The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: America and Iran inch closer to war, Ukraine proves itself worthy of NATO, and Canada moves closer to Europe

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

The U.S. edges back toward war with Iran just as food and gas prices are poised to surge. Could there be a role for China to play in getting Iran and the U.S. back to the negotiating table? Meanwhile Ukraine is quickly becoming a formidable military power due to battlefield resolve and technological innovation. Is it time for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO? Andrew argues that here the gains are bigger than the risks. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Andrew turn to Mark Carney's meeting in Armenia with European leaders to discuss security concerns and partnerships. Big changes are afoot in Europe which is hedging against U.S. instability by pursuing trade deals with other countries. Canada needs to follow their lead and look for other trade partners while not angering our most important trade ally, the United States. Is moving closer to Europe the answer? Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to full episodes of Munk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up.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.

Ukraine has probably one of the most effective armies in the world now, pound for pound. And it's in NATO's interest as much as anybody to get Ukraine into that. And if the United States weren't such an obstacle right now, I think that would be accelerating on that track. I think more and more people are realizing the gains are much greater than the risks. Things seem to be heating up again in the Straits of Hormuz, ship under attack, drones, flying. It's got big implications for the economy, inflation, maybe most important of all. Will the United States and Iran go back to war? To discuss all this and more, we're joined by regular mug debate contributor and global and male columnist Andrew. Hey, Andrew.

Good to be with you. So, an eventful weekend, we have this kind of rolling set of policies and announcements and prognostications out of the White House. The latest development of the last 72 hours seems to be the intention of the president to both maintain the blockade, but then also Andrew create a corridor or some form of safe passage for ships to come out and transit the Strait of Hermuz. Iran seems to be reacting to this very negatively with attacks on a Korean ship and potentially looks like drones sent into the UAE and damage to a UAE gas plant. where are we headed? What's happening here?

Is this war any closer to ending or is it more likely to restart again? I don't think we're any closer to peace. No. Look, the president has blundered into a cul-de-sac. He can't go forward. He can't go back. He's stuck. So he keeps trying various ways out that he thinks might be ways out.

So first of all, he'll threaten Iran. Well, Iran has basically taken all the pounding that the United States, and Israel could give to them, and they're still standing. The regime is still in place. They still have their nuclear materials. They still have probably more of their missile inventory than the United States is of theirs. We're getting reports of how much of the U.S. inventory has been depleted. So there's not much they can really threaten Iran in any credible way. So then he shifts to every now and then to castigating his allies in NATO for not coming to his aid and insisting making some new demand on the United.

them to come through and punishing them if they don't. So we've seen that in recent times with pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany and saying nasty things about Spain and Italy. But that's not going anywhere because the rest of NATO isn't frightened of them, basically. And they're not, certainly even if they are, they don't see any percentage in getting themselves involved in this conflict that Trump started that has nothing to do with NATO. So then it comes back to pretending to negotiate with Iran. Well, Iran's seen that movie before. What everybody who negotiates with Trump for every reason finds is there's no real percentage in it. You think you've got a deal, then he ran eggs on it. So there's no, you know, they launched the war while the negotiations were still

going on. So there's no percentage of that for Iran's sake either. So round and around the mulberry bush we go, he keeps basically stumbling from one alternate to another. And meanwhile, the strait of Homo is effectively closed. I don't think there's any appetite in the United States for the kinds of huge operation to be required to really open up the strait. And as long as there's a risk to ships going through, it doesn't have to be airtight. But as long as there's a sizable risk, nobody's going through because nobody can get the insurance. Yeah, it's such an important point.

And that seems to be, in fact, what's happening today, Monday, as we record, maybe possibly one or two ships have gone through, but the majority are not weighing anchor in sailing. And again, that's probably no small result of this Korean ship being seemingly attacked. We don't know exactly how, but it sounds like at least one drone struck the ship. So, Andrew, there are big implications, though, for this straight remaining closed. Are there not? I mean, we are at the point now where the inflationary effects that are being built up, that will fully reveal themselves three, six, nine months from now.

There are discussions now amongst S&P 500 companies about supply chain disruptions that they're seeing and they're beginning to report in their quarterly results. And food costs, Andrew Fertilizer, seemingly doubled through much of the developing South. And those costs are also coming here to North America and other major agricultural producers like Canada itself. I mean, how long can this go on? I guess is what I'm wondering, given the self-injury that will affect all of us. It's affecting Iran. It's going to affect the United States. It'll affect Canada. And people in the developing South will be the ones who will bear the brunt of it. Well, you're right to point out it's not just about oil. It's also about things like fertilizer.

