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- [00:00]
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- [00:47]
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- [01:32]
John Drennan
Even though the worst of the crisis has passed, we have a rattled set of allies and basically a lack of clarity for exactly what comes next. But I think the only thing that we can say for certain is that given the administration's general approach to Europe over the last year, I wouldn't take a return to crisis at some point soon, whether that's weeks or months off the table.
- [01:54]
Molly Roberts
It's the Lawfair Podcast. I'm Molly Roberts, Senior Editor at LawFair, here with Lawfare Public Service Fellow Ari Tabatabai and visiting Fellow at the Egmont Institute in Brussels, John Drennan.
- [02:06]
Ari Tabatabai
China also welcomes the United States being distracted elsewhere because it means that the more distracted the United States is, the more fighting its own allies within NATO, doing things in Latin America and so on and so forth, the less it's going to be able to plan for and commit resources and assets to the Indo Pacific. And that means that China essentially has this broad opening that it can use to increase its own influence and pursue its own goals.
- [02:36]
Molly Roberts
Today we're talking about the Greenland crisis and the international order. So first guys, I want to talk a little bit about where we are and how we got here. John, can you give us some background on how the Greenland imbroglio came to be and I guess also how it has resolved seemingly for now, absolutely.
- [02:57]
John Drennan
And thanks so Much for having me today. So we are now out of the acute phase of an intranado crisis triggered by direct threats by the United States against the sovereignty of one of its NATO allies, Denmark. It's the most dramatic episode in a series of growing US Europe tensions since Trump returned to the office that are straining the alliance. President Trump has long talked about wanting to acquire Greenland, typically by via purchasing it from Denmark. This dates back to his first term at least. He continued this pursuit in his second term. He cited things like security concerns stemming from Russia and China, the need for sites related to the Golden Dome missile defense system, as well as economic interests around rare earths, other strategic resources. So the discussion was perhaps not for the Danes, but in general for the administration, more of a background issue over the past year and switched into a crisis starting in this January, earlier this month. This is when the administration started saying that it wanted to annex Greenland and take control of the island and stated that the use of force was on the table. NATO allies led by Denmark pushed back, saying that any issues related to Arctic security and the island specifically could be solved among the allies in existing channels collectively. And everything really started coming to a head in the middle of January in a series of escalating events that turned it into a full blown crisis. So in response to the statements by the administration earlier in the month, the Danish and Greenlander foreign ministers came to Washington for talks where the outcome was basically that they agreed to establish a working group to then subsequently discuss Arctic security related issues. But after that, Trump doubled down on his statement that the US Needs to control Greenland. And so subsequently the allies deployed a small number of troops to the island for exercises in response. Then Trump threatened to impose tariffs on those countries that participated. And these were set starting February 1st and would escalate in June to a higher percentage if the allies didn't acquiesce. And so then in response, the Europeans started talking about this as US attempted economic coercion and considered counterterroriffs and using the EU so called trade bazooka in response. And so we're at pretty serious crisis at this point. And over this period we have polling that comes out that shows less than one fifth of the American public supported the administration's actions and rhetoric around Greenland. We have even some Republicans on the Hill came out and said this was a bad idea, why are we doing this? And so all of this, we're at the very acute crisis phase at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which Trump then walked everything back. So he took the use of force off the table. He said he would not be applying tariffs. He agreed to a quote, unquote framework agreement that he discussed with NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda. We don't know exactly what changed his mind. I suspect it's a combination of all those things, you know, and including in response to the tariff announcement, the market started to tumble a bit. So I think there's a lot of negative responses churning that are probably affecting Trump's thinking around this. We also don't know exactly what the exact deal is that the President pointed, basically said that it fixed or addressed some of his security concerns, addressed some of his economic concerns, but we don't know exactly what that looks like. There's been reporting that there's going to be new US Bases on Greenland, but all of that I think is premature as the final shape of the deal comes to form. So, basically, as of recording today on January 27, we have had several weeks of largely self inflicted crisis. All of the administration's stated rationale for Greenland, either security or economic, could have been solved through existing bilateral or multilateral alliance mechanisms. And so even though the worst of the crisis has passed, we have a rattled set of allies and basically a lack of clarity for exactly what comes next. But I think the only thing that we can say for certain is that given the administration's general approach to Europe over the last year, I wouldn't take a return to crisis at some point soon, whether that's weeks or months off the table?
- [07:30]
Molly Roberts
Yeah, so that's exactly what I wanted to talk about next. It seemed like the tension was building and building and then everybody breathed this huge sigh of relief after Trump backed down at Davos. But was this a kind of classic taco, Trump always chickens out move, and he'll chicken out next time he makes a threat, Even if he'll make a threat. Is the crisis really over or can we expect more threats to come and maybe more threats that we should be taking seriously given Trump's general approach to foreign policy? Ari?
