The Munk Debates Podcast - A public display of friendship between China, Russia, and India is a searing indictment of Trump's foreign policy

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Rudyard and Andrew start the show talking about this week's China summit with 20 leaders of non-Western countries, including India, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Narendra Modi's public display of friendship with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin is a searing indictment of the Trump administration and his disastrous tariff policies. Andrew argues that while countries in the global south might not be our allies, they are still willing to work with us. If we lose India, many other countries of consequence will follow. Rudyard and Andrew then turn to Canada's defense priorities in this geopolitical turmoil. We are caught in between a dictatorship across the Arctic Ocean and an emerging dictatorship to the south. Do we need to start arming ourselves and seek out other allies to protect us from these threats? And will Trump become more dangerous abroad to distract from increasing opposition to him at home?Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To have the foreign policy of the United States being subordinated basically to the ego needs of one person, which is literally big part of this, is extraordinary. It's once again shows just how lunatic the situation that is facing us, what an emergency it is facing us. Welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Roger Griffiths here, Chair of the Muck Debates, joined in studio by Andrew Coyne, journalist to the Global Mail for. our weekly conversations. Andrew, great to be with you. Nice to be with you. We've got you fueled up on coffee, ready to go, and it's been a consequential weekend, or since we last talked, and I want to begin with the news, in fact, the last 48 hours, this remarkable summit that's taken place in China. And let's start with day one. We came back from the Labor Day weekend and Tuesday, we were greeted with pictures, not only of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, clearly in

close communication showing to the world their alliance. But what struck me, Andrew, was the presence of Modi, right in the center of it with these two leaders, literally holding hands. This, Andrew, surely must be a major setback for the Trump administration in terms of U.S. foreign policy. It's a searing indictment, if you will. Although I did like the line, I think it was Tim Miller of the United States. the bulwark who said, you know, in a gathering of the world's autocratic superpowers, I guess it's good news that Americans aren't there, you know.

But, yeah, I mean, twofold. First of all, if the thinking behind starving Ukraine of funds, basically turning away from Ukraine was the sort of amateur geopolitical political strategists, the Trump foreign policy establishment, that we would tilt away, you know, it would be a reverse Kissinger, whatever this. It hasn't worked. China is, in fact, helping to fund in a big way the Russian war effort. They seem closer than ever, at least in terms of their own, the way they present themselves to the world. They would turn each other in a heartbeat if it suited their interests. But right now, in fact, since that infamous meeting before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,

They are maximum friends or whatever the phrase was. So there's that small loss of failure. And then, yeah, on the India side of things, you know, Trump, his trade policy is predicated in the idea that America is such a prize, is such a powerful country, such a large market. It can dictate terms basically to the entire world. And that's what Trump's been an attempt to do, is to have a simultaneous trade war with 100 different countries, including India. So there was that remarkable piece in the New York Times

talking about the phone call or calls between Trump and Modi after Trump had either, I forget whether he'd actually imposed the 50% tariff or was threatening it, in which the object of the discussion from Trump's standpoint, point was to get Modi to acknowledge publicly that Trump was responsible for the cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan, A, and B, that Modi should lobby for him to get the Nobel Peace Prize, and that it was over this issue that they fell out. Now, I think that's a remarkably

telling conversation and story in this sense. There's a tendency, and even I fall into this, as much of a Trump skeptic isn't quite the word as I am. But, but, but, Every time he talks about the Nobel Peace Prize, the reflexive instinct is to assume this is just for show. It's part of his shtick. It's red meat for the rubs. It's the whole, I'm the greatest man in the world. Right. But no, he sincerely believes it.

