U.S. Presidential Campaign Picks Up, Iran Mulls Retaliation, Bangladesh’s New Government, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, diplomacy intensifies to prevent wider war in the Middle East, the U.S. presidential campaigns ramp up with a complete Democratic ticket, and Bangladesh prepares for a new interim government after its longtime leader fled. It's August 8th, 2024, and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And, I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's kick off in the United States. This week was a big one for the Democratic side of the competition for president. Vice President Kamala Harris was certified as the Democratic presidential nominee, and she announced her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Now, governors tend to not have large foreign policy portfolios, and, as we know, vice presidents don't necessarily come in with a major foreign policy portfolio as well. However, we are the Council on Foreign Relations, and we like to talk about these things, whether it's vice president or president.

ROBBINS:
Wait, let's back up here. We had Al Gore, who took responsibility with Clinton, took responsibility for Russia, and Joe Biden with Obama, more experience on foreign policy.

MCMAHON:
No, no, yeah, absolutely.

ROBBINS:
But, please continue.

MCMAHON:
No, as has been borne out, and we actually have a backgrounder on this on our site, vice presidents actually have stepped up, and taken on important initiatives in foreign policy.

But, as you get into the campaign, as President Trump said recently, the president is the one that matters, and so, we'll see. It got a lot of attention. Tim Walz was the leading news cycle figure in a very busy news week, at the start of the week. What can we say about his foreign policy chops?

ROBBINS:
I was thinking about all this, and, particularly, thinking about this question of this commander-in-chief challenge for presidential candidates themselves, typically, face. Remember Hillary Clinton, that 3 a.m. phone call ad from the 2008 primary? It showed that picture of sleeping children with the voiceover, "It's 3 a.m., and the phone is ringing somewhere in the White House." Part of that was pushing back against sexism, of course, but even male candidates...when Bill Clinton ran as the Arkansas governor, first term Senator Barack Obama ran, neither of them had foreign policy cred, and they chose vice presidential candidates with much stronger resumes to bolster their bonafides.

And, Kamala Harris has built her career on domestic policy, and in Walz, you've got another candidate, who has built a career in domestic issues. In fact, all of her final candidates for the job—except Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who spent twenty-five years in the Navy and flew combat missions in the Gulf War—had domestic policy credentials, and not foreign policy credentials.

So, what I was asking myself is why haven't we heard more about the commander-in-chief test? Although, we have been getting all this swiftboating about Walz in the last twenty-four hours, but we can talk about that.

So, what's the answer? Well, nearly four years as vice president is certainly good understudy preparation, even if until recently this White House has downplayed Harris' role. I was intrigued to read in Fred Kaplan's column in Slate that she has attended almost every one of Biden's PDBs, these presidential daily briefs, in which a top intel officer outlines the major threats for the president, and other developments around the world. But, I suspect the main reason why this test hasn't come up, either from the chattering class, or from U.S. allies, is that the anxiety over Trump, and getting out of NATO, and disrupting alliances, and everything else so intense, and they've seen Kamala so often out there, including at Munich, and all the things we've talked about, that it's been enough to persuade themselves that the alternative, in this, by proxy, internationalism looks plenty good enough. And so, who cares if Walz is not a major international player? And so, the commander-in-chief test hasn't come up that much, which is a long intro to the question you asked me, but one that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about.

As for what Walz brings to the foreign policy conversation, there was no mention of his foreign policy credentials in his rollout, at least, that I've heard so far. But, he isn't a complete neophyte. He served in the Armed Services Committee in Congress, he was ranking on Veterans Affairs, he served twenty-four years in the Army National Guard, although, not in combat. And, as for his policy positions, there was a lot of scrambling going on as soon as he was announced to find him on the record on foreign policy, but that's not that surprising for a man who was mainly a governor. He left the House in 2019, and I don't remember him having an especially high profile, certainly, not in foreign policy when he was there.

So, what do we find? Like Harris, he's a supporter of Israel's right of self-defense, while criticizing its handling of the war in Gaza. He called in March for the United States to push for a cease-fire and a hostage release. On other issues, he ran, originally, in Congress, in part, on a platform opposing the war in Iraq. He traveled to Syria in 2009 on a CODEL that met with Bashar al-Assad that pushed unsuccessfully to cut off the pipeline of weapons to militants in Iraq where National Guard members from Minnesota were serving. In 2013, he spoke out against Obama air strikes in Syria; he supported the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Most importantly, he's a trade skeptic like Biden and Harris. Although, as the governor of an agricultural state, he's been more flexible on that issue, and he's very good on environmental issues, and I think for U.S. allies that's going to be a big deal.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and I think that extends to his energy policy. I think he's been bullish on trying to promote electric vehicles, for example, and, as you say, as a governor, he brings those governor credentials of someone who has had to make the tough trade-off choices, and having a state that produces things that they would like to sell abroad makes them a bit more pragmatic on trade policies, too.

