Transcript

What impact will US and Israeli air strikes on Iran have on global non-proliferation efforts? 
How is Trump reshaping the US's leadership in nuclear non-proliferation? 
Could shifting international security dynamics encourage countries like South Korea or Japan to pursue nuclear weapons programs? 

In this episode, Michael Cohen and Maria Rost Rublee join David Andrews to discuss how recent strikes on Iran have brought nuclear non-proliferation back to the forefront of international policy debates. 

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Maria Rost Rublee

Nuclear experts are pretty much in agreement that you cannot bomb a country out of its capability of developing nuclear weapons.

Michael Cohen

What better way to motivate a state to get nuclear weapons than to attack that state?

National Security Podcast

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific produced by the ANU National Security College.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Manager for Policy and Engagement at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. This week, I'm joined by Michael Cohen and Maria Rost Rublee to address the challenge facing the global community with regard to nuclear non-proliferation.

Michael Cohen is the Academic Director and an Associate Professor at NSC. He was a Partners Across the Globe Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome from September 22 through January 2023, and previously held academic appointments at Macquarie University and the University of Southern Denmark. Maria Rost Rublee is Professor of International Relations at the University of Melbourne. She's President of Women and International Security Australia, and Executive Committee Member of Women in Nuclear Australia, and in 2022 was named to the US National Security and Foreign Affairs Leadership List by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Mike, Maria, welcome to the National Security Podcast.

Michael Cohen

Great to be here.

Maria Rost Rublee

Thank you.

David Andrews

Well, obviously nuclear weapons and the resulting desire for nuclear non-proliferation have, of course, been hugely consequential dimensions of international security for many decades now. But in the recent weeks with the Israeli and US strikes on Iran, having brought these back to the forefront of policy debates, we thought this was a good time to talk specifically around the non-proliferation dimensions of international security. so hence we have both of you as our distinguished experts to talk to us today on the podcast.

To help maybe set the scene a little bit Maria, if I can start with you, could you articulate for our listeners the current state of the global nucleon proliferation regime? I understand there's lots of different dimensions to it and I think it might just help to understand just how big and how deep this system is.

Maria Rost Rublee

Yes, certainly. A lot of listers might have heard the phrase that, know, Iran is cheating. There was this report that said that they were enriching uranium. And that gives a little bit of a glimpse into what happens in the nuclear non-proliferation regime. It's actually a very large regime. The tree that was referenced in terms of cheating in Iran is the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and it entered into force in 1970. So it's been around quite a long time, more than 50 years. it's the cornerstone of this larger regime, but it's only one piece of it. There are multiple formal elements to this treaty. We have multiple multilateral treaties and agreements.

For example, the entire populated area of the Southern Hemisphere is covered in nuclear weapons free zones. And those are formal treaties. We had the Outer Space Treaty that prohibits, thank goodness, nuclear weapons in space. We have the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is the latest newcomer and a treaty that the Australian government did not support when it was being negotiated and is not a member of. Then there's lots of bilateral agreements. We also have the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is... an agency that performs inspections to make sure that countries aren't cheating on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, as well as bilateral agreements that countries, any country with civilian nuclear technology will have a bilateral agreement with the IAEA. so inspections take place. You can tell there's a lot that goes on here.

In addition to these formal elements, we have informal elements. We have informal institutions and groupings such as the nuclear suppliers group. This is basically a bunch of countries that got together and said, look, if a country wants to develop nuclear weapons on the sly, or if they're trying to cheat, there are certain things that it'll need. And so let's get together and make sure it's really hard for them to be able to do so.

Australia has engaged with the NSG in recent years because India wanted to be able to buy uranium on the open market, but the NSG had prohibited it. And so the US basically facilitated a waiver for India through the Nuclear Suppliers Group. That's just one of many. I could give you for each of these examples, 15.

And then we had the norms that support the regime. Everything from the norm of non-use, the nuclear taboo, which has been talked about a lot. People say that we're concerned about Putin using nuclear weapons related to Ukraine. And the nuclear taboo is this robust idea that it's immoral to use nuclear weapons because of what happens. It's not just a military weapon, but it also changes the environment and changes people because of what it does to DNA, the radioactivity. We have norms about restricting uranium enrichment. And this is a norm that has been coming up with Iran.

