, think about it physically.
You’re turning your body around, right? And you’re putting, giving your back to the Middle East, and you’re facing towards Asia. Lots of good reasons to do it, right? The problem is that, you know, they keep sucking us back in. But I would say in addition to sort of the cliches about how we always wanna get out of the region, we need to get out of the region, we need to pay attention to other things, is, “Well, no, we can’t because it’ll leave a vacuum and the Chinese and the Russians will fill it.” And I think the Iranians are learning right now just how much the Chinese and the Russians are filling it, which is not at all, right? They’re fair-weather friends, right? They were fair-weather friends for Assad as long as they could go in, get some money, kill some people, do some fun stuff, let the Wagner Group get a good, you know, its jolly’s off.
But when push came to shove, we noticed that Assad is living in Moscow, and they did not save his bacon. Same for the Iranians.
Julia Ioffe (00:32:08):
They’re busy elsewhere.
Danielle Pletka (00:32:10):
Yeah. They are, but they, that- this started even before Crimea.
Julia Ioffe (00:32:13):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:32:13):
Remember, Syria started in 2011, right? John Kerry invited the Russians in even before Crimea. Uh, so my... Anyway, I’m giving you a really long-winded, s- sorry, guys, answer, which is to say-
John Donvan (00:32:25):
It’s very thoughtful. It’s fine.
Danielle Pletka (00:32:27):
Yeah. But, you know, I, I work at a Think Tank, sorry.
Danielle Pletka (00:32:29):
But, uh, but, but honestly speaking, no, of course, nobody’s gonna fill the vacuum. And that, by the way, is worse because then some of our friends in the region make their own decisions, like, for example, the Saudis deciding they should go to war in Yemen. That was a bad idea, right? They did not win. They did not do a good job. We don’t want that. We need to be there. We need to do a good job there, and that’s part of the reason why I’m hoping that we actually man up and figure out what to do to get- win in Iran.
John Donvan (00:33:01):
Let’s reset to a new question. Is the Iran war good for Russia?
Julia Ioffe (00:33:08):
It’s a mixed bag. So, on one hand, oil prices have gone up. That’s the lifeblood of the Russian federal budget, and therefore, its economy and its fight in Ukraine. The US has also lifted some oil sanctions on Russia in a, in a bid to l- um, ease up the oil supply-
John Donvan (00:33:29):
And, and how impactful were those sanctions when in place?
Julia Ioffe (00:33:32):
Very impactful. Uh, increasingly impactful. Um, you know, to the point where in January, February, it looked like the Russian economy was teetering on the edge of a cliff. They had already hit a budget deficit that they weren’t slated to hit till the very end of the year. Uh, inflation had shot up. People were complaining about... You know, social media was just filled with, uh, videos of people complaining about grocery store prices. Um, then there was an internet shutdown. Like, people are really unhappy in Russia right now, and the economy is not doing well.
Um, now the, the surge in oil prices is letting them kind of paper over the deficit, but it’s still a temporary fix and, um, the Russian... The fundamentals are so- are not strong. At the same time, as Cliff Gaddy once, uh, said of the Russian economy, “It’s a cockroach economy.”
It’s incredibly rudimentary and, uh, hardy, and it will- and it can survive in some form. Um, so it’s helped, but it’s also, you know, the Iranians are, uh, a close ally of the, of the Russian regime. It’s where they got their horrible drones. The Shahed drones came from Iran originally, and the- then they opened up factories to manufacture them inside Russia. Um, and the, the loss of the Assad regime, the weakening of Hezbollah, the weakening of Iran is not great for Russia because Russia’s co- Russia’s game is to take us down a few notches.
So, um, it’s a... But at the same time, the US is bogged down in Iran. It’s focused mostly on Iran. It is, uh, less and less focused on Ukraine. It’s n- no longer trying to force a deal between Ukraine and Russia. We’re distracted, and we’re spending so much money on Iran that we, you know, if before there was an argument in the president’s base, and I would say, on the left in the US as well of why are we spending money to send weapons and financial aid to Ukraine when we should be spending it at home, now we’re spending on, on the war in Iran, so all the more so, why should we be helping Ukraine?
