Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Here in the US, coronavirus seems to
Speaker 1: be spreading steadily. Now. I know we cover this in
Speaker 1: a special episode last week with Mark Lipsitch, But for me,
Speaker 1: this whole pandemic issue is still very much front of mind,
Speaker 1: and it feels like most people I've talked to over
Speaker 1: the last few days are thinking pretty much the same thing.
Speaker 1: As of my taping this on Monday night, ten states
Speaker 1: have now reported cases Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and New York. With its geographical spread,
Speaker 1: that list tells you that pretty shortly it'll be all
Speaker 1: fifty states that have cases. But in China, where the
Speaker 1: epidemic first erupted, the outbreak, at least for the moment,
Speaker 1: appears appears to finally be slowing down. About a week ago,
Speaker 1: as that process was beginning, I spoke to Ian Johnson,
Speaker 1: a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who's based in Beijing. I
Speaker 1: asked him what life is like in a city where
Speaker 1: everybody is sheltering in place, all twenty million of them
Speaker 1: in Tell me what the mood is among the people
Speaker 1: you speak to with regard to coronavirus. Well, there are
Speaker 1: some cities in China where for a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: although things are loosening up a bit now, they had
Speaker 1: people under complete lockdown where you couldn't leave your housing
Speaker 1: compound without permission, or sometimes families could only leave their
Speaker 1: housing compound once every couple of days to go shopping
Speaker 1: or something like that, where all the park sort of closed.
Speaker 1: In Beijing, which is of course a big city, so
Speaker 1: it's even hard to generalize in Beijing, but it's a
Speaker 1: little easier the parks are open, and of course in
Speaker 1: the capital, buying groceries and so on is no problem.
Speaker 1: And I guess also the thing in Beijing, the government's
Speaker 1: influence is probably at its strongest, just like probably in
Speaker 1: any capital city. So I think overall in Beijing, the
Speaker 1: sense I get is that people are they're getting a
Speaker 1: little frustrated. They're feeling that boy has been going on
Speaker 1: for a while. The government's asking us not to meet anyone,
Speaker 1: not to go out. But how long are we supposed
Speaker 1: to do this? I think when it started. It started
Speaker 1: right around Chinese New Year, which is a time when
Speaker 1: people tend to be more inwardly focused anyway, visiting family members,
Speaker 1: and so it became sort of like a really long
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving weekend or something like that, which is good or
Speaker 1: bad depending on how you're feeling about your family at
Speaker 1: the end of Thanksgiving weekend exactly, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: again the weekend from hell. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: it's going to become for some people, because this long
Speaker 1: weekend's gone into two weeks and now it's a month,
Speaker 1: and people are start of wondering, well, when's this going
Speaker 1: to end? In one sense is in the government that
Speaker 1: there are people asking that question. Also, even if for
Speaker 1: another reason than GDP reasons like when can the economy
Speaker 1: get going again? So I think there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of frustration and percolating up. The frustration makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: to me. This is sort of fascinating that almost precisely
Speaker 1: at the moment that you're describing people in Beijing thinking
Speaker 1: can this be over? Already? In much of the rest
Speaker 1: of the world, people are waking up to think, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, this might just be getting started. Do you
Speaker 1: think that in Beijing there just haven't been a large
Speaker 1: number of reported cases, so people don't have a sense
Speaker 1: of the immediacy of the danger. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: partly about but I think the government also set this
Speaker 1: up wrong. The government set this up as a quick
Speaker 1: crisis that it could manage and come out successful, where
Speaker 1: they were going to put the country into lockdown, implement
Speaker 1: these your onian measures for two weeks or four weeks,
Speaker 1: and in some ways, statistically we are You see the
Speaker 1: rate of increase in China has gone way down. But
Speaker 1: also as the country gets back to work, people are
Speaker 1: going to come into contact with each other. You can't
Speaker 1: have even Hubei Province can't stay indefinitely locked down. This
Speaker 1: would be almost like the entire Midwest. This would be
Speaker 1: like Chicago plus Illinois plus maybe Michigan to So to
Speaker 1: get a sense of the overall economic impact of Hubei
Speaker 1: Province right at the crossroads of the country being locked down.
Speaker 1: That can't go on forever, and so it's going to spread.
