Pod Save the World - Biden’s Foreign Policy Farewell

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense, President Biden’s final foreign policy speech, and the many global challenges Donald Trump will be inheriting on his first day in office. They also talk about the potential for a last minute ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, Lebanon’s new president, far-right parties and candidates that are ascendant in Croatia, Austria, and Germany, Paul Manafort’s international comeback attempt, and the politics of naming aircraft carriers. Then, Ben speaks with Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group, about the top global risks of 2025.  For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

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and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash world. Welcome back to POT Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. So last week, prepping the show. Seems like a long time ago last week. Yeah, it's like Tuesday sitting in the office to look at the wind. window, you see this massive plume of smoke rising and building and building and then after we taped, it had basically covered all of the west side of Los Angeles, but we still had no idea. I mean, it was ominous, but we had no idea what was going to happen. So I remember last, yeah, last week I was, I had a dentist appointment in the morning and it's on San Vicente, forgive non-Angeloino's. San Vicente Boulevard. It's a, you know, main thorough for in West L.A. And as I was driving up San Vicente,

the entire other side was closed and was just all emergency vehicles. I hadn't seen anything like that since 9-11 when I was in New York. There were like dozens of emergency vehicles and that's when I came in here. And then when I drove home, they had like closed off I-10

where it goes down to the Pacific Coast Highway and I could see the fire. I mean, not just smoke. I could see like flames, right? And we lost power that night. You guys lost power early and for a long time. Yeah, well, it was that crazy night For what folks on, there was like a hundred mile per hour gusts of wind in some parts of the city,

and everywhere else was just really, really windy and scary, ominous windy. We had wind so strong that a tree and like a real tree, not like a small guy, fell over in our front yard. But we were never, you know, like you, we were safe distance in the sense that there's like three miles of concrete between us and the palisades. But man, just a totally tragic and surreal few days here. horrifying. And it's just that we're at the beginning of this thing. I mean, if we're talking Tuesday, afternoon, January 14th, there's going to be bad winds tonight. Hopefully then things calm down going into the weekend. And what we really need is some rain or for the winds to shift from

blowing inland to offshore to blowing in, you know, blowing from over the coasts in so we get some moisture in here. But I mean, Hannah and I, we're completely safe. We're fine. But on Wednesday night, we're watching TV, about to put our kids down. And, uh, you know, and, uh, you're, the local news starts showing the Hollywood Hills fire. Well, that was, yeah, that was the, that fire was a weird one too. I don't know if they figured out how that started. They don't know how it started. They got it out fast, I think, because they had the air assets available and they

started dumping water on it from helicopters and planes, et cetera. But when we saw that, Hannah and I said, we're getting out of here right now. Just because those hills are uncomfortably close. Yeah, and Hannah thought that we might have been evacuated. And so we just, like, through everything we could into the car. I mean, I will say. Like nine false evacuation notices. L.A. response has been far better than, I mean, I mean, we can, I'm not even talking about Karen Bass. I'm talking about these firefighters.

They're incredible. I mean, I have a bunch of friends on Mandeville Canyon Road. And it for, you know, the fire basically started to come up the ridge to this road. And they just stopped it. I mean, with airdrops, with brush clearing, with fire retardant. I mean, heroic, heroic work. But the people that fucked up are the people that sent emergency warnings telling us all to evacuate. Because I got like 4 a.m. Yeah, I got an evacuation. morning, I'm like, this can't be right. I mean, I'm looking out my window. I don't see you fire, you know. But anyway, that's the least of the problems. Absolutely terrifying. Hopefully, this thing is well under control soon. That doesn't mean, but there's going to be an enormous need for a very long time. And if you want to help out, we set up a way for folks to donate if they want to a bunch of great organizations. You can go to the Latino Community Foundation, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, the LA Fire Department Foundation, United Way of Greater L.A.

and the California Community Foundation Wildlife Relief Fund. If you go to Votes ofamerica.com slash relief, you can donate there. Your money will get split to all five of those organizations. We did it on Act Blue through this setup because most of our listeners have all their information saved and it just kind of reduces friction and you can donate easily. We raise about $100,000 for those groups. Super grateful of the people for their generosity. But man, I mean, Ben and I were just talking on the way in like, it's going to be a question of not, can you rebuild a lot of these parts of the city, but do people want to live there anytime soon? Pacific Palisades is kind of gone, you know? I mean, it's just wiped out. We know lots of people

who lost their houses. And yeah, I don't even know what it looks like to rebuild an entire neighborhood like that, you know. Thousands and thousands of houses. I will say my one, you know, lib comment here I'm going to make, but, you know, for years, like this, it's interesting to. to live in a place where the climate effects are so obvious, because to short-hand this in 30 seconds, it's been raining much more here the last few years, which means much more vegetation, and then it gets hotter and drier in the summer, which means that more vegetation burns faster. You don't have to be a climate scientist to understand that we have a problem here. And so there are places where it might have been safe to live, like, you know, 30 years

ago that people are going to have to think about how to rebuild, if to rebuild. Yeah, and how we're going to manage going forward knowing this stuff's going to happen. Yeah. Our buddy, Peter Hamby, is a great piece in Puck that I think really well encapsulates kind of the history of fires in the L.A. area. Like, yes, it's absolutely being exacerbated by climate change, but you had horrible fires in the 90s that led to the same questions, the same political recriminations. People, you know, you had people, you know, like Donald Trump Jr. is now attacking

like woke DEI initiatives and somehow responsible. the idiot Republicans in the 90s were saying that like an excessive focus on LGBT rights was the problem in why the city burned in places. Just the same stupid stuff. Stupid never changes. Amazing piece by Peter and Puck. And I think captures how angry a lot of progressives are at Democratic leaders in the city. Yeah. City is not the best government.

No, we're having our time. But we are going to do a great show for you guys today. We're going to talk about Pete Hegseth's confirmation up on Capitol. Hill and Democratic efforts to prevent him from becoming Secretary of Defense. Doesn't seem like that's going to happen. We're also going to talk about President Biden's speech Monday outlining its foreign policy accomplishments will cover news from both the Biden and Trump teams on immigration policy, the latest on international support for Syria, a new president in Lebanon, far-right

parties in Croatia, Austria, and Germany and what it kind of means for the global international order. And then what former Trump campaign manager or campaign chairman, I should say, Paul Manafort, is up to. And then, Ben, you just talked to Ian Bremmer. Tell everybody who he is and what you guys talked about. Yeah, Ian Bremmer is the head of the Eurasia group. And they have a report out the last few days about the top risks for 2025 and given our risk watching here on this show. I thought it was an apt time leading to Trump inauguration to kind of look at the landscape and think about what is the most dangerous thing on the horizon. it's the total absence of any international order.

It's the rising great power conflict. Is it the future of the U.S.-China conflict? Is it the way in which people like Elon Musk and other business leaders have become, you know, many states and more and more irresponsible? And, you know, Ian's an interesting character I have on the show because he circulates in that world, you know, of political and business elites. So I think pretty interesting insights into kind of the mindset of particularly the kind of business leaders who've kind of bought our politics. Yeah. So it's worth checking out. Definitely.

Definitely worth checking out. We got a new elite class running the show in Washington. We need to study their habits. Speaking of global risks, Pete Heggseth. Fox News Weekend anchor Donald Trump's nominee to run the Department of Defense. He was up before the Senate today, the Armed Services Committee, I think. It's no surprise. Hexeth got a warm welcome from Republicans. It's got some tough questions from Democrats. Here's an excerpt from some of the grilling portion. Your predecessor in a Trump administration

Secretary Esper was asked and did use uniform military to clear on armed protesters. He was given the order to potentially shoot at them. Heelows flew low in Washington, D.C. as crowd control. He later apologized publicly for those actions. Was he right or wrong to apologize. Senator, I was there on the ground. I saw that. I understand and I respect that. I've been there. I understand the level of threat that was involved in that moment. I also understand. So he was, legality and the constitution. Sir, was he right or wrong to apologize? I'm not going to put words in the mouth of secretary Esper or anybody else. He said him himself. You don't have to. What are you scared of? Did he do the right thing by apologizing? I'm not scared of anything. Senator. Then say yes or no. You can say no.