And it keeps coming up in private conversations. There was that phone call he made to the Norwegian finance minister out of the blue, lobbying him for his supposed poll with the Nobel Committee. and now with Modi so he's obsessed with this idea of getting the Nobel Peace Prize and it kind of reminds me once again of a nine-year-old boy right? A nine-year-old boy would tell

his parents, when I grow up I'm going to win the Nobel Peace Prize and he'd be filled with these images of world leaders coming to meet him and his counsel being sought on the important crises of the day he'd have all these fantasies in his head and in a nine-year-old you forgive that. This is what's animating U.S. foreign policy. Any of the long and the short of that

being, a huge falling out with Modi. Modi refusing to be played on this for Go to Real, we'll see what the impact is in terms of India's interests, but in the short term anyway, Modi is obviously very keen on showing

he's got other friends he can play with than the United States. And I mean, this is a, in some ways, in a traditional Indian foreign policy game of kind of triangling between them. But he's, at this moment, is angling pretty hard towards China and Russia in ways that are obviously not helpful to either the U.S. foreign policy interests or those of the democratic world. I think what's so interesting in your analysis, Andrew, is that the breakup between Modi and

Trump was predicated by Trump insisting, again, that publicly, that he had solved or had ended this, this not unsurious set of military attacks between India and Pakistan that happened to earlier this summer over a horrible terrorist incident in Kashmir. And even the most basic understanding of Indian foreign policy and kind of Indian security doctrine would internalize the fact that when it comes to Pakistan, India can, and no Indian leader will give any quarter in terms of acknowledging that as Trump seemed to want Modi to do, that India would have agreed to back off on Trump's instigation, not that India on its own de-escalated as the more powerful military and economy and country. And it goes to something, Andrew, about, as you say,

like just a complete loss of any of the kind of detail of these really, important relationships that now have created a scenario where decades of American foreign policy, which was seeking to peel India away from Russia because Russia was a major arm supplier and remains a large arm seller into India, seems to have now blown up. And I guess it just made for you to reflect on like, what are the costs of that, not just to the United States, but to this so-called league of democracies that we're being roped into willingly or not to lose India, which, yes, is an imperfect economy and an imperfect political system, but nonetheless is a democracy that has a long history of parliamentary democracy. And frankly, compared to China and

Russia, a pretty good record on a whole bunch of issues that both of those states have now completely fallen down on. Yet there is Modi holding hands with Xi. and Putin. Yeah, and I'll just stress again, a very imperfect democracy under Modi. Yes, and Modi's been pulling them in really troublesome directions, but that's, as you say, compared to China and Russia. And it's not just India, it's the whole kind of global south in a way.

You know, if the world is rapidly, you know, redrawing lines where, you know, where previously we hoped we would draw Russia and, and China into the orbit of civilized nations through trade. That's very clearly blown up. It wasn't anything of our doing. And so it's caused us to have to retrench into the democracies. Well, the pure democracies, the pure West is going to be one thing,

but there's going to be a bunch of countries that are adjacent, that may not be our idea of perfect democracies, but are at least willing to work with us. Brazil is another one that has 50% tariffs just like India. That's right. So there's these countries that, you know, as I say, they're not necessarily going to be our full-time, 100% allies, but they are at least willing, they at least don't wish us ill. They're at least willing to work with us. They can at least be drawn to our side in at least a tactical, strategic sense, if not a full-blown Western Democracy 101 type of model. And so if we can't appeal to India, then who can we appeal to? If we lose them, we're going to lose a lot of other countries with them. Let's put it that way. And so to have the foreign policy of United States being subordinated basically to the ego needs of one person, which is literally a big part of this, is extraordinary.

It's once again shows just how lunatic the situation that is facing us, what an emergency it is facing us. When you look, you know, we're all deeply concerned at what's happening within the United States and where it is, where it's going and what that means for its democracy. But simultaneously, this is happening at a time of just extraordinary geopolitical upheaval and redrawing of the map and potential crises. And to have at the top of the American government such an utterly unsuitable problem, person, again, to say the least, it's really frightening, frankly. You know, that meeting, I'll come back again to that meeting between Xi Jinping and Putin just before the Ukrainian invasion

in 2022, where they declared, I'm trying to remember the phrase now that. I think it's a no limits, no limits in a friendship, boundless partnership. It's just so redolent of Molotov-Ribbentrop. Yes. The timing is so similar that, you know, just before. for the initiation of hostilities. That should have set off every possible alarm bell everywhere. And again, it's a moment in history where you'd want the most assured, experienced, Democratic-leaning, small-D Democratic-leaning leadership

