The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Trump is a foreign policy wrecking ball, and Carney goes from elbows up to elbows down

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice open today's Friday Focus with the fallout from last week's Trump-Putin meeting and Monday's Zelensky visit to Washington. Putin is walking back from almost every concession he offered last week, essentially demanding that Ukraine be demilitarized without a pathway to NATO membership. This is a non-starter for Ukraine. How did we go from the bromance of Alaska back to the stalemate of February 2022 in the span of a week? It is becoming increasingly obvious that President Trump is not able or willing to do the serious work required to get a deal in place. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to trade with the US. Why is Canada being singled out for particularly rough treatment? Carney is trying to reset negotiations by removing retaliatory tariffs because he knows that if CUSMA collapses, Canada will pay a heavy price. The PM pushed an elbows up narrative in order to win the election. He positioned himself as the defender of Canada against Trump's America. Is he able to back away from this narrative and do a deal that might make him look weak but protect Canada's economic interests? To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.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.

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edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 22nd of August, 2025. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates, joined by Janice, of Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice, when we spoke with you last week, your lovely grandchildren had given you a rotten, horrible cold. You weren't able to join me in the studio.

I'm now away, so we're separated from each other. How are you feeling? I hope you're on the met. I'm much better. And all I can tell you, Rudyard, you were blessed by the fact that I did not join you in person last week. I think summer colds are two for one. You know, once you have at least one summer cold,

you should be allowed to skip two winter colds. How does that sound? I take that deal. I take it. Okay. Well, let's jump in. Since we last talked, we have the results and all the aftermath of Trump's Anchorage Summit with Putin and kind of round-robin series of meetings with European leaders at the White

House on Monday. Where are we at a week later, Janice? What, if anything, came out of Anchorage and came out of those meetings with European leaders in Washington five days ago? You know, it is astonishing, Roger. I could politely call this the absence of staff work, which is what we normally expect when you get ready for these kinds of summits. So there were no agreed on documents, no bracket in material, none of the ritual that we normally expect.

And no sooner did the two meetings end than Vladimir Putin was busy literally walking back. Every single so-called commitment that either Steve Wickoff had told the president that Putin had made or the president had told European leaders and Zelensky that Putin had made. It's really stunning. What concrete thing has come out of this? Marco Rubio, who's a fairly experienced person, is charged with working out the details of what those security guarantees for Ukraine would mean. I guess that's a step forward. We seem to be hearing by the end of the week from the Russians, Lavrov, the longstanding Foreign Affairs Minister, has really poohed the idea that security guarantees would contain the one thing that Europeans and Zelensky seem to demand of Trump, which is some kind of military presence in Ukraine made up of European powers.

backstopped by a formal U.S. guarantee. It seems, Janice, you know, there's been a lot of slip here between cup and lip since Putin and Trump met. Russians don't really seem to be moving off. Some of the original red lines that they set out in their original 2020 discussions with Ukraine before the war started. There's no movement, Richard. Let's just call it like it is.

There is no movement by Russia. I just think about this for a minute. Ukraine needs security guarantees because it's worried that Russia will break its word and invade again. Russia says, oh, oh, we'll be part of these security guarantees. We'll give them. And, oh, by the way, so will China. And these security guarantees should be approved by the Security Council. Well, what does that mean?

It means Russia would have. So here's the hypothetical. Russia decides that it's going to invade again. The issue of security guarantees and military action comes to the Security Council. Guess who vetoes? Russia. I say it in this flip tone of voice. First of all, it's not clear to me why Russia has any voice about security guarantees for Ukraine.

It's not part of an agreement between Russia and Ukraine. It is an issue between Ukraine, Europe, and the United States, if Russia, in fact, giving Russia approval here, Rudyard, is off the chart. Why do they have a voice? Yeah, I mean, the Russians have this, again, somewhat. Paul-Soyne, Navakavian, I don't know, pick your tragic Russian writer, insert name, view that they should be a co-guarantor. with the other powers. We know that's not going to happen, but I guess what's maybe more concerning, Janice, is they have a view that Ukraine should be demilitarized, that they are not open to the idea that there will be a military force, that there will be some pathway to NATO membership for Kiev. I mean, what do you make of that? Again, you know, how do we go from the kind of,

bromance of Alaska and the Anchorage summit to seven days later back where we were months before the summit even even happened frankly back to February as you put it rather rudyard and rightly so back to February 22 look I think everybody understands including the United States under Biden let's take Trump out of this from that there's not a pathway, a foreseeable pathway for Ukraine to NATO membership, despite the rhetoric. So that is not the shocker here. And the fact that Vladimir Putin has said, under no circumstances, will the United States have forces on the ground?

