The Duran Podcast - TRUMP & HARRIS, foreign policy differences

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

TRUMP & HARRIS, foreign policy differences

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the big story for today. Obviously, it's the elections in the United States of America. And if we have results tomorrow on November the 6th, if we start to get an understanding as to who has won, I just want everybody to know that you will be doing a live stream on locals tomorrow, the durand.com. and I imagine that is going to be the big topic of that live stream. So we're going to be covering the results, Alexander.

The Duran will be covering the results if we have, if we have results tomorrow on our locals channel, the durand.orgals.com. The link is in the description box down below. And today, November the 5th is the day of the vote. And Alexander, Harris or Trump, Trump or Harris, the establishment in Europe, in the EU, the UK, they are in a panic. Everyone in the establishment is very worried should Trump win. Of course, America first.

And leaders like, let's say, Orban, they are pulling for Trump, Elon Musk, RFC Jr., Tulsi He Gabbard. Joe Rogan endorsed Trump yesterday. They're pulling for Trump out of the fear of what would come if Harris were to win. Continuation of the Biden White House, maybe worse, maybe better, probably worse. We'll see. A lot is at stake here. A lot of wars, a lot of conflicts that are going on, a lot of promises made by both candidates. What is your general sense of things as we go into this election. Well, bear in mind, I'm speaking from London. I don't have that sort of granular feeling of an election in the United States that I would about say an election in Britain. But what I'm going to say is this. And it's just just a general point. I mean, there are,

the polls do look extremely tight. There's been some suggestion that polls on the last couple of days have shifted slightly in Harris' favour. But if you actually look at the actual vote, so far that seems to suggest, you know, the actual voting, the indications about the actual vote that we have, it seems to tilt slightly in favour of Trump. So, you know, on the assumptions that voting is a more accurate guide to what opinion polls suggest, and opinion polls in the United States, as I've seen many times in recent elections in, you know, the last two elections especially, are often a very, very poor guide as to. you know, the way things are going. If one assumes that polling, that actual voting is, you know, the better indicator, then as I said, it seems to be tilting slightly towards Trump. But I'm not saying that with any, you know, great, you know, certainty or authority.

I'm talking from a distance about a country that is not mine. And I'm not, you know, able to say exactly who's winning and who's losing. because I just don't have that level of knowledge or knowledge of the United States to be able to do that. Foreign policy. What is your sense of things if Trump wins? What is your sense of things if Aris wins? Well, this is, I think this is ultimately, you're talking about the Europeans freaking out and being very panicky about Donald Trump. It's about foreign policy. British freaking out. British freaking out. It's ultimately about foreign policy. I mean, you're hearing an awful lot of people talk about tariffs, for example, and it's

certainly true that Donald Trump is talking about tariffs a lot, and probably tariffs will increase and those kind of things. But this isn't a visceral issue for the European establishment that a foreign policy is. Foreign policy is what really mostly concerns them. And they have two overriding fears. The first is that if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, he's going to move very quickly to try to close down project Ukraine, which is, of course, the EU's beloved project. I mean, they're very, very heavily invested in this project. Now, they've committed huge amounts of their resources

and even more of their credibility to project Ukraine. So if Donald Trump moves to close down project Ukraine, they will be very, very angry and they'll be very disillusioned, and they'll feel that they'll, you know, committed themselves enthusiastically to Project Ukraine in 2022, when the Biden administration gave them the lead and that the Americans having led them all this way are now pulling back. So that's one thing that the Europeans will be very worried about. But it actually goes much deeper than this. And it's project Ukraine and what it stands for is in some ways symbolic.

of something even more important, which is that European leaders, particularly this generation of European leaders, the ones who've essentially acquired control of the EU and its machinery, the ones who are dominant in British politics, as we have seen very clearly over the last eight years since the 2016 Brexit referendum, they've pushed back so hard on that. They've destroyed the Corbyn movement. They're firmly in control. Anyway, this generation of political leaders in Europe and in Britain, the thing that terrifies them, most of all, is that the United States might be thinking about following its own course. This thing which we've been hearing about so much over the last 10, 20 years, the collective.