So, in that sense, it’s been good for Russia. It’s- It- Things are never kind of cut and dry.
Danielle Pletka (00:36:02):
One of the things that I’ve been really happy to see, uh, is, uh, is first of all, the Russians look like crap allies. I can say crap on PBS, right?
John Donvan (00:36:13):
That’s... That word will pass.
Julia Ioffe (00:36:14):
Will pass.
Danielle Pletka (00:36:14):
Okay.
John Donvan (00:36:15):
But you’re right at the-
Danielle Pletka (00:36:15):
But, but nothing else.
John Donvan (00:36:15):
... line.
Danielle Pletka (00:36:15):
I’m, I’m...
Julia Ioffe (00:36:15):
(laughs)
Audience (00:36:15):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:36:18):
No more. That’s it. I stop there. But no, the- I... And everybody is looking at them, going, “You’re helping them? You’re not helping them.” Ditto, by the way, for the Chinese, right? Who are, yeah, they’re providing, they’re, they’re refueling a little bit, they’re kind of complaining when nobody’s listening, but that’s all, right? They’re really not saving anybody’s bacon. So that’s bad for them, and I- I’m happy to see that. Uh, but if we get bogged down, you know, sure, then they’ll say America’s feckless, they can’t finish the job, they can’t do anything, and then they’re happy again.
M- My little silver lining here, though, as well, is I’ve been really happy to see the Ukrainians working with our Gulf allies, talking to them about drone manufacturing, teaching them lessons learned from the war with Russia. That is just a slap in the face of Vladimir Putin, and it makes, it warms my heart to see it.
Audience (00:37:08):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:37:08):
It, it, it does.
Julia Ioffe (00:37:12):
Well, and it’s also Ukraine is, uh, I think volunt- well, Ukraine is also volunteering to help us with our drone technology, which is, I think, a slap in the face of our vice president and certain other people who have been saying that Ukraine is nothing but, you know, uh, a leech and, uh, doesn’t say thank you, and it just takes, takes, takes, it doesn’t give.
Turns out-
Danielle Pletka (00:37:36):
Everybody loves to hate J.D. Vance. It’s, it’s an easy applause line, but-
Julia Ioffe (00:37:40):
(laughs)
Audience (00:37:40):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:37:41):
Uh, but-
Julia Ioffe (00:37:42):
He’s so likable. But so they, they, um, he really... You know, they, they really are showing that, um, when it comes to this new kind of warfare, there’s, you know, they’ve learned a lot, and they have a lot to teach both us and our allies. I think-
Danielle Pletka (00:37:58):
And we have a drone agreement. We have, we have a drone manufacturing agreement with them. We have intel sharing, intel sharing agreement with them. So, I mean, those things, those things, and those things are happening in the Trump administration, and they’re good.
Julia Ioffe (00:38:08):
And, and-
Danielle Pletka (00:38:09):
There are silver linings.
Julia Ioffe (00:38:10):
Yeah. And, um, the Russians are helping the Iranians with targeting information on, uh, U- US, uh, forces in the region, US, which, which is-
Danielle Pletka (00:38:20):
Appalling.
Julia Ioffe (00:38:21):
Poopy.
Danielle Pletka (00:38:22):
Yeah.
Audience (00:38:22):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:38:22):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:38:22):
Um, uh, (laughs) but I, I agree with, I agree (laughs) with Danielle in, in that, you know, the argument up until, I would say, um, 2022 and, um, I don’t know what happened in 2022, but the argument, uh, that Russia made to the world was, look at America, do you really wanna be allies with these guys? They talk a big game about values, about allies, then every two to four years they have an election, everything goes topsy-turvy, and they decide they don’t wanna come to your aid anymore.
Whereas we will send tr- that was part of the, um, part of the play in Syria in sending boots on the ground, putting boots on the ground in Syria in support of a local ally, say, “We are not fair-weather friends like the Americans. We will actually go to bat for you. We will be there when it matters forever.” Uh, now it turns out they’re stretched so thin in Ukraine, and they’re not doing well in Ukraine that, uh, they can’t, they physically can’t, and it turns out, like Danielle said, that they’re pretty poopy allies, too.
