458. Can Trump's Peace Deal Actually Work?

Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts, and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. It was wall-to-wall Trump. Here's Trump arriving, here's Trump at the Knesset. It really was the Trump show. Parts of which were slightly mind-blowing. Everybody is a little bit scared of him. They're dealing with somebody who isn't carefully calculating within a rules.

based order what to do but can be extraordinarily reckless. Reunited with their families. So that of itself is a huge achievement. But I think we're kidding ourselves that we think this is peace. What we've got now is the beginning of the framework. to their homes, now 90% rubble. There's no international structure. There's no UN structure here around this deal. There's no Palestinian Authority connected with this deal.

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Welcome to the rest of Politics. You're me Alice Campbell. And with me Rory Stewart. And we're gonna devote the first half of this episode to Peace in Our Time, Donald Trump in Gaza and Egypt. And then the second half talk about Latin America. Lots going on in Latin America. So did you manage to watch much of yesterday's proceedings? Nope, didn't get much of that. I've been talking to a lot of people in the region. Yeah. Talking to Israelis, talking to people in the Gulf.

Talking to Palestinians. But what was your sense of the actual proceedings of the whole? Well, I had a really strange day. I was all over the place, but every time I was kinda had five minutes, ten minutes. I would just sort of get on my phone and get onto one of the news channels and just follow it. And it was just it was wall to wall Trump. Here's Trump arriving.

Here's Trump at the Knesset, here's Trump doing this. It was just it was literally every time it was Trump doing stuff. And then occasionally you'd get to see hostages meeting their families, you'd get to see Palestinians being released, you'd get a sort of broader sense. But it really was the Trump show. And parts of which were just

slightly mind blowing. I mean, fair play, when this plan, this twenty point plan first came out, you and I were both very, very sceptical that it would kind of lead anywhere. It has led somewhere. It's led somewhere very significant. And that as it were is of phase one. And that has been the bombing has stopped Gazans are going home and hostages are being reunited with their families, Palestinian prisoners are being released.

and aid is going in. So that of itself is a huge achievement. Fair play. Let's start maybe with that one. So this is of course pretty much what the ceasefire agreement in January was supposed to be. So we're now going back ten months, which was torpedoed in March. largely by Netanyahu's government that didn't proceed to the next phases that so th the basic structure from the moment Trump came in, people will remember that Trump as soon as he came in announced within a few weeks

I've achieved what nobody else has ever managed to achieve. I've done what Biden could never do. I've got peace in the Middle East. And that peace was basically hostages released. Ceasefire, Israel withdraws its troops. And since then, if you go back um to July, for example, beginning of July. They were still in the middle of the negotiations that have been going on since January. And I huge tribute to all these negotiators.

Right? The work that Trump has done, the work that Jericho Kushner's done, the work that the Israeli delegation has done, the work that the Cathares did putting pressure on Hamas, Egypt. Egypt, etc. I mean you must be familiar with this from Northern Ireland. I mean completely sick of this.

Because for n at least ten months, but i basically an outline for a year and a half, they've seen what the beginning of a ceasefire could look like. And essentially I think what's been happening is they've been going back and forth with the Gulf countries who are the people with the influence on Hamas saying, Why won't you agree to hand over the hostages and disarm?

And the United States that has the influence on Israel saying, Why won't you stop bombing Gaza? And we sort of know the reasons why they didn't want to do that. But we can also see the reasons why in the end it would make sense for them to do that. And they got there in January, collapsed in March.

they were trying to put it together again in July, which is now I suppose three months ago. And now finally it's happening. Well when it when it was collapsing, I can remember we talked about it at the time and our shared sense was that that was at the point at which we genuinely did feel that Netanyahu, who's felt his own political interests of survival, were to keep it going. And I think where you do have to give credit to Trump is that, and you can say belatedly,

Because it is essentially the same deal. If he always felt he had the power really to force Netanyahu to do something he was a bit uncomfortable about, and then do it in a way that gave Netanyahu the sense that he was very much part of it. Then he could have done it earlier. That is true. But I still think when you see all of the things that happened at the same time yesterday, it was an extraordinary

thing to pull off. And then I think it is interesting, I've I've talked a bit to Tony Blair, who's as, you know, pretty closely involved in this. And he is yeah, he's pretty clear this has been the kind of framework the whole way through. Essentially what it is, what this is basically saying is

You have Gaza without Israeli troops all over the place, and you have Gaza without Hamas. That's kind of the framing of it. But he did say that Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff have been pretty impressive in the way that they've done

really absolutely on it and pushing the right people and pushing the right buttons. And the one thing that I think is really interesting about Trump, I've been trying to think about Trump, because of course we've got such a negative view of him and y I know you have, I've got a very negative view of it. I think the one thing

that you give him is this for good and bad, this ability just to sort of and boy did you see it yesterday, just to command all the energy and all the attention. But I think what that's a reflection of more significantly is his instinctive understanding of the power of the United States. Still,

And that ultimately is what pushed Netanyahu. I'd love to come back to the the Blair point, which I think is is is fascinating. But just to develop your sense of American power. When Biden was operating within the old world, in some ways America was hiding its I guess it's it's steel fist and a velvet glove. reluctant to do certain kinds of things. So something amazing has happened, as you say, to American power.