The laws in the Constitution. Okay. Are we going to abide by the Geneva Convention and the prohibitions on torture or are we not? Is it going to depend on the circumstances? As I've stated multiple times, the Geneva Conventions are what we base ours. But what an American First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield. America First understands we send Americans for a clear mission.

and a clear objective, we equip them properly for that objective. We give them everything they need, and then we stand behind them with the rules of engagement that allow them to fight decisively to defeat America's enemies. You heard Alyssa Slotkin, Senator from Michigan, and Angus King, centered from Maine. I thought Alyssa Slotkin, I didn't watch the whole hearing. I watched a lot of it. I thought Slotkin was really good, both in substance and tone of her questions. She would be good on that committee for all.

Yes, she is, and she has a lot of relevant experience. You can't get about her. There were also been a lot of questions about Hegsath's drinking. I'm reminded of the great word, a big word, bibulous, which means like a state of near constant drunkenness. It's one I loved and stuck with me a long time ago. Sounds like my freshman year in college. Yeah, his infidelity, you know, there are allegations that have tanked previous nominees for senior positions. But Republicans don't seem to really care about that stuff anymore.

So we're going to focus on Pete's responses to policy questions because it seems like he's going to get the job. So, Ben, I came away thinking that Hegson. Seth does not believe that women should serve in combat. He doesn't seem particularly committed to the Geneva Conventions or the rule of law. We know in the past he's lobbied Trump to pardon service members who commit war crimes. He also would not rule out ordering the military to shoot American protesters if Donald Trump asked him to. You heard Alyssa Slok and ask him about that. He's going to give him unlimited support to the Israeli military to use in Gaza. He is basically just a vessel for whatever Trump wants or says with no really relevant experience. But,

But did I leave anything out? Any other takeaways from you? Yeah. So I have a piece in the New York Times today that people want to check it out about this. Very good piece. But the basic point is to understand Hegsev, I think you have to understand what's happened on the right, really the far right, but it's now the right, I guess, since 9-11. Where a guy like Hegsef, you know, after 9-11, it's rah-ra-rah, we're going to go win these great victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those turn out to be terrible decisions.

those people feel somewhat betrayed by the bushes and Cheneas of the world. And then they do the thing that happens a lot when superpowers don't want more. Instead of kind of really focusing on the failed foreign policy, they kind of start blaming enemies within the United States. You know, the liberals, the Muslims, the immigrants, the wolf culture, fifth column stuff. You know, and that's Pete Hexed, right? He's basically, he went.

Yeah, he went from cheerleading in the Iraq war to castigating well, culture. But I think that the thing that is dangerous, and some of that's in the clips, is to just, you know, he is actually arguing for a fundamental transformation in the U.S. military. We would no longer abide by international law in the Geneva Convention. You know, he advocated the pardon of people that murdered civilians. I mean, this is not, you know, close stuff. These are people that were actually prosecuted. Yeah, these weren't edge cases. These weren't violations of the rules of engagement. These are pretty clear-cut war crimes. Clear-cut war crimes, right?

at a time when Trump is threatening to violate other international laws by maybe like invading Greenland. Which you got asked about. Yeah, yeah. That too is concerning. You know, how does the hostility international law go in that direction? The kind of reverse social engineering of the military. You know, we don't like gays in military. We don't like women in combat.

We don't like so-called diversity hires, including the currently black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know. And then this question that Alyssa focused on, which is, will the United States military just become, not only like a kind of maga military, like it's part of Donald Trump's social engineering, but will be used in the United States to serve the presence of political interests, to quash protest, as Trump wanted to do after George Floyd. She also asked if Hegseth would ask uniformed military members to staff migrant detention facilities on the border. It sounds like yes. Or engaged in mass deportations, right?

So this is very serious stuff. And it is just worth pausing on the fact that it's absurd he's going to be confirmed. I mean, putting aside the horrific sexual assault allegations and drinking allegations, just the fact that a fox and friends weekend anchor, you know, who's going to be there is crazy. The Democrats, you know, some of them I think were the people that were focused on what he's going to do, I think, have the right approach. One thing we just talk about is like, what's the democratic approach and resistance 2.0. Focus on what they say they want to do. You know, yelling at him about his drinking or his infidelities. I don't like those things, but like Donald Trump is the president.

I think we've crossed the barrier of infidelity being disqualifying for high office when the president of United States was literally convicted and sentenced a few days ago for paying hush money to a porn star. Yeah, one might argue also when Bill Clinton was elected twice. That's fair. People didn't care that much of infidelity. Yeah, when I turned on the hearing for the first time, it was Tim Kane, Senator Tim Kaine shouting about infidelity. And it just, it felt so off and it was so wrong. Tammy Duckworth tried to burn Pete for not knowing what countries were in ASEAN. I'm not sure that was effective.

That probably endears Pete Heggsette to his supporters because it's like, fuck ASEAN. You know, by the way, I say that, nobody loves ASEAN. I know you love ASEAN. I would never question you. But here was another slightly less effective line of questioning, Ben, from Senator Jack Reed. I thought people might enjoy. Well, by the way, would you explain what a drag-off is? I don't think I need to, sir.

Why not? because the men and women watching understand. Well, perhaps some of my colleagues don't understand. It would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the warfighters. Their promotions, their medals, in front of having the backs of those who are making the tough calls on the front lines. Thank you, Senator. Interesting. What about that exchange was damaging to Pete Heggzeth?

That's a huge win for Pete Hegzaf in that exchange. It's just terrible. It's just a fundamental misreading of the room, the room being America, to think that you're, you know, winning that exchange. Or the U.S. military. Like, that clip will probably go around to a bunch of service members who will think it's fucking hilarious that he's making fun of JAG officers and call him Jaggoffs. Yeah, it's not their way to go. I mean, we should point out that Pete Hagseth has also written constantly about the existential threat to America of a Marxist, leftist ideology and has called for the categorical defeat of the left in this country. So that guy running the United States military is maybe not the best thing for crooked media.

It's pretty bad for everybody. We're not Marxists, to be clear. No. But we are on the last. Not even close. Just to round out kind of updates on the team. Marco Rubio has his confirmation hearing on Wednesday. The day this episode comes out, it sounds like he's a shoe in for confirmation, Rubio.

The nominees that were seen as wobbly in terms of from the national security side of the nominations front, Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence. Cashel, the FBI director. Those are no longer seen as wobbly by the kind of mainstream press. It sounds like they will make it through barring some other revelation or disaster at their confirmation hearings. But Ben, before we move on, I did just quickly want to check in with you on what Trump 1.0's team is up to. This is a clip of Trump's first national security advisor, Mike Flynn, on some random right-wing podcast called The Mel Kay Show. Let's hear from General Flynn. I mean, there were people while Trump was serving as president that were in his administration that we now know committed treason.

100%. They undermine the sitting president of the United States while they were working for him, and they were in the executive branch of the government. That's called treason. So some of them are over in the CIA, some are in the National Security Council. So there are going to have to be, you know, it's, I mean, I hate to use the phrase the night the Long Knives, because that's a really bad, bad phrase. But there has to be a reckoning, right? For those unfamiliar, the Night of the Long Knives was a major political purge, ordered by Hitler

in 1934, where he ordered the execution of rivals and political opponents. Ben, is it normal to suggest that your old boss should emulate Hitler? Yeah, when even Mike Flynn pauses and is like, should I actually say this? Yeah, you know that what's coming is a real special. I mean, there's been this relentless normalization of these people since the election. And, you know, Hegset, who I don't think had the votes to be confirmed a couple days after his nomination, there was this, you know, we talked about this already, but essentially part of the story of all these confirmations is the degree to which Trump has completely neutered the center Republicans. Because, you know, aside from tossing Matt Gates overboard, he's going to seemingly get all these people through.

