The Paul Wells Show - Anne Applebaum on the Trump revolution

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Pulitzer-winning historian Anne Applebaum is releasing a paperback edition of her book Autocracy Inc., on the autocrats who are eroding democratic freedoms around the world. Her timing is impeccable: she says Donald Trump is moving the United States closer to autocracy. In this week's episode she discusses all the ways Trump is undermining democratic norms, and explains why his attempts to stop the Ukraine war are coming up short.

I'm really happy to have Anne Applebaum back on the podcast this week. She came on the show not quite a year ago. You can find that episode and everything I write at my newsletter, paulwells.substack.com. But so much has changed since last year that I didn't think it was too early to have her back. Applebaum is, of course, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Cold War, a staff writer at the Atlantic, and a fellow sub-stacker. This week, Penguin Random House released the paperback edition of her best-selling book,

Autocracy, Inc., with a new preface that addresses the biggest change of the last year, the re-election of Donald Trump, a president who, as Applebaum writes, is not especially interested in democracy or democracies. What happens when a U.S. president moves closer to the world's autocrats, whom he openly admires. What does that mean for the next round of elections in the U.S.? For Ukraine, as it continues to defend against a massive Russian invasion, and for countries like Canada that have to re-evaluate longstanding alliances? We discussed all of that. Here's my latest conversation with Anne Applebaum. Thank you for joining me.

No, thanks for having me. It's a busy time in Washington. A lot is going on that critics of the Trump administration find unnerving on Friday the president threatened to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook if she refuses to quit. On Thursday, they fired the director of dance at the Kennedy Center. John Bolton's home was searched by the FBI. I've got about 20 more sort of news items on my little list here, but this government seems different in kind from the first Trump administration? Well, if you were paying attention to the election campaign, then it was clear this was going to be different and kind, where Trump was reelected after carrying out an assault on the U.S.

Constitution for which he didn't really pay a price. He said during the campaign he promised revenge and retribution for himself, but also for all Americans who feel whatever. need to have revenge and retribution that they that they might have against whoever uh he talked about his enemies as vermin and by enemies he meant democrats and judges and journalists using a kind of language that has never been used in u.s presidential politics before so he has been telling us for the last couple of years that this was going to be a really different kind of presidency and just a lot of people chose not to believe it.

to the chaste, are you sanguine about the chances that the midterm elections will be free and fair? I don't want to be scaremongering or doom mongering. Of course, I understand that in the U.S., the electoral system is decentralized. Every state runs its own elections, and that gives the U.S. the possibility for protecting against some kind of federal intervention against elections that a lot of countries don't have. Our federal system is good there. But I also fear that Americans have a lack of imagination when it comes to the possibility of stolen elections or assaults on our political system. I mean, we saw that once before. And I would not, well, not only would I not exclude the possibility that the Trump administration will try to alter the result, we see them already doing it in advance.

So the gerrymandering effort that the governor of Texas has launched at the behest of Donald Trump is profoundly worrying and it's quite different from gerrymandering that we've seen in the past. So in the past, you know, both the red states and blue states have sought to alter election borders to give whatever a ruling party the advantage. This is something that was a little bit different from that. This was the president of the United States, asked the governor of Texas, to gerrymander his state in such a way as to help out in a federal issue, a federal problem. In other words, the fear that the Republicans might lose the Republican House or Senate or both might lose the midterms.

And so we saw a Texas governor interrupting the normal flow events. Normally, boundaries are redrawn when the census, when new censuses are taken. This was done out of turn. And we saw him, as they said, a governor taking orders from the president. to change the way elections work in his state in order to benefit the president at the federal level. And I don't know of a precedent for that. Maybe some listeners will think of one and write in a letter of complaint, but I think that's something genuinely new. We also see a lot of pressure coming from, you know, Justice Department, other officials in Washington asking,

demanding things of states, asking for access to electoral rules and so on. I mean, it's not clear how much of that is going to matter. But what we see happening, which is what we saw, it's exactly what we saw, by the way, in 2020, is we see the Trump administration groping for legal avenues. What can they do to alter the election? How can they do it in advance? What tools will they have to question the result afterwards? You know, you can see it unfolding in real time. And as I said, a lot of Americans are so confident in their system, it's lasted for two and a half centuries, and they refuse to believe that this time could be different. So while I don't want to say that, you know, the elections are fixed already or imply that there's some kind of done deal. And while I don't want to discourage people from campaigning and voting, and I think they probably will in high numbers, I would say it's really important to beware.

