Anne Applebaum: Europe Is Preparing for an America That Turns Hostile | The Bulwark Podcast

I mean, actually, the French president said a couple of days ago, America might not be our ally anymore. You've heard the German chancellor say something similar in the last, you know, in recent days and weeks. He said it more than once, actually. So people are beginning to look for hedges.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic. Season three of her podcast, Autocracy in America, is out this morning. The first episode examines how the transformation of ICE into a massed and heavily armed paramilitary is reshaping our democracy. It's an apple bomb.

And that is a sad but timely topic to be to be releasing today. So I appreciate you're here on the pod.

Thanks for having me.

A bunch about autocracy abroad, I wanna get to with you today. But I guess given the topic of the podcast, we should start with what we saw in Minneapolis this week. We just spoke to Mayor Frey about his update from the ground.

But wanna hear more from your perspective on the ice killing in Minneapolis and how that integrates with what you're talking about on the podcast.

Right. So the point of the podcast is to pull together some things that we've seen covered sporadically or unevenly or in different places and to make an argument that these are the combination of the transformation of ice, changes in culture and education and health, deregulation of crypto, all these things are designed to unlevel the playing field for the midterms later this year. That's the bigger argument.

This particular first episode, which was not planned to come out the day after a really horrific and shocking American tragedy, the theme of the episode was ICE and to a lesser extent, the National Guard, which has been covered as a story about immigration. And my argument is that it's not just about immigration, it's about intimidation. It's about creating a paramilitary that feels itself to be above the law. People who wear masks have only rudimentary training,

drive unmarked cars, and as we saw in Minneapolis, use guns freely and willingly as if they were fighting terrorists on the streets of America, when in fact what they're fighting is 37-year-old women driving Hondas. But the point is that this was designed from the beginning as that.

So it was about immigrants, but it was also about having a force that was loyal to Donald Trump that could be used in political ways. We don't know all of the political ways that it will be used. Towards the end of the series, some people are speculating, and actually some of the governor of Illinois said this, so it's not just some people. There's a fear that troops on the street or armed men on the street during the midterms could frighten people away from voting. So there are lots of ways in which this kind of force can be used. But

what we just saw was it was almost like a, you know, it was more than just a power play. I mean, it was a shocking use of violence, and then lies about the use of violence, and then the immediate extension of impunity to the person who'd used violence. So already you can see the administration creating a force for violence that's above, somehow above the law and somehow protected by Donald Trump.

That fear that Pritzker references in your podcast, that there's concerns people be afraid to vote. I mean, we do have anecdotal evidence that that, not maybe at the ballot box, but in other anecdotal evidence that that, you know, not maybe at the ballot box, but in other ways of life that that's happening right now. I saw this in this community in New Orleans, I was hearing from people who, you know, said that they had employees

that don't want to show up to work, even if they were documented or had their green cards because they didn't want to be intimidated or because they're scared. You know, you see this, that rhetoric after the murder in Minneapolis, which was folks on the right and folks in this government saying, well, you know, you should, I think J.D. Vance said yesterday, you know, people should express their displeasure

with our immigration policies at the ballot box if they want to. They shouldn't be showing up in the neighborhoods where these law enforcement activities are, right? And so like they are intentionally trying to intimidate people to recede in various ways

from the public square. I don't think it's a huge jump to think that that might be part of the strategy around the elections

either.

No, no. I also heard a terrible story. I won't say who it was, but it was somebody who had moved to Washington and whose had come from a city in California where you have to drive everywhere, and whose kids were very excited to be able to walk to school.

And this is a Hispanic family, completely American, US citizen family. And they were – as soon as they got to walk, the kids were excited for the first time they can walk to school, they can ride their bikes. And their parents, because these are teenagers, became worried that they shouldn't walk to school by themselves because ice might pick them up. And that, to me, was a horrific story.

I mean, if you're afraid that your US citizen children can't walk down the streets and can't go to school, then we're already living in a different reality. So you're right that this has already begun to happen in some communities. I mean, not everybody feels it, but it's very possible

that everybody will. And actually, my podcast episode starts with a story of a guy called George Redis, who's a US citizen, was a veteran, and who was arrested by ICE and put in prison for a few days, missed his daughter's birthday,

and was never given a reason or an explanation.