John Donvan (00:39:33):
We, we’ve done, uh, Open To Debate a number of debates ab- about Putin’s ambitions, and one of the questions that often comes up and, and is debated because people push back on both sides is whether he really does have aspirations for greater territorial expansion beyond Ukraine.
Uh, w- what do you think on, on that question, and, and do you also think that he’s capable?
Danielle Pletka (00:39:54):
I mean, uh, it, it... Julia knows much more about this than I do, but I mean, I think, I think all evidence suggests that he has, that he would love to reconstitute. I’m still torn between its, whether he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire, but definitely one or the other. Uh, but on the other hand-
Julia Ioffe (00:40:12):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:40:15):
Exactly. I love saying that. Uh, but, but, you know, here’s the question, you know, if you’re Vladimir Putin with your big, big eyes, you know, and your big czar-like ambitions, and you can’t beat the damn Ukrainians, those Nazis, right? What are they? Nazi Jews, or-
John Donvan (00:40:31):
You wanna be clear that you’re not actually literally calling Ukrainians Nazis-
Danielle Pletka (00:40:34):
I’m ba-
John Donvan (00:40:34):
Please.
Danielle Pletka (00:40:35):
I think everybody knows that I meant-
John Donvan (00:40:35):
You can be misunderstood in this context.
Danielle Pletka (00:40:36):
No, no, no. No. Uh, no, I am not a Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine.
Julia Ioffe (00:40:41):
(laughs)
Audience (00:40:46):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:40:47):
Um, got, got a good Republican line in there for you. Uh, but, uh, no, I, I think, uh, I think if the fact that they can’t even do this suggests that his larger ambitions are, you know, largely pipe dreams, but I’d love to, (laughs) love to know what you think.
Julia Ioffe (00:41:00):
So I think, I think there are, uh, degrees of, you know, of wishlists of what he has. I think would he love more territory? Absolutely. With what army? That’s another question. Um, one of the goals of the Ukraine war was to prove the hollowness of Western American-led institutions, like the UN, like especially NATO, and I think one of the discussions that was happening in Moscow earlier this year was let’s, uh, attack Estonia, let’s attack one of the Baltic NATO states in... And you can attack in different ways, right? Uh, you can send in drones, which they’ve been probing, uh, for months and months now. They’ve been messing in Lithuanian airspace, Latvian airspace, Estonian airspace-
Danielle Pletka (00:41:54):
Romania now.
Julia Ioffe (00:41:55):
Yeah, Romania, uh, I believe a Dutch airspace, Danish. Like and, and the question is when does Article V get invoked? What is enough to trigger Article V? And if it’s never triggered because who wants to send French and American and Italian boys to die for a village in Eastern Estonia, then NATO doesn’t really exist, and Putin will have accomplished its goals, even if 98% of his army is bogged down in Ukraine, right?
You can send a few, uh, little green men, or a few drones, and just show that they’re not serious. They’re never gonna invoke this thing. So that’s number one.
Number two is if you look at Russia’s near abroad as, uh, scholars of the region call the, kind of the former Soviet states, the, the more immediate kind of post-Soviet neighbors of Russia, a lot of them have taken the lesson of, of Ukraine to heart. For example, Georgia, which has a big, beautiful George W. Bush highway leading from the main airport in Tbilisi into the center of town. There, the Georgians love Americans. They were some of our best allies in the region. Now, they are continuously flipping us the bird, insulting our diplomats publicly, uh, have cracked down on civil dissent, put in Russian-style laws, basically copy-pasted, uh, have become very Russian-friendly, and they were able to do that by scaring the population, and saying, “We’ll never be able to... If we are re-invaded again, like we were in 2008, we’ll never be able to do what Ukraine has done. We don’t have the territory, we don’t have the people. They’ll be in Tbilisi in 10 minutes.”
