Hegseth Faces Senate Hearing, SCOTUS Hears TikTok Case, Canada Weighs Future Leadership, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth faces a Senate Confirmation Hearing. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging the imminent ban of TikTok and Canada prepares for a leadership change after longtime Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigns as head of the Liberal Party. It's January 9th, 2025, and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, first of all, happy 2025. It feels like we've been here already quite some time.

ROBBINS:
It's just the cold.

MCMAHON:
It's just the cold, okay. Well, let's begin with developments in our nation's capitol regarding the President-Elect Trump's potential cabinet nominations. On Tuesday, January 14th, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth. President-Elect Donald Trump has tapped him to lead the Department of Defense. Now, Hegseth has faced allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denies, and has expected to hear questions from some senators about a number of positions including the role of women in combat. Tell us, Carla, what does Hegseth face on Tuesday?

ROBBINS:
Well, first, President Trump appears to have backed off on his idea of bypassing senate advice and consent with recess appointments at least for now. We'll see if things get really bad for any of his choices, may hear that again. And before we talk about Pete Hegseth, let's quickly go through who else is expected to get hearings next week. Senator Marco Rubio, who was up for Secretary of State, will go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the 15th, and he's going to skate through. The prediction is that he could even come to the floor and be confirmed on Inauguration Day. So an easy time expected for Marco Rubio. Trump's energy and environment team, and I use the latter term advisedly, will also have hearings next week and they're expected to make it through their Republican-controlled committees with no problems, although there's ongoing wrangling with Democrats about delayed financial and other vetting, and there's a lot of wrangling going on generally up there.

The paperwork is just not there for a lot of these people and the Republicans are saying, "Oh, you're just being obstructionist," and all of that, but the paperwork's supposed to be up there when they go through this. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, who's been nominated to head up the Department of Homeland Security, is scheduled to come before that committee next week and we'll see how well she does. DHS is just a massive bureaucracy and they have counterterrorism, cybersecurity, a lot of other responsibilities. But if she sticks to her tough-on-border-security script, she's going to probably get through, too. In another time, in another place, I think a lot of people would say, "What does she know about this stuff?" But by comparison with Hegseth and Kash Patel and a lot of other stuff that's whirling out there, I think we haven't heard a lot of questions about her candidacy.

And as of yesterday, Wednesday, the Intel committee was wrangling over Tulsi Gabbard's paperwork for Director of National Intelligence. That's supposed to be seven days before a hearing, they're supposed to get that paperwork, so she may or may not get her hearing next week. And once again, you're not hearing a lot of complaining about her. And there was a time there because of her relationship with Bashar al-Assad, because of her apparent fondness for Putin. But you're not just hearing a lot of complaints about her either. So all of this leads back to your original question, Bob, Hegseth seems to be the most controversial of the candidates right now. He is, without a doubt, a deeply problematic candidate, and if he makes it through, it's going to be an important sign of President Trump's ability to control the Republican caucus and the Senate. They're going to probably grit their teeth.

I'm not predicting this, but it looks like he has a reasonably good chance, but we'll see how he performs. What are the questions? I'm putting it in several buckets here. Questions about competency. Hegseth spent his career as a TV host. He ran two veterans organizations and even there, there are questions raised about potential financial mismanagement. He was in the Army National Guard. He just doesn't seem to have the experience in national security policy, defense planning or even running a major organization. And the DOD is the largest employer in the U.S. with nearly three million people. Then as you said, there were serious questions about his personal conduct. He paid a woman to settle a claim of sexual assault, a claim he vehemently denies. There have been news reports of Hegseth repeatedly drunk or hung over on the Fox News set, claims he repeatedly denies. But he's been up there, reassuring people.
And Senator Roger Wicker, the new Chairman of Senator Armed Services Committee has said that Hegseth is committed to not drinking if he's confirmed. I don't find that commitment all that reassuring, "I promise I will never drink if I get the job." And then there are questions about his positions on military and defense policy, which really are far outside the mainstream and I really worry that because of the roiling about these other issues, which are incredibly important, personal contact, incredibly important, competency is incredibly important, but his positions on military defense policy should be a major focus of these hearings. And as a Fox News host, he pushed President Trump to pardon to servicemen convicted of war crimes. He has said women should not serve in combat roles and he's called policies allowing gays and transgender troops to serve in the military part of a Marxist agenda.
And a week before his nomination, he told podcast host Sean Ryan that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine General C.Q. Brown should be fired because he was too woke. And he said, quote, "Any general, any admiral whatever, who was involved in diversity, equity, inclusion programs or woke S, dot, dot, dot, has got to go." He called DEI socially correct garbage. He's backtracked in recent meetings on some of these things. He's said women were great warriors. When he met with Senator Rand Paul, he said that gays should serve in the military. But he has years and years and years of these positions, anti-DEI, anti gays in the military, anti-women.

