Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/22/26: Trump Caves On Greenland, John Mearsheimer On Greenland, Iran & MORE!

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump caves on Greenland, John Mearsheimer on the new world order.   John Mearsheimer: https://www.mearsheimer.com/ Danny Funt: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Everybody-Loses/Danny-Funt/9781668062029      To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you,

please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we at Bristol? Indeed, we do. Trump with the ultimate taco on Greenland. We will break it down for you, but actually the Danes are not super happy about what's going on there as well. So we'll get into all of those details. Also, the great John Mearsheimer is going to join us to talk about that and all of the things geopolitics. He's also obviously continuing to focus on Iran and what may or may not have.

happened there. Scotas heard oral arguments and looks like they're going to rule against Trump in the case of trying to fire the Fed board governor. So we will dig into the arguments there and what that one means. Kind of interesting what SCOTUS is willing to go along with and what they are not. The Trump administration also confirming that some of the Doge people misused social security data. This comes at a time when Trump is talking more and more about the quote unquote rigged election. We also have the author of a new book on sports gambling. You guys definitely want to check out this segment. I'm super excited to talk to him.

I know Sauer's super excited to talk to him, but a lot there in terms of the way that those markets are completely rigged, the way they're changing, not just sports, but culture and society as well. And finally, you guys probably saw this story we covered on this show. Ice tear gassed, a six-month-old baby who was in the car with their family. They're on their way home from basketball practice. The parents of that baby are going to join us live to talk about. what happened to them, how their family is doing, and how they are coping with all of this. So I'm really looking forward to that as well.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to him. All right, thank you to everybody who has been subscribing to the show, breaking points.com. You can become a premium member today. For those of you who are watching this on YouTube, unfortunately, many of you seem to watch, but don't subscribe to our channel. So hit the subscribe button, if you will.

And if you're listening to us on a podcast, send an episode to a friend, greatest five stars. It helps other people find the show. So let's go ahead and start with what many are calling the taco of all tacos. If you're not familiar with the term taco was a term coined by Wall Street, Trump always chickens out. For some reason, Schumer then adopted it as if we don't want Trump to chicken out, which, no, we do. I'm always reticent to use it.

Right, yeah, because we don't want this to become a thing. But we also support it. It's all right. You know, the people in power, unfortunately, don't seem to care that much about what we think. However, this with the Greenless situation seems to have now come to a close after Trump has gone to Davos. he was asked specifically an alleged new framework and or one might call concept of a plan has been announced with Greenland. No tariffs will be allowed. So did we get anything out of this? Here's Caitlin Collins from CNN asking Trump specifically. Let's take a listen.

Does it still include the United States having ownership of Greenland like you've said you wanted? It's a long-term deal. It's the ultimate long-term deal. And I think it puts everybody in a really good position. especially as it pertains to security and minerals and everything else. How long would the deal be, Mr. President? Infinite. There was no time limit. It's forever. And how would you ratify the deal?

It would be money in vote. It's signed forever. What's in the deal? I don't think I've ever seen him have to gather his thoughts as long as he did on that question. It's humiliating. It's a long-term deal. Put this up here on the screen.

All right, these are the details. All right, small pockets of land for the U.S. You want to know what those small pockets of land are? They're called bases. Now, this is my favorite invented term I've seen so far. The U.S. will get sovereignty over its bases on Greenland, as if you don't have sovereignty over a military base that you already have. The U.S. will be involved in Greenland's mineral rights.

Duration of the deal has a definite timeline designed to block Russian influence in Greenland. U.S. Golden Dome system will be involved, opens door to U.S.-backed infrastructure investment, aka every single thing that the Danes were like, you can have all of this. You already have it. As long as you don't have. Not even you can have this. You literally already have this. You have most of this. We can increase it a little bit if you want to. So I mean, it's like they were blocking us from doing mineral deals in Greenland. I mean, we already had this agreement in place where we could basically do whatever we wanted on Greenland. And, I mean, you have to laugh, but it's not like, you know, in a sense, I'm sort of glad because I think it was actually a wake-up call for the world.

Like, you know, the speech that Mark Carney gave the Canadian Prime Minister where he was like, listen, this whole liberal international order thing, we've been going along with it, even acknowledging that it's never really been real and that there is a giant distance between the principles and values of it and the reality of it. Like, you can't take that speech back. So it's not like we end here exactly where we started. No, we do end up in a somewhat different place. And to be honest with you, I think it's probably positive that the Europeans, Canada, the rest of the world are looking at this guy maybe with clear eyes saying, okay, this person is insane. This country is insane. We can't deal with them. We have to move on from relying on them for our defense, from leaning on them for anything.

we need to move into a, sorry for the turn of phrase, but a new world order. I mean, that is what we are actually living in now. And that speech from Prime Minister Mark Carney, I think, was incredibly significant in shifting into that mindset. No question. I mean, I would rank it among one of the top moments of my life to see Western politicians say international law is fake and that the Western liberal world order itself is a fiction. And, you know, you may say, oh, why? Well, I mean, we have talked about the alleged benefits of the international world order,

definitely was to our benefit. I would say somewhere up until around the 1970s. I do think things explicitly switched after the Cold War ended. And that's when the unipolar moment ultimately became the detriment of the United States. Well, yes, we allegedly became richer on paper. Our trade deals bankrupted and destroyed most of our manufacturing base. And we became basically the world's policeman. This culminates in the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan, which drained our resources. And then eventually, you know, transforms into some, you know, know, literal, liberal world policeman, Libya-style NATO intervention where everything is about humanitarianism. A Canada and a Europe, which actually is responsible for its own defense,