So, I think you're right. I think immigration is another interesting issue, because Minnesota has a lot of people who are either refugees or asylum seekers—Somalis, in particular, in the state but also others. And, he was also outspoken on the Ukraine war, condemning Russia's invasion. So, he's got a voice; we're going to hear a lot more of, I think. As you say, very domestically-focused, seen as very willing to take on the Trump ticket, and challenge them in a number of ways. It'll be interesting to see if they do end up coming up with either a first-ever Trump-Harris debate, or a JD Vance and Walz debate, and see what comes out, at that time, because you're starting to see some of the veterans type squabbling going on involving his record there, vis-à-vis Vance, who served in Iraq, and I think it was a communication office, if I'm not mistaken.

ROBBINS:
Yeah. The swiftboating thing—we'll see how much legs it has. The Kerry campaign-

MCMAHON:
We should know what swiftboating is, really quickly, for those who might not be totally familiar with the 2004 campaign.

ROBBINS:
Okay, so, when Kerry ran, and Kerry was a Swift Boat veteran, and some people who served with him falsely claimed he had exaggerated his service in Vietnam. But, they didn't push back. They just let it go. They didn't think it was going to be a big deal. The things that were said were not true, but it hurt him, and he, of course, had been someone who had served, and in Vietnam, and then had opposed the war when he had come out. And, it had become a very emotional issue for a lot of people who served in Vietnam.

But, the term itself, the verb, swiftboating, becomes a part of the political lexicon, and now, here's Walz, who served twenty-four years in the National Guard, and the accusation is, from Vance, for which there appears to be absolutely no substance, is that he left to run for Congress to avoid going to Iraq for deployment. And, what the record seems to show is that he made the decision to go before they got their orders. And so, thank you very much. But, what we know is when he ran for governor, there was several people who surfaced this charge—people who were opposed to him. And, he opposed the war in Iraq, so it got—much like with Kerry and Vietnam—that there are these divisions.

My husband is a Swift Boat veteran himself, and I see this division among the Swift Boat people. I've seen people oppose the war in Vietnam, people are now opposing the war in Iraq. You can see how that can get very, very emotional. But, Walz made the decision to run for Congress. He ran for Congress, in part, as I said, opposing the war in Iraq; drew some flack for this when he ran for governor, and then it went away, and now Vance has surfaced it again. So, they're using terms like stolen valor, they're doing all sorts of other things that are going on. I think that the public, having seen it, I'm not sure it's going to have legs a second time around, but they're, certainly, pushing it really hard. We'll see if it's a one-day story or a two-day story.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and it's interesting to note that Vance, while having served in Iraq, has also come out as being very outspoken against entangling military involvement for the U.S., whether in the Middle East or elsewhere. But, that's a separate topic for debate.

ROBBINS:
I think it is an interesting point. Then we, of course, haven't even gotten into, and they haven't even gotten into, President Trump, who was hugely critical of the war in Iraq. I don't like his criticism of John McCain, who he said he wasn't a hero, because he got shot down, and these terrible things, and his refusal to visit an American World War I cemetery in France, and all of that. This is a very problematic thing for the Republican ticket itself.

So, JD Vance served; he should be thanked for his service. Walz served; he should be thanked for his service, and this sort of nastiness is really not a substance of a campaign. Let's move on from it.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, we are going to return to another topic that I think will be a frequent topic on this podcast, which is the Middle East. We are in a state of heightened anticipation about Iran's expected retaliation against Israel for the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Leaders and diplomats have been scrambling to avoid a wider regional war. Iran insists there is no room for compromise on this front, but there are also reports, persistent reports, that it also may be reconsidering how it responds. Hamas, meanwhile, has named Yahya Sinwar, who was the main architect of the brutal October 7 attacks against Israel, as its new top official. And, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, has said Israel's prepared to engage in a multi-front war with Iran. So, what to think of the diplomacy going on, and this anticipation, Carla?