You can't backtrack on that stuff, so he is a really problematic candidate. I think these hearings could ultimately, I think President Trump's going to lobby really hard. But you never know what happens when you get in the room. The senators and the public could decide Hegseth is just too controversial or disruptive, especially at a time when there are so many dangers out there. Or all of the noise could cancel itself out. And you know what these hearings are like, Bob, there could be no serious discussion because everybody's bloviating and no serious follow up, so we'll just have to watch what happens.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think on that last point you mentioned, Carla, first of all, I do think there's a lot about the culture warrior aspect that is guiding this. It seems to be, based on his comments, based on President-Elect Trump's comments and others among Trump supporters. They want to have this type of voice in there. But given what's at stake, and again, we're talking about, as you said, largest employer, this incredibly important department at a time when things are... We're approaching a third year of the Ukraine-Russia war where there's all sorts of concern about creeping expansion there, NATO's role, U.S. role. The U.S. expanded presence in the Middle East in the period basically since the Hamas attack of [October] 7th, 2023.

And in support of Israel and countering Iranian strikes, countering Iranian proxies. And now in this post-Syria phase and this interest in quashing an ISIS threat in Syria, there are concerns about Chinese activities in and around Taiwan, in the South China Sea with U.S. treaty allies. There are so many major things at stake, really, really important things, it's going to be interesting to see to what extent these issues are brought up and the candidate is pressed on these by senators and how he handles himself. I'm going to be watching for that. I'm not sure how far that's going to go, but I think it's kind of incumbent on senators. Certainly we'll hear from some of the Democratic senators about that, I would think.

ROBBINS:
I do worry, as I said, that these hearings, people tend to posture and somewhat, there's this accretion of so many issues can come together that we lose sense of the substantive policy debate. Where does he stand on defense acquisition? Where does he stand? Is it all really going to be about cultural issues? And even before he came on the scene, there was all this legislation that came out that said, "We're not going to do DEI anymore." I mean, diversity is a source of strength, not a source of weakness in the U.S. military. This has been true for an incredibly long period of time. Sexual assault is a serious problem inside the military.

Unless we have a serious sense of where he stands on everything from how we should be spending our money in the military to how we deal with problems like sexual assault, why is DEI a threat to good order in the military? Quite the opposite to my mind. We want to hear where this man stands if he's going to be leading the Defense Department, let alone how he feels about the future competition with China. Is it all going to be sparring about, "No, no, how dare you question my drinking on the job?" This could be chaos or one hopes this will be an orderly hearing. Certainly, the politics up there does not suggest order, but one will hope that there's a real conversation to come. All of that next week, lots to watch there.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and as you said, so many other positions, important ones, too. So it's going to be a news fire hose like we haven't seen, even in this climate we haven't seen in quite a while next week.

ROBBINS:
And it also may, if it were a great conversation, we also don't want it to divert to a serious conversation about other nominees' credentials for their jobs. The Director of National Intelligence is an important job, DHS, an incredibly important job. EPA is an important job, energy's an important job, interior. These are all really important jobs and we really hope that there are serious conversations in all of these hearings. But so far there's a guerrilla theater aspect to a lot of these nominations. And because everyone's been so shocked by this, I mean, look at Kash Patel for FBI. He was up there and it was nothing but a love fest. This is a man who says he wants to shut down the FBI headquarters and fire most everybody. And there's been nary a complaint about him from the Republican caucus, so lots to talk about there and lots to watch there.

And at a period of time in which the domestic and international security threats to Americans are really substantive. I mean, terrorist attacks, serious terrorist attacks. That's of real concern for the DNI, real concern for homeland security. It's all going to be political jockeying, we're all going to have to worry about it. Lots to watch there. Bob, on Friday in the case of TikTok v. Garland, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear challenges to the 2024 law, which will force TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok or be banned in the United States. And interestingly on Friday, January 3rd, Donald Trump filed an amicus brief, asking the court to suspend this January 19th sale deadline until after he takes office, arguing, "Only I can actually... I'm such a good negotiator, I can work this thing out." What do you expect the court to do?