And that's partly because of the way that Trump uses it. Obama, Biden to some extent often seemed powerless. They would say, Here's a red line in Syria, the red line would be crossed, they couldn't really act. Biden was putting pressure on Netanyahu for a ceasefire, he never got there. What's different about Trump? What's different about Trump is an incredible recklessness and a total disregard for global norms. So we can see it

Here's a fifty percent tariff on Brazil to back my friend Bolsonaro. Here's twenty billion dollars going to Argentina, here's airstrikes against Iran, etcetera, et cetera, et cetera. And What's happened there is all these players are now off balance because they're dealing with somebody who isn't carefully calculating within a rules based order what to do, but can be extraordinarily reckless. And as you said, Absolutely, this has worked with Israel. And it's also given Netanyahu for some reason

coverage with his far right. I mean, what's the reason he's stopped? Fighting or was reluctant to stop fighting, he was scared about Ben Gavir and Smotric, that they would collapse the coalition. Somehow, Trump's participation in this has created a situation where it looks as though his coalition will hold in a way that it didn't look like it was going to hold in January March.

And it's true with the Gulf too. The Gulf are profoundly, I guess, worried about the way that Israel's behaving, incredibly resentful of that, the attacks on Qatar, totally thrown off balance and probably pretty resentful of the way that Trump is behaving. But somehow I think everybody is a little bit scared of him. And and and unfortunately, this is one consequence is something that we hate, which is the collapse of the rules based order.

in this case probably is getting results because you if you are Mohammed bin Salman or if you're the Qataris or if you're Israel, you do look at this guy and think he has power. And he uses that power in all sorts of different ways. And the the other really bizarre sense you have twenty four hours.'Cause I mean, even though I'm absolutely prepared to say

This is l in in a a very significant part down to him and the way he operates and the sheer brute force of the way that he applies that power. At the same time, I heard somebody saying that it's like watching a split screen president. You have this guy who's talking about being being the peacemaker and bringing peace to the world in the Middle East and this is the three thousand years of history, and then over in his own country he's doing as much as he can to fuel division, to fuel hate.

He talks at everybody in this side of the screen as they're great friends of mine, and over here they're all his enemies. You know, the f the slob governor in Chicago and all this sort of stuff.

And that's I think part of And again I'm not sure it's that thought through. I think it's just the way he's always operated instinctively. It is a kind of form of strategic chaos. Yeah. The split screen, um Ezra Klein, who we interviewed on leading. also has this idea that it's a little bit like those uh optical illusions where you can see a face or a vase but you can't see both at the same time. Yeah. And I think this is the nature of this new form of power.

So uh let's lean into Mohammed bin Salman, for example, in Saudi Arabia, right? Yeah. Where you can see your same split screen. On the one hand He is the great reformer who's done extraordinary things. for opening up the Saudi economy and Saudi society, and it's a great success story and people are going there. On the other hand, the early days of his rule were the most extraordinary examples of random

power, you know, famously. If you were turning up to have your passport renewed in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, you were not expected

like Khashoggi to then be chopped up with chainsaws. If you were Mohammed bin Nayaf, who was the previous Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, one of the most powerful, wealthy men in the world, friends with US presidents, senators and everybody, you're not expecting when you turn up to the palace to suddenly find yourself arrested, uh locked up in a hotel room, stripped of most of your possessions, and find yourself under house arrest years later, along with many other

close relatives of Mohammed bin Salman, some of whom still haven't been heard of to this day, most of whom lost their money. So we are in a new world and it's a world that that actually I want to talk about a little later in relation to a new book.

by a man called Daimpoli. We've got Saudi doing it, we've got Trump doing it in the US. We've got Israel doing a version of this. And what is Netanyahu doing with that strike on Qatar? And what may happen, I I would not be at all surprised If there is soon an Israeli strike on Iran again.

that he reopens the front of the run. They're all people who sense, and the same with Putin doing his drones, they sense that power in the modern world involves being excessive, you know, provoking, going beyond the limit, doing things that shock people and make them think This is completely unnecessary. Why did you need to do that?

through the whole day yesterday. So for example, when Trump was addressing the Knesset to the Israeli Parliament, and he was doing his usual thing of he had a he was he had an auto cue, there was a script, but he kept sort of, you know, going off on t on tangents. And one of his tangents,'cause he had

uh Herzog, the president, two down for on his left. And he's got Netanyahu sitting in front of him, and he just turns to the president and says, And I don't even know if this is possible in the Israeli system, but because it's possible in the American system, he obviously thinks it's an appropriate thing to say. He says, Hey, I have an idea. Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?

Give him a pardon. Just give him a pardon of all these silly charges that he's faced, you know, corruption and the like. And of course, huge applause from all of Netanyahu's supporters, huge applause from the in the galleries, from all the kind of people who've been put it there. to to to Lord Trump. And then later when he met Sisi in Egypt, and the thing in Sham al Sheikh was extraordinary, these leaders coming in from all over the world.

who Fiona my Fiona said this morning, so it was like that they were like extras in his film. It was his film. He stood there and it was literally like a red carpet thing with peace, this massive peace twenty twenty five. And one by one they had to come up and just stand there and shake his hand and

pulling Macron and pulling Orban and doing his usual thing. But then when he sat down with Cece for a sort of proper bilateral, brought the cameras in as usual, and he just started to he went straight in, he didn't talk about the Middle East thing, we talked about crime. And this guy th I'm with this guy all the way.