West, the rules-based international order, all of that in which they feel themselves to be a part, and which makes them feel important, that the Americans are losing interest in it, and that it's coming to an end. And I think that they worry that that is the general trend in the United States, whoever wins in the election. But if Trump wins, That from their point of view, dark day, when the Americans start making their own decisions by themselves, no longer thinking about the collective West, no longer focusing on Europe specifically and so much, no longer in a situation where the US president comes and talks mostly to leaders in Europe, to people in Berlin and London and Brussels and places like that, but starts thinking more about. exclusively American interests and American concerns and starts doing a genuine pivot to Asia and things of that kind. That dark day will have come much faster if Donald Trump is the next president of the United States. And that is going to freak them out because Europe is a

geopolitical zero without the United States. It's no longer going to have the way. It's no longer going to have the weight or the influence in global affairs that it has as part of the collective West. And that is going to terrify them. And of course, if Europe loses its overall weight in global affairs in that kind of way, then the political class in Europe, in Britain, is going to be left confronting the European in public, which is becoming increasingly disenchanted and disillusioned all by itself, and that's going to freak them even more. What do you mean by closing down Project Ukraine?

I mean, is it as simple? Is it as simple as just stopping the money? But like ISIS, because, you know, I took care of ISIS, he said. I defeated ISIS, but we know how ISIS was defeated. The money just stopped to the moderate rebels. That's it's it. Yeah. Is it that simple? Well, you know, in a kind of way it is.

It's not, it's not a question. I mean, I think, again, this is an important point to make. You don't want to get involved, at least, you know, if Trump is elected and he becomes president. I mean, this would, if you ask me for my advice, this is the advice I would give him. Don't waste time trying to negotiate a detailed outcome to the conflict in Ukraine. That would be an impossibly complicated thing to do. The Europeans would then get involved. They would have their own views, which are going to be diametrically different from your own.

And of course, Zelensky himself is an impossible person to work with, as we have seen. But the United States doesn't need to do that. It can simply switch off the money, switch off the arms supplies, tell the Ukrainians, look, we've done all we can, which isn't far from the truth, by the way. Already money and arms from the West, from the United States is diminishing, is falling away because there isn't so much, certainly arms that the United States can go on giving.

You know, we've done what we can. The Russians say that they're prepared. to talk to you, why don't you do that? This is your chance. This is your chance. We're not here to negotiate this outcome for you. You're not an ally, a formal ally of the United States. You can sit down, talk with the Russians, and you can sort it out. We in the meantime have many, many more important things to worry about, including our very important relationship with Russia itself, which is a great power, which you ultimately are not. We got things to sort out in terms of strategic weapons, the general economic situation in the world,

the situation with oil supplies, energy supplies and food supplies, the situation in the Middle East, where the Russians look like they're becoming more increasingly involved now. So we've got many, many things we need to talk to the Russians about. You cannot insist, go on insisting. that we make your cause are overriding and exclusive priority. So if the Americans do that, then of course the entire situation with respect to project Ukraine changes. And to say it straightforwardly,

the Russians are much more sophisticated people to work with than say the Taliban was in Afghanistan. The Russians would not want in a situation like that to crash everything in Ukraine in a way that would be difficult for an administration in Washington that they might want to work with. So that's what I would tell the new president. If the new president were asking me from my advice, don't get involved in the details. That is a trap. If you start doing that, you're going to be tied down for weeks and months. You're going to expand a huge amount of your time and credibility,

and the outcome will be the same as we see now. The war will end on Russian terms, and you will share them with the general humiliation that the Biden administration has brought on to America. Yeah, you'll get sucked in by the EU, by Zelensky, and then they'll come up with all kinds of articles from the media and scandals and all kinds of things. Don't waste your time with any of them.

That I agree. And for the U.S., yeah, for the U.S., it's priorities. I mean, your priority, if you're the leader of the U.S. is to deal with players. Russia is a player. China, obviously, is a huge player. Bricks is a player. India is a player.

Deal with players and with leaders that can make decisions. Europe is hollowed out now. I mean, they're a vassal. They're going to do whatever you tell them to do anyway. they'll complain and they'll kick and scream. But at the end of the day, whatever the U.S. tells Europe to do, they're going to do. That's obvious. Yeah, deal with the powerful players that can make decisions.

I think Trump knows that. I mean, being in business, he knows that at the end of the day, you need to talk to people who can actually decide things. Exactly. I mean, that's obvious. The Chinese, the Indians and the Russians have agency. The Europeans don't. I mean, it's as simple as that.