but on the oil front, and I don't know all the ins and outs of how the oil market works in this regard, but what one reads is as these things work its way through the pipeline or the lack of pipeline, in about four weeks is what I read, we're going to hit some kind of cliff where the shortages just become absolutely acute and the prices therefore rise partigenously. So if that analysis is correct, then it's not three, six, nine, months, it's a few weeks before things really start to get hairy. Now, the market, stock markets, have remained, you know, relatively sanguine through all this. They fluctuate here and there, but they haven't really cratered. And a lot of people think that traders are not really fully

pricing in. I guess what they're pricing in is they think before we reach the catastrophe state, some kind of deal will be struck that will somehow rescue everybody from this cliff that we're all headed towards. You know, I guess traders have as much knowledge in this as anybody, but certainly there's lots of experts who say the market is not fully pricing in the risk of this. And there is a real, real chance that we head for, you know, just catastrophically high oil prices and the kinds of shocks to the economy worldwide that that would entail. There would be winners and losers in that. Canada would be a bit of both. In the short term, we've seen that in the in the Fed's economic statement that you get a short-term boost to revenues. Obviously, the

oil-producing sections of the country get a boost, but there's huge knock-on effects for the rest of the economy as well. Yeah, I agree. So if we feel that this is a cul-de-sac, as you put it, that the president, and unfortunately, literally these ships are in a cul-de-sac, which is the kind of Gulf of Oman. Kuwait supposedly exported absolutely zero oil over the last 30 days. So the shut-in is real and it's growing. If we want to look for off-ramps here, Andrew, international pressure, we have Trump's meeting coming up with Xi in a matter of 10 days or so.

A lot of people are kind of putting weight on that, that the Chinese are seeing stresses in their economy. They are close to Iran. They, in fact, played a pretty big role in re-arming Iran over the last year. Should we put some hope that there might be a role that China could play here, vis-à-vis this U.S. administration, a president looking for a way out, and a premier in China with lots of cards to play with Iran. which is a country that will need to rebuild once this conflict does end at some time.

Well, the Chinese don't do anything for free. And we already have the situation where prior to this, there was much talk that this summit that Trump would be making some kind of concession to Xi on Taiwan for whatever reason. I mean, with Trump, you have to factor in. he's endlessly manipulable, endlessly flatterable, seems to have a kind of a man crush for other dictators. And so the notion that the pro-Maga people were trying to put around

to give a fig leave of respectability to their Ukraine policy was supposed to be, oh, well, we can't get involved in European wars. The real issue is China. The great game is China. and we've got to pivot to China, was the phrase you always heard. We're going to get tough with China, and therefore we can't, you know, be dealing on two fronts. Well, so they basically delivered Ukraine or wanted to into the hands of Russia. Ukraine, of course, is confounding that expectation by quite heroic fighting and ingenuity.

And now seems to be getting actually the upper hand of that fight. But meanwhile, if you're in Taiwan, you're looking at the United States. basically halfway to reneging on the undertakings it's made over the years. So that was already in the air and in the works and potentially troubling. But if Trump needs favors from she, she will want to see that favors are returned. I'm thinking of, I can't remember the line from the Godfather, but, you know, perhaps you will be in a position to do me a favor one day. That's right.

And so it's very worrisome. At the height of this craziness, Trump was inviting China to, you know, send its Navy through the straits, which is the last thing anybody needs is China playing that kind of role in the Middle East. It's unhelpful enough that it is, you know, cultivated Iran as a client state. But he seems to be cultivating the United States as a client state at this point. Yeah, I noticed today that Trump is now. encouraging South Korea on the basis of its shipping attack to send its Navy into the straits of her moves to...

This is this circuit he does of cast around saying, please help, I don't need your help. Why won't you help? If you won't help, then I'm going to do bad things to you, but I don't need your help. Remember, as we always try to stress on this thing, you cannot analyze this through the realm of an ordinary statesman. this is a nine-year-old. This is behavior indistinguishable from if a nine-year-old were the president of the United States. He's in over his head to that degree, and he's crying himself to sleep at night, one presumes, or he would be if he weren't on Twitter all night long.

Yeah, I think he's true socialing himself and all of us into some kind of state of condition. Just as we wrap up this section of the show, Andrew, if we step back from this and we think that this war, like unfortunately so many wars, easy to start, hard to finish. There are so many parallels in my mind between what's happened over the last 60 days and Vladimir Putin's failed invasion of Ukraine. Similarly, Putin thought that the war would be over fast, that he would, in fact, Decapitate the regime in Kiev, seize control of the country, and turn it into a sat trap of Russia. That war now, Andrew, we know, is dragged on three plus years, potentially a million casualties on both sides, hundreds of thousands dead, and really no end in sight. Are we, like, how do you gauge the risk here that it's not simply that the United States has

stumbled into a war with Iran in the straits? of her moves, but that this conflict might be much more intractable than we're even realizing now. I do. I'm guilty of this. We seem to talk about the next two weeks or the next four weeks. Today, today, though, was concerning that low-level, low-intensity, asymmetrical warfare by Iran, as you said, doing exactly what it needed to do, creating enough uncertainty that shippers, insurers would not put their boats through harm's way. But it's not attacking. U.S. destroyers, it's not creating a cause for a restart of a full war. This looks dangerous to me, Andrew. It looks like there's characteristics here that could suggest that this might be

