Rahm Emanuel
Our interests in the Indo-Pacific, Russia-Ukraine, and the Middle East are all interconnected. A regional war in one, could easily trip into a regional war in another — and in some cases actors in one region are already being supported by regional actors from another. Just follow the moves of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran.
Rahm Emanuel has been an energetic diplomat in one of those regions — the Indo-Pacific. He is the U.S. ambassador to Japan. In addition to being a diplomatic and policy practitioner, he has also been an often astute — and sometimes provocative — analyst of the Chinese Government and its moves.
Rahm also has deep roots in American Jewish life and with Israel. He has a lot to say about the lessons he took away from serving in the Clinton administration, where he was involved in President Clinton’s efforts at a two-state solution during the Oslo and Camp David processes.
Rahm also served 4 terms in Congress, where he was a member of the House Democratic Leadership. He was President Obama’s chief of staff for the first two years of the Obama administration, before returning to Chicago to run for mayor, where he served for two terms.
To read Rahm’s piece mentioned in the episode: https://japan-forward.com/lessons-from-israel-timely-for-japan/
Follow Rahm on X: https://x.com/USAmbJapan
Register for Call me Back Live at the Streicker Center: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
RE: Everybody talks about diversity as a strength. It's only a strength if the foundation of unity is there. We have lost the unifying to make the diversity work. We are diverse. I'm a former mayor of the city of Chicago. We had 147 languages spoken in our public school system. Okay? You can only have that diversity be an asset if there's a unifying principle. Let me give you another example, our women's gymnastic team, they won all-around. Everybody, oh look at the diversity. And I agreed with it. It was beautiful. But you know what nobody's held up? Yes, there was this beautiful mosaic of diversity where they had an American flag wrapped around them. So you could see diversity. I saw the unity of representing a country, singularity. We don't have that. China, Russia are betting on these divisions and they play on them. They throw sand in them.
DS: It's 11:30 PM on Thursday, August 29th here in New York City. It's 6:30 AM on Friday, August 30th in Israel as Israelis start their day. Before today's conversation, just one housekeeping note. As I've mentioned before, we will be hosting a live Call Me Back event at the Stryker Center in New York City on the evening of September 24th. Our guest will be Amir Tibon, who is a journalist with Haaretz and who also has an extraordinary book coming out on that date, on the 24th, about his October 7th day, his riveting and horrifying story, and then his observations and analysis of how Israel got to October 7th and what has happened since October 7th and where Israel goes from here. We hope to see you at the event. If you want to register for the event, just go to the Stryker Center website. We will also post a link for the event in our show notes. Now on to our episode. As you, our Call Me Back listeners, know, since October 7th, we have been almost singularly focused on Israel, the Middle East, and the US-Israel relationship. We will continue to be. But the Middle East is just one of three geopolitical hotspots we have been closely monitoring. The other two are, of course, China, Taiwan, Japan, India, what is more broadly defined as the entire Indo-Pacific, which includes many more countries as well, too many for me to list here. and then of course Russia, Ukraine. So the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, and then specifically Russia, Ukraine. These three regions and the threats in each of them and our interests in each of them are all interconnected. A regional war in one could easily trip into a regional war in another. And in some cases, actors in one region are already being supported by regional actors from another. Just follow the moves of Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. All three of their interests are aligned and there is already sometimes outright coordination between them. Rahm Emanuel has been an energetic diplomat in one of those regions, the Indo-Pacific. He is the US Ambassador to Japan. And in addition to being a diplomatic and policy practitioner on behalf of the US government in Tokyo, he's also been an often astute and sometimes provocative analyst of the Chinese government and its moves. Rahm also has deep roots in American Jewish life and with Israel. He has a lot to say about the lessons he took away from serving in the Clinton administration, where he was involved in President Clinton's efforts at a two-state solution during the Oslo and Camp David processes. And of course, he has a lot of reactions, which we discuss, to the Hamas atrocities of October 7th and what has followed since then. Rahm has also served four terms in the US Congress, where he was a member of the House Democratic leadership. He was also President Obama's chief of staff for the first two years of the Obama administration before returning to Chicago to run for mayor, where he served for two terms. But it's his time and experiences, serving three US presidents and specifically about US foreign policy during those times, that is the focus of our conversation today. My conversation with Ambassador Rahm Emanuel. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, who joins us not only for the first time, but the first time we've had a guest join us from Tokyo, virtually. Ambassador, thanks for being here.
RE: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
DS: I want to start with your decision to take this job. Not why ambassador? Very prominent officials in US politics and US government take on these positions at very important countries around the world as ambassador, including some predecessors of yours in Tokyo. Walter Mondale was Ambassador to Japan. Tom Foley, former Speaker of the House, was Ambassador to Japan. And we can go on and on. There's a current US Senator who was an Ambassador to Japan.
RE: Two Senate majority leaders.
DS: Two Senate majority leaders?
RE: Mansfield and Howard Baker.
DS: Yeah. Okay, there you go.
RE: US History for 200.
DS: Look, I know you're a history buff, so we can geek out on history. I may have to do a separate episode just on that. But, you get offered a position to serve in this administration. You'd worked for two presidents already. You're now asked to serve a third. Presumably, there are a number of... I know when a president calls and offers a position, you take it. But you seem to me to have been genuinely interested in being in Japan. So what should I take away from that in terms of where you see Japan, the US-Japanese relationship, Japan in our kind of global geopolitics, Japan in US foreign policy? Why Japan?