is a world where the United States is no longer having to put hundreds of billions of dollars into Ukraine. We're not, you know, simultaneously having to constantly be, you know, concerned with the explicit security arrangements of the Dunbos region. So I think these are all great. And in fact, there was a Maloney video, which we originally were going to play, apparently it was old, but it was about her saying something like, oh, we're going to close your bases and boycott McDonald's. I'm like, oh, so you're going to threaten me with a good time that we no longer have to forward deployed presence of 800 bases all around the world? Like, we should have bases only where they actually are strategically important. And we've had tens of thousands

of troops, hundreds of thousands actually deployed now around the world for some 70 odd years. You know, President Eisenhower, who is like one of my foreign policy load stars, actually wrote in the 1950s, we cannot be a Roman Empire with legions deployed abroad to police the world. And it's effectively what we turned into. So to restore some sort of strategic balance to actually have, I mean, to fulfill the Gaul's dream of like an actually independent Europe. These are good things for Europe, for us and for everybody. I mean, you know, yes, it took Trump to bring some of this in. The flip side of that, though, is that, you know, the tremendous, so the deal was we provide all

of this world security in Europe basically doesn't have to invest that much in their own defense. And in exchange for that, the dollar is the world's reserve currency. And that is a massive, incalculable financial benefit to us. And so, you know, the debt and the deficits that we run consistently, those are not possible. All true. If we are not the world's reserve currency. And so if that contract is broken, which is what this basically signifies, and not that this all happens immediately, not that NATO is totally over and all of that, but that is the world that we, everyone is acknowledging that we're moving towards now, then that is going to, that is going to have a massive economic impact on the U.S. And there is going to be a reckoning. So, you know,

as someone, I said this to, Jeffrey Sachs, when we talked to him, like, even in spite of myself, I can't help but have some American nationalistic feelings. I am concerned about that. in terms of the globe and the world moving away from this, you know, what has certainly has always in certain sense has been a fiction and has been exposed as a total fraud and a lie through our complicity with the Gaza genocide. And Europe's complicity and Canada's complicity, by the way. But moving away from that is not going to be without pain for us. But I do think that that is, you know, I'm excited to talk to Mirschreimer about this

and see if he sees it the same way. but, you know, that is increasingly the world we're moving towards. Not just the speech from Mark Carney, the deal that he struck with China, incredibly significant. And, you know, if you guys weren't following this closely, like just a couple years ago, Canada was one of China's top sort of antagonists. You know, there was a very adversarial, very frosty relationship. That is now over, and they're like, we're going out in the world and we're making deals and we're going to do what we need to do. Yeah, you know, Matt Stoller has long said that being the world's reserve currency is a bad deal for Americans. of long, look, it's of two things, because like you said, we can do infinite debt deficit finance,

but it also means that our Federal Reserve works on behalf of the global banking system and not on behalf of Americans. You could compare it, let's say, to the British Empire in 1940s, or the famous, you know, 1945 election immediately, like, while Potsdam is happening, you have two different visions from the Churchillian vision of, like, the Empire will stand. And Atlee and others are like, no, we just fought this horrific World War. Like, we are no longer going to be police. leasing, you know, India and whatever, all of our different colonies. Like, we want health care. Like, we want a national health service. We all need to decide, like, on our core strategic interests and, like, we ourselves are going to be. So, you know, you're talking about the deal.

The other side of that deal is one reason that we don't, we have an extremely weak social welfare state is because we have 800, 900 bases all across the world. The Europeans, their only reasons they all get to get universal health care is because we pay for all of their defense. Like, it's a fraudulent system in almost every single regard. There are pluses and minuses. there will definitely be a period of transition like there was for the UK as well. To continue down this road, A3, shall we put that up on the screen? NATO has, quote, no mandate whatsoever to negotiate on behalf of Greenland. This is from the Greenlandic MP who says, said on Facebook, quote, the idea that NATO should have any say it all over our country and our mineral resources is completely absurd.

That is another element which I just think, you know, was driving me crazy about this whole thing. Denmark, you know, negotiating with the United States over middle rights in Greenland, which is allegedly a self-governing territory, but it gave up its own foreign affairs. It's like it is genuinely ruled by the kingdom of Denmark. And then NATO itself coming and say, oh, well, we'll negotiate with you over the rights over this territory. It just gives, again, I just, I can never let it go that there is a lot of fictions about rules. And they're like, oh, you're challenging our sovereignty. I'm like, well, you literally rule over these people. They only got self- determination like eight years ago or something like that. In terms of their own constitution,

there's your subjects for hundreds of years. So let's all not pretend as if your naked imperialism is not like a footnote in this conversation. Sure. But I mean, and yes, to have, I mean, imagine if NATO came in over our heads and was like, here's the deal we did on your behalf. That's right. Who are you? Mark Ruth? Like, what are you talking about? So that is the reaction that that was from one member of parliament, the prime minister has now come out and said similar things. I mean, again, I don't even know what this deal really is because it appears to me to be things that already existed. So maybe they won't, you know, object to stranial season. It's basically some like face-saving deal for Trump so that all of his sick of fans can go out and be like, oh, look, art of the

deals. Isn't he brilliant? Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I mean, with regard to what the people of Greenland actually want, judging by the polling and what I've seen there, there's, there's was definitely a movement within the country. And this is very, I mean, we're talking, what, 56,000 people in Hungary? This is a very small population. But in any case, there was a movement of interest in true independence from Denmark. However, with this threat from the U.S., that seems like it's really been put on hold. And it's like, listen, we would much rather stay with Denmark than go with the U.S. And there was a clip that went viral where one of their politicians was saying, look, we don't aspire to American culture. There's all kinds of TikToks of them

making fun of like, you know, doing the fentanyl lean. They're like, we don't want bums addicted to fentanyl in our streets. I've never felt more, I've never felt more affinity for the grand of people. I'm like, I'm with you, all right? Soccer's moving to great one. Be free. But stay away from us. But in addition, she was like, look, we get free health care.