Speaker 1: They're going to be other centers of the epidemic, and
Speaker 1: the government hasn't set people up for this. The messaging
Speaker 1: is sort of off. It's that it's going to be
Speaker 1: over by now, and these draconian measures are going to stop,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what they're going to do when
Speaker 1: this continues on. I think everybody now has come to
Speaker 1: the realization in the sort of expert community that this
Speaker 1: is going to continue on for months to come. The
Speaker 1: Chinese government is pretty sophisticated in managing the way that
Speaker 1: its own citizens make sense of what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world, and I'm wondering if there isn't a pivot
Speaker 1: point available to them as it becomes more of a
Speaker 1: global phenomenon. Is there a way for the Chinese government
Speaker 1: to say to their own citizens, Look, this is bigger
Speaker 1: than just us, and we're just doing what everyone else
Speaker 1: in the world is going to have to do, and
Speaker 1: this is an unfortunate normal, But don't look at us
Speaker 1: and say, why didn't you solve this? After all, no
Speaker 1: government in the world has a simple or straightforward solution
Speaker 1: to this problem. It's nature. And in a way, might
Speaker 1: that in a sense almost let them off the hook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that would work better if the government weren't
Speaker 1: partly culpable for the outbreak, and they also just haven't
Speaker 1: been able to downplay that that is still kind of
Speaker 1: popularly understood on some level that there were these whistleblowers,
Speaker 1: they did try to say something, and at least local
Speaker 1: officials were responsible for the outbreak. Now I think the
Speaker 1: government's going to try to just push all onto the
Speaker 1: local officials. But I think there is on some level
Speaker 1: and Moong more sophisticated people or not maybe more sophisticated
Speaker 1: the wrong world, but maybe in a narrower group of people,
Speaker 1: there's an understanding that the government was also responsible. So
Speaker 1: that makes it harder to make that case. I think,
Speaker 1: is it clear that had the early whistle blower has
Speaker 1: been taken more seriously, that could have actually contained the virus,
Speaker 1: because the sense that I have from speaking to epidemiologists
Speaker 1: is that as we learn more about how the virus
Speaker 1: spreads and whether you can spread the virus when you
Speaker 1: don't have any symptoms at all, it's at least possible
Speaker 1: that nothing that the government could have done would really
Speaker 1: have been able to contain this well. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I think the government sort of hasn't made that argument yet,
Speaker 1: but it's probably true. And I mean, even this heroic
Speaker 1: guy who died the face of the whistleblower Leeu and Leang,
Speaker 1: the doctor whose image is now ubiquitous even in Chinese
Speaker 1: social media. He wasn't a real whistleblower. He was telling
Speaker 1: a social media group of friends of classmates about this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as if he had filed a formal complaint
Speaker 1: to the government or gone on widespread social media about this.
Speaker 1: So it just shows, of course how ubiquitous the government
Speaker 1: censorship is that they can even see what you're saying
Speaker 1: to your classmates. But he hadn't actually started a process
Speaker 1: that could have resulted in anything, even if the government
Speaker 1: had been open to it. So yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: that's probably true. It's not clear at all that that
Speaker 1: would have changed things, but at least there's a sense
Speaker 1: in terms of trying to make win the pr battle
Speaker 1: that the government's partly responsible for it. What is your
Speaker 1: daily life like in light of the current situation. Well,
Speaker 1: my daily life, like other people's, is sharply constrained. So
Speaker 1: it's very hard to go and meet people because for
Speaker 1: the people who are buying the government line, they're still like, oh,
Speaker 1: we better not meet because the government's told we shouldn't
Speaker 1: read people. And then even for the people who aren't
Speaker 1: binding the government line, is getting harder and harder to
Speaker 1: get into people's housing compounds, because if you just go
Speaker 1: to somebody's apartment block and to try to get in,
Speaker 1: you can't even necessarily get into the building. And then
Speaker 1: with most restaurants and cafes closed, the most you can
Speaker 1: do is go for a walk in the park or
Speaker 1: something like that with somebody. So it's hard to get
Speaker 1: as much information as before. It's sort of fascinating because
Speaker 1: it draws out the ways in which a quarantine works
Speaker 1: alongside technological control to really shift the way information spreads.