And that's insane. Because Cash Patel and Pete Heggzeth are, you know, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Yeah, Bob, 90% of that Senate, well, maybe not 90 these days, but probably half that Senate caucuses. They know better. They wouldn't pick those people, you know, and they know better. So it does show how much he's just enforced dominance. But with the Flynn, you know, Flynn is a little bit more out there. But I don't know, man, take a tour through Pete Hags as writings. And there's some good short ends, you know, noted Neo Lib, John Chate had a piece in the Atlantic just summing up reading his books.

these people talk in apocalyptic terms about the left. Yeah, some fashy stuff. Cash Patel talks about, you know, tearing down buildings and sending people to prison. I mean, it's not that far off from the night of long eyes. And I guess what we'll find out in the next few weeks is whether they meant it. Yeah, how far off? Yeah, yeah. That's what we'll find out.

And it's an uncomfortable place to be. And the fact that every, I mean, you know, I'm not going to do the media criticism of, you know, the resistance. It's more just all of our psychologists have to resist that these are normal people in these jobs. Yeah, for sure. Pottae the world is brought to you by Haya. Typical children's vitamins are basically candy in disguise, filled with two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, and other gummy additives growing kids should not eat. That's why Haya created a superpowered chewable vitamin.

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To claim this deal, go to Hayahealth.com slash world. This deal is not available on their regular website. go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-L-T-H-E-H-E-L-H-H-T-H-T-H-T-H-E-H-E-H-E-H-E-L-T-H-E-H-E-L-T-E-H-E-R-E-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-R-E-RU-ROWS-E-E-E-ROWSORE. Here is kind of a big-P-E-E-RECT-EFORSORE. This is a fierce competition underway. The future of the global economy, technology, human values, and so much else. Right now, in my view, thanks to our administration, the United States is winning the worldwide

competition. Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker. We have not gone to war to make these things happen. During my presidency, I have increased America's power at every dimension. Look at the end of the Pacific. He made partnerships stronger and created new partnerships to challenge China's aggressive behavior and to rebalance power in the region.

Just consider Russia. When Putin invaded Ukraine, he thought he'd conquer Kiev in a matter of days. The truth is, since that war began, I'm the only one that stood in the center of Kiev, not him. Putin never had. All told, Iran is weaker than it has been in decades. And if you want more evidence, if it was seriously weak in Iran and Russia, just take a look at Syria.

There is nothing, and I can tell you from my conversation about Xi and Putin, nothing our adversaries and competitors like Russia and China would have liked more than seeing us to continue to be tied down in Afghanistan for another decade. For all those reasons, ending the war was the right thing to do. And I believe history will reflect that. So a lot of different pieces there, Ben. We talked about this a bit on Pots of America Tuesday, so I'll just be brief. I mean, I think what I found lacking in the speech or less effective was it was kind of a litany of accomplishments that didn't really at times match up with the reality of this uncertain moment that we're in.

Yeah, yeah. This moment of peril that we just talked about with Mike Flynn. Like, yes, we created new partnerships in Asia, but what happens to them now? And also, by the way, I mean, some of those partnerships and alliances like South Korea are a little rocky at the moment. Yes, it's great that Biden went to Kiev and Putin is not, but what happens to Ukraine now? Yeah. Yes, Iran is weaker, but they are closer to never getting a nuclear weapon. So, look, you give it your best shot in these speeches.

You're trying your best to kind of lay down the first draft of history and your legacy and your accomplishments. And on one score, like, part of the speech, I do give President Biden a lot of credit for ending the war in Afghanistan. It's interesting that he's now highlighting that as an accomplishment when they didn't really talk about it for a very long time, because it was seen as a liability. But, you know, some of the stuff in there about, like, urging Trump to keep in place his AI policy or his climate work, like, it seems very unlikely. And then Gaza was kind of an afterthought. We can get to that in the second.

But, like, what were your big picture of thoughts on this? Yeah, well, let's do Gaza, you know, next. I think you put it well, you know, listening to that even just now, and this, we should note, this is the last pod say the world of the Biden administration. It's not unlike, you know, the domestic piece in which they have a communications, and I don't think this is on the communication staffers. I think this is from Joe Biden himself, to be very clear. They have a communication strategy that's constantly telling you about all these historic achievements. And so on domestic policy, I would watch this and he's constantly, you know, I pass this and that and nobody's done as much since FDR.

And a lot of those accomplishments are real and important. But you know what? Like the cost of living sucks. And the infrastructure bill is that's, it's not the new deal. It can be good without being the greatest thing ever, you know. And it's interesting that they do the same thing on foreign policy and all these legacy tours because, sure, there are good things that they've done. And if I go through the list that, you know, sure, they kind of restored good relations with our allies. They at the critical moment with Ukraine kind of helped Ukraine survive and have a fighting challenge.

chance, and literally that's all it is in this war with Russia. I think they've done a lot of interesting things vis-vis China, whether it's kind of restricting technology to give the United States an advantage, whether it's kind of building this network of alliances in Asia-Pacific, also kind of stabilizing the relationship with China in the last year or two. They got that fucking spy balloon. Got shot down that fucking balloon, you know, rejoined Paris and they, you know, they're good things. The huge climate investment, massive climate investments. but because they overtorget so much, you know, that it's like, to your point, like Ukraine is not, they talk about it like it's some war that is over that was won. And it's not. It's still a very difficult circumstance. And also, we're not the main actor.

I'm more interested that Zelensky stood in Kiev than Joe Biden, to be honest, you know. And on Afghanistan, they'd have more credibility in defending the withdrawal if they'd, if they'd, acknowledged that the withdrawal didn't go well. I know. That part's frustrating. And Joe Biden has never once said that he has any regret about how that went went down, you know, and if he just said, you know, I believe it was the right thing to do. I believe we had to leave Afghanistan at some point. I didn't want to leave this to another successor, but, you know, we wish that it was less chaotic. We are heartbroken at the loss of life of Afghans and Americans. And we continue to care about Afghan women and people that are

suffering under the Taliban, the inability to just describe what everybody is seeing in the world, because nobody is going to only believe that speech, because we're still looking out of the world in which there's a war in Ukraine, in which there's a lot of unnerving conflict, in which the Middle East is a mess, and we'll talk about that. So I just, it's a lesson, in the last thing I'd say on alliances, which I keep coming back to, it's alliances are a means to an end. They're not an end. I mean, the fact that we get along with countries we should get along with is not, that's great, but, you know, what do you want to do with that? And what is Trump going to do with that? And so I just think that there was just, it was so off the, while there's a lot of substance in there

that is right, and we know a lot of people in this administration, by the way, who worked their ass off for four years. And I'm talking about even down people, mid-level people. These are not necessarily even just, you know, these are not the people negotiating in Gaza, you know. I'm talking about people that went to work in a pandemic and are leaving with Donald Trump coming in, probably had a pretty tough four years and worked hard. But, but this victory lap just felt kind of totally like who's it for, you know? Yeah, no, I don't know. It seems like it was for to be blunt, Joe Biden. Yeah, who wants to kind of like lay down what is, what he thinks his record is and what it should look like. And yeah, and I think he would be better served, at least

taking on board, listening to giving an inch on some of the critics. It'd be a more effective communications threat. They'd have a better chance at communicating a positive legacy if they acknowledge some error or some unease. Yeah, for sure. We reference the Gaza piece. So here's a clip of President Biden talking about Gaza. Palestinians have suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started.

They've been through hell. So many innocent people have been killed. So many communities have been destroyed. The Palestinian people deserve peace and the right to determine their own futures. Israel deserves peace and real security. And the hostages in their families deserve to be reunited. And so we're working urgently to close this deal. So, Ben, this was the part of the speech that frustrated me the most, which is totally the most off.

I think the Biden administration, a lot of senior officials often talk about Gaza and Palestinian suffering and the passive voice. Yeah. Is if we are not a party to this conflict when we're. we're giving all of the weapons to the Israelis. And I know that President Biden is desperately trying to get another ceasefire deal. And there were a bunch of reports and rumors this morning that a deal was imminent and about to get done. But, you know, nothing was finalized by the time we started recording at what's 2.43 p.m. Pacific right now. But even the deal that's being discussed will not end the war.

