← Brussels Playbook Podcast
Brussels Playbook Podcast
Whose world is it now? Trump, power and Europe
00:36:45
Europe had barely switched off its out-of-office replies before geopolitics came roaring back.
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- [00:01]
Alison Hoffman
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Eva Hartog
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- [00:59]
Sarah Wheaton
Supposed to be easing back into the New year, catching up on emails, moving a little slowly. I was going to make some headway on my New Year's decluttering resolution and clean off my desk. Instead, the news went totally off the rails. In the first days of January, US Special Forces launched an operation that killed more than 100 people and captured Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, flying him to New York, putting him in front of a judge, and reminding everyone very loudly that the holiday break was over. For Europe, there was no warm up period. What happened in Caracas didn't just reshape Venezuela's future. Not only did it jolt Brussels straight back into crisis mode and reopen questions about American power, but it made us ask if that power might someday be pointed directly against Europe. Because this wasn't just about Venezuela. It reignited talk of spheres of influence, this old idea that great powers decide what happens in quote unquote, their parts of the world. It revived Donald Trump's fixation on Greenland, and it rattled European capitals already nervous about the war in Ukraine. No rest for the wicked. So what do Trump's moves in Venezuela tell us about the world he's shaping and what does it mean for Europe? Sarah I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential, and we have a lot to catch up on, so let's dive straight in. I'm joined by Alison Hoffman, Politico's transatlantic editor, based in London. Here in the studio with me are Nick Winniker, our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Eva Hartog, who's been looking closely at how Moscow is reacting, and Bartosz Brzezinski, our agriculture and food reporter. Okay, let's start with A lightning round where a week into 2026. One word only. What does the global order feel like right now? Ava? Start with you?
- [03:20]
Eva Hartog
Oh, no, I'd say volatile.
- [03:24]
Sarah Wheaton
Artosh, you're one word.
- [03:25]
Bartosz Brzezinski
Unraveling.
- [03:27]
Sarah Wheaton
Unraveling. Nick, you're one word.
- [03:29]
Nick Winniker
I would say historic. Big change in kind of big, big tectonic shifts.
- [03:35]
Sarah Wheaton
Alison, over to you.
- [03:37]
Alison Hoffman
Disordered.
- [03:38]
Sarah Wheaton
Mine is, mine is French. My French is not that good, but I love the way the French use hallucinant. So, like hallucinatory. That's just completely surreal. And let's get to one of those surreal images that we just saw. It snapped everyone out of holiday mode. That photo of Venezuelan leader Nicola Maduro holding his water bottle and blindfolded on a plane. Bring us up to speed. Where are we now with this, Alison?
- [04:05]
Alison Hoffman
Thanks, Sarah. So Maduro and his wife Celia Flores are now in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center. That's in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is not in the cool part of Brooklyn that tourists think of. It is totally the opposite. They're actually charged in Manhattan, which is where they made their court appearance this week. But weirdly, the detention center there closed as part of the fallout from Jeffrey Epstein's death in custody. So in a really roundabout way, the reason the Maduro's this very unglamorous, out of the way part of New York City is because of Jeffrey Epstein. This prison or jail is known for pretty terrible conditions. They are facing drug trafficking charges and narco terrorism charges and they've pleaded not guilty. They're interestingly not challenging their detention yet.
- [04:46]
Sarah Wheaton
And what are we seeing on the ground in Caracas?
- [04:49]
Alison Hoffman
On the ground in Caracas, we're seeing a crackdown, really. I think that there's a lot of questions about how the Trump administration is going to navigate this. It is not clear that they had a real plan. They have been back and forth with Delsa Rodriguez, who's now running the show, but it seems like they went from immediately saying Trump saying on Saturday we are running Venezuela to Marco Rubio saying, well, we're not really running it to now. We don't really know what comes next on the ground. There's also questions obviously about how things go with the Colombian side and Marco Rubio's ambitions in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean. So there are a lot of open ended questions here.
- [05:28]
Sarah Wheaton
Well, yeah, I mean, Trump has framed this as a response to drugs coming from Venezuela. He's also talking a lot about oil, saying he really expects American oil companies to start, you know, pumping it out of the ground there. So what is the sense that we're getting at this point about what this was really about?