Because you commit a crime in this guy's country and you know you're gonna pay the price. It's not like with our slop governor in in in Illinois. Background for that, people who aren't concentrating, right? US ambassadors sitting there in Egypt For the last four years complaining about human rights, complaining about European citizens tortured, Italian citizens disappeared in Egyptian prisons, C C is a military dictator running a profoundly authoritarian regime, the standard American line

for years, hypocritical though it would have been, would have been respect for human rights and all this kind of stuff. If only we had more leaders like him. I told you I I met C C at the ti uh just as he took over and I was p part of this plan to try and get him to kind of democratize and you know be be a nice guy kind of yeah. Which you've which you've done a certain amount of.

Didn't exactly move the dial very far. But I remember when talking to about, you know, the the importance of values and the importance of, you know taking the public with you on this journey and making them feel part of this journey. He did look at me like I was kind of from another planet. I thought, this is this is not gonna work.

But there's Trump basically saying, This guy is my guy and then when he had the later when he had the leaders behind him, and he was just sort of wheeling them in, he there was only one elector and he was in charge of it. So he says, Where's Victor? Where's Victor? I got Victor a twenty eight point lead, and he's going to do even better in the next election. Where's where's UK? Where's UK? he goes.

It was like and it was a show. The whole day was a show. The really big worry I have out of it this is where it's very different, I think, to the Good Friday Agreement or Bosnia or any any of these other peace processes or post conflict processes. Is that let's say we're through the they keep saying we're through phase one. The number of points at which the detail is so difficult.

And where things can go wrong. And I just worry that yesterday was such I get the whole th you know, day of joy for the hostages, day of joy for Palestinian families being reunited, all that. I get that a hundred percent. But because of the way Trump communicates

Yeah. And it's not. Yeah. So two things. Quick quick shout out to a a book that was published two days ago called The Hour of the Predator by a man called Daimpoli about authoritarians and tech bros who who really would make these connections between C C Mohammed and Salman Trump. And and Bukele in Latin America, who maybe we can talk about a little bit after the after the break when we get to Latin America. But your bigger point, right?

Phase two. So phase one is basically a ceasefire. Phase two is supposed to be reconstruction of Gaza, and and this is something that You know, you and I saw, because this was very much my time in the Foreign Office, your time in government, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the story then the great cliches that you will remember were there were meant to be three things you do when you reconstruct a country.

governance, security, economic development. If you look at Gaza from that point of view. And uh what was the logic? Well th the logic basically is that governance is at the heart of all of it, which is a pompous way of saying if you haven't got a government which seems to

And again, this sounds like jargon. Credible, effective, legitimate, ideally elected. It's very difficult to do the economic development and security. And and how do you illustrate that? Well, look, if um and I found this when I was uh in Iraq. So I was the Deputy Governor Coordinator of this province in Southern Iraq, and I'm sending back reports every week talking about all the good stuff we're doing. You know, this week we've fixed all these schools, we've sorted out the petrol, we've

repaired a clinic, we've created these jobs, we set up the police. But actually what's happening over my time there is an angrier and angrier local population who are demonstrating outside my door. And the fundamental problem when I say to them, uh

Look, why are you so angry, you know, we're doing all these things is our problem isn't what you're doing, the problem is you're doing them. I mean who are you? And and this is the problem to cut to the chase with this technocratic Palestinian administration, if it ever emerges, that's meant to be running Gaza. they will have to make every day the most difficult decisions in the world. Decision number one.

Hamas is fighting with tribal groups which have been armed by Israel. These are tribal semi criminal groups that Israel have turned into militia and are given weapons to. They're fighting. Whose side do you intervene on? What do you do? And who intervenes? W what are the security forces that intervene?

And that's where you into this other complicated thing about international force and where that comes from. Exactly. And and at the moment the story is maybe Pakistanis, Egyptians, Indonesians, but then there was a little bit from Shama Shekah They'll stay on the borders and there'll be a local Palestinian police force in charge of doing this. How does that really work? There is a firefight taking place in the streets between these two groups. What do you do about it? Who do you shoot? Right.

Secondly, when you start doing your economic development and somebody comes and says, Of the thirty two hospitals, why are you starting with that one, with that community rather than that community? Number two, why did you hire that contractor?

What do you mean you've spent two billion dollars on that? I know this guy, he's completely corrupt. He will have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. It's too slow. You're not creating any jobs for this tribe, you're creating jobs for that tribe. Hamas is influencing you and you're discriminating in that direction. then the question isn't technical, right? It's not just saying this is how you build a hospital. It's politics, right? It's the stuff that you live and breathe every day.

It's exactly the same as, you know, why are you investing in Bolton instead of investing in Dorset? So you just dropped in there two billion for this project, that project, and there's a prior question to all of this, which is where does the money come from? And I can remember

being at one of those big donor conferences on Bosnia. And the sums of money I don't remember the top of my head, but I do remember we were talking astronomical for the time, sums of money, that countries around the world, with governments present What it where I think we are global economy-wise is where I think if you were to do something similar now, a global donor conference.

to help rebuild Gaza. Where is the money going to come from? Who are going to be the big donors? Okay, and tradition North America. Traditionally two of the big donors, of course, were the US and the UK. So for forget interventions. I mean forget.