We get free, not just like, you know, through high school public education. We get free college. In fact, if we want to go and study in college, we get a stipend to support like our living needs. So they're like, we've got a pretty good deal here, definitely better than what's on offer from the United States. And culturally, they were not really feeling it either. So in any case, you know, to the extent that the wants and concerns of Greenlanders, is that what they're called, Greenlanders? I don't know. I apologize. The people of Greenland. To the extent that that matters at all, that seems to be where they are. I do want to go visit. So United now has a direct flight

from, I think it's from JFK to nuke. And I think after all of this talk, I think, after all of this talk, I got to go. I got to go and see it all. Go in the summer. No, no, you've got to get the full experience. I want to go see some of the Greeley expedition ruins. I think that they're still there, actually, some of the huts. This was an American expedition to Greenland back during the 1800s. Great book about it I read called A Kingdom of Ice.

All right, let's continue here with Donald Trump. Speaking of kingdoms of ice. Kingdoms of ice. Trump having a Biden moment confusing Greenland with Iceland a couple of times. Well, Brandon here. Let's take a listen. I don't know that they'd be there for us. They're not there for us on Iceland.

That I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money. But that dip is peanuts compared to what it's gone up. A stock market is it 2009 again? Remember when Iceland went broke back during the Great Recession? That was immediately. Maybe I'm thinking too deeply about it.

But let's put this up here. The press secretary's defense of this is, his written remarks referred to Greenland as a piece of ice because that's what it is. You are the only one mixing up anything here. So saying that... Caroline Levitt here, playing the role of Corrine Jean-Pierre. A news nation reporter was like, I think Trump just refused Greenland with Iceland. And she was like, no, Greenland is a piece of ice because that's what it is.

You're the only one making anything up here. It's an ice space land is what she's trying to. to say here. He didn't say Iceland. He said ice space land. Yeah. So it's a piece of, so Alaska is ice. Okay. All right. I think everybody gets. Yeah. Pretty good. So yeah. Full brand long moment. That's what we're doing with. Let's put A6 here up on the screen. There are still some, obviously, some followouts that's happening as a result of all this. This was to the point of our discussion a little bit earlier. Yeah. European officials suspend the U.S. trade agreement amid the tariff dispute on Greenland. The 27 nation blocks struck a trade deal with Trump sometime back in July. They suspended the trade

agreement over the tariff threat. It is unclear as of right now what is exactly going to happen because it suspended it, but then Trump called off the tariff, so it may go back into effect. There was a modest stock market reaction, like a 1.2% bump in the S&P 500 as a result of Donald Trump's backing off of the threat on Greenland. And generally, like, stability within the market seems to be something that's going to go forward. However, you know, we shouldn't forget that a lot of these deals, but the fact that it could immediately get called into question may also give the the European Union, its negotiators a little bit. I just, I don't know what their general position after all of this is going to be.

You had the Macron situation, the EU suspending the tariff deal. Trump saying he won't attend that, you know, that accelerated G7 meeting, which Macron was trying to create in Paris. And then at the same time, you know, it's not like, while yes, he backed off entirely of Greenland. It's like you were saying with Canada, not just Canada, but basically all of the great leaders of the EU, like Macron, when I say great, I mean, the great powers. So Macron, you had, you know, the chancellor of Germany and the Danish prime minister, like so many of these other different officials. The tension still remains high there. And don't forget, like, they have their own domestic populations who are now very upset with the United States.

the largest Danish left-wing party, which looked to be losing the upcoming election, have now had a massive bump due to Trump's Greenland posturing. Then he says he had the same effect on the Canadian election and the election in Australia, quote, quite possibly there is no person who has had more of a detrimental effect on right-wing political success across Trump as the West. These are important times with the specter of immigration, quote, it's not time to fuck around in this way. This is somebody obviously who has sympathy with the right, right, I think it's right. And you could see this spread down in South America, too.

Trump going after Petro has made Petro enormously popular. You have seen the same thing with Lula, saved his political fortunes. You can definitely point to some limited success he had in the Argentina. Argentina, but Honduras election, right? So he had two different-Chile as well. So he's had a couple where it seemed to have worked out on his behalf, but it's a relatively mixed track record if you look across the spectrum. And, like, really what it shows you is that other countries have...

I mean, this is part of what happened with Liberation Day and with Canada. The reason why we ultimately folded with a lot of our threats towards Canada is because the Canadian people were like, look, suffer, we will. If somebody's coming after, it's an external threat actor. If we all have to get, you know, a little bit poorer over a couple of year time period, we'll deal with it if we want to. You've seen the same situation across Europe. Japan had a very similar thing. They were not happy about that trade deal at all. And there's all kinds of stuff. if you watch Japanese politics and you can hit the translate button, there were all kinds of discussions that were happening there.

