On this episode, we are talking about several big wins for Putin over the past week, including Navalyny’s demise, the opportunity to spread his propaganda to Western audiences through Tucker Carlson, and Russia’s solid economic growth.
Another big win for Putin is Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO by not respecting our treaty commitments were he to become the US’s next president.
The news keeps getting better for Putin with Ukraine’s struggles on the battlefield, while future military assistance continues to be blocked in the US Congress.
Finally, we look at the continuing conflict in Gaza, frustrating the White House and its hopes for a ceasefire that would see the release of the remaining hostages.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Putin’s Very Good Week
Ukraine Battlefield Struggles
Israel-Hamas update
Follow Us
On this episode, we are talking about several big wins for Putin over the past week, including Navalyny’s demise, the opportunity to spread his propaganda to Western audiences through Tucker Carlson, and Russia’s solid economic growth.
Another big win for Putin is Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO by not respecting our treaty commitments were he to become the US’s next president.
The news keeps getting better for Putin with Ukraine’s struggles on the battlefield, while future military assistance continues to be blocked in the US Congress.
Finally, we look at the continuing conflict in Gaza, frustrating the White House and its hopes for a ceasefire that would see the release of the remaining hostages.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Putin’s Very Good Week
Ukraine Battlefield Struggles
Israel-Hamas update
Follow Us
Anita Kellogg: [00:00:00] Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in U. S. foreign policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg, an international relations scholar specializing in the relationship between economics and national security. I'm here with my co host, Ryan Kellogg, an expert in energy investment and policy.
Ryan Kellogg: Thanks and glad to be back. So this is episode 43, and we're recording this on February 18th, [00:00:30] 2024.
Anita Kellogg: On this episode, we are talking about several big wins for Putin over the past week, including Navalny's demise. Spreading his propaganda to Western audiences through Tucker Carlson and Russia's solid economic growth.
Another Putin is Trump's threats to withdraw from NATO by not respecting our treaty commitments for he to become the U. S. 's next president. The news keeps getting better for Putin with Ukraine's struggles on the battlefield. While future military assistance continues to be [00:01:00] blocked in the U. S. Congress.
Finally, we look at the horrific violence continuing in Gaza frustrating the White House and its hopes for a ceasefire That would see the release of the remaining hostages
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, so you have been Pretty busy since the beginning of the year at work around women's history month coming up but also around the Energy industrial policy course that you're helping as, as the deputy and you [00:01:30] guys took a recent trip, which I'm pretty jealous about to NREL, so the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Colorado.
And so what would you think of all of that experience? I really
Anita Kellogg: liked it. I think for me, sometimes like sitting in class or just reading things, it's hard to like, really absorb it being there. And seeing the developments in hydrogen that are going on to see the new technological advances in solar and [00:02:00] wind, but we didn't see the wind as much, but it was really fascinating.
I learned a lot, like I said, just being able to see what's going on is pretty great. So what
Ryan Kellogg: was it that? What was the one thing that maybe surprised you the most or came as unexpected from what you learned there?
Anita Kellogg: I don't think that I knew very much about hydrogen at all before we hadn't really covered it in class yet.
And we did learn some geothermal, but just the different uses for hydrogen. [00:02:30] I think they're further along in the technology than I would have guessed. So I think there is that, but also learning about how this is kind of random, but how solar panels are made and how you. grow them, which is kind of like.
Making lasagna by growing steel over the steel, like these really, really thin sheets and then also some of the technological advances we're making with colineum. I think is the, but don't quote me. [00:03:00] So, different than what most of the solar planners are made in China, and I think it's a little bit heavier.
So, there hasn't been as many use cases, but. They're working on ways to lighten it up, and they're definitely, I think, 30 percent of projects in the U. S. are made with this now. I don't know. I think also, though, like, how much tariffs affect solar in the United States, how we pay more than twice for it than the going price and what people.
Like in Europe and stuff can pay for it [00:03:30] because we have these really high tariffs to have the industry in the United States. And there's a big question of whether that's really strategic or not, but we, you need to have our own industrial base for producing
Ryan Kellogg: solar. And these are, these are tariffs that are specifically introduced as part of the IRA or infrastructure bill.
Anita Kellogg: I don't remember which bill they
Ryan Kellogg: came part of. But under the Biden administration, that's become. Yes. Around, yeah, competing with China and trying to bring this within [00:04:00] the domestic
Anita Kellogg: industry, right? Because while the U. S. develops all the technology. So China became easily the largest manufacturing of solar and in part because they've been rapidly expanding their own use of solar and renewables because the pollution from coal plants.
And in fact, I was reading that Most people think that China's energy use will peak within the next couple of years, [00:04:30] and as they put more renewables online and energy consumption doesn't rise as fast as it has been in the past. So, I thought that was pretty interesting. So, China just kind of overwhelmed the market.
I thought it was interesting that when I said, well, do you think like China was dumping it, which means. subsidizing the cost to get rid of the U. S. solar industry. And she was like, no, just China is such a big country and it had to manufacture so many for its own country, let [00:05:00] alone, it just made it cheaper.
They just developed more advanced manufacturing techniques.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. I mean, I think the scaling was state subsidized, but you're saying that they're not intentionally delivering something like below cost to the market. The manufacturing technology to scale that big was heavily state subsidized to achieve that scale.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: But there's nothing like wrong with subsidizing the manufacturing.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a strategic choice that obviously has paid dividends and was [00:05:30] politically driven by what you talked about, air quality. Which was seen as a, it's a source of domestic unrest for the party, so it makes they had a interest and trying to alleviate that, especially for urban residents
Anita Kellogg: as the consequence of that you have one hand this measure to make us more use more renewables.
Yet at the same time, your tariffs on trying to keep the manufacturing in the United [00:06:00] States is making it twice as expensive for everyone.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, without kind of the clear, the clear strategic drives of having your own solar panel, which I think we talked about earlier. I mean, the average life of a solar panel was quoted by NREL, like 20 to 30 years, 20 to 30 years, some maintenance involved.
But pretty limited, so you wouldn't be in a situation where you're in a conflict, let's say with China and [00:06:30] being dependent on them for solar panels would create. A unacceptable like national security around energy. Right. So,
Anita Kellogg: I mean, I literally saw someone on Twitter, some economists or China scholar that I follow who was like, yeah, this is a huge problem that China builds so much of the solar and.
Then they could weaponize it against the United States. And it's like, how would they possibly weaponize it?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, I'm trying to think where you wouldn't have [00:07:00] domestic flexibility. Obviously in the state of war, everything's on the table. We have a gigantic advantage of natural gas. If anything, you're probably drawing like less LNG imports and being able to switch.
Utilities are probably still going to keep like their natural gas plants. For like peak loads and things, so you'd have the flexibility where solar panels, yeah, you're regularly replacing them, depending on the age of the solar panel farm. So maybe you're seeing some reduction over the extent of a [00:07:30] conflict, but not enough given a conflict would be, if it comes to that, it's not going to be, I don't envision it being longer than four years, let's say.
Yeah, definitely not. So, yeah, I struggle to see where that that kind of rages or raises the. Strategic national security issue of having buying solar panels from China,
Anita Kellogg: right? So, I mean, it's an important consideration when you're thinking about adoption of renewables and what kind of incentives [00:08:00] you want to have.
And of course, on one hand, probably it sounds politically better to be like, we're creating these jobs at home, but it's not a tremendous amount of jobs. And it's just questionable incentives.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, especially for just your kind of non cutting edge rooftop solar panel sort of things. There's no reason that the U.