And you know, who's like ruling out ending the war. And now the reconstruction effort is going to get handed off to Donald Trump, who does not give a shit about the Palestinians. So it is incredibly bleak. We're the reason it got to this point because we've been arming one side of the conflict and doing nothing to end it, in my view. Yeah, I mean, it's been 15 months since October 7th. Every single plane that has dropped a bomb on Gaza is an American plane. The 2,000 pound bombs dropped on refugee camps or American 2,000 pound bombs. The United States has vetoed resolutions that tried to bring about a ceasefire.

at the UN Security Council. We could go on and on. The bottom line is that Joe Biden used absolutely no leverage to try to end the war in Gaza. And it sounds like the Trump administration, without even taking office, is using more leverage or at least playing a little more hardball than Yahoo, according to news reports. Well, yeah. I mean, according to news reports, you know, Trump has clearly made it known that he wanted this war over by the time he took office.

Yeah, probably and he said that publicly. And he said, I've heard from many people in the, the U.S. government and in foreign governments that that's the message from Trump since the election. And if you look at reports, you know, Steve Whitkoff, who, you know, none of us had heard of two months ago, was harder on Netanyahu than anybody in the Biden administration. Like, let's just be blunt about it. You know, if those reports are true. Yeah, I don't know. And let's be clear, too. That's not because Donald Trump is too fuchs about the Palestinians. That's because he wants to probably humiliate Joe Biden, you know. Yeah. I wonder if you're trying to actually Jimmy Carter, which was, you know, Ronald Reagan takes office. and hours later, the hostage just get out of Iran.

He wants this kind of off the plate when he comes in. He wants it out of the news. But, you know, I see some people are like, see Donald Trump's better for the Palestinians. Let's wait and see what happens in the West Bank. Wait a see. Because the West Bank is actually the thing that I've been most concerned of with Trump is whether he'll just look the way to kind of de facto,

if not outright annexation there. But look, there's no way getting around the fact. I know you can tell in all the legacy stuff, they don't want to be defined by Gaza, but this is the thing that has happened that's the most prominent thing that's happened for the last year and a half. And it's a huge part of this legacy. And all the language, passive voice about Palestinian suffering,

there was not really any action. You know, I mean, Tony Blinken's argument is, well, it could have been worse, you know, I guess, but it was pretty fucking close to the worst. Not that much worse. Biden also made a couple policy announcements on the foreign policy front that we just want to quickly mention. On Tuesday, the AP reported that Biden is planning to lift the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Ben, can you just give us the quick explanation of how big a deal that is and a time estimate for how long it will take Marco Rubio to walk it right back?

So, you know, I love this move. I've argued for this move for years, but just to, this is a really powerful sanction because when you're on the state sponsor terrorism list, you're basically cut off from the international financial system. I mean, the risk of anybody doing any business in Cuba is through the roof because of this level of sanction. Obama removed them from the state sponsor of terrorism list as a part of the normalization process. I want to add, as some person who negotiated that, Cuba was not a state sponsor of terrorism. So it wasn't like a gift. It was actually just an acknowledgement of reality. They were on this list for wholly political purposes.

Obama removes them from the list. The things start to get better in the lives of the Cuban people. There's more travel down there. There's more resources down there. There's more internet connectivity down there. Mike Pompeo, at about this time, the Trump administration, in January of 2021, slaps them back on the list going out the door. Cuba's been in an acute humanitarian crisis that we've talked about.

Look, this is a hugely positive step. But the fact that they're doing it now makes you wonder why they didn't do it one year, two years, three years, or four years ago because Cuba's not a state sponsor tourism. So, I mean, I'm glad they did it. I kind of begs the question of what's different now. Cuba was no more state-sponsored terrorism in any other day of the Biden administration than today. And, yeah, the risk is that Marco Rubio, who's, you know, made a kind of political identity out of being a hawk on Cuba, may come in and just throw them back on that list. Yeah, you can see that happening.

The other immigration-specific thing Biden announced was the Department of Homeland Security announced an extension of temporary protected status for immigrants from Venezuela, Ukraine, Sudan, and El Salis. So that will protect 937,000 people from deportation for 18 months. The thing that's obviously great because sending someone back to, you know, Sudan right now is unconscionable. Sadistic. But Trump has previously said he'd provoke TPS status for certain groups. So it's just not clear to me how settled this is or if they could also walk this one back. Yeah.

I, you know, this begs, you know, the question of there'll be legal challenges, I'm sure. but I badly needed stuff. But this is the same situation that was faced by the Haitians in the infamous Dogs and Cats episode because the reason those people are legal is because of TPS. But the reason that Trump and J.D. Vance

argued that they weren't legal is that they intended to revoke that status. And so expect to see a lot of drama tragically around whether people are here on temporary protected status can stay. Yeah. And then one last immigration thing

that caught our eye before we move on. Republicans are pushing legislation in Congress right now called the Lake and Riley bill. It is named after a nursing student in Georgia who was brutally murdered by an undocumented immigrant. It became a huge sort of right-wing cause during the campaign. The bill would do a bunch of different things, including require federal authorities to detain undocumented migrants, suspected of theft of over $100 or more and do so without trial. So basically, petty theft will get you thrown in jail indefinitely, which is very strange and unconstitutional seeming. But the one very surprising piece from a world over perspective is the bill lets states demand that the state

department not issue visas to countries that refuse to take back migrants we deport, which just seems completely unworkable to have like the state of Oklahoma making foreign policy determinations for the federal government. But I don't know. This bill is a classic case of a bill that was allegedly written to do a particular thing, which is deport criminals. And yet was written so expansively as to basically do away with any due process as to kind of give the state of Oklahoma foreign policy powers. And Democrats were so intimidated by the election that far too many them went along with it. You know, check out Andy Kim, Melissa Slokkin, two friends of ours now in the Senate, you know, who took a principled to stand on this. The one thing I'd add from

world our perspective is this is actually not new. It's out of a far-right playbook that we've seen in Europe. So there have been efforts in Europe to use things like, you know, traffic violations, get people deported, you know, it goes far beyond the kind of stated intent of deporting criminals. It's basically, can we find any, you know, imagine if you were totally innocent and someone said, that guy shoplifted and this person's innocent and suddenly they're getting deported under the Lake and Riley Act. I mean, that's not great. No, that's terrible. Well, another one to watch because immigration will be something that it moves fast, I think, in this next administration.

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At that conference, Saudi Arabia called for getting rid of sanctions on Syria, with the Saudi foreign minister saying, quote, their continuation hinders the aspirations of the Syrian people to achieve development and reconstruction. So pretty clear there. And then in Europe, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland, all released a paper saying the EU should immediately begin adjusting their sanctions regime, while at the same time keeping a close eye on the human rights situation in Syria. if certain conditions are not met, they propose sort of snapback mechanisms to put sanctions back in place.

But, you know, it's interesting that Assyria tries to rebuild. There are these European and Saudi pressures, you know, pushing in the direction of sanctions relief. There's also this question of how to hold the Assad regime accountable, especially given the fact that so many of its senior leaders have fled. We caught up with Ismail Al-Dula. He's a member of the White Helmets based in Aleppo. We just wanted to hear what he had to say about what ordinary Syrians want to see happen next from their government. Most of the West or the West audience are talking about who will lead Syria or who will run Syria and this guy or this guy. And for Syrian people, this is not their priority.

Their priority to get back to their homes, have normal life. and I can say on behalf of most of the citizens we don't need a president right now for five, six years, we don't need president we need to get normal to our life to normalcy to live again, to go we need our children to go to school, their schools, good school, good education.