I mean, who anyway do you talk to in Europe? None of the European. Why do you need to? Why do you need to, exactly? They're going to do what you tell them to do anyway. That's my point. I mean, anyone that believes, you know, Donald Tusk, when he makes announcements that it's time for Europe to break free from the U.S.

It's just nonsense. Europe doesn't have the capability. Actually, because of Project Ukraine, Europe is now even more dependent on the United States and ever before, at least maybe five years ago. You can make the case that, you know, maybe Germany is a big economy. France is a big country. They have some agency. They can make some decisions on their own.

But now, after being deindustrialized from project Ukraine, they can't make any decisions on their own. Zero, zero. They're completely beholden to the United States. I'm entirely of that view. That's exactly my own view about the situation. I think that, you know, you can, to be honest, you don't need to worry too much about the Europeans now, if you're the American president.

I mean, this is not, this is not, this should not be your priority. Your priority is to de-escalate what is an extremely dangerous and very tense global situation. And you have to deal with the big players. The Russians and the Chinese first and foremost, the Indians are important. And of course, the various countries in the Middle East, the players there, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, They're in Europe as well. There is important as well. Yeah, start stabilizing things with people that can make decisions to stabilize the situation.

Absolutely. Talk about, okay, so we touched upon Trump. Talk about Harris. What happens? Foreign policy, Ukraine, Europe, China, India, Bricks. What happens if Harris wins? Well, my sense about Harris is, of course, she's committed herself very much to following where Biden has led.

So I mean, it will be very much a continuation. At least that's what she's presenting it has, a continuation of the Biden administration. My sense about Ukraine is that whoever wins, Project Ukraine is coming to an end, not because there's going to be a decision, you know, to close it down if Harris is elected, but simply because the means to keep on supporting Ukraine are no longer there,

at least not to the same extent. And I get the sense also that Harris personally isn't as invested in this project as Joe Biden is. I mean, Joe Biden knows Ukraine. He's been to Ukraine. He's had all kinds of connections with Ukraine, which we all know about. Harris is not in that kind of situation. So she doesn't have that personal investment. She doesn't have the personal feelings about.

Putin himself that Biden has. So I think that in terms of project Ukraine, it won't be as dramatic and as decisive as it probably will be with Trump. But gradually, the support is going to ever weigh. The problem with Harris, for me, the real problem with Harris, is not that she's going to, you know, do dramatic and dangerous things over Ukraine, that that possibility can't be excluded. It's that we get...

Depends on her team. It depends on her team, exactly. But it's... The other risk is that instead of having the kind of policies that we saw the Biden administration followed, we're just going to get drift. We're going to get a situation where the administration just doesn't want to break with Ukraine and just goes on supporting Ukraine. And it turns into another Afghanistan.

not the Afghanistan of 2021, where everything further far, but the Afghanistan of the 20 years before, where it just went on and on and expending more money and more machines and more weapons and more things and just goes on like this, sticks along without any real, you know, anything being changed or improved in any way. The relations with the Russians continue to go from bad to worse

the situation with the Chinese continues to go. from bad to worse, the situation in the Middle East continues to get out of control. In other words, that what I suspect would not be a strong administration, with a strong president, is going to just be at the mercy of events rather than exercising agency to bring things back under control. And of course, when I say the president would be at the mercy of events, You must always remember that in Washington, there's all these various powerful factions that exist, the neocons. There they would be in the ascendant because they backed Harris.

And of course, they will want to intensify and in this atmosphere of drift. They will want to accelerate things, probably more in the Middle East now, I suspect, than in Ukraine. But they will want to do things maybe. Well, absolutely. I mean, that is an extremely dangerous situation. will have such a prominent. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is the difference.

I mean, one would like to hope and one would want to believe that if Trump is elected and we have a stronger presidency and a more a presidency with greater agency, they would be doing what we discussed. They would be contacting the players and trying to de-escalate the situation. The risk is with the Harris administration, they will do the diametric opposite. it they will want to contact any of the players. The neocons, as I said, will push for greater escalation everywhere and we will get a smash. We're more likely, much more likely in that kind of scenario to get a smash in the Middle East, in my opinion in the South China Sea,

the Taiwan Strait, in Europe potentially with the Russians and in all of those sort of things. So that's the risk. That's for me the big danger if Harris is elected. I think that's a huge danger. I mean, Trump, it looks like Trump has disavowed the neocons. That's how it looks, especially with the stuff he says about Bolton. But to be fair, he has said complimentary things about Pompeo. We don't know how serious he is about those things. And we do know that Lindsey Graham does have Trump's ear.

