US-China De-escalation? (& the latest on covid's origin) -- with Josh Rogin
Is the US Government trying to re-engage and bring down the temperature with China? Why right now? And what about the resurgent findings on the possible lab leaked accident (on the origin of the pandemic)? Where does this fit into the de-escalation dynamic? Josh Rogin is a long-time foreign affairs journalist, currently a columnist for The Washington Post. He’s also a Political Analyst for CNN. He’s the author of the bestselling book: “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century”
Josh's columns discussed in this episode:
"The State Department is wrong to play down China’s bad actions"
"The investigation into covid’s origins must continue"
Ukrainians are begging for cluster munitions to stop the Russians
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] And in any disaster plane crash or nuclear meltdown, the obvious thing to do is to figure out what happened. So otherwise, how can you make politics and policy changes to ensure that you have the best chance of preventing seems pretty clear to me. So I'm not advocating for the lab leak. What I'm saying is that.
For three years, there were a lot of important people who were intentionally steering people away from the lab leak hypothesis for corrupt and hidden reasons. Some of them were more egregious than others. And a lot of them were the scientists who were the best friends of the lab. And they misled the world health organization.
They misled a lot of journalists. They misled Congress. They misled the intelligence community. And they continue to do that to this day. Is
the U. S. government trying to re engage China, trying to bring the temperature down? Why right now? And what about [00:01:00] the resurgent findings on the possibility of a lab leaked accident as the origin of the pandemic? How does this fit into the current dynamic in U. S. China relations? Josh Rogin is a longtime foreign affairs analyst, currently a columnist for the Washington Post.
He's also a political analyst for CNN. And he's the author of the best selling book, Chaos Under Heaven, Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century. When Josh's book first came out back in 2021, we had him on this podcast. And whenever topics related to China and U. S. China relations emerge, I'm always quick to read Josh and check in with him, so I'm glad he was able to join us today.
Josh has also recently written a provocative column for the Washington Post on what the U. S. should do next. In the Russia Ukraine war. We also get into that. It's important. What he's advocating for, you are not hearing from others. So that in and of itself is an important conversation. Josh Rogin of the Washington [00:02:00] Post.
This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, my friend, Josh Rogin from the Washington Post. Josh, thanks for coming back on. Great to be back. So, Josh, when we last had you on, it was April of 2021, just after your excellent book had come out, which we will repost again, uh, in this episode show notes, highly recommend it, uh, on China and U.
S. China policy during the Trump years and to. At the time, we were focused on the U. S. China relationship, we were focused on the origins of coronavirus, the theory that it was a lab related incident, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, at the time, um, we discussed that, I want to come back to that because that topic's important.
You know, suddenly back in the news, but before I do, I want to start with a lot of what you've been writing about, which is China, U. S. China [00:03:00] relationship, relations, a lot of what we've been discussing on this podcast, and the last few episodes we've had Richard Fontaine, Neil Ferguson, Mike Gallagher, and, um, and Rich Goldberg, and there's like a theme to all of these conversations, which is China, On the march to some degree and the US a little bit on the back foot, uh, wanting to cool things anywhere from caught off guard to not fully recognizing the threat, uh, of China, uh, the geopolitical dynamic with China and not recognizing the need for the US to be engaged in the world, whether it's in Asia, whether it's in the Middle East, where in our last episode, we talked at length about China's brokering of a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And so. There's been a tremendous focus on what China is up to, and in your last column in the Washington Post, you, you were about what, what Washington is up to, and I quote here, you say, President Biden clearly wants to reestablish high level [00:04:00] dialogue with Chinese President Xi after Secretary of State Blinken canceled his trip, I'm quoting here, to China last month.
Officials and lawmakers have noticed that the State Department has been less vocal recently in calling out China's bad behavior regarding drug trafficking, trade with Iran, human rights, and other issues. So I want to start with that. What and we'll post the column in the show notes, but if you could just summarize, what are you actually seeing in recent weeks in terms of the U.
S. trying to bring down the temperature? Right. Well, Dan, I think it's really important to. Sort of take a step back first and talk about where we are in the US China relationship because in Washington, as you know, this gets covered usually as a horse race. Oh, the Chinese said this, the balloon went here, the missile went there, and it's seen as a number of incidents rather than it's Uh, the trajectory of the, uh, complex interconnected, uh, system of institutions and people and, [00:05:00] uh, and groups that make up the world's two superpowers interactions with each other.
And so when we're when we're talking about why it is that we're at this point in US China relations, which is, I think, objectively the lowest point. Since at least, like, let's say 1972, where U. S. China high level dialogue, much less high level communication, totally gone. It doesn't exist, really, in any functional sense.
That's a bad thing. And, you know, we can, uh, I'm gonna get to the part of why the Biden administration is doing some things that I believe a lot of people, other people believe are foolish in order to fix that bad thing, in order to get back into that room. It's clear that President Biden wants to Get back into that room.
He thinks it's important, right? Okay. Uh, but before we do that It's really important to understand how we got here because what you'll hear a lot in washington these days dan is this idea that oh well u. s china relations are so bad because Bipartisan hawkish group think in washington has pushed them to that point [00:06:00] And congress for political reasons both parties just wants to ramp up the china threat to score points with careless disregard for The fact that this is causing an escalatory ladder that's going to lead to world war three nuclear war.
And we're going to, it's going to be all our fault. That's the, the, the fashionable chattering class, conventional wisdom at this moment in time, Dan, I'm here to tell you, and you'll, and they call it dangerous. Washington group. Think the reason that we know that that's wrong. The reason that we know that that's a blinkered and incorrect way of looking at what's actually going on in the U S China relationship is twofold.
One is because it ignores how we got here. Okay. And how we got here was that the Biden administration to its credit started in April, in 2021, the last time I was on your podcast with a very rational outreach to China, which basically said that we're going to cooperate, compete, and confront you all at the same time on three parallel tracks, they sought to de link.
Issues like human rights from issues like economic [00:07:00] competition from issues like cooperation on climate change. That was their theory of the case They said it very clearly and a big part of that was not to Give the chinese government concessions for talking not to make engagement the thing that we were paying for it was Actually something that the Trump administration realized first, and there are a lot of things that Trump administration did wrong on China, but there are some things that they did right.
And one of the things that they did right is they stopped paying for talking. Okay. And because it's creates a perverse incentive in the minds of the Chinese, because then they'll always just demand that you back off their. Bad actions in exchange for just having basic conversation about anything. And, uh, so that was the theory in 2021.
It didn't work. The Chinese basically told the Biden administration to go screw itself. And, and we're not going to do that. And everything is linked. And if you want to cooperate with us on climate climate change, then you're going to have to ignore the. Uyghur genocide. And if you, uh, you know, don't do that, then you're responsible for the cold war and the, and whatever comes next.
So it, by year two, the Biden people sort of realized that [00:08:00] this wasn't working out because the Chinese didn't agree to it. And so they come up with a new theory of the case. That theory was called guardrails and the rhetoric changed. And, you know, I talked to very senior officials and they said, yeah, the cooperate, confront.