in Washington, and we don't have it. Yeah. Today, the day we're taping Wednesday, the 3rd of September, we were greeted with another strike, image out of this summit in China, and that was leading a procession of the global south, obviously Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, but Kim Jong-un, the, I don't know how you would describe him, probably a mass murderer, a criminal, the head of one of the world's largest

counterfeiting and drug criminal syndicates in the world. a dangerous nuclear power who has acquired weapons of mass destruction. And there he was, side by side, was Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, again, leading this procession of world leaders of the global self down a red carpet to watch what was clearly a threatening display of China's military might. How are we to interpret this, Andrew? Is this a kind of the China pulling, you know, the sword or dagger halfway out of the scabbard to show some steel to the Americans? Is this a provocation to Trump?

Is it what probably the Chinese would argue? No, it's not a provocation. We just simply want, you know, that old chestnut piece through strength. Yeah, if you choose to be provoked, we cannot be accountable for that. Look, it's a demonstration of power. at this moment of nuclear power but not just nuclear power

at this moment there are North Korean troops you know in Ukraine there are more coming to defend the rear guard apparently for the Russians to free up Russian troops to go to the front

the prospect of North Korea fighting in Europe is just extraordinary and it's sort of passed almost unnoticed but it's an enormous escalation, provocation. And it just shows you how much these countries are working together,

how we cannot view them as separate and independent actors. They have their own games. As I say, you can imagine a situation where if Russia were to collapse, where China would try to gobble up some of its territories in the East. They're not friends in any kind of bosom-buddy sense, but they are strategic allies at this moment and working increasingly hand in glove. What's notable about all of them, of course,

is that they are as much portraits of weakness as they are of strength. None of these regimes are particularly on solid footing. Each of them has enormous challenges in terms of their economies, in terms of their aging populations, in terms of some of their economic bases being eaten away. And so all of them, the danger in that is that all of them, therefore, have an interest in belliger. and aggression as a way of justifying and solidifying their regimes.

Russia most notably, if the war ends in Ukraine, Putin's got a huge problem on his hands, of what do you do for an encore, of what do you do with the troops who are returning home, of what was the justification for all this slaughter when we didn't, we didn't even win anything. But it's similar in terms of Xi Jinping. I mean, he's in a more solid position than Putin, but there are long-term dynamics in the Chinese economy. When you look at their population base. Their population could have in the next generation. By the end of this century, they could have, the projection is something like 600, 700 million people down from, what is it, 1.3 billion today.

That's extraordinary. Imagine the economic and social carnage. And so much of that of an aging population as well. and terrible problems trying to find jobs for all these young men. So they've got, you know, huge internal problems that they, you know, they're a very efficient government at keeping a lid on. But that's to me what is particularly dangerous is when a regime like that is in as perilous position as that, what do they do to try to justify preserve their base.

These are all very brittle regimes that are powerful. verticals that have been assembled around a single personality, Putin, Xi, or Kim Jung. All of whom are aging as well as individuals. And there was, I don't know if you saw this story, there was a hot mic incident. Again, I wonder how inadvertent it was where Xi Jinping and Putin are discussing advances in medical science and how long it will allow people to live. Like, say, 72-year-old leaders. And, you know, they were musing about people to be able to live to 150. Yes. I'm sure that whatever stem cells they need, they're being harvested somewhere, most likely illegally. That science may not arrive quite rapidly enough to save them, but they'd like

people to think that they're going to be on the throne each individually and together for much longer still. Yeah. Putin struck Ukraine overnight coming in today Wednesday while he is at this summit. As we said, the previous day, Moody basically sent the most obvious postcard you could to the White House saying, as you put it, well, I have other friends. I can take care of myself. What does this do for Canada, Andrew? Because on one hand, you know, we want to assert our independence. We want to find ways to remain a kind of sovereign country, able to determine our national purpose. But we seem to be pushed here, being ground down between two big millstones.

On one hand, no Canadian would want to see Mark Carney in that circle with Modi, G, and Putin. And on the other hand, do we want to go to what is now the gilded cage that is the Oval Office? And upon bended knee, like the Europeans or the Japanese, except some kind of humiliating deal to be led into this increasingly imperfect American-led, for lack of a better expression, League of Democracies. This seems like the ultimate and kind of Faustian choices.