Afghanistan, Iraq, which was three trillion dollar interventions, three thousand billion dollars. If you even look at Pakistan, for example, in the twenty fifteen, sixteen, the UK government was giving four hundred million pounds a year just to Pakistan.

The US government's probably giving two billion dollars a year. USAID is now gone. There is no more American money. The British money, and I don't think people have fully taken this on, when I was Secretary State for Difford, We were spending seven percent of GDP and it was almost entirely untouched, unconditional, unrestricted, anywhere in the world, twenty billion dollars a year.

Today the headline's gone from point seven to point three, but we're spending of that two thirds on asylum hotels in Britain. So there's point one left. So effectively the budget has gone down from let's say twenty billion to three billion, and of that Already the money's given to the World Bank and the IMF, which we're committed to. Then you have humanitarian responses, which we used to give a hundred million pounds to there's no money. Literally no money.

So then the whole burden falls on Qatar and Saudi, right? To pay for this whole thing. Because again, this is not like uh people draw analogies with the End of the Second World War, you know, America and Britain defeat the Nazis, occupation, reconstruction. No. From the time of the Atlantic Charter onwards, America and Britain were already thinking about reconstruction of Germany. Israel has no interests in reconstruction of Gaza. I I did a conference earlier this year.

speak to a lot of Israelis about this, the one consistent theme is we want no responsibility for Gaza. Yes, there's been fifty billion dollars worth of damage to Gaza, but if you expect us to contribute one cent, you can forget it. So the other big donors back then were Japan? Yep. Their economy's not great. And they've got uh providing she gets through a new Prime Minister coming in who may or be may not be as committed as uh her predecessors, US UK as you say.

Uh Germany facing similar pressures to the to the UK. So I think in the end it will a lot of it will fall on the Gulf, but meanwhile, as you say, the needs will be now. And I think it was right yesterday there was all this focus on the hostages. But I did keep thinking as because there was kind of wraparound television coverage of the whole thing. far less seeing the Palestinians returning to their home. Now

ninety percent rubble, possibly finding bodies there and so forth. So they're going back to that. They're going to expect some sort of Recovery fairly quickly, and they will look to the famed international community to do that. And I d I really do worry that.

parts of the international community, not least Trump, will think, Well, we've done our bit. Absolutely. And now it's over to the rest of you. So so firstly, what do we know about Trump? He's not going to put any boots on the ground and he's not going to be writing big American checks for sure. Secondly, the upside of Trump's autocratic rule breaking behaviour is that he can pull off a ceasefire.

The downside is this pompous word legitimacy. There's no international structure. There's no UN structure here around this deal. There's no Palestinian authority connected with this deal. And when he talks about what security force that Mood Abbas was eventually at that meeting yesterday. That's good. But when you look at the security force going in on the ground, the sort of questions if you are Egypt or

Indonesia or Pakistan or the Gulf that you'll be asking is what is the legal authority under which this group operates, right? Let's let's say you're a a UAE colonel or Pakistani colonel on the ground and you're having to make this decision, what do I do? Do I shoot this person? What is your authority to shoot that person? Are you there legally under an Israeli occupation? Are you there under a UN peacekeeping mission?

Or are you, as Trump seemed to be suggesting yesterday, reporting to the US Centcom Commander, the Admiral in charge of US forces? With the US somehow saying, We are in charge, we're coordinating. By the way, we're not providing any troops, we're not providing any money.

But you, the UAE colonel or Pakistani colonel on the ground, you're somehow following. Are you gonna get a Security Council resolution? No. I mean again, Trump goes back and forward on that. If you can't get an elected Palestinian Authority that people can look at and say, these horrible decisions because within six months, twelve months, people will be so angry. I mean s people are hoping at the moment their houses will be rebuilt. You just point out there's no money.

Rebuilding fifty billion dollars worth of damage is like ten, fifteen year project. So people will be so Impatient. There won't where will the jobs be? Will the borders will be open? Will you be able to have a port? Will there be any economic activity? Are the trucks actually going to be able to cross the border?

Are you going to be able to cross as a migrant worker into Israel in order to get revenue? Probably not. So your family will be very, very poor, you won't have a job, your house will be in rubble. So this government that you're gonna have to be patient with is neither an international UN sanctioned body, nor is it a Palestinian body. It's a body that very quickly you'll begin to say if you're an angry Palestinian,

is this uh a sort of proxy for Israel? And then Israel will say from the other side, where it's like, is this a proxy for Hamas? Mm. No, and also you th the the other thing that would happen, because we've had no real

international media access. I think the stories that are gonna start to emerge about the scale of devastation, the scale of destruction. So let's take a face value sixty seven thousand deaths. You're probably going to find there's more than that now. Those stories will start to get told. And so I I just felt that there was something discordant about the tone yesterday.