You know, uh uh, a compete thing. They didn't buy it. So now we're going to guardrails. This is like, okay, well let's take the most contentious things and try to agree not to poke each other on them just so that we can be in the same room together. , and they tried that for a little while. Then what happened?
Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan and destroyed the guardrails, the main guardrail, the Chinese guardrail. The one that they wanted was, Hey, don't send Nancy to Pelosi, to Taiwan. And then she went and they blamed Biden and blighted Biden. Wasn't actually responsible for it, but they didn't believe that. So there go the guardrails.
Okay. So now we're in year three and year three, the Biden administration plan. Again, they won't admit this. This is their public rhetoric. They're still talking about this cooperate, confront, compete stuff, which they know is not working, but that's still the public line where they're really trying to do is put a floor under the relationship [00:09:00] there.
They're trying to prevent this thing from going downhill fast and it's failing. You know, and, and so what my article in this week's Washington Post says is that because they're getting desperate and because they've now have, uh, uh, an imperative, uh, an order from the president himself to. Go fix this. Uh, they're falling back into old patterns of failed engagement that include paying china to talk and one of the ways that they do that is by Subtly backing off criticisms of chinese actions related to anything.
It could be fentanyl. It could be iran sanctions It could be human rights and I tried to document a series of uh instances examples data that shows that You know, they're not really confronting anymore. They're basically just, uh, So if you give one of those examples, you, you cite the discrepancy between the state department, I think it's treasury over the fentanyl issue.
Right. So the treasury department puts out a press release on fentanyl sanctions. They're sanctioning Mexican companies. And, uh, it says, well, the precursor chemicals come from China. And then the state [00:10:00] department press release doesn't mention that it's just, it's the same press release, but without the China mentioned and, you know, Senator Bill Hagerty, former ambassador to Japan.
Happen to notice that and he asked Wendy Sherman. Why would you do that? Well, Wendy Sherman is the Deputy Secretary of State and she's asked at a hearing. Yes, and she's basically in charge of the China engagement part of this policy and she says, oh, well It wasn't connected to Tony Blinken's planned trip to China has nothing to do with it Well, you know it was actually and it's it turns out that I've discovered that actually they were trying to Turn down the temperature because they thought they could address this issue better inside the meeting than outside the meeting now again I don't blame them for wanting to seek cooperation with the Chinese on fentanyl, but you can see the problem is that now there's no meeting because Tony Blinken didn't go to China, so we have an endless waiting game, and meanwhile we're self censoring on the fentanyl issue when it comes to China, for what?
You know, well, what did that get us? It ends up becoming essentially a [00:11:00] unilateral concession. And that's the pattern. That's the trap that we're supposed to be avoiding. That's what the Biden administration said they were going to avoid. And the fact that they're falling into that trap, but not admitting as such.
Is where the gap is between the rhetorical and functional policy. And then if you look at things like human rights, you can see, you can definitely see there's a, a big, a lot less of a focus now, again, a lot less comments up a commentary about human rights abuses against Tibetans, against Weavers, Hong Kong, across the board.
And these people notice that because this is their lives and their families are suffering and they pay very close attention and the State Department line is, Oh, no, no, no. They're fine. But I talked to them. They're not fine. Okay. And again, the Trump administration complicated, right? It's a mixed bag, let's say.
But Mike Pompeo's met with the Tibetans and Uyghurs and there was a photo of it on the State Department website. And when Secretary Delaney. Lincoln met with those same people. They never released the photo. The people there notice that, you know, they're, they're, they, they, that photo might not seem important to you or [00:12:00] me, but for them, it's that photo is what keeps their families safe.
Uh, and so, you know, again, there's the, like, the State Department has a tough problem here. They've got to deal with the Chinese government, which is being obstinate and, and, Meanwhile, ramping up its rhetoric. What do we see every time as the Biden administration gets nicer? And this kind of proves my theory of the case.
I think as they get less and less critical, the Chinese get more belligerent. And that's what we saw at the Munich security conference. Anthony Blinken went there to. Re establish relations and they, the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi made up, got up on the stage and called on the United States to apologize for the balloon, that we should apologize for them sending the balloon.
So this is the kind of thing we're dealing with. And you know how it is, Dan, in Washington, it's like we have this, this false notion. First of all, that everything's like America centric, right? That if we just create the perfect rational policy based on weighing interests and values, and we have a good bureaucratic process and a bunch of meetings and memos that [00:13:00] we're going to get the result that we want.
And it fails to realize that these other countries have agency and China. Isn't in the mood to make nice with us. It seems pretty clear they're in the mood to. Uh, to, to actually press their, what they see as their advantage and actually our, our weakness emboldens that strategy. And that means that actually the, the, the, the people blaming the United States are feeding into their propaganda and actually amplifying.
And I'm not saying that they're fellow travelers per se, I'm just saying that let's call it a coincidence. That the people blaming Washington for U. S. China tensions in Washington are saying the exact same things as the Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlet. So, you know, I just think we need to again take a step back and realize that we're not to blame for China's bad actions and Of course, they don't want us to talk about it or to respond to them.
And of course, they'll tell us that that's the thing that's provocative, but responding to the provocation is not the provocation. And actually when you don't respond, that actually, uh, creates an incentive for the [00:14:00] provocations to only increase, which makes the situation more dangerous, which makes the cold war and the hot war more likely.
So it's actually a much more dangerous policy. Where does the. Um, how do we call it? The unidentified aviation object, the balloon, fit into this timeline that you're seeing. The discovery of it, and, and just, just the overall, like, pattern, I guess. Blinken cancelled his trip Oh, go ahead. Yeah. No, that's right.
Lincoln canceled his trip. Uh, not because they were upset about the balloon because remember they knew about the balloon for several days before they admitted it. They were hoping it would just go away. They were hoping the Chinese would just turn it around and if you think about it because they wanted the trip to go ahead, but then when the, when someone saw it in the sky, they couldn't deny it anymore.
So the thing about the balloon was that you could see it. So there's no way to say, Oh, what balloon? And then all of a sudden they had to cancel the trip because they were afraid of the political blowback of, uh, uh, Ignoring that kind of a provocation and so, you know, if you, if you, [00:15:00] if you think about it, what did the Chinese do is now, first of all, it seems clear from my reporting that initially the balloon was blown off course, but then when everyone noticed it, they had a choice to make, they could have, you know, steered it back or, or done something to signal to the United States that, okay, well, let's not make this do a big deal, but instead they flew it right over the missile sites are nuclear missile sites where they hovered there.
Okay. Okay. And, and a couple others. So they, they, when they, that's how, you know, that it was an intentional provocation and not just some sort of like Chinese general going rogue. It was not about the fact that the balloon made it to the United States. It's the fact that once it got there, the way it acted showed intentionality.
And so they were, uh, sticking up their middle finger at Tony Blinken and he had to cancel the trip and, and everything was scuttled. So, uh, I think it was an actual. It was designed to be recognized and be identified in the U. S. to the point that the U. S. has to respond. It was like a, it was a humiliation or it was just, it was just, it was just [00:16:00] brazen.
No, I, I, I think they, uh, it accidentally went off course. And then once they had a decision to make what to do with that accidental. Uh, they decided to double down and, and, and, and, and, and be more aggressive because they realized that it was going to be a big story. And that's the, that's what they do when, when they're confronted with a challenge to U.