We need to rehabilitate everything. We need a government to represent everyone election, but maybe this after one years, two years, three years, four years, four years, maybe. And we're not in hurry to get a new president. We have president since 50 years. So we can live without a president. We now, maybe we are the most happiest, happier people in the world last month. Without president, without anything, we're living, we're building,

Syria people are in the streets, clearing the streets, moving the trash, helping each other. Some good contacts from the ground there about what actually matters to people. But Ben, on this sanctions question, I mean, why do you think the Saudis and these European countries are so much more forward-leaning than the Biden administration when it comes of getting rid of sanctions? I just think that if you don't get rid of sanctions, you have a much greater risk of instability of different groups fighting because there's a lack of resources, right? And so if your concern is the stability of Syria, you actually want to get electricity in, food,

in, investment in so that the place can stabilize so that you don't have HDS beginning to get turned on by these other groups that are armed. And so if you're Europe, I mean, and let's face it, I mean, I'd like to think some of this is humanitarian. I think it is. But you also want Syria that people can go back to you. Yeah, they want to send back asylum. So if you want people to return to Syria, you need Syria to be something. success. Saudi is very interesting to me. It's interesting to me. It's interesting to me that this conference was in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, me too. Because Saudi Arabia and the U.E were the least

enthusiastic about what happened. They didn't like Assad. They hate Iran, but they don't like Islamists either. Right. They don't want ISIS. The UAE was apparently kind of the last holdout, you know, in terms of trying to work with Assad. I think it was smart of the Syrians to, you know, do this in Saudi and frankly of the Saudis, you know, we don't have much good to say. But, I mean, good to host this kind of gathering. And I just would like to see the U.S. follow suit because these sanctions aren't really accomplishing anything. People will argue that they're leverage to get HTS and Syrian leaders to be inclusive

and to protect minority rights. But the European approach is the right one. You can snap all that back. If they start, you know, repressing minorities, you can sanction them. And the last thing I just want to reaffirm that we talked about a little bit is that let's not make the standard perfection here. Like coming out of the Assad regime and the traumas of war, this place is not going to look like a, you know, a paragon of democracy in six months. If it's better than it was and they're trying to do the right thing, we shouldn't be holding them to like impossible standards either.

Yeah. Because that's what happens sometimes with this stuff. For sure. And I think I heard the German foreign minister talk about like they need for a peace dividend for the people of Syria. Like got to make life better for them post Assad. That has got to be the near term priority. And the rest of the democratic process is going to take. take some time. Writing a constitution, it's going to take some time. Well, you heard that guy, too. Like,

we're not in a hurry to have a president down there. They know, I mean, not to, you know, it's a totally different comparison. You know, they've, like, I'd be nice to not have a president here to do. Like, I'll go pick up the trash, you know. Right, right. Well, speaking of a place that didn't have a president, let's talk about neighboring Lebanon for a bit. They now have a president. They now have a prime minister after two years of the caretaker government. You can get a lot done with the caretaker government or gosh, like nothing done. General Joseph Awen is commander of the Lebanese military and is required by Lebanon's sectarian power sharing agreement.

He's a Marinite Christian. He was elected in the second round of voting with 99 votes out of the 128 and will resign from his position as army chief to take on the job. It was his job to then appoint a Sunni Muslim prime minister and he chose Nawaf Salam, whose job it is to now form a government. For those who don't, the Lebanon has a very strict sectarian power sharing setup with the president has to be Ameri-Kristian. Prime Minister is the Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of Parliament, a Shia Muslim. The list goes on and on and on. Salam is an interesting background. He's a former

diplomat. He's a current head of the UN's International Court of Justice. But the big thing to note in all of this is how weakened Hezbollah seems to be after Israel basically decapitated its entire leadership structure. Neither candidate was Hezbollah's first choice. Awen even promised in a speech to parliament that he would, quote, monopolize the carrying of weapons, end quote, to the Lebanese state, so an allusion to disarming Hezbollah. Obviously, it's a good thing that, one, Lebanon now is a government, too, it's a government that Hezbollah doesn't like. The thing I'm trying to figure out, and maybe it's unknowable, is whether this is a durable change and whether Hezbollah is permanently weekend or whether they're just going to buy their time.

The Iranians will slowly feed them money and weapons, and it will just kind of reemerge. That is the question. I mean, the headline from all these government formation moves in Lebanon is the marginalization relatively of Hezbollah and the, you know, breaking of the logjam in Lebanese politics because of that marginalization of Hezbollah, together with what's happened in Syria, this is a massive shift in the Levant, you know, and that's good. That said, it's the Middle East and Lebanon has massive problems. I mean, financial crisis doesn't begin to describe it. Yeah. And so the question is, can this government, you know, both can Hezbollah regenerate, but also can this government perform? Or else their

going to be blamed in a year or two years, too. So another reason to try to have Europe and the Middle East probably taking the lead and trying to help stabilize the Lebanese economy. Yeah. So those are some of the situations that Trump's inheriting in Middle East. We want to talk a bit about the political situation in Europe that lays at the fee of the Trump administration and kind of what that means for the world. So we're going to start with Croatia, Austria, in Germany, and then kind of expanded out. In Croatia, the current president, Zoran Milanovic, was reelected in a landslide with 74% of the vote. The quick and dirty on this guy is he's pro-Russia, anti-support for Ukraine, and a harsh critic of the European Union. Milanovich often gets compared to

Trump, though I think it's more like style than substance. But the Croatian presidency is not a, it's a ceremonial job largely. But I think his margin of victory, 74%, I think, gives you a pretty good sense of the way the political winds are blowing in this European Union NATO country. And that's something. I think we should just clock. And then in Austria, it is increasingly likely that the government will shift dramatically to the far right. Herbert Kiekel's Freedom Party got the most votes. And last week, Kekle was given the chance to form a coalition and see if he can become the next chancellor of Austria. The Freedom Party is promised to ban Islam, expel migrants, including ones who have become Austrian citizens, by the way. Kekle likes to attack the EU. He opposes support for Ukraine,

and he wants to roll back policies to prevent climate change. So he opposes everything I care about. But even that, like, on a policy list doesn't get at how extreme these guys are. Kiekel has repeatedly used Nazi-era slogans and language that he knows are Nazi. You know, he knows what the dog whistle he's using here. And the Freedom Party itself was founded in the 1950s by former members of the SS. So there's nothing subtle about these guys. And then finally, Ben, Germany has elections coming up on February 23rd. Most political analysts believe that Friedrich Mertz from the Christian Democratic Union or at

CDU, Merkel's party, will win and go into coalition with the social Democrats. But who knows? These right-wing parties keep outperforming their polling. And the AFD, the far-right, extremely far-right party in Germany, is currently sitting at about 22%. The AFD platform is also super-right-wing deportation of asylum seekers, exiting the euro, leaving the Paris Climate Accords, so similar to Austria. But this is the political context for Trump 2.0, right? We talked about this last week. Justin Trudeau out.

far right Austrians and Germans in? Like that's not a good setup. The diehard world, those who listened to the election series, might remember, Zach Beauchamp from Vox was on on democracy. And I remember it's something stuck in my head because I asked him what would be the worst thing for democracy about a Trump win. And I had some answers in my head and he said the AFD in Germany, which is actually not the first answer I had.

And his point was that Trump's victory could kind of normalize the idea that is seeming extremist right-wing politics can be in the mainstream. Yes. And I think what I take away where there's differences between these three. The commonality is people are just, they're pissed off in Europe in the same way that they're pissed off here. There's a kind of anti-incumbency, anti-establishment, anti-institution, anti-COVIDs. Anti-Migration vibe.

Yeah, post-COVID anti-migration vibe that is the predominant momentum in European politics right now. That's the first point. There are different degrees. He's a Croatian guy's kind of a bit more of a personality than like a deep idelog. And he's warringly, you know, kind of seemingly pro-Russian and anti-EU and stuff. But, you know, he has beef with the prime minister. The Austrians, let's just be clear, Tommy. You don't like Nazis starting in Austria, right?

No. This is, you know. We're finishing in Germany. Yeah, Naziism that begins in Austria and the news to Germany has traditionally been a very bad thing. And I was making a little bit light. But to take it seriously, like, this is like, you know, the mask is off here. These guys are like super scary, scary, creepy, far right guys who've party built. Like, they didn't come out of nowhere. Like, they've been working their way to this.