Speaker 1: That sounds as if for someone like you who talks
Speaker 1: to people about things that they may not want the
Speaker 1: government to hear, there's actually a real limitation on your
Speaker 1: ability to gather information. Yes, it is hard to talk
Speaker 1: to people. I mean I think when you read things
Speaker 1: on social media, you really have to parse things. And
Speaker 1: I find a look at an article on social media,
Speaker 1: and one of the things I try to do because
Speaker 1: things get erased so quickly, is I'll quickly send myself
Speaker 1: on wa chat. There'd be things through these articles that
Speaker 1: people write, they sort of self published someone wa chat,
Speaker 1: and so I'll see something like this, some sort of
Speaker 1: edgypiece about how the governments in trouble and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth, and I'll quickly save the URL and
Speaker 1: printed to PDF for something like that, so that if
Speaker 1: it's gone, I still have a record of it. But
Speaker 1: I sometimes have to do that really quickly, because if
Speaker 1: I sort of say, oh, I'll do that in a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, I go back and reopen the URL
Speaker 1: and it's been closed. So the government's pretty quick on that,
Speaker 1: although sometimes what I'm surprised is that not everything is erased.
Speaker 1: And I just had an article that somebody sent me
Speaker 1: the other day on how nothing will nothing can be
Speaker 1: the same after the coronavirus, and partly they were talking
Speaker 1: about how the government had to allow a free or
Speaker 1: flow of information. They avoided key words that would cause
Speaker 1: the bots to censor the article, like freedom of speech
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but I was surprised that that
Speaker 1: hasn't been eras yet. Do you have a theory about why.
Speaker 1: I think partly the censorship works on two levels. One
Speaker 1: is they have bots to just go through and so
Speaker 1: if you say something like you know, the Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winning dissident to Leosha boy, you put those three characters
Speaker 1: out there boom, your piece is probably going to be
Speaker 1: automatically erased. But I think also things that are a
Speaker 1: little harder to tell from just if if you're just
Speaker 1: using AI, maybe you need a human eye on it.
Speaker 1: I think the flood of articles right now is such
Speaker 1: that probably the censors are just a little bit behind
Speaker 1: on their work. You know, that's probably the only explaination.
Speaker 1: I don't think it means that there's a split in
Speaker 1: the government and that therefore the information is getting out
Speaker 1: because someone in the propaganda ministry, etcetera, etcetera. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's happening. In light of what you
Speaker 1: have described as genuine mismanagement of the crisis from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of the government, and in light of the fact
Speaker 1: that this is, you know, almost certainly the most significant
Speaker 1: threat to the country that Chi Jinping has faced during
Speaker 1: his entire time in office. What do you think are
Speaker 1: likely to be the longer term consequences for his relatively
Speaker 1: still young transformation of the political codes of the country. Well,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it depends, but it sort of
Speaker 1: depends on how quickly we can pull out of this.
Speaker 1: It's like the government has sort of put the patient
Speaker 1: in a coma to try to solve the illness, and
Speaker 1: now I was going to try to pull it out
Speaker 1: of the coma. And if that works and the illness
Speaker 1: is cured literally and metaphorically, then I think the government
Speaker 1: can still say it was a big success. You know,
Speaker 1: we took firm, resolute measures, and it was difficult. And
Speaker 1: GDP's taken a hit and probably will be you know,
Speaker 1: zero in the first quarter or something like that, but
Speaker 1: this was a difficult situation. It was a national crisis,
Speaker 1: and we did the right thing and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. But if this goes on, and if we
Speaker 1: do indeed have another wave of cases, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people are expecting as the country gets back to work,
Speaker 1: and if there's maybe another wave again in the autumn,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes a possibility in these patterns, and the
Speaker 1: numbers keep going up and up and up, I think
Speaker 1: it will be hard for this to not be seen
Speaker 1: as another really major crisis. The memory of the SARS
Speaker 1: crisis of two thousand and two and two thousand and
Speaker 1: three is still surprisingly fresh for people who were saying
Speaker 1: over thirty or thirty five years of age, people still
Speaker 1: refer to it all the time, and that it wasn't
Speaker 1: really handled maybe all that well. So I wonder whether
Speaker 1: this isn't going to be another one. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be hard for it not to
Speaker 1: be a case like that, unless this turns into some
Speaker 1: full blown real disaster or with tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people dead or something. I don't think this is going
Speaker 1: to be a Chernobyl type event, which is the other
Speaker 1: scenario that people look at. It's amazing how the government
Speaker 1: can control these narratives. Thirty one years ago there was
Speaker 1: a Channeman Square crackdown when hundreds and hundreds of people
Speaker 1: were gunned down to death in the center of Beijing.