don't be caught out because just because you can't imagine it or because it seems incredible or because it's never happened before in quite this way, doesn't mean that it can't happen again. So will they try to manipulate the elections? Yes, they definitely will. Will they succeed? We'll find out. One of the surprises of the last year is that the Trump administration seems to be getting more satisfaction from the courts than one might have predicted. He's doing better as a re-elected president than he was as an out-of-office ex-president with three. the courts? I mean I'm not an expert on the courts and I I I I'm I'm the wrong person to ask. I mean my guess would be that there's more you know they're more there more conservatives on the courts and

higher positions some of them clearly not not ideological conservatives but just partisans who are who who are just pro Trump that that may be part of the story part of the story may also I don't know, the judges are part of society, and maybe some of them feel the same kind of intimidation that CEOs feel or some journalists feel or some civil servants feel. That would just be my guess. But as I say, direct that question to somebody who understands the courts better than I do. Okay. Something you know very well is your own writing and your book, Autocracy Inc., which is being released this week in paperback. First of all, broadly, for the readers who are listeners who are catching up. What is the argument of Autocracy Inc.?

The thesis of Autocracy Inc. was that we live in a world where dictatorships, even when they are not ideologically aligned, can often be politically and kind of in policy terms aligned, and in fact, are. And so the book was an explanation of how Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, but also Venezuela, Zimbabwe, you know, Egypt, Uganda, and other countries have begun to work together. So to coordinate their use of propaganda, to hide and steal money in the same ways, using the same institutions, to cooperate militarily. We see them do in Ukraine, you know, we see the Iranians played a really important role in the Russian attack on Ukraine, so did the North Korea and sort of the Chinese in a kind of second. second-tier way by providing the Russians with components and spare parts and markets. And so we see that they are able to coordinate their activities and that they have some common

goals. And their most important common goal is, is there are the most, I should say, the thing that most unites them is their dislike of us. So they're dislike of the liberal world, their dislike of the democratic world. And above all, they're dislike of the kind of language that we use, the language of rights, of rule of law, of freedom, of accountability, of transparency. And the reason they dislike that language is that that's the language of their own internal opponents. So whether it's the Russian anti-corruption movement, the Navalny movement that was the most successful anti-Puton movement, whether it's the rights, women's rights movement in Iran, whether it's the Hong Kong democracy movement, they understand that their people can be

inspired and moved by the kind of language that we use, the kind of language that's written into the U.S. Constitution or the Canadian political system. And therefore, they need to push back against that language and against those ideas both inside their countries, but also increasingly around the world. They understand that liberal organizations and alliances are simply by existing, are a threat to them and sometimes more. So they seek to break up NATO, break up the European Union, undermine the so-called liberal world order, the set of laws and international institutions that were created after the Second World War, to keep peace and protect borders. All those things are now in their sites.

They want them undermined and they're working together to do it. The book talks about, as I say, it talks about their military cooperation. It talks about their financial cooperation. These are all very corrupt regimes. Most of their leaders are billionaires. It's one of the things that separates them from the autocracies of the 20th century. And they're all very reliant on these systems of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation. They need to mold and shape the information space in similar ways.

