Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire, Trump’s First Immigration Moves, Russia’s and Iran’s New Partnership, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Israel and Hamas tried to finalize a long-awaited ceasefire deal. The Trump administration takes office next week poised to act on immigration. And Iran and Russia sign a partnership agreement, intensifying ties. It's January 16th, 2025 in time for The World Next Week.

I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, before we jump into the episode, we want to remind our listeners that this month will be the last for The World Next Week after seventeen years on the podcast lines. Today will be our last regularly scheduled episode, but we have planned a finale next week, a special live show that also features Deborah Amos, a longtime NPR international correspondent, now at Princeton, and also a longtime friend of this show. You can tune in live to watch or listen to Deb, Carla, and me onstage at CFR in New York City on Tuesday, January 21st at 6:30 PM, and even join in on a live Audience Figure of the Week poll. To join, please visit CFR.org/TWNWLive. That's CFR.org/TWNWLive. And if you can't make it, no worries. The episode will be available on our typical audio feeds, including our YouTube channel.

ROBBINS:
Do try to come. It's going to be fun.

MCMAHON:
Please do.

ROBBINS:
It has been a great honor, a constant learning experience and often a blast, although the news is pretty grim, bringing your analysis of what's going to happen each week, and we'd love to hear from you about your favorite TWNW moments through the years. Drop us an email at [email protected] or leave feedback on our iTunes pages or tag CFR_Org on X. And thank you to those who've already written in. We will miss you too.

MCMAHON:
Here, here. We have enjoyed every minute of this and we have a few more minutes here, Carla, so let's get into the news.

ROBBINS:
Bob, let's begin with the breaking news out of the Middle East. As we often say on this podcast, things could change before it's edited. Israel and Hamas may or may not have reached a ceasefire deal that is supposed to bring the first real pause in the fighting in fifteen months. In its first stage, it is supposed to lead to the release of dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Should we expect the deal to go through in the next few days? And does this look to you like the beginning of the end of the war?

MCMAHON:
I'll answer the second question first. I would be very cautious in saying that, and it's the word of many seasoned regional experts, is that we should not be expecting the end of the war, including a couple of our colleagues who just had a media briefing for CFR, Stephen Cook and Elliott Abrams who were saying there are so many pitfalls here. The animosities between the two sides certainly have not subsided, and there's any number of ways in which spoilers could disrupt this deal.

But just to recap, as you indicated, Carla, the deal calls for three phases. The first phase is a six-week ceasefire that is supposed to begin this Sunday. Now, the latest report we heard from Israel is that there will not be a cabinet meeting today, Thursday, as we're taping this podcast, until Israel figures out and clarifies a way of securing its withdrawal from Gaza. It is particularly interested in making sure that it is able to prevent any sort of shipment of arms into Hamas fighters in Gaza as this process takes place. So just one indication of how difficult this deal is.

Hamas is due to release, on the first phase, thirty-three Israeli hostages. This includes women, children, and men over fifty. And as with each phase, it's not completely clear how many of these hostages are alive or how many of these constitute bodies of hostages. This is all going to be part of a very emotionally wrenching process as families find out who survived. And then Israeli troops are supposed to withdraw from densely populated areas in Gaza, if they sort out this security areas that still seem a little bit nebulous. And then humanitarian assistance was supposed to begin two population areas in Gaza with hundreds of trucks entering. There have been repeated reports about the dire situation facing Palestinians in Gaza. Certainly, this time of year, it just makes that even more of a concern. So there's a great deal of interest in making this happen.

I'll just say phase two is supposed to be the stage when remaining living hostages are to be released, including male soldiers and Israeli forces are to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. But again, the Israeli officials, especially if officials from the hardline right government that is governing the country have not agreed to a complete withdrawal until Hamas' military and political capabilities are eliminated. Hamas says it will not hand over last hostages until Israel removes all of its troops. There's this question of what comes first here, which is going to bedevil this process pretty steadily. So bottom line is this Sunday, I think it's going to be a very difficult path to having this actually begin this Sunday.

