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- [00:01]
Host
This is a bonus episode of history as it happens. It's January 21, 2026.
- [00:06]
Donald Trump
You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no, and we will remember.
- [00:15]
Host
President Trump is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he told some 60 world leaders he wants Greenland but would rather not invade it.
- [00:23]
Donald Trump
We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay? Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.
- [00:51]
Host
The president's meandering, incoherent remarks follow an unhinged letter he sent the Norwegian government in which he whined about not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. As his obsession with Greenland intensifies, alarming US Allies, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used his speaking slot at Davos to say, the world order is unraveling because of US Conduct and a new system to protect national rights is necessary.
- [01:17]
Mark Carney
We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
- [01:42]
Host
President Trump continues to say Russia and China will take Greenland if the US does not, leading the Quincy Institute's Anatole Levin to write, while, unfortunately, we have become quite accustomed to governments on this planet uttering falsehoods. And as far as I can see, Trump has now gone further in mendacity than any previous US President. As Levin puts it, Trump is jeopardizing, not enhancing, US Strength and influence through his wholly unnecessary Greenland gambit. Although more insane than past foreign policy follies, it is part of a pattern of US Overextension in pursuit of something that is not of vital national interest. Anatole Levin. Hello. Welcome back.
- [02:25]
Anatole Levin
Hi. Very good to be back.
- [02:27]
Host
Thank you for finding the time in what may be the craziest news cycle since the most recent craziest news cycle. You know we're connecting as Donald Trump is actually speaking in Davos. We've been listening to the speech before we started our recording. I don't do too many breaking news podcasts but maybe this falls into the category. What is your take on his winding, meandering speech where he did say he's not going to use force to acquire Greenland?
- [02:55]
Anatole Levin
Well, I mean, that was the only really important thing in the speech and will, of course, be of tremendous relief to people in Denmark and Europe. He did not, however, say anything about not imposing tariffs that he's threatened on Europe. And indeed, if there was any point to his endless rambling about how Europe and the rest of the world have ripped off the United States, that point would have been, I suppose, to tell them that that threat is very much still on the table. Now, of course, avoiding an actual military takeover is good, but avoiding a trade war between the US And Britain and Europe would also be good. I mean, beyond that, I'm sorry to say this, but I started to think of something that Goethe wrote, that hatred hurts nobody. It contempt that drags men down. He sounded like the old Soviet leader Brezhnev towards the end, who would ramble and ramble and, you know, make wild accusations against the west and then stress his desire for peace and contradict himself and, of course, go on and on and on and on at inordinate length until he became a joke to his own people in the world. And, I mean, I wouldn't say Trump is a joke because he's much too dangerous for that. But, you know, it really doesn't increase respect for the United States. So by comparison, I fear it does increase respect for China in much of the world. You know, you don't see Xi Jinping going in for this kind of thing.
- [04:39]
Host
Well, Canada and China just announced some type of economic or trade partnership as well. So the reason I wanted to have you on here, I reached out to you before Carney, the Canadian prime minister's speech at Davos, and now Trump's speech. He wrote an essay for responsiblestatecraft.org over at the Quincy Institute, where you work, about how Trump's statements are becoming, well, becoming. They've always been unhinged. His very first statement as a politician when he entered politics in 2015 was to accuse Mexico of sending. Sending rapists and murderers to the United States across the southern border. So he's always been divorced from reality, but maybe it's getting worse now. And you wrote about how he sent this letter to the government of Norway blaming it for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize, although as far as I know, it's not the government who makes that decision in Norway, it's the Nobel Committee. And then there were other Things in that. In that letter that you said here were comparable to Brezhnev, you wrote that you have to say things that other people can believe or even pretend to believe. Otherwise the US Will risk the fate of the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev of ending in a situation where official statements have become so manifestly divorced from observable reality that the credibility of the state, and you put credibility in quotes, does indeed collapse in the eyes of the world and its own citizens. What do you mean by the credibility curse in this essay?