And the risk of this jumping into Germany through the AFD and making significant inroads in the election is scary. I think what it also means is the EU is going to have a hell of a time. I mean, for those who don't follow the EU, it's most major decisions are like required a degree of unanimity. there's veto powers and things like that. With Hungary, Slovakia, you know, like when Domino's potentially falling, I think one of the things we're going to have to watch the next few years, and you and I were talking about this, is that some things are going to have to be done by kind of collections of like-minded countries, things like support for Ukraine, for instance. You know, the countries that are not going this route may need to find ways to do things collectively

that are harder to do through the institutions of the European Union. Because you're going to see some fracturing, and Trump is probably going to accelerate that by his own personality. Yeah, and so, like, you know, liberal-minded leaders in Europe are going to have to deal with Donald Trump, and they're going to have to deal with these right-wing parties in Europe. But the other kind of grenade that America is just kind of rolling into the equation is Elon Musk. Yeah. Because he's become the biggest booster of the AFD. He's doing it mostly on Twitter, but he also wrote an op-ed.

We discussed some of this last week. But the New York Times had a great piece where they wrote, they reported that AFD members are getting such a big boost from Elon Musk on Twitter on X that they've started tweeting in English and not German in hopes of getting noticed by him. Yeah. And last week, Elon Musk did a Twitter spaces chat with this AFD leader who wants to be chancellor. Her name is Alice Vital. During that conversation, Musk repeated his endorsement of the AFD party.

And then he asked her a bunch of softball questions. I sadly listened to some of this as I was like sitting in Laguna having escaped. My kids were taking a nap. So what else would I do as one does? The AFD. Very soon into this. interview, Vital goes into this just absurd revisionist history about Hitler and the Nazis. She was claiming that Hitler was not right wing, but was actually a communist and a socialist. In case you're

wondering, that is nonsense. It's literally the opposite. Hitler used the threat of communism to get all the industrialists to finance his far-right Baltic. Yeah, like Hitler was an ultra-nationalist. He was a fascist. He threw leftist, communist, socialist into concentration camps and murdered them. Yeah. Dumb and or dishonest people often point to the full name of the Nazi party, the National Socialist German Workers Party and claim the inclusion of the word socialist means that Hitler was a lefty. But I would recommend you look at actions, not words there. Actions like executing communists and then invading the Soviet Union. Yeah.

And purging social Democrats. And like literally mobilizing like your support by fear mongering about the left. Right. Right. But so Elon's response to Vital claiming that Hitler was a leftist was, quote, yeah, very much so. They nationalized industries like crazy. And so just an important thing to understand about the AFD in Germany is they get support consistently. Right now they're polling is at 22% or so.

But what has kept them out of power is all these other parties refusing to normalize them, refusing to go into coalition with them. Literally labeled under German law as extremists. Yeah. And the concern is, and you have AFD party members saying this, the fact that Elon likes them is normalizing them and making the intra-German efforts to offset. ostracize them look ridiculous. Yeah. And that is really dangerous long term. Yeah, the world's richest guy who is kind of an icon to a bunch of people and is seated at the right hand of the president of United States is the ultimate normalization seal that can be granted.

And he's just playing with, I mean, this is a problem with Trumpism generally, like it connects all the way back to some of the crazy shit Heggsets said. They're playing with like historical forces that you kind of can't control when you unleash them. This brand of nationalism, far right politics, nativism, us versus them stuff. I mean, they think they can control it. And, you know, there were a bunch of German industrials who thought they could control Hitler when he was back in Austria. And that's not how it ended. No. Do you see also the Bloomberg news reported that Chinese officials are considering selling the kind of U.S. TikTok assets to Elon Musk if they can't fend off this plan to ban TikTok at the Supreme Court?

So that would just hand that guy. Imagine that guy controlling X and TikTok. I'm crazy. I mean, it's weird that Steve Bannon is now calling Musk truly evil and he's vowing to take him down. There is this kind of intra-mega fighting. But, you know, I just saw a report that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are going to be sitting like on the day as to Trump's inauguration. So it doesn't seem like Bannon's winning then.

Well, you know, Ian Bremmer talks about this is pretty interesting about it. Essentially, it is the case that there are these deep ideological differences underneath the umbrella of MAGA, you know. Yeah, for sure. Between the kind of guys. Like, tech and the populace. Tech guys want to, yeah, you've talked about this. But this is actually globally the case, too. Like, there are different flavors of the far right, you know. And Bannon really is a tear-it-all-down guy. And Elon really is a regulatory capture and make a lot of money and disrupt things, guy. And those are different ideologies, ultimately. The problem is the weakness of all these

institutions, right? Like, the weakness of the French government and the German government and You know, the U.S. government is kind of creating an opening for we're going to be living with the outcome of a intra-maga civil war that we don't get a vote in. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of the French government, the New York Times also reported that Paul Manafort Trump's, you know, campaign, was he the chairman, I think he was a chairman, not manager, chairman. I don't get that title. Well, yeah, he's back on the scenes. He's pitching his services again. Remember, this guy went to jail for financial crimes violating foreign lobbying laws and then Trump pardoned him. But the Times reported that Manafort has pitched his services to a French billionaire who is known for boosting right-wing

political parties in France, including Marine Le Pen and the National Rally Party. So that's the election we have to look forward to in 27, the next thing down the pike. A lot of potts of the world content. A lot of bad content. Finally, before we get to Ben's interview, we did just want to explain to you guys why the civility police are toasting at Cafe Milano this week after some major, major bipartisan news. So President Biden announced that the next two Gerald R. Ford class nuclear powered aircraft carriers will be named after two great former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Because I personally can think of no one better to name a piece of massive military hardware after than the president who led us into Iraq and is responsible for

tens of thousands of U.S. service members being killed or wounded in a completely unnecessary war of choice. Yeah, you know when you have these deployments we have to talk about, and it's like, you know, the USS George W. Bush is off the coast of the Persian Gulf, you know. For nine months. That's a good message. You know, I don't know, Tommy. I'm just going to go there, you know, for the, maybe we're far enough along into the show that the political reporters have that but uh baroque h obama uh did not get a fucking uh you know personnel carrier named after him uh joe biden did seem to revel i mean in uh that's very funny eulogizing jimmy carter and paying tribute to george w bush and uh bill clinton there this one other former president that uh

you know what i think who who by the way could give a shit there's probably no one who would We care less about getting things named after ships in Barack Obama? It is kind of weird to name ships after former presidents and people. It's like, imagine if you had a ship named after you and it was just like launching missiles at some, you know, porting Yemen. What would you want named after you? I don't know, like the worst bridge in my hometown in Dedham. Yeah, that's a good question. I would do with like one of those benches in Central Park with the black on it.

Can you buy those? Is that like a charitable donation thing? That's a nice idea. should do that. It's one of these days from my parents. Yeah, that's a good question. What would I want? Obama's got actually a lot of stuff here in the light. He's got there. Barack Obama Boulevard is actually a real street. There's like a Barack and Michelle Obama Institute in on Lincoln Boulevard. What happens? I don't even know what happens. I've driven by it all the time. I was like, what goes out in there? You know? So Obama's doing fine. No, no, he's fine. He doesn't need a aircraft carrier,

but I did think it was a funny story. He's like, oh, good. Hopefully we can launch another Just what we need. Yeah, doing a belly tap. Oh, good. Okay. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. You're going to hear Ben's interview with Ian Bremmer about all the geopolitical risk in the world. So stick around for that. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything for products to content to time all in one place, all on your terms. Introducing design intelligence from Squarespace, combining two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs

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who is the founder and president of the Eurasia Group, which recently released its report on the world's top risks for 2025. So, Ian, I know we've been talking for a while about you coming on, but this seemed like an apt time to look at risk. So welcome to POTS of the World. I would say so. No, good to see you again, Ben, and happy to be with you. Okay, so we talk a lot about risk on this show. and I think everybody feels some sense of foreboding as we head towards the inauguration here in a few days.