Uh, you have other countries like Kazakhstan, like, uh, um, Armenia, Azerbaijan, they’re, they’re trying to figure out how they can... They know the US isn’t going to come save them, but they also will always be neighbors with Russia, and they don’t want a Ukraine-style scenario, and it has definitely changed their behavior. So, has he conquered those territories? No. Has he brought them to heal a little bit in terms of their ambitions to join the EU or NATO? Like Georgia, absolutely. Unfortunately.
John Donvan (00:44:22):
Does he enjoy any kind of organic popularity?
Julia Ioffe (00:44:26):
Any? Sure. Yeah. But it-
John Donvan (00:44:29):
But, but, on the part of whom in the population?
Julia Ioffe (00:44:32):
So, what pollsters will tell you in, to the extent that they can do any kind of real polling in Russia, which is a real kind of, uh, question, the kind of conventional wisdom has been that it’s 25/50/25. 25% of people are gung-ho about, about the war, no peace talks, you know, take, nuke Kyiv, nuke Paris. I mean, I, I have such a potty mouth, and I would like credit for filtering myself as much as I have today.
Julia Ioffe (00:45:04):
So, um-
John Donvan (00:45:05):
He has a total stranglehold on the media there, does he not?
Julia Ioffe (00:45:08):
Oh, of course. And, and it’s not just, it’s not about the media; it’s the fact that he has a stranglehold on the population through fear, because the country is now run completely by the FSB, and the things that people have gone to jail for are insane and have terrified people into submission. So, uh, most recently, for example, there were, um, three third-graders in a Russian city that were playing in the main square on the- this installation of cubes, uh, that were decorated to celebrate Victory Day, victory over Nazi Germany. They were playing on these cubes, one of these cubes broke, and now the state authorities are threatening to take these children away from their families and place them into orphanages.
Uh, there was a famous case a couple years ago where a 12-year-old girl drew a, um, a picture in her class that said no war. She was taken away from her father. Her father was beaten and tortured by the FSB, thrown in jail for two years. She was in an orphanage. They could only be reunited after having escaped Russia after his prison sentence. People are going to jail for wear- accidentally wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag. People are scared to talk on the phone. People are going to jail for private phone conversations.
So, um, there is a part of the- of Russian society that really does support this, and, uh, sociologists will tell you it’s generally older men, for whom it’s a way to kind of show a masculinity that they don’t feel they have anymore. They can’t go down and fight anymore, but they can sit in their armchairs and yell at the TV that they really should nuke Kyiv and Washington while they’re at it. But, um, I think the vast majority of the Russian population does not like the war, has found it disruptive, expensive, bloody, uh, they don’t like the social outcomes, the, the kind of crackdown on their freedoms for... Like, now people don’t have mobile internet in huge parts of Russia anymore, and they say it’s to protect them from drones.
Well, they’re not doing a very good job of protecting them from drones. Uh, so people are quite unhappy, but whether or not... Uh, how they want the war to end is a different question, and a lot of sociology has found, or polling has found, that they want, much like Americans who were against the war in Iraq, they still don’t want it, the war to end with them being the losers.
John Donvan (00:47:38):
Danielle, uh, the U- United States at all times lives in a dangerous, complicated world in which there are all sorts of trade-offs and always has to be worried about its position. Does it need to be more worried now than normally? Is this a difficult and dangerous time in a particular way?
Danielle Pletka (00:47:55):
Uh, there are 98 different ways to answer that question, and, and to answer it, you know, really fairly, uh, uh, I would say absolutely we need to be worried a- about our position in the world. We have never faced an adversary like the People’s Republic of China. We faced the Soviet Union for 70 years, but they were poor, right? Uh, and-
Julia Ioffe (00:48:14):
And incompetent.
Danielle Pletka (00:48:14):
Uh, uh, uh, the Chinese are less competent than, than, than you think. Uh, just because their stuff on Amazon is kind of-
John Donvan (00:48:20):
Are you gonna just disagree about that?