MCMAHON:
That is the deep, deep mystery here because as has been pointed out repeatedly, this particular Supreme Court sided consistently with people making First Amendment claims. The right of free speech is usually also sided with the federal government when it comes to national security issues, Congress and the Executive. So there's going to be, as the economist called it, a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here as they tried to sort out prerogatives in this case, or maybe not. It's not clear. It was interesting that they took it up so quickly. There was a lot of scrambling during the holidays to get briefs in and so forth. And clock is ticking, it's due to take effect-

ROBBINS:
Tocking, yes.

MCMAHON:
The clock is tick-tocking, yes. Thank you for catching that. Inadvertent. But also, let's take a quick look at the popularity of TikTok in this country. 170 million users. The number of clips that were created by Americans last year was 5.5 billion with a B. That's 2023, that's probably higher last year. And it's a source of news for, I saw an estimate of something like 17 percent population gets its news from TikTok. So it's not just passing along curios and funny video memes and things like that, it's actually a source of information. But Congress, and in a bipartisan fashion, was seized of the issue and concerned enough to say that, "We can't have this threat to be... It's ripe for Chinese infiltration. The Chinese Communist Party does not allow Chinese companies to function without having a hand in it." And so that's what's at stake here.

There's a bigger issue here obviously as well, which is the way in which U.S. and China coexist when they have business interests that crisscross borders. Now, it's also worth pointing out that a number of American social media platforms are blocked in China. It's not like China's going to turn around and say, "Well, now we're going to block Meta," because Meta is already blocked in China. But China can clamp down on other areas where the U.S. relies on China for its supply chains in areas like critical minerals, which it has done already in some of the high tech tit for tat. And Chinese are also likely to, as our colleagues at CFR's Net Politics blogs pointed out, they're probably going to highlight what they see as U.S. hypocrisy on limiting the free speech of TikTok users for national security concerns.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, said after the passage of the bill, initial passage back in March, bill violates principles of fair competition international trade, and he called it robber baron logic. That's a little bit of a sense of the type of language you could hear from China if this goes forward. But back to your original question, what the Supreme Court does, of many intriguing recent cases, this is a particularly intriguing one. And it's something that's more than an unusual number of Americans are going to be affected by what emerges from this because it has become such a popular platform.

ROBBINS:
Your daughters, are they on TikTok all the time?

MCMAHON:
They are cognizant of it, they are not avid users. They know of the pitfalls that are not related to the Chinese Communist Party, but more like the addictive nature of some of these reels constantly coming into your feed and some of the salacious stuff and other things that come down the pike in TikTok. So they're certainly familiar with it and can view some of the TikTok things, but as they will freely admit, they're not locked in on it. They'll look at Instagram more frequently and they'll look at reels in general, but have not been caught up in the huge TikTok flow on a daily basis.

ROBBINS:
As a journalist, I mean, talk about cognitive dissonance, I'm fundamentally ambivalent about this, which, I really see the free speech aspect of it and I don't like the idea of the government banning anything. At the same time we're seeing X and now Meta abdicating all responsibility, if anything, turning themselves willingly into platforms, if not for propaganda and some cases for propaganda and other cases as a free-for-all. And we see the potential malign influence and addictive and frightening for disinformation and worse. So I'm ambivalent about this and if the government were somehow the lawgiver and really was completely, it really could make objective judgments, but it is a power that frightens me when the government can go around making decisions like this.

That said, many of our allies, one, have had bad experiences with TikTok and have seen the power to influence elections recently, which don't have their own first amendments. They're not as committed to free speech as we are, but they've already voted, they've made a decision. So it's not just India, which goes around banning things right and left. It's not just the semi-authoritarians, it's been an increasing number of democratic countries. The European Commission is very uncomfortable with TikTok, but we're also seeing what's happened in other countries in Europe and they're moving very hard against it. This seems to be a growing consensus that TikTok in particular is something that they don't like because it's Chinese-backed, but I don't know. I'm uncomfortable with it.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I share your discomfort. I'm not sure I would say I'm ambivalent, but I am concerned about the fact that there's this ongoing sense that there needs to be a reckoning with social media platforms, not just in this country, but really worldwide and their role in disseminating information. But we can't quite settle on what that reckoning should be in terms of is it right to have them mandated to be fact checking on their platforms? Should they be regulated like the old regulations for broadcast media in the US, which had their critics, but they also assured a sense of a gate-keeping function that for its faults, also was a place where information could be disseminated in a generally responsible way.
That's just gone and there's such a free-for-all now in the way information is disseminated that one hopes for some sort of shared sense of what the rules of the road should be. But like Meta for example, you mentioned they're going to replace their fact checking with what's called a community note system where people in the so-called community can chime in and challenge misinformation or whatever, but that becomes a bit of a jungle as well because then people attack the members of the community who are challenging falsehoods and things that are being disseminated.