S. should manufacture that. I mean, the next gen stuff, the stuff that NREL is developing, and then wanting to keep that and commercialize that in the U. S., fully [00:08:30] support that. But yeah, your rote stuff that gets installed on like the average consumer or office space rooftops. That's a commodity. It should be manufactured in the cheapest place
Anita Kellogg: possible.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so I just thought all of that was pretty fascinating. Yeah. And I think we all, particularly the parts that we got to see, I think. The students and myself really enjoyed that part and learned a lot.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Yeah. No, it sounds like a really cool trip. Good [00:09:00] primer for your upcoming big trips in April.
Anita Kellogg: So much travel. I have a conference the first week in April and I'll go home and I'll literally have like one day to pack and have a two week trip. We're going to Oklahoma City and then Norway and then Sweden. So.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be
Anita Kellogg: crazy. It's already getting crazy because of Women's History Month, which I'm organizing the university's events for.
And so that has [00:09:30] been a huge job. Yeah. And maybe we'll talk, we'll do an episode in March, if I have enough sanity.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Exactly. Because, I mean, it is important. You have a lot less representation of women in national security. And so it's important to see what women are doing and what the value that they bring.
Exactly.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Okay. So on to Putin's very good week, which is [00:10:00] sad for us. Yeah. So why don't you start talking about what's been going well for
Ryan Kellogg: him? Yeah, I mean, it is quite the laundry list of positive outcomes over, I'd say, the last three or four weeks for Vladimir Putin. I think we can start off, maybe on the, on a little bit lighter note, with our favorite ex.
Fox News Opinion Hour host, Tucker Carlson, who, since his release from Fox around the [00:10:30] Dominion lawsuit and the 2020 election, has made himself a feature on X slash Twitter, and he made a journey out to Moscow and gave a rather lengthy interview, although I will say it did not match his lengthiest interview, which he gave to Andrew Tate, Fox News.
I know you don't know who Andrew Tate is, but he's the famed British convicted rapist and currently in [00:11:00] Romanian jail, but also one of the most popular people on YouTube and all around good guy. So Tucker, Gave this interview, and I think that the most useful takeaway, because essentially he only asked five questions during the full extent of the interview at one point, letting Putin ramble on for 30 minutes, giving a full account of Russian history, going back to 800 Russian history.
Yes. Putin's version of Russian history, [00:11:30] which I'm sure is Quite contested by actual scholars of the, of the period, even at one point, I think I handing Tucker, like letters from, I don't know, the 16th century, like backing up whatever claim saying, yeah, we'll get these translated in English for you later, just to tuck into his credit was pretty baffled and annoyed.
This is normal kind of annoyed book when all of this is occurring, but [00:12:00] nevertheless. Did it attempt to intercede at no point in the course of the course of the interview? Did he ask about were challenged around the atrocities that have been committed in Ukraine or the fact that he's wanted? By the EU and international criminal court for his war crimes.
So it's really a softball Interview, but I think the the one takeaway is that Putin still clearly has [00:12:30] Maximus goals for the ukraine campaign he is in No mood to negotiate and he's not satisfied with the current lines As they're drawn now and that that came about because he specifically targeted that Regime change is still necessary within Kiev, and the ultimate goal is this, still the talking point of denazification, which means the removal of Zelensky and his leadership, and kind of deferred on the current [00:13:00] territorial gains.
So I think that's the key takeaway, the one useful thing that Carlson did. On a more amusing note, he also made, while he was in Moscow, he went, checked out a couple of the local sites. Including the grocery stores where he became quote, unquote, enraged and radicalized against the U S government, essentially because the groceries that this, I think it sounded like a fairly nice grocery store in, in Moscow [00:13:30] that essentially it costed four times more in the U S compared to, to, to Moscow to support like a family for a week.
So that, that outraged him. Freed Zakaria kind of dutifully pointed out that. It's really a function of the GDP per capita and how rich or poor a country is. Usually it determines their grocery price. Kind of advised them to go down to Mexico and check out the grocery prices there. And maybe be more impressed with like how the Mexican government runs things.
But that, [00:14:00] that seems pretty unlikely.
Anita Kellogg: I just want to say you like this story a lot because you, everywhere we go, you have to check out the grocery
Ryan Kellogg: store. Yes, because, you know, one, grocery stores are endlessly fascinating, just seeing the variety of different kind of goods and vegetables and produce. I'm really convinced you can tell a lot about a country's priorities, what they prioritize in terms of [00:14:30] subsidizing certain foods or What they stock kind of in terms of imports, you can just tell a lot about a country's priorities around kind of what's, what's in the grocery store.
So I, I get spent like forever, like going to grocery store and now that they become pontificating
Anita Kellogg: on it as well.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, maybe a little bit. So I would, I love the story. I love that grocery stores came up in this, this forum, but yeah, it was, it was a little ridiculous. There was a little bit of back and forth not to [00:15:00] get on too much of a tangent on this, but you had another piece.
I already mentioned for, he'd kind of responded to in the Washington post, but then you had another Atlantic piece, which essentially kind of defended, yeah, Tucker to a certain extent that grocery stores in Russia are indeed much better than they used to be, because I think a lot of the responses against Tucker's approach is like, yeah, you went to a showpiece store for rich Muscovites, go 10 miles outside.
And this [00:15:30] Atlantic article essentially said, well, 10 miles outside, the grocery stores are pretty decent. And even though a lot of the smaller poor areas, they're way, way better than they were in the 1990s and way better than they were during the Soviet era. And I think the one good point is to underpin that life is much better under Vladimir Putin than it was in the 1990s or under the Soviet era.
And that's, that's part of his enduring strength with the Russian pe, especially the rural, the more
Anita Kellogg: rural areas. Right, but not a better quality of [00:16:00] life than an American.
Ryan Kellogg: No, no, definitely not. And that was, I think Farid did a fine job, kind of with that. I mean, Tucker even went on about the restaurants being better.
Moscow, give me a break. That's
Anita Kellogg: hilarious. Give me a break. That's just hilarious. Anybody
Ryan Kellogg: that's traveled, no offense to Northern Europe or Eastern Europe, but come
Anita Kellogg: on. You're going to offend anyone from those countries now. But
Ryan Kellogg: come on, but that's the advantage of it. Farid left it to New York and San Francisco, [00:16:30] super Cosmopolitan, but you can get any cuisine in the world and great representations of those cuisines, like, because it's literally people that came here, set up these restaurants and you're going to get 100 different cuisines.
Where else are you going to be able to do that? There's nowhere else in the world that has like that diversity of. Yeah. Culinary excellence. Come on. Get out of here. Get out of here. And then the, the lowest point was him going to the subway stations. Anybody that knows anything about Soviet history [00:17:00] knows that the subway systems were always used as a propaganda piece.
The state. poured enormous resources in creating these beautiful, most beautiful subways in the world. No doubt about it. I mean, beautiful tiling, works of art, chandeliers in the subway. I mean, I mean, the Metro here's pretty decent, especially compared to New York. There are no chandeliers at DuPont Circle.
Or even Bethesda, Bethesda should have the fanciest one, right? It's got the most. [00:17:30] So he, he literally repeats a Stalin talking propaganda point from the Soviet era. as proof of superiority of the Russian system. So it's all around gross, but nevertheless, we spent, we spent enough time on that. So that was a win.
All of this clearly a huge win for Putin. He's allowed to pontificate on history. He has a Western stooge, essentially a repeat point after point of his own minister's propaganda [00:18:00] to a Western audience that As we've seen is, is increasingly receptive to those points.
Anita Kellogg: I don't get it. I mean, I really don't get why these patriotic Americans have any sort of favorable thoughts towards Russia at
Ryan Kellogg: all.
Yeah, it's, it's baffling, especially considering a lot of them grew up in the Cold War. Edge certainly shouldn't buy into the subway propaganda. That was Soviet 101 [00:18:30] garbage. Yeah. So I, I didn't get Heather.
