The Paikin Podcast - World on Edge: Did Trump Just Kill the Liberal International Order?

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Janice Stein is joined by Jon R. Lindsay from Georgia Tech to discuss if the kidnapping of Maduro signals the death of the liberal international order, if Venezuela was an inside job, and if Trump has turned the world into a “den of thieves,” as the President Steinmeier of Germany said last week. They then discuss Canada’s response to America’s attack on Venezuela, Poilievre’s vs. Carney’s statements, and what this means for Greenland, Taiwan and, well, Canada. In other words, how seriously should Canadians take Trump’s 51st state rhetoric now?PATREON: patreon.com/thepaikinpodcastYOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastX: x.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAM: instagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKY: bsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.socialEmail us at: [e-mail]

Hi, everybody. Steve Paken here, and welcome to our first edition of World on Edge for 2006. My goodness, how the world has changed since we last gathered in December. The United States, possibly with the cooperation of elements within the Venezuelan government, attacked that country and snatched its president and his wife to put on trial back in the United States. We've heard a mix of reactions out there, everything from, good. We're glad to be rid of Nicholas Maduro, two, this is illegal and the old rules-based international order is dead. Let's get into that debate. Coming up next on the Paken podcast.

Delighted to welcome back for the first time in 2006, Janice Stein, founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and our special guest this week, John R. Lindsay, he is associate professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the San Francisco. Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. He's also the author of Age of Deception, Cybersecurity as a secret state craft, excuse me, as secret statecraft. And he comes to us today from Atlanta, Georgia. And John, we're so glad you could join us. I want to put you to work right away because your friend Janice is quoted all over Canadian media over the past few days, saying the rules-based international order is dead. It is no more. Do you agree? Well, I want to say that

I did bring my Canadian passport to this conversation. So I'll speak on both sides of the border if I can. I think the rules-based international order has always been fairly complex and often violated. But the violations always paid lip service. And it was kind of a compliment, right, that you violated it by behaving covertly or abstractly or ambiguously. And now it's happening so bleakening. blatantly, that that old ways is not as available anymore. So if it's not dead, it is certainly struggling for life. Janice, the Venezuela situation clearly was the straw that broke the camel's back for you. But what was the first evidence you looked at and said, I got a feeling this thing is about to be on its last legs? And Steve, I actually said that at a meeting of

senior ambassadors in Global Affairs Canada in 2015. So I met with, I can only tell you, astonishment, chagrin, and actually some hostility. How could you say that? When I say that now, it's so obvious to everybody that they don't really push back anymore. And one of them remembered that I had set it in a decade. I didn't say it was dead then. I said what John just said. It's dying.

But you don't die for 10 years. At some point, you just die. And I think it's dead now. There's no going back. You think it's dead now? And was it Trump that killed it definitively? Yeah. There were other pressures.

I mean, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it was never a part of the liberal. And, you know, for me, it's the liberal order that really matters because every order has rules. What's really at the heart of this are liberal. So, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe struggled the way it did and depended entirely on U.S. leadership to respond the way it did, you knew that, frankly, that liberal order was in big, big trouble. And then when you get this combination of Russia and the United States, Putin and Trump together, I think that was the finish of it, frankly, Steve. John, I want to read a quote to you.

This was what the president of Germany said about these recent developments. He said the United States has broken with the values that it helped to establish. It is turning the world into a den of robbers where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want and treat whole countries as their property. That is a pretty blunt way for a high-ranking official from an allied country to be speaking about the president of the United States. Do you think he's wrong? I don't think he's wrong. And you can look at previous foreign policy adventures that were unpopular.

You can go back to Kosovo, right? That was very unpopular at the UN level. It was a NATO operation. You can look at the invasion of Iraq, right? And while these seem to be really at odds with the spirit of the liberal order, there was a big attempt to at least construct a legal justification, at least come up with a story, a narrative that could be told in legal forum. And you could kind of have this two-faced aspect. And now you've got the President of the United States that explicitly says,

I don't need international law, my mind and my morality, whatever that might be, is what can restrain me. And you just don't get a more explicit a statement of the alternative. I mean, international order is about creating mutually recognized constraints that we try to, you know, use at least to justify our policies, is not to actually constrain them. And to just, you know, put that aside and have it be, you know, a purely sovereign, motivated foreign policy is fairly new. Well, it's fairly new. The president said that. Yeah, yeah. Janice, the president said that line. I am guided by my own morality, and that's it,

in those interviews that he did with the New York Times, I think four hours long meeting in the Oval Office. And as soon as I read that article, I thought, I wonder what Janice thinks about a president who decided that his morality alone will guide his decision-making. What did you think? And it's in plain English, Steve, is really scary because you can have an international order with rules

and there's just not liberal rules, but they're rules. You know, we've had those before. We had them in the 19th century, frankly. Great powers follow rules. But here he's saying there are no rules. There's no rules that govern. I don't have to follow any rules. I decide what the rules are myself,

and I'm unconstrained except by what I think is right. So he says, we're going to run the country. we're going to take the oil. Well, there's one man with enormous power that the United States has, who in a time where they have expanded the notion of what the executive can do, the courts, Congress is really, it was the slightest sign last week that the Congress might be beginning to push back the Senate, but in the most minimal way. And other than that, he's unconstrained.