RE: So a couple things. I do, I mean, to the core, I do believe when the president asks you to do something, I mean, I'm old school, you're old school, which is you have two answers: yes or yes, sir. And you get to just figure out which of those two you want to give. And second is the president, it was about 10 days after he gets confirmed that he's the president, as you remember that history, and early December, and he says, look, in fact, he said, I want to go back to the tradition of having a vice president Speaker of the House of elected officials with some status in our system. And we had a conversation about Japan and about what he wanted to do as a partnership with Japan, but also in the region and how Japan could play a role. That's kind of core from my own perspective. I mean, I said it at my confirmation. I said it kind of to be pithy soundbite. And then I realized it was more prescient the more I thought about it and the more I got involved, which is that the next three years will determine the next 30 years. there we had come to a point, and this is, you know, literally in the fall of 2021, this area in Japan specifically, Japan was ready, the United States was ready to kind of take it to a different place and take it to a different moment. And I thought that if that could happen… I was watching what Prime Minister Kishida was saying, watching what Prime Minister Suga was saying, watching what, I know what the president, Kurt, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, others wanted to do. You could see wide lens, 10,000 feet, that this could be a moment and you want it to be part of it. Now, I happen to think it was not just a pithy code, it turned out to be prescient. When you look back at what President Biden and Prime Minister Kushida, there's a story today in Nikkei about this. It has been, whether you want to call it momentous, whether you want to call it, like I have said, the golden era, what has been done to upgrade the relationship on the diplomatic side, the political side, the security side, the economic front. It is totally transformational as both countries have totally transformed the way they deal with each other and how they approach their task and their mission together. And I wouldn't exactly call it Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation, but I put my thumb at the scale with Phil Goldberg, my partner in Seoul. He's our ambassador there. We worked on the trilateral when people were saying, we had tire marks on the back, don't do this. We've been here before, it's never gonna happen. Mary Kay Carlson, also a colleague and partner from the Philippines, our ambassador. We were at a INDOPACOM conference and this was when the Korea trilat was just kind of bubbling out there, we wrote a memo about doing this with the Philippines. And so to be part of that, now did I see that when the president called in December of 2020? No. But that we were going to enter a different phase and I have kinetic energy, I can't control it and you know, etc. And do you want to be part of something having, I wouldn't say exhaust on the domestic side, but this would be a different channel on the diplomatic, international. And one last thing and I'll just close on this. A lot of people, if you say diplomat, in your mind's eye, you got a gray flannel suit and a pipe. Diplomacy, in many ways, with another country that's an ally that's democratic, is politics. Just a different political chessboard, but it's politics. If you do politics, you can be a diplomat.
DS: This was always James Baker's point, by the way.
RE: Really?
DS: Yeah, yeah. His memoir from serving as secretary of state was called The Politics of Diplomacy.
RE: Yeah, everybody has this note. First of all, it was also like, you've got to learn how to calm down. You got to learn how to be quiet. You got to learn how to be very diplomatic. And one is I didn't want to be inauthentic. I was going to be myself. Now, for the Japanese, I joke, I've been here two and a half years. For them, it feels like 25 years. But it's worked, being very direct, honest, without going over the line, being very upfront about kind of what we can, can't do, what you should, can't do. How do we make this work? And then understanding, I'm dealing with an elected official, this is a political issue. So, okay, here's your politics, here's our politics. Let's see, if you don't know politics, you can study, you can read Foreign Affairs all day long. It ain't gonna work. You gotta know it. You gotta get it. I mean, I have anecdotes of this, like on the energy policy for Europe, where I helped them work through how to get to a position where Japan became the first country to give LNG to Europe in the early days of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, when the energy was cut off. It was a political solution.
DS: So I want to come back to some examples that I've been struck by where you've been, shall we say, extraordinarily direct, at least for a diplomat. Before I do, if you could just briefly summarize for Americans what you want them to know about Japan, why Japan matters to the United States.
RE: You know, I think it was the book, Judgment at Tokyo, and so it comes out this year, fascinating book. I think it's in that book. But anyway, I recently read, did you know that George Kennan was sent here to write a memo?
DS: I did not.
RE: Okay, well, we all know the Long Memo, right?
DS: Of course.
RE: Yeah. When he's head of the State Department, head of the policy and planning, he's sent here and he writes this as prescient to memos you could have as the Long Memo you know on how Japan is going to be our bulwark in the area as our partner and not only confronting communist China, but also in kind of anchoring the Indo-Pacific or the Pacific area at that point, it was referred to, to the United States and it was going to be the bulwark of that foundation. So I went and pulled it. It's unbelievable and it's incredibly prescient. And nobody ever told me about this. Now I'm not saying other people, it's not like in the briefing book I got from the State Department. So there it is. And Japan is our number one foreign direct investor for the last five years. A million Americans directly work for Japanese companies and they support many, many families and communities throughout the United States and places in… their investments heavily tilt towards manufacturing. Two, they're becoming the third largest defense budget and our critical partner. There's nothing we're going to do in this region vis-a-vis the security goals we have or confronting China without Japan. It's an away game and Japan makes it a home game for us. Three, Japan's cultural contribution, not just to our national pastime, their national baseball, but they're a true ally in all the sense of values, economics, security, and the way they see the world. And I will say, and the congressmen were just here, I I felt it at the time, you know, Prime Minister Koshida's speech at the joint session kind of gave the old spice slap up to Congress to get movement on the Ukrainian aid, not that they went to done otherwise, but a week after his speech, they finally, finally moved. And it was very poignant where he literally, and members of Congress today, when I took him to see the prime minister, thanked him for waking them up, both Democrats and Republicans. So it's a very, very important country in a kind of the most important place in the world from an economic standpoint, security challenges we have and opportunities. We spent 60 years of a relationship on what I refer to as alliance protection. These are the early days of writing the script on alliance protection into the region and Japan's our sidekick and partner and we are theirs.
DS: And they are investing now at a considerable level in their own military, which they had not done for most of their post-World War II history.