- [05:46]
Alison Hoffman
Well, Trump and his aides have offered Americans in the world a real buffet menu of rationales for this. As you pointed out, it's mostly been focused on stemming drugs. That ties back to these months and months of attacks on boats in the Caribbean that were already pretty sensitive and contested. But Trump is pretty quickly pivoting to making sure that he's making the case that the US Will benefit from the sale of Venezuelan oil, making the case that it should be the US Rather than others, particularly Russia, and really saying that it's about asserting power in the Western Hemisphere. I will say, even though it was shocking and nobody expected or had this on their bingo card for January 2, and the administration kept it extremely secret, including from top congressional leaders, which is like a level of secrecy that previously applied to things like the bin Laden raid. Not. Not more than that. But Trump and his team had really been telegraphing this for weeks with the escalations in the Caribbean. So I think from their side, they feel like they gave Maduro a chance. You know, Trump said right after the raid that he had talked to Maduro as recently as last week, and Maduro refused to go into exile. And there is a case, and they were facing charges. And so there is a line of argument that this is just the US Bringing somebody to justice who they did not regard as a legitimate leader anyway. So there's been a lot of discussion that sense. But, you know, seizing the leader of another country, even somebody who Trump doesn't regard as legitimate, is really a huge move. I will say the US Military pulled it off. There has been a lot of discussion from the Trump end of things that no American lives were lost. There were Venezuelan lives or Cuban lives as well lost, but no American lives. It was such a wild shore of force. And so, you know, you can't discount how much it was intended to rattle other leaders, particularly Putin and Xi Jinping in China. So there were a lot of things at play here.
- [07:32]
Sarah Wheaton
Well, yeah, and actually, you know, since you've invoked Putin, Eva, how. How is this playing in the Kremlin? Everyone seems to have been caught off guard by it, including in Moscow. What is the vibe coming out of the Russian capital?
- [07:46]
Eva Hartog
There's the vibe and then there's the reaction. And there actually hasn't been a reaction yet, which is very unusual from the Kremlin. So no official reaction from Vladimir Putin or any of his, like, TV pundits, people who are usually super trigger happy and very Combative. And so there's been silence. One reason for that is because the Russian New Year's holidays start on the 31st. And so there's this two week winter period of hibernation, basically, and everyone takes their time off. But that's not the entire reason. I suspect there's something underlying that because it fits within a trend that we saw last year as well, which is there's this, I'd say like a three tier system. That's the way I see it. So at the very top you have Putin and his spokesperson, like big names, and they have tended to stay silent on anything that Trump does. My explanation for that is that he's trying to keep Trump close. He thinks it's better to say nothing than to say something negative. He's playing the field. It's about Ukraine, basically, in short. And then below that you have. So the second tier is Russia's Foreign Ministry and those kind of second tier officials. And what they did in response to this crazy story in Venezuela is that they issued this pretty dry statement citing international law and that this is a violation of international law. But it was very dry considering the language the Russian Foreign Ministry has tended to use in recent years. And then below that, and that for me is the most interesting part is what we call Russia, which is called like the Z community. And that's a group of people who are mostly on social media. So Telegram, they have their own channels. And these are military bloggers, nationalists, people who are less constrained by the rules. These are not public figures, or sometimes they're semi public figures. And they are pissed. And I'd say the dominant feeling, their vibe there. You asked me about the vibe, is envy. They feel like Trump just basically upstaged, basically did what Putin should have done four years ago or promised to do in Ukraine, which is remove a head of government in this blitzkrieg and hasn't managed to do for four years. We'll be entering the fifth year of the war soon. And so there's a. There's been a lot of envy and. Yeah, and exasperation, frustration mostly at why Russia isn't able to do this.
- [10:03]
Sarah Wheaton
Is there a sense, though, that Trump is validating at least the, the principle behind Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which is that, you know, this is the Western hemisphere, maybe is Washington's sphere of influence. And, and likewise, Putin should be able to do what he wants in his sphere of influence.