The Redis story is horrifying. I had a chance to talk to him too. What a great guy. Somebody texted me the other day, I think it was yesterday, it's been also been so bleak this week.

It's like, do you have any hope? And I don't know if he was felt this way in your podcast, I'll put a link in the show notes on YouTube with him. He was very kind of cheery at the end. I like what happened to him was horrible. But, you know, he's somebody that like served in the military and has a kid and is a young guy. And he was and he was, you know, I basically said to him, I was like,

you've got to hate America at this point, given how you were treated. And he was the opposite. And I don't know, there's something about that, about like the human ability to stand up to these horrors. That's, there's like a little, it's darkly optimistic, I guess. It's like optimism through dark, light through darkness. But there's something to be said for that.

Well, there are a lot of people fighting back. I mean, there were people protesting in Minneapolis and there are people who are documenting ice and there are, you know, I'm really impressed with the Catholic Church in lots of places. I mean, you can feel these communities moving and doing things. And, you know, I'm impressed with Americans who do all that. And so, and they're, you know, they're exactly, they're the source of, you know, they're the future

of the country.

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Well, I mean, this is all America is involved in all this. We kind of want to do around the world of the various autocracies and our roles. I want to start with Venezuela. You wrote about this for The Atlantic this week and how Trump is trying to put in place a new global system. Before we get into the Monroe Doctrine side of this, I'm just curious what your sense is of the state of play in Venezuela.

Trump said yesterday, last night in an interview, that Machado, he will be meeting with Machado next week, the opposition leader in Venezuela, and said it'd be a great honor to accept the Nobel Peace Prize from her. At some level, it feels like a little bit too late to be siding with the opposition, but maybe not. I don't know.

What's your sense of what the state of play is in Venezuela?

So I am in touch with people. I'm in touch with a couple of people in Caracas and others. To be clear, the Venezuelans I know were delighted that Maduro was gone and were really happy. And the Trump press conference on that same day, in which he kind of dissed Machado

and he said she's a very nice lady but nobody respects her, was truly horrifying to them. I don't know that all Americans realize what, I mean, we were just talking about people who inspire you. The Venezuelan opposition, particularly over the last two or three years, fighting against enormous odds, carried out this incredible election campaign. Machado herself wasn't running because she was forbidden from running, but Edmundo Gonzalez, who was a former

Venezuelan diplomat, did run. They got people all over the country involved. They, and not only that, they got people involved in monitoring and counting the votes. So they were able to prove that they'd won. They won something like, you know, two to three, you know,

they got two- thirds of the vote. So this is a very deep, very big, very grassroots opposition. This is not a bunch of elites or a bunch of rich people or a bunch of outsiders. You know, she Machado represents a very large part of the country, and she has enormous respect. She is widely admired among all kinds of people, all kinds of

demographics in all parts of the country. And so the people were horrified by that. People were also horrified by the initial impression is that Trump intends for the country to be run by the Maduro regime, which is still in place and its own paramilitaries and its own police force are still in place, and somehow intends to monitor it from the outside by controlling black, I don't know, through blockades, somehow controlling oil revenue. It's very unclear how that's

going to happen and how that's going to work and what it's going to mean for ordinary Venezuelans. And the people I talk to go kind of way up and down, you know, like one day maybe it's going to be all right, you know, maybe this is a transition phase and eventually we'll have our own legitimate leaders. And then some days they seem more, you know, a lot more worried. Very hard for me to tell you what direction this is going. It's not unprecedented for the US to be involved in some kind of leadership chain

in Latin America. But the way this is happening and the language that Trump is using is totally unprecedented. The way he's talking about Venezuela very much as we're taking their oil. The point of occupying

Venezuela or blockading Venezuela is to take their natural resources for the purposes of Americans. So he sounds not just like a imperialist. I mean, he sounds like a kind of, I mean, you'd have to go back before, you know, before the British Empire. I mean, it's a kind of rapacious, extortionate, you know, we're just there for the oil kind of enterprise. And obviously, Venezuelans who suffered so

much...

That's right. I mean, it's not even the Victorian British Empire, which did have an ideology and manifest destiny. It's very, very brutal. And, you know, Venezuelans, you know, Venezuelans want change. And one person said to me, you know, I don't care who runs the oil industry. I just want, you know, the country to move again. So they keep looking for the bright side, but he's not sounding like someone he's he almost never talks about Venezuelans.