He's unconstrained. You know, I think everybody should be worried. And I think countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, should be very worried when you hear this. Well, let me follow up with John from this standpoint. I'm sure there are people watching and listening to us right now who are thinking, you know, there were a lot of wars and a lot of people got killed. Even when the so-called rules-based international order, at least people pay lip service. too. Maybe we should try a new way where just might makes right and maybe things will turn out better. That's the argument. What do you make of it, John? Well, so I think it is helpful to try

and distinguish the concepts that we use to explain state behavior and the way that states actually think about formulating their foreign policy. Right now, everybody loves to quote Thucydides, right, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. And forget that on the very next page, Thucydides talks about Athens going off into the Sicilian expedition, which was the end of the Athenian Empire, right? So Thucydides himself did not think this was a good idea. Even in a world that was about power politics, the character of the state, the character of the leaders were still fundamentally important. And this was a story of, you know, Athenian character basically unraveling over the course of, you know, 16 years of brutal warfare. So, you know, in this

sense, I can say, you know, international politics has always been a pretty, you know, tough neighborhood and people having to make really, really hard decisions. It's not that, you know, the liberal order was this incredible utopia where everything worked out well, but at least there was this sense that we're trying to do this in a way that will be marginally more humane, marginally more predictable, and enable states to coordinate their foreign policies for some kind of collective good. And that's really, really what has come apart. And now states are really having to think about, okay, now how do we take care of our own interests now that the thing that we have relied on for the past 70 years is no longer reliable?

Well, Janice, let me play devil's advocate for a second here. And that is to say, you know, some people are making the argument out there and we'll talk Middle East for a second, that trumps, what do we want to call it, unanticipated, different, counterintuitive approach to handling Middle Eastern affairs may actually make more progress on the Israel-Palestine question than doing things the old-fashioned way. Is there an argument to be made that out with the old rules-based order, in with Mike Makes Right, could deliver dividends we didn't anticipate? You know, I have trouble going here with you, Steve, because I think what happened in the Middle East for the last two and a half years didn't follow any rules.

and almost was not a rule follower in any sense of the word. What it did is consistent with no rules. It did it because it could do it. And it's been a longstanding ambition to do it. The way Israel responded, we all know, I think, broke every rule, frankly. Even the rule of basic power politics, which is you live, think about the next day, as John was just saying, not just about today. And then, you know, Trump comes in and muscles.

That's what he does. He frankly muscles the Israelis to agree to a ceasefire. And that's where we are now with not a lot of progress in addressing any of the underlying issues. One interesting example of this is that doesn't get a lot of attention. He needs to stand up some sort of force that will go into Gaza. Otherwise, there's no hope of moving forward. He goes to the U.N. Now, it's really fun to read that resolution because the wording of that resolution,

the way it's written, so different from any other UN security resolution, it doesn't follow any of the normal whereas, whereas, whereas their force that you get in UN resolutions. It's just, you know, it's a few slight paragraphs, but people, countries would not agree to participate in the force. unless he got them a UN resolution. So even the most powerful president of the most powerful country still has to negotiate with others. Where this president has broken a weight from anything that the modern United States, by which I mean the last 75 years, is the deal on Gaza was covered for deals on Bitcoin, hotel businesses, crypto, and energy that enriched not only the United States,

but enriched the president, his sons, Steve Wyckoff and his sons. So we have a level of kleptocracy and corruption in the United States that you usually see, Steve, with empires in decline, frankly. So it's hard to make a good case here for what's happened. Let me get you two to focus back on Venezuela now. And I want to get both of you on this notion, which is I suspect we have all heard a lot of chatter over the last week about the fact that the American invasion and taking

slash capturing slash kidnapping, use whatever word you want of Maduro, was an inside job, that there had to have been cooperation with the existing government of Venezuela for that to happen. John, what have you heard on that? What can you tell us? Right. So, like it or hated, people that look at, you know, the events of last Saturday, almost universally praise the efficiency of this well-oral, you know, American military machine that went in and did this large-scale special operations raid. And it looks like there was very, little Venezuelan resistance. And that's a real puzzle to me, right? I mean, you've got, you know, the American military, it is invading a sovereign country. It's a sovereign country that's got

a lot of high-end Russian air defense equipment. And there seems to be very little resistance. So there are three explanations. One, the American military is just so well organized and has so many high-tech cyber electronic warfare and space tools that they were able to suppress all of this and we just had our way with Venezuela. The next possibility is that the Venezuelan military is just incompetent and decrepit, right? They didn't unpack their defense systems. They didn't read the manuals. And they just didn't put any kind of, you know, fight up. So the American military just walked all over them. And I don't, I mean, I think there's elements of truth in both of those, but I look at the tools that Venezuela has. I look at the geography of Venezuela,

and it seems possible to put up a little bit of a resistance that would have drawn more blood than it actually did. So I guess to the third possibility that this was an inside job. And there was some coordination with the Venezuelan regime to basically stand down and pull their punches when the U.S. came in. And maybe it wasn't, you know, across the board, and that's why you had some elements that were offering some feeble amount of resistance. But basically, that turns this into an intelligence-enabled coup rather than just a kind of pure foreign regime change or decapitation. So, you know, I think that that's, I find that compelling because I just don't buy the ease with which the American military win in. And I could talk about that for.