Speaker 1: The government came out of that wounded and damaged, but
Speaker 1: still okay, and was able to keep control. I think
Speaker 1: one always has to be careful in China about saying
Speaker 1: this is a turning point that will shake people's faith
Speaker 1: in the system. People's stability to believe in the system again,
Speaker 1: just like in any country, is amazingly resilient. So I'm
Speaker 1: hesitant to say that this will be a turning point
Speaker 1: or shake thing. So what you say it makes enormous sense,
Speaker 1: especially with respect to the overall system of Communist Party rule.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm wondering about is whether, at just
Speaker 1: a more micro level it might have an effect on
Speaker 1: Shijun Ping's own bid to say, remain in power you
Speaker 1: much longer than his predecessors have done. Do you see
Speaker 1: it having a micro effect on those internal party developments
Speaker 1: and debates. I think it can. I think the problem
Speaker 1: with is that he hasn't also really handled this very well.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is I'm not trying to project
Speaker 1: what I think a Western politician would have or should
Speaker 1: have done in this case, in other words, that they
Speaker 1: should be out glad handing people or visiting all the
Speaker 1: emergency wars and so on. But the only visibility that
Speaker 1: he's shown at all was to go to one neighborhood
Speaker 1: in Beijing, which is not badly affected at all. The
Speaker 1: city and the neighborhood is not particularly affected, so that
Speaker 1: is not much visibility. He's made speeches and said sort
Speaker 1: of the right thing. He recently said that this was
Speaker 1: a grave and serious crisis to the country. But he's
Speaker 1: normally at the forefront of these kind of big things,
Speaker 1: and it looks, I think even for casual viewers, it
Speaker 1: looks as if he's not willing to take responsibility because
Speaker 1: it is such a problem, and he's let the premier,
Speaker 1: who is supposed to be in charge of the leavers
Speaker 1: of the actual bureaucracy and government, he's let him take
Speaker 1: a greater role. Although even he hasn't been really out
Speaker 1: there every day. So I guess there are different models
Speaker 1: of authoritarian rule. There's a sort of Putin model, which
Speaker 1: is he's you be out there probably on talk shows
Speaker 1: and fielding questions and stuff like that. Teaching thing would
Speaker 1: never be like that anyway, but he's been, I think,
Speaker 1: quite noticeably absent from the day to day managing of
Speaker 1: a crisis. One story that's gotten a fair amount of
Speaker 1: coverage outside of China is the Chinese government's decision to
Speaker 1: expel three journalists associated with the Wall Street Journal in
Speaker 1: retaliation for the headline of an op ed editorial piece.
Speaker 1: The headline referred to China as the sick man of Asia,
Speaker 1: a reference to a nineteenth century formulation that was actually
Speaker 1: mostly used about Turkey in the nineteenth century, although I
Speaker 1: learned in this context it was also sometimes said about China.
Speaker 1: My first question is, are you surprised by the government's
Speaker 1: decision to do that? Well, I am surprised. You know,
Speaker 1: I could see where they would expel perhaps one person,
Speaker 1: but three seems a lot. It must also be tied
Speaker 1: to the State Department's decision to declare Chinese media companies
Speaker 1: to be the agents of foreign influence or something like that,
Speaker 1: that they're essentially working for the state, which is accurate,
Speaker 1: but that that was sort of maybe in Chinese do
Speaker 1: a provocation or throwing the gauntlet down, and so they
Speaker 1: had to say something. So I think the number of
Speaker 1: people probably went up from one to three. The government
Speaker 1: had been asking for several days for some sort of
Speaker 1: an apology, the people in the journal even before the expulsion,
Speaker 1: the people on the news side of it, the reporters
Speaker 1: in the bureau, many people were sort of appalled at it.
Speaker 1: So I think that it was something that the government
Speaker 1: probably felt it had to do something not to be
Speaker 1: sort of a conspiracy theorist, because this is sort of
Speaker 1: hard to prove this, but I think this also plays
Speaker 1: wonderfully into the government's narrative. I mean, this was something
Speaker 1: that they could blast out on social media. I don't
Speaker 1: think this term sick man of Asia. It was to
Speaker 1: me sort of a face plant, a grown sort of like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe they did that headline. I mean, I
Speaker 1: worked the Walsta Journal for many years. I know the
Speaker 1: opinion page very well, and they like to provoke. They
Speaker 1: like to make people to get up and notice something,
Speaker 1: and so it's not atypical for them. But when I
Speaker 1: saw that, I was okay. So I was a little shocked,
Speaker 1: but I was even more shocked by the government's reaction.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a nice way for them to
Speaker 1: shift attention away from the crisis and be able to
Speaker 1: blame a foreign country for kicking China while it's down
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. I think it's this outrage has
Speaker 1: been really fomented by the government and probably they're quite
Speaker 1: happy for this sort of thing. And this might also
Speaker 1: be a precursor of a strategy in the future if
Speaker 1: the crisis spins out of control and we feel a
Speaker 1: need to somehow sort of divert attention and blame foreigners, etc.