Anita Kellogg: What's that? Isn't Tucker probably RH?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Well, I mean Tucker's we know why Tucker's doing this. He has commercial He has financial reasons that he's doing this.
He doesn't actually believe any of this. Yeah, it's more the people Yeah, they're following Tucker. We're Elon. That was the other thing I mean Putin had a lot of praise for for Elon Musk Even though as we'll see later in this story, he wants to knock down all of Elon's
Anita Kellogg: [00:19:00] Yeah, he doesn't want to see Elon do anything positive for Ukraine.
Ryan Kellogg: No, but he's been talking very favorably on, we need to have a peace deal. We need to give Russia is going to win this war. We need to end this war now. So that, yeah, Elon's all been saying that. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Okay. So in much sadder news. One of Putin's main opposition, Alex Navalny, was found dead this week in his [00:19:30] Siberian prison.
Apparently he went for a walk, that's what we were told, and then he was dead. Obviously, there's no question in anyone's mind, the White House has said, very specifically, That Putin was responsible for, for his murder. Vani first came to prominence in 2011 during the wave of anti government protest in response to Putin's return to the presidency, this United Russia party caught rigging a legislative [00:20:00] election.
He ran for Moscow mayor in 2013, but lost to Putin's ally. He gained further prominence on social media, showcasing government corruption on YouTube, but this gained him more traction with international viewers than within Russia. He was poisoned in August 2020 with the nerve agent Novochok, but still returned to Russia in January 2021 after recovering in Germany, where he was immediately arrested and sentenced to 19 years in a Siberian [00:20:30] labor camp.
I was listening to a newscast. Someone had asked him, like, why would you go back to Russia after you are poisoned? And he said, well, you can't, I can't change Russia from outside the system. I need to be inside it to change Russia. So that was in his words or his view, perspective, why he went back to Russia after being poisoned and knowing he was going to face these kinds of circumstances.
It's a culmination of efforts to make any opposition to Putin unimaginable. [00:21:00] Any sort of memorial for Navalny, flowers, any, anything sympathetic at all has been harshly cracked down on by Putin as well.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. So, I mean, extraordinarily tragic demise of somebody who. Extraordinary bravery. I mean, obviously, after being being poisoned, surviving that and then coming back to the country knowing full well that it would probably end in his and his death.
So I think it's [00:21:30] really the question is, will there be any sort of Consequences. A lot of people think Putin has undertaken this because of the aid and comfort that he's been given in the West. And we'll talk a little bit about, for instance, like Trump's assertions around not supporting NATO unless every country meets its 2%.
And then obviously the, the positives on, on the battlefield gains [00:22:00] due to the, to the lack of forthcoming funding from the U. S. It'll be interesting to see, obviously within Russia. They've been so effective and just shutting down all opposition. I think a lot of the articles talked about the contrast between 2021 when actions around the opposition could draw thousands of protesters within Moscow.
Now, like you mentioned, any sort of assertion or [00:22:30] memorial. Is immediately met by armed government troops. So there's just this, this absolute fear, Stalin esque in terms of the, the level of political repression going on within the state now.
Anita Kellogg: Well, and how can anyone punish Putin? He's already like heavily sanctioned, was already.
A war criminal, I mean,
Ryan Kellogg: yeah, it's not about, it's about, will this allow for [00:23:00] momentum and what we'll talk about later for getting the U. S. support bill? Will this be the thing to shame enough Republicans in the House? to defy Speaker Johnson or even shame Speaker Johnson, even though it probably will mean the loss of his position.
Is that enough to shame them between this and then the other issues that we'll talk about around national security? Um, shame like they ever feel shame. Well, I mean, yeah, let's talk about the other positive [00:23:30] thing. For Putin is which emerged initially as kind of a cryptic announcement. I can't remember the Republican representative's names that sits on the either the armed services or foreign service or foreign affairs committee within the House.
But it was sort of this mysterious message that, oh, Russia has this new. Weapon, new capability, but it became public over the course of this last week. And essentially Russia is apparently trying to [00:24:00] move to deploy nuclear weapons in space in order to threaten satellite networks, which would be a clear violation of the 1967 outer space treaty.
Now this treaty, just to give a little context, historically, this treaty was signed in the U S. by the U. S. and the Soviet Union following a number of upper atmosphere tests, the most famous being a 1962 by the U. S. which detonated a 1. 4 megaton nuclear [00:24:30] weapon, which surprised a lot of scientists at the time because it's a relatively small weapon.
It caused My EMP pulse, so electric magnetic pulse that ended up damaging electrical grids in Hawaii, which is nearly 900 miles away from the blast. And it knocked out basically a third of global satellites at the time. Now, mind you, there weren't a lot of satellites in space. So it was just six satellites that got damaged.
But the power of these weapons of a [00:25:00] nuclear blast in space is enormous. So what you've seen. When the ongoing conference and Munich is that Blinken's actually raised these concerns that the Russians are looking to deploy such a weapon with. His Chinese and Indian counterparts because essentially a weapon of this nature, if it is targeting satellites around the support for Ukraine, it's not just going to damage U.
S. or NATO based [00:25:30] satellites. It'll knock out Chinese and Indian satellites as well. And given how interconnected our global economy is, it would cause massive disruptions to you. Also, it's emergency services, cell phone, GPS, travel, energy grid, not to mention obviously all of the, the targeted military applications of a modern military.
So very concerning, not an immediate threat, but it does represent that Putin is, [00:26:00] is clearly thinking of other ways to escalate knowing that targeting a NATO capital immediately leads to World War III. So what is a way that you can escalate? Without killing a million people as a result, and this seems to be a strategy that they're landing on, but one that seems like it would receive similar condemnation from, from China and India,
Anita Kellogg: right?
So, first of all, it was Mike [00:26:30] Turner, who is the chair of the intelligence committee. There's this idea of, like, how can we make. Weapons, something that doesn't just like destroy whole cities like Los Angeles, which of course, if you use that is kind of ends up in a total war sort of scenario. And nobody wants that.
So can you use tactical nuclear weapons? Or could you do something like this, put it in space and then why you're not killing people directly? I mean, you lose 911 services, you [00:27:00] lose telecommunications, you lose everything, right? Power grids, just unfathomable amount of damage you could do. So I think it's part of this overall strategy.
What can we do with nuclear weapons that isn't the same as like taking out a city? But yeah, definitely. I hate whenever it's like, well, we have no sway with Russia. So yeah, they rely on India and China. When we're relying on other countries to persuade someone, it doesn't always, it's not always effective, [00:27:30] but considering how much their own interests would be threatened, I think it's the last nuclear treaty that Russia is still a part of because it's withdrawn from the other ones.
Yeah, I mean, obviously a really important one. So Mike Turner wanted more this unclassified. The Biden administration is annoyed that they have to talk about this publicly. There was some discussion of how much they would declassify to share with China and India, with some saying that it [00:28:00] has to be enough to, for them to recognize this is an urgent threat.
Concerning, but maybe not as hyped up as Mike Turner had made it sound.
Ryan Kellogg: So I think the final point we had in terms of like things going well for Russia was the IMF released and upgraded its forecast for Russia for 2024 from being slight growth at 1 percent to fairly robust growth at 2. 6 percent to the extent [00:28:30] that if that is achieved, it would be greater than the average growth of the G7 as a whole.
Now, U. S. growth has obviously been very positive, but Europe is in, there's a number of European nations that are currently in recession, like the U. K. In Japan, they're in the G7. In Japan, yeah, yeah. So, obviously, and we talked about this before. The Russian economy, despite the international sanctions has largely between the additional funds it's put [00:29:00] towards industrial mobilization around particularly like artillery manufacturing.