Yeah, let me add to what John said. The United States clearly used to cyber weapon over the city of Caracas to knock out all the lights, right? They've said the city went dark and, well, John's not sure it's a cyber weapon, so I'm going to let you back in on that one, John. But they turned out all the lights in Caracas. You have the president in his presidential palace with a security guard. don't tell me that they didn't know the lights went out when the lights went out. How can they not know?

And yet, in the story of the invasion that we've all been told, which is confirmed because they injured themselves, the president's wife were not in their safe room. They were on their way in when 20 minutes to a half hour later, U.S. Special Ops Force get off their helicopter and raid the... the palace. How can you explain that? There's no conceivable way you can explain that other than the security detail around him was compromised in some way and cut off from the information that they would normally get. It's just not. As soon as I heard that story on Sunday morning, I said something's wrong with the story. It just doesn't make sense. John talked about the

but the anti-missile defense systems that had finished away. He had really good ones. Now, one of the things the Americans said is that they raided these warehouses or bombed them and they found missiles packed in boxes with parts missing. Well, that speaks to the incompetence theory. One was fired. One. And the story they put out is, oh, well, after one was fired,

and then those who were firing it were bombed. The message went out to everybody else don't fire. Come on. In that time period in a darkened environment to coordinate those messages where there may not have been adequate electronic communication, the story does not hang together. Steve, there's no way to explain this.

John, you want to follow up? Yeah, so, um, On the cyber side, I mean, First of all, on the cyber web, yeah, on the cyber weapon. Trump amounts that, you know, announced that there was some special technical operation, and then there was lots of kind of anonymous speculation that this could have been cyber, it could have been electrical warfare, could have been space, could have been a lot of things. We know there's plenty of video with, you know, the lights are up and with the cell phone,

you can see the Black Hawk helicopters going through. So the lights weren't shut off entirely, but maybe they were, you know, shut off in certain avenues of attack. You know, whatever happened, it was very, very minor. And I guess my point is that Venezuela is a big place. It is a mountainous place. It is a jungle covered place. And two and a half hours over the target is a very long time.

And if you are being invaded and you have a bunch of people with shoulder-mounted S-A-27, man-portable air defense systems, you're going to be able to get off several rounds. And maybe there are some counter-battery fire. You can suppress some of those. but you can also hide in the hills and in the jungles and in places that are going to provide you some protection if there was a determined effort to resist. And that just seems to be lacking. So I think, you know, while, you know, do credit to the United States military and its ability to suppress enemy air defenses, I think that there was also this internal weakening that helped to make this, this,

operation a lot more feasible than it ever would have been. Let's have one more piece of this story. The president is snatched and grabbed, he and his wife, right? And they're put on helicopters. And then there's a gap, two hours in the official story. They were flown back on helicopters to the warship that was off the coast, the Iwo Chima. How come no missiles fired at those helicopters?

It's a long time. Nobody claims any missiles were fired at those helicopters. The firing took place before. Wow. And if you look at the timeline that was published, you will find this big gap. And who died, by the way, in the firefight on the way in Cubans. Cubans, yes, about 80 of them.

Well, 42 Cubans, I think 38 Cubans, and there were 80 people. who died in the whole operation. So the immediate security force around Maduro were all Cubans. The others were casualties of the bombing. He didn't trust his own security forces. As you tell me, if you ask me quickly what's going on in Iran right now, I will tell you that a big part of this of what's going on is the Supreme Leader does not trust his own security forces because they've been infiltrated.

This is deadly, as John says, and it enables these kinds of activities. It was, in fact, an intelligence make coup. And the story that there was a CIA agent in the presidential palace is widely circulating, and there's been no denial whatsoever from the CIA. So they say an agent? I think that's probably an understatement.

Well, John, let me do the devil's advocate thing again, and that is one argument I'm hearing a lot these days, is that maybe the UN charter doesn't hold here because Maduro stole his election. He was an illegitimate leader to begin with, and therefore we ought not shed too many tears about the fact that the U.S. snatched and grabbed him the way they did. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I've been asking myself, as I go through kind of the justification of this, Is there any possible world in which Biden or Obama handed this military intelligence opportunity that says, hey, you know, we've got all these inside forces.