Speaker 1: Going back to your face palm reaction. Was your reaction
Speaker 1: because you thought to yourself, Oh, my goodness, this is
Speaker 1: going to make the Chinese government crazy? Or was your reaction? Boy,
Speaker 1: that's actually kind of offensive, because, as I discovered after
Speaker 1: a little poll of my friends and family. Most people
Speaker 1: are not going to get their reference to, you know,
Speaker 1: nineteenth century European treatment of the Ottoman Empire, and so
Speaker 1: most people are just going to see it as a
Speaker 1: kind of you know, almost quasi racist statement that China
Speaker 1: is sick in some way because of the coronavirus. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, my face plant failing was like,
Speaker 1: this is a stupid cliche. I can't believe they're using that.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think when countries are down. Historically,
Speaker 1: when they've been down, they often look to analogies to
Speaker 1: the human body. You know, if you go back to
Speaker 1: say Germany in the mid nineteenth century, there was this
Speaker 1: movement among nationalists who wanted to unite Germany to literally
Speaker 1: improve the physical strength of people to get out there
Speaker 1: and climb mountains and do outdoors activities and things like that,
Speaker 1: to strengthen the physical body of the people, and that
Speaker 1: would strengthen the body politic and the national character and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And so I think it
Speaker 1: is sort of on a deeper level, it is sort
Speaker 1: of insulting to people to imply that their country is
Speaker 1: sick and that it has some sort of fundamental illness.
Speaker 1: I know, the article itself didn't make that the case
Speaker 1: exactly like that. It was saying there was something wrong
Speaker 1: with the political system. But you can see where people
Speaker 1: might take it if they're not really reading the article anyway,
Speaker 1: and they're just reading this stuff on social media third
Speaker 1: hand and fourth hand and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: that they would say, hey, you know, China is not sick.
Speaker 1: And the whole story the columnist party is pushed over
Speaker 1: the past seven years is that the Chinese people have
Speaker 1: stood up. That's what Mao said in nineteen forty nine
Speaker 1: at think Dat of Heavenly Peace in downtown Beijing. This
Speaker 1: is his famous of saying at the founding the People's Republic,
Speaker 1: we've stood up. We're on our own two feet. And
Speaker 1: then a few years later they fight the US to
Speaker 1: a down still in the Korean War. So now to
Speaker 1: sort of imply that China is weak and sick, it
Speaker 1: is a bit of a provocation to many people. So
Speaker 1: before the coronavirus story came to dominate your coverage and
Speaker 1: the West's consumption of news about China, you were doing
Speaker 1: amazing work in explaining the complexities of the Hong Kong
Speaker 1: protests to the rest of us, and I was following
Speaker 1: your coverage of that extremely closely, and in fact, when
Speaker 1: my producer Lydia Jina first reached out to you, we thought, well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Ian about Hong Kong. Presumably Hong Kong
Speaker 1: is going to have to undergo the same kind of
Speaker 1: nobody in the streets, nobody talking to each other, shelter
Speaker 1: in place arrangement as other major cities in China have
Speaker 1: been undergoing. What is that going to do to the
Speaker 1: protest movement that otherwise was sort of continuing. Well, I
Speaker 1: think in the short term, this, of course will make
Speaker 1: it hard to have protests if you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: be out on the streets. But I think it feeds
Speaker 1: much more strongly, much more importantly. I think it feeds
Speaker 1: into this overall feeling that we don't want to be
Speaker 1: part of this governing system which is sort of not
Speaker 1: on our level. I mean, I think there's this feeling
Speaker 1: among Hong Kong people at some basic level that we're
Speaker 1: much more advanced. We've got a modern, functioning, cosmopolitan city
Speaker 1: that we built. Yes, it was a British colony, but
Speaker 1: we Hong Kong people, we built the city. These are
Speaker 1: our freedoms and so on, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: lose this, and we don't want to be part of
Speaker 1: this sort of messed up system north of the border
Speaker 1: that isn't able to handle a public health emergency without
Speaker 1: having a giant conniption fit that you know, has all
Speaker 1: these other problems. So I think they're going to look
Speaker 1: at this as further proof of the incompatibility of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong with the mainland, and when people in the mainland
Speaker 1: get frustrated about those people south of the board are
Speaker 1: protesting all the time, those uppity, no good Hong Kong people, great,
Speaker 1: thankless Hong kongress. One of the first things people in
Speaker 1: the mainland say is let's just cut off the water
Speaker 1: supply and see how long that works, or the food