I think the that if only Trump could ha find it within himself to say, look, this is a great breakthrough and we've made progress and now here are the steps that are gonna have to be taken instead of which it was all the war is over. Peace in our time, the mo the most momentous day in a century. You know, Rubio said it was the greatest day in

fifty years and Trump said is that all? He said, okay, a hundred. I mean it's all this kind of boastfulness and this self aggrandizing stuff. And I have to say I I I I think that is part of what this is why we're back to the sort of split screen stuff. It's part of what has allowed him to make it happen. The over the topness. Going over-the-top, that sense of making somebody like Netanyahu a bit scared of him. But the over-the-topness in this stage, I think, is setting us laying the ground.

for a failure to understand the kind of thing that you've just said. The processes And the organizations that now have to be put in place very, very quickly to avoid the an escalation of the sort of violence that's already starting to creep in. Trump's attention span and patience because

one risk with Trump, which we maybe have seen with Putin Ukraine, where he seems to have just lost interest now and given up, is as you say that he may have felt he's done his job now. He did Allah he did Alaska. The Ukrainian government his job was Alaska. Wall to wall attention, I'm doing something big, I'm doing something bold. You've got two weeks, Vladimir. Yeah.

Well how many weeks ago was that? And actually we should just give a shout out to our current leading interview with the former Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kaleba. I mean it is amazing how he somehow manages to stay positive and optimistic. But I don't think he's in any doubt, under any illusion that the Ukrainians

are not as reliant upon the Americans as they were. If we follow up your instinct on his patience, the only way of getting to a uh peace is continual pressure day in, day out, on Hamas, who need to be made to disarm and withdraw, and on Israel, who need to be convinced to withdraw and to give the freedom and autonomy to Gaza to allow it to reconstruct, flourish,

grow. And how's that going to happen? Well, that pressure on Israel can only come from one place. It can only come from Trump and the US. And what I think I fear we don't know with Trump because he's so unpredictable. But there's definitely a chance that he loses interest. And he feels he's done the heavy lifting and he's not gonna continue to apply day in, day out pressure if, for example, Israel

refuses to withdraw from the lines it's currently at. Because the most optimistic scenario that I can see at the moment, I mean I hope I'm wrong, but the most optimistic scenario I can see at the moment is go forward. Six months, twelve months. Gaza is very poor, very high unemployment rates, still in rubble, Israel's still mounting strikes and military raids, Hamas still there on the ground, not fully disarmed, in a very ambiguous position with the government.

No opening of ports, no opening of airports. The US largely disengaged, no two state solution, no political sovereignty from Palestine. basically simply Gaza in a more unstable, poorer situation than they were in before October seventh. You'll still have the the settler movement

sort of focused on development in the West Bank. Uh I thought the King of Jordan made a very interesting intervention yesterday. He basically said, This is great day, they're all saying that, but unless there remains a commitment to a a Palestinian state. then the war effectively isn't over because that's what the war been fighting over for so long. So I think we're in a very, very unpredictable, vulnerable, quite dangerous place right now. And of course so many people

have have bought into. And I don't want to be a killjoy. I really don't. I th I mean I get the joy. I get all that. I understand why people were so excited and so happy and and what have you. But I th I think we're kidding ourselves that we think this is this is the end of or th if this is peace, they're not going to be at peace with the th and and just think of all the

Think of all the resolution that sh that's gonna have to be done. Think of all the people who are gonna feel more radicalized, probably on both sides. And so I think unless there's that understanding of the processes that have to put in place And you know, I go w going back to the Good Friday Agreement or going back to Bosnia The the the big day, Good Friday was not the that was not the end of it.

That was the that was the framework and what we've got now is the beginning of the framework. And Netanyahu is selling a story to the Israeli people of unconditional surrender by Hamas. This is a great victory. But The truth is Hamas has not disappeared. There are still thousands of them around, clearly. And what we've learnt here is what we should have learnt in Vietnam, what we should have learnt in Afghanistan.

which is that unless you have a political path, unless you have economic reconstruction, you're not gonna be able to destroy an ideology. The idea that you can just drop bombs, kill sixty seven thousand people, and eliminate A movement like Hamas has never worked. Didn't work with the Taliban and Afghanistan. And from the Israelis' perspective, they hear you say something like that and they'll say, Yeah, and don't forget part of that ideology is to wipe us out.

So we still feel at risk. You know, the fundamentals are still not on the side of a long term peace, I guess is what we're is what we're saying. I think there's wisdom in it, even if it's considered liberal wishy washy nonsense, right? is that long term peace requires, in the end, both Palestinians and Israelis feeling safe.

prosperous and having their own legitimate governments. And nobody is offering that to the Palestinians. So it's very difficult to believe that these problems are gonna go anywhere so long as the only approach is one of violent military force. We should also say to our uh l listeners that our fellow goal hanger podcast, Empire, has done a series on the long history

Of Gaza. All the way back. Eleven part series starting in 1450 BC. I'm also going to give a shout out to a friend of mine, Don McIntyre. Remember Don McIntyre, Middle East correspondent, and he wrote a brilliant book about Gaza a few years ago. He's now updated it. I think it's only an e an e book now, but it's and it's called Gaza. But I think we need we need because a lot of people seem to still seem to think this whole story started two years ago. Det did not.

It's been around for and that's why I think it might be a little bit premature to say it's now all over. Final shout outs from me. It's some great European and American commentary for people who want to go deeper. On the American side you can see the spectrum covered by uh David Ross Phil Gordon more on the Democratic side, Elliot Abrahams more on the pro-Israeli Republican side, Eust Hilterman from uh the International Crisis Group.