They're like, oh, well, you know, bases here in Japan, maybe those got to go, just like what Maloney was talking about. They're still not happy with the way that that entire thing went down. South Korea, similar problems. So, you know, you can see this all across the world. It's very clear with Trump, what pulls them back from the brink. Stocks. It's the market. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, and the market at this point sort of prices in a taco. You know, they assume a lot of taco. So it takes a lot before the markets actually are like, oh, maybe he's serious. This might be a real problem. And once that happens, then he walks it back. But so we've sort of have like, I don't know, like increasing resistance to the Trump insanity with the markets where it's like he has to do crazier and crazier things before it gets so far that there's a reaction. And so, you know, you finally had that where, you know, he's threatening a new trade war. and there's leaving on the table, potential military invasion.

You've got a-9 up on the screen. Freaking Canada is doing war games for how they're going to like wage guerrilla warfare against us. If we try to invade them, I mean, it's just... Yeah, can you read the subhead? Yes, it says military chiefs have modeled the response to an attack and the Mujahideen-style insurgency tactics they would need to use against American invaders. I mean, intelligent because they know they don't actually have the military might to defeat us, but like, we get messed up by the Taliban.

we got messed up by the Houthis, you know, go back to Vietnam, like guerrilla warfare tactics, very effective against a, you know, a big conventional military power such as us. So in any case, like, that's, we got to that point where Canada is like, I guess we better do some war games here with our neighbors, the United States of America, our largest trading partner. And up till now, like, you know, no real friction between us and great allies before the markets were like, okay, something's going on here and there was a drop and gold spikes and the dollar drops and the treasury bond yields go up and all of that sort of stuff. And the minute that happens, he's like,

yeah, I got a deal. I'm done. We're not invading Greenland. Goodbye. Everybody trade wars off. So it's just a very, very clear, consistent pattern here with how he operates. It's the one thing that he seems to actually care about. And I think the bonds in the bond market in particular. No, I totally agree with you. That's what happened with Japan in Liberation Day. One of the reasons that the Treasury yields happen. I mean, you know, and then our, the Treasury Secretary will talk a big game. Like yesterday, he was like, well, Denmark is irrelevant whenever it comes to U.S. debt or U.S. treasuries. But the EU as a bloc is not, right? Obviously, that's kind of the entire purpose of the European Union, you know, ceding all their national sovereignty to, or economic policy

to a literal central bank is specifically to try and to create a situation like this where they're able to exert and punch much more above their weight. There's no way really to know, you know, this entire thing is going to go. But I do think that the general schizophrenia, you can take it two ways, like you were saying, with taco, is that you can usually count some sort of taco to happen. However, each taco usually gets somebody to the brink of a potentially bad situation. Yeah, that's right. And eventually, something is going to happen. Like, I don't even think, people, what is it, what's the term, panicking? They're like, oh, you're panicking. If you say it, it's like, look, I mean, it can't always work out. It just doesn't. Like, read a book.

in general, usually, you'll gamble, you'll gamble, you'll push, you'll push, you'll push, and you'll come from a bank. Eventually, you'll meet somebody who won't or they'll miscalculate and something will happen. And let's not forget that there was an entire taco on Iran. I'm fine with that. Let's taco. I mean, let's do the taco if we need to. However, that situation, it got very, very close.

And it is not by any means, you know, on the back burner. And in fact, that is where I think that the danger comes in, is that something like this, can explode at any time in any place. And the fact is, you want these questions to actually be settled. That's why I was so frustrated with the Midnight Hammer discussion. They're like, we went in, we bombed, and it was over. The situation is solved. I was like, oh, the situation is solved.

Tell that to the Israelis. So what, six months later, we're right back to, oh, we got a strike Iran, you know, and then we've got to make up some shit about how they canceled. Execution, not true, by the way. Literally, completely not true. Yeah. Does Mark Levine, does Ben Shapiro think it's, over and solved.

It's not over, right? Exactly. As long as the Iranian regime stands, it is an open question. From their point of view, not mine. The same thing whenever we talk about all, what are the other? Venezuela, even right now, nobody knows. Delsi Rodriguez allegedly coming here, I'm sure that's going to play over super well down in Venezuela, right?

Yeah. I'm sure the Venezuela, Bob George is going to love that. Cuba, which we're going to talk about with Mearsheimer, like, oh, yeah, we're just going to collapse the Cuban regime within a year. It'll be fine. It should work out. And in just like, you cannot, again, look at the long history of all of this. And no American president, none has the capacity to simultaneously run all of these things without at least something going awry.

And yes, look, they can claim immediate victory. It doesn't matter. This is, you know, history and all of that when we think, we look back and we'll just gloss over nine or ten months. We're all living through it right now. It becomes very obvious of a slow decline over. a certain period. Sometimes Iraq took two years to truly deteriorate. Libya took months and months. Afghanistan didn't truly become like a disaster for the United States till 2008, you know, something like that. And we invaded in 2001. So you just have to remember that.