I want to begin with what you describe as a top risk, which is essentially a G-0 world, essentially the vacuum of leadership in the world. Talk a little bit about what you were trying to identify with that and how it might manifest in the year ahead. I'm looking at a world where the United States is unprepared. to support a global order of collective security, free trade architecture, promotion of rule of law, democracy, and no other country or group of countries can step in to do same. And I think it's been coming for a long time. There are lots of reasons why the U.S.-led global order has been starting to erode and fall apart. One is that, you know, Russia, when the Soviet Union collapsed,

didn't integrate into the West, into NATO, into the EU, irrespective of who you blame for that, the Russians blame the U.S., they're angry about it, and now they're allied with, like, other chaos actors like North Korea and Iran. The Chinese were integrated, particularly into the global economy, but on the presumption by the West, by the U.S., especially, that as they got wealthier, they would integrate into our value system, into our worldview. They'd become, as we called it, and you've called it, responsible. stakeholders. They have gotten a lot more powerful and wealthier, but they have not integrated. They've

not accepted an American worldview. And instead, something really interesting has happened. The United States has increasingly adopted a Chinese worldview, much more transactional, much more about power, much more of the rule of the jungle. But Trump is saying, you know, by the way, Chinese, Russia, you think you guys can play that well? We can play that game a lot better than you can. And we're going to get everybody to line up the way we want to. And so now you have the confluence of those three things together at a time when the United States has consolidated a lot of power, both politically because the GOP is riding Trump's coattails, not the other way around in 2017, because he's appointed all these loyalists in his administration as opposed to establishment

Republican figures who were much more independent in 2017, but also because the U.S. is in such a better position than so many other countries. Its adversaries are much weaker. Russia's in serious decline. Iran has just lost its empire in the Middle East. China's in the worst economic position since the 90s, maybe even the 70s. And America's allies not only are in an economically, technologically, and militarily much worse position, but their governments are also much weaker, much more fragmented, as we see with like South Korea and Germany and France and Canada, all imploding right now and even other governments like Japan and the UK facing huge, huge headwinds. So for all of those reasons, the top risk this year is not about one leader, about one country.

It's really structural, right? And it's going to manifest in so many different ways with so many different actors around the world. Yeah, it's interesting in looking at you. report and I wanted to step back and have this kind of conversation with you. You referenced the or there is a historical analogy, the 30s, obviously the pre-World War II period, the onset of the Cold War, which obviously felt like a very dangerous time. I might add to that even like the pre-war War I days and in the sense that you have these competing great powers without an order governing it. And I wonder what you make of the fact that, you know, you already have Russia, and Ukraine, you've got the Taiwan hot spot as a potential for Chinese military action.

We've obviously been living through a period of war in the Middle East. And now you have Trump, you know, threatening territorial aggression again in Greenland and Panama, as much as people may laugh at that, I take it kind of seriously. What do you see is the risk of this kind of increasing great power aggression, like throwing your weight around in your neighborhood, leading to the, to a risk of actual great power conflict? Because usually in history, when great powers start with territorial ambitions, end up bumping into each other.

How do you equate that risk for 2025? So I've got three different things I can say here. One is that traditionally, when we talk about that kind of changing global order leading to great power conflict, it's because one great power is declining and another great power is rising. And, you know, we talk about that as the Thucydides trap. Graham Allison wrote that. a big book about 10 years ago. Here, the United States is not declining at all other than its

political system, but I mean, certainly not in its ability to project power around the world, which Trump is very interested in doing. So I don't see that. In fact, right now, China is much more inclined to try to cut deals with countries because they're weak. I mean, we see that on India. They just had the first summit meeting in over five years. and they withdrew from their contested border to try to improve diplomatic and economic relations. Same thing with their outreach to Japan. Same thing with their outreach to the Europeans,

to other countries around the world. And Russia, of course, is in very severe decline. That's another very specific problem. And Russia and China do not have an alliance, in my view, even though their interest geopolitically are in many ways aligned and overlapping. There are also many persons. I would not put Russia in the same camp as Tony Blinken did in his recent foreign affairs piece

with North Korea, Russia, and Iran. I think China is in a separate camp than that in a different camp. They're an adversary. They're a competitor, but they're not a chaos actor, and they're not always an enemy. So I would, so that's one point. But the second point as to where we are now heading, compared to these adversaries that are other major powers

with military designs on parts of the world. China with Taiwan and the South China Sea, Russia with Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, the Baltz, all that kind of stuff, areas of the balts, is that, yes, I accept the idea that the Americans have been promoting rule of law and American exceptionalism, which was frequently hypocritical

and not always well executed on and certainly not always well. implemented, and the Russians and Chinese would constantly call us hypocritical. And instead, we're now saying, actually, no, we got, we're all just power players. And that provides, I mean, what Trump is saying about the Panama Canal is very analogous to the arguments that Putin has made about Crimea. Yeah. Right? Very analogous. And completely undermines territorial integrity and sovereignty and the United Nations, which the U.S. created, right, all of that stuff. So on the one hand, I completely agree with where your question is going there.

On the other, the United States is not prepared, in my view, not under Biden and not under Trump, to allow Russia to take over Ukraine. And in fact, Trump has been pushing European allies to spend a lot more. money on defense, and they feel more urgency with that under Trump than they did under Biden. You know, Mark Ruta talking about a 3% GDP defense spend across the board, and I assume they are going to make progress on that from the European leaders I've spoken with. That's not something Putin wants. And, you know, taking a few months to get Ukraine in a stronger position to negotiate with Russia is not what Putin wants. And it's not at all clear to me.

that even though Putin clearly prefers Trump in many ways to Biden and Harris, and the money that they spent in disinformation campaigns showed that to be the case, it is not clear to me that they suddenly get a free ride, you know, a hall pass on their territorial ambitions, now that the Americans have said, okay, we're all about rule of the jungle.

And with China as well, I think the Chinese, I think we're really concerned about Trump becoming in. And clearly the Iranians, right? Yeah, I mean, you didn't ask about Iran, but I mean, let's face it, given where Israel is and given, you know, Trump's support of Israel in an even more stride in fashion

than the Biden administration had, you can easily see that Iran might feel like they're going to face being taken out their nuclear program, at least, by the U.S. and by Israel. I don't think that's going to happen, but I think it's plausible, right? Especially over four years of a Trump turn. Yeah, so on Trump, I mean, he occupies a couple spots on your list, one that has to do.

Different ways. Yeah, and I think it's, you know, accurate to separate out. One is essentially that there are no checks on his power this time around. He's got a cabinet, you know, today we're talking. It's Pete Hegg-Zest confirmation hearing that is not Jim Mattis, you know. And you can look across the board. It's loyalist. The Republican Party is completely in his image now, unlike in 2017.

that and then you talk about his economic policies. I mean, you know, one could listen to you and say, well, maybe Trump's on to something. It's a transactional world. Let's, you know, discard with the hypocrisy and just, you know, throw our weight around where we feel like it. On the other hand, though, you know, this brand of leadership tends to go to dark places. I mean, what are you most worried about as we approach inauguration in terms of what a second Trump term could do? for global stability and really the lives of people here in the U.S. Well, you know, I'm probably most worried about something long term,

which is that a transactional U.S. that is going to leverage its power in ways that will build a series of hub and spoke relations that work better for the U.S., which, by the way, is the Chinese worldview over the last 30 years. That's what they've done. A belt road initiative from the U.S., right? The Gulf, you know, some places. in Asia, some places in Latin America, yeah. Yeah, and the U.S. dominates an AI and the Chinese dominate in, you know, post-carbon

energy transition. And those are the two most structurally important technological drivers of, like, humanity for the next 20 years. Like, that is interesting. And I might be, I don't like it. It does not resonate with me personally. It doesn't touch my soul. It's not who I am as a human.