ROBBINS:
Bob, this is one of the moments when both of us desperately miss daily journalism. I'm sure in your case, you miss wire service journalism, because, at least, you get to do it early. We're taping this Thursday morning with no certainty that it won't all be OBE by the time the podcast drops. So, with that enormous caveat, we, like everyone else, are waiting to see what Iran does, and predictions on both the when, and the how big, have swung wildly, as you know, in recent days.

Iran has warned Israel that it's going to hit back hard for the Haniyeh assassination, but, also, as it did in April, to signal that it doesn't want to spark a much wider war, or, at least, that's what Iran's new somewhat more reformed-minded president Masoud Pezeshkian, said earlier this week when he declared that Israel "will definitely receive a response for its crimes and insolent." But, he also said that Iran was not seeking to "expand the scope of the war in the region." That was his statement; whether the Revolutionary Guard Corps, whether the Supreme Leader feels that way, who knows?

Many countries, very nervously, urged their citizens to leave Lebanon, and avoid travel in the region. Some airlines canceled flights to Israel, and then resumed the flights. Others have stopped flying to Beirut altogether. And, over the weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told his G7 counterparts that an attack on Israel from Iran and Hezbollah was imminent, and urged them to use their diplomatic influence not to avoid it but to halt further escalation—it seemed so inevitable, at that point.

But, yesterday, we began hearing, while U.S. officials still expect some Iranian response, they have began to think it may not be as large as they originally feared, and that the Iranians have been talked down either by diplomatic pressure or the U.S. military buildup in the region. One explanation that I found puzzling, but intriguing, is the argument that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb, not by a missile, as originally believed, which seems somehow to be a much smaller assault on their sovereignty, and a tactic that Iran also uses. Who knows? But, I was also...What we're hearing is that, even if the Iranians may be rethinking the size of it, does that mean that Hezbollah is rethinking what they're going to do? We do know that in private, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, and the Saudis have warned Iran to calibrate any response.

After the humiliation of Haniyeh being murdered, the betting had been that Iran was going to try to inflict much larger pain than it managed in April. They sent three hundred drones and missiles. The U.S. and its allies managed to push back with the Israelis. The U.S. has, again, moved forced into the region. But, the feeling was that the Iranians, if they were going to do it bigger, could perhaps get through this defense by not just sending its own missiles, but, also, having barrages from this axis of resistance; things coming from Hezbollah, things coming from the Houthis, things coming from Syria and Iraq.

So, we don't know what's going to happen. Has Iran been persuaded to scale it back? Can Iran control what Hezbollah does? And, if the Iranians do hit, can the U.S. persuade Bibi to once again cool it in his own response? So, we'll have to watch.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. I think, particularly, what you said about Hezbollah is important, because it wasn't just Haniyeh who was assassinated. The day before, a very senior military commander in Hezbollah was killed in a Beirut suburb, which is another very, very clear warning shot from the Israelis that they can go very high, if they have to, to go after the leadership in Hezbollah.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah came out with another fire and brimstone speech this week warning about repercussions. And so, I think where maybe things have tempered a little bit on the Iranian side, itself, Hezbollah is the place to watch, and you're seeing special jitters in the region, in and around Lebanon. So, I think that's what we should watch, and, again, as you say, as we tape this, all bets are off. Something else could have overtaken our discussion as this podcast drops.

ROBBINS:
And, we also don't know...This is sort of like the Star Trek Prime Directive. Even when the reports come out that say that the Iranians have been persuaded to calibrate their response, how is that going to go down in Tehran? "Do not underestimate us." Because, this was a huge assault on their sovereignty.

So, we do know that the U.S. has moved forces into place, that they have put together, once again, a coalition. How many Arab states are willing to participate in it? Not so publicly this time with radar. Are the Jordanians still going to be willing to shoot drones down over Jordan? We certainly know most of the Arab states don't want to get sucked into a regional war; huge numbers of uncertainties there. And, then there's the question about the cease-fire talks.

MCMAHON:
Right.

ROBBINS:
The White House is still predicting that there's some sort of a deal that is within reach. Is this the triumph of hope over experience? Are they trying to jolly them along? We know that CIA Director Bill Burns, and officials from Israel and Qatar and Egypt met again last week, and they're trying to move things ahead. And, pretty much everyone agrees, including the Israeli military leadership, that Bibi is the main obstacle.

But, how Hamas' in-your-face naming of Yahya Sinwar, who is the architect of the October 7th attack, to succeed Haniyeh changes the dynamic isn't clear. U.S. officials say that Sinwar always had veto power over any deal, but, at least, with Haniyeh there, it was, at least, a small voice, some voice for compromise. That's now gone.