So you always have that risk. He's disavowed McConnell. He's disavowed Bolton, Kelly, all of these neocons. but you do have some neocons who are floating around Trump. And that's dangerous. Yes. But it doesn't look like he has as many neocons hovering around him as he did in 2016. That's a good thing.

And he does have people he's surrounding himself with like RFK Jr. Like Tulsi Gabbard, you know, you have people like on his side like Tucker Carlson and like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramoswamy. who definitely do not like the neocons. And then they make it a point to say they despise the neocons. So you have that with Trump. Harris, I think it's clear, given Cheney support, that the neocons, they've got her. Yeah.

And my fear is that she's so inexperienced at foreign policy, and she has such a non-interest in foreign policy. That's my sense of things. Yes. Is that she'll just give it all to the neocons. She'll just outsource it to the neocons. We could be seeing Hillary Clinton, a secretary of state.

date, I don't know. Definitely the Europeans. And my question to you, possibly, why not? And my question to you is, the Europeans would be much happier with Harris. The British would be much happier with Harris. We've talked about Stommer and the bet he's placed on Harris, because they would be able to, I mean, they'll be able to bring her into their circle, into their global circle, they'd be able to sweet talker. They'll be able to pal around with her and eventually they'll keep the money flowing to the whole system. Where with Trump, we know that Trump does not get along with a lot of the EU leaders. I mean, that we know he doesn't get along with them.

And they don't like him. And they've been very public now. I mean, Stommer has been very public in showing his dislike of Trump. I mean, I think there are some clear distinctions, don't you think? No, they are very clear distinction. I mean, that's the fundamental difference. To repeat again, what we said, I said earlier, for the Europeans, for the, elite here, the key issue, the important issue is not tariffs. I mean, they may write

articles about tariffs. But the thing they really care about is foreign policy. That is the most important single thing. I get to say this. I think you're absolutely right. I think Harris is not particularly interested in foreign policy. She's never shown any great interest in foreign policy. She's not got a foreign policy background to speak of. But, But the people around her, some of them, are very interested in foreign policy. I suspect, by the way, it would be a very disorganized and chaotic administration. There are other people, some people. I mean, there's one, her own national security advisor has apparently written a study

saying that regime change in the Middle East, whenever it's been applied, has never worked. So, you know, she's got other voices to. But you're going to have a very discordant. and troubled administration. And of course, she's taken on important political debts to people like Cheney and others, which are going to connect her more firmly to the neocons. These people will want many of the key positions

in the US government, in the foreign policy system. So, you know, you're going to see this. And perhaps without Harris herself, having that volition, as I said, we are going to drift into all sorts of problems and crises in all kinds of places, simply because the president is unable to basically put the foot on the brake. Yeah. All right. Let's finish the video. Just to say, if a car is speeding out of control, then the fact that the driver can't put the foot on the brake. is a very serious thing, even if the driver has no particular thought to put the foot down

on the accelerator rider, if the car is already speeding that way. Yeah. Talk a bit about, to finish the video, talk a bit about China and Russia, Bricks, India. How are they looking at this, Trump or Harris? I mean, or do they care? They care. They do care. They do care. Are they going to adjust? They care. Everyone cares. They do.

Everybody cares. Even the Russians care. They may pretend that they don't. But fundamentally, ultimately, everybody, everybody cares. Now, of course, it varies. I mean, you know, the Russians probably would rather have Trump because, well, Putin dealt with Trump. He's met him a number of occasions.

They've spoken. He has some understanding of Trump. And Trump says things, which the Russians... if you follows through with them, the Russians could work with. So I think the Russians on balance would prefer Trump. If you're talking about the Chinese, it's a bit more complicated in the sense that, of course, it was under Trump that relations between China and the United States began to become visibly bad. But they were already deteriorating before, which is a thing people don't understand.