So that's just a very brief, it may not sound brief, that's just a very brief overview of the big structures in the non-proliferation regime and the cornerstone of which is the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

David Andrews

Thank you for that. think given the size and the number of pieces of it is whether that's treaties or institutions and norms, as you say, there's much more that could be said. And I think possible that listeners will have least be familiar with things like the IAEA, whether that's through weapons inspections internationally or indeed through AUKUS where there's been a sort of relationship between the two parties there in relation to Australia taking on highly enriched uranium through the engine cores of AUKUS submarines, for example.

Mike turning to you, could you articulate for us the role that the US has traditionally played in this system? Cause I think we all understand of course that when we talk about the rules based international order or the broader liberal international order, that this is one that the US has been quite central to in forming and refining over many years now. But how does that play in the nuclear space? So have they kind of been the cornerstone of this system or is it more internationalized?

Michael Cohen

Yes, thanks David. The US role has loomed incredibly large. as early as the 1960s, US President Kennedy famously worried that by our time, there'd be 30, 40, 50 nuclear powers maybe. And indeed there are several dozen states that could go down the road to develop nuclear weapons and associated delivery vehicles at fairly short notice. And so it really is noteworthy that now we still only have nine nuclear powers were a rant across that threshold, it would be number 10. the ones South Africa also developed nuclear weapons but did away with them. that's noteworthy because it says that the only state to have done away with nuclear weapons did so after regime change. But regarding the role of the US, the US has played a very forceful role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons far earlier than many realize.

So yes, you have the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as Maria outlined in 1968 and then ratified in 1970. But from the very early Cold War, the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the US is working very, very hard to stop the spread of nuclear weapons because the US is worried, correctly, that if other states were to get them, it would impact the US's ability to project power and have its way in an early and emerging Cold War. And so things like ⁓ Almost every state that has got nuclear weapons, there were serious deliberations at high level in the US government regarding whether to attack these facilities. That's from debates responding to the Soviet nuclear program in the late 1940s, all the way down to debates in the Clinton administration in the 1990s and since then regarding how to respond to the North Korean nuclear threat.

And in addition to that, assurances, alliances, in some cases, forward deployed nuclear weapons – most maybe most famously in the Indo-Pacific on South Korea that were tactical nuclear weapons that left in 1991. But the US has loomed incredibly large in working towards the spread of nuclear weapons just because stopping the spread of nuclear weapons has served US interests so large. It has served other states' interests, but for the most part, insofar as those states have tended to have less… be less able to project military power over the world, they've been less interested in stopping that spread.

And so the big question now is with Trump having his second ⁓ term in office and a lot of science suggesting that he's less interested in a lot of these things that have been the bedrock of US ⁓ foreign policy and grand strategy for decades, whether we might see a crumbling of the nuclear non-proliferation edifice that many have been worrying about for some time.

David Andrews

Do you have a sense of how this framework of the regime, how it's perceived by other states? So obviously, as Mike said, there's only nine nuclear powers. It's quite concentrated. But we talk about countries like China or Russia, maybe not necessarily being fully satisfied with the broader international order.

And you mentioned India before as country that was, you know, had to sort of have this certain exemption provided to acquire material. And so it may not necessarily be thrilled with the way things are structured at the moment. Is there a sense that there's satisfaction across the world with the way the order is operating and the way this regime is operating, or is it actually maybe a bit more tense than that?

Maria Rost Rublee

There's a lot of discontent with the nuclear non-proliferation regime, but you know, positions have changed over time. So the Soviet Union and the US worked together to negotiate the NPT. In fact, they created the first draft of the NPT together. And it was states like Germany and Japan that said, whoa, you've got to add some things in here to make sure that we have the right for civilian to use civilian nuclear technology. You know, after the fall of the Soviet Union, you know, Russia has become incredibly reliant on its nuclear weapons for defence. And so that's why, you know, there's now a lot of talk about, you know, potential ⁓ escalate to deescalate strategy, you know, on Russia's side, that they would use nuclear weapons first in a conflict to get the other side to back down, to say, to say, we're taking, you know, you need to take this seriously.