The only thing I'll add is that we are at this moment because the incoming Trump administration, which has its inauguration on Monday, has made this a priority. President Trump said there'll be hell to pay if this deal is not reached. He has already dispatched his named envoy, Steve Witkoff, to take part in the talks. He's actually in an extraordinary set of collaborations, taking part with the outgoing Biden administration on pressuring the sides. Qatari, Egyptian officials have also been part of these talks. And there is a great deal of pressure brought to bear.
The other thing that's different from when many of the contours of this deal were released many months ago is that Israel's in a bit of a stronger position. It has eliminated some of the top tier threats from Hezbollah. In Syria, situation has changed dramatically. The Assad government no longer rules there. Israel's feeling in a much stronger position and maybe feels like it can now move forward, but there are so many steps still to come.

ROBBINS:
Hell to pay is a really interesting formulation. This deal really doesn't look much different from the one President Biden announced back in May. And yes, this is the result of actions both on the part of the Biden administration, which has been negotiating for months and months and months, the last minute sort of remarkable coordination between the incoming Trump administration people and the outgoing Biden administration people. But when President Trump said hell to pay, I think my first reaction was that it was a warning to Hamas. But I think if you look at it now, in many ways it was a warning to the Israelis, that if they were going to take Trump for granted, Trump said he wanted this war over before he came in.

And that while Netanyahu has certainly always seen, even though Biden has spent decades and decades totally committed to Israel, went racing to Israel right after the October 7th attacks, I think that the signal from Trump has been, don't take for granted that we're going to back you completely if you want to prolong this war. Which then raises this question of are they feeling pressure even now to move forward with this. Or potentially Netanyahu's government could fall over this and what's the message even now from the Trump people? So hell to pay not solely on Hamas.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it's interesting you raised that, Carla. I had the same reaction in terms of how to read that line. And it very much is the case that as we saw in the initial reaction, the incoming president was quick to respond and take credit for the deal on Truth Social. And it has been widely pointed out that he would not only like to have a deal, but also among these hostages being released are Americans who were taken at the time. So he wants to be able to say he was the one who, true to his word, brought peace to one of the most intractable conflicts besetting the world in the last years of the Biden administration, and brought Americans to safety.

What that means for any sort of lasting solution, and this was our colleagues got into in the media briefing today, Carla, this is going to take an incredible investment in time and energy and pressure from the Trump administration and it's not clear at all that it will be invested in such a way. It could just be it's looking for this temporary cessation and then we're back to a situation of a grinding conflict. So we'll have to see where this plays out and how much capital is expended to bring us to some sort of case where there is a pause and then there's some sort of movement towards a realistic future for governing Gaza that allows for people to put their lives together and the Israelis to be satisfied that Hamas is not going to be the power broker that it has been for decades.

ROBBINS:
In a speech this week, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said, "Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost," which is a pretty grim assessment. This speech itself was pretty... It was as frank as you could possibly get. Of course, he can afford to now that he's leaving, about exactly how tough a challenge lies ahead. Phase three is a comprehensive reconstruction plan for Gaza. And we haven't had any idea at all from the Israelis about what the governance is, no commitment to a two-state solution, no commitment to what the Palestinian governance would be in Gaza itself.

And Hamas has not... It's been certainly hugely weak and the Israelis are in a much stronger situation across the region itself. And the Israelis themselves can't agree even within not just the hard right versus Netanyahu between the military leadership in Israel, the IDF leadership, which does not want to occupy Gaza indefinitely. And with Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost, there is a huge, huge challenge there. I don't think the IDF wants to occupy Gaza and have to deal with that.

So probably not the beginning of the end. Many governance challenges. And if Netanyahu can't agree within his own government, can't agree with the IDF, there are many, many challenges they have to figure out. And Gaza's really not a prize for anybody.

MCMAHON:
No. One of the things you touched on is going to be extremely interesting to watch in the period forward, which is aside from whatever the Trump administration decides to do is how are the Israelis themselves going to sort out their contradictions and conflicts here? Because as you say, there are some on the extremist right that would like to pursue the scorched earth endgame in Gaza and then set up Israeli settlements there and once and for all make it a place to expand settlement activity. And there are many others though, as you say, who are aghast at the idea of this sort of semi-permanent IDF presence in that region.