And then obviously the energy sanctions around oil and gas are never meant to keep these off of market. But Russians have largely been able to realize Maybe a slightly reduced premium, but not much of a reduced premium by taking over and using a lot of Indian and Chinese based tankers to ship their, their oil to willing [00:29:30] buyers.
Anita Kellogg: To get around the requirement that you can only sell for 60
Ryan Kellogg: a barrel. Right. Yeah. Cause that was based on tankers that operate within the more developed countries in order to ensure those. They had to go by these provisions, but they found a loophole around that. So yeah, the Russian economy is doing fairly well.
Inflation, even though, despite Tucker saying that it was Lower than the U. S. That is not true. They're running about [00:30:00] 7%, which isn't devastating, but certainly better than at the start of the war. And I think the ruble has been largely stable since initial losses. So in terms of the economic pain, particularly amongst the elites.
Uh, residing in Moscow and St. Petersburg has been relatively minimal. And of course, they've, that's the one thing the Putin regime has done is to keep the pain of the war far away from those elites within the cities, as opposed to the rural countryside, which it's, [00:30:30] it's willing to feed into the meat grinder in Ukraine.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So, I mean, I was surprised by this news and just kind of reflects how hard it is to use And kind of the failures, the whole point of the sanctions were to hurt the Russian economy, doing creative measures that were supposed to keep the revenues of Russian oil low. And like we just said, there was a loophole, [00:31:00] just all these efforts that were at the beginning of the war and continuous to kind of destroy the Russian economy, which is important if you want to destroy the war machine and has been spectacularly unsuccessful.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, so there's still the BBC article that we saw some of this information from was, I think, wildly optimistic on eventually the Russian economy would be ground down from well, this quote in particular was was a little laughable is the demand for [00:31:30] oil and gas peaks. Great, we can wait till 2030, 2035 for that and competition from, from air gulf states come on the street.
So that part, wishful thinking, I think the other wishful thinking is a lot of stuff about the loss of brain power, the loss of the best and brightest from Russia, which is true, but that's something that hurts you longterm, not in the, the period of time that we're talking about, which is the next. Say three or four years.
Yeah, or I mean could well be next year depending on the [00:32:00] election So yeah, they've done an extraordinary effort though. The last thing that the g7 Is currently considering is the use of those frozen Russian funds at the beginning of the war and using that 300 billion as a prepayment for unilaterally enforced reparations on Russia for causing the war.
But obviously there's a lot of, they're just at the analysis stage, both technical and legal, but any effort to do this could be extremely perilous, [00:32:30] given the message that it would send to global South leaders. Which, if you're going to start to do things for moral reasons, there's a lot of regimes within the Middle East and within the Global South that may then question the trustworthiness of Western central banks and keeping their funds in these locations if the West can essentially unilaterally decide based on moral terms to, to seize assets.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So I've said for a while that I don't think this is a viable plan. You highlighted one of the [00:33:00] reasons for it. It doesn't seem at all legal to me in terms of international law. I simply don't think you can do this.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, I guess it's giving that there's no other game in town.
And I agreed that the Chinese system, because of its lack of transparency, isn't really another game, but it does give strength to that as an alternative. And maybe they don't care about transparency. Some of these Middle Eastern, I'm trying to think of places [00:33:30] that would have enormous amounts of funds or where you would.
And I can only think of primarily like the Middle East. Is there
Anita Kellogg: some in South America?
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, maybe. So yeah, that's, that's where things stand now. Putin riding high, looking triumphant, heading into his completely pointless election in March, where he will no doubt get 99. 8%. Then where does this leave [00:34:00] Ukraine and U.
S. policy going forward? And did you want to talk about kind of Trump and
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, I feel like we have to mention Trump's comments. So kind of another win for Putin. Trump the other day, I think initially in South Carolina, but he's doubled down on it in several interviews, said that the United States would not Protect NATO countries that were not paying their, in quotation marks, paying up to have their fair share and [00:34:30] defense spending Trump's terminology again, acts like this 2 percent goes into a fund or it goes to the U S or something.
But actuality, I wanted to go a little bit into the history. There was this quiz that not many people know what NATO stands for. So it's the North Atlantic treaty organization. It has, um, it was
Ryan Kellogg: this quiz. See what, uh, I forget where it was from. It wasn't at work though, right? Although,
Anita Kellogg: it's kind of funny.[00:35:00]
There's 31 members. They're all European, except for the U. S. and Canada. One of the original purposes of it was to protect Europe from attacks from the Soviet Union. Notably after the disillusion of the Soviet Union, many former USSR states were incorporated to discourage Russia from trying to reconstitute the Soviet Union, also to establish better relations with Eastern Europe.
So where does this whole 2 percent spending 2 percent of your GDP on defense? And I want to [00:35:30] emphasize, basically, this is not a fund that you pay into. This is how much money of your own economy you spend on your own military and defense industry. So. Amidst concerns from the U. S. perpetually that Europe was not doing its fair share of its own security, in 2006, there was a, they announced a goal that each member would spend 2, 000 of its GDP on defense.
In 2014, a NATO declaration declared that countries not meeting the [00:36:00] goal would aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade. As of last year, 11 countries met that goal, but as a kind of huge increase by the end of 20 24, 18 countries are expected to meet that goal. Trump said he will not defend these countries.
That do not mean the 2% meet this 2% guideline, which would equate from being a withdrawal from NATO since. The requirement of being a NATO is that you come to the fence of any NATO country. [00:36:30] This obviously would be a huge win for Russia, which has territorial ambitions. Many think on countries like Latvia, Estonia, other former republics.
of the Soviet Union that aren't NATO members now and are quite vulnerable to Russia. So it's given a cause for a lot of people to worry about, like he could be the next president and the U. S. could no longer be in NATO and what does that do? What are the consequences [00:37:00] of
Ryan Kellogg: that? Yeah, it's certainly something that has.
Is I mean, yeah, as as terrified to a certain extent is definitely the talk of the at the Munich conference currently ongoing and in Germany, but even if we accept, like, Trump's definition, which he took down to a country level saying if that country didn't spend 2%. I'm going to tell Russia to do whatever the hell it wants to that country.
Conveniently, people came out with maps, showed that all the countries [00:37:30] bordering, all the NATO countries bordering Russia are spending well in excess of 2%. And it's really Western Europe that's always lagged. I think Germany finally, finally is going to make good on its promise, which it has under Schultz really turned a corner following the invasion of Ukraine.
But finally in 2024, it's going to meet that, that 2%. Now the rest of. France, Spain, some of the other countries in Western Europe haven't, but the countries are actually would be invaded by Russia. [00:38:00] Under Trump's definition, you would have to support because they're spending well over excess of 2%. If you're going to take it down to this stupid, which it's not, it's going to take it down to this stupid Bob boss way of managing foreign policy.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: So just disturbing in what it says about the U. S. 's possibility of future commitments to its treaty obligations. The kind of chaos, again, this unleashes against the world, how, I mean, I think there's a question. How do [00:38:30] other countries deal with the fact that they can't count on the U. S. in the same way that they could before, and that a presidential election can undo treaties, essentially, which sets a horrible, horrible precedence and makes it very hard for countries to enter into treaties with the United States.
So in another piece of news that is certain to make Putin very happy is. Ukraine's struggles on the battlefield, beginning with the loss this week of ADI fka. [00:39:00]
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, so Ukraine ordered over the beginning of this weekend, the complete withdrawal from the city of Adi fka, which is actually, and I didn't know this had been a military stronghold for a decade.
So dating back to the. The beginning of the conflict in the Donbass and in 2014, it represents the first major gain for Russia since last May, with its victory over in Bakhmut, Bakhmut, and [00:39:30] unlike Bakhmut, Advitka actually could be strategically important and could be key to unlocking additional gains within eastern Ukraine, and it really came about this loss because Russia's unending willingness to feed that meat grinder, take heavy casualties, and then you're really beginning to see the material consequences around U.