You know, he doesn't talk about them at all and what they would want. And he's never used the word democracy when he talks about them. I guess it's important for him to meet Machado and I, you know, I don't envy her having to go through that. And I'm I am afraid there will be some horrific scene where she hands him the, you know, the gold piece of I think it's a gold medal you get when you win the Nobel Prize.

I mean, there might be some ugly thing that happens, which I don't want to watch. But my colleague Sam Stein posited that like for even for Trump, that feels a little undignified to take somebody's medal. But I have to I have to dissent with him on that. I don't I don't know that there's anything that's too undignified for him. I think he would take it.

Um, so we'll see. It's a side story. One thing that struck me reading your piece about this that I think is a little bit under discussed because all of this is hypothesizing and it's figuring out what the potential outcomes are. There are a bunch of different ways that things could shake out when there's a change in leadership like this. I was going to say it's not really regime change.

One thing that I don't hear a ton of talking about is like, will there be pushback from within Venezuela? That's something you mentioned, right? And especially the way Trump talks about this, whether it's FARC or some other group, there's honor and dignity and pride within Venezuela. And it's like, we're not going to, these guys aren aren't gonna come steal our oil. And that is a, I think a risk

that, you know, is that we haven't seen so far. Though some Venezuelans died in our, you know, in our removal of Maduro. But it does seem like a risk that these guys are totally, basically oblivious to or not, not, not talking about or just a wish casting over.

There are armed groups inside Venezuela. There are some terrorist groups, I mean, mostly on the border coming. You know, there are these, you know, coming from Colombia and elsewhere. But there are also armed paramilitaries inside Venezuela who may or may not be happy with the new system, whatever that system turns out to be. There are Russian and Chinese and Iranian links in Venezuela. I mean, I know that the Trump administration said they would have to leave,

but that's not how it works. I mean, they don't necessarily leave. And, you know, there's plenty of opportunity for people who don't like the new system, whatever that turns out to be, to push back against it. And that's, you know, stepping back. I mean, that's the broader danger of a policy that doesn't take into consideration the desires and, you know, of the people on the ground. You know, if America is just a brutal regional bully and nothing else, then it will find it harder and harder to have allies. And people will, you know, they

will organize against the U.S. or they will seek to thwart the U.S. or they may eventually use violence. I mean, I don't want to be too specific in predictions because it's just too early to say what this is going to be like. But if you look at the history of the world, that's what happens. I mean, an action has a reaction. You know, the US of the second half of the 20th century and the first, I don't know, 15 years of the 21st century was a country that did have an enormous amount of power, sometimes abused it, but very often sought to share

it with others or to incorporate others or to build alliances and work together with partners, you know, either with partner governments or partner organizations in other countries in order to achieve things. And this is an administration that doesn't seem interested in doing that at all with anybody. I mean, not the Venezuelan opposition, not anyone. And so that means that some people will begin to say, well, is this in my interest? Maybe not.

And that will create a backlash eventually.

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events that made him feel like this was the right thing to do to depose Maduro, but I don't know that he has some consistent viewpoint that he will employ throughout the region. But just for the sake of the discussion, if they are serious about the spheres of influence thing, right, where they want to take control of the region,

this is what you kind of get to in the Atlantic. There are a lot of potential risks and ways that that could go bad. You know, and like this idea that this is a risk board and we can just divide the world up between China and Russia and the US is silly. I mean, other countries in the world have agency. And on top of that, it's kind of like, where does Europe fit into all of that? It's so strange.

And there's one of Trump's allies tweeted this earlier this week. Someone is getting Greenland one way or the other. It's going to be us or Russia or China. I know my choice. I'm like, well, wait, Europe already has Greenland. Why would it be Russia?

Russia is a broke dick country. Russia doesn't have the resources that Europe has. Russia's tried to take over one European country and has utterly botched it. So their whole world view seems broken on this.

It's deeply bizarre. I mean, first of all, you're right. So I don't think Trump himself has a strategy or has ever had a strategy. I think he's somebody who wants to win whatever is the situation,

whether it's a conversation with a journalist or with the president of Ukraine or with Maduro, it's just all about winning and dominance and victory.

And what the first-

In that situation, in that minute, right? Like, yeah, he's very adaptable.