ROBBINS:
Including the Israeli defense leadership.

MCMAHON:
Right. And you also have another party we don't talk about a lot, which are Arab leaders, the Abraham Accords, which is one of the signature accomplishments of the first Trump administration in terms of a rapprochement between Israel and Arab states and potentially Israeli-Saudi agreement going forward. Are they going to be invested in any sort of process that allows Israelis to occupy this area and take these steps? Very doubtful. So there's so many elements that need to play out here. Again, do we have some sort of short-term respite, which is what I think people are desperate for, for humanitarian, if not other reasons, maybe. But I think you don't know.

ROBBINS:
And release of the hostages.

MCMAHON:
And release of the hostages, yes. I mean humanitarian and human rights and the whole element there of just sort of real human tragedy that has unfolded ever since the October 7th attacks, which again, were the worst attacks on Israel in its history.

Carla, I want to turn now to the epic political transition that we alluded to coming into the United States. On Monday, President-Elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for his second term, only the second U.S. President to not have consecutive terms, after Grover Cleveland Alexander. Mr. Trump has made a lot of day one pledges during the campaign. Immigration is certainly at the top of those pledges. What should we expect in these coming days? Can the president actually make good on some of these pledges, including what continues to be promised as the largest deportation operation in history? And this is referring to undocumented migrants.

ROBBINS:
Promised, threatened, President Trump has made a lot of day one pledges, solving the war in Ukraine, all sorts of things. Although that one has now turned into a hundred days, but conversation for another day. But a lot of those pledges have been about immigration. He's vowed more than thirty times to close the southern border, more than two dozen times to begin this largest deportation operation in history. He's also pledged to restore and expand the first term travel ban on people from some Muslim majority countries, to end birthright citizenship. Never mind that that's in the Constitution. To suspend refugee admissions into the country, something he did not do during his first term.
So lots of pledges on immigration, lots of day one pledges on immigration. Can he do what he has vowed to do? He has always had a maximalist view of presidential powers and he's certainly going to try to use executive orders to make good on those. These are really important political commitments for him. He campaigned really heavily on this, so buckle up.

But he's also going to face considerable obstacles. President Biden frustrated, at least temporarily, part of this by extending TPS, this temporary protected status for some nine hundred thousand people from Ukraine, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Sudan, at least until October 2026. And I think that's going to be very hard to overturn. If you recall in the first Trump administration, Mr. Trump ended TPS for four hundred thousand people from El Salvador and a few other countries and the courts didn't let him do it. So maybe that's one thing that has been blocked.
And there are just really some basic resource challenges to this largest deportation in history pledge. There are just not enough immigration agents to track people down, arrest them, not enough judges to review their cases. And then there's the simple question of infrastructure. We remember the horrors of the kids in cages and all of that. Public outcry is going to be enormous, but they also just don't have the resources to do a lot of it.

There are an estimated eleven million undocumented immigrants in the country and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deportation Branch only has six thousand agents and forty-one thousand detention beds. And Trump's chosen border czar, Tom Homan, already has been trying to tamp down enthusiasms on the Hill among Republicans. And he's just warning them that ICE doesn't have the resources. He's asking for money when he does this. And then you, of course, have the whole question of the continuing resolution and the budget and where's the money going to come from.

So I think the early plan is to target, there's about 1.4 million people in the U.S. with final immigration orders. A lot of this has already been resolved and they're going to go after them and that's an enormous number and a lot of families wrenched apart and that, but it's not this largest deportation in history vow. But the president's committed to it and they're going to look at other ways. Trump said in November that he would get around some of these resource questions by using the U.S. military. And DoD has traditionally, they provided limited operational support at the border. You remember them? Were they going to finish the wall? They've certainly used surveillance planes. They've moved border agents around in helicopters itself. But we have this-

MCMAHON:
And there've been some National Guard deployments.

ROBBINS:
Certainly, there's that. But using federal troops, there's this whole question of Posse Comitatus. National Guard's not subject to that, but to do that, he's going to have to consider something like the Insurrection Act. And the military's not going to be happy with this. It's going to be huge politicization of the military.