ROBBINS:
That's allegedly what was going to happen in X.

MCMAHON:
Exactly.

ROBBINS:
We saw how that's happened. It's not the community, it's not the wisdom of the crowd, it's the lynch mob on a regular basis.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. And there's a piece in today's Washington Post about how difficult that community effort has been for X, which is worth reading because it points out the pitfalls. And from people who were dedicated to trying to hold sources to account and sort of police the news in a way, but it's not going to get solved anytime soon. But there does need to be some sort of reckoning and otherwise, there's fewer and fewer places to have shared understanding of facts and events and that gets into trouble.

ROBBINS:
And there's also this question, the complaints about or the warnings about TikTok range from it being used for misinformation for intervening in elections. And we've seen examples or alleged examples like the Romanian presidential election with far-right candidate suddenly overnight seemed to use TikTok and do really, really well. We saw-

MCMAHON:
Yeah, we talked about that recently in Romania, that's right.

ROBBINS:
Right. And we saw Fernando Marcos Jr., who used TikTok to whitewash his father's dictatorship. But was there something specific about TikTok that couldn't have been done on X or couldn't have been done on Facebook? Was there some sort of secret sauce on TikTok, or was something about TikTok that was different from other social media platform? That's one thing. Another thing is the potential of the Chinese government using TikTok to serve up information that is propaganda in favor of China, that's the second question. And then the third question itself is the gathering of information, specific information that's useful to the Chinese government.

On that, there's so many data brokers and data miners out there, are the Chinese getting information and other countries getting information? Do they get the information just from what I buy at fill in the blank pharmacy or fill in the blank... Is there more specific information? Obviously, shopping is different from the emotional response I get to something because I watch more reels on this and watch more reels on that, but people can pick that up from what I do on Facebook, except for the fact that I don't do Facebook. They're all very different things, but why is TikTok particularly more dangerous, more malign than X? Why is it particularly more dangerous or more malign than Meta, other than the fact that it's owned by the Chinese?

MCMAHON:
That in and of itself seems to be the driving issue here at a time when U.S.-Chinese antagonisms are growing. There's been, in the reporting I've seen, few specific instances that people, critics of TikTok can point to, to say, "See, this is an example where Chinese intervention manipulated information and changed US hearts and minds towards China." They are trying to do that in other places. There's not a lot of evidence that they've done it through TikTok. And I think their efforts will continue in other platforms as well, as Russia has proven quite adept at it through overt media and through troll forums and other things.

There's many, many different ways to that end, and I think that's going to continue. It's also going to be interesting to see if TikTok does go away and is not sold to a non-U.S. company as the U.S. legislation requires. It will be interesting to see the copycats that are going to copy its formatting to some extent and come forward in the U.S., and you'll still have that kind of breathy viral approach to sharing information perhaps that goes forward. Maybe TikTok does not need to be indispensable in that fashion. So there's lots of things to chew on here, but the Supreme Court has a very interesting case on its hands and it may be a precedent-setting case.

ROBBINS:
Unless it just decides to punt and let President Trump do it. But keeping in mind the president, this ban effort started with President Trump and that he did a complete 180 on it. It will make a real commentary about the court. There's a lot of things to watch for there, so we've now ended two segments with me saying there's a lot of things. We do call this The World Next Week for a reason.

MCMAHON:
Well, we're also watching something else, which is our northern neighbor. It's safe to say Americans have not been discussing in Canada so much in many, many a year. This has for so long, seen as our benign neighbor to the north, but that's not the case most recently in terms of the rhetoric that's out there. This week, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Canada. That marks the end of his ten years as Prime Minister and it caused a bit of surprise, but other closer Canada watchers are not so surprised. How will the emergence of a new leader affect Canada-U.S. relations, Carla?