And so, You know, in general, Russia tends to, you know, not make a lot of waves with, you know, the NPT, but is generally has backed away from a lot of the associated parts of it, such as, you know, the norm of non-use. know, Putin's made lots of threats of nuclear use and has backed away from arms control agreements, et cetera.

China is very interesting because they're a country that used to be a spoiler in the system and now they tend to be more of a supporter. know, China was a country that joined later and joined the NPT later and was not an enthusiastic participant. many people believe that they helped Pakistan with their weapons designs. The evidence is pretty clear, I think, that they did that. so, you know, helping to spread nuclear weapons, which is, you know, sort of anathema to the heart of the NPT. But in more recent years, China has become, ⁓ you know, taken up the mantle of non-proliferation more seriously. And, you know, the question about their relationship with North Korea, you know, it's very hard and we can talk a lot about North Korea, but it's very hard to know exactly what's been going on. from reports I've seen, China is very unhappy with North Korea's nuclear behaviour and they would much prefer if North Korea, you know, backed up and rejoined the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state. Of course, that's not going to happen. But in general, then we have states in the Global South, the Non-Aligned Movement, who feel that the NPT was a bargain. If we agree not to acquire nuclear weapons, then you promise to work on disarmament. And they see it as a half successful treaty, that non-proliferation has been pretty know, well managed that we only have four new nuclear weapon states outside of the NPT framework, because five states are allowed to have nuclear weapons under that framework. And yet nuclear weapon states have not worked very hard in disarmament. And in fact, they're, you know, all now working on nuclear modernization, nuclear expansion and more.

Then we have a country like India, which never joined the NPT. So India and Israel never joined the NPT. And India has always maintained that it's discriminatory treaty and has, along with Pakistan not joining, has maintained that they would support disarmament, but only in a sense where you didn't have this discriminatory nature where India is not one of the five nuclear weapon states and they have no intention of joining this regime when they could not join as a nuclear weapon state. So there's actually quite a bit of tension in the system.

And this is just only, I'm just talking about sort of the key cornerstone, the NPT, you know, the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which entered into force in 2021, is a huge sign of the tension. And again, this relates to the lack of progress on disarmament that, you know, many states around the world say, you know, we've done our part, you haven't done your part. And this tension is not going away and if anything it's getting stronger.

David Andrews

Just very briefly on the TPNW, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Weapons, is my recollection correct that no nuclear weapons state or their ally is a member of that at the moment? It's all states that aren't nuclear weapons affiliated, you might say. Is that correct?

Maria Rost Rublee

Yes, it is. think the Philippines, I think the Philippines may have signed it, but otherwise, yes, that is the case. And in fact, when the TPNW was being negotiated in the UN General Assembly, the US and some of its allies, including Australia, protested outside of the UN building. They were mocked a bit. You're saying that you're not taking our security concerns seriously when the US has the biggest…defence budget in the world. And so that was actually seen by a lot of states who support the TPNW as just showing the depth of the problem. But you're right that US allies are not members and there have been backdoor discussions or backdoor reporting about pressure being put on US allies not to sign or ratify our participation negotiations or even go to TPNW meetings as observers.

But, and I think that is the case and we do have some evidence for that. But it's also, you know, some of these states are like, we rely on the US for nuclear deterrence and, you know, we're, you know, we believe in disarmament, but the TPNW goes too far too soon.

David Andrews

Mike, to come back to you now, as I think we probably move towards some of the, let's say, kinetic dimensions of this conversation, talking about the strikes on Iran and the consequences there. We talked about Middle East security in broad terms on the podcast a few weeks ago, but I thought it's a good chance to talk about this specific dimension. Can you elaborate for us, in your opinion, what impact, be that positive or negative, have these strikes had on nuclear non-proliferation in any tangible sense? Have they furthered that objective? Have they actually made it worse because it's encouraging Iran to pursue a breakout? What's the status that we're seeing now?