- [10:19]
Eva Hartog
Yeah, that's really interesting, this sphere of influence idea. I think it certainly aligns with the story that Moscow has been putting out in the past years, right, about Moscow's backyard, this idea that Russia still has sway over its former Soviet sphere of influence. But I think if you look a bit further, basically, Russia's. How do I put it? Russia's sphere of influence is broader than just its former Soviet sphere. Right. Russia is trying to hold sway over Latin America, is trying to get a foothold on the African continent. And so this story about might makes. Right, which is a story that Russia has been promoting very aggressively, might actually not play out so well for Putin at the end of the day. And that's what we're seeing now. That's what these military bloggers in Moscow are so annoyed about. That in this world where what matters is to be the strongest, the strongest bully in the courtyard, Russia is not really able to impose its will. And so it actually, it might stand to lose more than win from that kind of order. Order of things, yeah.
- [11:21]
Sarah Wheaton
And indeed, we saw Putin get into a little bit of trouble from. From Florida, floating into Trump's sphere of influence.
- [11:29]
Eva Hartog
What's happened is that basically U.S. forces seized this vessel that was flying under a Russian flag, and they'd been chasing it for two weeks on its way, apparently, from Venezuela to Europe. And apparently Russia had sent a couple of warships and a submarine. This is all very hard to confirm, by the way, but that's what media are reporting to defend this vessel. And the Russian Foreign Ministry had come out a day before this happened, the seizing happened, had come out with a warning saying, you know, please respect, again, international law, the law of the sea, and all of this. Just back off, basically. And that's not what happened. And so, once again, Russia is left humiliated because the Russian authorities are good at bluff and they talk to talk, and now there was nothing that they actually did to protect this vessel. And apparently there were a couple of Russians on board as well, who are part of the crew, and they're being put on trial, apparently. And so this group of war bloggers that I mentioned earlier there, yesterday was just another horrible day for them. It's just been a terrible start of the year from that perspective, from the Russian nationalist perspective, because they've been shown to be weak and unable to defend their own interests, not just in failing to capture Ukraine, but now also in the rest of the world. And just sneakily, very quickly, since the war in Ukraine, there have been several kind of car crash moments. From the Russian perspective. There was Nagorno Karabakh, so Azerbaijan moving into this place that Russia was meant to protect. There was the toppling of the regime in Syria, the airstrikes on Iran and now Venezuela, and all of these places were meant to be allies of Russia's, right? Part of this alliance that Russia has struck with mostly authoritarian states. And so at least in the Syrian case, Moscow was able to basically airlift Assad out of there. So Bashar al Assad, the Syrian dictator, is now living a good life in Moscow and it hasn't been able to do that even with Maduro now. And so it's on display for the entire world to see that Putin isn't even able to save his buddies, let alone continue to prop up their regimes.
- [13:35]
Sarah Wheaton
Okay, so we've, we've checked in on Washington, we've looked at Moscow. Nick, let's bring it back here to Brussels, to European capitals. How are European leaders reacting to this?
- [13:47]
Nick Winniker
I think the, the reaction was very muted, kind of awkward and stilted. If you looked at the, the statement put out by the, the Chancellor, it seemed like it was produced by some kind of chatgpt deep in the German bureaucracy. It was, it was hard to make sense of. I think the initial reaction was basically, this is not our problem. Right. This is very much their sphere of influence. It's a feta complete. And don't forget that the Europeans tried to kind of attach themselves to Trump's anti drug crusade in Venezuela. There were, you know, a couple of efforts to participate in some way and sort of join forces with them on that. Around a Latin America summit that we had last year. France has also put proposal on the table to get much, much tougher against international drug traffickers. So there was an idea that, well, on Venezuela we could possibly sort of join forces with the United States. And I think that's why you saw the statements from Macron and others where the beginning of it was Maduro is an illegitimate leader and it was good to get rid of him. However, of course, it would be nice if you could respect international law. Now what was interesting is how quickly the sort of shockwave from Venezuela, which Europe very much hoped would be contained to the Western Hemisphere, contained to the Americas, washed up on European shores. It took one day. We had White House advisor Stephen Miller, his wife sent out a tweet with a picture of Greenland overlaid with the American flag saying soon. And that kind of connection that nobody wanted to be made, wanted it to be an American thing. All of a sudden it's your problem. Actually, this is the Don Roe doctrine and we're going to invade and anything in our neighborhood. And it became the first crisis major Crisis of Europe in 2026. Everyone was saying, four days in and we've already got this massive problem on our hands. So that's kind of where it's gone.