ROBBINS:
First of all, it's not all that much a surprise for devoted Canada watchers and there are a variety of reasons why Trudeau foundered after winning three elections in a row. One is prices are high. Another one, Canada's economy is weak. GDP per capita has fallen eight of the past nine quarters. Ten years is a really long time, and that rock star image has grown stale. And many people also see him as the first victim of Donald Trump's tariff threats.
Trump has threatened to impose twenty-five percent tariffs on Canadian goods as soon as he takes office if Canada does not stop what he claims is an invasion of drugs and migrants into the U.S., and people are worried about that. Now, keep in mind that Canada's barely a source for either. I was reading in the Washington Post that just 1.5% of migrants apprehended by U.S. customs and border protection and 0.2, 0.2% of fentanyl seized at U.S. land borders in the most recent fiscal year came from Canada.

MCMAHON:
There's some fact checking for you, by the way.

ROBBINS:
Yeah, well, I credit the Washington Post for this. I will say that fentanyl and undocumented migrants are not a major problem on our northern border. Nevertheless, Trump is threatening to impose this tariff. So there seems to be on Trump's part, a real grudge match, verging on obsession, first with Trudeau who was younger and a lot more telegenic, and now with Canada. He's been trolling Trudeau, calling him Governor Trudeau and saying Canada should apply to become the fifty-first state. And in his press conference on Tuesday, the same one in which he refused to rule out military force to retake the Panama Canal, he declared he would use economic force to join Canada and the United States together. Part of the Trudeau thing is that he was criticized for not taking the Trump threats seriously enough, including by his own deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, who quit or was shoved out.

For all of these reasons, he resigned. Now, if Trump actually follows through with this twenty-five percent tariff threat, it would wreak havoc on Canada's economy, everybody says, and potentially putting them into a recession. And it really wouldn't be great for ours either. This is thanks to our wonderful researcher, Helena. In 2023, just the total value of automotive trade between Canada and the U.S. exceeded $110 billion, for which the U.S. had a slight surplus. And the way that auto trade works is that the border doesn't exist here. That's thanks to USMCA, which is the follow-on to NAFTA. Vehicle parts travel, they go back and forth across the border six or seven times before a car is assembled. That means if you had these tariffs, this would be a major increase in costs in what are so-called American-made cars. Canada also supplies twenty percent of the oil consumed in the U.S.
There are these refineries in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states, which are built specifically for processing Canadian oil, which couldn't process American light crude. We get twenty-five percent of the uranium for U.S. nuclear power plants from Canada. Canada sells electricity, we're working them on critical minerals, the ones the Chinese, you were talking about, had cut off. So they would hurt big time, we would hurt big time if these tariffs were going to go through. But right now, this is one of the reasons why Justin Trudeau is out of a job, is that he probably is the first victim of the Trump tariff threat. Who comes next? Trudeau is going to stay on as Prime Minister until a successor in the Liberal Party is chosen and Parliament has reconvened in late March. There are variety of names mentioned in the Liberal party race. You've got Mark Carney, who was previously the governor of both the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England.

You've got Chrystia Freeland, the one who quit or was shoved and who was very critical of him. We've got Melanie Joly, the Foreign Minister, Finance Minister potentially. I don't think anything's really going to matter because the Liberals are already in a minority government and they're likely are not going to survive a vote of confidence. And even if they did, Canada's going to have to hold an election by October. And right now, depending on which polls you look at, they are twenty to thirty points behind the conservatives who were headed up by Pierre Poilievre, and who is at heart, a policy nerd.

But he has really tried to adopt Trump's bullying style and many of his MAGA populist positions. He opposed vaccine mandates, he was one of the only Canadian politicians who embraced, remember the freedom convoy of truckers? He's anti-woke, anti-regulation, pro-oil and gas and he likes to beat up on big business even as he courts their support. But his MAGA stance has limits. He is pro-choice, he's more pro-immigration than President Trump, though a lot less than Trudeau. He supports same-sex marriage and he's made clear he is not interested in becoming the fifty-first state. And on trade, Poilievre has declared that he could strike a great deal with Trump to increase Canada's oil and gas exports. But when asked about tariff threats, he has also vowed to, quote, "Fight fire with fire." So I do not think we want to trade war with Canada, but I think we could end up with one.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, there's really no one's going to stand up and say tariffs are great, whatever their political stripe is. But even someone seemingly so close to the incoming political tide in the U.S., because hearing you describe him and how he could possibly make common cause with Trump, it made me harken back to that era of Reagan and Brian Mulroney, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney, where you just had an early reference to the term bromance. I mean, there was such chemistry there and such bonhomie any time that they got together.