Well, the United States has no intention of ever putting forces on the ground. That's not a shocker. What the Europeans and Ukraine wants to be in the United States, intelligence, support, air cover, which really, really matters. But what Vladimir Putin is saying, no European country, no France, no Great Britain, no Poland, by the way, has declined to do it because it says it needs its armed forces focused on Russia in the event of a Russian attack on Poland. But they're saying no British or French forces on the sovereign territory of Ukraine.

whatever that is, which would come out of this. Well, again, there's no agreement whatsoever to demilitarize Ukraine and to cede sovereignty by outlying any disposition of military forces. It would have no guarantees then, Rudyard. And it's not going to agree to do that. That's a non-starter. So what comes out of this week, there's absolutely no agreement. between Russia and Ukraine and Europe about what the future security arrangements should be.

Trump clearly expressing his frustration at the lack of progress, end of the week by encouraging Ukraine to attack into Russia. He pointed out the obvious feature of this war from the beginning, which is Russia is a vast country. It has defense in depth. It can keep all of its critical manufacturing and war-making capacity well outside of the range of most of the weapons that Ukraine has, with the exception of some spectacular drone attacks over the last few years. It all just seems completely incoherent, Janice. I guess the question is when do we start calling this out for what it is, which is a wonderful,

reality TV show in Anchorage, a little bit long for me, maybe three hours. They might have edited it down to 44 minutes to allow for commercials. You get me in and out on my usual hourly cadence. I love that. And instead, you know, we've had this show, this big show, the show at the White House, the Gilded Oval Office, the European leaders, somewhat embarrassingly, you know, genuflecting and stroking the president and lauding him for his peace-seeking, when all of it is obviously so completely inconsequential and an utter nothing burger. Like, at what point do we start acknowledging reality as opposed to living in this president's fantasy? Well, that's why I actually started, to go to a more serious note,

no staff work was done for this, right? You actually need staff work. And what staff work mean in a case like this? It means that diplomats go back and forth and they understand where the parties agree and where they disagree. And they bracket off the material that they disagree. And they keep working at it and they don't allow a summit meaning to happen unless there's a reasonable prospect that the two principles can narrow the final remaining differences. That's what a professional process looks like.

Well, that didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? There's two reasons. One, Trump has so depleted the staff. The National Security Council is reduced by 50%. The intelligence agencies, you may have noticed this week, they just fired their best-known Russia expert. You're getting none of the normal work

that would make this a serious process. He doesn't care. And secondly, I think even if the staff were available, I'm very skeptical that Donald Trump would draw on that staff, take it seriously, and use the staff in the way that you have to in order to get a serious result. So what am I really saying here? This president seems incapable. We have a U.S. president that is incapable of doing this serious work that is needed to get to a deal. Well, agreed. I guess, again, it's my, my frustration. I'm not a diplomat, so I don't have to deal with their realities. But it does seem that the Europeans, and to certain extent our own prime minister and his congratulatory remarks on Monday to the president or in the aftermath of the Anchorage Summit are perpetuating the president's fantasy. We are, we are lauding this so-called diplomacy when demonstrably, It's not. And I guess, I don't know, at a certain point, do leaders, other leaders, by definition of the word, being a leader means providing leadership, do they at some point have to start acknowledging that this president is a foreign policy wrecking ball? He is ineffective, capricious, deleterious. I mean, you pick your adjective.

There are many that can be applied to him. And yet everyone goes on treating the emperor as if he has clothes, as if he's covered in some wonderful, spectacular robe or gown. When in fact, we know it's the opposite. And I don't know, as you can say, well, they have to do this. They have to get along with him. America is so big and powerful. I understand all that.

But the problem is that they're perpetuating an unreality. An unreality that is now having horrible consequences for the people of Gaza, an unreality that is having horrible consequences for the war in Ukraine, an unreality that has led to this deeply damaging and kind of pointless set of tariffs and trade wars across the world. What do you think, Janice? I know you're going to give me the realist answer, so I might as well hear it. I'm going to say with a certain amount of despair that those European leaders in the room have another set of issues going on at the same time. As that meeting was taking place, European officials were working with U.S. officials to turn that deal that they made with Donald Trump on trade into a document. and that document just got done literally yesterday Thursday. So these same leaders have core interests at stake with this president and understand very well the narcissism of the person they're dealing with.

The second even more sobering thing I can say is that people have confronted Trump. I told him he's wrong. And what's happened to those people? They've been fired if they work for him. They've been prosecuted if they don't work for him. As we speak today, John Bolton's house was being raided by the FBI. There's no evidence, rather, that I can see that Donald Trump has ever taken feedback. So you can't go around this president.

but it's a nightmare going through him. That's the best way I can summarize. Well, let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers. We've joined us for this, the first half of Friday Focus. Thank you for tuning in. If you'd like to catch the back half of the show, along with getting all the other benefits that come with Monk membership, please sign up now.

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