In that minute, in that minute.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly, and the next minute, who cares? You know, and he's fine to talk to Mondani, you know, and he's fine to do something else. He has no strategic view at all. And I, you know, the Dunro doctrine, I think, is something somebody else made up. I mean, he's not, he didn't, he doesn't know what the Monroe doctrine was. By the way, the Monroe doctrine was about keeping European imperialist powers out of the Western Hemisphere. It wasn't, you know, the original idea wasn't the version that Trump has come up with.

But there are people around him who have strategies and you see them, you hear them from time to time or you see echoes of what they think. I mean, one version was in the National Security Strategy that was published before Christmas, which had the rudiments of this in it.

You know, the US needs to dominate the Western Hemisphere, needs to take over all the important economic assets, and what happens to Europe and what happens in Asia is of less interest to us, and we're not really interested in talking about Russia and China as rivals anymore. That was the fundamental basis of that document. First of all, the origins of this idea that there should be three spheres in the world is Russian.

This was a kind of Russian geopolitical...

Josh Birkeltt Since they're the weakest of the spheres,

that's not surprising.

Elizabeth Anderson Yeah. Partly because it's the justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Georgia and so on, and also because it makes Russia, which is poorer by 10 times than the European Union, makes it look more important if it's sharing the world with America and China. Actually, Russia is a client state of China, not by any means it's equal. So it's crazy because that's not how it works. Russia isn't dominating Europe and actually China, you know, there are other players in Asia too, China, Japan, but also South Korea.

There are many countries that don't want to become Chinese colonies. And so it's a misunderstanding of how the world is going to work. And it's also a recipe for war. I mean, the, you know, if the U.S.'s job, if the U.S. sees itself as its primary goal is to extort resources from Latin America, then there will be struggle and conflict in Latin America as people object to it, as we just discussed. You know, if Russia decides that its job is to dominate Europe, then there will be a war in Europe. If China wants to dominate Japan, there'll be a war with Japan. So, you know, this way of seeing the world, that it's about big

powers having dominance, is an absolute recipe for violence and warfare. The whole point of the post-war world, of the UN Charter, of the myriad institutions that we're now dropping out of, was to have a different way of running the world. Instead of big countries saying might makes right, give small countries agency, organize networks, organize alliances, create,

even in areas like shipping law or airplane traffic, have ways of discussing things between nations where everybody gets a say and we get some kind of solution that's good for everyone. I mean, that was the basis of international politics for the last 70 years.

And they seem very convinced that they can just discard all of it and that it will somehow be good for the US.

I mean,

US losing European markets, you know, US being cut off from Japan, US isolated in the Western hemisphere, US losing, I mean, you can see how much the US stands to lose just when you start

to think about it. I'm wondering whether, you know, kind of the view from Europe is changing, evolving at all over the past couple of weeks, given what we've seen. And obviously you're in London now, your husband's a Polish minister. And so you're not much deeper in that world than I am. You know, it's one thing to be bluster, you know,

and talk with Donald Trump and then the talk going, right? And now, you know, with what's happened with Maduro, they've refocused on Greenland again. He's, you know, trash talking Colombia and Mexico. I'm just wondering if there's been kind of any updated POV from from folks in Europe that that makes things seem a little more alarming or whether this is what they've just been dealing with now for 10 years.

It's funny, I so I talked to a Danish journalist just before talking to you, who was asked me about where is this dramatic change coming from and so on. And I said to him, have you not been paying attention? You know, Trump has been talking like this since 2015. You know, the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022. It's now 2026. All these trends were visible in the past, but there is something about the, it was actually the combination of Maduro and Greenland that has led to a new level of anxiety.

I mean, actually the French president said a couple of days ago, America might not be our ally anymore. You've heard the German chancellor say something similar in the last, you know, in recent days and weeks, he said it more than once actually.

And you are, I am watching people, the word I would use is hedge. So people are beginning to look for hedges. So there is a, you know, rapidly looking for replacements for US systems, you know, rapidly talking about,

it doesn't talk, it doesn't happen much in public, but there are a lot of behind the scenes conversations about what do we do in the case of a U.S. invasion of Greenland? Who responds and how? You know, what is, what does that mean for Ukraine going forward and so on?