It's worth pausing for a second on Venezuela, because in a sense, what Trump did in Venezuela was a taco. You know, he talked such a big game. And there are so many, you know, the Miami occupied government is so strong, that he had to do something. But he realized, like, you know, this whole Machado thing's probably not going to work. I don't really want to get in, like, that deep and do a whole regime change, boots on the ground, et cetera. But I also said all this stuff, so I got to do something. And so the something he came up with was, let me kidnap Maduro and, you know, use that and plus the economic threats to coerce the vice president into doing what we want, which again, you know, know, everybody's acting like this is settled. You think the Venezuelan people are going to be down

with us just taking their oil forever? I think they're going to have something to say about that. But in any case, that was the taco. And so because he did all these threats and talked all this big game, we now end up in this situation where we are running Venezuela to the benefit, apparently, of like a handful of Trump's cronies. And with many unresolved questions about how any of this is going to go in the term. So these things are not costless, right? They create pressures on Trump. They back him into corners. And they also do, I mean, in a way that, again, may end up being positive for the world, maybe not positive for the United States, but positive for the world. They do force a reckoning from world leaders of like what this, you know, American regime is really all about. So they're not

costless. They don't, they don't really leave the world in the same place as they were before, even if not all that much in terms of the deals that are struck have fundamentally changed. Because, I mean, again, with Venezuela, like, it reminds very much of Greenland. We, Maduro was willing to do whatever deal we wanted with him. We didn't have to kidnap him and completely, you know, just brazenly go full robber barren, mafia thug, colonialists, we're just going to steal your oil. And now we're, you know, in this situation with Venezuela where we're supposedly running it. So in any case, even though the deal,

at the end of the day is very similar to the deal that we had before, the world is changed by the threats and by the actions that he takes. No question. And to expound even more on this is Professor John Meersheimer, one of our favorites. Let's get to it. Joining us now is Professor John Meersheimer, the University of Chicago, one of our favorite guests here on the show. It's good to see you again, sir. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Glad to be back. I mean, one of the things we had to get your reaction on is this now famous Mark Carney speech. the Canadian Prime Minister about the U.S. Western-led order, about many of the fictions that belied it. Why don't we take a listen and we'll get your reaction?

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tenement. for countries to go along, to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won't. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls or whether we can do something more ambitious.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice, compete with each other for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn't allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield them together. Professor, your reaction to that speech in the context of this Greenland situation, that now may have appeared to be resolved, but the tactics and the rhetoric from the Trump administration cannot be taken back. Well, you want to remember that Mark Carney is the Prime Minister of Canada, and President Trump referred to his predecessor as the governor of the 51st state of the United States. And he's made it clear President Trump that he has his gun sights on Canada as well as on Greenland,

although Greenland's getting all the attention these days. So Carney is well aware of what he's dealing with. And Carney made what I think is in many ways a brilliant speech that made it clear that he understands that Trump represents a fundamental threat to the so-called Western order or the rules-based order. If you listen to most European leaders, they want to accommodate Trump. They think that by appeasing Trump, they can get Trump to play ball with them. I think Carney fully understands, and quite correctly, that that's a wrong way to deal with Trump. Trump is interested, basically, in wrecking NATO.

Trump is not interested in having good relations with the Europeans, and he has a huge amount of power, and he's going to use that, number one, to take Greenland, and number two, to do great damage to the Western Alliance. which he has little use for. And basically what Carney was doing was spelling that out. He was telling brutal truths to the audience at Davos. And that's basically what's going on there. Do you think that this whole Greenland episode has been an effective wake-up call for European leaders as well? Yes, I think there's no question about that.

The key point here is that Denmark effectively owns Greenland, to put it in more benign terms, Greenland is in effect part of Denmark. And Trump, until yesterday, was threatening to use military force to take Greenland away from Denmark and make it part of the United States. If that were to happen, that would be one NATO member of the United States, effectively going to war against another NATO member. This is really quite shocking. Of course, you want to understand that before all of this hullabaloo about Greenland, all sorts of frictions had arisen within the alliance. Ukraine is a really good example. The Europeans and the Trump administration have long been doing battle over how to deal with

Ukraine, and Trump is fed up with the Europeans for resisting his efforts to try to strike a deal with Putin. So when you look at that past history regarding Ukraine, you can understand why Putin, excuse me, why Trump is willing to play hardball with the Europeans and he's willing to, you know, facilitate some sort of divorce across the Atlantic Ocean. You know, Professor, you know, in the context of your overall work and looking at this, how do you see a, quote, new world order emerging as a result, not just of this action, but of the broad spectrum of what Donald Trump has now done in his first year in office.

Well, I think you want to realize that there are sort of two dimensions to Trump's foreign policy. One is the great power politics dimension. And that's how he deals with Russia and how he deals with China. And in terms of U.S.-China relations, things are actually quite calm these days. There's not a lot of trouble in East Asia. And with regard to the Russians, Trump is doing everything he can to foster good relations with the Russians. So in terms of great power politics where we have this multipolar world, where we've moved from unipolarity to multiparity, you don't see a lot of trouble between the United States under President Trump and the Russians and the Chinese on the other side. It's with middle-sized and smaller countries where Trump is really ruffling feathers and where you see Trump behaving in quite radical ways.

So that, you know, he's picking on countries like Canada. He's picking on countries like Venezuela, Iran. He's threatening to take Greenland. He's playing hardball with the Europeans. And this is not great power politics. Trump is a very smart man in the sense that he understands that he cannot beat up on the Chinese or on the Russians. He has to work out some sort of modus vivendi with them, at least for the time being. But for weaker countries, middle-sized countries, including allies, and smaller countries, including allies, he's willing to play hardball with them.

He's willing to whipsaw them. And this is what you see taking place today. So if you have Prime Minister Mark Carney sort of ripping the mask off the Western-led order in acknowledging, I think, what is now the present reality that, you know, that is dead or dying, that we're moving into something different, what are the possibilities for what that something different looks like and what are the implications specifically for America? Well, if you listen to Mark Carney speak, he believes that these middle powers can pursue a third way and that they can form a non-aligned movement. He believes, and he says this very clearly, that these middle-range powers can create their own institutions.