Speaker 1: supply and so on and so forth. So you know,
Speaker 1: the two places are really closely linked, of course, and
Speaker 1: of course we all are, and Hong Kong's just going
Speaker 1: to catch this earlier. But we're seeing this spread to
Speaker 1: other neighboring countries South Korea, obviously, Japan. This shows probably
Speaker 1: the well, it'll make it hard for people in Hong
Speaker 1: Kong to avoid what's going on. No matter how much
Speaker 1: they want to independent of the virus, was it your
Speaker 1: sense that the protests were losing steam or that they
Speaker 1: had just sort of entered a phase of institutionalization where
Speaker 1: people were accustomed to them and working around them to
Speaker 1: the extent that they could, and they were going to
Speaker 1: remain a challenging facet of life. We've had a series
Speaker 1: of protests over the past say ten years. They come,
Speaker 1: they go, they come, they go, but they seem to
Speaker 1: just it SEMs like a roller coaster ride, but maybe
Speaker 1: where the altitude keeps increasing, so you're just you are
Speaker 1: dipping down a little bit, but you go up to
Speaker 1: newer highs. You go down a little bit, but you
Speaker 1: go up again. And I think we might see that again,
Speaker 1: maybe after the coronavirus ends, if there's no end to
Speaker 1: the political crisis, if there's no accommodation from the side
Speaker 1: of Beijing, that will probably see a new wave of protests,
Speaker 1: perhaps later this year or next year. Last question for
Speaker 1: you in I know you go back and forth frequently
Speaker 1: between Beijing and London. Can you still do that? What
Speaker 1: will happen to you when you go to London? Are
Speaker 1: you allowed to fight to London? You have to stay
Speaker 1: in quarantine. You know what's going to happen. Well, I
Speaker 1: am planning to go to London. There's no, for example,
Speaker 1: British Airway flights, but there is Air China, which is
Speaker 1: the national carrier and probably a great financial loss, is
Speaker 1: still flying to countries around the world. So I still
Speaker 1: have an Air China flight booked, and unless things change dramatically,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll be out of here. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to self quarantine myself. I have a family member
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of London who has a big country
Speaker 1: house and has given me a wing of the place
Speaker 1: and just said you can just hang out there for
Speaker 1: two weeks. And so I'm going to do that and
Speaker 1: go for walks in the English countryside and do writing
Speaker 1: on my computer and so on, and then I'll be
Speaker 1: clean and then I'll come back to China again in
Speaker 1: a few months when I can get more work done,
Speaker 1: because basically the problem here is it's really hard to
Speaker 1: do any research, to go out and talk to people
Speaker 1: because the country is in such lockdown. Well, I hope
Speaker 1: you're extended English country weekend with your own wing of
Speaker 1: the house is an enjoyable one, but more importantly, and
Speaker 1: I hope you stay healthy and well yourself. And thank
Speaker 1: you for speaking to me, and thank you for your
Speaker 1: steady stream of insightful analysis of events in China. Bye,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: We caught up with Ian when he had just returned
Speaker 1: in the UK. Here's what he says. Yes, I've arrived
Speaker 1: in the UK. It was shockingly easy. I thought a
Speaker 1: guard's regiment might forcibly take our temperature, or at least
Speaker 1: ask of our contact information in case someone had to
Speaker 1: track down those who had contact with an infected person.
Speaker 1: But nothing of the sort happened. I arrived when through
Speaker 1: an automated passport control and was in a car in
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Now that's a little bit upsetting. If
Speaker 1: that's how you traveled from China to the UK right now,
Speaker 1: that may have consequences for the rest of the world. Ian, however,
Speaker 1: is a good citizen and a good sport. He's now
Speaker 1: in the empty wing of his relatives country home south
Speaker 1: of London. He's going for long walks through the English
Speaker 1: countryside while avoiding pubs, swimming pools and any other place
Speaker 1: where people congregate. It's nice work. If you can get it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with this week's playback in just a moment,
Speaker 1: and now our playback. That's the sound of clapping in Doha,
Speaker 1: the capital of Qatar, where a representative of the US
Speaker 1: government and a representative of the Afghan Taliban signed a
Speaker 1: peace agreement this weekend. The clapping notwithstanding, this is an
Speaker 1: agreement that's already facing very significant challenges, and those challenges
Speaker 1: are only going to get greater. To understand why, you
Speaker 1: have to begin with a painful fact about the nearly
Speaker 1: twenty year US engagement in Afghanistan. By any ordinary military standard,
Speaker 1: it ultimately looks like a defeat. It didn't start that way.