We are in a very difficult situation. We are in between, geographically, in between a dictatorship, a full-on dictatorship across the Arctic from us, and an emerging dictatorship to our south. you know, you have to go back to like Poland in the 30s to find a comparable, you know, dangerous place to be. It is an extraordinarily sobering time. You know, we've had a great 150-year run in this country

where we didn't have to worry about our defense, or we thought we didn't. We were a million miles from the nearest predator we thought, and we had Big Brother America to our south that would take care of any, threats that might crop up. And as we've probably talked about before, you know, my great concern is not somebody marching into Toronto, but, you know, the Russians or the Chinese or somebody just setting up shop in the north and seeing what we'd do about it. And what would we do about it?

And what would the Americans do about it? Or the Americans setting up shop in the north to deal with the Russians and Chinese? Absolutely. Or or or or or or Trump demanding to be cut in on the deal, you know. So, you know, we have this enormous territory, the second largest in the world that has always been our pride and joy. And suddenly, you know, we're looking pretty exposed. So if we're going to have any chance of defending that, if we're not looking forward to a century of predation on our soil and increasing losses of territory, et cetera, then we've got to get really serious about defense in a big hurry. And obviously one part of that is building up our own defenses. You know, it used to be, you only had to go back a few years, when people would talk about Canada almost as if it was a neutral power.

I think a lot of Canadians believed we were a neutral power. Costa Rica. The first neutral power in the history of the world to have its defense paid for by another country. If you look at actual neutral powers historically, like Switzerland or Sweden, they're armed to the teeth because they know they have. have nobody to turn to but themselves to defend themselves. So we've got to get over that idea to hurry. And certainly, as you say, we can no longer just simply assume the United States is going to be our defender. So it means arming ourselves in a sense almost like a neutral power

that other countries that are only going to be able to do so much for us. But it also means we've got to get allies in a hurry. So it's a difficult time because NATO is trying to walk this funny line where on the one hand it pretends to acknowledge U.S. leadership. You see this every time now they're having a meeting. Is they're on the one hand talking as if the U.S. and Trump are their leaders? On the other hand, having all sorts of bilaterals and, et cetera, meetings with each other about what to do about the problem of the United States. And I don't know exactly how that's going to resolve itself, but it may at some point, you know, Trump may resolve it by pulling out a NATO. If he doesn't get what he wants on some other thing. But there's, we certainly should

to be looking at democratic countries that can ally with us and we can provide our mutual aid and comfort and, you know, defense sharing, procurement sharing agreements, et cetera. And we're doing that, to be fair. And you're starting to see countries turning away from the United States as a military supplier. Just in the last few days, you saw, I think it was Spain canceling a U.S. agreement. You saw Norway signing a deal with the U.K. That was otherwise could have gone in the United States. So the world is being reshaped around the United States to some extent.

We'll see how far that goes. But the combination of a big defense buildup in this country, and some really tough questions we're going to have to face around that, and secondly, you know, scrambling to form some of these ancillary arrangements so that we're not just wholly dependent on the increasingly uncertain relationship, either with the United States or with NATO as it's currently arranged. Just to be provocative for a second, Andrew, I mean, that image of today, I guess last night in China, of Kim Jong-un-walking with Putin and Xi is so stark, is so completely outside of anything that you could ever characterize as in Canada's interests or shared values. are we approaching a moment where maybe the tougher, more realistic decision is to say, look,

there are two choices here. One we cannot take and we will not take. So there is the other. And the other has a lot of things that are unattractive about it. Most notably this president, everything that he'll extract from us in terms of allowing us under his vision of a fortress North America. probably as a satrap or some kind of vassal state. But what really is the option? I mean, you're still talking as if there's some kind of optionality.

And I'm just wondering if you really want to be tough with ourselves. Maybe there isn't an option. Maybe the more realistic path is that we do have to go to that gilded cage in the Oval Office. We do have to do a deal. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll look like something the Europeans got, which wasn't great. But it also, it wasn't horrible. And it's just time to cutterfish bait. I don't think it's as binary as that.

