4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
We're joined by two of our favorite foreign policy writers to examine what the end of Bashar al-Assad’s regime means to Syria and the region. Frank Foer and Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic also look toward the incoming Trump administration and what lies ahead. Can Trump be a steady hand to stop escalating war around the world? How will Israel react? And what happens to our support of Ukraine in their efforts against the tyrant Putin?
Read Anne's book Autocracy, Inc: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725302/autocracy-inc-by-anne-applebaum/
Read Frank's work in The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/author/franklin-foer/
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | Hey everybody, we got a great one today. |
0:08.0 | You know, for a change, I'm here in Damascus, Syria, where folks are celebrating, they're still |
0:15.0 | celebrating the exit of their dictator Bashar al-Assad. |
0:19.0 | Turns out he fled to Moscow, Russia, where he'll be living for |
0:23.2 | probably quite a while. Anyway, we'll be talking to my guest, Ann Applebaum, and Frank Farr, of the Atlantic, |
0:31.8 | and he'll be doing a survey of the trouble spots in the world from here in Syria to Gaza and Israel to Ukraine and Russia. |
0:40.6 | We got a great one today. |
0:42.4 | You know, we're a change. |
0:49.2 | Well, let's start, I guess, with Syria, because it affects everything anyway. Who wants to take Syria? It's |
0:56.6 | pretty simple. Yeah. Sure. So it's incredible that Assad began fighting a civil war against |
1:06.2 | his own people 14 years ago. And Syria became this stage for the great powers to combat one another |
1:13.3 | for the future of the Middle East. |
1:14.7 | You had Iran obviously making incredible investments in Assad and using Syria not just |
1:20.4 | as its own proxy and ally, but as a vessel for getting arms to Hezbollah, who was their most primary proxy and their war against |
1:30.2 | Israel. And then you had Russia trying to reassert itself in the region and ended up setting up a |
1:36.2 | base there. And the United States, of course, set up its own base in Syria in order to combat |
1:41.7 | ISIS. And then you have Turkey, who was the major sponsor of |
1:46.7 | one rebel group and the rebel group that actually ended up sweeping Assad from a power as it was |
1:51.9 | combating another rebel group in Syria that was aligned with the Kurds in the United States. |
1:58.3 | And just to be clear, the Turkey really is afraid of the Kurds because the Kurds are a very |
2:04.7 | large and powerful group. |
2:07.6 | They're especially concerned with this one group of Kurds who have an autonomous region |
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