We're going to be able to zip, zip, go in and do this. Is there a world in which any of them would have pulled the trigger? And I think actually, yes. I think it also would have happened with a lot of backchannel diplomacy and preparation. And there would have been a whole story prepared to at least hold up the fig leaf of international law. like that story might have been told. There was absolutely no effort to tell it in this case, which is interesting. And the other thing, you know, again, just going back to this, Janice's question of the inside agent, in the counterfactual where that doesn't exist,

right? You have a whole lot of warning because this is going in. You have a lot of people on the ground. You have this massive firefight, right? And somehow the president survives that. somehow he has no weapons on his own. Somehow he doesn't get caught in the crossfire. I mean, all of that is also incredibly surprising. So if you don't have that inside advantage, your chance of this turning from a kidnapping to an assassination are really, really quite high. Now, would Obama and Biden be willing to take that risk?

Probably not. Okay. So I do think we're in the world. Yeah, and just, again, because John and I really, really, this stuff, the way other people read detective stories, we read this stuff. Let's go back to the capture of Osama bin Laden right now. There you can make a very direct argument that he was behind the 9-11 attacks, and you can make an argument, an international legal argument, that he is a legitimate target. But when the forces went in, what happens exactly what

John just described now. There was a firefight. He was killed in the crossfire, right? It was not the liberty. He was killed in the crossfire. That didn't happen here, Steve. Right. John, I need your help understanding American politics at the moment with this next question. And that is one of the, you know, central tenets of MAGA, Make America Great Again. and Donald Trump's political base is we don't want any more involvement in foreign wars. And yet, you know, this is, I mean, admittedly, it's the same hemisphere, but it's a long way from Washington, D.C. And it's an engagement with a foreign power that you don't have United Nations good housekeeping seal of approval to do. So how is this consistent with Republican Party or MAGA policy

at the moment? Well, I mean, looking for consistency in MAGA is a little bit wild. I mean, the only thing that's consistent is, you know, is this aligned with Donald Trump's vanity. And, you know, that changes a lot. In fact, that's very, very useful, right? Because if you change your mind and you look inconsistent except in that way, then you demonstrate loyalty. And that's that's very, very helpful. The last thing you said about not having the UN, you know, good housekeeping seal to approval.

I mean, that's a benefit to MAGA, right? I mean, you want to be seen as America making itself great and not being beholden to all these, you know, international liberal weenies. So that's pretty cool. So if you think that you are going to go in, have this incredibly, you know, spectacular military operation, and then you can just be in and out and then on to the next thing on the news cycle, that provides the spectacle that I think the base thrives on. And it also provides this very interesting contradiction that, you know, you can either get hung up on or you can use it. as a loyalty test to figure out which side are you on.

If you want to focus on the contradiction, then we know exactly which side you're on, and that's helpful politically. All right. Since John has his Canadian passport for this discussion, and Janice is, in fact, Canadian, I want to take a look at how this country has reacted so far. We, Canada, have not had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019.

So, Janice, on the QT, you know, what are they saying in Ottawa? about this. Are we, in fact, maybe not pleased that it went down the way it did, but are we happy to be rid of Maduro? Not in this case, Steve, for paradoxical reasons. And I actually think there's an exaggerated discussion going on in this country, which has to do with Venezuela and oil. You know, Trump has said literally from that first press conference, this is about oil. We're going to take their oil. We're going to run the country.

We're going to take that oil. Well, there are, there are resemblances between the quality of Venezuelan oil and the quality of Canadian oil. Both of us make heavy oil, right? As you know, and that oil, the refineries all along, what used to be known as the Gulf of Mexico, were really built to refine heavy oil. And when Venezuela began to diminish the oil that it exported as its economy really cratered, because this is an incredible story of the destruction of an economy by its own leaders. Very, you know, again, not as similar to Iran, although in Iran, the sanctions played a much bigger role.

What happens? Canadian oil fills a vacuum. And refineries in the Gulf of the Gulf of. of Mexico in the United States are busy full-time refining Canadian oil with very little Venezuelan oil, if any, flowing into it. So all of a sudden panic after this happens because they're misreading what it will take to stand up and resume oil production in Venezuela. I think people should have sobered up when they watched that press conference that was filmed live with the oil executives where Donald Trump clearly states that to say, oh, these oil executives are going to be

thrilled. They're all at the table. Well, they were all at the table, but they were not thrilled. And with the exception of Chevron, who's been in Venezuela, we've had this whole period, one of them said Venezuela is uninvestable. And at the table also were majors, oil companies in the United States, who have been It benefited hugely from fracking and actually do not want to see the oil industry in Venezuela recover very quickly.