So where would those conversations even happen? I mean, it can't happen inside NATO really, since we're not part of it. So like the EU, just EU security services kind of, you know. EU security services inside governments,

you know, people are beginning to make, ask what alternative plans there are. I mean, it's also, you know, just to be not, not to be, just so that people aren't over, we don't get overexcited. There's another weird thing,

which is that while all this is happening, the US military and NATO country militaries remain as integrated as they ever were. And U.S. intelligence works closely with European intelligence in many areas. And there are, you know, I don't know that there are military exercises going on right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were or if there were some that were scheduled for next month,

and those will probably happen. So all of the stuff that allies do together, like on a sort of one level down from the politics, is still happening. And there are these deep relationships, as I said, between military, between strategy,

between intelligence institutions and people all across what we would call the transatlantic alliance. All that still happens. And so I think that's part of what gives people this feeling of surreality. I mean, we're not, you know, we still like Americans.

We work with them. You know, we trade with them. I mean, the Danes have all these huge companies that sell weight loss drugs. And they have enormous trade relationships and lots of tourists. And so simultaneously, while they hear this very aggressive stuff coming from the president

and some of the people around him, they don't see it in reality. And that's also part of the Kafkaesque, that's another Kafka, I would say, atmosphere of the moment.

What about specifically inside Ukraine? I mean, we've kind of this cyclical loop that we're in really with Trump's behavior with Ukraine where he kind of sounds Russia friendly for a minute and he hopes he gets a peace deal and then Putin makes him mad for a second

and then Zelensky comes to visit and well, except for that one time, the rest of the time he starts to be persuaded slightly and you know, it feels like we're going to be supportive of Ukraine again and then the cycle starts over again, where Trump starts sounding like he's more mad at Zelensky and he starts giving Russian talking points. Where did the events of the last week change the calculus there at all? Or is this, are we just still in this kind of unending loop of Trump playing footsie with

Russia and then backing off?

The one thing that has happened this week that is important for Ukraine is that a piece of the negotiation is about so-called security guarantees. I'm a little wary about all of this anyway, kind of dubious. But part of the negotiation is that if the war were to end, Ukraine would need some kind of conviction that it wasn't gonna start again the next day. So if people were to come back

and if they were to rebuild the country and people are gonna invest, then there has to be some security after the war. And so towards that end, actually, the British and the French in the last few days have said they would lend troops to Ukraine. And I don't know the full details. The United States has made some noises about security

guarantees. What Trump has just done, I mean, this is more about Greenland than Venezuela, you know, by threatening Denmark, and by implying in some of his conversation that he's not sure which is more important, owning Greenland or being in NATO. He suddenly makes this question of security guarantees seem absurd. I mean, of course, the United States can't be relied upon if it's about to attack Denmark. And so it undermines the project, you know, even the project of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, you know, to create some reliable system. I mean, even that is being undermined by the

things that Trump says. The main problem with the negotiations, as far as I can see, is that the Russians have never said that they want to end the war. Not once. Putin has never said the war is over. He has never said he wants a ceasefire. He's never talked about ending the war in public. And that makes me think that he doesn't want to end the war.

And so you have the specter of the U.S. and Europe and Ukraine coming to some kind of agreement that they're going to present to Putin and Putin will turn down. And maybe there's something that will happen that will change that. I mean, eventually it will change because I don't think Putin can fight this war forever. He's losing a thousand people every day. Every day. Think about that. Think about the United States lost 60 to 65,000 people during Vietnam. And this was a national trauma that went on for decades. We made movies about it, we wrote songs about it. And

it went on and on. And in Russia, they've lost a million people. And they're losing the equivalent of Vietnam every two months. And so it cannot last indefinitely. And there is grumbling in the ranks that you can hear that bubbles up on telegram. And there's clearly some discontent in the elite. And there is grumbling in the ranks that you can hear that bubbles up on Telegram and there's clearly some discontent in the elite. And people in Russia want the war to be over. And of course, they're scared to talk about it too much. But it is not sustainable

indefinitely. And I am still convinced that a hardline, you know, clear statement from the Transatlantic Alliance and the rest of the democratic world would have ended this war already. Had the election of Trump been followed by that, it would be over. But Trump gave Putin the feeling that he could continue, you know, that there was something to be gained. But, you know, I don't know, the Ukrainians I talked to are kind of sanguine. They're like, okay, we're going to just keep fighting. And there was a huge missile attack that hit Western Ukraine yesterday.