Danielle Pletka (00:48:24):
(laughs) Come on, get mad! Uh, so I mean, we’ve never faced an adversary like the Chinese and, and, you know, much as what Julia described about Russian foreign policy being, uh, an element of it being this insidious support for, uh, for not just bad elements, because the, the, the, the Russians, like the Chinese, like the North Koreans, like the Iranians, right? They, they actually... They may have their favorites, but they are all about pouring f- oil on the flames of disagreement. They are all about discrediting-
Julia Ioffe (00:48:58):
You should invite them to Open To Debate.
Danielle Pletka (00:49:01):
Yeah, there you go.
John Donvan (00:49:01):
(laughs)
Danielle Pletka (00:49:02):
Uh, (laughs) they, they’d totally be here like that. Um, uh, they’re, they’re all about, you know, they’re all about discrediting institutions of democracy, right? And they’re very good at it. And so even as we, you know, even as, as, as we look at, you know, hoping to see Putin defeated, uh, uh, uh, we’re not going to defeat that, because we don’t really have good strategies to do it because it’s an adversary we don’t know how to deal with in the same way. And that goes double, triple, quadruple for the Chinese because the Chinese on top of everything else have the money, plus they actually do have some strategery, right? They actually, for example, inside the United Nations, the, the Chinese are at the back end, and sometimes at the front end of more Chi- of more United Nations specialized agencies than anybody is aware of.
And these things sound intensely boring to, to, and believe me, it- it’s not just that they sound intensely boring, most of them are intensely boring. You know, uh, the International Telecommunications Union, you know, but everything you do on your phone, every standard is set by the ITU, and the Chinese basically run the back end there becau- for a whole variety of reasons. So their soft power is actually extremely dangerous to us, and we’re not sure how to fight it. But on the other hand, we still, I, I, I guess I can’t say it either, we kick butt extremely well. Just on the military side, we are still the world’s superpower. On the economic side, we are still the world’s superpower. Yes, presidents can make bad decisions, presidents can do stupid things, Democrats, Republicans, whatever they are, but the United States of America is still an absolute unrivaled superpower, and China’s power is all theoretical.
They haven’t actually fought a war in decades, and imagine, of course, to yourself that you are the parents of one child (laughs), right? How enthusiastic are you going to be? We don’t like sending our men and women off to war. They haven’t tested that proposition. So it’s a complicated answer, uh, a- and there’s no cable TV one for you, but it would... But just to make it this more combative-
John Donvan (00:51:22):
We’re PBS.
Danielle Pletka (00:51:23):
Yeah.
John Donvan (00:51:24):
So it’s totally okay.
Danielle Pletka (00:51:25):
I totally... In fact, we’re PBS, please don’t be angry.
John Donvan (00:51:26):
And we appreciate nuance. Thank you for the nuanced answer.
Danielle Pletka (00:51:29):
But, uh, but I will say, this is why Iran is actually important. If we screw up Iran, we look bad, and I will say, I think Donald Trump, that’s part of why he waffles, right? ‘Cause on the one hand, he’s kind of like, “Oh, God, this didn’t come out at all the way you told me it was gonna come out.”
Julia Ioffe (00:51:48):
He says it’s boring.
Danielle Pletka (00:51:50):
Uh, well, you know, he’s a man with a short attention span, but, but, but if... And if we screw this up, we will look bad. Even if we are amazing, we will look bad to our allies in the region, to our friends, and to our enemies.
Julia Ioffe (00:52:03):
Well, starting with the... If we go back to the very first question you, or the fourth question you asked because we already know where, um, what I studied in college, the, um... If you are the premier military in the world, and, uh, you know, a military power the likes of which the world has never known, and you did not beat Iran. I mean, whether the ceasefire stretches on, or we have to restart the war, like, we, maybe we didn’t lose it, but we certainly didn’t win it. And I think that really strengthens not only Iran’s, you know, David/Goliath, uh, m- mythology about itself, but everybody else is watching. It’s like the rest of the world is looking at us, and saying, “This army couldn’t beat the effing Iranians?”