I mean, Obama was already starting to reposition the United States into policies which appeared to be more antagonistic to China. And I suspect deep down that they won't want to say so. Again, the Chinese would prefer to work with Donald Trump simply because even though they don't like what he talks about with tariffs. and things like that. They sense that he's a businessman and transactional and that they can do deals with him. Whereas on issues like, say, Taiwan, which is, again, what the Chinese ultimately are most worried about,

they probably sense, again, that they're not going to be able to do deals with Harris. They know the Chinese understand pretty well the political geography in the United States. they know who the neocons are. They know how dangerous these people are. They see them. And that is what's going to make them more nervous and more concern.

But ultimately, neither the Chinese nor the Russians are going to let the election in the United States get in the way of what I think they have already decided to do. Because with the best will of the world, even if Trump is elected and does all the things that we talked about and tries to de-escalate global tensions and those sort of things, the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and all of the others, have seen that American policy can shift. The neocons will still be there. So the potential for a swing back continues. They will have seen how Russian assets were frozen, how the NICS will. United States has sent arms to Taiwan, how it's done, all of those things, and they're going to continue with the process of constructing the bricks. That will remain their key priority, because it's now become more than just insurance, you know, against the risks of, you know, change of policy

in the United States. It's become, in effect, the way that the escape route from a situation where everything depends on who wins an American election and what happens after. So I think that's what the Chinese and the Russians and the Indians and all of the others are probably saying to themselves and thinking. That is not to say, by the way, that if an administration appeared in Washington that really did want to engage with the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and all of the others, they would not reciprocate. It's just that they're going to be much, much more careful, and they're not

going to compromise now on their essential policies in the way that perhaps they would have done 10, 15, 20 years ago. They're not going to prioritize their relations with the United States in the way that they once did. But if a White House, a new party, president really did seek a general de-escalation what I have previously described as a geopolitical ceasefire, they would work with it. I mean, they would still, despite what I've just said, they would still want to engage with that because they understand that it is in everyone's interests to see that happen. Yeah, roll back the sanctions. Roll back. I know that's going to probably be the most difficult thing for a president to do, the most difficult, but roll it back.

And that's how you get the conversation started so that you can engage with the rest of the world and not be so isolated in the collective West. Yeah, you've got to break out of the collective West if you're the United States. Yeah, just break out of it because the world has changed. Very, very quickly, Alexander, Iran, the war in the Middle East, Israel, Netanyahu. do you think either of them can put a break to the drift towards a big conflict in the Middle East? No. It's going to be very, very difficult.

But again, I'm going to express my own view here. Some people won't agree with me. But I think it's more likely that Trump would be, if anybody's going to stop it, it is going to be Trump. Again, we have seen a year of what the Biden administration has achieved in the Middle East. We've started with the situation. where Biden administration gave Netanyahu a blank check. They've never called it back, never really. They're always saying that they're engaging in diplomacy.

And we've now ended up with a situation where the Iranians and the Israelis are launching missile strikes directly against each other's territories, which is something that has never happened before in the Middle East. with the Iranians as of now threatening to do this again on an even bigger scale than what they did previously. So the Biden administration has failed in the Middle East. I don't see any reason to think that a Harris administration is going to be able to be any better. I have to say that. Now, many people think that Trump,

is, you know, very pro-Israeli and that he's going to support Netanyahu in every possible way that he can, that if Trump is elected, that's going to lead to an even bigger escalation. My own sense is that Trump doesn't want wars anywhere at the moment. I think he does generally want de-escalation when he got himself, when he found himself in confrontation with Iran after the assassination of General Soleimani, the Iranian chief, military chief. He came to an understanding with the Iranians, which allowed it, made it possible to de-escalate tensions then. I think that Trump is in a much stronger position if he wants to do it to de-escalate the crisis in the Middle East than a Harris administration would be. And the fact that he already gets on well with Netanyahu and that he gets on well with the Saudis as well,

that he's on good personal terms with people like MBS probably means that he's more in a better position to achieve a de-escalation than the Harris administration would be. And that's not even including the fact that the neocons who always want escalation are going to be far stronger. in a Harris administration, then they will be in a Trump one. So again, I know that this is not the general view, but I think that if anybody is going to be able to stop the great conflict that's brewing in the Middle East, it's more likely to be Trump than it is Harris. Yeah, all right.

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