- [06:06]
Anatole Levin
You know, every now and again, of course, a government has to lie. You know, we all know that we're realists, but if it does so consistently, basically just making up things all the time and making up things that everybody knows are not true. Britain, my country, is desperately anxious to pretend to believe whatever comes out of the mouth of a United States president. But it has to be something that you can at least pretend to believe, because otherwise, and I think this is what Trump totally fails to understand. It's an insult. It's an insult to people's intelligence. You see this so much with Canada. Trump does, I fear, just love humiliating people, as do some of his staff, as does Besant, as do Miller. And Machiavelli wrote a long time ago that in many ways, it's more dangerous to humiliate somebody. Well, humiliate them and leave them alive than it is actually to injure them. That people forgive an injury more readily than an insult. Now, that's even more true of countries. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that the contempt that Trump has shown for Canada and for parts of the rest of the world and for Europe is doing profound damage to the image of America in the eyes of their populations. You know, America is not the only country which has some, you know, element of national pride in it.
- [07:38]
Host
How about in the global South? I mean, hasn't. Hasn't that image already been tarnished? Not to excuse Trump's madness here, but.
- [07:46]
Anatole Levin
Well, that's true, of course. You know, if you take India, it was already infuriated by many US Policies and US Language under Biden, but it certainly, I think, got worse under Trump. I must say, however, that there is still one thing to be said for Trump and one of his. Well, one of. Actually, one of Vance's advisors said this to me the other day, that, look, you know, and he didn't pretend to approve of everything that Trump was saying, but he said, do remember that there are only two countries with whom a clash, a conflict would end the World as we know it or end the world, and that is Russia and China. And Trump has actually sought, obviously, a peace in Ukraine that he hasn't got, but he has at least tried, which nobody else has. And he has, if only through inattention, defused some of the tension with China that was rising, you know, very steeply under Biden, indexed by the fact that you now have Democrats like Eli Ratner attacking Trump for being too soft on China. And you've got the admiral in charge of the American Pacific saying that, you know, China is still a deep threat to the whole of Asia. So once you hear the hawks like that beginning to attack Trump directly or indirectly, you begin to think maybe he is doing something right.
- [09:07]
Host
Well, also on the issue of Europe doing more to defend itself and taking on a greater responsibility with the Russia, Ukraine conflict. Right. I think most people will say, yeah, that's a smart idea. Europe is a prosperous continent and it should do more. And it has done more. Also, this idea of harming US Primacy or hegemony. I've been calling for the United States, not that anyone listens to me, but I think you may share this view as well, to pull back from some of its sprawling security commitments all over the world. To my point about how the U.S. image, you know, that Trump is damaging it well, the global war on terrorism, we can go back further. Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Mark Carney. I know. I'll get to a question here. Anatol. In his speech, the Canadian Prime Minister, he talked about a rupture in the world order that has done so much to benefit some countries. But he also did not idealize that world order that we're supposedly leaving now or departing from.
- [10:02]
Mark Carney
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values based foreign policies under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful. And American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
- [11:16]
Host
So I guess I have mixed feelings about this whole framing. Without excusing Trump's ridiculous posturing here.
- [11:24]
Anatole Levin
No, I agree with you there. And we have both been bitter critics of previous US Administrations precisely for their, you know, their interventionism, but also their colossal illusions about the world and about American idealism and values and about what America could achieve.
- [11:41]
Host
Yeah, I mentioned the first Gulf War there. I really meant to say the sanctions regime followed for the next decade, which killed thousands of Iraqis. That wasn't world order, but go ahead. I didn't mean to.
- [11:51]
Anatole Levin
No, well, I agree, of course. I mean, what Carney could also have said but didn't is that, look, you know, Canada has also done things which were not necessarily in its national interest out of deference to the United States and sure desire for American protection. But you know, remember, Trump has no need to put pressure on Canada or Denmark over his Golden Dome idea. Canada has long had us early war, well, throughout the Cold War, us early warning.
- [12:20]
Host
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