So the book describes those phenomena. It also describes the way they use us, they use our financial systems. They try to penetrate our information space and make use of our. weaknesses to help them now in the new paperback version which is out this week there's a new preface that you've written which describes the big change between last summer when the book came out and this summer which is that the democratic world you write changed profoundly with the election of a president who was not particularly interested in democracy or democracies i mean that feels like a bit of an understatement but maybe that maybe it's

carefully chosen Look, as I said at the very beginning, I didn't like to be a fearmonger, and I would rather not exaggerate. It's funny, I mean, I think even since I wrote that preface, which was two or three months ago, you know, the necessities of printing books mean that you have to do things farther than advanced than you can for a newspaper or magazine or a podcast. I mean, I would say that the thesis has been strengthened since then. You know, we now see the Trump administration, not exactly modeling itself after the autocratic world, but sharing many of the same practices. That would I would say, sort of same behavior, same practices. Most notable and most striking is the scale, the really astonishing scale of kleptocracy

that we now see in America, which is. again, something that is happening on a level that's never happened before. I mean, we've had corrupt presidents in the past. I mean, I don't know, Ulysses S. Grant was said to have granted some contracts to his brother-in-law, you know, stuff like that before. But we now have a president who has set up a cryptocurrency company whose sole purpose is to enable the paying of bribes to the president. So they're, you know, you buy Trump coins. They can't be traded. They can't be sold, the only reason to buy them is to have and have made an anonymous contribution to Donald Trump, and presumably somewhere, either he or someone in his company knows who you are.

And that's a new level. There was a New Yorker piece a few days ago that touted up the various different ways in which Trump and his company are making money off of being president, and they calculate then the last six months. I think it was $5 billion is the amount of money that's made. And as I said, the scale and the nature of those payments are stratosphericically different from anything we've seen before. So we have, you know, again, you know, American foreign policy being sacrificed to the whim of the president and his family. So the government of Vietnam offering land to the Trump company to develop a golf course in exchange for a better tariff agreement with the United States. So that's, again, a direct bribe going to the president to his family in the open, you know, we all can see it, you know, in exchange for U.S. policy that is different. And this is, this, as I said, this has become even clearer in the last few months, especially also as Trump seeks to have the same kinds of relationships with big CEOs of American companies.

And we see the, you know, we see there something that just looks a lot like Putin's Russia or she is China, where both foreign and domestic companies compete for the favor of the leader and for his personal blessing and the friendship and love of his family in order to get, in order to have good U.S. foreign policy. I mean, and that's, that's brand new. And that puts already the U.S. in a different category. It's already not a rule of law country. It doesn't belong with European democracies or with Canada

or indeed with Latin American democracies and others who still operate according to the rules of, as I said, of rule of law, transparency, accountability, and normal anti-corruption practices. And so we see increasingly the president in his behavior and in the behavior of his administration aligning themselves with the autocratic world. I mean, you could also argue that in other ways,

the U.S. is beginning to behave much more like an autocracy than like a democracy as well. And so, for example, again, U.S. foreign policy, I mean, the U.S. decisions to cut funding, not all these funding cuts have succeeded, but attempting to cut funding for Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America. These are the U.S. funded, brought foreign language broadcasters that have been broadcasting around the world since the Truman administration. They play an important role in a lot of places in offering counterpropaganda, and not even so much counterpropaganda, but just a counter view of the world to people who live in dictatorships and in closed societies.

And for the U.S. to say we don't care about that anymore, you know, we're not, we're not bothered about whether people have access to good information or not. That's a big sea change that, again, puts us on the side of the world of leaders who censor their public and get away with it. U.S. cuts to U.S.A.I.D. One of the things, you know, U.S. has always been a country that, for better or for worse, is associated with money and capitalism and business and so on. But at least until recently, we were also a generous country. So the idea was that we became prosperous and we believe in our means of becoming prosperous and we want to encourage and open that possibility to other people around the world. And in that sense,

the U.S., even at its worst moments, could be, strangely create aspirations around the world, whether or not you think we ever adhered to our values is immaterial. I mean, we presented them, people bought them, they admired them, and the kind of help that we gave, you know, medical aid, direct food aid, but also advice on development and on democracy that we gave around the world. I mean, this is part of what, you know, gave us a special role and made us admired. And the U.S. is not only did we cut that, we cut it in such a, a way that people died. You know, so it was done so abruptly from one day to the next that people,

