Ukraine, South Korea, Gaza, Trump's Nuclear Policy and Reason to Hope

Part Two of my interview with journalist Bill Press on everything, everywhere

On Monday, I had the pleasure of sitting down with veteran journalist Bill Press to discuss, as he put it, “Syria, Trump and the State of the World.” This is Part Two of our discussion, lightly edited for clarity. Part One is here. You can listen to the full podcast here.

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Bill (returning from a break in the program): Today’s edition of the Bill Press Pod is delighted to welcome back our good friend, Joe Cirincione — national security analyst, former president of the Ploughshares Fund. He's also a member of the Council for Foreign Relations and publishes his own Substack newsletter, Strategy and History.

Joe, welcome back. We mentioned Ukraine. Donald Trump was in Paris for the opening of Notre Dame and he and President Macron met with President Zelenskyy. Donald Trump says, day one, he's going to solve it, going to end that war in Ukraine. What's the situation now in Ukraine? What do you think we can expect Trump to try to do?

Joe: Amazingly, Ukraine is still holding the line against the overwhelmingly superior Russian force (that proved to be not so overwhelming, and not so superior). Russia is making some grinding gains. They've actually gained more territory in the last few months than they've gained in the last few years.

Ukraine is basically hanging on. They've been weakened by the hesitations of the Biden administration. Should we give them this weapon? Should we not give them this weapon? Can they hit Russian forces in Russia or not? Eventually the Biden administration made the right decisions but often it's been too late. Just this last weekend, Biden announced a billion dollar aid package. These are funds that have already been approved by Congress, but haven't been transmitted yet. They're trying to rush as much funding as possible before January 20 when Trump comes in.

Trump indicated that he would probably cut Ukrainian aid. He repeated that over the weekend. I think that's likely. Trump’s interests are much more with Putin than they are with the Ukrainians. So what kind of deal can he work out? There is no way to end the war in 24 hours. That's not going to happen. Even if you tried to force Ukraine to surrender by cutting off aid, what are the terms of the surrender? What is Putin willing to settle for? Does he just want the territory that is occupying or does he have additional ambitions?

I think he does. I think he wants more that he has been able to conquer. The rest of the provinces in the Donbas region, for example. He occupies three-fourths of them; he probably wants all of them. So, all this is going to be much more complicated than Trump indicates and, of course, the Ukrainian people don't want to stop fighting.

Remember, giving territory to Putin doesn't just mean the land that they now have but the three to four million people now living under a very vicious, fascistic Russian rule. That’s why the Ukrainians do not want to stop fighting.The Europeans are trying fill the void, to provide more aid.

Bill: Do you think that Republicans in Congress will give Trump what he wants and cut off aid to Ukraine?

Joe: I think they're inclined to do that. Speaker Johnson, for example, famously delayed aid to Ukraine for months this year. If Trump wants to pull the plug, the Congress will go along with it.

Bill: In another part of the world, if there's one war that seemed to be over because there was nothing left to bomb, it was Gaza. Yet every day we read, it seems, of more Israeli military actions against what's left of the Gaza strip. I mean is there still a military force that that justifies such continued military action? Why can't we have a cease-fire there?

Joe: There really are not significant military objectives left for Israel in Gaza. What’s going on now is something different. Amnesty International just this week called it a genocide. They issued a 300-page report detailing why they believe that to be true. A UN committee called it ethnic cleansing. The former defense minister of Israel, Moshe Ya’alon, called it ethnic cleansing. What's going on now is an effort by Israel to clear Gaza of Palestinians, at least northern Gaza.

As the ultra-Jewish nationalist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, he wants to help the Palestinians leave for their “other countries.” This is part of the sort of expansionist view that dominates the Netanyahu government.

It is also reflected in some of Donald Trump's appointees, like Governor Huckabee to be our ambassador to Israel. He says that he doesn’t use words like “occupation” or “West Bank.” This is Samaria and Judea, Huckabee says, and the Jewish people have the title and the deed given to them by God for this land. That's how they see it. Some call for Israel’s government to expand to other parts of the Golan Heights now held by Syria.