S. China relations, they try to double down and become more aggressive to back us down. And that creates a, again, a vicious sort of cycle, an escalation ladder where now the U. S. government doesn't want to go to China because they're afraid of political backlash at home. They're forced to retreat to their corner.
And. You know, it's a, it's a real problem that something like that, which started out as an accident, but then was mishandled by both sides, actually, because both of our governments are capable of doing stupid things. tanked what was supposed to be a really important sort of detente in the U. S. China relationship, um, but it just doesn't follow that.
In that case, what you have to do is try [00:17:00] harder to get that meeting because, uh, you know, in the end, the engagement is not the thing. The engagement is the means to an end. The end is solving the problem. And that sort of leads us to the next point, which is like, in order to solve the problems, if you can't solve them with the Chinese, because as we Just went through they're just not interested in proving the chinese by us bilateral relationship Well, then you can make a decision to use that time and resources at the top level of the u.
s Government to work with the people who do want to work with you who happen to be our friends and allies We're facing the exact same problem that we are who happen to be sound in the Like Japan and South Korea and Australia and others who are sounding the alarm very clearly. And this is sort of the second reason that we know that, uh, U.
S., Washington, dangerous, bipartisan, hawkish group think is not the reason that people are upset with China because That couldn't be the reason that Japan and South Korea are upset with China. They were upset with China anyway, for their own interests. Japan, I went, I went to, uh, uh, Tokyo and I interviewed [00:18:00] Fumio Kishida, the prime minister in January, right before he came to Washington.
And, you know, he's from the liberal faction of the. Ldp, he's considered a dove when it comes to china yet. He made the decision to double japan's defense budget over five years Taking it from being the ninth most highest defense budget in the world to the third And he that was before the balloon. He didn't know anything about a balloon balloon That means nothing to him.
It was before mike gallagher started a committee, you know to to focus on china nothing to do with tokyo's gigantic decades long Uh commitment to increasing its military deterrence He told me that this is the reality that he had to look around and realize that The military balance was changing because of china's expansion and because the threat of war is made more likely when the deterrence falters so we want peace, but in order to achieve that peace, we have to increase our deterrence and uh, You know, we we can't say that washington is to blame for the international response [00:19:00] to china because the demand signal is coming from the region Because the region, the people, the countries that are on the front lines are, are, who have the most to gain and the most to lose are the ones telling us that this problem is getting worse and worse, that we need to do more.
So that's, that, that's just not Washington's fault, that's China's fault. And do these countries, uh, in the region, I mean they, I, I gotta believe that our State Department, our, Are the White House, the Defense Department, they believe it is important that we deepen ties and reassure players like Japan and Korea, South Korea and Australia, others in the region.
So, are you just saying it's just, um, the, the orientation, they're pointed towards engagement with China, engagement with China, engagement with China, that's Washington. And they're doing that at the expense of engaging and reassuring all these other countries in the region. And you're saying, like, it's, it's not either or?
I mean, you, you, you can, you can figure out what your strategy is with China, but, but by trying to bring [00:20:00] down the temperature in China and doing nothing to engage deeper with these other countries in Asia. It's like the worst of all worlds. Right, but I don't think it's fair to say they're doing nothing.
They have a lot going on with the Allies. Uh, the question is, where does the highest level attention in government and time resources go to? Because as you know, working at the highest level of government, Dan, it's that, the most valuable commodity in the U. S. government is the time and attention of those very few people who are really powerful enough in any administration to get anything done.
Okay. So you can have lots and lots of projects ongoing, but unless you really have, you know, either a president or a cabinet member or a subcabinet member, you know, committed to doing something, it very rarely gets done. And, you know, when it comes to the Biden administration, it's really important to understand that it's not a monolith, that it's complicated, that there are political divisions and there are bureaucratic divisions, interestingly, that fall roughly along the same lines as they did in the past administration, which is to say that you have a hawkish NSC.
You [00:21:00] have some, uh, competitive minded folks at the state department and some, uh, professionals who are, who are, are more clientalist who, who view the, uh, the old way of doing business, which is to engage China as much as possible at the expense of everything else as still the right way to do business. And then you have the treasury department, which is pushing in the other direction because they're trying to fix the U S China economic relationship by helping their wall street and business, uh, uh, Paymasters, uh, uh, shovel American investor funds into the PRC before the whole thing goes kaput.
And so they're pushing against competitive actions because they see that as counterproductive for their aims, which is just to increase U. S. business in China. Then you've got the climate change people, then you've got the political people. And, uh, What it amounts to is a mess, a garble that obviously the Chinese don't understand.
Definitely the American people don't understand because they can't articulate that. They can't say, well, [00:22:00] you know, we actually have no trade policy in Asia. They can't say that. So they came up with this thing called the Indo Pacific Economic Framework, which is like. You know, I could, like, if you put into chat GPT, like, give me, like, some boilerplate nonsense about what we should do in Asia, this is what would come out, two pages of, like, oh, yeah, we like things that are good, like digital, you know, goodness and privacy and, you know, free markets, but it doesn't amount to a, it doesn't buy you a cup of coffee in Singapore, so it's sort of like, okay.
The region looks at that and they're like, Oh, well, how come there's no trade policy? How come there's no real investment strategy? How come, you know, there's, I mean, it's just, you know, we're, we're, we, we have a government that has teams of people who do certain things and some of them are good and some of them are bad.
So the NSC team, which happens to be really good on this, they did what they could do. They did this AUKUS deal with the submarines, you know, so the U S and Great Britain are going to help Australia. Uh, develop a submarine fleets could be nuclear powered, but conventionally weapon [00:23:00] submarine fleet. Okay.
That sounds good. That couldn't hurt, right? Let's do that. But that's, they're not going to get the new subs for 15 or 20 years, right? And you know, if China attacks Taiwan in 2027, that's useless. So I don't know. It's, it's undergirding all this Josh and we'll get to Russia Ukraine in a little bit, but undergirding all of this other than yet Russia Ukraine.
When I, when I speak to people in the administration, all I basically hear back either In actual words or in body language is the goal for the next two years is to just keep geopolitics calm, right? They know they're doubling How's that going? I know. No, no, I know. They know they're doubling and tripling on Russia Ukraine.
But, I mean, as it relates to, to Iran, for instance, they are, they're, they're, they're no longer being, you know, under any illusions about the return to the JCPOA. That's good, as far as Israel is concerned, uh, they're not looking to, um, they're not looking to get into [00:24:00] any high, high stakes political battle with the Israeli government over Any range of issues because they don't want any big noise and I mean that's been a little harder because they didn't anticipate some things the Israeli government would do after being formed, but they're trying to keep that on low boil.
They're trying to keep all these things in the Middle East on low boil. I presume in Asia on low boil. Other than Russia and Ukraine, they just want to keep. Things pretty quiet. Why? Well, what a, what a sad state of us foreign policy ambitions in 2023. It used to, what it used to be like peace through strength, shining city of hell.
Now it's like, okay, can everyone just like, uh, keep it quiet until the next election? That's our, that's our foreign policy banner. Wow. I can't think of anything less ambitious, but it's, you know. Well, they could argue, by the way, I agree with you, but they could argue, and I'm not sure they're doing what they need to do.