So I think the initial reaction in Canada was all focused on what's that going to do to our energy exports. Some sober good sense is now beginning to set in. But there was no joy in Canada. Yeah, we should say, you know, the Canadian Prime Minister's initial reaction was anybody who is worried that this is going to adversely affect the Canadian oil and gas. industry, don't panic yet. We won't see any changes for years and years down the road. It will still take a lot of investment in the US, excuse me, in Venezuela before we start

to feel any impacts here. What do you think of that? Well, I mean, I'm not an expert on the oil industry, so I don't want to comment too much on that, but everyone that I've read that claims to be an expert, you know, find themselves scratching their head because turning this into, you know, a usable source of, you know, refinal and refinerable oil is going to do. take a lot of efforts. So I think there's something else going on. You know, this is not the pure reason. And that means if that's not the main reason, then all of these worries about,

you know, second and third order consequences of the United States owning or controlling, you know, Venezuela and oil, I think, are a little bit premature. I mean, I've got a list of, it's up to 26 different reasons that the United States acted in Venezuela. None of them are convincing on their own, right? It ranges from, you know, drugs, oil, immigration, democracy, human rights, regional dominoes a la Cuba, right? The president's own need for spectacle. I mean, like, wagging the dog. So, I mean, like, you can go on and on, right? And, like, somehow these add up into this weird policy trash can of motivations, oil being just one, right? And there is no veto player anymore to get in the way of this train wreck.

Okay, let me follow up. All right, so Janice you want to do. Yeah, just one piece of this. You know, this actually starts with Marco Rubio. President says it started with Marco Rubio, who sat down with him in the Oval Office in the fall and walked him through all the options. Well, in your trash canter on,

there is one that says this is the doorway to Cuba. And for Marco Rubio, that's true, because that has been a primary motivation for him. Now, that doesn't make it the primary motivation for Donald Trump. But Rubio was in close through this whole thing and is now tasked with running this. And Venezuela is not what matters to Marco Rubio. It's Cuba. And the loss of two things, right? One oil from Venezuela, which Cuba was getting, which really was.

matters. Depends on. And their economy is very fragile right now, the Cuban economy. It is very, very fragile. And the other is, as we saw, there was a significant Cuban presence in Venezuela that was providing security to Maduro and the Maduro government. I was being paid for it. Now, again, a chunk of Cubans, I don't know what percentage, because we don't have accurate numbers, left Venezuela three weeks before this happened and went home. How could they not? How could the material people not have understood what that meant? If the Cubans could read the tea leaves, how did the Venezuelans not?

John, I want to get your take on that because I don't know exactly how far Atlanta is from Cuba, but it's probably Toronto to Montreal. You're not that far away. So tell me, can you imagine the U.S. following up on Venezuela? with Cuba? Well, I mean, we've all suffered failures of imagination with the Trump administration, so speculated that is hard. I do buy that, you know, the Cuba motivation was a huge part of Venezuela.

I mean, it's one of the major threads that goes in there. You know, it allows you to build coalitions because there's all these other narratives that you can stick onto it. Now, I mean, when you've left exactly the same Venezuela in place that you had before, you what's the relationship with Cuba? Is that really going to be changed? We just don't know quite yet. But, you know, the theory of influence seems to be that anything that is bad for Venezuela is also going to be bad for Cuba. And if you're going to cut off electricity, funding, you know, oil, things like that, that Cuba will be more and more weakened. And then

something will happen. And maybe it will be an uprising. Maybe there'll be some military opportunities. I don't think they've really thought that far ahead. But I think the theory seems to be that Cuba will be weakened and then dot, dot, dot, a miracle occurs. And that's never really been filled in. And you never really had to for this crown. Let me get both of you to react to what were two very different reactions coming out of first the prime minister's office in Canada and then the opposition leader's office in Canada. The government of Canada released what I think many have observed as a pretty tame statement after all this happened. They urged all parties to respect international law, which was interpreted as a bit of criticism

of the U.S., but not very much. They expressed solidarity with the people of Venezuela, but ultimately happy that Maduro was out. The opposition leader, Pierre Paliév, was out the gate very quickly with a rather bold statement on social media, congratulating Donald Trump for taking this step, no reference to international law being violated, but absolutely thrilled that Maduro was out. And we should keep in mind that the opposition leader's wife is originally a Venezuelan refugee herself, which may have been influential in that statement. I guess my question, Janice, you go first. Which statement did you like better? Let me put it this way. I think being prime minister of Canada right now in this world,

is one of the toughest jobs there is, Steve, okay? You have no degrees of freedom. You can't make one mistake with this president. This president is standing. So let's have a little empathy for anybody. I don't care who it is, who's got that. God-awful job right this moment. You know, we are in front of a renewal of USMCA,

Cosma, I don't care what you call it, which will start in a few months. Stakes can't be higher for this country. And so any president, I think if Polly F were prime minister right now, he would have issued a very different statement. He might have congratulated the Venezuelan people. And he might have said something because this would matter to him on a normal day. And he didn't in his statement of democracy, which actually the prime minister did.

He did include that he's hoping and looking forward to a democratic trend. transition, which is as far as he could do. But he was, for sure, he did not come out guns blazing. But neither did Claudia Scheinbaum. Well, she did criticize the move. She did say it was a violation of international law. Yeah. Well, so our prime minister said he respects international law, all right? There's a degree of difference here, but it ain't huge. And she was very, very careful. has been very careful all awake to hold their fire for exactly the same reason. The closer in you are, we are two countries in the Western Hemisphere.