Speaker 1: When the United States first came into Afghanistan, it very
Speaker 1: effectively and very rapidly made the Taliban leave the country,
Speaker 1: and that, after all, was the initial reason for the invasion.
Speaker 1: The idea was number one, get rid of the Taliban.
Speaker 1: Number two, catch as many members of Al Qaida as
Speaker 1: it's possible to get our hands on. The trouble was
Speaker 1: that happened almost too quickly, and then gradually imperceptibly over time,
Speaker 1: the US mission in Afghanistan changed. Ultimately, the argument was
Speaker 1: that the United States should make an effort of some
Speaker 1: kind to produce some kind of stable, functioning, quasi democratic
Speaker 1: government in Afghanistan, and yet the government that presently exists
Speaker 1: in the country is very very loosely democratic and only
Speaker 1: stable in the loosest sense of the word. In fact,
Speaker 1: most observers believe that should the United States actually withdraw
Speaker 1: its troops from Afghanistan, as it has promised eventually to
Speaker 1: do in this agreement, that that government would have a
Speaker 1: great deal of trouble, withstanding a serious attack from the
Speaker 1: Taliban now in order to get there, the so called
Speaker 1: agreement between the United States and the talis An Agreement,
Speaker 1: which notably does not yet include Afghanistan as a party,
Speaker 1: says that the Taliban are supposed to negotiate a peace
Speaker 1: with the Afghan government and put down their arms. From there,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to move on to an eventual US withdrawal
Speaker 1: of all of its troops. But from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: the Taliban, they don't have any really strong reason to
Speaker 1: put down their arms if it would require them to
Speaker 1: form a compromise with the current government that would not
Speaker 1: be to the Taliban's liking. The reason for that is
Speaker 1: that once the United States has said publicly that it
Speaker 1: intends to leave Afghanistan, its leverage to force the Taliban
Speaker 1: to do anything other than whatever it wants is reduced
Speaker 1: very drastically. After all, all along in this war, the
Speaker 1: only thing the United States has ever been able to
Speaker 1: do when it wanted the Taliban to listen to it
Speaker 1: was to continue to fight the Taliban. That's why, within
Speaker 1: a few days of the initial agreement, the Taliban demanded
Speaker 1: that if the Afghan government wanted to negotiate with it,
Speaker 1: the Afghan government would have to free five thousand Taliban prisoners.
Speaker 1: For their part, the Afghan government is terrified about the
Speaker 1: possibility of an actual US withdrawal, so it's in the
Speaker 1: Afghan government's interest to delay that as long as possible. Consequently,
Speaker 1: the Afghan simply said, we're not handing over the five
Speaker 1: thousand Taliban prisoners, which means that at least as of
Speaker 1: right now, the Taliban on the one hand and the
Speaker 1: government of Afghanistan on the other hand, are not even
Speaker 1: on speaking terms. Technically, without an agreement between them, the
Speaker 1: United States cannot withdraw and therefore the agreement between the
Speaker 1: United States and the Taliban might turn out to be
Speaker 1: more symbolic than actual. Nevertheless, this agreement probably will have
Speaker 1: a major long term consequence, and that long term consequence
Speaker 1: is primarily in the US domestic context. Donald Trump, in
Speaker 1: the run up to a reelection, seems fully prepared to
Speaker 1: do what none of his predecessors were willing to do
Speaker 1: and essentially admit defeat in Afghanistan by agreeing to do
Speaker 1: a deal with the Taliban. Barack Obama was not prepared
Speaker 1: to do that, even in a second term when he
Speaker 1: himself was not running for reelection. George W. Bush wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared to do it in either of his terms as president.