Well, it's just not working. Yeah. Because, again, there are other countries in the world, and it's really hard for Americans to [00:25:00] believe that, you know, American power, not just military power, by the way, I'm speaking mostly of the non military power, economic, technological, soft power, all that stuff, is really the only thing keeping millions and millions of people in the world out of the clutches of government.
Mass murdering psychopaths and their control. And when we Decide not to give a shit about that. Of course, those mass murdering psychopath dictators advance, and that's what we've been seeing, right? And now, I've talked to the, this sort of dates back to the Obama foreign policy theory, which is a little bit distinct from the Biden one, uh, in the sense that It was more open about its admission that it was trying to steer the decline of American hegemony.
In other words, their theory was, well, the world's going to be a more multipolar place. The responsible thing to do would be to hand off some of those responsibilities to regional actors so that we can, rather than just take our hands off the steering wheel and let the car veer off into the ditch. But that didn't work because those regional actors turned out to be bad [00:26:00] actors, I'm talking about.
Erdogan and the Saudis and a lot of the Russian reset. And this was the, this was the concept. They thought that all these regional actors were going to share responsibility. At least the Biden administration doesn't believe that nonsense, but at the same time, they're worried about the politics. In America, because they know that Americans are, are soured on intervention, rightly, right, because a lot of the interventions didn't go that well.
At the same time, they feel this responsibility not to, uh, retreat from the world, especially after the Trump era, because, again, the demand signal is coming from everywhere. So they have to act one way and worry about the politics the other way, which is why, again, nobody really understands what they're doing.
On the Middle East, I think it's a sad story, actually, because I think that Uh, you know, there was a thing called the path towards freedom, democracy and human rights in the Middle East that we supported. And even though it didn't succeed this time, eventually it will, someday it will with or without us, because that's people don't like living on their knees.
People don't like living with a boot on their neck. So eventually that region will, [00:27:00] uh, achieve the, the sovereignty and dignity. Uh, that the people desire, but we won't have anything to do with that under the current plan. And that's a that's a damn shame, you know, but okay, you don't want any more adventures in the Middle East that I get.
But no one says we can't confront China, right? Except for the Chinese. So that should be the thing that they should be more forward leaning on and rhetorically they are but functionally they're distracted You know again, it comes back to that senior leader thing if all the leaders are spending all their time rounding up You know 20 leopard tanks for ukraine and that takes six months Well, then taiwan gets short shrift and that's exactly what's happening Uh as it relates to the chinese brokering the beijing brokering of this saudi iran deal the administration said they Knew it was in the works even though they acknowledge it that they Uh, weren't involved with it.
Uh, they say they weren't caught by surprise and they praised it. Uh, what do you think was really going on? Oh my God. I mean, I think this is the [00:28:00] Saudis giving yet another big F you to president Biden, a pretty bold one, a pretty brazen one. I mean, just think again, you talk about, you know, the difference between foreign policy, rhetoric and implementation.
President Biden campaigned on making Saudi Arabia a pariah state. And he said that, I mean, let's face it, the Trump administration got into bed with the Saudis in a way that was pretty egregious, you know, ignoring the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Lots of, I won't go through the whole litany. I'm not even going to get into the private equity.
I'm just saying that. Biden campaigned on one thing, which was to reset the U. S. Saudi relationship and the MBS backed him down. And he used his control over energy prices and his flirtation with Russia and China. And it's a, it's a threat. He's, he's threatening Biden's political survival using Saudi influence and money and pressure and.
And power and it worked and Biden back down and did the fist bump and got humiliated and still didn't get the energy break. He still didn't get the Saudis to do the one thing that they're supposed to do in the U. S. Saudi [00:29:00] relationship, which is to manage the stability of the energy market. Just to remind people what you're referring to is when Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia.
After he said he was going to turn them into pariah state, he had to travel to Saudi Arabia to seek more assistance from OPEC, and he said he wasn't going to shake, uh, MBS's hand, but then he fist bumped MBS, and it all made us, or at least the Biden administration, look kind of, um, Make them a foolish.
Yeah, because he, because he, he backed off his own principles for an oil concession that he didn't get that they didn't even give him. So really, he got humiliated for exactly nothing. And now here comes the Saudis to say, okay, you know, that other thing that you wanted, which is to show that America is still, you know, a power player in the region by brokering all these Middle East peace deals.
Oh, no, we're gonna, we're gonna take that gem and give it to the Chinese and, and hang out with the Chinese and the Iranians. Right. You know, if that's not an F you to the Biden people, I don't know what is now. Now, again, my view may be different than your [00:30:00] view on this, but my view on the Saudis is if that, if they want to switch their dependent, their security dependence from the USA to China, I say, good luck with that.
Okay. Yeah. I see. Have fun trying to order a Russian tank or airplane in the next 20 years, because that order is not coming, okay? And, you get into bed with the Chinese Communist Party on regional security, Okay, that seems like a good idea, let's see how that works out. And, you know, I Well, not only that, but if, but if, but if, if, just because Saudi and Iran have, have, uh, resumed diplomatic relations doesn't mean they're friends, doesn't mean they're allies.
Uh, it doesn't mean they can rely on one another, so things could break down very quickly, and we should assume they will, because they always have, and when they do, and Saudi Arabia is feeling the threat from Iran again, are they really, can they really rely on China to have their back in that situation, given China is I say we should, we should put them to that test, you know?
Because obviously [00:31:00] like what, why are, why are we, you know, spending all this time and money and effort to protect Saudi Arabia if they're not holding up their end of the bargain, which is to stabilize the energy markets. And if they're not doing that, then we shouldn't do our part. That's what I think.
It's funny is that like the, and I realized that nobody there, no administration is actually going to do that. But what was funny is that Trump actually, when he was mad at the Saudis because they were, uh, overproducing. He threatened just that. He called them up and he said, I'm going to pull the U. S.
troops because they couldn't tell if he was crazy or not. They did what he wanted. So it just shows that like, you know, uh, when it comes to any sort of thuggish, you know, despotic regime, probably the sticks are better than the carrots. And I know the Saudis are still technically our allies, but, you know, listen, relationships change.
And, and, you know, they're, they're, if they're not doing their job as, uh, uh, stewards of the energy markets in exchange for what us doing our job, well, I don't, I [00:32:00] don't think that relationship is necessarily as valuable to us as it once was. Before we move off that topic, do you think I mean, to the extent this was clear in reporting, including in the Wall Street Journal, uh, a few days before the Chinese announcement about the Saudi, uh, Iranian resumption of diplomatic ties, uh, that Saudi's real near term, near to medium, medium to term goal is to get a, some kind of nuclear capability up and running.
You know, I don't know. I. You don't buy it? No, I mean, I just don't know. I haven't done any reporting on that. You know, I, my focus has been on the China part of this, you know. But I'm just wondering, are they playing the U. S. and China off each other? Who can get us, who can get us our nuclear capability?