ROBBINS:
He was so much fun to cover, he loved Americans so much. I actually reported from Canada in those days. I could get anybody to talk to me because he loved the United States so much.

MCMAHON:
It was really extraordinary. I think there was a famous episode where he and Ronald Reagan sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling or something like that at some event, but it just goes to show, and it's not like it's always been like that. Trudeau's father, Pierre, had some famously flinty moments with Richard Nixon and other U.S. leaders. But there is this tradition also of Americans and Canadians making common calls at the leadership level, if nowhere else. It's Trump certainly laying out the gambit of tariffs and seeing how far it gets him. And then we'll see whether he wants to take advantage of a potential fellow political traveler or not, and just decides to make things difficult and maybe counterproductive. Because again, given some of the figures you cited, it's not just hurting Canadians, this is the U.S. cutting off its nose to spite its face, potentially.

ROBBINS:
President Trump renegotiated NAFTA, which he always described as the worst trade deal ever, and then got the USMCA, which was an improvement over NAFTA. NAFTA needed to be updated. And there are those who know President Trump, who say, "Actually, this whole tariff thing is an attempt to soften Canada up and Mexico up for a renegotiation." USMCA, they're supposed to take another look at it in 2026, which is six years after it went into effect. And this may be just a Trump negotiation style, that it starts with threats and maybe he really is positioning himself and us for a really good negotiation in this and we'll get more out of this. And maybe the follow-on to USMCA will be even better. One of the things he seems to very much want is to have the Chinese not using Mexico as a back door into the market.

And maybe there are further improvements on USMCA that he'll get from this posturing, but trade wars are very easy to trip into and very hard to back out of and that's really the danger. And particularly these tariffs, they are as much as President Trump's claims that they're just a wonderful and beautiful thing, if you just look at those numbers, and we could go through the numbers with Mexico as well, the impact on the U.S. economy could be enormous of this.
Bob, it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. And this week, our audience selected Ukraine halts Russian gas transit to Europe. Cold there, very cold without gas. Why is Ukraine doing this? Who is suffering more Russia, which invaded Ukraine, or Ukraine's friends in Europe, which has been trying to help it in the fight against Russia?

MCMAHON:
Well, first it's interesting to note that this was continuing despite the invasion. A brutal war playing out and Ukraine was allowing Russian gas to transit its country. And it's partly explainable because Ukraine was getting an estimated eight-hundred million Euros per year through this trade. And Western European markets, which had embraced so-called cheap Russian gas, had started to find alternatives initially before the invasion, but certainly afterwards, such that it was really a handful of states, we've mentioned before, Hungary, Slovakia in particular, that were really relying on this gas and very worried about it. Slovakia in particular, this has been a sore point for and Slovak leader, Robert Fico, has gone to Moscow to come up with a different route of gas supply for Slovakia. There's been some angry verbal exchanges between Ukraine and Slovakia. Hungary is going to find some other alternatives as well. The rest of Europe, gas is more expensive.

Pipeline gas is cheaper than liquid natural gas that gets shipped over across the Atlantic for the United States, but that seems to be an increasingly bigger option for Western Europe, for the foreseeable future as they look at and explore their various energy options. Gas is still available. This has been long anticipated that this move would happen, but the wealthier countries have kind of set this in motion, they're paying a little bit more for it. But it's these countries in the eastern periphery and some of which have been on the front lines of bringing in Ukrainian refugees, housing them, dealing with some of the other fall out from the war that are having a tough time of it. The small country of Moldova neighbors Ukraine and has a separatist pro-Russian and Russian occupied region of Transnistria, they are hurting particularly.

Transnistria at last report, was going through a particularly cold patch these last seven or eight days, looking for alternative sources of energy because they heavily relied on it. I think there was going to be some bold new effort by Russia to try to get gas into those or energy supplies into that separatist region, but it's not clear exactly when that's going to pick up in any sustainable way. And Moldova is said to be getting some support from Western Europe, but they're feeling it. It is a cold winter so far and Russia meanwhile is also not happy with it, but also did expect this to happen as well and was anticipating this move. It wasn't like it was some abrupt escalation in another forum of this war, but an anticipated one that still has created festering concerns and a real kind of race to find alternatives and creativity in terms of routing energy supplies, especially to the pro-Russian countries or the Russian-aligned countries in Eastern Europe.