S. failure to provide additional funding. Because within this battle, the Russians were [00:40:00] able to have a 10 to 1 advantage on artillery. And then also provide close air support, which was a direct function of the lack of air defense missiles that the Ukraine is at against something. They're probably more critical than artillery.
At this point is the lack of air defense missiles. All of this is part of a larger Russian offensive. After the failure of the Ukrainian counter offensive, and it's occurring essentially throughout a full 600 mile [00:40:30] front across a number of different cities, but it's really focused on on reversing some of the gains that Ukraine made.
Particularly in the fall of 2022. So as a result of this loss and then the failure of the counter offensive, Ukrainian President Zelensky announced the removal of General Valeriy Zelensky from command of Ukrainian forces. Now the pair have always had a contentious relationship. You know, from the [00:41:00] beginning of the Russian invasion, but the partnership really deteriorated following the General's late 2023 interview in The Economist, where he was really the one of the first to come out publicly and say that the war was a stalemate.
Now, this did not sit well with Zelensky. He's obviously been busy trying to shore up support within Western capitals to continue funding. But other other areas of conflicts included there, [00:41:30] obviously, Ukraine's having a lot of struggle replacing the losses that seen within its rang. So there was controversy around different efforts on how do you mobilize and draft replacements.
So all of this has led to this. The way Zelensky has framed it is it's more about a shift in strategy and tactics, given that the wars changed to a more defensive posture, possibly to a posture where they have less resources from the [00:42:00] West to rely on. So more of a focus on technological sophistication and strategy.
That's again, we'll talk a little bit later. The one area of success that they've had is with drone warfare, particularly. In the black sea. So the replacement has been for the general is Oleksandr Shalinski, which is one of the country's more experienced commanders and is actually attributed with the defense of Kiev and early 2022.
[00:42:30] And then the successful Kharkiv. Counter offensive later that year, he is, however, not popular with a frontline troops. I think a lot of that is due to the decisions because he was in charge of the defense of back mood, which we talked about an earlier podcast. It was a brutal campaign, which obviously Ukraine ended up losing.
Mm hmm. So, I did allude to the one bright spot on the battlefront for Ukraine has been the [00:43:00] Black Sea. And they announced this week the loss of another major Russian naval vessel, which now Ukraine, despite lacking any sort of conventional Navy, has taken out a third of Russia's Black Sea fleet, which. Is the destruction of 25 surface ships and a submarine, and then another 15 that are under repair, it's forced the rest of the Russian fleet actually to retreat from Crimea because it's just too dangerous for them to operate [00:43:30] there.
And they've had to go back to Russian ports, nearly 450 kilometers away. And this has all been. Kind of homegrown technology on the part of the Ukraine is one of the good stories. These drones were developed by a state owned Ukrainian firm and were put in service only a year ago. Now the Economist article talked about, which was kind of my question too, does this really point to the complete obsoleteness [00:44:00] of Traditional navies, if these cheap drones can essentially take them out, the economists provided a much kind of positive assertion that China and U.
S. Navies are much better equipped and trained. So not necessarily, but I'm still a little skeptical that drone warfare doesn't make a lot of these forces potentially obsolete. But maybe you can comment on that because I know that's a big point of discussion and that into you.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, that's why a lot of people like submarines.
Thank you
Ryan Kellogg: I mean, they took out a submarine, which [00:44:30] I was really impressed with. How do you take out a submarine without having
Anita Kellogg: a I guess you can see what's happening in the Middle East, in the Red Sea right now, where they're using drones to attack those Navy ships, but.
Ryan Kellogg: That's true. And they've intercepted all of those.
So,
Anita Kellogg: yeah. So I think that they are much better technologically equipped to handle drone
Ryan Kellogg: warfare. Yeah, so I think that the most important thing for this is more towards the Ukrainian economy because we talked before about the lack of access [00:45:00] for grain exports, which Ukraine is heavily depended on for its economy as well as many African and Middle Eastern nations for that supply of grain.
They never actually reached a deal. They remember they are negotiating a deal and trying to get with Turkey and there's going to be like escorts and all of this. Well, because Ukraine has made such gains and forced the Russian fleet away, it's completely opened up exports. So that's been a real, that's been the one good positive story.
And those exports have actually reached. The [00:45:30] point where they're actually higher than they were before the war in 2019 and 2020. So it's a one, it's a positive sign. I guess this is the tie towards technology. How can you leverage that? I don't think that really applies to the stuff. The combat on land, which is just going to be sheer industrial power and troops and all the stuff it takes to occupy territory on land.
All of this about industrial support around supplies, this all goes back to the West [00:46:00] and EU came through over the last month. They were able to push through 50 billion in additional support. Now, a lot of that's humanitarian aid. It's not necessarily and it's also, I think, spaced out. Over a number of years, but it still represented success and overcoming objections from Hungary, I think, through a combination of arm twisting and then unified support from the rest of the member states, but we turn our [00:46:30] attention to the U.
S. And it's much more complicated here and discouraging. It shouldn't be, but it is. It is. The Senate was able to get its act together, and with pretty wide bipartisan support, they passed a bill, a 90 billion package, which was combined with Israel, Taiwan, but included 60 billion for Ukrainian aid, but now it is essentially stuck in the House because of the [00:47:00] current speaker, Mike Johnson, who's refused to bring the bill to vote, citing the lack of border security provisions, which It's kind of amusing given that a very strong Republican bill was brought forth and passed in the Senate around border security, but apparently that wasn't good enough now, and they're refusing to bring the bill to vote now.
Obviously this, this funding is, is critical. [00:47:30] Zelensky is definitely making the case that without this, that there's a decent likelihood that their defenses will collapse. And Ukraine could be overrun now. That's probably creating alarmist case. But nevertheless, it makes it much more difficult for Ukraine to move
Anita Kellogg: forward as an aside to just emphasize how much she doesn't understand.
Trump was saying, well, instead of giving him 60 billion, we need to make this alone. As if we were just handing 60 billion in cash [00:48:00] to Ukraine, and it wasn't actually like what's worth 60 billion is the type of military equipment that we would send to Ukraine. Right. Right. Just such a, and I heard like Tim Scott on CNN this morning, repeat the same talking points.
Ryan Kellogg: And then we've
Anita Kellogg: talked about how much of that comes to back to the US because they're using that to buy but then
Ryan Kellogg: replenish our own inventory. Yeah. Yeah. Just a good [00:48:30] chunk of it just feeds back directly into our economy. Why we do tremendous. I mean, they were putting the dollar terms. I think they've done at least 200, 300 billion worth of damage to the Russian military.
They have 300, 000 casualties. I mean, in long term, you've Really crippled one of your strategic allies through this by spending essentially nothing because it feeds directly back into the U. S. economy. So it's
Anita Kellogg: rebuilding our [00:49:00] industries, creating
Ryan Kellogg: jobs, right? Rebuilding the industrial manufacturing capacity.
You need to challenge China later. So it's just this. It's a very beneficial circle overall. And you can definitely Yeah. Make arguments on what the long term goal is, and that's fair. What are you pushing towards to achieve and Ukraine and this aid package? Yeah, it's it's not gonna I don't think you're going to see.
We've talked about before. This is eventually going to be a [00:49:30] negotiated solution, but it's about holding the existing lines. Take an opportunistic advantage over time where if Ukraine can eventually get an advantage on artillery and get that additional with the F 16s and the air support, can they make strategic gains that then put them in a good position to negotiate?