- [15:45]
Eva Hartog
Yeah.
- [15:45]
Sarah Wheaton
Indeed. This is what European leaders had to confront. They thought earlier this week that they were going to gather for sort of a Coalition of the Willing meeting in Paris to talk about Europe, Ukraine. There were some very important Trump negotiators at that meeting, but first they had to sort of engage with this US Rhetoric on Greenland. So how are they dealing with it? And we'll get to that when we come back from a quick break. So stay with us.
- [16:18]
Alison Hoffman
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- [16:50]
Sarah Wheaton
Say we're using Folgers instant coffee, seamlessly blended with water and ice, a splash.
- [16:57]
Alison Hoffman
Of whatever kind of milk is your thing. And gotta get that caramel drizzle, all.
- [17:03]
Sarah Wheaton
To make a toasty, roasty caramel iced coffee.
- [17:08]
Alison Hoffman
You could be enjoying it, every damn sip of it.
- [17:15]
Sarah Wheaton
Damn right. It's Folger's Instant. Nick, let's go back to you and to how European leaders are reacting to Trump's threats over Greenland.
- [17:29]
Nick Winniker
It was remarkable. I mean, I was speaking to, you know, an EU diplomat on, on Sunday night when it was all popping off, and he said, you know, they're walking on eggshells. They realized they had that meeting coming up on Tuesday, the coalition of the Willing meeting, and they knew they needed to get the US to sign on to security guarantees. So it was a very sensitive time period. We couldn't provoke them. You didn't want to be confrontational. We wrote on Tuesday morning, you know, this is obviously Greenland. The threats against Greenland are going to be the elephant in the room at the Coalition of the Willing. But you can't endanger that sort of very fragile Ukraine. US Europe entente over the Ukraine peace deal. That's the sort of top priority for the eu, has been for years, resolving the Ukraine crisis. And this Greenland thing was kind of a distraction. I thought it was very significant that you did get a statement from seven leaders in the midst of the coalition of the willing. It shows you that things are moving, that things are. People say Europe is slow and indecisive and so on. But you do get these ad hoc efforts that are coming together much faster. Two more countries attach themselves to that statement. And you also had the Nordic and Baltic states coming out in support of Denmark. So you have some mobilization this week. The president of the European Commission also name check Greenland talked about international law. You do have some sort of rallying around Greenland. Now the sort of fill in the blank part is, well, what do we do? How do we kind of dissuade Donald Trump from going down that path? And I have to say, you know, we've written about it, we've written sort of the options to leverage that Europe has, but that's kind of US marshaling that information rather than the leaders really putting that out there.
- [19:16]
Sarah Wheaton
And so just quickly, what are a couple of the things that Europe could do?
- [19:19]
Nick Winniker
Well, the leverage we have is the trade deal. We're still negotiating a trade deal with the United States. You could obviously suspend that. You could just kind of, you know, withhold European agreement to parts of it. That's a big U.S. interest. You also have the money. You know, the commission is the wallet of the eu. They could at least advertise the fact that they're spending, you know, large amounts of money. What we're doing for Greenland, we're already paying a great deal. And you could also leverage the military aspect. You could talk about contingency plans. You could talk about troops, stationing European troops on Greenland. All these things could be done. It hasn't really been vocalized by any leader. And I think the reason is that it is still a lower order priority for the EU compared to Ukraine. And there is talk of some kind of grand bargain US Participation in Ukraine versus Greenland. I mean, I don't know, but it seems conceivable that could be, you know, the way things pan out.
- [20:23]
Sarah Wheaton
Okay, so saying Trump can have his way with Greenland if he, if he helps with Ukraine.
- [20:29]
Nick Winniker
I don't see in any of the leaders statement the words defend Greenland against the United States. That has never been said. And I wouldn't go so far as to saying the EU is preparing the ground to give it up, but certainly not a full confrontation with the US Over Greenland. I don't see it.