Michael Cohen

I think they've done both. They've both pegged Iran's nuclear capabilities back a little way. How far it's unclear. Have they totally wiped out Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities? It's hard to say. Have they done no damage at all? Well, they've obviously done some damage. Exactly how far Iran has been put out ⁓ is hard to say, especially when US intelligence agencies themselves disagree. At the same time, it's almost certainly incentivized Iran to double down on its nuclear program. After all, what better way to motivate a state to get nuclear weapons than to attack that state? And that would be the case really, whether that was Iran or North Korea or anyone else. Israel may have, you look at Israel's history, there's Saddam's nuclear facility that the Israelis destroyed, I think in the early 80s, 81, Osirak, I think, from memory. That was above ground and was a little bit easier. There was a facility in the Syrian desert, I think that the Israelis also took out, was it 2007, 2008, maybe 2011, again, above ground. Yes, I realize that they perceive much greater threat from Iran than we do in Australia, but it could be that Israel's perceived success in taking out those two facilities has partly emboldened them to believe that Iran's nuclear capabilities can be similarly pegged back.

David Andrews

What's your initial take, Maria? How have you seen this all unfolding?

Maria Rost Rublee

Yes, I mean, look, I have to say nuclear experts are pretty much in agreement that you cannot bomb a country out of its capability of developing nuclear weapons unless you're going to bomb all the universities and all their industrial capability. And in fact, after the attack on Assyria, an Israel general was bragging that we put the nuclear genie back in the bottle for Iraq. And then, of course, we know what happened after the first Gulf War.

We saw that Iraq actually just put it underground and actually came pretty close. And so, look, I am in no way a proponent or supporter of Iranians nuclear weapons program and their civilian nuclear program. They have cheated, we know that. And the Iranian regime has done horrific things to its own people, let alone its support of terrorist groups. ⁓ But attacking those facilities is not going to stop the program. I mean, from what I've seen, you know, they likely moved a lot of the advanced centrifuges out as well as some of the enriched gases. Yes, they did kill a lot of scientists and that's more of a setback than anything. And unless we have some sort of negotiated agreement or regime change, where you have a regime that doesn't want nuclear weapons, and that's a big if because, you know, depending on if there was regime change, you know, who comes in power and, you know, how they'll feel about Israel and the state of the Middle East, these types of things can be developed. Iran can build its own centrifuges. This isn't a country like Libya or Syria where they're just buying things and people are putting them together. This is a country that has done it on their own. so, yeah, I think it has set back the program in the short term. But unless we figure something out for the long term, this is just going to drive it underground even more.

National Security Podcast

We'll be right back.

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David Andrews

Michael, a of your work in the past is focused on the Korean peninsula. And obviously there's been a long history of the US and North Korea when it comes to prevent the acquisition and development of nuclear weapons by the North Koreans. It's your sense that the actions they've taken here in support of Israel, have they been, or maybe how have they been informed by that experience with North Korea? Are they related or should they be best viewed as quite distinct scenarios?

Michael Cohen

Yeah, I mean, that question ultimately hinges on what President Trump learned about the North Korean challenge and what lessons he applied from that to Iran. And so perhaps for that reason, I hesitate to ⁓ postulate as to what I'll suggest what the US president may have ⁓ learned from that. Maybe just as important as sort of lessons from the Korean Peninsula is that the President Trump seems to have a fair degree of animosity towards the regime in Iran and a lot of sympathy for Israel, Saudi Arabia and many other states in the region. And so perhaps for this reason, President Trump feels particularly threatened ⁓ by the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons, or at least can be easily egged on by the Israelis. It could be that President Trump took lessons from North Korea and then applied them to Iran, but there's no evidence that suggests that he has. And so I might wait to see what later evidence suggests about that sort of connection, at least as far as the president is concerned. Fair enough.

David Andrews

The question that I suppose that I have in mind is that as we say, there's the option of a negotiated, maybe not solution, because if there's no interest on both sides of negotiating, but there is sort of comes a point where maybe there's a window, perceived window for military action to set back the program before that cease to be viable because they have an existing weapon. And so I'm I'm not sure where that window sat for Iran, but I guess as you say, Maria, there's a lot of resourcing and capacity in the Iranian system. There are other sites that weren't attacked.