And a lovely article actually on an exhibition that's been done in in Paris on archaeological finds in Gaza, covered by Josephine Quinn and the Lund Review of Books. Excellent. Well that's enough plugging, we'll go to a break. This episode is brought to you by Google. We won't fully realise the potential gains of AI unless we make it accessible and useful for everybody across the whole UK workforce.

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Welcome back to the Restless Politics with me, Roy Stewart. And me, Anister Campbell. And Roy, do you know what we were doing exactly a year ago this week? Last year was probably uh I mean not not for you, but for me, probably the biggest audience we've ever played. Do you remember us doing O two?

Difficult to forget. Mm. That was quite a thing. It was a thing. On stage. Almost and it was set up like a boxing ring. Yeah, but we didn't fight. So we had sort of fourteen thousand people in the round peering down at us, following on from the Royal Abbott Hall. Yeah.

No there was a pr pretty bizarre moment in the world of podcasting. It was, it was. It was a good moment though. I enjoyed it. Um and now we're gonna do it all again. We are, we're off on tour again, and this time we're gonna do London, Bournemouth.

Manchester and Glasgow. You're gonna bring along the bagpipes, as usual. So it's ninth to the sixteenth of November in all of those dates. So if you want to get tickets to any of those shows, just go to theresticepolitics dot com. Dead easy. We'll be able to cover the whole world. Delve into some of your lessons on leadership and much more. Yeah, I also wonder, do do you think it'd be I'm I'm now throwing this out as a a live idea. Don't you think we should show some of these impersonators?

Particularly of you. There's some great impersonators online of Rory Stewart. Really, I think the ones of you are much better than the ones of me. Anyway, we're looking forward to it. Now Latin America. We don't talk enough about Latin America because it's so interesting and there's so much interesting stuff going on there.

Um but let's let's do a bit of Argentina and a bit of Peru. And maybe a bit of I've got a really interesting thing about Chile as well. Okay. Well a little bit of framing. When Trump came in, And I'm sorry it all keeps coming back to Trump, but a los of what he was obsessed with relates to what's happening in Latin America at the moment, and probably I guess three things. Uh one of them immigration.

So Venezuela, eight million people have left Venezuela. Cuba lost, I think, twenty percent of its population in the last five years. And that goes to stuff we've talked about, right? Colombia refusing to accept migrants back. Second thing. Crime. Cocaine production consumption has doubled in the last fifteen years, new markets have opened up. in Latin America itself and in Asia, which has then led to this incredible explosion of criminal gangs.

in countries which previously were considered pretty safe in Latin America. And then the third thing is this whole question of small government against big government. Yeah. Which brings us to Millet. Anyway, where do you want to go? Let's yeah, let's start with Millet,'cause of course Millet is this extraordinary it's quite a strange character.

uh very very I know you're obsessed with politicians and their hair. He's got he's unique. The hair is unique. I think he's called the wick, that's one of his one of his And he's and and of course you m you mentioned chainsaws in relation to Khashoggi's murder. his chainsaw was a symbol to say I'm gonna cut the state down to size. Th then taken by Musk, which shows that the whole world isn't

All about Trump influencing other people, it's sometimes about other people like Orban and Millet influencing Trump. Absolutely. And also both Kemi Badenot, the Conservative leader here, and Nigel Ferrar's reform leader, have both said that

Millet is something of a role model and example. So he's become a global brand. I mean who would have thought an Argentinian president would become a global brand? Of course, but that's some time back. That's sometime back. Um And so what happened recently is that there were local elections in Buenos Aires, it's a you know big part of the country, and Millet did very, very badly. And having campaigned personally and hoped that he'd do well.

And that left the markets a little bit spooked. He has come out and said he's gonna change his style a little bit. I think the the the the chainsaw is gonna be left in the locker. But he's now got really b much bigger elections coming up on October the twenty sixth. They they have midterms like the Americans do. A half of the lower house and a third of the Senate are up for elections. So these are big, big elections.

And although his chainsaw approach and sort of absolutely disruption and all that It has brought inflation down considerably. Yeah, let's just remind people a little bit on the economy because we we we came back into this and again in terms of self criticism, Ayu certainly was a little bit skeptical about whether he would be able to pull this off. The the conventional wisdom, of course, in all these cases is it's much more difficult than it seems, and Argentinian politics

was difficult and it was difficult handling uh the fact he didn't have a majority in the lower house or the upper house. So how was this guy who called himself an anarcho-capitalist, who was basically a a a T V pundit? going to be able to do all the stuff that he wanted to do. He would inevitably, the story was, at least for my Argentinian friends, be blocked by the system.

In fact, this isn't really well up to now. Yeah. He came in and he did these extraordinary things. I mean he cut government spending by something like thirty five percent which was removing something like five percent of GDP. He got rid of all the subsidies on public transport, heating, groceries. He fired tens of thousands of civil servants. He cut, I think, pensions by thirty percent.

And inflation went down from a hundred and forty four percent a year. So if you're running a small grocery shop in Buenos Aires, you were putting up your price maybe in the morning and the afternoon, and then again two days later to inflation now being only projected to be twenty five percent here instead of a hundred and forty four percent here. So all that seemed amazing.