RE: They've done five things and doing five social security changes with no protest. They're going from 1% to 2% of GDP from the ninth to the third largest defense budget in the world. And 99.9 % of it is in equipment and weapons. Number two, they are acquiring counter-strike capability. Number three, they've lifted the cap on exporting weapons to other third -party countries as long as they're not in a conflict. Number four, they've normalized a relationship with South Korea and the United States on a trilateral basis as a strategic chess move of boldness orchestrated by the president and administration. And number five, they have rewritten three national security documents that we could have written and they could have written that complimentary. And every one of those things are upending 70 years of policy. Pretty significant and there hasn't been ten protesters out on the street.
DS: And you have been screaming from the hilltops about the US industrial base for purposes of our own military construction, particularly shipbuilding. And you point out, you wrote this piece for the Washington Post just recently about how China is way ahead of the US in terms of shipbuilding and its fleet. And you're like sounding the alarm. So A, you are saying we have a huge problem, and B, Japan can help us solve it. So A, can you describe the problem, and B, then describe how you envision Japan helping.
RE: To quote that great philosopher, my father, Dr. Ben Emanuel, our military industrial base is verkakte. Okay, it's screwed up.
DS: By the way, on this podcast, Rahm, we don't have to do an addendum on what verkakte is. We have a lot of listeners who have Yiddish, you know, at their fingertips.
RE: Verkakte, I was to say something else. Thank God for Yiddish.
DS: Yeah. Exactly right.
RE: Thank God the FCC did not know does not know. Get that Yiddish English dictionary. What verkakte mean?
DS: Right.
RE: Number two, we have these security agreements, we have security objectives, and the weakest link in our national security is our defense industrial base. And we're all responsible, every one of us. It's Democrat, Republican fault. We all did it. We overshot the runway post the Cold War. We didn't wake up until a decade after that we have this problem with Russia and China. It was right there. China decided to go from strategic competitors to strategic adversary, and we still hope they were just strategic competitors. All of us have our hand on the bloody knife. I'm not interested in how we got here. I'm interested in getting out of here. And I mean, I'll give you one example of this problem. Lockheed makes the Patriot PAC-3. They also make the F-35. Raytheon makes the AMRAAM C and D. Very important weapon systems. Both companies combined did $19 billion in stock buyback last year. And you cannot get, we need a thousand Patriots a year minimum, and we can't get there on the industrial base we have and we are, even if we said, okay, yes, now at home, nowhere else, no other country, no other partner doing it, it will take us four years to get another factory and capability on a good day. Okay, so they got $19 billion in stock buyback and our strategic obligations to our partners, and I don't even want to get into the system, I have renegotiated things that we have signed with Japan that we cannot keep, either the budget or the deadline, and it's not one weapon, it's multiple. All based on the fact that our military companies, the big five, when I was working for President Clinton, used to be 50, down to five, cannot ever meet a deadline or a budget. You can't name me, I challenge you, I'll pay the first year of your kid's college education, name me 10 weapons that have either been on time and on budget. Either one of those or both, name them. And I'm not talking about a pair of pants.
DS: Right, right. I gotcha.
RE: Okay. This is like mental therapy and I want to thank you for taking Blue Cross and Blue Shield for this. There's a three trillion dollar backlog and the first response you get is, well, we've got to see the demand signal. What part of the zeros are close to three trillion dollars? It's not a demand signal. It's as we say in Chicago and Tokyo, that dog won't hunt. Give me a break. Now, number two on that, we're not going to get from here to there without our allies and doing things different. I'm for more money, but doing more money will not, it would take one piece of equipment. For 10 years, we have appropriated enough money for two nuclear subs, and we've only produced 1.2. Giving them more money to produce three will not get you to three. So I'm for a bigger defense budget. It's clear, given the security challenges we have with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea, we need to meet our security, but we can't do it. So even on an interim basis, it may not be long term, just take the idea of ship repair and maintenance. Since we have to build up the ships, we need every day and every hour spent building new. Allow allies who have longer shipyards, we're short on shipyards, let the allies do repair and maintenance in theater. It has a deterrent effect. They'll do it on time and on budget. It allows us to keep our focus on new ships rather than repairing old ones. And there's an example off of Yemen. I put it in The Washington Post. Even when they're done with repair maintenance, they have to go back. We're extending stays by our navy. Look, you have an aircraft carrier today in the Middle East as you and I are taping that came out of the Indo-Pacific. We are literally stealing from [inaudible] in many different crises. We can't do this. And while that is happening, you have situations where Ukraine has shown without a navy how to fight a naval war, without a navy. And they've got the Russian naval fleet locked up, and they don't have a ship. So you have old model, new technology, and let me then give my other anecdote, which is why we should build up new industries and old guys should not be allowed to compete for certain things. You have a situation where you have two astronauts in a space station. If you did not have SpaceX, you'd be determined that you only had Boeing. You should not be in a situation on the military side where you only have literally a monopoly by the defense industry by five companies. You should use future technologies, drones and other types of information and cyber warfare where you help nurture new industries and new competitors so the big five don't own us and don't own our security. You know, there's a company in the small drone area in Ukraine that produces 3,000 drones a day. We can't do that. It's doable. So I'm just saying the system we have and we're all responsible. There are other Paul Revere's before. I've been on this, but I am like, I paid attention in the Situation Room. I mean, phones aren't allowed in, so I wasn't distracted. I paid attention. This was, you could see it, but it was never really a focus. It wasn't a focus when I was in Congress. And we have a crisis on our hand, and we're not structurally capable of meeting the security obligations and also meeting the security challenges. It's just a fact, and we got to get out of it, and we got to not only spend money, and more money, we got to spend it wiser. We got to create more competition in using the dollars, especially in the new technology area. I've had kind of like a mezzanine, bloody nose seat to this. There's other people closer to this problem. And then I will say this, I've got two kids in the Navy. I've been on the Abraham Lincoln, I've been on the Ronald Reagan, and I've done a citizenship on the Abraham Lincoln, and I've done a lot of stuff down on the [inaudible] kind of thing. We ask these kids to do truly heroic things. And I really do believe these kids who volunteer, they are the real 1% because they're giving something, not people… The 1% is not who takes, the 1% is who gives.
