Tommy and Ben discuss the seismic shift in US foreign policy that happened this past week after Trump announced that the US and Russia would directly negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine through talks that exclude Ukraine and Europe. They also explain how JD Vance’s first foreign trip insulted nearly every leader in Europe while boosting Germany’s far-right AfD party ahead of Germany’s election this Sunday, how support for a crypto scam has become a major political liability for the president of Argentina, the continued fallout from USAID cuts, the latest on the Gaza ceasefire, and intelligence leaks about a potential Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Then, Ben speaks to Max Seddon, Moscow Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, about how the flip flop in US foreign policy towards Russia is being greeted by the Kremlin.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Chapter 1: What sparked the shift in US foreign policy towards Russia?
Someone just went abroad.
He's poised to win. He's moving way right. This is not under Merkel, right?
Yes, big time.
He's talking about sealing borders.
We should say, short version is he put forward a hardline anti-immigration vote in the Bundestag knowing that it could only pass if the AFD voted for it. which is seen by almost everybody as, if not like in spirit, a breach of the firewall sort of agreement. Yeah.
And what this could do is it could just break that consensus against the AFD inside of Germany because, you know, if he moves so far right, he can't form a coalition with the Social Democrats, for instance. Well, then all of a sudden you might be looking at the AFD being in the German government and having this kind of right, far right government in Germany, right? With a French election coming up
you know, in the next couple of years that could bring the far right to power in France. And then what kind of world are we living in? You know, this is starting to feel like the 30s a little bit and not in, well, there is no good way it could be like the 30s. So J.D. Vance, he has this kind of smarmy note. The guy's 40 fucking years old, right? I know, I know.
And he's sitting over, he has no experience in foreign policy, really. And he's just going to go pull a pin out of a grenade and throw it in the middle of Europe?
In 2016, he was calling Trump a Nazi.
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Chapter 2: How is Ukraine responding to US-Russia peace talks?
In response to these hostage releases by Hamas, Israel said they are going to free all women prisoners and prisoners under the age of 18 who are arrested since the October 7th attacks. That has, I think, created a pretty unreasonable debate, Ben, about whether you're a prisoner or a hostage if you were just kind of picked up for not doing anything after October 7th in Gaza. Yeah.
conversation for another day. Bigger picture, the first phase of the ceasefire ends on March 2. I mean, they're about they've sort of sped up the release of the hostages. So the first phase will be complete pretty soon. The talks for the second phase have not officially begun. Reuters says Reuters reported that indirect negotiations for phase two are going to begin this week.
Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy, seemed confident. He told Fox News that phase two is absolutely going to begin. That's a quote. I saw earlier today there's reports that the Israelis and Hamas are both going to send teams to Qatar to negotiate. So those are all good signs of progress.
And I hope Steve Witkoff is right and he's not too focused on whatever he's doing in Saudi with the Russians right now. But Ben, I mean, the thing I keep thinking about is like whatever political incentive Hamas had to actually get to phase three of this deal, the reconstruction phase, kind of went out the window when Trump decided that we're going to ethnically cleanse and occupy the thing.
I mean, like trying to understand how this works now.
Yeah, it's good that this didn't get derailed. It's good that phase one is still moving forward. I just think this gets exponentially harder at each juncture. And so long as the operating plan is the Riviera in Gaza, we're not going to get there.
So the thing to watch is how the phase two negotiations go forward, how people start talking about actual reconstruction, who's responsible for administering security in Gaza, whether there's still an ethnic cleansing plan on the table or not. But this does show there seems to be a real mutual interest between, believe it or not, the Israeli government and Hamas to not see the phase one go away.
And that's good. And hopefully that can be a basis for getting to those more difficult issues. And hopefully they can kind of I don't know. I just don't think the U.S. I mean, Witkoff seems to have played like a constructive role here. You kind of want Trump to to to not be that focused on it because, you know, the the Riviera plan is not going to be one that sells.
No, you want Trump to shut up. I'd also love to see certain former Biden officials shut up. shut up and stop writing op-eds?
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