Speaker 1: Both of them ended up owning the American involvement in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and the history books will so record. Donald Trump, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, despite to a great extent continuing the
Speaker 1: Obama administration's policies in the first part of his term,
Speaker 1: has actually now signaled a willingness to bite the bullet
Speaker 1: to say that the United States actually must get out,
Speaker 1: and Trump will now carry the historical legacy of the
Speaker 1: willingness to withdraw even if the United States doesn't withdraw
Speaker 1: in either of his potentially two terms in office. I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but that's actually a major gift
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump is making to the United States and
Speaker 1: also to a future president, any future president, and it's
Speaker 1: no secret that my view is that it would be
Speaker 1: better for it to be anyone other than Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, we'll be able to continue the Trump
Speaker 1: policy of saying that the United States has signed a
Speaker 1: deal and is prepared to leave the country. That will
Speaker 1: be a tremendous advantage because it will mean that that
Speaker 1: president will not have to say we agreed to lose
Speaker 1: the war on my watch. There is, however, a final coda,
Speaker 1: as there almost always is. No US president is going
Speaker 1: to want to preside over scenes in Kabble that are
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the famous scenes of the US withdrawal from
Speaker 1: Saigon in nineteen seventy five. No one will want to
Speaker 1: be present in the United States with helicopters flying out
Speaker 1: with the last US personnel and tens or hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands or tens of thousands of Afghans begging to be
Speaker 1: on those helicopters. And yet that scenario is entirely possible
Speaker 1: if the US government ultimately withdraws troops and if the
Speaker 1: Taliban move on the city in a serious military way.
Speaker 1: The agreement does give Donald Trump the flexibility to say that,
Speaker 1: under those circumstances with a Taliban army heading to Cobble,
Speaker 1: that the United States would not withdraw, but it seems
Speaker 1: entirely possible that Donald Trump would be willing to do so,
Speaker 1: and to bear even that price. A remarkable consequence of
Speaker 1: Trump's confidence that his base will support him almost no
Speaker 1: matter what his apparent belief that he cannot be made
Speaker 1: to look weak on foreign policy, no matter what his
Speaker 1: actual policies are, and Trump's conviction probably accurate that most Americans,
Speaker 1: even if they would feel bad in the short term
Speaker 1: at such a painful public betrayal of the Afghan people,
Speaker 1: are ultimately tired of this war. The upshot of all
Speaker 1: of this as if the United States will at some
Speaker 1: point find itself with its troops out of Afghanistan, and
Speaker 1: the consequences for the Afghans are likely to be disastrous.
Speaker 1: The Taliban in this piece deal did not say that
Speaker 1: they had embraced democracy, because they haven't. They did not
Speaker 1: say that they now support the education of girls and
Speaker 1: young women, because they don't. They do not commit themselves
Speaker 1: in this agreement to any future course of action other
Speaker 1: than agreeing to talk to the Afghan government, something which
Speaker 1: is already not happening. Ultimately, historians will look back at
Speaker 1: the legacy of the American presence in Afghanistan and wonder
Speaker 1: just how the United States could have gotten itself wrapped
Speaker 1: up in a nearly twenty year war. Why They will
Speaker 1: ask didn't the United States defeat the Taliban, catch Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden and then turn back to the Taliban and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you want to go back to Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do about it, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to try and stop you. Real politique will not
Speaker 1: answer the historians question. To make sense of how the
Speaker 1: United States experienced the ultimate mission creep in Afghanistan, will
Speaker 1: have to look back to the context of post September eleventh,
Speaker 1: to the feeling in the Bush administration that the goal
Speaker 1: of the United States should not simply be to try
Speaker 1: to take steps against those who perpetrated the nine to
Speaker 1: eleven attacks, but to bring about generational transformations in the
Speaker 1: countries of the Muslim world so that such attacks would
Speaker 1: never happen again. Those transformations turned out to be well
Speaker 1: beyond the power of United States and probably beyond the
Speaker 1: power of any one country. In retrospect, it all seems
Speaker 1: so painfully obvious. At the time, a derangement syndrome far
Speaker 1: greater than that of trumped arrangement gripped us all, myself included.
Speaker 1: We wanted more because we the United States, thought that
Speaker 1: the trauma we had suffered was unmatched. Unmatched trauma was
Speaker 1: supposed to lead to unmatched realization of new plans for
Speaker 1: a democratic Muslim world. In the end, the only people
Speaker 1: who can make democracies in majority Muslim countries are the
Speaker 1: people who live in those countries, and the American effort
Speaker 1: to create democracies by the sword is definitively a historical failure.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Lydia gene Coott, with studio recording by Joseph
Speaker 1: Fridman and mastering by Jason Gambrel and Jason Roskowski. Our
Speaker 1: showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara. Special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Noah r Feldman. This is
Speaker 1: deep background