you know, in their accounts of this from all over the world, I was in Sudan twice this year, and I can talk about it there if you want. We saw the way in which that had this very abrupt, um, harsh effect. And it must, it clearly was intended. You know, the message was clear. The message was we don't care about you anymore. We're not going to help you. We don't care whether you become rich or remain poor, we're shutting the door. You know, we're only interested in in stuff that makes money for our oligarchs. And that also, you know, that was another way in which the U.S. was realigning itself in a, you know, against the, you know, against its old image and against its old friends. And, you know, I don't know if you want, I mean, then there's a whole separate

conversation to be had about Ukraine and Russia. And maybe, well, I, I, kind of. in Europe. I want to get into that and substantially devote the back half of this conversation to developments on the Ukraine front. But the changes that you're describing, one thing that was striking was how early they happened in the administration and how sweeping they've been. I've got a friend who was doing fieldwork for the International Republican Institute, which is theoretically a sort of a development branch of the Republican Party, but because all of their funding is, it comes from the national endowment from. for democracies in Washington.

I asked her what she's up to lately. She said, out of a job. That, you know, all of that activity has been shut down, including what was formerly nominally on behalf of the Republican Party internationally. And there's a domestic counterpart to the Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty stuff, which is the zeroing out of the budget, potential zeroing out of the budget of national public

the exaction of tribute from law firms, from large universities, and the sort of strange message being sent out that you can continue to survive if you pony up. And if not, then you are out of luck or going to be sort of harassed out of existence. This seems like the sort of thing that people would, you would have thought that people wouldn't put up with this. But, you know, like the president's campaign against universities, for instance, he seems to have a lot of social license to prosecute that campaign. Well, the university's campaign, remember, comes on the back of a decade, maybe two decades worth of conservative attacks. on universities. Universities made a lot of mistakes. I don't want to get into that argument right now.

But the undermining of universities has been the groundwork for that was laid for a very long time. And so I think that's part of the explanation. And then I think another part is that the universities seem to have been completely unprepared for this. Surprisingly, actually. I mean, I think they expected some cuts, but not the scale and not the, you know, not the kind of of specific attacks on Harvard and Columbia, for example. And they are, with some exceptions, failing to act together. I mean, there are a few group lawsuits that I know about,

but surprisingly, they have not come to the aid of one another. I had one university president tell me how surprised he was. He was on a group call discussing one specific action that was taken and how surprised he was that universities from red states don't want to join these groups, for example. You know, they think that their senators are going to help them or they're going to find some way around it. I mean, I guess in the case of state universities,

they can't join lawsuits because their state attorney generals have to agree. But in the case of private, big, famous private red state universities are also not being helpful. And so I think the failure to prepare, the failure to have the kind of imagination I was talking about earlier, I remember I was talking about, you know, you need to imagine that the president will try to steal the election and be prepared for it. I mean, I think also universities fail to do that.

I think that's, that's part of the story, too. It was a, it was a massive failure to foresee. And actually, in the case of the law firms, there's a similar story. So why don't all the law firms band together? And actually the answer is some of them have, but some of them decided they could go it alone. And that's why it's through creating these divisions that that the Trump administration is able to exact, you know, tribute essentially from, from American, big, big American law firms. Okay. Given all of this, another surprise, given how sweeping a lot of this action has been

on the part of the administration, another surprise in your preface to the paperback edition of your book is the way it ends, which you say networks of people who sort of stand up for traditional values of free speech and democracy just need to keep doing their work. And we will simply have to form them at least temporarily without the leadership of the President of the United States. That suggests that the Trump administration is not necessarily a game changer in the future of freedom and democracy in the United States and around the world, that it's a bigger obstacle than usual, but not insurmountable. So, you know, I am not in the business of telling people that the future is determined

and everything is going to end badly. And I'm not in that business because I don't believe it. I mean, there's a, that's not how history works. There is no rule that says the United States is heading in one direction right now, and it will head that way forever. And therefore, we need to, you know, just count on all the doors shutting and it's not worth doing anything. Because that's not, as I say, that's not how this stuff works. You know, everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today.