John Donvan (00:52:53):
I’m curious for your take on, on a couple of personal experiences I had as a journalist that relate to both of your areas of expertise. Um, I was in Gaza in 1994 after the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian authority had just been theoretically empowered to take control. Um, the Israelis were cooperating with that. Yitzhak Rabin was alive. Um, yeah, so Arafat was saying all of the right things. And I went in there, and what I found was an enormous amount of hope and energy and excitement, p- particularly among the Palestinians, who were talking about plans for developing, uh, beachfront properties, et cetera. Um, Rabin was assassinated, Arafat disappointed, and many years later, Ariel Sharon pulled out of Gaza, the Gaza Strip. I was there when that happened. Again, I went and talked with the Palestinians, and they were talking about hope and the ability to rebuild. We know what happened there.
Um, I also was based in Moscow in 1991 as Gorbachev lost power. Soviet Union collapsed. I was living there for three years and saw Yeltsin come in, and so much hope about democracy and excitement and a young generation that was stepping up to, and embracing the, the values that we value and voicing them, I think, with sincerity.
In both cases, this hope was just totally dashed, and I- I’m wondering (laughs), uh, my reporting did not foresee the downside happening. My reporting was very, very optimistic. How naive was I?
John Donvan (00:54:27):
What, what... Just what went wrong, or what goes wrong in the large picture?
Danielle Pletka (00:54:34):
Uh, you, you, you weren’t naive. It’s not, it’s not wrong to be, it’s not wrong to be hopeful, and it’s... I mean, I think we all really love a journalist who wants to tell a good news story because God knows there aren’t a lot of those. So, you know, I, I completely understand w- why you were optimistic. Um, I, I was never optimistic, um, not because, uh, I’m clever, but because I’m a Middle East person, and it just doesn’t pay to be optimistic because there’s never a good ending, but-
John Donvan (00:55:10):
The scorpion and the frog story.
Danielle Pletka (00:55:11):
Exactly. And, and, you know, look, but it, it... There’s an argument here about American policy to be had on both Russia and on the Palestinians and the Palestinian authority. My view of America’s role in the world is not to set people up, uh, and then say, “Go forth and do the right thing.” Because when you live under a dictatorship, or when you worse yet install somebody whose instincts are those of a dictator, yes, an Arafat, a kleptocrat and a dictator, a dictator in his instance, um, you, you end up seeing them adopt those policies. And that’s why I have always believed that, uh, I’ve always believed that in the case of Russia, in the case of Gaza, in the case of Iraq, I can pick, I can keep going here. We need to be much more aggressive in defense of our interests and our values by in- by, yes, interfering, uh, and saying, “No, that person isn’t okay. That person isn’t okay. This person is okay.”
And by helping to pick and choose and, yes, to nurture generations in the West Bank and Gaza, Republicans, Democrats, Congress, the Executive Branch, nobody worked on broadening that base to have other people be candidates for it. And, you know, people like to blame Israel for this. Oh, I mean the Israelis, the rest of everybody. No, we didn’t do this, and we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and failed to do this. I don’t know whether the, the... There’s a, a proper analogy here in Russia, but we need to pay attention to the guy to... If you wanna take it right back to where you started on Iran, we need to pay attention. It wasn’t enough to hate the Ayatollahs. We also needed to have somebody who we thought could step in, even add, you know, add interim.
And, you know, I’m not sure that guy exists, but we don’t work on that kind of thing anywhere.
Julia Ioffe (00:57:16):
Isn’t one of the reasons we are, we are in the situation with Iran to begin with is we help pick a guy?
Danielle Pletka (00:57:24):
No.
Julia Ioffe (00:57:25):
In Iran?
Danielle Pletka (00:57:25):
You mean, you mean by helping the Iranian people over-throw Mosaddegh in the 50s?
Julia Ioffe (00:57:29):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:57:29):
Before you were born?
Julia Ioffe (00:57:30):
Yeah.
Danielle Pletka (00:57:31):
Before I was born? That’s what you’re worrying about now?
Julia Ioffe (00:57:34):
No, um, but it... I mean, it’s whether or not you and I were around at the time, I mean-
Danielle Pletka (00:57:39):
Well, but I know what happened. (laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:57:41):
So, so do I.