DS: And by the way, 1% is accurate. It's not just a metaphor.
RE: We're asking them to project America's interests and execute it. Can we really, all of us in our cheap seats, say we're doing our job the way we've asked them to do theirs? And the answer is no, we haven't. We've been totally irresponsible and we owe them something better if we're going to ask them to do what we're asking them to do. And these kids are incredible. I mean, they are kids, but they've done, I mean, extended stays. They can't talk to… see family. And we're not backing them up. We're not. I want to thank you again for the mental health break there.
DS: Look, I mean, it's weird. You, you're lying on a couch. I mean, it's like a therapy session. Our listeners can't see how much this is like…
RE: I do hope that Blue Cross covers this.
DS: Yeah, it covers this. All right, I want to talk to you about China, where you've been really outspoken, as you and I were discussing offline, where you've been exceptionally direct. So just want to pull up, there's so many to choose from, but I want to pull up a few of your choice tweets here. Here's one of your tweets. Ecuador suspends a visa agreement with China earlier this week and suffers a nationwide blackout the next day. Then you say the UK charges two men with spying for China and its Ministry of Defense is hit by a massive hacking attack. You list a bunch of these examples. Coincidences, you write, happenstance, or something more sinister? Thoughts and opinions are more than welcome, according to you. I'll give you, here's another one. China's foreign ministry spokesman, this is a tweet, claimed in response to a question about China's increasing regional isolation that it maintains, quote, friendly cooperation with countries in the region and beyond. Am I missing something? Philippine Coast Guard ships attacked with water cannons and lasers. Multiple Indian soldiers killed. Illegal fishing in Japanese waters after banning Japanese seafood. In a recent cyber attack… You go on and on and on and you're like, I guess there are different interpretations of what friendly means. It's tweet after tweet after tweet that are… I mean, I find it very refreshing and I'm sure most of my audience will find this very refreshing, but I could also see why some may see these tweets from a US ambassador as provocative. So what is your thinking in terms of saying these things and what's the reaction?
RE: Well, I'm still here.
DS: Fair enough.
RE: Okay. I'm still standing. I'm vertical. Okay. So let me ask a question. Do you think El Salvador is saying what El Salvador and then the cyber attack? Do you think that was a coincidence or not?
DS: Not at all.
RE: Okay. Did you put, before I said it, did you put all those together into one kind of narrative?
DS: No, but when you start seeing it, you're… yeah.
RE: Okay. So one, it's true. And second, my own view, you know, I jokingly say that George Kennan will be known for the Long Memo. I'll be known for the short tweet. Okay, there it is. But my view is they got to get called out. We've been operating too much. You know, the leadership always talks about this win-win. Well, no, we're not doing this. You have a set of rules for you and then a set of rules for everybody else. And I do have the security and I don't try to do it all the time, but I do it in instances like when they cross the line into Japan's airspace the other day, doing examples of, you know, their good neighbor is not love thy neighbor. You look at what they've done to Japan's airspace. You look at what they just done to the Philippine Coast Guard. You look at what they did to the airplane from Australia, firing the metal into the engines. There's nothing good neighbor about it. There's no win-win there. And they're going to get called out. And I would say, you could go through the social media. There's nothing I have said there that's not accurate. And do I say it in a way that you remember it? That is, you said there's things that, you know, I will never be accused of writing in State Department talking points. That will not be on the tombstone. And I don't want it on my tombstone. You will walk away remembering it and you will also remember because it called out a truth. Maybe you will be okay. That's not diplomatic, but you know what? Public communication is changing. Diplomats before me didn't take the train in Tokyo, in Japan. Our public diplomacy has to be different. And I do think calling out China in their hypocrisy when they try to sit there and sell you something else, they're not the only people that can basically throw pitches like that. So they'll operate it. And I also think there's a side benefit. Our allies stay stronger when our allies see us not backing down, talking straight, talking honest and staying strong. They're willing to take up and take a bigger step, a bolder step.
DS: Yeah, I completely agree with that.
RE: It could cross. It doesn't mean it's true all the time, but it's more true than not true.
DS: Okay, but China, just generally speaking, because I feel like you took the job in Japan because for all the reasons you stated earlier, and also because Japan is one of, if not our most important ally in dealing with China, which you have said sometime in the last decade flipped from strategic competitor to strategic adversary. But I find in this country where I am right now, in our country, having a serious conversation about China with a lot of people, particularly young people, is hard because they don't understand what China is up to and what we're up against in terms of what China is up to. So if you could, the way I asked you at the beginning, what would you want Americans to know about Japan? What would you want Americans to know about China today? If you could educate a bunch of millennials who know nothing about geopolitics and great power conflict.
RE: You could also say their parents don't either, but look, here's what I think. There's an interesting book, Asia's Reckoning I thought was a very good book about the United States’ relationship with Japan, Japan's relationship with the United States, and Japan's relationship with China, and China's relationship with the United States, United States’ with China. It was basically that triangle. It was very complicated, obviously. So one is I would separate what you said if I could. China has a very, very rich culture and a very, very entrepreneurial society. So I separate China from the PRC. They're not the same.
DS: Or from the CCP.
RE: The Chinese Communist Party.
DS: The regime.