The thing that was noteworthy about this, because Russia has been consistently attacking Ukraine every day, was that it was a hypersonic nuclear capable missile. So it wasn't, like, they didn't, it wasn't obviously a nuclear detonation, but that it was a nuclear capable missile. Why is that significant? Zelensky, Kiev was warning that that is a grave threat more so than some of these other attacks.

I guess Putin had used a missile such as this in 2024 and gave a rationale for it. Talk about how that might be a little bit different than what we've been seeing.

It's a way of saying, next time I'll put warheads on it. I mean, that's how it's interpreted. He gave the rationale he gave this time was that it was a response to the Ukrainians trying to bomb his residence, which is something that we know didn't happen.

So he's created the fake excuse that allows him to make this response, which is pretty par for the course. I mean, now we've all got used to politicians lying and using their lies to justify violence. And it's not just in our country, it's in other countries. It's possible that

the Maduro capture also unnerved Putin. I mean, as I've written, you know, in a way, it enables the Russians and the Chinese to do whatever they want. If we can do whatever they want, they can do it, you know, they can too. But it's also true that Maduro was a Russian client. There were billions of dollars of Russian investment in Venezuela. The Russians sold a lot of weapons to Venezuela. They may be feeling, you know, particularly given what's going on in Iran and what happened in Syria a year ago, they may be feeling that, you know, it's true that the war in Ukraine has sucked up all of their assets and all of their weapons and all of their ability. And they may be feeling, you know, Putin may be feeling some kind of insecurity. And maybe the missile was an expression of that too.

I wanna get to Iran, but just one more thing, going back to Greenland for one second, because you said something that struck me about how Europeans' reaction to Trump, kind of implying that he wasn't sure what was more valuable, being in NATO or Greenland.

It is, they've truly been spitting in the face of our European allies, both Trump and Vance, and Vance in particular. And the kind of smarmy, the condescending way in which Vance has been like tut-tutting Denmark, like you haven't been a good ally to us, young man. I'm gonna send you to the principal's office.

When like the Danes have fought our wars, like the Danish soldiers have fought and died in American led military actions, Afghanistan and other places. It's truly insulting. And Europeans have dignity too. You can only lecture somebody and wag your finger at them when you're the bad actor for

so long, I would think,

before they would have a negative reaction to that. No, that's right. I mean, also the other bizarre thing, you know, just to reinforce the point that this is not about anything real, the US used to have more military assets on Greenland. And actually, at one point during the Cold War, we had nuclear weapons there. There's now one tiny base. I read recently it's 150 people. I don't have to check whether that's the case, but I know it's very small.

And the U.S. has drawn down troops from there. So if this were, you know, and by the way, we have a security arrangement with Denmark that has allowed the U.S. to have troops there, military equipment there for decades. So if the US thought Greenland was very important and thought it was an important military asset, there's nothing stopping the US from, together with Denmark, rebuilding, I don't know,

new bases on the island. Nor is it true that Denmark has not protected Greenland. I mean, Denmark pays for Greenland, Denmark has invested, but I mean, Denmark pays for Greenland. Denmark has invested. I mean, it's a longer story.

But the worst part about the JD Vance, this kind of condescension, is also just that it's based on lies. It creates a false reality. I mean, oh, the Danes aren't investing in Greenland. Well, actually, the US could invest in Greenland and doesn't either. So it creates a fake world in which things that aren't true appear to be true.

Nobody really likes to be lectured about anything, but it's particularly galling to be lectured when the person that is lecturing you is making shit up and is actually the bad actor. Anyway, I want to move to Iran. Potentially some good news. I've been through this a lot in Iran, but I feel remiss having not covered it earlier this week. Massive protests now for about the last 10 days across the country, biggest since 2022.

Particularly, they've run security services out of some cities, including along the Iraq border. Just wondering what you're kind of seeing there and hearing from folks who have expertise on Iran.