This is a fraught time. We both have to negotiate an agreement that he has already said he wants to break up and he wants two bilateral tracks because when you do this bilaterally with each, you're more powerful and the other two can't align and cooperate. there's no way you can expect either the president of Mexico or the prime minister of Canada to come out with a statement, which in any way reflects the way either of them feel, frankly, at this moment. Because John, neither one wants to be on the menu is next. Is that it? Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that, right? I mean, you know, this president has a very mercurial and very shifting, you know, attention spans. So, you know, whatever it gets his attention seems to shape things. I mean, like, you know, we've been talking a lot about, Venezuela being an inside job, but we still don't have a lot of clarity on what that inside

trajectory was really going to look like. I mean, perhaps there was supposed to be a very different head of Venezuela. And then she accepted the Nobel Prize and didn't give it to Trump. And now in a fit of peak, he's got another favorite. Right. I mean, like, that seems ridiculous, but also weirdly plausible, right? And we'll, you know, we'll figure that out. So, you know, as far as like saying, hey, there's a violation of international law, I mean, the Russians had a very boilerplate statement that came out of the foreign industry that basically said exactly the same thing. It's like, the United States is being very, very aggressive and we want some negotiations in order to resolve this policefully, and this is destabilizing for the international order.

You're like, if even the Russians are saying that, right, it clearly means nothing, right? So, but, but yeah, I mean, you know, this is, this is a Canadian prime minister that owes political existence to Trump in many ways, right? Igniting Canadian nationalism and bringing him. So, I mean, like, you want to, again, you want to stay in that sweet spot where you've got just enough resistance to have, you know, a sovereign Canadian foreign policy without attracting too much higher from Trump. And then just to add to what John said there when you talked about Putin, it's really interesting because Fiona Hill, who worked in the first Trump administration, left in, left because she objected so strongly to what was going on over Ukraine,

told the story that Putin has made an offer to Donald Trump. You know, you get out of my space in Ukraine. I'll get out of your space in Venezuela. Now, if you actually look, we got a very boilerplate statement from Putin, as you just said, John. But even more interesting, the United States boarded a tanker that had reflect itself with a Russian flag. And it's no small job to board a tanker in international waters where that was. And you, again, got the most minimal kind of Russian reaction. So there's a president saying you're violating international law.

Well, what did he do? And he's no compunction whatsoever. This is somebody, you know, this is something. You know, this is somebody who sent 200,000 armed forces across the border of a neighboring state and then makes a token, takes a token, bow to international law. It's all, you know, if I were international law, I would be embarrassed by the people that invoke me, is all I can say. John, I'd like to read you something that one of Mark Carney's predecessors just wrote. This is from Michael Ignatiof, who was the liberal leader for Canada.

oh, I guess about a decade and a half ago, and he wrote, Canada and Mexico will watch what happened in Venezuela and begin thinking the unthinkable. What if they have to defend themselves not against Russia and China, but against their next-door neighbor? Again, how much should we worry? How much should the Mexicans worry that we're next? Well, I agree that it was unthinkable until, you know, this last couple of weeks, last year.

And so I think there is a small part of your brain. and your national defense planning apparatus that needs to start thinking about that, right? And that's not pretty. I don't see that happening, especially on the Canadian side. But, you know, there are a lot of scenarios that we could think through. And I think we just need to start thinking through them. Janice, I want to put this to you. Because a few months ago, you did a show with Stephen Marsh, who said,

an invasion by the United States of Canada is a real possibility. Annexation is on the table and you push back at him saying, oh, you're being alarmist, you're overdoing it. Have you changed your view at all on that, given what's happened recently? Well, yes, first of all, yes, I have. The word, you know, annexation is very, an invasion is very, very strong because there's so many other things you would do first. But yes, I have changed my mind.

I've changed my mind, interesting enough, because of the story that John and I told, which this was an intelligence-based coup in which there were covert planning and action was done beforehand. Because we were an open society state, right? So you think that's happening here right now? It's entirely possible. It's entirely possible. In the five eyes, which John knows very well, we are not supposed to spy on each other.

That's kind of understood that we don't do. Oh, we do? I think we do. Yes, I think we do. And one of the reasons for Canada to sit up and take notice in an entirely different way now is because the CIA was heavily involved in Venezuela. Let me give you an example. of what I think should worry us, frankly.

On that Sunday, on the flight back from Mar-Alauga, when he gave this very long press conference to the reporters who were on the plane, he talked about Greenland. And he said Greenland is a matter of national security. We must have Greenland. Because, you know, the United States Court has basing rights in Greenland. All it needs to do, frankly, you sit down with Greenland in Denmark, have a negotiation.

expand the base as much as it needs. It used to have many more than it does now. And that would all be within a framework that is comfortable for people. Well, the president says ownership is different. Different than leasing. He wants ownership. Right. So why does he care about Greenland?