RE: Yeah. The Chinese Communist Party, well, it reflects the culture and society, but it is also different. I mean, and when I say that is, I think one of this leadership and President Xi's mistakes is they have squashed the entrepreneurial part of China. It’s not just foreign capital fleeing, they have squashed the economic engine of China. Entrepreneurs live in fear. They are trying to flee. They're trying to take their money out. They're trying to get out themselves. And he does not realize that 70% of the employment comes out of the private sector and he has scared the living wits of them and they're not going to take a risk. I think it's a great country with a great history and great culture and a huge contribution to cultural life, intellectual, literary life, and to scientific discovery. It has a huge history. And it's very complicated. And also we have to understand some of it is the West, mainly Europe, but also the West was abusive in recent times. And part of what they're doing is to make sure that that never happens again. They have a right to be, because of how the West during what is called the Opium Wars, et cetera, was abusive of China and the Chinese. That said, you have a system here today in a political structure today that knows no boundaries and limits on their appetite. And I do think one of the mistakes we made is we stuck with this paradigm and this structural and this perspective that they were a strategic competitor. And it's clear by the time 2012 and President Xi comes to power, he's decided the United States, because of the financial scandal and other things, is a spent power and they are now a strategic adversary. And we stuck with something hoping that we could make it a strategic competitor and that's not where they are. And so then therefore we have to as a country realize unlike every other part of our history, whether that's in the 18th, 19th, and then early-20th century, mid-20th century, we're finally facing a bigger country by size, population, a competitor like we have never ever, ever in our history faced. Now I would not bet against the American ingenuity. I wouldn't bet against American sense of purpose and unifying when it has to. But this is a different competitor and the historic anecdotes and benchmarks that we use doesn't really apply to China. This is a new game for us. It's a different game. There are some things that are similar, is what you call great power. But from our historical standpoint, vis-a-vis Great Britain, vis-a-vis Nazi Germany, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, this is different because of the size, scope, and scale of China. And we got to approach it differently.
DS: And do you think their geopolitical ambition goes beyond the region that you're in right now?
RE: Yes. Look what they're doing with Russia. Yeah. Definitely goes beyond the region.
DS: And Iran. Look what they're doing in the Middle East.
RE: Yeah. But the first and foremost is this region. And first and foremost is making sure that everybody in this region now is a subject. Now, I want to say one thing. We have our own faults. We don't come to this clean, the United States. We have a very checkered past. But by and large, when you look at World War I, you look at World War II, we have spent a huge amount of political capital to help other countries and economic and lives of our fellow citizens on behalf of other countries, their freedom. I'm in a country we fought a war with and then we built them up. There's never another time in human history. The United States fought Germany and Japan. The first thing we do after the war is help build them back up. That hasn't happened in history, but we're at fault on other things. China's strategy vis-a-vis the Belt and Roads, the debt issues they do, is literally to make you lose your own sovereignty, political, diplomatic or strategic. You become a subject of China's will. And that is different from us. And again, we don't come to it purely. We have had our mistakes and some of them have been massively costly to the countries that were there to help. But our history is usually using our resources on behalf of others, not just ourselves. It's a fundamental difference.
DS: Okay. want to talk to you about, because you're spending a lot of time thinking about China's ambitions in the region and beyond, but in the region, because you're in the country that has huge stakes in China's ambitions for the Indo-Pacific, there have been joint military exercises between the US and Japan around the Straits of Taiwan, including earlier this year. Obviously, a lot of the attention focused on what China may do to Taiwan and what it means for the region. On April 13th, some could argue there is a case study of a, in the case of April 13th, 300 projectiles launched at Israel, another small democracy surrounded by adversaries, that's an ally of the United States. And there was an extremely impressive defense against those projectiles, multi-layered, multinational involvement, highly coordinated, didn't pop up overnight. It was a couple of decades in the making. And you wrote a piece for a Japanese publication, basically saying, and I'll link to the piece in the show notes for this episode. But you basically looked at that and say that, that has implications obviously for the Middle East. And that's first and foremost, and that's very important. And Israel survived something that night, the night of April 13th, that was extraordinary. But there's also a lesson there. And there's a lesson there for other countries and how the US works with other countries, including countries in the region that you're operating in. So what struck you about April 13th, from that perspective, where a light went off saying, there's a lot of other players, a lot of our other friends who need to learn from the US-Israel relationship?
RE: Well, first of all, April 13th was not just US and Israel. UK was involved. France was involved. There was Saudi Arabia. Jordan was involved. And a lot of people think things were launched from Iran. Well, they were also launched from Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. They were not just launched from Iran. So there were five different countries. The United States and Israel had been planning and running exercises for 20 years. Two, I forgot the exact year, but Israel was integrated into a Mideast CENTCOM system. So information, real interoperability was essential to the success of that defense.
DS: I think that was 2021. That was a big deal.
RE: Massive.
DS: Yeah. People don't even realize that. When I tell people Israel used to be in European command, it wasn't even in Central Command, it wasn't even in the Middle East Regional Command.
RE: You know, we had the system that everybody plugged into and then everybody got the information, but in this case it was Israel. And the ability in, they were trying, if you looked at it, both ICBM, drones, cruise missiles, different weapons, different countries, all arrive in 10 minutes or 30 minutes of each other. So it overwhelmed the system. And our defensive structure based on training, on interoperability of technology, integration of systems, and being able to communicate and talk to each other, and then the practicing that we had done, and Israel's own technology and cyber and activities, nothing got through. Never had happened before. 99.9%. Now, there is still, unfortunately, a Bedouin child who was affected. But when you look at the magnitude of what was attempted, and you can even argue recently, I mean, Israel did it with the northern part in Lebanon, but there's been four weeks between their targeted assassinations in both Beirut and Tehran, and America's presence in power there has had its own deterrent effect. It's an amazing amount. I think there's like 500 plus cruise missiles, over 100 planes there, two aircraft carriers.