And, then there's the basic logistical challenge of negotiating with a man who is hiding in tunnels, and refuses to use electronic communication, and, add to that, is Bibi going to compromise with a man he describes as "a dead man walking?" Certainly, an in-your-face appointment of Sinwar, and I really don't know why the White House keeps saying that this is so close to happening.

MCMAHON:
Other than that, the stakes are incredibly high, and they, certainly, have been active, and would like that to be the case, but, as you say, is it wishful thinking, or is there something really going on?

ROBBINS:
Yeah. Bob, let's move to Dhaka, Bangladesh where after weeks of bloody protests—some four hundred plus people reportedly died—long-serving, increasingly autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India. Basically, just ahead of the crowds.

These protests began after a high court reinstated a quota that reserved more than half of civil service jobs for specific groups, including 30 percent for the descendants of those who fought in Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence. This is a constituency that is largely made up of supports of Hasina's Awami League party, and this is, particularly, intolerable in a country where youth unemployment is really high, and Hasina's repression getting worse and worse, and, increasingly, undermining any legitimacy that she had left. So, what happens now? Hasina had ruled the country for, what, fifteen years? This is a pretty big change.

MCMAHON:
It absolutely is. It's extremely breathtaking to watch, and, potentially, in a positive way, the term people power has been used, in terms of what's happened with these protests, and the dislodging of someone who had been thought to be a very powerful leader.

First, let's just take a quick note. Bangladesh, eighth-largest country by population in the world, third-largest Islamic country in the world, one of the world's factories for what's called fast fashion, it produces enormous amount of textiles, and yet, with some deep problems, deep-rooted problems, that we've seen these protests really bear out.

As we were taping this podcast—another fluid situation—there was the installation going on of Muhammad Yunus, as a head of an interim government, which was agreed on by the current president of Bangaldesh, Mohammed Shahabuddin, military leaders, and student leaders. Now, the student leaders, in particular, had said they would not accept a military-like government, but wanted Muhammad Yunus to lead. He is a Nobel Laureate, he is well-known for establishing what's known as Grameen Bank, a microcredit organization, that was aimed at lifting the poor from abject poverty, and seen as a real solution in not just Bangladesh but really worldwide. He became almost a global rock star in this way.

Very well-known internationally, had been seen as an opposition figure by Hasina's government, and now could be coming back and bringing Bangladesh to some sort of a new era of stability. He said, as he was returning to the country today, "Today is a glorious day for us," and also referring to it, saying, "It's as if Bangladesh has got a second independence." Then he also called for the restoration of law and order.

So, we'll see what ability he has to bring about that law and order, as you said, four hundred people killed. These are increasingly dangerous, and lethal protests that caused the prime minister to leave. There were a lot of people killed, police were killed, thuggish attacks happening by Awami League supporters, in particular, and a country that still can be considered a powder keg. But, I think there seems to be this prevailing mood that they want to bring it into a new era, and that Yunus could be this transitional figure that helps to bring that about. We'll take it day by day, Carla, but it's, certainly, a different situation than what we're seeing in Venezuela, another place we talked about recently.

ROBBINS:
The protestors wanted Yunus, who's to take over, and this really isn't actually a legal, or constitutional process that's going on here, and the military is the one that said, "Okay. You can have him." Is the military really going to be pulling the strings? Do we have a process actually? Is there going to be elections? Is there some constitution behind it that actually makes this a legitimate transition?

MCMAHON:
All really good questions. The military is, as it so often is in these cases, is really crucial, and, apparently, it was the military that had reached its tipping point, and signaled to Hasina, as well as members of her family, and some others, that she needed to leave the country; that they were not going to be engaging in a violent crackdown on protestors.

So, the military could be in place to back up, and support a peaceful transfer of power, and, yes, it currently seems to be outside the bounds of constitutional change, but Hasina's government was reelected in what was widely seen as a not free and fair vote earlier in the year. So, I think the country is trying to put things back together, and that would seem to have to include the main opposition party, known as the BNP, and headed up by the longtime rival, another legendary woman figure in Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia. She was released from house arrest. She, herself, has been urging her followers for "no destruction, revenge, or vengeance." So, she wants to, basically, help to contribute to democratic national elections.