A more favorable outcome,
Anita Kellogg: right? And Putin's not going to negotiate if he
Ryan Kellogg: keeps winning, right? I mean, that's what Carlson, that's the one thing that is interviewed [00:50:00] revealed is he's in no mood to negotiate because he has all the momentum right now. This is about changing that momentum back for negotiation purposes.
We've
Anita Kellogg: said this a million times, but it's. It is truly shameful what is happening in the U. S. Congress. We all know that they won't vote on a border bill before the presidential election. So to keep tying this to the border bill is ridiculous. Ukraine definitely cannot hold on for another. Nine [00:50:30] months.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Yeah. So what actions are being taken to try to circumvent this block where there's two major initiatives that are currently underway. And one of these, I think, seems pretty promising. It was actually spearheaded by Republic, but it's made up of bipartisan approach for four Republicans and four Democrats.
But Representative Brian Fitzpatrick at a Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. Has put together a bill for 47 billion. So essentially it [00:51:00] strips out the humanitarian aid. So it's strictly just the military aid for Ukraine and it's. The hope is that you're using the brutality of Navalny's execution, frankly, at the hands of the Russian state to shame enough Republican colleagues within the House to support this bill.
And I think critically, it includes some provisions, which I Assume that we're already in the Senate bill around border security, but [00:51:30] includes some provisions on border security so that Johnson can't complain that there's a lack of border security provisions in the bill. So I think this one has the best hope.
The more hail Mary approach the house Democrats are working on, which Alex Denman was also kind of tweeting about last week, is the idea of the discharge petition. That the discharge petition would force a vote despite the objections of. The Speaker of the House, but it has to be signed by 218 [00:52:00] representatives and then voted on the House floor.
If that passes, then essentially within two days, that bill must be brought forward for a vote. And it was actually successfully applied in 2015. I don't know what made this controversial, but it was just to reauthorize the import export bank. I don't know what the heck was going on back then, but apparently that was a big issue to force a Discharge petition, which had enough bipartisan support that it was successful.[00:52:30]
Now, the challenge in this is obviously getting any sort of Republican support is challenging because it is just basically a F you to the Speaker of the House. So that's one challenge. But Democrats have also struggled on their left. Flank because of the Senate bill. Remember includes aid to Israel. Well, you've had a number of progressive lawmakers.
They don't want to see any aid to Israel included in that. So then that would raise the bar. If you lose a handful of progressive [00:53:00] members, you have to get additional Republican members to
Anita Kellogg: bring it forward. If you had unity, you only need three Republicans. Yeah, especially
Ryan Kellogg: after the result of the election in New York.
So they
Anita Kellogg: can only afford to lose two. So you would just need three.
Ryan Kellogg: So, I'm hoping between Navalny's untimely death and the threat of this nuclear satellite in space, that pushes enough Republicans over, and then they have a bill [00:53:30] that they can turn to that has some border provisions in it, that's enough to get it over the finish line.
I mean, what do you think? You think, I'm feeling more optimistic now. Really? Yeah. I like the thing that Navani's death is not in vain. That it will support something that punishes Putin for his actions. I
Anita Kellogg: will be surprised.
Ryan Kellogg: Wow. So you're still just like, no, nothing's going to get passed.
Anita Kellogg: I think the Republicans are going to fight as hard as they can to keep anything from [00:54:00] getting passed.
Wow. Because they just fundamentally don't care about Ukraine.
Ryan Kellogg: I don't even know if it's the majority. It is 50 percent. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: At least. I mean, that's a
Ryan Kellogg: significant amount. But there's a significant part that are very much, and I would think even more so given the security implications that have been revealed over the last, last week.
Anita Kellogg: But do they care enough to go against their
Ryan Kellogg: own party? I don't know. We'll find out.
Anita Kellogg: [00:54:30] I just, and I hope I'm wrong. And I just have become so skeptical. I really thought there would be some sort of deal in the beginning of the year or. Right. And just seeing the playbook recently has made me very discouraged.
And just seeing like what they seem to be organized around. The determination to say, well, this has to be tied to border security, but we're not going to pass a border security bill until the election is over. [00:55:00] And I don't, I just the feeling that the leadership, the people who control the party don't care about
Ryan Kellogg: Ukraine.
Yeah, and I will say one of the more discouraging things to emerge around that is, I don't know if you saw this, the shift in Lindsey Graham's position on Ukraine. Lindsey Graham together with Mitch McConnell, some of the biggest defenders of Ukraine policy and support and Lindsey Graham, essentially, because what I don't get is the dude's [00:55:30] not up for election again till 2027.
So it's not like he's facing a primary challenge right now, but he's basically he officially caved in. He did not attend the Munich conference, which he's a regular, enthusiastic participant at that conference, but basically is going full along the Trump line on Ukraine now, which just seems just, what do you stand for?
I mean, quoting, quoting Hamilton, which we saw last week. I mean, it's just like, I [00:56:00] thought this was his line in the sand. This is an issue he's always been passionate about. U. S. 's role in the world and security situation. This is always like an area you could agree with like a Lindsey Graham of the world, but he backed away from this.
That's just, that's discouraging. I
Anita Kellogg: didn't know about that. I mean, Lindsey Graham anymore. Like what does he stand for it as he stands for anything? I thought he stood for
Ryan Kellogg: this.
Anita Kellogg: Except wanting war with Iran, which is what he's just long, long, [00:56:30] long seemed to have called for. When you see people like that.
When you see the way, just hearing Tim Scott this morning, kind of echo Trump's talking points, like about this isn't urgent and we should just give Ukraine a loan and the type of. The way Trump is going to be leading the party through these elections with what is common, at least he certainly seems to, no one wants to go against whatever Trump's comments are on foreign policy.
So [00:57:00] I just see a big part of it, big part of the party determined not to vote on these things. And it being difficult for the rest of the members who may, like you said, care a lot about Ukraine, but would have to defy their party to see anything done. And no one in the Republican party seems willing to do that.
I mean, because then you have to become an independent. If you defy the party, then you can't stay Republican.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, you're more, you're more than likely going to be primary because these essentially [00:57:30] are Republicans that are usually in purple districts. So getting primaried means the loss of that district for Republicans, so it's kind of even dumb to primary somebody in a moderate.
But look how well it's keeping control. It does, and yeah, it's this small group, I don't even know if Johnson, because it's funny because he comes out with quotes, and they were actually pretty aggressive against Putin after the Navalny murder. And you would think. That should change then his position, but then we [00:58:00] all know then that's probably the loss of his speakership.
It would be the loss that the, the maggots would then read the insurrection act against him and, and kick him out and be the same, same fe as, uh, McCarthy.
Anita Kellogg: Absolutely. He would be kicked out and I think he wants his position more than he wants to make a stand for anything he might believe in.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. All right.
Well, now you got me pessimistic. So thanks. I
Anita Kellogg: appreciate it. I was like, Oh, I was glad somebody had some optimism on the show. [00:58:30]
Ryan Kellogg: What I'm seeing like a new bipartisan effort in the house has the border security provision. What more, what more could you do? I mean, I like, yeah, he would still lose his speaker, probably maybe lousiness to come to the floor.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So,
Ryan Kellogg: so I think still good luck. Democrats with the discharge petition.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, it's hard for me. To me, that seems the most likely I didn't know that they had [00:59:00] used it, that this has been used
Ryan Kellogg: before pretty recently to round that super controversial import export bank. I want to dig into that. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. I'm not feeling good about it, but then I'm feeling really terrible about what happens strategically to Ukraine if we don't
Ryan Kellogg: get anything passed. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it realistically, it's what we talked about before. It's not like Russia is in a position to make major gains. It just becomes more of this absolutely [00:59:30] brutal urban combat where you have to draw them in.