It's a big ask. It's a stretch. I wouldn't be shocked by anything at this point. I mean, we're talking about a guy who like kidnaps prime ministers and murders journalists and does all sorts of other, you know, commits atrocities in Yemen. This is a, this is, he's not a reformer. Okay. And, uh, you know, there's a lot of money thrown around [00:33:00] Washington to make people say that he is, but he's not.
And, and so what it, that means that all bets are off. That means that, yeah, if, if, if at some point in the future, he thinks it's in, in, in his interest or in Saudi Arabia's interest to go buy some nuclear technology from China, that's what they're going to do. Okay, and, uh, that's a, again, that just shows us that, you know, that what we think of as a strong U.
S. Saudi relation is not really the case if they don't see it that way, and, and, uh, that's just the reality, but I don't really know exactly what his plan, I don't profess to know what's in the mind of the, of the clown prince. Okay, so. Now let's talk, you, you wrote extensively and we talked when you were on, on the podcast back in 2021 about the possibility that the COVID originated with a lab related accident, accident, uh, rather than, um, rather than some sort of natural, uh, process through a wet market and, and all the rest, uh, as was the conventional wisdom at the time, [00:34:00] this, you know, Senator Cotton and others were, um, You know, giving oxygen to this idea, a lot of people, particularly, uh, at the, uh, at the CDC and the Center for Infectious Diseases pooh poohed the idea and it kind of, you know, the, the, the oxygen, uh, went out, you know, out of the debate and it went quiet and then suddenly in the last month or so the U.
S. Energy Department, uh, changed its initial assessment on the origins of the virus and they, CDC. Said that the, you know, the analysts now believe that a lab related accident was most likely, and then they caveat it with low confidence, uh, the, the, uh, sorry, the, uh, the pandemic or the coronavirus originated in a lab related accident.
And again, they say it with low confidence and then immediately those who. Had believed that all along, put like a neon sign on top of that news report, pointing that [00:35:00] out. Others began to focus on the low confidence part. And so then the whole debate got heated up again. And you've been writing about it and reporting on this for some time.
So first of all, what actually happened? Like, why did the Energy Department already pop all of a sudden pop up? Was it significant that they popped up, even though they said so with low confidence? Then there was a FD uh, FBI report that also came on the heels of the Energy Department report. So, just Help us like explain what's going on here.
Sure. Yeah. First, a comment on the debate over the debate, because every time, I mean, I've been living in this nightmare of a story for three years now. And by that, I mean that I've, uh, uh, you know, it's in my book. I've done more reporting. On this then or as at least I think as much reporting on this as any other journalist out there and uh, it's a it's it's the story is a nightmare because it's so misunderstood and because At this point it's become an ideology [00:36:00] Ideological argument rather than a factual argument you have some people who are like oh, it must have been the lab and you have some people who are like Oh, it definitely wasn't the lab.
How dare you say the lab? And there's no amount of evidence or data or, you know, short of like Xi Jinping getting on TV and saying it was the lab that would convince either of these people to move off of their long held assumptions. It's ingrained into them. It's a, and they each have, and they each have.
Sources and reports and that they could lean on, they all feel justified in having a bias in other words, and I don't have a bias. I don't care if it came from the lab. I care about finding out what happened because that's the only rational way of figuring out. How to make sure it doesn't happen again in any disaster plane crash or nuclear meltdown.
The obvious thing to do is to figure out what happened. So otherwise, how can you make politics and policy changes to ensure that you have the best chance of preventing that? It seems pretty clear to me. So I'm not advocating for the lab leak. What I'm saying is that. For three years, there were a [00:37:00] lot of important people, uh, who were, uh, intentionally, uh, steering people away from the lab leak accident hypothesis for corrupt and, uh, and, and hidden reasons.
And Uh, some of them were more egregious than others, and a lot of them were the scientists who were the best friends of the lab, and, uh, they misled the World Health Organization, they misled a lot of journalists, they misled Congress, they misled the intelligence community, and, uh, they continue to do that to this day, and the, the polarizing figure that Anthony Fauci is has also complicated the discussion of this important public health and national security issue, because, uh, There are a lot of bad faith attacks on Anthony Fauci, but there are some good faith attacks on him as well.
And it's impossible for the good faith attacks to get any oxygen because the bad faith attacks fill the room. But what I, what I, what I'm trying to say is that it's very clear that Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, the head of the National Institute of Health at that time, [00:38:00] intentionally misled, uh, the public and Congress about what they knew.
About the possibility still as yet unproven theory that the outbreak was linked to the lab and there's thousands upon thousands of documents that they refuse to provide Congress and the public for 3 years and as this and why would they do that if they were really as they claim to be on a search for the truth?
There's no reason that these unclassified documents about research that was funded with U. S. taxpayer money shouldn't already be on the internet as of right now. We know that the Chinese are going to hide the origin. They're, they, by the way, they have a lab leak theory too. They say it came from our labs.
We can get into that. But the point is that there's no explanation I've ever heard that justifies why our public health officials You know, pooh poohed this theory for three years and then hid all the information that would either exonerate them or convict them, because remember, if they were so sure that it wasn't it, then the information would only prove their point, [00:39:00] and there was never anybody who forced the truth to come out.
Now, here we are three years later. And people say, well, who cares? What does it matter now? Well, it matters because not only because we have to know whether or not we have, we live in a world of limited resources. We can't, if it's the market theory, we've got to close down every market in Asia. Well, that's one thing to do if it's the lab theory and we have to.
Increased biosafety in the labs. Well, that's another thing to do. People say, oh, well, we'll do both, but that's not really the way the world works. You're not going to go around and close down every market in Asia. Cause that's a crazy thing to do, especially if it had nothing to do with the outbreak. So now three years later, another, a tiny piece of information comes out.
Okay. In, in, in perspective compared to the, um. The mass amounts of evidence and data. And now, again, my argument is not that I want the lab leak theory to be true, but that if you look at the piles of circumstantial evidence, the pile on the side of the lab leak is bigger and growing all the time. Whereas the pile on the side of the market is very small and hasn't moved an inch in years.
So can you summarize the, [00:40:00] can you, can you summarize the, the pile on the, because, because we know, we know about the pile on the. On the, uh, wet market theory, so Let's just go over that real quick, cause the, the, the pile on the wet market theory is that There are, and this is the totality of it, is that There, there are some early cases, oh no, not the earlier, earliest cases that are connected to the market.
There was a cluster in the market, in other words, in the early days. Number two, that there were animals at the market that might have been An intermediary host, although not one animal was ever found with any evidence of having been that intermediary host. That's it! Okay, now I can easily destroy those two pieces of evidence right now.
The reason that the earlier cases were clustered around the market is because in those early days, they only tested around the market, okay? So of course, more cases came up in the places where they tested, and no cases came up in the places where they didn't test. So it's [00:41:00] crazy to use that data to conclude anything, because if you only did they zero in on that market?
Like, why did they say Some people got sick at the market, but they found that doesn't mean that's where it broke out. In other words, the Chinese government theories that it was a super spreader event, not an origin event. And again, we now know that there were a lot of cases months before that, months before the earliest case was found at the market.
But in 2021, it seemed like the market was an early event, so it might have been the origin, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. But you're saying, you're saying that that just proves that it was a super spreader event, not that that's the Chinese government's position. Your position is it was a super spreader it was a super spreader event.