I don't see anything that's going to stop the Netanyahu government. Joe Biden certainly didn’t. Donald Trump is even less inclined.

Bill: How much of it is all part of an effort to keep Netanyahu in power?

Joe: A great deal is to keep him in power and out of jail. He will testify this week in his corruption trial. I mean, that that's the kind of situation you have right now. So, he understands that if he loses power, he's going to jail.

Bill: if there's one country that we thought was stable and nothing to worry about, it was South Korea. Then, last week, suddenly martial law. The guy back down, but that's still a very, very unstable situation there. What happened with the president?

Joe: President Yoon of South Korea is a very Trump-like figure. A relative political unknown, a political novice who never held office before he won. He is an instance of someone elected because of intense dissatisfaction with the current economic conditions in South Korea. Even though by most measures, South Korea’s economy is booming.

Yoon was frustrated that in elections this year, the opposition party seized effective control of the Nationa/ Assembly and was blocking his initiatives, was impeaching some of his officials. He decided to solve his political problems by declaring martial law. He thought he could get away with this. Maybe he was encouraged by Trump's victory in November and thought that this was the time to make a strong-man move.

In a huge lesson for the American people, the South Korean people showed us how you do this. How you fight a tyrant. They immediately came out to the streets and took back control of the National Assembly where Yoon had sent troops to ring it. Legislators climbed over the walls to hold an emergency vote, repealing martial law.

Now, it's Yoon who is in retreat, threatened with impeachment, forbidden just yesterday, from leaving the country. This is the kind of action we may need to here.

Bill: We can learn a lesson right from the way the South Korean people responded?

Joe: Absolutely. Do not retreat. Do not acquiesce. Resist. And get ready. Be ready to show up.

Bill: There’s one aspect of this that I've been wondering about. Over the years, you and I have talked many times and you've been such a leader, particularly with Ploughshares Fund, in the effort to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons on the planet, but now most people are not talking about it anymore. It's still very much a threat. How do you see all the things we've talked about now and Donald Trump's return to power? What impact does he have on the threat of nuclear weapons?

Joe: This is perhaps the least talked about, but one of the most important parts of what Trump’s victory will mean.

Trump will accelerate what's called the modernization of US nuclear forces. We are building a whole new generation of bombers, missiles, subs, warheads and production facilities. Joe Biden did nothing to reverse these Trump nuclear policies from his first administration. It was, frankly, a terrible mistake. Biden made no changes in Trump's policy offunded all these at the rate of about $70 billion a year. currently, on nuclear weapons, plus $30 billion on missile defense programs.

Trump is going to put these programs on steroids. He's going to trash what remains of the global arms control regime. His abandonment of American leadership in the world, his pullback from American security guarantees to our allies is almost certain to stimulate discussions among our allies of whether they should go nuclear. Whether they need their own nuclear weapons.

South Korea is a good example 70% of the South Korean people already think they should get nuclear weapons. You see countries like Germany discussing whether they need nuclear weapons. If NATO is going to be abandoned, if the security alliance with the United States is going to crumble, should they get their own nuclear deterrence?

There is also concern among our in our adversaries about whether they need to get nuclear weapons. e were just talking about Iran. What's the approach going to be with the Iran? if you push them — and it looks like the US now sees a chance to overthrow the regime (shades of W Bush’s regime change policy) does that push Iran over the line? Do they conclude that they have to get a nuclear weapon? Is that the only thing that's going to protect them?

So, it’s highly unlikely that Trump is going to bring stability to this region. We're going to see an increase in nuclear instability, at least discussions of new programs increase, increased nuclear weapons, budgets, and new nuclear weapons and maybe a renewal of nuclear tests.

Project 2025 calls for exactly this program. They have a detailed plan for how to do this at both the policy and organizationally levels. One of those points is to get ready to test nuclear weapons again. The US hasn't tested nuclear weapon since 1992.

Nobody's tested a nuclear weapon in the world in this century, except for North Korea. If we test you can bet the China is going to test; Russia will start testing. The arm control regime is going to explode, literally and figuratively.