You have to use a lot more asymmetrical warfare. It becomes a lot bloodier and, and more difficult. I think the more, the bigger concern and what Zelensky has raised is the air defense missiles. Once you lose that, because those have done an extraordinary job of protecting the cities, the economic centers of Ukraine, and once you lose that, and they can just pound at will, the utilities, the economic centers, [01:00:00] then yeah, Ukraine does begin, it becomes much more difficult, I kind of talked my way into a more difficult position because of the damage to the economy, more than the actual kind of the military front side of it, yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah, and you're dwindling ammunition, I mean. That's going to allow, I think, Russia to take creeping gains.
Ryan Kellogg: Creeping gains, but again, it is much harder to take territory, and they are pretty beat up themselves.
Anita Kellogg: But a big supply of [01:00:30] manpower.
Ryan Kellogg: A big, endless supply of Prison labor from Siberia and at poor ethnic communities that they just shove in and get slaughtered.
Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Mm hmm. Well, you do that. Traditional Russian warfare. I'm not sure.
Ryan Kellogg: Well, those are the prisoners. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the prisoners, I mean, maybe it's their families get, we quoted before, I think it's equivalent to 10, 000 or something, so. Rough times. Rough times.
Anita Kellogg: Discouraging. I [01:01:00] mean, especially from a national security viewpoint, it's madness.
Unbelievable.
Ryan Kellogg: Unbelievable, endless shame if we actually end up not, not supporting them over the course of this year.
Anita Kellogg: How can people say, oh, we want to make America respected again, strong again.
Ryan Kellogg: Serve as a deterrent to China. And then
Anita Kellogg: just allow Russia to get its way. Well, switching to a different part of the world for our last story.
There is still the [01:01:30] conflicts. The Israel Hamas war and the tragedy of the violence that is ongoing there and the U. S. is pretty frustrated with Netanyahu. They have expressed that even publicly, they are pushing very hard for a ceasefire that would see the release of all the remaining hostages. And Israel does not seem inclined to negotiate in good faith.
They definitely don't want to see an end [01:02:00] to the war. They want it to be very temporary and it's uncertain that Hamas will ever agree to that.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, it's definitely, there's a disconnect. There's definitely a split, obviously, within Israeli society on the path forward. But yeah, in terms of the Netanyahu administration, they're pushing full steam ahead.
The latest conflict point, because remember, most of the military operations have been in the northern Gaza Strip, are solved. extensive [01:02:30] bombing campaign and then the fleeing of a million civilians essentially to the south. The latest focus has been in the southern part of the Gaza Strip and the last stronghold of Hamas, which is Rafah, which now has a population of a million because of the huge number of Palestinian refugees that have flooded in.
So there are growing fears that there's going to be An Israeli invasion of this city, and then obviously the [01:03:00] risk around civilian casualties and such a densely populated, frankly, in a kind of refugee camp situation. It's very likely that any sort of attack on this city would re inflame the massive protests that we saw at the beginning of the war, both in the Middle East and in Western capitals because of that conflicts.
Egypt. Which has not been helpful, but is looking not to destabilize its own political situation has cut off all [01:03:30] refugees at its borders and is now threatening Israel that if they are overwhelmed because of the situation that they create. Because of Palestinian surging the border that the Egyptians are threatening to suspend the 1979 peace treaty, which would be a gigantic, very bad shift within policy.
Now, the economist kind of lays out the likelihood of that attack and what Netanyahu would need to achieve to go forward [01:04:00] with that. And he doesn't have carte blanche in terms of. Domestic support. I mean, his own polls are horrible. He, if an election was held today, the Likud party would get absolutely trounced by his biggest rival.
So, Benny Gantz, which is part of the Kind of the wartime coalition that the government's composed of, but the National Unity Party, which is centrist and has been pushing more towards a ceasefire and focus on, on [01:04:30] hostages, would trounce the Likud party. But again, elections are not coming up. The other issue is troop mobilization.
So we all recall a number of Israeli citizens flying back from abroad. They mobilized 300, 000 reservists, they've been partially demobilized already. So it means we have
Anita Kellogg: a student in our class that will, okay, and is
Ryan Kellogg: now back is now back from that. And so he actually took part of the operations in northern [01:05:00] Gaza.
Yeah. So it's kind of amazing the how rapidly they can mobilize and demobilize those forces. But nevertheless, it represents a barrier, but the other hope is that Hamas will be forced to make concessions around the ceasefire and their terms, especially as we head to the start of of Ramadan, which starts on on March 10th.
So I think a number of challenges there, [01:05:30] obviously. Rafa, an attack on that, Biden administration is definitely pushing against that, pushing more towards the ceasefire solution. You do have constant domestic rallies in support, especially from the remaining hundred or so family members that have hostages still being held.
I took a look at what are the status in terms of the military objectives. That is really had in terms of dismantling of Hamas [01:06:00] and according to Israeli intelligence, about 10, 000 Hamas members have been killed, which represents about 18 out of the 24 battalions being dismantled. So Israel has done significant damage to Hamas
Anita Kellogg: should be noted the total casualty of civilians.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. It's almost twice that. Three times that. Three times that? I saw 30, 000. I thought it was 30, 000 total. Well, 30, 000 total. Including the Hamas losses. So, yes. Yeah. That being said, [01:06:30] they have not decapitated Hamas leadership yet. And I just highlighted kind of the three main ones. I'm surprised. I think Israel, not nearly as That's kind of coordinated.
Remember we had like the deck of cards remember in the Iraq invasion But like these are the kind of our main targets. Anyway, they have three the political leader of hamas Sinwar is still at large and he is believed to be in rafa. There's a lot of speculation that [01:07:00] he's effectively lost Communication with the majority of his forces and there's rumors that hamas is looking for a replacement So he may be isolated but again still has not been Captured.
Then you have Mohammed. Yes. He's the commander of the military wing of Hamas and actually has survived seven different assassination attempts over the last 20 years. He was shown to be alive still in December and actually in better [01:07:30] condition than Israeli intelligence thought. They thought he had been had amputated legs and an arm is basically kind of a shell of a human left.
But it's still kicking is actually widely looked up to within the Middle East because, well, frankly, of his, of his toughness that he's been able to survive for 20 years, despite being targeted by Israel. And then his deputy commander is also still at large, despite the seizure of his estate in Gaza [01:08:00] and the assassination of his son.
So they really haven't achieved. They've done fairly good at dismantling the foot soldiers. And maybe some of the operational capacity of Hamas, but the leadership still is at large. So this could be a reason why Netanyahu needing that symbolic victory would still feel pressured to go into Rafah because I think the majority of these leaders are thought to be holed up there.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. I mean, [01:08:30] it's just a terrible situation, notable that these main leaders have not been eliminated. It's kind of, I mean, on one hand, it's understandable why Israel wants. To go into Rafa, but the consequences are pretty devastating. The whole principle of war is that any retaliation is proportional, right?
And so even though it was a high number of Israel citizens who died, it's not anything like the 20, 000 [01:09:00] civilians, the non Hamas, the people who have died. And continuing to create that situation is only going to, as we've said before, drive terrorism, the instinct of terrorism to increase. Just the humanitarian situation is terrible with people, like, struggling to find food.
I mean, there are all these refugees from the north, and now there's no safe place to go at all. I don't know what else to say [01:09:30] other than yeah, but it's, it's a very depressing sort of situation while understanding Israel's frustrations, the type of violence that is affecting civilians is
Ryan Kellogg: unconscionable.
Yeah. And it's, it's really also the. Complete lack of commitment towards the long term resolution and the dismissal of the of the two state solution. The true thing that would take to secure Israel's [01:10:00] long term security. And that gets us into kind of our last point. Tom Friedman strikes again. They make fun of him, but these are fine ideas.