a long, drawn-out conflict with the president equally uninterested in bringing it to some kind of crisis or culmination because of his own difficulties around the midterm elections. Yeah, I mean, there's some old lessons in here and some new lessons and some really quite disturbing lesson. So the old lesson is the country on its home turf has a, I think they rate it as a three or fourfold advantage, you know, man for man in fighting against an attacker or an invader. So that's certainly been the case in Ukraine. It's been the case in Iran as well. The new lesson or newish is, you know, the asymmetric warfare, the new technologies of drones, et cetera, making calculations of pure hardware less significant than they would have been.

United States obviously has massive amounts of bombing capacity and all sorts of battleships and fighter jets, et cetera. But we've been seeing the damage, some of it's only now coming out about, for example, the damage to U.S. bases in the region that can be done with relatively low-tech and low-cost hardware. and that is causing everybody to make big calculation changes. The Ukraine, Senator Blumenthal, what's his first name? Blumenthal came back from there saying they're producing a thousand drones a day. They're upgrading them several times a day based on reports back from the front

where you just changed the software to take account of how the enemy is responding to your tactics, et cetera. So it's speeding up the process of learning and adapting in warfare and ways. that I'm sure could not have been predicted. And Ukraine now, as a result of this, is not only fought the Russians to a standstill, it seems to be getting the upper hand of late. And this is very dangerous for Putin because Russians are unforgiving historically

for leaders who lose wars. They're certainly unforgiving when the troops come home and have time on their hands and grievances to settle. And that can be very destabilized. You're reading reports now about how Putin is deathly afraid of some kind of assassination attempt to the degree that it's kind of hampering his freedom of maneuver. And he's certainly afraid of the war ending. And the danger in that is he may escalate or he may go into other territories as a diversion just to keep the fight going, to keep some argument as to why he has to stay on, etc.

So like a cornered rat, I think he himself has used this analogy about himself. You know, he's never more dangerous than when wounded or cornered or in danger. So there's a whole thing around there. But one of the things coming out there is Ukraine, it's no longer just a matter of Ukraine would like to be part of NATO in order to have NATO guarantees of its safety and security of future. Ukraine would be a major leading power in NATO. Ukraine is probably one of the most effective armies in the world now, pound for pound. And it's in NATO's interest as much as anybody to get Ukraine into that. And if the United States weren't such an obstacle right now,

I think that would be accelerating on that track. I think more and more people are realizing the gains are much greater than the risks in admitting Ukraine into NATO. So that's changed. You see now Ukraine circling around the, at least offering some of its hardware and know-how and expertise to the embattled states in the region because, you know, the U.S. can't protect them. Maybe Ukraine can. You know, that's where we're at. Yeah. So the long-term damage from all this in terms of U.S. credibility. The credibility of its

security guarantees to countries in the region is essentially shot. They were, it was worth nothing. They sustained all kinds of attacks from Iran. The credibility of the U.S. military is, in some on the line here. They have, they had some early successes, but of a tactical rather than strategic kind, and they haven't really been able to enforce their, you know, the United States' will on Iran, which is the ultimate goal of warfare. So a lot of long-term consequences, of course, including the possible breakup of NATO. It's debatable whether NATO as such exists anymore in the form of a truly transatlantic alliance where there are genuine security guarantees extending both ways. It's not at all clear the United States would fulfill its Article 5 obligations. And in fact,

the most recent threat to a NATO partner came from the United States, threatening to attack Greenland. But Iran, I think, has really accelerated all this. And it may well be seen as a kind of a turning point or the thing that kind of pushed the American Empire over the edge and into decline. Yeah, well said. Andrew, we're going to say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers. Join our monk donors on the other side of a short break. If you're enjoying these conversations with Andrew, please become a donor to the monk debates. You can do that for as little as $20 a year, all kinds of different donor levels to join at.

And you're supporting our efforts to bring civility and substance to the public square through podcasts and video series. like this and of course our main stage debates and we've got a great one coming up for you in May in just a couple weeks so head over to our website check that out triple w.munk munk debates with an s dot com so here's that bye-bye thank you for listening to the first half of our monk dialogue with Andrew coin to get access to the full episode right now consider becoming a monk donor for just $50 a year less than a dollar over week you will get 72-hour advanced access to all of our premium podcasts including Friday Focus with Janice Gross Stein. You also get our live streams of mainstage debates and all kinds

of other great perks and privileges. Simply go to our website, triplew.munkdibates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. And click on the join button on the top right hand corner of the screen. Again, that website, www. monk debates.com. The monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating.

Thank you again for listening.