- [08:00]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah, so, you know, I think everybody, even Republicans on the Hill, as John mentioned, are really eager to move on from this. This is not good from the perspective of US national security interests. It's not good from the perspective of kind of our standing internationally. And so I think everybody is hoping that this is now behind us and we're going to move on. And, you know, given all the things that are going on in the world and at home, you know, the various crises that the administration is juggling now that Republicans and Democrats on the Hill are having to respond to. I think the idea is, okay, this is just another thing that, you know, happens. We go through various news cycles in a given day, so we can just kind of move on. I think it's important to understand that while we here in the US Are kind of used to that and, you know, over the past 10 years of probably President Trump being in the public politics, right. And having kind of shaped politics and discourse and news cycles around his actions and his rhetoric, I think it's sticking a lot more in Europe. And, you know, you've seen now it's both cumulative. The president has been going on about wanting to withdraw from alliances and from the world order for ever since it's been in the public eye and politics. It even goes back to before he started his campaign back in 2016. So this is something that he's really, that is very consistent in his worldview. There's also the set of actions that John described that he's been taking, the different things he's also said about allies. Just last week, after the kind of initial phase of the crisis was over, the president then moved on to talk about how, yeah, sure, allies did contribute to our war effort in Afghanistan, but maybe they weren't in the front lines like we were. Maybe they were kind of sitting behind. And that was taken very seriously in Europe, both by governments, but also by public opinion. And it was viewed as very, very insulting, which it was to allies who had committed forces and resources and seen hundreds of casualties to support the United States in the aftermath of 9, 11. So I think while in the US we're kind of, we have a short attention span when it comes to news. I think that is a little different in Europe and from the perspective of other nat NATO allies. And then after that, too, the president had this truth social post where he talked about Governor Carney, quote, unquote, referring to Prime Minister Carney of Canada. So kind of bringing back and putting back on the table this notion of Canada as the 51st state. So he's not fully moved on from undermining NATO. And even again, if this crisis is fully behind us, which I agree with John, we just don't know that this is not going to pop up again. The Greenland piece specifically, in a few weeks or a few months or in a years, I think the damage is done. I think the other thing that is important to understand is that Trump 1.0 so the first Trump administration was really focused on kind of withdrawing from the international order. I think what we're seeing this time around in Trump 2.0 is actually the administration going a step further and taking President Trump's worldview to its logical end, which is not just about withdrawing from international institutions and agreements and so on and so forth. It's actually actively dismantling those things to kind of create this new order and this new vision. And we're seeing that with all of the kind of various threats of use of force or actual use of force around Latin America with NATO and so on and so forth. So that's something that I think is going to continue shaping the way the administration approaches the world and in turn, how allies see us. The last piece, I think, again, really important to highlight is that the trust that has underpinned NATO for decades now is being chipped out slowly but surely. And so, you know, for the first time, NATO has had to not just deal with kind of disagreements internally about how to approach a common threat, but it's had to deal with a threat from within. And again, I think it's important, and we don't really appreciate that here in the US That European allies and NATO allies more broadly are starting to move away from this view of the United States as their main security guarantor and moving more toward a view of the United States as not just kind of, you know, sometimes unreliable, sometimes kind of, you know, not an ideal partner, but kind of as an adversarial power at this point. And then in the short term, too, one of the things, and maybe John can talk about this later, is that, you know, the crisis itself, the self inflicted crisis, has had, has made allies at least divert their attention from what they should be focused on, which is those common threats, including the Russian war in Ukraine, to kind of deal with, you know, managing the relationship with the administration and President Trump. Spec.
- [12:55]
Molly Roberts
Yeah, and I definitely do want to talk about the war in Ukraine and how this is affecting that later. But I guess first you mentioned the world order is changing. Trump is changing it. Europe is taking that seriously and seeing those changes happen. So what are the Europeans doing and what are our other allies like Canada? Trump does keep calling the 51st state doing in response to this, John.