He's an influential guy. He's definitely read by the Biden administration. These are all things I have no doubt the Secretary Blinken is pursuing. So pulling these off. Yeah.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. So basically what he wrote is what he thinks the Biden doctrine should be in the
Ryan Kellogg: Middle East. Yeah. Yep. So he's, he's good with marketing.
[01:10:30] So he's named it. He's basically given to the White House. It's like, I know you're pursuing these things. I'm hearing from the guys I'm having conversations with at fancy hotels in Dubai. What you're talking about, and I'm going to just brand it right here in the New York Times, Biden doctrine, it's going to look good.
The key part is right at the end of his column, and he sums it up, key selling point, and it's a strategy that could work with Arab Americans on Lake Michigan and with Arab [01:11:00] allies in the Persian Gulf. Key being Michigan, where the election is going to come down to three states, one of them being Michigan, Arab American population there is very critical.
So, good job framing, good job discussing. What does it make up? Well, I mean, it's three main initiatives. The first He's recommending the Biden Doctrine, strong and sustained response to the Iranian proxy attacks on U. S. forces. I think since he's written that column, we did strike back against [01:11:30] the, as we talked about in the last podcast episode, you had three American service members that were killed.
At a base in Jordan, and we did strike back against the proxy forces in Iraq that caused that now mind you that led to blow back and now the Iraq government is saying, oh, we may need to force you to pull out your troops that are security agreement is no avoid. We'll see where that goes, but I think there has been [01:12:00] essentially a sustained response, especially around the Houthis.
I mean, that's that's a sustained campaign. The second part of this is the more forceful promotion of a two state solution, and this essentially is some sort of formalization, so a U. S. recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the caveat that it would come With a set of defined credible institutions and security capabilities to [01:12:30] ensure that this new Palestinian state is both viable and could never threaten Israel.
Anita Kellogg: My question about this is how does Palestine develop credible institutions and security capabilities?
Ryan Kellogg: This is where you have to have the Arab Gulf States kind of be sponsors and on board with this with US support. Now, the other component of the carrot, which is in because this is a three pronged stool for the Biden doctrine.
[01:13:00] And this is the. Critical on which we've talked about before and has been floated out there for a long time, but it's a vastly expanded U. S. Security alliance with Saudi Arabia. That's the carrot in exchange for that, I assume it's kind of let them mention. But yeah, it's also Gulf state support for this Palestinian state and assurances around that.
And then that ultimately leads to the Saudi Israeli normalization and that this creates this virtuous circle that Israel [01:13:30] essentially has its security, the Gulf states get the economic benefits of Israel and the additional security benefits of having this, the most powerful militaries in the region, Israel and the U.
S. and a security alliance essentially against Iran, so it isolates Iran, and it settles the Arab streets because you finally have a sustainable path towards peace. A Palestinian state. Yeah. That all sounds [01:14:00] nice. Yeah. It sounds great. It sounds great.
Anita Kellogg: But this assumes a lot of things that haven't been shown in the past where the Arab nations have not taken much responsibility for the Palestinians and to do so in this context would be definitely something entirely new that, like I said, that they haven't done in the
Ryan Kellogg: past.
Yeah. So I think that's the difficult stuff. And then obviously the cell now is you're going to have zero progress until the Netanyahu administration is removed. Yeah. And I have no doubt, [01:14:30] democratically, Israel is going to arrive at the Likud party getting kicked out. And you're going to find a administration that is accepting of this, if it actually meets in the U.
S. 's Under this Biden doctrine of having a Palestinian state that does not threaten the security of of Israel has to have kind of those assurances built in as well, but I think you will have a more agreeable Israeli administration coming in whenever Netanyahu has to face the [01:15:00] consequences of his massive
Anita Kellogg: failure.
It's just hard to imagine the level of devastation that has happened in the Gaza Strip. And trying to build a Palestinian state.
Ryan Kellogg: I mean, it has to be a joint G7 sort of effort. The funding with the Arab state. I mean, the Arabs will provide money to help rebuild. It's a potential good investment.
Opportunity a stable state. It is beachfront property. It should be it should just be as prosperous as the [01:15:30] israeli Coastal cities. I mean it has that potential.
Anita Kellogg: I mean maybe but I was reading another article That was kind of interesting of how the arab states have just like refused to take any palestinians and refused to give them Yeah,
Ryan Kellogg: I know.
Yeah, that's that's all no they've been enormously inquired and that's that's the argument against a palestinian So it's like why why should we care? I mean, they, the Arab citizens don't, the Arab elites we know care less about their co religionist. [01:16:00] Yeah. They care less. They do care when their masses protest in the streets.
That's not great for the elites, but the elites themselves easily throw them under the bus. And that's why I think if Trump is reelected, I think Middle East policy will actually be pretty decent. I think he'll strike a deal. With the Arab states, you will have normalization of relations and the Palestinians will be thrown under the bus now with Arab streets.
I don't, I don't know. They'll play, maybe they, they can, as [01:16:30] long as like atrocities aren't being committed actively and mass portions like they are now.
Anita Kellogg: So either Trump or Biden could have the first two, the. first and third points of this doctrine.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah. Let's see. What was the
Anita Kellogg: first is the strong sustained response to Iranian proxy attacks.
Yep. Definitely. And then the security alliance to Saudi Arabia for Saudi, Saudi Israel normalization. Yep. And then it's unlikely [01:17:00] any president is going to get to the
Ryan Kellogg: two states solution. Trump's not getting there. No. And I think he can still make those deals. With the Arab states around that, but yeah, the, the Palestinians will be crushed.
Anita Kellogg: Yeah. The only thing that would make this unique is if Biden could get some sort of two state solution, but that's extraordinarily unlikely.
Ryan Kellogg: Very difficult, very difficult to do. But that's why it's kind of framed as this would be the [01:17:30] biggest achievement since 1979 and the peace deal with Egypt and Israel.
Anita Kellogg: It absolutely would. Yeah. Because it's absolutely unlikely from happening. Something to shoot for. I'm my usual optimistic self today.
So on that wonderful note, do we have anything positive? Give me something positive. Oh, anything
Ryan Kellogg: positive.
No. I [01:18:00]
Anita Kellogg: love foreign policy. I do, but all that optimism, I just really struggle to find it.
Ryan Kellogg: Well, not around these two issues. You should come up with a third one that had like a positive spin on it. One of these days,
Anita Kellogg: we'll have to pick a story that is just, let's pick positive. But like, that doesn't usually make news.
In case you're missing it, Ryan has his thinking cap on right now, trying to think of a story.
Ryan Kellogg: Yeah, we [01:18:30] need that. We need to have the equivalent of the fluffy little kitten at the end of the news story getting rescued by a firefighter. That news story. We need to have the foreign policy equivalent of that at the end.
I
Anita Kellogg: totally understand now why they do that, because otherwise it's like, oh, this is all kind of depressing.
Ryan Kellogg: You need to have that nice human interest story. Yeah, I will work on that for next time. We're gonna have a the equivalent of the fluffy little kitten rescued
Anita Kellogg: story. It might actually be a fluffy little kitten.[01:19:00]
Ryan Kellogg: That's a taking place abroad though. Find
Anita Kellogg: a Korean kitty. Yeah. Well, this brings us to the end of this episode of Kellogg's Global Politics. You can visit our website at www. kelloggsglobalpolitics. com and follow us on Twitter at Global Kellogg or me, AR
Ryan Kellogg: Kellogg. You can reach us also by email, so anita at kelloggsglobalpolitics.
com and myself, [01:19:30] ryan at kelloggsglobalpolitics. com. As always, please see the show notes for the articles we discussed in this episode. And if you like the show, please take the time, tell your friends, share it on your social sites. It's a simple, quick, and free way to support the show. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks. Bye.[01:20:00]