So how much he's committed to this politically, how much he's committed to this personally, hugely divisive potentially there. But I think the bottom line is that they don't have the resources to do a lot of the commitments that he's made and he's going to have to make some pretty enormous divisive political actions if he wants to get the military involved to pull this off.

And then finally, there are the courts who are going to get in his way, one hopes. I'm making an editorial decision here. Certainly to end birthright citizenship, he can't do this through executive action. He may sign an executive order, but it is enshrined, as I said, in the U.S. Constitution through the 14th amendment. He could make progress legislatively, but not on that. We are seeing motion that's already passed through the House and the Senate has this Laken Riley Bill. And the Democrats are allowing it to move forward, at least for debate in the Senate. And this would require immigration agents to take into custody people who've been arrested for minor crimes recently, burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. And it would mean that someone could be deported before they were even convicted or even getting the chance to defend themselves in court. And that too could really break up families.
So expect a lot of disruption, expect a lot of political commitments there. And how far he's willing to go from mobilizing the military to tossing people out who haven't been brought to trial, we'll just have to see.

MCMAHON:
Carla, they certainly feel like they had a mandate from the way they campaigned and the election results and some of the exit polling we saw from voters about getting the border situation sorted out. At the same time, experts have pointed out that the flow across the border has slowed down appreciably and certainly in the last year or so. And that Biden administration itself has already moved vigorously against anybody certainly found guilty of criminal activity. But as you say, this legislation could move that further along.

We saw in the first Trump administration, one of the first things they did was this so-called Muslim ban and certain people originating from certain states were banned and that faced a great deal of pushback, especially in the courts. There was also people showing up at airports and demonstrating. I think probably we should suspect something along those lines, wouldn't you say? Or at least maybe using health as a justification, healthcare concerns as a justification. Maybe they'll claim that the fentanyl influx is too much of a threat, they have to do something. I would suspect they've learned some things from the first time around in the way they've staffed up at least to try to move, if not be able to sustain, at least to move in that direction.

ROBBINS:
We'll have to see how the politics of this plays out. President Trump campaigned heavily on this. Polling has shown immigration is top of people's concerns, even though the numbers, as you said, are down. At the same time, when it is your neighbor, someone you work with, if people really are using either National Guard or, under the Insurrection Act, U.S. troops to kick down doors and to break up families, people with kids who are American citizens, if we really do see those images, I don't know if Americans are really that ungenerous. I'm not sure that that concern about... It's one thing to talk about illegal immigration, it's another thing to talk about your neighbors and I still believe that there's a fundamental generosity to the American spirit and the people may at some point remember that we really are a nation of immigrants, so we will see.

Using American troops for that, I think that we're going to see a lot of generals who are going to be really unhappy about mobilizing troops that way and politicizing the U.S. force. I think there are some really basic political and moral questions that are going to be raised for it, and there are also economic questions that are going to be raised for it.

MCMAHON:
I was just going to say, Carla, there's a reason why that eleven million figure you cited, that figure's been pretty constant for, I would say almost fifteen years now, and there's a reason for that, maybe even longer. Because there are industries that support them and want that labor and we're talking about agriculture certainly, construction.

ROBBINS:
Meatpacking,

MCMAHON:
Look at the construction needs that California's going to have soon enough after tries to rebuild from the wildfires. Meatpacking, as you said, hospitality industries. These are areas that are certainly going and one suspects will speak up if they're finding an important source of labor to go away.

ROBBINS:
And it's not fair to people who are quote undocumented workers. These people pay taxes and pay in and don't get the benefits of it, from social security and all of that. It would be good to regularize these people so that they contribute enormously and that don't get the benefit of it. I'm not saying, "Yay, let's exploit these people," but yes, there are industries that are going to certainly say, "If there's no one to pick my crops, if there's no one to work on construction, if there's no one to cut meat in meatpacking industry," we're going to see the supply chain implications of this as well.