And he remained remarkably popular, over fifty percent popularity even a year and despite the fact the poverty rate was soaring, as we talked about, despite the fact many people were beginning to feel the strain. until recently. Right. When when things prices have got out of control, it's been difficult supporting the payoff, etc. I think what's happened is that he's focused understandably on inflation. He's managed to get inflation down substantially, but the economy

insofar as it i i is performing more generally, is not doing terribly well. And then they had this problem with the peso. Um and this is where he called in big f really big favour from Trump and from Scott Bessant. Trump has said that he's his favourite other president, obviously. He is his own favourite, but Millet is number two.

Bessant has waxed lyrical about Millet and essentially said Argentina has to be safe. So they're offering them this twenty billion dollar currency swap. W which which again is absolutely unprecedented. I mean The the only closest precedent of the US ever doing this before was Clinton doing it with Mexico. But Clinton doing it with Mexico, which again was twenty billion dollars.

was in a very different environment in the nineties and Clinton would say, I guess, in his defense, well, Mexico was so integrated with the US economy, it has this enormous border that it shares. And at that stage Mexico wasn't tapped out on its IMF loans. Argentina you would have thought in a normal world, if you were a MAGA base, would be the classic example of something which

is not in the US national interest, doesn't really have much trade with the US, doesn't share a border with the US, is totally maxed out on its international credit lines. Why on earth would the US taxpayer be putting twenty billion dollars behind Millet? Also, I don't know the answer to this, but did Clinton get Congress backing for what he did? Because, of course, that's the other thing that's happened on this, is there's no mention of whether Congress is involved in this.

So but but whether these elections what's happened is the markets have got a little bit scooped that his big thing was macro stability. And they got a little bit of scooped that maybe the public are not quite as supportive of this as they thought and therefore where's that going to go into the future? His ratings have started to drop.

And then of course the other story that keeps coming up although that twenty billion has massively strengthened him of the market strength his popularity. I mean it's a real life. I mean it doesn't in a sense the numbers don't completely matter. It's a bit like the uh

the way that the US deterrent used to work with NATO, it's not really the numbers, it's psychologically the sense that Vestance behind you. The other sort of story that has hit into his popularity and the sense of competence is our old friend corruption. There's a couple of big corruption things going on, in one of which, although she denies any wrongdoing, his sister, Karina, who is also his chief of staff,

and his closest advisor by some stretch. I mean the strange thing about Millet is he doesn't appear to have much of a life. outside the public profile. I mean he's very, very, very close to his sister. And she's got caught up in the these leaked sort of conversations that she got caught up in. She was

implicated in one of one of these big corruption scandals. So that has affected him as well. So if these elections, October the twenty sixth, go badly, then given how the markets got spooked about a local election in Buenos Aires, then We shall see. We saw yesterday with Orban and, you know, Trump Trump will now feel that he can get directly involved in these elections in a way that

I don't think any previous president has ever done. Which brings us, I guess, to Peru. So the big story is the story of Latin America.

Which has been uh had a very, very strong influence of left-wing populists, and we can give many, many examples of this, ranging from people like. Boric in Chile, who's turned out actually to be pretty respectful uh respectful of human rights, respectful of the Constitution, screwed at people who are slightly further out on the edge. So uh we we'll talk about Pedro Castillo.

Um, but we can also talk about the Colombian president and then the far edge of left-wing populism in Latin America, which is of course Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, right? And in this incredibly polarized world, all the people who are instinctively on the right in Latin America who think that their states are too big, they're spending too much money, they're too much and hooked unions. Instinctively think that

any left wing movement, doesn't matter whether it's Lula or Scheinbaum in Mexico, the basic right wing critique would be these people are taking their country towards Venezuela. And actually the truth is that many of them are in a British context kind of versions of Jeremy Corbyn. They are people with strong left wing identity, they often talk about Marxist Leninism, but they're not actually locking up

Well, not in all cases, locking up political prisons. It's like uh Michael Reed would say, it's like uh I guess Jeremy Corbyn with much weaker institutions. And against that is the right wing push. So the right wing push is Miley, doing this sort of radical stuff and restructuring, and Bukele who in El Salvador has come in

arrested eighty thousand people, detained them without trial, and dropped the homicide rate in El Salvador to the lowest homicide rate in Latin America. So a lot of people are looking at this and thinking if we think about our problems, crime immigration security. Well actually, you know, we're not gonna exactly do what Bukelli's doing, but they're beginning to be pretty tempted towards that authoritarian line. Trump is getting ever closer to it. There was a piece I read this week by the former

chief of staff to ICE under Biden. I can't remember where I read it, but it was it was he was basically saying that what ICE is doing now is, you know, we're we're we're we're almost moving beyond any previous American definition of authoritarianism. But I think what's in and and Bukele, you know I mentioned C C

Trump saying this I'm with this guy on crime. He's also he's he's a big fan of Bukele. Yeah, and will sends wants to send his people there. What's been going on in Peru though? I mean you regularly and rather gleefully, I fear, sometimes talk about Keir Starmer's terrible terrible ratings. But Dina Boluate. who until last week was the president of uh of Peru.