DS: I've been saying on this podcast, if 5% had gotten through, 5% on April 13th, we’d be in a regional war.
RE: Yes, it's an amazing... So the lessons are investing in technology, investing in training, investing in interoperability, investing in cyber defense, investing in new technologies, and then working it like a system. Now, one of the things I would say that's relevant also here is why coalitions matter. And people that think America can do this all alone don't understand what happened on April 13th and don't understand what happened here. One of the things I will get back to on China. China's entire strategy is to take a Philippines or take Australia, take a Japan, isolate it and apply all their political, military, security and economic structure and crush that country's sovereignty and independence and to isolate it. One of the things that President Biden's strategy, which I've been a part of, working with Tony, Jake, Kurt, all the people on this, is building a coalition where you flip the script and then the isolated party is China, not the Philippines. It is not an accident that a week ago, the United States, Canada, Australia, with the Philippines, did a naval exercise. Two weeks ago, Germany did a coast guard exercise. Three weeks ago, Japan did a coast guard exercise with the Philippines. There is a message there where the isolated party here on the South China Sea and the different islands there is China. You have a sovereign country, the Philippines, with many different allies, won a 2016 international court case proving that those islands are in their EEZ. China refuses to abide by the international ruling and allies have come to the Philippines defense and the isolated party both politically, diplomatically and security wise is China. And the reason they're reacting is because they don't like being the isolated party. So the strategy is not allow the Philippines to be isolated, but to flip the script and leave China the isolated party in the region. And that is why this latticework system that the president and the team have assembled on the security front, the diplomatic front is so, in my view, the right structure, the right strategic plan, because it isolates China, not the targeted country. And it allows that targeted country to be part of a broader coalition. That's why alliances and allies matter.
DS: Earlier this year, not just a few weeks ago, you made the decision to not attend a war memorial ceremony, Nagasaki.
RE: Correct.
DS: Because according to the press, I only know from the press and I know what I shot you after I saw the press, but I don't know, I haven't actually heard you really talk about it, but you'd made this decision based on what I read because Israel was banned from the ceremony. So can you explain what the ceremony was, why the ceremony is significant, and why you chose to not participate?
RE: I went to a ceremony here in Tokyo because I think as a US citizen and US ambassador, it's important to recognize the memorial and the anniversary of Nagasaki. So I did participate in a memorial. I did not participate in the one in Nagasaki. Okay. Also, the other countries of the G7 did not participate. The only other country banned to go to Nagasaki was Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. Israel was invaded by Hamas. There's no moral equivalency. And I was not going to participate in any moral equivalency. Three months ago, I called the mayor and I said, look, I'm asking you to think this through. You're talking about security. There's no way the prime minister is going there and you're going to have a security problem. There is no post-Abe, post what happened to Prime Minister Kushida himself, you're not having a security problem. So what you're saying doesn't add up. You're also going to have the foreign minister there, half the Diet will be there, half the government, and the diplomatic court. There will be tight security. And I said, as a former mayor, I've done a lot of events. You want to come out for a ceasefire? I'm for it. You want to come out for returning the hostages? I'm for it. But don't hide behind this flag that somehow is security when that dog won't hunt because if it was a security problem, Israel’s ambassador would be the least of your problems. It would be the prime minister going. And every time I've ever been to an event and I sell them this down in Nagasaki and in Hiroshima, there's always protests. That's what happens. So I waited and then we wrote him a letter as G6 countries privately to the mayor saying that we opposed what he was doing, we'd ask him to reconsider. I went on August, early August, to Hiroshima like others to participate in their memorial. The Israeli ambassador was there. I then sent him a letter, said, look, Hiroshima happened, the Israeli ambassador was there, nothing happened, and given that you've decided that this is “a safety and security issue,” I will not in good conscience participate in what I think is a political decision, and a political decision that I disagree with. Other ambassadors had taken the same step, and I let it be known that the UK ambassador, myself, and the Israeli ambassador went to a temple, Buddhist temple here, and participated in a memorial for the Nagasaki bombing issue. And I think of it as an obligation as an American that we carry that burden, to have that event remembered. And I think he was politicizing it and then using security and safety as the excuse, and that wasn't true. And if you want to say you're banning Israel because you have a disagreement with Israel, we'll have that out, but don't tell me it's safety and security.
DS: Okay. So I want to talk for a few minutes, for a few remaining minutes, about Israel because I think when you made that decision to do what you did, it got outsized attention. Again, I welcomed it, circulating among a number of my friends. And I think it got outsized attention not only because it was a US ambassador doing it, which was a big deal, but it was also because of you, who you are. There are a lot of Jews in American public life who kind of downplay their Jewish identity. They downplay their pride they have for Israel and the importance of the US-Israel relationship. And you don't.
RE: It's very hard if your middle name is Israel.
DS: It is Israel. Rahm Israel Emmanuel.
RE: Really hard to...
DS: And if your father fought in the War of Independence, in Israel's War of Independence, it's also hard to... right.
RE: You can try. You do have a prime minister who accused me of being...
DS: Did your father also serve in the Urgun?
RE: Yeah.
DS: Yeah. So I mean...
RE: Well, we used to have arguments all the time. I said, you're nothing but a terrorist.
DS: Okay. So just describe Jewish life in the Emmanuel home when you were growing up?
RE: It was a sitcom. That's the only thing I could say. First of all, every time one of us brought a serious girlfriend over that was probably going somewhere, halfway through the meal, they would go upstairs and lay down. They were exhausted. I remember my wife Amy was saying, why are you and Ari fighting? We're not fighting. What do mean we're fighting? She goes, no, you're…
DS: We're having a conversation.