And I would suggest, I was just looking at it not at a point in time, but overtime. Right. I think the game that you see the government playing right now, I would say I hope this is the game they're playing, is a two-track one of, trying to maintain as stable a relationship with the United States as you can in the short term while you are building bridges to other countries. in the longer term. So you can't just cold turkey go, screw off the United States, we're flying with France and UK now because you don't have enough, you know, a buildup on that side of things to compensate for it. So that's a really difficult, so just as I was saying, NATO has got to be figuring out the other NATO countries, Saenz, the United States. I've got to be thinking about

what's the future of NATO with or without the United States. Canada's got a really acute version of that of how do we maintain as productive relationship with the United States, including trade relations, including in the short-term defense relations, so that we don't just blow up everything in the short term while we're trying to build up things in the longer term. Now, the really difficult, really difficult part of that is what if the United States objects to our building of bridges? And this is the thing I really worry about, is does Trump or even some successor to Trump attempt to impose some kind of Finlandization on us?

where our foreign policy and trade policy options are delimited by American Fiat. But, and for surely in the context of Kuzma, that's exactly what Trump and Lutnik and percent want to do. And they're renegotiating of that agreement. Don't you think they're going to demand access to a whole series of industries in Canada? They're going to demand access to resources. Finlandization is like six to 12 months away. Well, it could be. And that's an absolutely fair concern about what is going to be the dynamic of these negotiations.

It means that we've got to have bottom lines to some extent of what we're prepared to accept and what we're not going to accept over time. As I say, I come back to this time element of it is. What you would accept at any given point might be different than what you accept once you've got some more options. So it's a furious game of building up as much as you can. can of options on one side to inform your negotiating bargaining position in the talk there, which conversely, the fees back the other way as well. The stronger the position you're able to arrange with the Americans, the more time you have

to build things with the other. So I think the danger you're suggesting is absolutely real, is that they will use this negotiation to attempt to make really severe limits on our freedom of movement in trade policy, etc. And security. And security. And we cannot be so desperate to sign a deal that we sign on to anything. So there's got to be at some point a position where you're able to say this is not worth it.

And particularly, and this is the thing that the devil's any negotiation with Trump is, what is the point of making any concession if you've got no assurance of what you will get in return, that you've got literally no assurance? We just saw this with the Europeans where he came back last week and said threaten them all over again with any kind of taxation and regulation on American big tech. Yeah. Large-scale tariffs. You threatened American tech companies. We are back at you.

He seemed to have no recollection of the fact that he just done a so-called trade deal. Well, and emphasis on the so-call. So this is the point. Trump has a few of these so-called deals that aren't really deals. I agree. And I think part of that is other countries and the... the EU are playing something the same game we are of stall for time sign sign a deal that isn't a deal right let Trump jump up a down claiming that he's made this great victory then people delve into

the details and they find out he got nothing of the kind so for example supposedly you know the the the deal with with I think it was Japan to Trump's way of telling it was a Japan or year but I forget one of the deals what gave him 600 billion dollars that he could invest personally yes and it turned out to be completely mythologically Yeah. So, no, and he was upset about that and kind of, again, demanded, I think of the Europeans on autos and other things. The tariff will remain high, higher than the base 15 percent, until the Europeans enact various other kind of market reform. And again, to come back to the point, he could change his mind next week.

So once again, I'm just going to reemphasize this point is I'd love to be able, you know, we'd love to be able to, to discuss and analyze these things all in terms of, you know, trade interests, geopolitical strategy. Rational agent actors. And just every time it comes back to you're dealing with a completely irrational actor in the White House, and that changes everything. And it makes all precedent essentially useless. We've never had to deal with a situation where the psychosis of the President of the United States is the central dilemma of foreign trade and defense policy.

I want to end, Andrew, on your second most recent column out in the Global Mail this weekend, positing that America is at the cusp of succumbing to some form of autocracy. What people can read the article themselves. We'll post a link to it in the show notes. But I wonder if you could help me with timing, because this surely is vital to Canada. Because if we are going to see some tip over into a push by the Trump administration to openly and self-evidently pull down some of the key kind of democratic and institutional infrastructure of the United States to benefit its own power and control over American society, then that will have a huge impact, I guess, on whatever Canada can and should contemplate for the next period of time. Yes. One of the things we cannot take for granted anymore is the stability of the United States, the internal peace of the United States. I was struck by a speech by the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker.