But as a political scientist, I can see how that kind of a strategy could be quite successful if it could be, like China's, implemented strategically over a long period of time, which Americas cannot be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the United States has an election every two years and a presidential every four. And there are constraints on Trump in the sense that the elections are run by states and they can't be easily rigged. And there is a professional military.

And there is an appointed judiciary, which is independent. and that is still true no matter how many challenges and no matter how much erosion we've seen. And so the ability of Trump to ensure that if the Dems take the House in two years, which looks reasonably likely to me, that he's still going to be able to implement the way he can for the next two seems very constrained.

And after he's gone when he's 82 and how much influence would he have, even if a Republican won, I would say very hard to implement a policy like that. And that means that you have thrown away so much of what the U.S. has worked to build. I mean, these institutions that are now going to be on defense and maybe on life support because the Americans are going to beat them up and ignore them.

And, you know, first and foremost, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, right, which the U.S. hasn't even joined. But also, like, the WTO, the World Health Organization, the U.N., if we choose not to provide dues anymore and the Chinese are going to do it. They'll pay dues. So they'll have vastly more influence over who's appointed in the secretariat and key positions for global governance and regulation, which is really important lots of places. Like I certainly don't want to cede influence over U.S. created, U.S.-led organizations in return for a policy that we can't even implement on for a period of 10 or 20 years. I don't want to do that. To be cynical,

might it also just be kind of a corruption period? Like Trump is going to, you know, through his associates and family members, enrich himself in the Gulf and in other parts of the world. I mean, sometimes are we applying too much strategic vision to Trump when it may just be some bottom line corruption that's going to take place? Well, certainly in his first term, there was corruption. And, I mean, look, there's been. corruption in lots of U.S. administrations on both sides of the aisle and also in my own mayor

in New York City right now. And, you know, I mean, Jesus. Like, there's plenty, right? But if I look at what I see as particularly unusual about Trump, that really sets him aside from other American leaders, it's not his level of corruption, right? I mean, because it's not actually, we're not talking about huge numbers. For the leader of the so-called free world, it's not really strategic corruption, right? I mean, it's not like, I mean, Elon operates at a different level, and he's going to make a hell of a lot more from his alignment with Trump. That's a different story. Yeah, we're going to get to that. But for Trump himself, I would know, I mean, when I look at strategic corruption, I look at like the Indian military industrial complex over the last generation.

Like, that's strategic corruption, right? Jared Kushner collecting a few people. billion dollars in the Gulf is different than creating institutions that are entirely corrupted to serve economically. Clearly. And Trump, I mean, saying Ivanka can get some handbags in China license and, you know, that foreign leaders should pay full rack rate at a Trump hotel when they go do a conference. Like, that's just not strategic corruption. I've, I, Trump spends so much more time on other stuff than he does on how to enrich himself, which is interesting, right, as president. And I think where Trump is really unique is in having zero interest in promoting U.S. values

or even believing that U.S. values exist. I think he's fundamentally far more transactional and far more oriented towards getting deals done one-on-one. That's where he's really unique. Yeah. So the last thing I wanted to ask you about, which is, you know, you are someone who's out there kind of on the circuit, you know, in addition talking to play. political leaders, you engage a lot with business leaders, you know, the kind of people turn up at, you know, at Davos or the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. And one of the things I'm struck by

is over, say, the last 20 years, like my time in active politics, those people were kind of stakeholders in the system, right, in the international order that kind of created the umbrella of security for them to make enormous profits. And yet we've seen that. We've seen that. all these problems from climate change to massive and growing wealth inequality to technological disruption, the kinds of things that breed disorder, breed, frankly, kind of fiscal bubbles. I think, you know, I have some concerns. I'm not usually a fiscal person, but I don't really like what I'm seeing in terms of the U.S. right now. What do you make of, Elon is the extreme example, but what happened to the responsible business leader?

You know, I mean, I just, because it does feel like we have a global elite that is, I don't know if they are following the political elites or leading them, but that are assuming a degree of risk that feels irrational to me. With their, you know, backing Trump, you know, everybody bending the knee. What do you, how would you describe the mindset of the kind of business leader who, you know, 15 years ago, they might like low taxes and less regulation, but they wanted a stable international system to endure. Those people now seem to be, look, we'll take Elon as the extreme example, far more willing to be disruptors. Why is that? Well, I think that most CEOs that I know

would still prefer a stable U.S.-led globalized system where capital and goods and services and people can move freely with little friction because they make a lot more money in that environment, and they would like smaller government, and they would like regulatory capture by them. That is still the baseline. And there are things they like about Trump, and the things they generally like about Trump are not his being a chaos actor. The thing they like about Trump is the fact that he lowered taxes in 2017, and will extend that for businesses and for high net worth individuals, and that he's also,

pulled back on regulation, which they intend to do with Doge and they'll have some success on, more success than taking money out of the budget. And they also want to just generally reduce regulation to allow the private sector to do more. That's pretty consistent. What is problematic is the fact that the U.S. political system, unlike other advanced industrial economies, has increasingly become captured by moneyed special interests. Yeah. So like a post-citizens United kind of world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, It's a $3 billion two-year election, which, I mean, that's way out of whack with every other advanced industrial economy. When you as Elon spend $250 million on a presidency, you expect a significant return, and I think

he will be richly rewarded. But it's not just him. It's everywhere. And it's not just big business. It's also any special interests that can coordinate and get money, whether it's the NRA, or whether it's APAC or whether it's, you know, your local police union. I mean, these are your problems. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think that what, and what that has engendered is a large number of Americans that really believe that their leaders do not represent them. And it's much more toxic.

It's much more potentially violent. It is obviously driven algorithmically in ways that are very dangerous for the United States and for the American citizens. And, What's interesting about Trump, what I find unique about Trump, especially after this election, is that there's a real gap that is emerging between what I would call dark MAGA and deep MAGA. You know, we're dark MAGA, Elon Musk, and you've got all of these, you know, quote-unquote, shadowy forces that have a lot of money. And what they want is to capture the state. Yeah. And they wanted to work for them.

They want to be as small as possible and let them just go and just make a lot of money. and they want their H-1Bs and they're globalists. And they're willing to give, you know, some meat, some red meat to the base on anti-D-EI and the rest. But that's not what really excites them. That's not why they're going to give their money. They're going to give their money

because they're going to make a shit ton doing that. But then you've got Deep MAGA, right, which actually wants more benefits from the state. They hate the idea that these corporates on the uniparty, they believe it's all a uniparty. and that the Mark Zuckerbergs don't care who they give to. Elon Musk used to be a dem too, and they're very, very skeptical of all of that.

They want a government that works for them. Now, there's alignment on these issues in terms of, let's say, you know, getting rid of illegal immigrants. There's alignment. And there's some alignment as well in America Firstism in terms of industrial policy. Yeah.

But there's less alignment every day. I mean, Lord knows there's less alignment when Luigi Mangione kills the CEO of United Health. Yeah, yeah. Right? There's less alignment. And that's a dangerous place to be, right? I mean, we're used to this happening outside the U.S.

Yeah. Like, we're used to, you blow up, you go into Iraq, you go into Afghanistan, you do nothing with the Palestinians, and you see a lot of Islamic extremist terrorism. Like, we're used to that. Yeah. But we're not used to playing that out with, within the United States. the American political system, like completely homegrown. We're not talking about lone wolves here. We're talking about people that are deeply uncomfortable that their system has been stolen by powerful

elites with access. And that is a place where the U.S. political system is uniquely broken. Yeah. Well, look, that's a really good answer and good note to end on. And I agree. I mean, watching the Steve Bannon versus Elon Musk side of this to short-handed is going to be very interesting. Ian, thanks for joining us. You know, can check out your report on global risk from the Eurasia group. Look forward to keeping in touch in the future. Thanks, Ben. I'm glad to be on.

Thanks again, Ian Brammer for joining the show. And thanks to you, our listeners, for tuning in, and for all of you who donated money to our California Wildfire Disaster Relief Fund because it has been horrible here. And a lot of people need help. And a lot of people need help. I mean, it's, we're in for a bumpy ride, and we got a little awful early reality here.

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