MCMAHON:
Well, and inflationary pressures, that's another cardinal rule that they would be violating because they campaigned on inflation and inflation, according to the latest figures, is still sort of stubbornly not where it should be and that would be a great deal of concern. So yeah, a great deal of pressure, emotionally fraught issue. It's going to be really, really interesting to see that among many, many other issues.

ROBBINS:
So we will see whether, are they symbolic moves of sending the National Guard to complete the fence, tossing people out who already have gone through the courts and already have these orders, doing that so the president is fulfilling these commitments that he's made dozens and dozens of time. Or are they really going to go through and mobilize federal troops and start kicking down doors and pulling out, breaking up families and putting people in cages again. We will just have to see what they do. Certainly, there are a lot of hardliners in the administration like Stephen Miller who want to see that, and there are people on the Hill who are hardliners and we will see where the American public, what the traffic will bear and also we'll see how much court shopping they do.

There are judges out there who are willing to challenge this notion of birthright citizenship as well. So there's going to be a lot of challenges to how Americans define themselves in the months to come. And there's that talk about that mandate, but I think that mandate, I think a lot of people have very different definitions of what they mean by undocumented and quote illegal immigration.

Bob, let's move on to a very different topic, the ever evolving partnership between U.S. adversaries Iran and Russia. On Friday of this week, January 17th, Iranian president, this new reformist president, Masoud Pezeshkian, is going to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss their deepening economic and security cooperation, and they're going to sign this treaty on comprehensive strategic partnership.

Now, they're part of this axis of autocracies. The Iranians have been supporting the Russians in Ukraine. But this is a relationship that goes back quite a long time. The Russians, I remember, helped the Iranians basically resume their nuclear program, rebuild the Bushehr plant. At the same time, the Russians were part of the Iranian nuclear deal. They sort of played different sides of all of this. So how seriously do we take this pact and particularly at a period of time in which Iran has to make some pretty big choices about how it's going to move forward in a weakened state?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think it's a very serious development, but it's worth pointing out some things that are maybe not going to happen. Some of the reporting just today confirmed what had been expected, which is Iran has been saying that, "Well, yes, this is an important agreement, but it will not include a mutual defense clause," which Moscow had signed, you might recall earlier this year with North Korea, has also done so with Belarus. Iran is not interested in binding itself into that kind of a pact with Russia, but it sees a great deal of other common cause areas that it wants to get involved with Russia. And it certainly has a military security relationship with Russia.

We should note that that was cultivated and advanced in large part during their joint effort to help the Assad regime in Syria, and they both were responsible for basically rescuing that regime, at least keeping it afloat for a good ten years when it was facing big troubles during the civil war there. Both countries were seen as some of the biggest outside losers in the fall of Assad, in that Iran basically just lost an advanced beachhead for projecting influence through Lebanon to Hezbollah and onward. And Russia is still kind of scrambling to play the sides and whoever emerges as a sustainable power in Syria and whether or not it can keep any sort of military presence there.

But they both forged a relationship in terms of cooperability. Iran's drones that has been selling Russia are a crucial part of the Russian war effort in Ukraine. These Shahed drones, just sort of a game changer for a while. The Ukrainians couldn't believe it when they first started seeing these things coming down on them, and they've been kind of reverse engineering them in some way to figure out how they work. Ukrainians themselves have been incredible manufacturers themselves of drones, and that's been a big part of that war. And that relationship is only getting more intense between Iran and Russia.

They're holding some joint military exercises in recent years, that's expected to continue, probably some broadening of intelligence ties as well. But economically is the area where the Iranians would like to focus on what they see as a big part of this deal. First of all, we should note these are two of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world right now, largely driven by U.S. efforts, Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, Iran going back decades for all sorts of reasons, terrorism and otherwise terrorism support.

Among other things, it's worth noting, in addition to collaborating on their fossil fuel sectors, these are both major producers of oil and natural gas, that face sanctions. So maybe generating some shadow fleet capabilities that will expand on what they currently are doing. Both countries are able to trade even though they're under heavy sanction.
But there's an international, what's called the International North-South Transport Corridor that would connect Russia to Iran. It would also link India to the Persian Gulf as well, in a route capable of circumventing western sanctions and lowering some trade costs. It's not an easily done deal, shall we say, but it is something that has attracted a great deal of interest.