- [20:48]
Sarah Wheaton
Yeah, of course, trade is ultimately kind of one of the areas where the EU does at least still have some power if it chooses to use it. So as we heard Nick say we're actually seeing from the European Parliament some calls to block the US Trade deal with Europe over, over the Greenland threats. But meanwhile, we are seeing a push by Europe to maybe get all up in Trump's sphere of influence. The EU is edging closer and closer to signing the MERCOSUR deal with South American countries. It's been in the works for 25 years and it's now being read geopolitically as, you know, maybe Europe getting more involved in the Western Hemisphere. Bartosh, can you kind of walk us through the status of this deal and how the new situation on the ground is affecting the thinking about it?
- [21:38]
Eva Hartog
Yeah.
- [21:39]
Bartosz Brzezinski
So it's a massive trade deal that's been more than 25 years in the making with a group of Latin American American countries, including Brazil and Argentina. It's a boon for, for the European automotive industry, for some of the kind of high end products, export products, including from the food side, cheeses, wine, spirits and stuff like that. But it's an incredibly contentious pact as well, opposed by farmers, opposed by some governments, and it's at its final stretch. So even by the time you're listening to this podcast, we might already know whether it's true or not. It all kind of hinges on this vote today by EU ambassadors and Italy. The kind of the lone standout keeping everybody guessing is key to unlocking this deal that is being opposed by France, but that is being opposed by Poland. It is happening as all this geopolitical drama is unfolding around it, including the neighboring country of Venezuela. So far, no one in Europe, at least from political leaders, is framing it as a geopolitical way of maintaining Europe's influence on the continent. It's still being framed as an incredibly beneficial trade deal for both sides, especially for the eu. And in a way that kind of tells us about where Europe is finding itself today. It is finding itself in a geopolitical world that is talking a lot more about spheres of influence, that is returning to this kind of language of geopolitics from the past century. Whereas the EU has been a bloc that is kind of guided by rules, guided by the order of the World Trade Organization, by agreements, bilateral agreements. And so this deal, this Mercosur deal, this massive deal, one of the biggest trade deals ever negotiated, is finding itself kind of in this context, where Europe perhaps would prefer that it didn't, because European leaders already have farmers on their back. The last thing they want is to have Trump looking at this trade deal and saying, wait a minute, you're meddling with my sphere of influence, ultimately, what European leaders want is to keep it as a trade deal. We'll send you cars, you'll send us beef, we'll send you this, you'll send us that. It's really more about Europe wants to maintain a foothold on the continent, but it knows that it's not able to kind of maintain a stronghold.
- [23:53]
Sarah Wheaton
Yeah. And that's a really good way of putting it. A foothold versus a stronghold. And I do have to admit Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, is supposed to fly to Paraguay to sign this deal next week if it works out. And I'm just like, really, lady? You're going to go there and not make a comment about what's happening? So I'll be curious to see how she deals with that if she gets to make the trip. Alison, back over to you. I mean, all these interventions by Trump in the region are happening kind of at a time that, like, Congress, including the Republicans in Congress, are kind of getting their mojo back. We're starting to see maybe more traditional Republicans be less interested in just toeing his line. So what are we hearing from them, if anything, about, you know, this action in Venezuela, potential action in Cuba, going after Greenland?
- [24:43]
Alison Hoffman
We're hearing relatively little about Venezuela, I think. But it definitely got a quick response from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who now has gone from being one of Trump's biggest allies, who used to wave her phone around to prove that she was on the phone with Trump, to one of the biggest thorns in his side. And she immediately said, everyone who voted for America first, boy, were we wrong. So that clearly was a channel of frustration that was building. What we've actually seen is now Republicans on the Hill assert themselves around Greenland and basically tell Trump to knock it off. We will see how effective that is. The thing about Trump, and really, not just Trump, but his top policy official, Stephen Miller, who Nick mentioned his wife, was the one who really kicked off a lot of the Greenland chatter because she had tweeted this soon kind of troll post. But Miller had a very contentious interview this week with Jake Chapper on CNN and really launched into an incredibly thorough ideological position that was the opposite of what I think Europeans think the world is. And really pitching it as a battle, as Eva was saying, a battle of strength, a battle of bullies in the schoolyard. And that is what is sort of cooking on the West Wing side of things. You know, we had this back and forth where Trump said, we're running Venezuela. Rubio said, well, we're not really running Venezuela. He's now in the position of having to be the reasonable one. And he's been all over Washington telling lawmakers that, no, you know, Trump really doesn't want to invade Greenland, he just wants to buy it. And then you immediately had the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt turn up the heat with a note that said, oh, and by the way, we always reserve the right to use military force. So it's a little bit messy. All of this is happening in the context of the midterms later this year. Republicans have a lot on their plate that they really can't agree on. They have majorities, but those majorities are shrinking literally every day. The year in Washington before we got to all of the military action of the year, also started with a very unexpected death in Congress that shrank their Republican majority even further, making it even harder for Republicans on the Hill to reach agreement on any of the things that they need to reach agreement on. That includes funding. They went through this very long shutdown last year that threatened air travel. And they don't seem to really have a plan for avoiding the same thing happening again when their short term deal runs out in a few weeks. So things are really pretty messy in Washington. One thing we do definitely know is that at least one Democratic presidential hopeful is already leaning on the Greenland talk, especially to poke at Trump, and on Venezuela to poke at Trump. That's former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has made it a talking point that he would focus on domestic priorities rather than these overseas adventures. I think he literally said Columbus rather than Caracas. And that again, is exactly what many of Trump's own voters thought the man they voted for had promised to do. So I think we will see this becoming more of a domestic political issue on the US Side.