That’s just in the sort of normal realm of nuclear threats. You always have to add the risk of an unstable, unhinged, unchecked president having control of the nuclear button. Trump alone — without anybody else, without any approval from anyone else — can launch a nuclear weapon whenever he wants for whatever reason he wants. That is a terrifying scenario.

Bill: Plus, there is the possibility, as George Schultz and others have warned, of just an accidental launch, right?

Joe: Right. With all this uncertainty, it's easy to make miscalculations. As Robert McNamara often said, we survived the nuclear age “by luck.” Even with the best leadership in the world, luck played a huge role. We are going to have far from the best leadership in control of our nuclear arsenal for the next four years.

Bill: Joe, I saw one article this week where people were talking about maybe it's a good idea to give Ukraine their nuclear weapons back. I mean, that's how crazy it is. But here's what I don’t understand. What is this new drive for expanding our nuclear weapon stockpile? What's it responding to? What's the threat right now?

Joe: The traditional analysis is that there there are a new threats in the world, so the US has to increase his military capabilities. The mantra from the Department of Defense is the China is “the pacing threat.” China is increasing its nuclear arsenal.. It has a very small force. Used to be about 300 nuclear weapons now it's 500 nuclear weapons. We have 5000. So, our arsenal is ten times larger than China’s.

China may increased to 1000. Okay, so maybe they will get to a fifth of ours. The argument holds that, therefore, we need new weapons to compensate. That's one level of analysis.

But that's not the driver, as far as I'm concerned. The main driver is the $70 billion we spend every year on nuclear weapons. This is a business. People make money producing nuclear weapons. Defense contractors — like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon — they sell nuclear weapons like Kelloggs sells cereal. It's not just Shredded Wheat, you need. You need Mini-Shredded Wheat, Frosted Mini-Shredded Wheat, Blueberry Frosted Mini-Shredded Wheat. You need a nuclear weapon for every conceivable mission.

Which is the main reason why you're seeing under the Trump, under the Project 2025, the call for new kinds of weapons, smaller weapons, bigger weapons, all kinds of weapons.. People are making money off of this. A lot of money. The nuclear weapons budget is probably going to grow to $100 billion as the national defense budget crosses into the $1 trillion a year territory.

It’s money that's driving policy. The rationalization is just a thin strategic veneer over this mountain of contracts.

Bill: So, Joe Cirincione, after all of this talk about all these problems around the world, when you look out at the globe, what do you see? Is there any bright light you can leave us with? What gives you hope?

Joe: Well, I would say that the events of the last week are very encouraging. You saw the people themselves taking power. You saw the South Koreans standing up. You saw that image of a young woman grabbing the gun of a South Korean soldier…

Bill: She was a member of the Parliament…

Joe: Yes. That courage and determination. The desire for freedom. The willingness to take matters into your own hands.

Then, the people of Syria. I mean this is a revolution. We can talk about the individual leaders but this was a mass uprising against a regime that held power for over 50 years and it disappeared in 48 hours. It is just stunning to see those those kinds of victories.

So, yes, these are the kind of things that give me hope.

Bill: Wonderful. Meanwhile, fasten your seat belts. As you pointed out in the beginning, it’s going to be a rocky road ahead. We need all the courage we can muster to survive, that’s for sure.

What a great treat to spend some time with you today. Thank you so much for your time and for all your good work over the years. We'll keep a watch on things, Joe, and be calling on you again soon to help us understand what it's all about.

Joe: My pleasure. And despite what we just talked about: Happy New Year, Bill!

Bill (closing): That's it for today's podcast. A great thank you to Joe. By the way, Joe is a member of Bluesky as I am, too. I encourage you to join us on Bluesky. It's a great new app. A lot of us are there. I'm still on X for a little bit longer, but I don't want anything more to do with Elon Musk. I want to go away from there as soon as I can. So I've signed up for Bluesky with a lot of other journalists and just good thinkers and good citizens. The pro-democracy advocates are joining as part of the resistance and getting away from X that’s become just nothing but a propaganda arm of Donald Trump

You can go to bsky.app. Become a member of Bluesky and you can follow me. I look forward to seeing you there.

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Listen to the entire podcast here, and subscribe to The Bill Press Pod.