And in that regard, I think he's wrong. It's great powers that create institutions. It's great powers that create international orders. and countries like Canada have remarkably little maneuver room. So I think he's wrong in thinking that he could do that. Now, with regard to what the international order looks like moving forward, it is important to understand that President Trump is taking a sledgehammer to the international order. If you think about NATO, he is, I think, trying to wreck NATO.

no interest in maintaining NATO. He has little interest in the alliance. But also he's now putting forward this Board of Peace. And as many people have argued, the Board of Peace is basically now become a substitute for the United Nations. He has no use for the United Nations either. And of course, he recently withdrew from 66 international organizations. It's really quite amazing. So you see that President Trump, as Mark Carney makes clear, is a wrecking ball when it comes to the international order. And then when you start thinking about what's going to replace these institutions that he's wrecking, what is the new international order going to look like, it's quite clear that

to the extent President Trump is interested in international institutions, he wants international institutions that he runs. This whole subject of the Board of Peace is really quite remarkable. It started out as an institution that was designed to facilitate a peace agreement, a peace accord in Gaza. It's now morphed into this international institution, at least in his mind, that he runs and he sees it as a replacement for the United Nations. This is not going to work. This is not going to be a meaningful international institution.

So I think given that President Trump is going to be in power for three more years, international institutions are not going to have a whole heck of a lot of effect on how international politics is conducted. That's not to say they're going to be irrelevant, but as long as he's in power and as long as the United States remains so powerful relative to all the other countries in the world, international law and international institutions are probably going to matter less than they have, at least since 1945. You know, Professor, at the time when we're talking about great power politics and, you know, this embrace of the Donne Roe doctrine, as he would call it, with Venezuela, some element,

at least, of realism. We also saw this bizarre emergence not even two weeks ago of complete neo-conservative ideology with this idea that we could just bombard the Iranian regime as a result of their alleged crackdown on protesters. And the president seems absolutely committed, you know, to this idea that if the Iranian regime executes some protesters, that that would immediately bring about the bombing of the entire country. He doubled down on this in a recent interview. Let's take a listen.

There are reports that they are still burning thousands of protesters alive. They also issued an assassination threat against you over the weekend. I know that you can't talk about what's on the table, but what is your response to Iran's leadership in the regime continuing to taunt you, threaten you, especially given over the weekend you said it's time for new leadership in Iran? Well, they shouldn't be doing it, but I've left notification. Anything ever happens.

We're going to blow the hell. The whole country is going to get blown up. So we've, you know, originally Biden should have said something. You know, when they made a statement, we always said, why isn't Biden saying anything? Because he didn't. But a president has to defend a president. Like if I were here and they were making that threat to somebody, even not even a president, but somebody like they did with me, I would absolutely hit them so hard.

But I have very firm instructions. Anything happens. They're going to wipe them off the face of this earth. What do you make of this, sir? You know, the American riot is trying to tie this to some alleged assassination. attempt, but, you know, again, the preemption is this crackdown on protesters. It just seems so totally out of step with any sort of realism or, you know, great power understanding and a complete fantastical embrace. Well, it's very important to understand that this is Israel and the United

States working together, number one, to topple the regime in Tehran. And number two, to break the country apart the way we, the Israelis and the Turks, broke apart Syria. And the real trouble started in late December of last year, that's December 2025, when protests started in Iran. And we played a key role in fueling those protests. And the idea was that the protests would turn violent. And we had agents and the Israelis had agents. inside of Iran that were helping to turn the protests violent. And the idea was that once the protest gained a lot of momentum, and it looked like the regime was going to topple,

then the United States would move in with military force. So we were planning to move in with military force. The Iranian government cracks down on January 8th. And when the Iranian government cracks down and it looks like they're having an effect on dampening the protests, we begin to think about moving in with military force because we want to topple that regime. And when I say we, I mean the United States and the Israelis. But what happens is that on January 14th, Trump backs off. And the question is, why does Trump back off? And there are two reasons that he backs off.

The first is his military commanders tell him that he cannot win a decisive victory if he uses military force. And the reason is that the government in Tehran has basically quelled the protests. So the protests are not swelling to the point where the American military can come in and deliver the final blow, the coup de grace, right? We're not in a position to do that by January 14. So Trump begins to cool his jets. The second thing that happens is Netanyahu calls him, and Netanyahu tells him he does not want Trump to use military force. Because as long as the regime is in power, and it looks like it's going to be in power on January 14th, that means the regime will launch ballistic missiles and cruise missiles at Israel.

And Israel cannot defend itself. This argument is hardly ever heard in the West, but you have to understand that in the 12-day war last June, what the Israelis wanted to do after 12 days was end that war, because they were incapable of defending themselves. The Iranians had learned how to get lots of ballistic and cruise missiles through their defenses, and the Israelis were running out of defensive missiles. So the Israelis were in real trouble and pushed Trump to end the war after 12 days. Well, the situation has not changed. If the regime is in place in Tehran and is capable of launching ballistic missiles at Israel, Israel would really be pounded. And Netanyahu recognized that. So it's very important to understand that the Israelis on January 14th asked us not to bomb Iran. And again, the American military said, you can bomb Iran, but you're not going to get regime change. And in large part, because the protests, had failed by January 14th because on January 8th, the government in Tehran started to crack down.