Right, right, right, right. Some people definitely got sick at the market because that's market is a place where people trade sickness. But that's that's quite different and apart from having any evidence whatsoever that the spillover happened at the market. For which there is none and despite the culling of tens of thousands of pangolins and raccoon dogs and minks and other various innocent animals a pangolin genocide occurred in wuhan in the search [00:42:00] for the magic pangolin that was the None none were ever found that were ever connected to the Outbreak.
So it's really, uh, like disingenuous and dishonest to hang your hat on this point that, oh, well, there were a lot of early cases of the market or that there were animals at the market that could have possibly been related somehow, although we, we, we didn't find any now on the lab side. Well, the, the, the evidence is just keeps, keeps on coming out.
And first it was the published research. This is years and years of published research that the Chinese published. With American scientists, with the ones, the very American scientists who are denying that the lab leak theory could be true. Which talked about modifying bat coronaviruses by passing them through humanized, mice with humanized lungs to make them more, uh, virulent and dangerous.
They published that research, that's public, it's not contested, they were doing this research for years and years. Now, piece number one. And then piece number two is all of the intelligence that we know [00:43:00] about, which is the sick researchers at the lab, the finding by the Trump and Biden administration that there are military researchers at the lab.
In other words, it's not that the NIH, that the U. S. government Or Fauci sponsored research that led to the pandemic, necessarily. One of the theories, the theory that I think is backed by a lot of evidence, is that we taught these Chinese scientists how to mess around with dangerous viruses, and then they built another part of the lab, the part that they didn't tell us about, with the Chinese military.
And people say, well, it's not a bioweapon. No, it's military bioresearch. We were, we have it too. We have it at Fort Detrick. That's where they think they say the outbreak came from, but that's obviously not true because there wasn't an, uh, spill, an outbreak. And people didn't get sick in Fort Detrick.
People got sick in Wuhan. So the point, so big red flag right there that the, the, the. Published research shows that they were doing exactly this type of research at that lab. Number two, as the evidence came out, we found out more about the coverup. And that was [00:44:00] about the fact that American scientists and American officials.
Totally thought the lab leak was plausible, but in public denied it. And in fact, orchestrated a campaign to call it a conspiracy theory, which the press ran with, because if you were in the press, typically, if you saw a bunch of scientists versus Donald Trump, you would probably believe a bunch of scientists, but in a sense they got captured the.
Journalists got captured by their sources who were the scientists because they didn't understand that they had a conflict of interest and they were covering their own asses. And then two years later, the Biden administration comes in and they don't know, right? They weren't there. It wasn't on their watch.
They didn't feel this, uh, ideology that it had to be the market. So they ordered an intelligence review, which is very rational thing to do. And here's the crazy part, Dan, the intelligence officials, the ones that believed that pointed to the market. Their sources were those same scientists. They made the same exact mistake the journalists made, which was they got captured by their sources because they didn't know what they were doing.
And we think, Oh, the intelligence community must know what they're doing. No, they didn't know what they were doing. [00:45:00] They, they went to those scientists who had the conflict of interest to run their intelligence investigation. That's why for the, uh, agencies came back with, uh, Oh, it probably was a natural origin because that was informed by those same scientists who were involved in the misleading and the coverup the whole time now that takes us to the energy department.
Because we have an energy department full of national laboratories where they do investigations of this kind all the time. So, one of those is the Z Division, right? Right. So, can you explain what the Z Division is? Yeah, I mean, in the cold, that's the thing, like, we talk about bioweapons and bioresearch, that, we've been doing that for decades.
And so have the Russians, and so have the Chinese, and a lot of other people. So, in the 60s, the U. S. government created this division inside the energy department to, to do investigations about bio, bio, uh, threats. And that would seem perfectly suited to this. This is definitely a bio threat, no matter what you think the origin is.
And so the Z division gets word up and they start working on it and they're told to stand down. [00:46:00] Okay. No, no, no. Let's leave this to the NIH and the, and Anthony Fauci's outfit. They're the experts on viruses and quite to their chagrin, actually, the Z, the Z division people were forced to stand down for two years.
Now, one of the, so. Isn't that curious that these are actually, these are the scientists in the U. S. government who aren't conflicted, and they were taken off the case. And all Biden did was put them back on the case. And then it took them a while to start up again, and now it's two years later, and the evidence is two years old and all that.
And they, so they came up with this, oh yeah, probably came from the lab, low confidence. Okay, fine, that's the same low confidence on the other side. And, uh. Everyone's like, Oh my God, how did that happen? But the truth is that they're just doing their jobs that they were prevented from doing for the last two years.
The only reason it took two years is because someone shut them down. And then the FBI comes out and they say, Oh, well, we have moderate confidence. It was the lab because we also have experts. And if you listen to Christopher Ray's interview on this, He's very deliberate. He says, We have teams of [00:47:00] people who do this for a living, who investigate the danger of viruses, and they worked with Fort Detrick, by the way, who are the other experts.
So all of the U. S. government experts, or at least a lot of them, who are, who don't have a conflict of interest, who are the most forensic minded investigators, because again, it's not a scientific question, it's a forensic question. Something bad happened, we have to figure out what it was. Uh, uh, Was there, was there any, was there any, uh, was there any Coordination or was there any, was it merely a coincidence the timing between the FBI and the energy department in the z division?
Uh investigations so it what it was the FBI actually came out with its ruling a year ago, but it wasn't public. And all they did now was acknowledge it. And the, the energy department's, uh, uh, investigation gave them the political cover they needed to do that. It's clear that Christopher wanted to do that.
He wanted to go on record to tell people what he thought. And I don't, I don't know if that was clear with the White House. I don't think so, but I'm [00:48:00] not sure. But if you look at it from the Biden administration's perspective, They have an interest in not getting caught on the wrong side of this thing.
And so that's why they turned the investigations on but they didn't really publish it So they're they're they're playing a they're a very sort of cynical game, which is like, okay No one can accuse us of shutting down the investigations because we turned them back on but we're not going to push it Because it's a diplomatic problem for them with the Chinese.
It's a problem for them with the progressive caucus because so many progressive Democrats are committed to the idea that the lab leak theory is racist, even though when you think about it, it's much more racist to assume that Chinese people eat weird stuff at markets. Okay. Which is by the way, not. True.
I've been to China a bunch of times, the markets are everywhere. It's not like, it's not like it's a weird thing to have a market. Okay. But anyway, because of the messed up way, this, the story was managed. Now the lab leak theory is seen by progressives as a, as a racist thing. So again, Biden doesn't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole, but he suffice to say, he can't, he's happy to let it just play out whatever it is.
And then just say, look, [00:49:00] I, I, I turned it back on. That's what's happening. So, you know, that's why I think it's really ridiculous when people are like, well, four agencies say market and two agencies say lab. So four beats two, right? But that's insane. Because only one of the theories is 100 percent correct.
And one of them is 0 percent correct. It's not a horse race. The majority can be wrong and the minority can be right. It just matters what the answer is. And it's not it's not up to the intelligence community to take a vote on it. Okay, it's up to everyone involved to Uh, call for transparency, and that transparency will reveal more data, at which point we will eventually have a preponderance of the evidence, not a smoking gun.