Maria Rost Rublee

Yes, and I think what's important to note that Iran had a certain amount of enriched uranium up to 60 % and you can easily get from 60 to 90, people were saying within two weeks or a month, and it makes it sound very urgent. We must do something right away. But the fact is is that just because you have enriched ⁓ gas, you've got to turn it into metal, you've got to weaponize it, and the biggest thing is you have to be able to deliver it.

And so unless you're going to put it in the belly of a bomber and try and fly over Israeli airspace, which is, laughing here because that's laughable. Iran can't do that. Iran has to miniaturize these nuclear weapons to be able to put them on missiles. If you want to miniaturize, you have to test or have access to test data. And so the ability for Iran to strike Israel with nuclear weapons was actually much, much further away. And even if Iran had access to North Korean test data, which we don't have any evidence that they did, it would still be at least a year or more. And so the urgency wasn't there. And what we now have is, I'm sure within the Iranian leadership, an urgency to figure out next time, how do we get much closer to being able to miniaturize these so that we're not stuck in this zone where we're very close, but we can't deliver anything.

And I think that's the real lesson for Iran. Iran's learned a lesson looking at Iraq versus North Korea. If you have them and can use them, you're safe. If you almost have them or have them and can't use them, you're not safe.

Michael Cohen

Another lesson that may be relevant here, building on what Marie has been saying, not all, but a vast number of the observers, commentators, policymakers that looked at Iran and said a nuclear capability to attack Israel with nuclear weapons is around the corner. Many of them were also enthusiastic or supportive or keen for a wider regime change type war with Iran. Many that were much more...less alarmed by the Iranian nuclear threat were also supporters of the Iranian nuclear deal and also thought ⁓ nuclear capabilities aimed at Israel or elsewhere were a bit further from the Iranian regime than the other group suggested.

David Andrews

Well, it sounds like, again, we're only giving a of a very skim of some of the technical scientific detail here, but we're talking about centrifuges and enriched gas, which has to be converted into metals and miniaturized and tested. mean, there are all kinds of phases along this program, which I think both point to the necessity of the breadth of the regime that we talked about originally. We're setting all these different facets of preventing proliferation.

But it also points, guess, to the complexity and the challenges of other states going down this path and how many resources they have to commit to it and at what cost it comes to, I think, society at large. And I'll come to that in just a second, maybe to cap up this piece of the conversation talking about Iran specifically. My understanding is that they've now suspended cooperation with the IAEA, which puts them in breach of the NPT to which they are signatories. Again, as I understand it, if they were to withdraw from the treaty or continue the suspension of cooperation. Mike, do you have a sense of what the consequences of that would be? Like, what would that signify or change for Iran?

Michael Cohen

It would suggest that there's further things that they're doing, enrichment and otherwise, that they don't want IAEA inspectors and the international community to observe. Critics of the NPT could point out that Iran, as it has done for many years, could both keep signed up to that and continue doing things in secret. And so you could argue that Iran is now more confidently rejecting the NPT and wider nuclear non-proliferation commitments and that infrastructure.

And saying to the US and the international community that it's happy to, as Marie suggested, go deeper underground and speed up its quest for nuclear capabilities. think really ever since Israel attacked and especially after President Trump more surprisingly also attacked shortly after Israel did, really that's just pushed Iran so forcefully in that direction towards a nuclear capability.

David Andrews

Just as sort of into this sort of final phase of our discussion, I wanted to think a little bit about the future of nuclear non-proliferation, both, I guess, as of other states and the structure itself. And as we're just saying, it's an immensely complicated process. That's hugely resource intensive. so Maria, I'm not sure if you have a sense of where this leaves us. Are there realistic possibilities of other states pursuing similar nuclear sort of weapon development?

Or is that just a of a theoretical position that we could see talking about Japan and South Korea are often mentioned, for example, or Saudi Arabia, if Iran were to nuclearise. Are these kind of realistic prospects or is it highly conditional?

Maria Rost Rublee

That's a great question. And I think that there are some realistic scenarios for countries within the next five to 10 years developing independent nuclear weapons programs, which is a terrible thing. know, the NPT for all of its faults and it is a discriminatory treaty, you know, the less nuclear weapons that we have, the less likely they are to be used either intentionally or accidentally. And so, you know, South Korea is definitely at the top of the list. Public opinion polls. You know, about 80 % of South Koreans support an indigenous nuclear capability. you know, depending on how, you know, the Trump administration, you know, the sort of US pivot to Asia, you know, how this works, you know, concerns about, you know, China's rise and, you know, North Korea's continued provocations. South Korea has the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons. There's no question.