Danielle Pletka (00:57:41):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:57:42):
But, uh, but the, the... I think it’s a d- I, I hear your point, but it’s a dangerous game to play when you start, the US from the outside starts picking and choosing leaders. I think the more important lesson is that we gotta stop hoping.
Danielle Pletka (00:57:56):
Oh, that’s-
Julia Ioffe (00:57:57):
I’m, I’m joking. I’m joking. That’s a joke. Yeah.
Audience (00:57:59):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:57:59):
That’ll teach you to hope, you know? Um, I think, you know, and, and in, in Russia there was a person like this, uh, and we didn’t pick him. His name was Alexia Navalny. He w- he-
Danielle Pletka (00:58:13):
He, he... I- I’m a huge fan of Navalny’s, but-
Julia Ioffe (00:58:17):
But I mean, we didn’t create-
Danielle Pletka (00:58:18):
He’s on the Putin camp on Ukraine, at least. He was. (laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:58:21):
He, from, from prison, he wrote a 15 point plan on Ukraine, which called for returning, uh, Ukraine to its 1991 borders, i.e., returning territory to Ukraine, paying reparations to Ukraine. Um, and we all know what happened to him because Putin also saw his potential, and, you know, there’s, there’s a limit to hope, there’s a limit to our control, there’s a limit to what we can do. That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything. It doesn’t mean we don’t hope, um, but you-
Danielle Pletka (00:58:53):
But shouldn’t we do, shouldn’t we do more? Isn’t that the morally right thing to do?
Julia Ioffe (00:58:59):
I, I don’t know that more is better or less is better. I think we should do what we do more smartly, but the problem is we have... We also have-
But we also have... But that’s easy to say, well, I’m sitting here between two ferns.
Audience (00:59:13):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (00:59:14):
But it’s, uh, but it’s, but it’s hard because we do have elections every two years, and people have short attention spans, and the, the world is far away. We have two friendly neighbors and two oceans, and these issues don’t usually matter to Americans, and it’s hard to stay consistent because Americans like to vote back and forth, back and forth, and each new person comes in and says, “Oh, what the last guy did was totally stupid. I’m going to find a... I know I can find a way to talk to Vladimir Putin. I can figure him out.” And he’s on his fifth president now, right?
And he’s like, “Cool.” You know? So, um, I, I don’t know what the answer is. My, my job is, des- describing the pro- the problem in-
Danielle Pletka (01:00:00):
(laughs)
Julia Ioffe (01:00:01):
... in, uh, exquisite detail, but, um-
Danielle Pletka (01:00:06):
I like, I like, uh... I, I try and describe the problem in exquisite detail, but I also like thinking about what the answers could be, and you are, not in the case of Iran, but you’re certainly right that we have ha- ha- occasionally displayed bad taste and incompetence. On the other hand, I like our values. I like what we stand for. I like, I like human freedom. I like democratic elections notwithstanding, you know, uh, who participates in them sometimes. I like women’s rights. I like religious freedom. I like minority rights. I like those things, and I love it when we stand up for them in foreign countries, and increasingly, and I say this in a very bipartisan slam because Barack Obama didn’t believe in this at all either. We need to do that and then perhaps if we did more of it, we wouldn’t end up with Yasser Arafat.
We wouldn’t end up with Hamas. We wouldn’t end up with Putin. Maybe we would and then you could come back and say Dani was completely wrong. But at the same time, I would feel very good when I went to sleep at night that I was standing up for something that meant something.
John Donvan (01:01:10):
Danielle Pletka, Julia Ioffe, thank you so much for taking the time.
Danielle Pletka (01:01:15):
(laughs) Sorry.
John Donvan (01:01:15):
You got the last word.
Danielle Pletka (01:01:17):
Poor guy. (laughs)
John Donvan (01:01:19):
And, uh, thank, thank you all.
Danielle Pletka (01:01:20):
Maybe we could arm wrestle at the end.
Julia Ioffe (01:01:22):
I tried to keep it spicy.
John Donvan (01:01:24):
Thank you all here in the audience and those of you watching at home for being part of the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival.