And so while I am not at all underrating the scale of the damage that Trump is doing, and by the way, I do think it will last past his presidency. Whoever is president next time, whether it's President Gavin Newsom or President J.D. Vance or President Ocasio-Cortez, I don't know. But whoever is the next president will not experience the same level of cooperation and friendship, for example, from Canada or, for example, from Europeans or indeed from former American allies in Latin America or in Asia will not experience that again. And that's maybe not in our lifetimes, you know, that there will never be the sense of automatic trust and faith in the

United States that people used to have. I do believe actually that's gone. You know, that's gone and it won't come back. I mean, you know, you can probably tell me more about the Canadian-American relationship than I can, but then I can tell you. But, you know, certainly I can speak for Europeans who are in a kind of stunned shock, you know, and they're not going to snap out of it three years from now, even if the best conceivable, most pro-European, most, I don't know, liberal person wins the election. It's still not going to change that.

The level of trust is gone. But that doesn't mean that Trump is forever. It doesn't mean that people won't try to reverse what he did. It doesn't mean there won't be a reaction in the United States. It doesn't mean that they're going to fix all. all elections well into the future, you know, there are still possibilities. And I think when the specific reference at the end of my preface was to the final part of the book in which I talk about the construction of, you know, democratic or freedom-loving networks as opposed to the

autocratic network. So there are these autocratic networks around money and kleptocracy. I was suggesting there could be a network of, you know, a coalition of the willing of countries that wanted to fight kleptocracy working together. And that, of course, is still true. I mean, if Canada and Germany and Luxembourg and the United States and I don't know, you know, Brazil and Peru wanted to work together to fight kleptocracy in their countries, they could do it without America. You know, there are a lot of things that can be done without America.

There are a lot of issues that can be tackled without the United States. suggestion was that people who care about them go ahead and do it so let's get to what just happened in Alaska and Washington and various points since then which is the attempt to broker a peace one thing that the president's partisans are arguing is that unlike Joe Biden Donald Trump is actually trying to find peace in and for Ukraine it seems to have gone badly What's your read on the meeting with Putin in Alaska, and the meeting with Zelensky in Washington, and all the not much that has happened since then? So I think, first of all, it's important to remember how peace is usually negotiated.

So normally there would be mid-level representatives from both sides, who had the serious goal of finding a conclusion. they would negotiate over the various differences of opinion, they would get closer, and then perhaps there would be a meeting of major leaders. In the case of the Trump and Putin meeting, none of that ever happened. So not only were there no negotiations in advance involving Ukrainians and involving Russians at a serious level, there was no closening of positions, there was no discussion by anybody knowledge, of what was going on on the ground. Steve Whitclough is not somebody who understands the war

or understands what's happening during the war. And so you have to ask, what was the purpose of this meeting? Why was it held? And the answer, I have to say, unfortunately, looks now like the Russians wanted the meeting because it re-legitimized Putin. It made him, once again, a leader of a superpower who could meet the leader of another superpower,

which he hasn't looked like for the last three years. It gave Trump a big TV moment of the kind of thing that he likes, whether that was a psychological boost, political boost. I don't know. I mean, you know, some say it was a distraction from the Epstein Files argument, but I don't even think you need that to explain it. It was his, it was part of his personal campaign to make himself look important. The Ukrainians were not there, so they weren't part of what would have to be a negotiation either. And the result, was what you expected. The result was nothing was achieved. There was no deal done. There was no progress made. There was no, you know, there wasn't even, you know, there, you know, even the, I mean, I was amazed by the degree to which so much of the media ran with stories based on stuff Trump would say or stuff people around it would say as if it were going to happen. Now there's going to be a trilateral meeting. Putin never said there was going to be a trilateral meeting. Putin never said there was going to be a trilateral meeting.