So they do not enrich uranium because of enormous pressure from the US in the negotiation of their one, two, three agreement, their nuclear materials agreement with the US. But they could do it if they withdrew from that and they have all the capability for what's needed. It would take a couple years. mean, look, you can always have a couple bombs in the basement pretty quickly, but that's not...you know, advanced nuclear capability. And if South Korea or Japan were going to develop it, a nuclear deterrent, they're not just looking for a couple of bombs.

They're looking for like a complete, it might be small, but a complete, you know, nuclear deterrent.  And so I think, you know, there is a risk with South Korea. And, you know, I hear from the Trump administration and from, you know, colleagues in the U.S. I heard someone joke the other day saying, let's not call it when it comes to allies, let's not call it nuclear proliferation, let's call it nuclear participation. In other words, trying to undermine the norm of non-proliferation that it's actually okay to have for our allies to have nuclear weapons. And so this is a real concern. so we have countries, South Korea, Japan, Japan is also technically capable and they have a lot of excess material. Again, it's plutonium that's not the right plutonium needed, but it could potentially be used for some bombs, but within Japan, the domestic norm is still stronger against it. I think it could happen, but it's harder than in South Korea where you have a public that's very much in favor of it. And then there are other countries, you know, if want to talk about if Iran did go nuclear, there will be other countries in the Middle East that respond to that because that will essentially put Iran on parity with Israel in terms of, you know, the two big players.

And the religious within the Muslim community would not be possible for it just to be Iran. Saudi Arabia would feel the need to respond. Then we have countries like Brazil that have uranium enrichment capability and their inspection arrangements aren't with the IAEA and their centrifuges are partially shielded. And so there's lots of room for possibilities around the world, unfortunately.

Michael Cohen

I agree with everything Marie just said. One additional concern with the South Korean nuclearization challenge or problem, many states that have gone down the nuclear road have also needed not only delivery vehicles, but often ICBM, Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Delivery Vehicles, to reliably target their adversary with nuclear weapons. It's not clear that South Korea needs them because it's needing them to target North Korea. It can probably do this with missiles less than ICBMs, which makes it a little bit easier or less challenging for South Korea. But the bigger picture question, there's both good news and then bad news. The good news is that really ever since the Cold War ended, immediately, concern for nuclear proliferation has waxed and waned, but the constant theme has been concern for proliferation tipping points. So there'd be a crisis and state A would get nuclear weapons and this would cause states B, C, D and E to follow. And this has really been a recurring concern for last 35 or so years since the Cold War ended. The good news is that in those 35 years, how many states have actually developed nuclear weapons? The answer, only one, North Korea, India and Pakistan. Yes, they tested in 1998, but had most systems in place by the very late 80s, or at least very late 80s. So good news, only North Korea has crossed that threshold since the Cold War has ended.

We can debate what the cause of that is, but that is in some sense good news for the wider nuclear non-proliferation agenda. The bad news, of course, much of which is encapsulated around President Trump, suggested if the US is becoming less interested in maintaining the global order that it's maintained for so long, when nuclear non-proliferation looms so large, might this be the ingredient that we see to ensure that South Korea goes nuclear? Where, as Maria said, public opinion are so strongly in favour of nuclear weapons to deal with the North Korean threat. Japan, as Maria said, a stronger normative opposition, but also a concern and a small number of other states as well.

David Andrews

Well, I'm conscious that there is just so much more we could get stuck into here, whether it's talking more about some of these different sort of future scenarios or, indeed the scientific dimensions of this, as well as conversations around nuclear propulsion and how that sits under the non-proliferation regime, both with Brazil and Australia looking to acquire nuclear powered submarines. But this has been a great start and maybe the basis for a future follow up conversation. But Maria, Mike, thanks so much for being with us on the National Security Podcast.

Maria Rost Rublee

Wonderful, thanks for having me.

Michael Cohen

It's been great, thank you.

National Security Podcast

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