So they'll have this meeting in Moscow tomorrow as scheduled, handshake between Pezeshkian and Putin. It allows both countries to say, "We are not flustered by these sanctions and by these attempts to isolate us. On the contrary, we are ready to counter and be part of what you refer to this vigorous," although not self-named, "but this vigorous axis of autocracy that stands to try to come up with a different approach to organizing the world and to countering the Western narrative," at a time when there's a lot of transition going on obviously. It's going to be very interesting to see how the Trump administration responds to this partnership deal as well.

ROBBINS:
Well, Pezeshkian has a pretty big question that he's going to have to contemplate soon, which is he going to move ahead with his nuclear program or is he going to try to offer a deal to President Trump? President Trump, of course, in the first term, had this maximal pressure campaign on Iran. At the same time, with North Korea, he would try to... Beautiful letters.

So we haven't heard much about how the incoming Trump administration is going to deal with the axis of autocracy and Pezeshkian is supposedly a reformer. And given the way the Russians bailed on Assad, you would think that Pezeshkian might want to be playing all sides himself. So I'm wondering why didn't he want a mutual defense pact with the Russians? Do you think it's because it's not worth the paper it's written on?

MCMAHON:
It's a very good question. All I can say is that since the early days when the Russians were signaling this could be possible, the Iranians were just really keen on not getting drawn in in that way. I do think there's some truth to what I think you're alluding to, Carla, which is that having such a pact would seem to really complicate Iran's ability to enter into some sort of constructive talks with the U.S. on at least freezing its nuclear program as is.

It's worth pointing out, first of all, Pezeshkian, as president, does not hold the power that President Putin holds in Russia. Iran has a supreme leader, albeit aging, Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the ultimate authority on all power issues and has certain security agencies that report directly to him. Pezeshkian is head of government, he has some clout and he can generate some initiatives. He campaigned on and as the quote unquote sole kind of moderate, using that term very loosely, candidate in the recent Iranian presidential campaign, Pezeshkian emerged as the one that the country could get around and has said that the nuclear deal, which is reviving and is seen as a way of opening up Iran and freeing up some of the sanctions. And Trump has also not dismissed talk of some potential negotiations with Iran. Again, he likes to fashion himself a deal maker and would be a real coup if he could come up with a deal with Iran that is seen as being more acceptable than what was known as the JCPOA under the Obama administration.
We'll have to see, but back to your original question, I think potentially Iranian power brokers do not want to bind the country to Russia. And you alluded to their long relationship. I do think it goes back and it's very complicated and there is some wariness there too, and I don't think they fully trust the Russians. So I just think they're not ready for such a relationship and have not been keen to enter in those types of relationships in any event.

ROBBINS:
I remember, in the way back years, in the early days when we weren't exactly sure what the Iranians were doing with their nuclear program, and I remember being in Russia and the Russians were giving the... There were Russian engineers in Iran, and they had had this Bushehr nuclear power plant and they were helping them rebuild it. And I remember saying to people at the Russian Nuclear Power Ministry, which needed any work it could, the Russians were desperate for foreign currency in those days. And I said to them, "You guys are right next door. Don't you sort of worry about a nuclear armed Iran?"

And they had this incredibly sort of patronizing, almost racist attitude, like, "We could give them all the help in the world and they'd never be able to develop a nuclear weapon." They had this imperial attitude toward Iran and they'd never catch up to us. And I think it's sort of, maybe that's part of it too. The Iranians are very proud of their long proud history as well, looking askance. And the Russians bailing on Assad, as much as we talk about the way we bailed on Afghanistan, that has got to have had a pretty searing message there for countries that are for that axis of autocracies.

MCMAHON:
No, and it wasn't too long ago that Russia, in its role on the Security Council, took part in sanctions against Iran's nuclear program and then took part in those talks she referenced about requiring Iran to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and so forth. So yeah, there's a bit of that Russian ability to play those sides and that sits with some Iranian officials who are in positions of power.