So this is what's going on there. But of course, as you well know, this game is not over. The United States and the Israelis will continue to look for ways to have regime change in Iran, and they will continue to look for ways to use military force to help topple that regime. Let me go ahead and put B3 up on the screen here, guys. And let me get your reaction to this, Professor Mearsheimer. So one of the theories that I've seen from people who are hoping that we attack Iran, frankly, is that this is just a pause while we move appropriate assets into the region because we had a lot of things far afield to deal with the old Venezuela situation that Trump created.

And so this is just a pause to bring more assets in. And actually what it means is that we're going to do something even bigger than what was potentially originally intends. Do you think that there is any credence? Do you think that that is something that we should be concerned about? Well, we should definitely be concerned about it. You know, we live in a very dangerous world, and President Trump makes that world increasingly dangerous by the day by his rhetoric and by his actions. So we should be concerned. But having said that, what are we going to do with all that military force to affect us? To a few. affect regime change in Iran. The fact is the regime is in place and there's no way all that

air power that we have in the region can topple the regime. You see, you want to understand that starting in late December, we and the Israelis thought that with the protests, with the protest, we could topple the regime. The protesters were going to do the heavy lifting. The protesters were We're going to undermine the regime, and then we were going to come in and deliver the coup de grace with American military power. But once the protests fail between January 8th and January 14th, it doesn't make sense to use American military power because we no longer have the protests working in our favor. So using military force just doesn't make no sense. There's no question we can pound that country. Bringing in all that firepower will definitely wreak destruction on Iran.

But the question you have to ask yourself is what will the regime, which remains in place, do as a consequence? And number one, as I just explained, the regime will pound Israel, and the Israelis don't want that. Secondly, the regime will go after American military bases and American troops in the region. And we really don't want that. And the third thing is that the regime in Tehran is likely to shut down the Straits of Hormuz and therefore shut down the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, which would have devastating effects on the international economy. So the point is that as long as the regime in Tehran is in power,

it doesn't make sense to hit them with American military power or Israeli military power because the regime in Tehran has retaliatory options. Again, what we had hoped to do was topple the regime, and the American military would come in at the last moment and facilitate that outcome. One of the things that's really struck me, Professor, is just the, I mean, I was always pessimistic about the American military, but learning about how 25% of that interceptors were used

just in the 12-day war, learning even in this scenario where they wanted to strike Iran or potentially, and they had to bring a carrier from the South China Sea, all of our naval armada is stuck in the Caribbean and across the world. We were unable to defeat the Houthi campaign. It does seem as if there are severe limitations on American power as Trump is trying to embrace this world policeman, this world policeman, but only in certain select areas strategy. How do you think that will collide with reality at some point or has it already? Let me just point out that I agree with everything you just said.

Very important what you just said. But just to come at it from a slightly different perspective, you want to remember that we didn't do regime change in Venezuela. All we did was take away Maduro and elevate the vice president to the presidency. The regime remains in place. Yes. What we tried to do in Iran was regime change. Now, when we did regime change in the past,

we had boots on the ground. Remember Iraq. Remember Afghanistan. The last thing Trump wants to do is have boots on the ground. He's not interested in engaging in social engineering. That's why the protesters are so important. They are in effect our boots on the ground. But once that does it work, right, then you can't use American military power.

All this is to say there are great limits to why. you can do with military power. And this is something that I think Trump intuitively understands. His predecessors did not understand that, which is why we invaded Iran, I mean, excuse me, invaded Iraq and engaged in social engineering with boots on the ground. Trump understands you can't do that. That's why he didn't pursue regime change in Venezuela, and it's why he's not putting boots on the ground in Iran. But the point that is that. is that there are lots of people in the body politic who just think we can drive aircraft carriers into the region, use those aircraft carriers to topple the regime in Iran, and then march on to the

next target. It doesn't work that way. There are real limits to what you can do with military power, which again is why we've put boots on the ground in the past. And I think that Trump understands that. And that's why Trump, although he has used military force quite liberally since taking office, I count seven different countries that he's attacked. And of course, he's threatening to take Greenland with military force, or he has been threatening to take Greenland with military force. Although he uses military force liberally, he uses it in a pinprick fashion. He doesn't invade countries and end up with boots on the ground.

And as long as he doesn't end up with boots on the ground, he will be pretty much free to use military force here and there against weak adversaries. But the end result is not that significant because they're just real limits to what you can do with air power alone or by removing Maduro and replacing him with Ms. Rodriguez. It just doesn't add up to that much. Well, let's talk about one more country using that analysis. Put B5 up on the screen, the Wall Street Journal, reporting that the U.S. is actively seeking regime change in Cuba by the end of the year after oucing Venezuela's leader, the Trump administration is searching for Havana insiders who could cut a deal to end communist rule. Let me just read a couple of the first paragraphs here. Inboldened by the U.S. ouster Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro, the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the communist. regime by the end of the year. The Trump administration has assessed Cuba's economy as being close to collapse that the government has never been this fragile after losing a vital benefactor in Maduro, these people said. Officials do not have a concrete plan to end the communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for a seven decades, but they see Maduro's

capture and subsequent concessions from his allies left behind as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba, according to senior U.S. officials. Quote, I strongly suggest they make a deal before it is too late, President Trump stayed in a January 11th social media post in which he said, quote, no more oil or money would be going to Cuba. So what do you think the plans are for Cuba here? Well, I think that the Trump administration, especially because of the influence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is interested in doing big-time social engineering in all of Latin America, very important to emphasize that the Americans have long been completely intolerant of left-leaning governments in the Western Hemisphere.

