Rational Security: The Closing the Clubhouse Edition

Published: May 23, 2024, 4 p.m.

This week, Alan, Quinta, and Scott were joined by Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes, fresh from his New York rumspringa, to talk over the week\u2019s big national security news, including:

  • \u201cYou Don\u2019t Have to Go Home, But You Can\u2019t Stay Here.\u201d That\u2019s the message that will soon be going out to those Lawfare team members that have been camping out at our temporary Manhattan studio, as, after weeks of proceedings, it is officially closing time for former President Donald Trump\u2019s criminal prosecution in New York. How has the trial proceeded? And what have we learned up to this point, before the verdict comes in?
  • \u201cSpinning the Wheels of Justice.\u201d The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has made a landmark request for arrest warrants targeting Hamas\u2019s three most senior officials as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds that they have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Is this a step towards justice? Or towards an end to the conflict?
  • \u201cTake a Hayek.\u201d The Biden administration has now followed in the Trump administration\u2019s footsteps in imposing major tariffs on imports from China, and both parties seem comfortable with a level of trade protectionism that would have been inconceivable just a few decades ago. Is this the end of the neoliberal experiment? And what seems set to come about in its wake?

For object lessons, Alan recommended pianist V\xedkingur \xd3lafsson\u2019s reworking of Bach's Organ Sonata No. 4. Quinta shouted out two cartoonists illustrating the Trump trial: Liza Donnelly for the New Yorker and Josh Cochran for the New York Times. Scott recommended the new book forthcoming from friend-of-the-pod Michel Paradis, a new portrait of Dwight Eisenhower in the lead-up to D-Day entitled \u201cThe Light of Battle.\u201d And Ben gave an unlikely endorsement to one of Trump\u2019s legal counsel, the somewhat vampiric but nonetheless effective Emil Bove.

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