She was down at two percent. Is that and I never quite understand the negative word. Does that mean like negative ninety eight percent or am I getting confused about it? That means that two percent out of two out of a hundred She didn't she well it was hovering between two and four. So just to remind people's story, because we covered it at the time and if if real geeks can go back to our original podcast when this happened, but this

figure. Pedro Castillo, who was a primary school teacher from a pretty simple rural background, ran on the back of something called the Free Peru Party, which is, you know, proper Marxist Leninist. I suppose more intellectual listeners from Latin America are definitely familiar with Jose Carlos. Mariatagi, who was this great Marxist intellectual from the twenties and thirties, he won. But not long after he got into power, he decided to do a weird reverse coup against himself.

which is although he was actually the president, he tried to run a coup d'etat against Congress and Judiciary, then im they then impeached him. at which point his deputy, who was this slightly sort of anonymous figure, became, to great applause, you know, the first female president in Peru, A few questions about just how able she was, whether she wasn't actually a little bit mediocre, but anyway, she got in.

and she was sort of sustained by Congress, including being sustained by Fujimori's daughter, who's traditionally from the right. There were then protests, the army was very, very violent. People were killed, so now there's a whole human rights story going on. And the previan economy that did pretty well from the reforms of Fujimori through to twenty sixteen, beginning to falter

really losing its way, the parties giving up on ideology and becoming pretty much kind of corrupt party machines. And now this Boloarte was the sixth leader of the country since twenty eighteen. And three of them are in jail. A lot of this about law ferrisment. We talk a lot about this pr complicated question.

You know, on the one hand we support the independence judiciary, on the other hand, in many Latin American countries there's a sense that they're just used against your political opponents, which almost certainly is what Trump is doing and will probably happen to Trump when he steps down. And also these it's strange how you have high level corruption and what might be termed low level corruption. There's probably a bit of both going on here.

But the media in and the and the opposition became obsessed with her uh her seeming fondness for Rolex watches. And a house got r her house actually at one point got raided. So as they could establish just how many Rolex watches. She had a little bit of a that she went off to have a nose job while she was meant to be doing some sort of It's a little awkward'cause if you're coming from the Marxist Leninist less. I mean originally

sort of Vladimir Chiron, who again was put in jail so couldn't run, which is why Castillo came in and she was coming in on that ticket. Yeah. To be collecting Rolex watches a little et cetera. But you mentioned crime earlier, uh crime and the murder rates and Contract killings have just been going off the charts.

I don't know what's next. What's happened now is that under their constitution she didn't have a vice president. Normally the vice president would take over, so it's gone to the president of the Congress, uh a guy called Perry. He's just survived um rape and sexual assault.

uh investigations. So it's a mess. It's a total mess. There I guess the question is What's next for countries like Peru? Are they going to and I think this will be an opportunity for mini bouquet? So we're seeing sort of versions of this. Paraguay, Costa Rica, Panama I mean of course the the the pro Trump right wing candidate in Panama is feeling pretty uncomfortable because Trump's still talking about taking over the Panama Canal, confusing everybody.

Is there gonna be room when the election comes for somebody trying to run on a Mile or Bikele ticket? Because the situation in some of these countries I mean uh w we talked in January of last year about this amazing moment where Ecuador, which had been one of the most peaceful Countries in Latin America suddenly found criminal gangs take over a T V station live on air. Peru we got a producer produced this extraordinary figure that in twenty twenty four fifty percent of the homicides in Peru

were contract killings. The the big story at the moment has been an attack on a a local popular Latin American band that didn't pay Exceptionally. Sometimes it takes a tipping point that feels a bit odd, but there's this ba this popular ban that got caught up in a

in a shooting and uh I think it was just the point at which the politicians thought, you know, enough is enough. And the vote I think that there are it was a hundred and twenty four zero. She got literally zero votes. This was the eighth impeachment attempt.

And she got zero votes. And she was taken out for an under a clause for mental incapacity. Yeah. Moral incapacity. Moral incorporally incapacity. No, no, it was worse than that. Permanent moral incapacity. In other words, there is no coming back from this. Lizzy, before we go, j just when I mentioned um Chile, you know how I'm a big fan of compulsory voting? Well they've got an election. Chile's got an presidential election on november the sixteenth.

also Senate and 155 seats in the lower house. Now I didn't know this really. They've had compulsory voting. They had compulsory voting but voluntary registration. Okay? So if you registered, you had to vote. But you didn't have to register. Then in twenty twelve they went for automatic registration. So everybody got registered. and voluntary voting. Yeah. And they've now decided to put the two together. They've got automatic registration and compulsory voting.

Round of applause for Chile, I say. Round of applause for Chile. Um and and fingers crossed because, you know, obviously you and I are big believers in Compulsory voting.'Cause I think a lot of people in Chile are pretty sceptical about Boric, this young student leader. He's only allowed this one term though. Right. I he can't stand d doesn't exactly. But I I do want to do a little shout out from people who thought he was gonna go full Venezuela, Nicaragua.

It's not been like that. He has been actually more idealistic, more respectful towards human rights than many people anticipated, and as a I would argue a a sort of better version of the left wing populist leader in Latin America. Well, in which case the Communist Party candidate might come through. Well listen, we've got question time tomorrow and we're going to do something a bit different. We're going to be relentlessly positive uh on the back of a complaint.

That was delivered to me by hand by one of our listeners who said we promised such an episode almost three years ago. Let's see tomorrow. Let's try it.