He cares about Greenland. Look at where Greenland is on a map. Yeah, he doesn't want Russia or China to get it. That's what he says. Yeah. Well, what's in between Alaska and Greenland? the Canadian Arctic. Yeah.

Okay. So I think Canadians would be more than foolish not to take very seriously and engage in defense planning. And John, I think they are doing it, believe it or not. Were that kind of conversation to develop about the Canadian Arctic, we have very few defense investments in the Canadian Arctic. We have left it fundamentally as a vacuum.

And given the rhetoric about Greenland, which comes back and comes back and comes back and comes back, and with a determination, it would be criminal on the part of Canadian defense planners not to think hard about that scenario with respect to Canada. Well, and the scenarios are, I mean, there's a huge diversity of things that can. happen, right? Talk about invasion and occupation, an annexation of Canadian territory. Like, I don't buy that, right? That's very difficult. The nationalist resistance that you would meet from, you know, Canadians would be tremendous. I actually think that a violent invasion of Canada would also be a civil war in the United States because, like, it would rip the U.S. military apart. So, so that's a huge issue. Now, there are lots of other things about, you know,

occupying and dismantling radar sites and dismantling intelligence sharing relationships, kicking, you know, Canada out of NORAD, right? So, I mean, like, there are a lot of kind of, really, really key Canadian defense relationships that are utterly dependent on the United States because this was the fireproof house and you had the involiable guarantee. And now that's gone, right? So there's so much pain that can happen way, way, way, way short of armed intervention. I would take that seriously. Now, I take, you know, Greenland, I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it's feasible because in all of these Trumpian military operations, he gambles on being able to get away with something at really, really low cost, it's dramatic, it's successful, and then he

moves on to the next thing, right? And Greenland could look like that, right? Because, you know, there's just not, it's not really defended, but it would rip NATO apart. And at that point, like, I have trouble thinking about it because it feels very 1914. where I'm in a complex system that now has all these interdependencies that, you know, you never would have been able to predict the year before. But I think it's those kinds of things that seem really, really easy, but then start to put you in a very, very different system condition that are more likely than just the outright invasion of Canada.

That's just not Trump's MO. That's not going to happen. You know, just by way of comparison here, Steve, there's 66,000 people that live in Greenland. Right. Okay, there are 40 million people that live in Canada. And where I agree wholly with John, he wants it easy, Trump. He wants it easy. When he went into Iran, the Israelis cleared the pathway in the skies and reassured him 10 times over,

there would be no anti-aircraft fire, all right? That's when he did it, not before. And he asked him to do it. He doesn't want any casualties. He goes into Venezuela. And that's why I think a lot of this was. done before, John. And he must have been reassured that the possibility of casualties was going to be ready. And in fact, no American died. That's the ammo for Donald Trump. Greenland,

notionally, is within that kind of territory and invasion of Canada. It's simply not. So I have changed in the sense that I believe that our defense planners have to look at a whole variety of scenarios of the kind that John just talked about, but I do not think that innovation of Canada is coming. Janice, I've got to say, I'm completely impressed with somebody who, if I may say, as an octogenarian and who has thought about these issues for decades, is capable of seeing new information and new developments and therefore offering a new opinion on things.

So kudos to you for that. I would hope so. Let me, in our remaining moments here, let me just get two more issues for you to consider and that is of course one of the one of the huge issues people are looking at going forward now is whether or not china now says what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and does this make an invasion of Taiwan more likely john what say you uh i understand the argument i don't quite buy it just i mean everything that we went down with kind of you know venezuelan incompetence venezuela be and totally isolated uh the united states like owning the caribbean like you know

the lake of the United States Navy, you know, totally riddled intelligence penetration. I mean, none of that applies in the Taiwanese case, right, where this is an island that is, you know, is finally understood that it needs to defend itself like a hedgehog and it can't just have a bunch of prestige weapons and it understands the fight is going to be long and difficult. It's been looking at Ukraine. So, I mean, like, it is a much, much more difficult military problem. And, you know, at the end of the day, like China is, it's not a liberal organization. country, but it is an international order country, right? It wants to have a stable world in which, you know, China can go out and make plenty of money and Chinese prestige can be intact and all

these things. And in most Taiwan military scenarios, those are really, really deeply in jeopardy, right? So, you know, if China wants a short, sharp war in Taiwan, I don't think Venezuela gives you any insight one way or the other on whether or how that's possible. So I think it's comparable. Yeah, let's have, I agree with China. Let's have one more piece of this story, right, which is always a piece of the story, is a tiny, Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company, right? Which the U.S. needs.

Yeah, but so is China. Don't forget. Okay. And those chips that are manufactured in Taiwan, the most advanced in the world, that are really important to go into China. We talk about what the United States sells to China. terms of chips, but it also sells slightly less sophisticated ones in large numbers into the Chinese market. And they're at the end of a supply chain. So another good reason not to have a

war there. Not to have a blockade even, because the first thing that would be cut off would be the advanced lithography on the chips that go to that Taiwan company, TSM, and it would only be a matter of time until both the United States and China did not get the advanced computer chips that they need. China is a big loser in that scenario. So one of the things to watch is, you know, how are the Chinese doing at manufacturing the most advanced chips on their own independently? They're certainly, their performance is improving, Steve, but they're nowhere near there. So I don't think this story, the Venezuela story, is determining it anyway of what Xi Jinping will do. He's a very, unlike Donald Trump, he's cautious.