- [27:37]
Sarah Wheaton
Okay. Yeah. And you know, we're going to see Secretary of State Marco Rubio actually meet with the Danes next week to talk about about Greenland and I guess see if they can get past that. But as Nick was saying, you know, Europe's real priority is Ukraine. And we did see this discussion at the coalition of the willing about some security guarantees for Ukraine. Nick, how real are those and what would they involve?
- [28:03]
Nick Winniker
Well, they seem to be pretty real from the European side. I mean, they put in the words legally binding into the statement from the coalition of the willing. And knowing how legally minded some of those countries are, that says a lot. It's also in writing, which is always good. But what I would point out is that statement was only signed by the European side. The United States was present for the meeting. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were there, and they kind of paid lip service to security guarantees and a US Backstop, but they didn't put anything in writing. So effectively, Ukraine is now more or less fully Europe's problem, and the US Is essentially support at will as much as they want and can be withdrawn probably whenever they want. So that's where the Europeans are standing now. I think they see that as a win, that the United States was present and supported their commitments, but it didn't sort of change the calculus fundamentally.
- [29:01]
Sarah Wheaton
Bartosz, what's your sense about how this is playing out on the ground in a place like Poland, a place that is threatened by Russia and where the public is really quite divided ideologically?
- [29:15]
Bartosz Brzezinski
Well, I think that's where we see the kind of the populist camp tapping into the pro Trump camp almost, which includes President Karl Novretsky saying, well, actually, this new strategy, this new foreign strategy that, that Trump seems to be driven by puts Poland at the forefront of European defense or European kind of alliance with the US Because Poland is investing so heavily in its military, because it's right there kind of at the forefront, it has a significant US Presence. And there is almost this sense of confidence that Trump would never withdraw troops from Poland. So in a way, Polish population is less worried about what's happening with Greenland, what's happening in Venezuela, and more what's happening with Russia. And so the focus is still, what will Trump and Putin do in Ukraine?
- [30:01]
Sarah Wheaton
And Eva, and you know, on these, on these Russian telegram channels that you're monitoring, you know, are these new kind of security guarantee discussions with the coalition of the willing, are they taking those seriously, or are they just kind of rolling their eyes?
- [30:14]
Eva Hartog
And I don't think they're making much of an impression. I mean, that's not their real focus. I think in those circles, certainly Europe has. Has always been seen as weak. Well, it's a bit of a strange story, actually. The paradox is they both depict Europe as being very weak and divided, flooded by migrants and all sorts of people that Russia doesn't like to see. And on the other hand, Europe is presented as very strong and evil and a force to be fought. Right. So Europe is somehow manipulating Trump into once in a while saying something pro Ukrainian. Europe is the mastermind behind all of these things. And so there's little concern for these kind of details because they're not really seen as something that Russians should seriously take into account. Also, because the Russian leadership has been very consistent in saying that they will not accept any foreign boots on the ground or even near the Russian border or in Ukraine. And so none of this is taken very seriously.