And this is coming to a head in the next few days. With Chicago? A? Was Chicago sending troops into? About the prospect of Trump sending troops into Chicago from other states. So this is quite apart from the idea of him forcibly federalizing the National Guard of Illinois, which doesn't sound he's going to be able to do, but we'll see. But getting sympathetic Republican states to send troops.

Red states into blue states. Sounds kind of like a certain war in 1865 or whatever it was. It's really worrisome, right? So if people decide to push this, you know, usually. these kinds of things could be settled in court, but if the courts are going to be increasingly taken out of play, because Trump just simply won't acknowledge their rule, and that's an ongoing fight. You're getting every day now a court ruling that this or that aspect of the Trump agenda is flagrantly illegal. The language of the judges is just, you know, they're just

gasping for words to describe how illegal and unconstitutional these various measures Trump has been doing really are. So if you can't count on the court settling this, then how exactly is that resolved when, if Trump and let's say, Texas, decide to push this? Anyway, you've got that aspect. You've got the aspects of people protesting in the streets, Trump sending in troops, more protests at the arrival of the troops,

somebody decides to shoot somebody. Where does that go? So it is increasingly, even as, as Trump is increasingly putting in places, putting into place the pieces of it. It's not that, you know, one day there's a coup and the tanks roll in the streets and suddenly your dictatorship.

It's like sort of fast-drying cement, you know, like he's been sort of fitting the cement around the shoes of American democracy, and at some point America's gonna wake up and go, I can't move my feet. Right. And then you're stuck. And obviously,

one benchmark along the way is going to be the 2026 elections next November. Do they take place into free and fair conditions, or does Trump, as he seems increasingly aspiring to do, some combination of fixing them so they can't be run on Democratic ways? So, you know, forbidding mail-in voting if you can get away with it, redistricting on the grand scale, if you can get away with it, and or sending troops in to monitor the poll. stations if he doesn't like the result. There's all kinds of possibilities. Or refusing to seat

Democratic members from blue states on the basis that they engaged in a legal balloting process. All things are possible with this president. So, you know, there is serious talk now in the United States about how to avert this and it's going to get increasingly fervid over the next 12 months. And it's, it's, it's, so I always say to people, it's only going to get worse. So the, as bad as you think it is now, we're going to look back at this period as a period of relative tranquility. Right. And so for Canada and Canadian negotiators trying to figure out this relationship, is this something that is to our possible benefit? Because as the internal kind of chaos and consequences of the Trump administration ramp up internally, their external tolerance,

their threshold for pain potentially that we could visit for them in terms of failed trade negotiations or talatory tariffs, his. own popularity ratings, I think, are the lowest of any president at this point. And with most presidents, that would be a key strategic variable, may still be with Trump, to some extent, that the weaker he grows at home, the less maneuverability has. But with Trump and with an emerging dictatorship, then to me, as you're asking that question, it starts sounding like China and Russia again. Right.

Does he become more dangerous, the more threatened he is at home? You know, there's this business with them threatening Venezuela, for example. And believe me, got no love for the Maduro regime in Venezuela, but I would not put it past Trump at all to start a war with Venezuela, to open a different front and change the subject. Remember, of course, hanging over his head is the whole Epstein stuff, which is coming to a head as well. So it's a peculiarly dangerous period for any country dealing with the United States.

for a country that's spread out along 5,000 miles of border with the United States. It's the worst position to be in. It's the worst possible position. And so far, we've avoided the prospect of enormous numbers of people fleeing the United States for Canada. I don't think we should foreclose that possibility by any means. Yeah. Well, Andrew, tour to force. We went from China to Ottawa, Canada, back to the United States and back again.

So thank you so much for coming on Monk Dialogues again this week. Great fun. Andrew Coyne, columnist at The Globe and Mail, publisher of a fantastic new book, The Crisis of Canadian Democracy, Sutherland Press. Go to their website, check it out. We will include a link in today's show notes.

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