So these are huge protests. I mean, you're right that it's not the first time and the internet is now cut off there. And so there may be repression going on at a scale that we can't immediately see. I mean, there are a couple of things

that are new about these. I mean, one is that they come after the Israeli and particularly the Israeli strikes on Iran a few months back, which killed some leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and gave a lot of Iranians some hope that that would lead to political change, but of course it didn't. There is also an interesting role being played by the son of the late Shah, whose name is being chanted by some of the protesters and who is, might even in here, I'm pleased, you know, don't take this as as as read. But it's something that he may have some support inside the regime.

There may be a part of the regime that wants him to come back and for there to be some kind of transition and for the the the Revolutionary Guard to stay in charge.

What is his political valence?

I mean, to see he was living in northern Virginia and has studied in the U.S. and is U.S. educated and has been an advocate for democracy and political change in Iran all of his life. You know, who he's friends with now and what, you know, what he's doing, I don't know. But his name is in the mix in a way that it wasn't before. And it seems to have some traction. And that's probably the most interesting thing that's happening. I haven't, I've had one

or two conversations about it and I've seen it. I haven't explored it fully, but it's a, it's a theme to watch over the next few weeks.

We'll keep watching that. I guess one other element with that is relevant with Iran is kind of the interplay with Israel. Right. And I mean, you mentioned it, like the Israel attacks in Iran preceded this. I mean, I think that if you follow Israeli news, certainly it doesn't seem like they're done. I think the BB told Donald Trump that it was a one and done, but I don't think that's how Israel sees it.

I'm wondering whether you think these protests, how it interacts potentially with kind of outside security concerns.

You know, I'm sure there Iran is full of people saying this is inspired by Israel. I don't I don't doubt that. And could Israel be there? I'm sure they are in some form. They obviously have some kind of assets inside Iran. But I don't think they're the primary cause.

Iran has for many years been spending billions of dollars on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on the Houthis. It spent billions of dollars on this nuclear program that is, we don't know how much of it was destroyed, but enough of it was destroyed that makes it look like it's pretty unviable. Meanwhile, people are short of food, they're short of medicine,

they're short of in some places of water. This is clearly, you see people on the streets in Iran right now who are genuinely desperate and angry at the regime for misspending their national wealth. And I think that's the most important source

of anger and frustration. Could there be other foreign spies? No doubt. But I don't think that's the main thing that's happening.

Yeah, the Real has lost more than 40% of its value since June, soaring inflation. And so that's as good a reason as any to protest against the oppressive regime. Okay, we'll continue to monitor that. Last thing is, you know, we have an informal

and Applebaum book club around here that people really get excited about. We've had the Captive Mind, the Oppermans, the director. You offered a poem last time, I think, The Choice. Is that right? Did you read anything over the holidays?

Did you have a chance to or were you just? That eggnog doing eggnog and champagne's have I already suggested what we can know the Ian McEwan novel Have we I didn't have that on my list, but it's possible. It's possible that you did I don't it sounds familiar now that you mentioned it. I'm behind, I guess I'm not fully up to speed on the an apple bomb book club because I got a lot happening and occasionally I need a break from the

an apple bomb suggested books that need to do like gay coming of age novels, you know, which is one I just finished, for example, anyone's ghost,

people are looking for that. Uh, And so I'm a little behind. So it's possible you did suggest that. What was it? It's called What We Can Know. And it's by the really great British writer Ian McEwen. And what's interesting about it, it's not quite as on the nose related to these same subjects, although in some ways it is. It projects something not that far into the future, maybe 100 years into the future. And it's a group of historians looking back on our time and trying to understand it. And in the meantime, in the interim, there's been a climate change disaster and a nuclear war and, you know, the world is looks very

different. And, and the first part of the novel, you think it's about, it's a it's a kind of lecture moral story about the impact of climate change. And then actually it turns into a novel about what actually can we ever know about the past. Like, you know, when we study history, when we look at, think about people's motives, do we ever really,

what's the real story we don't really know? And I'm a, sometimes I'm a historian when I'm not being a journalist. And I found it, I found it really thought provoking. So that's my, it's not hard to read. It has a science fictiony kind of air.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to do better about keeping an official list now instead of going based on my memory. Now we've added to when I was keeping up to speed with your suggestions and reading them myself, it was easy for me to remember. But now that I'm behind, I need to keep a written list so I can come back around to it.

Anne Applebaum, thank you so much, as always. The podcast, Autocracy in America, season three is out today, go check that out. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you in a couple months. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you in a couple months.

Yeah, thank you. the