You know, Putin, and remember, Putin has never said he wants the war to end. He's never said he recognizes the sovereignty of Ukraine. He's never said, you know, that he understands the war was a mistake or that it should end. You know, he has never, you know, he's never given any indication that he wants peace of any kind. So you have to ask, you know, why do people keep repeating, you know, the, the, these, kind of imaginary futures that are being put forward by the Trump administration. And I think it's partly wishful thinking. People would like the war to be over. I mean, the Ukrainians would like the war to be over. And it's partly, you know, the magic of the presidency. You know,

the American president says something, you know, it must be true. And we've known Donald Trump long enough. I mean, we've been watching him for a decade now. We know that he lies all the time. And yet we keep taking his word for it. We keep repeating things that he says as if they were real and they were going to happen. And so as far as I can see, unless there, and I don't exclude that there's some secret conversation I don't know about, although I do talk to a lot of people who would be in a position to know about secret conversations, that I don't exclude there is something. But on the surface, there is no evidence of any change. The Russians have continued bombing Ukraine. Actually, a couple of days ago, they hit an American factory in Western Ukraine

that made electronics and stuff like coffee machines. And they did it using cruise missiles, meaning this was deliberately targeted. They chose this American factory. They hit it on purpose. No doubt they thought they were sending a message to President Trump. I don't know whether he understood it or not, but that's what it was. And we see all that. Meanwhile, at the same time, to revert to our previous conversation. We watch the American president dismantling Russian language media, independent media that we've worked for many years,

which a lot of it, which was working to expose Russian propaganda inside Russia and in the region. We've seen two instances of aid to Ukraine being blocked by the Pentagon for obscure reasons. We see some discussion of restrictions on what kind of American weapons the Ukrainians can use. We haven't had any discussion of expanding sanctions.

On the contrary, we see that the U.S. is de facto lifting sanctions because a lot of the commercial targeted sanctions require constant renewal. They're not being renewed. That means slowly sanctions are lifting. So we don't see the Americans putting any pressure on the Russians whatsoever. Nothing. There's no pressure on them militarily or economically. you know, there isn't any progress towards peace.

You know, I am not against anybody meeting Putin. I'm delighted for any leaders to meet Putin who feel they could come to the end of the war. My objection is not to Trump seeking to meet peace. My confusion and concern is more about the way he went about it and the fear that he's given the impression that he did something that was real when in fact it was a PR stunt.

President Zelensky sometimes comes in for hard moments on his visits to Washington, including in that surreal gang up that Trump and Vance delivered earlier this year. But President Putin seems as grandly uninterested in anything Trump might say or want. Like he hasn't shown up for things that Trump predicted he would do. It seems like his only business is on the battlefield. And his occasional concessions to Trump's theater are sort of things he puts up with in ill grace. He's quite eager to get back to the fight. And yet Trump seems incapable of figuring that out and noticing it.

So, you know, this war is only over when the Russians stop fighting, when the Russians understand that the war was a mistake and they seek to end it. That's when it's over. And the only way to make them see that is to put more pressure on them, whether economic pressure, military pressure, political pressure, and so on. And that was what Biden was doing. And, you know, the great complaint about Biden was that there wasn't enough of it. You know, it was always a little bit laid, a little bit slow and so on. Trump has tried the opposite. He's taken off all pressure. You know, again, all these things that we don't really see or pay attention to the Russians see, you know, pressure from independent Russian radio, pressure from sanctions, you know, pressure from military shipments, he's taken off all that pressure. And the result of that is that instead of Putin changing his mind and saying, right, the war is over, he, Putin now believes he can win. And so as far as I can see what Trump has just done has prolonged the war and given the Russians a more faith in their own strategy. They believe that they're going to wait out America, they're going to wait out Europe, and they're going to win the war. And that's how they plan to end the war.

And so any, you know, and almost any other interpretation of this seems to me naive. You have written this, that essentially the piece comes when uh, Russia goes through a sort of, uh, a preise de conscience like France did when it gave up on its colonial adventure, when it, when it gave, when it realized that Algeria and all the other colonies weren't worth the hassle. Um, and, and, uh, I'm with you, but it's hard to imagine Russia ever being put to that end point, uh, by any American administration, by any coalition of the willing in Europe that never seems to be willing to do much, except, except have the next meeting.