He's patient and he plays a long game. He's the obverse. You asked him explicitly, it's through long-range implications. I'm sorry. I was going to say, you mean, you asked Venezuela foreshadows a war in Taiwan, and I said no. But if you asked me, does this foreshadow more Chinese influence over Taiwan? I would say that's much more feasible, right? You can imagine a spheres of influence type argument where basically, you know, the United States

just says, you know, hey, like Taiwan, like keep the microchips coming. But China, right, if you want to put more political pressure on Taiwan, we don't believe in democracy anyway, like go to, right? And you can definitely imagine that world. And China would be quite happy living with, you know, this notional two systems. for a while, while Taiwan, you know, is abandoned by its supporters internationally. Let's do one last thing here, and I want you to react to, I don't mind saying it, my favorite writer for The Atlantic, who is David from, born and raised in Toronto. And here's what he

has to say about all of the events of the last week. Because the Trump movement is a cult of personality with no consistent principles and no concern for the truth, many of its boosters don't care whether success is real or phony. They don't care whether the advertised success actually happened the way Trump says it did. They don't care whether the so-called success achieves anything important or lasting. They don't care if there later turns out to be a corrupt underside. They celebrate peace plans that don't bring peace, trade deals that don't enhance trade. The Trump movement exists to glorify Trump in all his erratic mania. Results in the real world don't matter. John react if you would to that. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, that's, that's an argument that the politics of the Trump

administration is fundamentally a politics of spectacle. And what you're looking for is something that gets lots of attention. And it helps to mobilize MAGA. It owns the libs. And it makes for really good television. And I think that's, you know, that's certainly plausible. But, you know, let's bear in mind that, you know, the people that are bearing the cost for right now, these kind of Trump foreign policies are not Americans. The American economy continues to crank along. There are a lot of kind of long-term slow processes that are, you know, really going to be harming the MAGA base. But like, you can kind of sustain the spectacle as long as you have, you know, a tremendous amount of, you know, economic performance. And at the end of the day,

security that is provided. If those things are in jeopardy, then I think you would start to see things start to turn. So the point is not that, not only that this is a government that focuses on spectacle, but is a government that is largely unrestrained. And I think if the constraints, either internally or externally, really did start to tighten, then the power of spectacle would be weakened. Janice, last word, do you? Well, I think that the lack of constraints, really matter, you know, support of the polls is dropping for Trump. He did say during this intense week that we've all lived through for the first time, he did say, I'm going to hold middle-term elections because if I didn't hold them,

people would say I was a dictator. Well, I was really glad to hear that because I was not 100% confident that he was going to do that if the polls were negative. Now, we did follow that up with a discussion about changing the rules in some ways for these elections. So everything is on the table for sure. But we are beginning to see, I would say, very early sprouts of some constraints. There were five Republican maverick senators who put up their hand and voted past it. That would not. have happened a year ago. No way would that have happened a year ago. That's one. There is a consistent fall. He will not win the house if the polls stay as they are today. He will not.

And the people around him know that. So there are constraints that are operating there. They're weak. There's no international pushback really that's meaningful. The Europeans can't because they care about Russia. They are worried about Russia. We and the Mexicans can't because we're worried about him. And the Chinese, as John just rightly said, have no incentive to do it. So there's a wide open football feel for this president to continue moving from one spectacle to the other. I don't think that part of it is over yet.

Well, related to the midterms, someone once said, a week is a lifetime. politics and that's 50 lifetimes away. So we'll have a lot to talk about between now and then. That's for sure. John Lindsay, I want to thank you for joining us from Atlanta, Georgia. People can read your stuff. You're at Georgia Tech and we're really grateful for you joining us. Janice, my thanks to you as well and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Just before we sign off, I want to make one little announcement as it relates to this show. You know, we started about six months ago, and I think it's fair to say we were crawling at that point. I think we're walking at this stage of the game. And maybe, based on what I'm about to say, maybe you could say we're

starting to jog. And in that respect, I wanted to announce that we have launched something new here on Patreon. Now, a lot of people who are into the podcast world know what Patreon is, but for those who don't, go to this website. Patreon.com. That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Patreon.com slash the Paken podcast, and you can find out. We're starting a new community chat there. We want to hear you hear from you. We want to be responsive to you. We're going to have some exclusive offerings on Patreon, some exclusive interviews, and a few other things as well. Something we want to start there. And it's a way as well for you folks to show your support for this effort. It'll always be free. But for a few bucks a month, we're going to offer something a little bit extra. That's patreon.com

slash the Paken podcast. And until next time, everybody, peace and love.