So, I think the hope is that you're going to see emerge from this process, Yunus' installation, is relatively quickly some sort of a path towards elections that will be free and fair, and where people can feel like they have some sense of agency and move beyond this corruption, cronyism, thuggishness that was leading the country. It's been a tough half-century of independence, though, and we'll see if Bangladesh is ready.

ROBBINS:
Lots to watch there.
Bob, time to discuss our audience figure of the week, and this is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at @cfr_org's Instagram story. And, this week, our audience selected, "Four Hundred Arrested in UK Anti-immigrant Riots." Far-right groups using social media, and a huge amount of disinformation have been driving the violence, and UK Science and Tech Secretary Kyle has been especially critical of X, and its owner Elon Musk, who tweeted on X, that "civil war is inevitable," in response to the riots. Is the UK's new Prime Minister Keir Starmer getting this under control?

MCMAHON:
That is the major question. Obviously, the first big test for him. Worst riots in more than a decade in the UK. We are just taping this after a night in which there were counter-protestors, who are trying to change the narrative. So, they were bracing for protests to resume again on Wednesday night. They were pretty muted, and, actually, the biggest voices that came out were those seeking to protest against the violence, against the anti-immigrant hatred that has come out of this.

But let's just take a quick note about what spawned this, a truly horrible event occurred in late July. A seventeen-year-old man with a knife killed three girls between the ages of six and nine, injured eight other children, two adults, at a dance event in a seaside town of Southport, Northern England. Initially, the name of the accused assailant was not released under British law, people under eighteen, they would not release the name. And social media, that you were referencing, filled the vacuum, along with people who, in the UK, and outside the UK, who are from the UK, whipping up hatred as well, and, basically, saying it was an immigrant, it was a Muslim, it was someone who came in the country by a boat last year. None of which was true.

It turned out, when they did release the name of the accused assailant, it was a person born in the UK, in Cardiff, Wales, of Rwandan background, and still not known exactly what triggered this attack. But, that almost became beside the point, because these protests have whipped up, which was this percolating hatred of immigrants, of the "other" that has come in, and, to some in England and the UK, have started to pose this huge threat to life and limb, and so, it really became this situation that was building on itself.

Keir Starmer has a background as a public prosecutor; very much had a law and order response in terms of sweeping arrests, threatening of jail time, and so forth. What he's being looked to for now, though, is more of the political messaging that the country really needs to overcome this really traumatic period. I think last night's counter-protests tapped into some of the concern, the deep concern, that many in the UK feel about just the violence that was happening. You saw people breaking into hotels that had been temporary lodging for asylum seekers, and trying to set them on fire, trying to burn people to death. They actually set on fire a library.

It was a combination of people who are deeply resentful of immigrants as well as people who are looking to, basically, just pile on, frankly. It's been a real ugly period of time for the country, and Starmer is really on the spot. Again, first big test for him, and he's going to be looked to. He's been described as a bland, technocratic figure, in some ways. He's going to be looked to for some, if not eloquence, at least, some consistent messaging that gets the country back on its feet.

ROBBINS:
Social media has played such a central role in this, and you're always caught between questions of free speech, and the problems of disinformation, and you see how potentially destructive. Are they handling that? Do they have new legislation over there? Are they handling it any better than we're handling it? Is there some sort of model there, or are they overstepping our whole notion of the First Amendment?

MCMAHON:
It's a really good test of what is still an emerging piece of legislation known as the Online Safety Act that allows for the prosecution of people who convey information they know to be false, which has, certainly, happened in this case, and if the information was intended to cause either psychological or physical harm to a likely audience. This act is not in effect yet. It's still going through its implementation phase, and so the government is in this really challenging interim period. It can still go ahead, and prosecute people who are trying to incite violence online, but it's not able to employ the full effect of the Online Safety Act.

The European Union has very vigorous online safety legislation that the UK would have been able to take advantage of, had it still been part of the European Union, but it's now facing its own threat here. There is this really difficult exchange, as you cited, between Elon Musk and the Starmer government, and it must be said, that the platform X is really continuing to show consistently it is a not responsible place in these moments. So, this is going to be something that is going to have to be closely watched as well.

And that's our look at the turbulent world next week, Carla. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on: Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio visits Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, and I know you're waiting for this one, San Diego Zoo officially welcomes back two new pandas.

ROBBINS:
Yay.
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. 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. Please note 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 Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra, and special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson and Emily Hall Smith for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria, and this is Carla Robbins saying so long and get ready to vote.

MCMAHON:
And, this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and please be careful out there.