- [31:14]
Sarah Wheaton
All right, so that was really interesting that, you know, in Russia, Europe as well portrayed as this, you know, great manipulative power. Nick, I mean, what do you think, you know, with. With 2026 shaping up to be about spheres of influence? Does Europe have this strategy for influencing how things will play out, or is it just a lot of careful language?
- [31:34]
Nick Winniker
You know, I think there, last year was really the year of Europe's humiliation. Right. It was the summer of humiliation with the, with the trade deal. I think, frankly, the start of this year you could call an awakening to some degree, the idea that this is going to get worse, that the transatlantic relationship is probably not going back to what it was before. You really get a sense of kind of a mental shift going on. But I was having a conversation just, just before coming here with former EU diplomat and saying, you know, well, do you think Europe will continue to cave? Will there'll be other humiliations? And my sense is probably, yeah, probably there'll be further humiliations in store from the United States. You know, we're talking about a grand bargain over Greenland that, you know, Marco Rubio could make a deal with Denmark, and in exchange, the US Would provide some kind of backstop in Ukraine. I mean, everything I've seen from the administration is that they don't work like that. They don't work in quid pro quo or deals. It's the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they. What they must. And that's Europe's position right now. And I think Greenland could absolutely end up in American hands this year, and Europe would probably have to face it. But I think that being said, Europe is changing and getting its act together. It's just going to take a long time to get there.
- [32:58]
Alison Hoffman
Yeah.
- [32:58]
Sarah Wheaton
Allison, as far as the transatlantic perspective, what are you seeing?
- [33:02]
Alison Hoffman
Well, I mean, I think one of the things that we've learned over this last year is that when Trump says something, he means it. We had this incredible shock in December with the national security strategy and then Trump backing it up in an interview with our own Dasha Burns and saying, I think, think Europe's leaders are weak. And I think he means that. I think that you can see it written all over the Greenland expedition. The reality is that the White House view and Trump's view is, well, why should little Denmark, which obviously doesn't. I say this with an eye roll, which obviously doesn't. Have the capacity to fend off the Russians and the Chinese. Why should they have access to and control over this island? That is very strategically important for the U.S. but also, really, in this case, for the West. So from their perspective, it's the big daddy thing. And I think that we are definitely in a world where, again, I referred to this, the Stephen Miller interview. He was very clear that he has very little time. And by extension, we would imagine Trump agrees that they have very little time for the talk. Talk. You know, their problem with Brussels is not just the perception of elitism. It's also the idea that so much talk goes on and nothing happens in the end. And we definitely saw that happening partly with a nudge from the US Around a bunch of issues late last year. Washington didn't help by throwing some confusion in driving a wedge between countries, but it was very easy for them to do. And that is the fundamental weakness of the thing. So I think across all of these issues, the thing that ties them together is the fact that Trump either can run around and talk to a bunch of people and set them all against each other or decide he doesn't have any one person to talk to and so he won't bother. And also, even when anybody thinks they get something out of him, it turns out no deal is ever a final deal. And we've seen that with all of these trade agreements that were agreed over the summer, there's no paper following them up. So a handshake deal is only as good as the handshake, and then it's actually still an ongoing negotiation, it turns out. And so every day is a day for everybody to figure out how to impress Trump and convince him that whatever they want is also in his interest. And that's a very tiring game for anybody to play. And so I think we'll see that playing out across all of these things through this year.
- [35:14]
Sarah Wheaton
Yeah, it's time to put the art of the deal back on the shelf. Open up Art of War, perhaps, but we'll leave it there. Alison, Eva Bartosh. Nick, thank you so much for being here.
- [35:25]
Eva Hartog
Thank you for having us.
- [35:26]
Nick Winniker
Thanks for having us.
- [35:27]
Bartosz Brzezinski
Thanks.
- [35:27]
Alison Hoffman
Thanks, everyone.
- [35:31]
Sarah Wheaton
Okay, thanks to our brilliant panelists. And that's it from us this week. If you haven't already, make sure to follow EU Confidential wherever you get your pop podcasts and leave us a rating or review. It really helps others find the show. If you have thoughts, comments, or ideas for guests or topics, you can reach us@podcastolitico.eu thanks to Deanna Sturris, our senior audio producer. And thanks to our office manager, Christina, for putting up with another week of my messy desk. I'll do it tomorrow, I promise. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.
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Alison Hoffman
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