RE: She goes, yeah. She goes, no, you're fighting. I go, no, we're talking. Ari and I are talking. Yeah, so it's, you know, nothing, don't grab the food. You could end up with a fork in your hand. I mean, like, you got to know when to go for the food. Many people obviously talk after they're done chewing. We decide to talk while we're chewing. And we have arguments. And I mean, we have arguments about, you know, politics and we have arguments all the time. And I also say this as my parents, they weren't observant Jews. We were both culturally Jewish, but we did every Friday night have Shabbat dinner at the house.
DS: By the way, that's its own form of observance. I mean just maintaining that ritual.
RE: Yeah, no, no, no, I know. But I'm saying, I'm saying.
DS: I know they're not religious. They weren't religious Jews.
RE: My dad was an Israeli. That was good enough. He checked the box. My mother was more religious than him and she was a Chicago Jew. So, you know. We, even when I was mayor, when I was a Congressman, I’m very serious about it. When I was Chief of Staff, we had a Shabbat dinner every Friday night. And whoever got something special at school, they got a star plate. They were allowed to invite friends for the Sabbath dinner. We made it our home. You know, we're the only place where you don't have the Vatican. The home is the center of Jewish life. The synagogue is secondary to it. And building a home with a set of values, and I am Rahm Israel Emmanuel. I got two of my kids, their Bar Mitzvahs in Israel, and I am proud of it. It doesn't mean I have my… as you know, Bibi Netanyahu has attacked me. He's criticized me in his own book. Doesn't mean I don't have disagreements with the Israeli government, but I'm very proud of the Jewish faith and the values that it imbued with me, and growing up in a home where those values were of tzedakah, of making the world whole, of saving one life is important. It's one of the things that drove me towards public life.
DS: My most recent book, we have a chapter called “Thanksgiving Every Week.” If I could have people, even if people don't want to read the book, I say, just read this one chapter because it's about how in Israel they have the Shabbat every week, that it's this ritual where the whole country slows down. Families slow down. They're with each other, one, two, three, sometimes four generations together every Friday night.
RE: To President Obama's credit, he always knew Friday, 6:00 to 7:30, there was no call. I mean, at 7:31, it'd be the White House operator. But 6:00 to 7:30, that was not allowed. And that's the only thing I asked. I can say in two years, I can't remember a violation of it.
DS: So let me ask you, and I ask a lot of my guests this question. Where were you on October 7th and what were you thinking as events were unfolding? Now, obviously I know…
RE: I was here in Tokyo.
DS: And you were watching it and thinking what? Were you thinking Israel, the region, we're in a whole new world?
RE: No, I don't actually. I mean, I was shocked like everybody else, based on the fact that you had one perception of Israel's security capabilities and another one that's playing out. So there's that and as the horror of it and the magnitude of the horror came, it took me a long time to get my head wrapped around it. I don't consider it an intelligence failure. I don't. I think it's a mistake because clearly the women on the front lines of the intelligence gathering had warned it was a judgment failure, not an intelligence failure, in the same way the Yom Kippur was not an intelligence failure.
DS: I completely agree with that. People blame it on bad intelligence, bad technology.
RE: No, no. The fact is, if you go through the ‘73 War, King Hussein of Jordan, Sadat's son-in-law, they told Israel they had the intelligence... They knew it. There was judgment. There was bad judgment. And this, they told them. And to the great leadership of the IDF and members of the security, they have personally owned that failure and they wear it because they have let down the people of Israel and they know it and it will be on their conscience as they said, many of them have said it for the rest of their lives.
DS: In the Clinton administration, you worked on the Camp David Summit, the Barak-Arafat-Clinton Summit, you worked on the Wye. I mean, you've seen, you had a front row seat to the hopefulness of the pursuit of Palestinian self-determination of these two states living side by side.
RE: This is, look, I generally describe myself as a hawk on security and a dove on peace. That's me. Now, my view, this is mine. Do I think the Palestinian leadership on the West Bank has been a good partner? No. Have they, as Abba Eban once said, they never miss an opportunity to miss the opportunity to make peace. That was true in the closing days of Camp David between Barak, Ehud Barak, Yasser Arafat, and President Clinton. There was a deal there. They missed it, purposely.
DS: And I just want to be clear on this, because President Clinton has written about this in his memoir. There was a deal, and Clinton, and I guess you, say that Arafat had the deal in his hand to have a state, possibly with East Jerusalem as their capital, or part of East Jerusalem, and he walked away.
RE: They would argue [inaudible] give him cover to make the deal on Jerusalem, whatever, but there was a deal, 97% of the land. There was also a potential deal with Olmert in ‘06, also passed, in shades different, but not really fundamentally different than the blueprint. At the end of the day, the plan is gonna be the plan. It's not gonna change because the geography limits the choices you have. And so I understand, you know, one time you signed an agreement at Oslo and the next day you got a bombing at Dizengoff Street that you got a little skepticism about who you're dealing with. But you could also argue on the security side, the Palestinian Authority’s been a pretty good partner. So there's been Israeli governments where the Palestinians could say, not exactly the perfect partner. I can name one or two of them. So to me, I say I'm for a negotiated process and to get a right of self-determination for the Palestinians, not because I'm, you know, some warm person that wants to cuddle a terrorist. I say it because it's the only security agreement that's ever worked for Israel. And we've had three different variations on this. Negotiated, unilateral, or divorce. And only one track's worked. And both the peace agreement with Egypt, the peace agreement with Jordan, the Abraham Accords have been tested by battles. And they’ve stood up. They worked.
DS: What would you tell young people in the United States who post October 7th seem to have this bizarre, and it's not all young people, to be fair, this bizarre enthusiasm, affiliation with the Hamas cause.