And then we'll be forced as a society to reckon with that preponderance of the evidence in order to make policy to protect ourselves. And we, and so we, and we can't do that because we're still arguing about whether or not. Uh, the pangolin is the, it, it just, uh, made a thousand mile trip from, you know, or the bat made a [00:50:00] thousand mile trip and then bit a pangolin that's happened to spill over to a human ten miles from the lab, which is, again, common sense tells you it's just a much, much, much less likely scenario.
Before we move off this topic, just very quickly, I know you don't have a crystal ball, but based on your reporting, when are we going to get real visibility into? What happened? So all this is now, it was sort of quiet for a couple of years. Now it's back on. Like what, what kind of timeline are we looking at?
And I assume now given Congress is in Repub, or the house is in Republican majority, and there's the special committee that Mike Gallagher is leading. And so there's a lot going on that would, I would think give fuel to those who want to. Get to the bottom of it. Uh, right the the action on the hill on this issue is in the hands of the Uh house permits like committee on intelligence a subcommittee on the coronavirus, uh chaired by uh, uh congressman wenstrup Uh, they had their first hearing on it Robert redfield the head of [00:51:00] the former head of the cdc during the outbreak a virologist by the way you know testified that based on the makeup of the virus and the way it acted and His access to intelligence and sources.
He believed it came from the lab and you know, everyone wrote that he's a racist as a conspiracy theorist. Uh, so, you know, I hope that they, that subpoenas start flying. I hope that they start to pry open the files of USAID, uh, and the intelligence community because that intelligence review itself, uh, the allegation, uh, by Republicans is that it was completely corrupted.
And so we have to see their work on this thing and, uh, and USAID too. And, you know, let's get. Peter Daszak from the Equal Health Alliance under oath and see if he says the same thing as he's been saying this whole time, which is that I have no idea. Why would the Chinese hide a science? And this is sort of like the, the, the big sort of lie about this issue is like that the, this idea that, oh, well, the Chinese labs said they didn't have it.
So that means that they didn't have it. And in order to believe that you would have [00:52:00] to believe that these Chinese scientists were probably very nice people. You know, have any control over really what gets released in the, about this issue. They don't, it's a Chinese communist party controlled issue. This is a dual use technology.
The lab is run by the PLA. It was occupied by the PLA before. Now it's just run by the PLA and it's not just this lab. It's a network of labs and we shouldn't be surprised that the Chinese have a bio. Defense program related to virus research, because we have one too. The problem is that we built theirs for them and then our intelligence community failed to track it properly because the people that we had on the inside decided to work with them in a way that may have probably likely, uh, caused the pandemic they were trying to prevent.
Okay, Josh, before I let you go, I would be remiss if I did not ask you. About Russia, Ukraine, you've written about this war extensively, most recently, the column about three weeks [00:53:00] ago that I was that I was quite moved by, uh, this was, I think, following President Biden's trip to Ukraine, where he said something along the lines of we will, we will Help Ukraine for as long as it takes or something is, uh, something along those lines.
And you, you wrote this column, this sort of impassioned plea that, you know, basically argue it's not about as long as it takes. It's about now, right? And I'll quote you, you wrote here, and I'm quoting, Ukrainians have, this is what you wrote in the Washington Post, Ukrainians have been fighting heroically.
But they're still outnumbered and outgunned. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops and still enjoys substantial superiority in material. Ukrainians know perfectly well that time is not on their side. A fresh Russian offensive can come at any moment. So, it doesn't matter that President Biden says we'll, we'll, we'll be there as long as it takes.
It, it, they're in a race against time, according to your piece. What is The Biden administration not doing [00:54:00] that they should be doing because everyone I speak to reporters, I speak to who are covering this, this issue, this foreign policy challenge is one of the, as far as President Biden is concerned, is one of the defining, if not the defining mission of his presidency.
It will be the legacy of his presidency. It's, it's in part why he wants to run for reelection and continue his administration. So what is he not doing? If he really wants Ukraine to win, what is he not doing that he should be doing? Right, right. Well, to be clear, I wrote that column after going to the Munich Security Conference and speaking with a bunch of Ukrainians, you know, and, you know, what I'm trying to do in that column is to convey the reality of what the Ukrainians are experiencing.
Uh, and factor that into our policy discussion because, you know, they're the ones fighting and dying. It's their country. Okay. It's their lives on the line there. Every Ukrainian family is in a state of panic and tragedy. Every single one. They've all lost people there. There are many, most of them are living in darkness or, uh, living as [00:55:00] refugees.
Families are separated and it's getting the economies in the, in the, in the, Toilet and, uh, it's not getting any better and it's been a year. Okay. And, uh, so as long as it takes, sounds horrible to them, you know, they're like, as long as it takes, what are you, what are you talking about? They're like, as long as, no, no, no, no, no, right.
We're not taking it for a long fight. We want this to end. They're like, yeah, they're like, you don't understand these Russian criminals and zombies and messed up crazy, you know, hordes of rapists and murderers that they're sending it, they can send those forever. Okay. That's horrible for those Russians, but that's their problem.
This is our country. And, uh, you know, there's, there becomes a tipping point where, you know, the, the things that Ukrainians, you know, view as the, the underpinnings of their, of their military, uh, structure, uh, start to fade away. They start to have the people who are, are the skilled soldiers, the equipment that they know how to use.
And, uh, you know, and moreover. [00:56:00] What's the point of saving a country if that country is a ruin, okay? And, and, when you hit the Ukrainian, when you ruin their infrastructure, well that doesn't snap back. So, every time more infrastructure gets ruined, the costs of reconstruction go up, and the task of rebuilding, and that's even if they win, they could lose, they could still very well lose.
So, that kind of sense of desperation I don't think is well understood in Washington, where people are like, oh well we give them a bunch of stuff, they're fine. You know and oh now they're just arguing over this line or that line in the sand. That's not true They're arguing, uh, about their, their, their very, uh, existence as a country and as, and sometimes as, as human and often as human beings.
So that kind of sense of desperation should lead us to say, well, okay, where do not, the one big problem is the U. S. and, uh, Washington and Kiev don't have a shared, uh, agreement on what winning means, okay? They want Their idea of winning and our idea of winning are clearly different, although we don't acknowledge it.
The other big [00:57:00] problem is that, what's the timeline? At which we determine that we want to go for that endgame. And what the Ukrainians are saying is that this is the last year we can do this. Don't tell us we're going to be here for five years. It's not going to work. We're going to lose. You're going to regret that.
And if they really wanted to win this year, well, then there are a lot of specific things that they need that they're not getting. Before we get to that, Josh, I'm sorry, before we get to that, but so we talked about the discrepancy in timelines. Can you talk about the discrepancy in what winning means, what Ukraine thinks winning means, and what Washington thinks winning means?
Sure. For the Ukrainians, winning means, uh, the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, getting back all of the Donbas and all, all of Crimea and, and every Russian troop is dead or out. Okay. And for the U. S. winning means getting to a, a, a, a, a diplomatic negotiation that results in a cessation of violence.