Carla, we've talked our way in once again to the Audience Figure of the Week portion of the podcast. One more ding for the memories.

ROBBINS:
We will always have that ding.

MCMAHON:
We will always have that ding, Carla. This is a figure, of course, that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. Carla, the audience this week selected, intriguingly, thousands protest government in Serbia. So we've talked about Georgia, we've talked about Romania and other countries in this-

ROBBINS:
Moldova.

MCMAHON:
And Moldova in the eastern sphere, the former communist sphere of Europe. But what's happening on the streets of Belgrade?

ROBBINS:
Serbian students have been protesting for weeks, after a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in the northern city of Novi Sad on the beginning of November and killing fifteen people. And they originally were calling out what they saw as enormous amount of government corruption in this renovation project at the station, which interestingly was part of a larger Chinese modernization of Serbia's railway system.

But these protests quickly have turned into a broader condemnation of President Aleksandar Vučić's autocratic rule. Vučić holds the presidency, and that's officially only a ceremonial role. But he controls everything in Serbia, he controls the intelligence agencies, the judiciary, the country's largest media, has the power to award major state contracts. And in November, Amnesty International reported the Serbian activists and journalists had government spyware installed on their phones. Since the protests began, pro-government media has published personal information about the protesters. This guy is into everything and they're out there saying that their civil liberties are hugely curtailed. And this is the pretty much the biggest challenge to his rule in more than a decade.
His response to the protesters is this utterly dismissive quote. He said, "They live in their own world, they're not my problem, but I blame those who were pushing them about this. I mean their professors." As a professor, I think if only I had said power.

He's also accused protesting students of receiving money from the West. And that also is quite intriguing because Vučić is a guy who has managed to win the backing of both the West and of Russia. We've also, as you said, talked about all these different countries in which the Russians have been trying to push the Moldovans away from the EU and push Romania, and have been pushing all sorts of places around.

And he seems to be the one who walks through fire on all sides. He claims Serbia's future is with the EU. He signed several declarations opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But he also refuses to impose sanctions on Russia. And so far, even though he has thousands of protesters on the street, he's not getting criticized from either Moscow or Brussels or Washington. If these protesters and these students are going to try and bring this guy down, they're not getting a lot of outside help.

MCMAHON:
Of all the developments in that part of the world, this one's especially interesting because the so-called Balkan powder keg has been attracting a lot of attention recently. Not just Serbia, but by extension Serbs who live in Kosovo, which has not yet been recognized by Serbia, although it has been by a lot of other countries, as well as ongoing concerns in Bosnia where there are ethnic Serbs. This is not Milošević-era Serbia, this is a different Serbia. And as you say, the leader who represents a certain political stripe in that country that's trying to navigate these two worlds, they very much want to keep ties with Russia, but at arm's length. And they very much want the EU resources and largesse that they see other countries in the region have.

And it's a real test. Maybe it's because these other sides both want to have a stake there, they are also not... They don't want to tip the scales too heavily. So it is yet another flashpoint that is going to play out in the year ahead. And we don't know whether these protests are going to get further legs because I think that's going to then force the issue. Because ultimately, we saw in Georgia, countries in the EU and other places lining up behind the opposition figures and the now former president of Georgia. But in Serbia, it's not clear.

ROBBINS:
Well, so far, he seems to have lots of friends out there except for his own people.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, for one more time, that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. The World Economic Forum hosts its annual conference in Davos, and once again, neither of us received our invitations in time to go.

ROBBINS:
Once the podcast is over with, I'm sure they'll be sending us invitations.

MCMAHON:
Looking forward to that opening up. And the Equal Marriage Act takes effect in Thailand, officially legalizing same-sex marriage in that country.

ROBBINS:
The publications mentioned in this episode as well as the 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 Justin Schuster, Molly McAnany, and Marcus Zakaria, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. And special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson for her fabulous research assistance. Our theme music is provided by, he's everywhere, Marcus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long and we will see you next week.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon also saying so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, and we'll see you at our live and final show next Tuesday at 6:30 PM.

ROBBINS:
I like the word finale.