We have a rich history, as you both know very well, of toppling governments in places like Chile and Guatemala that we thought were to the left of center. We just do not like governments of that sort. And we've had no greater adversary since 1900 in the Western Hemisphere than Cuba. It goes back to when Fidel Castro took over there in 1959. So we've long had our gun sights on Cuba. And I think that in terms of the moment, I think that the Trump administration would like to produce regime change in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. But Cuba is definitely number two on the hit list. And what the administration is doing is not using military power.

It's not putting boots on the ground for sure. But it's using our tremendous economic leverage in the region to hopefully, from their point of view, topple the regime in Cuba. And what we think we can do is by controlling Venezuelan oil, make sure that the Cuban economy, which is in terrible shape, even when it's getting Venezuelan oil will be in disastrous shape when the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba is completely cut off, which is what we're now in the process of doing. So we want regime change in Cuba. But it's, again, another example of Trump pursuing regime change on the cheap. Is this just an ideological, I mean, I know it's an ideological fixation for Rubio,

But is there anything beyond that? I mean, with Venezuela, first we were sold this nonsense about drugs. Then we were sold just like, no, we're just taking the oil. I mean, there are a lot of natural resources in Venezuela. Cuba, not so much. So is this just purely an ideological project? Is that the rationale behind it? I think that the principal factor that explains American military intervention in Latin America

since 1900 is ideology. And it's our deep-seated fear of left-wing governments. And we're not even talking about far-left governments here, like you saw under Allende in Chile. That's not what we're talking about. Even moderately liberal governments really spook us. And we often do regime change, and we often do it at the end of a rifle barrel, but not always. Now, just to go back to Venezuela, to pick up on what you were saying, Crystal, You remember in the beginning, it was narco-terrorism.

Then when that argument began to, you know, lose its punch, they started talking about the Monroe Doctrine, as if, you know, China and Russia were taking over the Western Hemisphere. But that didn't make any sense. And then when Trump finally went in, the explanation became oil. But oil was not touted as the main reason for going into Venezuela. for most of the period before the kidnapping. It wasn't like oil was front and center as the argument.

And I was saying on various podcasts that I thought the principal reason was ideology. But you want to remember that ideology and oil are tied together. Because when you talk about oil, what bothered the Americans was the nationalization of Venezuelan oil. Who are these Venezuelans to nationalize their own oil? This is unacceptable. American oil companies should be free to come down there and exploit Venezuela and oil. That's basically the view of the Trump administration. And that is inextricably bound up with left-right issues, right?

And of course, the Chavez government and now the Maduro government, these were socialist governments. Anytime you use the word socialism, you know, the trouble is in store for that country that identifies itself as a social country. So I think the oil issue morphed into the oil, excuse me, the oil issue and the ideology issue were tied together. But as you point out, in the case of Cuba, there's no oil issue, right? Cuba doesn't have oil. Cuba's not Venezuela. There, it's, I think, purely the ideological issue. Got it. Well, last question for me, for you, sir, is about potential blowback. So they're basking the

Trump administration when I talk to them. in their glory of Iran, of Venezuela. They genuinely feel as if nothing can go wrong. I often point out that it took many years for many interventions or others to fall apart. How do you see the potential blowback or complications in all of these scenarios? Well, they failed in Iran.

I mean, we'll be very clear on this. The American media, the mainstream media, will not say this, right? They will not say that this was a colossal failure, which just happened in Iran. And, of course, there is a possible. that at some point in the future, the regime in Iran will be toppled, so we can't say it will never happen, but it has not happened so far. With regard to Venezuela, they think this was a great

victory. But I think that you want to remember that after we toppled the regime in Iraq, President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier, and he declared mission accomplished. I think that the Trump administration is duplicating what the Bush administration did back in 2003. They're declaring that the mission has been accomplished. We're going to live happily ever after vis-a-vis Venezuela. I would not bet a lot of money on that. The idea that a bunch of gringoes from up north can come down and run Venezuelan politics. And you want to remember that this is what President Trump said he was going.

going to do. He said he was going to run Venezuelan politics, and furthermore, we're going to steal their oil, and we're going to get away with that in a country where there is a powerful sense of nationalism, I would not bet a lot of money on this. There's a long road ahead for the United States in Venezuela, and I believe that the mission accomplished argument will not look like a good one a year or two from now. And with regard to blowback, there's obviously lots of blowback in the system. The Mark Carney speech at Davos that we just talked about is an example of blowback. The Europeans are beginning to push back on us, not very hard at the moment, but they are

beginning to push back. And we're going to have trouble in different places around the world that we don't have to have if we would act smartly. But the key point you want to keep in mind is that the United States is an incredibly powerful country. And it operates in an integrated international economy. The international economy is highly integrated. And that integration provides us with enormous leverage over virtually every country on the planet, except for maybe China and Russia. So we use, the Trump administration uses that economic leverage liberally to get its way.

And it also, that economic leverage causes countries to be very fearful of fighting back against us. They don't want to get on the wrong side of us. This is why so many countries are now rushing to join the Board of Peace. President Trump wants them to join the Board of Peace. Okay, let's join the Board of Peace because we don't want to anger him. Given the power that he has and given how willing he is to use that power, we have to be very careful. So the point I'm making to you is given just how powerful the United States is, especially on the economic front. And in a funny way, more on the economic front than the military front, we are able to whipsaw countries and not face that much blowback.

Yeah. Well, we really appreciate your time. We know how in demand you are. So thank you so much, Professor, for your analysis this morning. We're incredibly grateful. Thank you so much, sir. You're more than welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. As we, as did we. We'll see you later. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.