RE: Yeah, well, I'm not sure that's a description, but I do want to note a couple things. There have been five ceasefires between Israel and Hamas. All five of them have been violated by Hamas. I'm for a ceasefire. I was for the one on October 6th. Only one party violated. There was a ceasefire. I was for the one on October 6th. You know why I was for it? 20,000 people in Gaza were working in Israel. They were making an income. More people in Gaza were working in Israel than any Arab country in the entire Mideast. Now I find it, I will say this, don't, nobody said this. I find it ironic that Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire, permanent, but you were the violator of the last one. So you're the one asking for something that you violated. Now you can understand why from an Israeli perspective, you have 1,200 people dead, 250 hostage, many women raped, many uteruses cut, pregnant women who have had literally the fetus cut from under there, and you want a permanent ceasefire, having violated the last one? So you can understand one being cynical about it. Now, I understand the David versus Goliath narrative, understand the empathy. It's a horrible thing to look at the pictures of civilians caught in this battle that was brought to Israel and Israel's decision to defend itself. Can you say in every military effort that it could be done different? There's a lot of things, I'm sure, that could be done different. The way we fought our own many different wars. Look, I'll give you one example we could have done different in World War II. Clearly we could have bombed Auschwitz earlier. We never did. And we were given all the information. Could we have done, I say this now as the US ambassador since we did in Argyle, could we have done World War II without an internment camp in the United States of Japanese? Yeah, we could have. We didn't. So everybody fights wars that are ugly. That doesn't give Israel an excuse. Doesn't give them permission.
DS: No, it just means it's not an outlier.
RE: Right. And I always say this, Israel has stood its army up as an example of both morality and execution of war. It's its own standard and it has to meet it. It doesn't have to meet just international standards. It has to meet the standards set for itself. And in many cases, it failed. Now I want to give one example. We don't know all the facts. Okay, so I want to be very clear. I'm only stating something I've read. It is very clear that when Israel was invaded by Hamas, women were raped and sexually abused. Nobody in the Hamas system has held any of the rapists accountable. There were stories that there were sexual abuse going on in Israeli prisons and Israeli's judicial system arrested the reservists and they're now being detained. Now there were right wingers that attacked the police and the security apparatus of the IDF for doing that, but they arrested when it was clear that something was happening in that prison. It was brought to the attention by the legal authorities within Israel. Israel arrested those reservists to hold them accountable for sexual abuse. That has never happened for what has clearly been documented in the United Nations has seen the report on October 7th. Now Israel has to live up not only to the international standards of their abide by it, they have to live up to the standards they hold themselves accountable. And they have good days and bad days. And when they have bad days, it is not wrong to call them out.
DS: I want to close…
RE: You get one last question because this is way past my bedtime.
DS: I know you're being... But this is therapy. Remember? I'm here to help you.
RE: No, no, we passed therapy.
DS: Now it's torture.
RE: Now we're getting close to getting fired.
DS: Okay, very quick, very quick. Speaking of Israel, you have written with Bruce Reed and you've been out there about the importance of national service and why the United States needs a national service program. It's something I've written about in both of my books, especially about the role that national service plays in Israel. Even a deeply divided country, it kind of helps hold the country together. It's like a societal shock absorber. Even a country's polarized as Israel, they can't ultimately tear itself apart because of this, not only because, but partly because of national service. Can you just spend a moment now, because you have two kids who've chosen national service and…
RE: Look, Bruce Reed and I wrote about this in 2005, where I call for, we both call in the book for, one of the chapters was about universal national service. I think it's, and I go back to my, the true 1% is that those people, not that the, much they were measured, not by what they acquired, not by what they own, but what they gave. And they gave something of themselves to this country. I also think there's a political benefit. Everybody talks about diversity as a strength. It's only a strength if the foundation of unity is there. We have lost the unifying to make the diversity work. We are diverse. I'm a former mayor of the city of Chicago. We had 147 languages spoken in our public school system. Okay? You can only have that diversity be an asset if there's a unifying principle. Let me give you another example, our women's gymnastic team, they won all-around. Everybody, oh look at the diversity. And I agreed with it. It was beautiful. But you know what nobody's held up? Yes, there was this beautiful mosaic of diversity where they had an American flag wrapped around them. So you could see diversity. I saw the unity of representing a country, singularity. We don't have that. China, Russia are betting on these divisions and they play on them. They throw sand in them. And the reason I'm for national service is we need people with vowels at the end of their name, with K's at the end of their name, Z's at the end of their name, Y's at the end of their name, all serving alongside each other. Reminding each other in a single thing and a single purpose what you do together and building something off of that. And it will serve invaluable experiences for the kids, invaluable experiences for the country. And it will allow that diversity to become an asset, not a liability. And right now, because we don't have that unity, our diversity is not our strength. It's our liability and our adversaries are using it to great advantage. And so our generation, we're losers. We're losers. We're gone. Okay. Not just because of our age, because we screwed it up. We don't have another generation to waste. So we got to start now giving people not only a civic education, but a civic purpose in the same way that John Kennedy said, don't ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. We have to give that mission to allow this beautiful mosaic to flourish. It's now not flourishing. So there's multiple benefits to why I think national service should exist. And it can be Teach for America. It can be the United States Armed Forces. It can be cleaning up a park and working on literacy. There's a lot of ways to do it. But give six months of your life to something bigger than your life and the country and you will be richer for it.
DS: We will leave it there.
RE: Okay.
DS: Rahm Emanuel, thanks for doing this. I know it's late there.
RE:Yeah, it's really late. It's 10:30.
DS: Lilah Tov.
RE: See you later, buddy. Bye-bye.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Ambassador Emanuel, you can find him on X, where I highly recommend you follow him @USAMBJapan. And also remember to register for our live recording of Call Me Back with guest Amir Tibon September 24th at the Steicker Center. We'll have the registration link in the show notes, or you can just search on the internet for Stryker Center, for Amir Tibon, and my name as well. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huérgo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.