You know, it looks like it seems like time is on Putin's side. So, first of all, that's not at all clear. Second of, number one, the Europeans do aid Ukraine, and actually the amount of money that Europe sends to Ukraine is now larger than what the U.S. sends. I mean, the Europeans lack a couple of key capabilities, but in terms of ammunition, in terms of basically, arms in terms of economic support, for example, for the Ukrainian drone industry, economic

support more broadly for the military and for the country. Europe is way ahead now of the United States. And you're not hearing right now any complaints about delivering that. So that's all that that's that's that's that's happening. Second of all, there are some pretty deep problems in Russia. So one of the other pieces of the war that I'm not sure why is, it's gotten so little attention, and I'm hoping to write about it later this year, that's very underrated are these long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries and on the Russian oil and gas industry. And what we do know is beginning to happen is that, you know, if nothing else, the refineries are causing huge fuel shortages all over Russia. And so in not in Moscow and St. Petersburg,

but in the east and elsewhere, there are reports of many hour-long queues for, you know, for petrol at gas stations. There are shortages. The Army is experiencing shortages, transport of fuel around the country is beginning to falter. You know, those kinds of breaks and crashes and inconsistencies in the Russian economy are more and more frequent. So it is not, this is actually not a poshation. that the Russians can sustain indefinitely. They don't have the people to lose, you know, to lose tens of thousands every month. They don't have the capacity to continue producing in the face

of Ukrainian strikes. They don't have an indefinite amount of money they can spend on weaponry. I mean, their consumer economy is also falling apart. So there are limits to what Russians can do and more pressure from us could end their ability to fight the war. But we need the conviction to do it, and we need the leadership to do it. And I do believe, actually, that a different Trump administration strategy, if Trump had said from the beginning right, we're quadrupling aid, we're quadrupling pressure, we're bringing out full-scale sanctions,

I believe that could have had a difference, and we could already be in a different phase of the war by now. So I guess the last thing to discuss is what America's erstwhile allies should be doing. The Canadian Prime Minister Carney is careful to praise Trump in all in in in in passing in every public statement he makes about this situation but in the meantime I think our government even since the spring has moved away from trying to influence American behavior to just trying to walk around the Americans and to find other people who are another other countries other leaders

who are willing to work together as you said in European circles there's a there's a sense of having turned the page on the United States even longer than the next change of administration, but durability over the long term. Is that practical? Sometimes I worry that it's like trying to play baseball without the pitcher. Like, so it is like trying to play baseball without the pitcher, but when there's not a pitcher, what else can you do? I mean, so I actually do believe that the best route for Canada and for Europe is to work together and to begin to create new trade links that don't go via the United States. People have differing views on this, and I've had this argument with Europeans who

disagree with me. I am not sure that the policy of flattering Trump and sucking up to Trump and telling Trump how great he is, which a lot of people believe is the right way to go, is useful or helpful. I don't know that it gets us anywhere. I mean, again, people disagree with me, and they think anything is worth trying. But it doesn't, you know, he respects people who, you know, who have, as he would say, have cards, who push back, who have other ideas. And I don't know that this kind of suck-up race, you know, achieves very much. I would think that, as I said, creation of new trade links and new relationships. I mean, there's clearly a Canadian, Latin American relationship that's going to need to be created that needs to somehow go around the United States. There's a Canadian European relationship. There's a Canadian, you know, Japanese, Australian, New Zealand, South Korean

relationships that need to be created. You know, you'll have to work out how you feel about China. Everybody's got different theories about that. But there are, you know, there are, you know, there are other people to trade with in the world. And people are going to just start to do, you know, if the U.S. is a problem, then people will have to avoid it. I mean, as I understand it, there is quite a lot of trade that did somehow go via the U.S., right? You know, European goods would come into the U.S. and then one way or the other make their way to Canada or vice versa. And maybe now it's time to deal directly. And I think that's, I think that's, I think getting on with business and finding ways around it and being creative about what else you can do and achieve is more useful than trying to flatter and cajole the person.

president because sometimes that works, but sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it even backfires. Okay. I think we've covered a lot of ground in a compact discussion. Ann Applebaum, I know that a lot of my listeners follow you avidly at the Atlantic and on substack and in your books, and I know that's going to continue. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure. And that's my conversation with Ann Applebaum. My thanks to her and to you for listening in. Remember to hit like or subscribe if you like what you heard and want to subscribe.

And remember that you can find more of my writing at Paul Wells. Dot substack.com. We'll be back soon.