ROBBINS:
We've talked about Moldova before and the Moldovans have made the decision, they voted, they're sticking with Europe. But something like this, could this tip them in the wrong direction? Because the Russians keep reminding them, "You're going to end up like Ukraine, don't choose the wrong side." And the Russians have tried to use gas again and again for political reasons. Does Zelensky consult with the U.S., with Europe before he made a decision like this? The Western Europeans are okay, but you take a country like Moldova, which is just on the brink as it is and politically making the right decisions, shouldn't they be really careful not to push them back into the Russian orbit?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I would imagine that it was a major consideration, especially for the reasons you mentioned, that the very touchy political situation, it was a razor-thin majority, a Western-aligned majority that won in the recent Moldovan elections, which there were many signs of Russian disinformation interference. The big Russian energy from Gazprom has been saying Moldova owes close to $700 million for past gas supplies, Moldova disputes this. But this is a tiny country, it is definitely vulnerable to threats. And an issue like energy supplies, we've seen it happen in bigger countries, that has caused political upheaval and so it's got to be really careful. I think because there has been such a strenuous Moldovan outreach towards Western Europe and an orientation that way, there are plans to continue to try to bolster the country's energy, if not its finances to help it through this tough patch right now.

But still, Ukraine was intent on doing this and I decided all things considered, this was the move it needed to take at this point in time. I think it's really keen to see Russia take a hit wherever it can because they are facing such an onslaught in so many different ways from Russia in terms of different type of bombs, many of them targeted at population centers, at transit hubs and so forth. And I think they're looking for ways to try to create pain wherever they can for Russia, which has been, as we've said before despite sanctions, has found ways to circumvent them, has found ways to use a shadow fleet to sell its energy products. It's certainly taking advantage of its partnership with China. And so I think it is a mark of Ukraine's keen interest in trying to raise the stakes for Russia wherever they can.
As we're talking, there's a renewed Ukrainian offensive following on its incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. Russia is throwing all sorts of different projectiles into Ukraine. The situation at the front is not great. Despite heavy Russian losses by all accounts and heavy North Korean losses for that matter, the soldiers that they've lent to the cause, Russia is still advancing in that eastern front. And so all of it leads to something we've talked about many times before, which is a real kind of inflection point as the Trump administration comes in and there's a great deal of anticipation about what Trump brings to the table in terms of setting up any sort of a diplomatic momentum, which close watchers are skeptical of.

ROBBINS:
Although they have a little bit potentially more breathing room because President Trump's envoy, Keith Kellogg, is now talking about a twenty-four hour solution. Not forcing them into negotiations immediately, but one-hundred days to try to-

MCMAHON:
Yes, that was a major announcement. I also would recommend people, we like to cite reading material on this podcast, there's a long, long piece by Bob Kagan in The Atlantic that I recommend people take a look at, about the Russian government and particularly Vladimir Putin's posture on this war and their disinclination to any sort of negotiations and what's at stake for Russia and why western countries need to know what's at stake for the West. It's a very interesting, as Kagan always is, very interesting thought-provoking piece and look at the stakes on this front.

ROBBINS:
Very smart man, Bob Kagan.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, one more development for us to note while we tape this week's podcast, and that is the truly horrendous spread of wildfires around Los Angeles. Now, this is something we've discussed before in California, certainly as well as places like Australia and even the Arctic in past dry periods. Is the U.S. though, given this latest episode, showing any sort of readiness to deal with this new kind of intense wildfire?

ROBBINS:
Internationally, the discussion is turning increasingly to mitigation for climate disasters. And here in the U.S., we are you're increasingly discussing this question of adaptation and mitigation, including who's going to pay for reconstruction after these, whether they're floods, hurricanes, terrible wildfires? I mean, there's pictures from, and particularly of places that we all know so well, these iconic places in and around Los Angeles that's just really horrible what's going on here. And these are questions not just even if you don't live in southern California. When these disasters happen, everybody pays because homeowners are going to watch skyrocketing insurance rates. This is touching all of us. And so President Biden went on Wednesday, went to California and declared that the federal government was prepared to do anything and everything for as long as it takes to contain these fires. Of course, President Biden, his as long as it takes is eleven days.