And you could see the political imperative from the Biden people, right? They don't want to be, uh, uh, [00:58:00] what do they want it to be on TV when he's running for your election? Well. Nixon, 1968, he said the best thing to do is to be a peacemaker, so he ran as a peacemaker. Now, of course, it didn't turn out that way, but the point is that, uh, that's what they're going for.
They want, by the end of this year, to both sides be sufficiently exhausted that they sit down at the table. And it doesn't matter, necessarily, if those negotiations are concluded, just that they're ongoing. And then it'll be less violence. You can run as a peacemaker. That's a pretty good bumper sticker.
Uh, well, the Ukrainians are saying, wouldn't it be better to run as a victor when it isn't that much, much better to be, and even if we're not going to get a hundred percent of our territory, this is the Ukrainians. Again, isn't that a better negotiating position can't even get behind us on this negotiating position so that when we sit down at this table, we have the strongest hand in the best negotiating position because they can't go to the Russians and say, we went all the territory and the Russians like, well, we know that the.
Biden people don't really agree with you on that. It's, it's, it's, uh, that lack of coordination is really [00:59:00] problematic. Now, the Biden administration will say, well, we're, we're, we're very unified with Germany and with France and, you know, And in many cases with Poland, and that's true, and that's good, and they deserve credit for strengthening NATO and all that stuff.
Uh, but that does very little for addressing the Ukrainians desperate needs. And that's the planes, long range missiles, uh, you know, the tanks. they got them the planes, it's still months before So the planes are a little bit of a red herring because, uh, because, yeah, that's what they'll say. Oh, well, if we started today, you still wouldn't get them for six months.
To which they say, well, let's start today. Right. You know. Let's train the pilots. What could be the harm in that? You know? And so, but I think really what's really, and tanks are on the way. Like 20 tanks, Dan, 20. Okay. It's a, there's a 2, 000 Russian tanks. It's, it's, it's insane, but really the, the, the emergency, my reporting shows that the emergency is about the ammunition.
Okay. So these are, these are, this is cluster munitions. No, no, I'm talking about just regular shells. [01:00:00] Regular shells. Okay, before we get into questions. Yeah, so we haven't put our, our defense industries on a war footing. We've sanctioned the Russian defense industries, but they can get drones from, from Iran.
They can get, they can find ways to break the sanctions. Our, we're still producing the same amount of stuff as we did in peacetime and the Ukrainians are using it at a rate that it can't be replenished. Which means that eventually they're going to run out. Pretty soon. And that's a big problem. Nobody produces the one five, five artillery shells anywhere, except for the South Koreans.
They're the only ones in the world who actually build these things. Cause no one thought we were going to be fighting artillery wars in Europe in 2023, but here we are. So absent a war us getting our industries on our war footing. There are other less attractive options like giving them cluster bombs.
And I wrote a column about that too. So let's talk about that because that's controversial. So explain what cluster bombs are for those who. Don't follow, you know, the history of warfare, uh, what are cluster bombs? Why are they so [01:01:00] controversial? And why do you think despite the controversy, and it will be controversial, it's worth making them available, dusting them off the shelf and make them available to the Ukrainians?
Right. Well, cluster munitions describe a range of weapons whereby one munition breaks up into dozens of other munitions, essentially spreading bomblets over a wide area. Uh, it's a good way to kill a lot of people with one shot. And if you've got 200, 000 Russian storming at you and you've only got so many shots, you probably want to kill more than one with each shot.
So that makes perfect military sense for the situation. The problem is that these are internationally banned weapons in a hundred countries. U. S. and Ukraine haven't ratified that treaty, but still, it's not a good look. Okay, and the Ukrainians know that. They're not happy about it. Convention on Cluster Munitions.
As you said, 100 countries have signed on to it, not only because they can kill indiscriminately even when they're not intended to do so, but long after the fight, long after the war, there are [01:02:00] remnants of these munitions that can stay in the areas that were hit and cause further damage to innocents.
Right. These are old weapons. They've been sitting on shelves since like the 80s or 70s in some cases, and a lot of them don't explode. They essentially become landmines that children can stumble upon years later. But the Ukrainians said, listen, we'll do the cleanup if we live that long. And if we don't live that long, then it's not going to matter.
And we won't have any children to stumble upon these ordinances if the Russians kill them all today. And so they really are that desperate. And now, again, the Russians use cluster bombs on civilian areas. The Ukrainians are promising to use them only on the Russian military, and they know where they are.
And we've criticized, the U. S. has criticized Russia for using them. Of course, yeah, because they use them in cities, not against military targets. Uh, but just goes to show you that it's really the use of the weapon and not the weapon. That's the evil but anyway, the the ukrainians Say this is for a specific military use which is to uh, stop the oncoming russian advance [01:03:00] and they don't have another alternative And what I say is that Okay.
If, if we're not going to, and by the way, there were a million, we have lots of those, we have millions of cluster bombs sitting around Europe that we can give them today that could save Ukrainian lives and kill more Russians, which I thought is what we're supposed to be doing now. And if that makes you feel icky, if you don't want to be involved in that cluster bomb proliferation, I get that.
Well, then you must give the Ukrainians another way to kill more Russians, but you can't just tell them, well, we can't give you the planes because it's too complicated. We were running out of regular weapons and we can't give you the cluster bombs because we're afraid that it's like a bad image thing for us.
Uh, so good luck, which is essentially where they are. And you know, it's like a. Giving them just enough weapons to fight to a bloody stalemate, uh, again, makes sense politically for the Biden administration, but militarily and for the Ukrainians, it's crazy. And it leads to what Putin wants, which is, uh, to destroy the Ukrainian country as a democracy, as, as they know it.
So it can never emerge to be a healthy democracy with a healthy [01:04:00] economy. That's integrated into Europe and partnered with NATO. That's the goal. Okay. That's the shared goal is that at the end of this thing, Ukraine is a functional. Democracy that can, by the way, we'll have a huge army and we'll be on our side because we help them because we save these help these people save their own lives, but only if they win.
And if they, if they lose, they will cascade of horrors will surely follow in. Ukraine and beyond. I agree. Uh, Josh, we're going to leave it there. You laid out, uh, a bunch of reporting and analysis on a number of categories. We've been following closely in this ongoing conversation, this podcast that, um, you anyways, I just sort of stayed out of the way and let you lay, lay all these issues out.
My goal was to have this podcast band in seven different. Dictatorships. So I hope, well, let's see when you air it. Uh, I can count four or five. Iran you hit, Iran, Russia, China, Saudi, [01:05:00] Saudi, you didn't hit North Korea. I don't know. Uh, Well, you'll have to have me back on. Yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to. Josh, thank you for this, uh, Josh Rogan from the Washington Post, we'll post again your book in the show notes, we'll post the columns we talked about in this, uh, in the show notes, show notes, and uh, thanks for joining us and illuminating these issues for us, and um, look forward to having you back.
Thank you, thank you for your service.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Josh Rogan, you can find him at Josh Rogan on Twitter, that's at Josh J O S H R O G I N, and you can follow all of his work at the Washington Post. You can find his book, which I highly recommend, at, you know where you can find Josh Rogin's book. Call Me Back is produced by Alain Benatar.
Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[01:06:00]