We'll see what the Trump administration is willing to do. Mr. Trump, as we know, is a climate change skeptic, and in the past he's made threats to withhold wildfire funding if California Governor Gavin Newsom refused to go along with his water policies for California. Of course, he also did the right thing in the past with other wildfires so they'll come through, I would predict, for California. But the U.S. states increasingly are taking their own action rather than waiting for the federal government or for Congress to act on the bigger question of mitigation. And I think that's probably going to be a big part of the future here, rather than just relying on FEMA to come in when there's an immediate disaster, the bigger question of mitigation. And in late December, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed into law, something called the Climate Change Superfund Act.

And that requires companies that were responsible for much of the carbon emission buildup for the first twenty-four years of the century to pay about $3 billion a year for the next twenty-five years. Vermont already has its own climate change superfund law. And this money is supposed to go to upgrade infrastructure, protect wetlands, recovery efforts from disasters like this, health programs for climate related illnesses. And I think you're going to see a lot of other states moving to do this because I don't think you're going to see Congress taking a lot of action on this. So mitigation is probably going to increasingly become a big conversation in the United States as we see it at the Paris-like meetings. Hope that they make more progress than they're making in the Paris meetings. But I think the states are going to be taking a big role in this.

MCMAHON:
Well, especially yes, on the adaptation piece of this, Carla, I should note, our colleague, Varun Sivaram, is going to have a piece up on our website shortly where he looks at a whole series of steps the country should focus on, especially in adaptation since even if the U.S. went to zero emissions, the rest of the world is functioning in such a way that warming will continue apace. So the country needs to adapt, right? And one of the things that he points out and other experts have pointed out is that in addition to adapting, improving infrastructure, approving building codes, is also just not populating certain areas that are prone to wildfires or floods, simply not supporting people's ability because states in particular have ended up becoming increasingly sort of the lenders of last resort in terms of backing up insurance for people who go back to coastal communities, or let's say go into woodlands that are prone to wildfires.
It's not that LA is going to be depopulated necessarily, but some of these places that we saw in the past in California like Paradise Region and others, maybe the answer is that insurance won't cover those and the government won't either. And so people will either vote with their feet or not, just not be allowed to inhabit some of these places. That's a big change, that's not a palatable change, it's not a feel-good change, but it's sort of a reality of this new situation we're facing. Because again, we're talking at a time when these fires are by no means close to being done in LA and the scenes are already horrific. And every early fall, we point to some massive blast of hurricane that's done something it's never done before. It's just increasing, increasing. These are facts.

And so communities are going to have to come up with some ways to deal with these to get people out of harm's way and also start to reduce the cost because the country cannot keep paying for these. And let alone, looking around the rest of the world, the small island nations that are watching water levels rise or getting inundated with torrential mudslides and floods and so forth. It's just things have to change that involve adaptation in addition to the longer term goal of this mitigation. And that's our look at the tumultuous world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Nicolas Maduro will be inaugurated for a third term as Venezuelan president after a disputed election. And Haiti marks fifteen years since a massive earthquake devastated the country and killed more than two-hundred-thousand people.

ROBBINS:
And before we go into closing credits, we have some of our own news to share. After seventeen years on air, this is going to be our final month. We have one more regular episode next week, and then we will be recording a special live finale episode of The World Next Week. You can watch us on stage here at CFR on January 21st at 6:30 PM eastern standard time, and even join in on a live Audience Figure of the Week poll. The link will be available on the CFR.org website, and the episode will then be available on all of our usual audio and video platforms. Bob and I, and before that, Jim, we've all truly enjoyed the opportunity to bring our take on the news to come to you each week, and we would love to hear from you about your favorite TWNW moments through the years.

And if you want to complain, as you have before, you can tell us about that as well. Drop us an email at [email protected] or leave feedback on our iTunes page or tag CFR_org on X. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. And please know that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's program was produced by Justin Schuster and Marcus Zakaria with Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Elijah Gonzalez was our on-site recording engineer. And special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson for her research assistance. And yes, Helena, we did trade again because we know you love it so much. Our theme music is provided by, he's everywhere, Marcus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long. And yes, we will see you a few more times.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon echoing everything Carla said, and this week in particular, be careful out there.