- [13:20]
John Drennan
Sure. So basically, as Ari said, the US Is moving from its the European view is that the US Is moving from its typical role or historic role in Europe and they're getting used to a crisis situation with the US if not outright confrontation, as we've seen. And I think the cumulative effect of all of this is that it's going to be a net negative for both US Security and European security. As Ari kind of mentioned as we talked earlier, the this has been a year of tensions that have been spilling over in different ways between the US And Europe, whether that's tensions over Ukraine policy and the administration basically coming in the first month and saying that Europe, you're now leading on Ukraine, we are taking a step back. That's been over defense spending, which the outcome has been the allies have agreed to spend more, but I think the second and third order effects of the overall US Approach are going to have the US Going to have less say over what the allies are actually spending that money on. We've seen tensions around the administration's general, I don't know if you want to call it normative or philosophical approach to Europe, which is both in the national security strategy talking about civilizational erasure as a result of European social policies basically, or senior administration officials focusing, as J.D. vance, Vice President J.D. vance did in the Munich Security Conference last year, focusing on the threat from within as the major threat to Europe, not Russia, which is actively engaged in a war in Ukraine and threatening NATO allies regularly. And this is also manifested in other areas outside of security and defense, like over tech policy and in trade policy. And so I think, you know, the optimistic take is that the Europeans have, are recognizing that at minimum they're not going to have the same level of constructive engagement. But at worst, you know, we could be looking at ways that they hedge or seek alternates to certain pieces at least of the U.S. relationship. I think what they'll do about it in the near term, it's, there's frankly not much that is possible now in terms of security and defense. I think in other areas there's a lot more flexibility, but there is a built in dependence on the US for certain key capabilities within the NATO construct. The allies rely on US extended nuclear deterrence. And so none of that is something that they can change right now overnight. I think those are where we're going to see longer term shifts, shifts, whether that's taking the higher level of spending and the higher level of capacity in European defense industry and developing their own capabilities. Or we've also seen patterns of allies in Europe seeking other defense partners for weapons, for equipment. For instance, the Poles have been for the past four or so years have been really cultivating a relationship with South Korea, Korea. And so looking to those other partners outside the United States for key pieces of capability, I think is another option. There's been some rumbling around developing an independent European nuclear deterrent. And I think again, that's not something that is happening now. It's probably more either signaling to the US or some sort of contingency planning, whether that takes the form of the UK and France jointly expanding their deterrent to the rest of Europe. You know, that we've seen it not by governments talking specifically necessarily about starting their own nuclear programs, but I think the, the potential for proliferation at the bare minimum, and Ari can probably talk about this more than I can, but the potential for proliferation has increased, which is something that historically the US has been opposed to. So ultimately, the allies are absorbing the shock, I think, in the short term, because they still depend on the US in so many ways, but they're seeking ways to hedge militarily, industrially, economically, because their baseline assumption is volatility in the relationship with the US as opposed to partnership. In the past.
- [17:37]
Ari Tabatabai
I agree with everything John just said. I think one additional piece I would add is that what happens next is sort of dependent also on how far the President is able to push the envelope and whether any of the guardrails that were built into the US system actually kick in and start working. You know, we, we mentioned that Congress has been taking an interest in this. Republicans, certainly Democrats, have been hoping that this will, this issue will go away and will resolve itself and, you know, we'll all move on to other things. But I do think that if this kind of pattern of behavior continues and if it seems like this is something that is going to stick and that there is going to be no other kind of no pushback internally from the, from within the United States, that it will certainly kind of crystallize all of the perceptions that John mentioned and lead allies to take the actions that John mentioned. And then on the proliferation piece, I think we are already in an environment where a number of allies, partners, and of course, traditional adversaries are looking at nuclear, at developing their own nuclear capabilities. And this is a little bit of a shift from before, where obviously adversaries, you know, we've seen spent decades trying to prevent the DPRK from developing a nuclear weapon. That was. Those efforts were not successful. Similarly, decades preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, those efforts were largely successful. But now what we're seeing is a shift in the way the allies are thinking about it. There are debates within European countries that do not actually have a nuclear capability, some of which stopped developing those nuclear capabilities largely because of US Security guarantees and assurances. Now having to think about whether or not they would need their own capability to be able to keep themselves safe because they can't Rely on a partner that shifts, that has these mood swings apparently every four to eight years. And that's not a way to kind of build your national security strategy and your defense strategy. Right. You need to kind of be able to stand on your own two feet if you perceive your key ally that you've been looking at to support you, to provide that deterrence, to provide those security assurances is know, perceived as unpredictable and as unreliable.
- [20:01]
Molly Roberts
Got it. So Mark Rutte gave a very self effacing or alliance effacing speech to the European Parliament this week saying if anyone here thinks that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the United States, quote, unquote, keep dreaming. We need each other. We've talked a little bit about what Europe is getting from NATO, but we haven't talked so much about what the United States is getting from NATO and from its partnership with Europe. So what are we getting and what are the implications of tensions in the alliance, the Greenland crisis, but also just the broader tension for the United States.
- [20:39]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah, let me start and then John, you should jump in. I think a lot of the conversation around what we get from NATO, in addition to being kind of framed around the idea of defense spending, as John mentioned, has been centered around Article 5, which is collective defense. And that's because that is the most visible piece of what we get from NATO. The thing to know though is that NATO has been around since 1949 and Article 5 has only been invoked once, and that was again in response to the 9, 11 attacks in the United States and the US decision to go and conduct a regime change operation in Afghanistan. And NATO allies joined that operation, committed forces, assets, resources to do that. But NATO is not just Article 5. NATO does a lot more every single day that most people don't see because those things are just not super visible. They're not the things that pop up in the news very often. So just to give you a couple of examples of those, we get access, spacing and overflight capabilities from NATO. We get intelligence sharing with NATO allies and partners. We get political support. John already mentioned this one, but we get US defense industry is able to sell billions of dollars worth of assets and weapons and equipment to NATO allies. And all of those things essentially in combination allow us to detect threats. So again, going back to intel sharing, right, like we get capabilities and collection capabilities from, from allies that allow us to detect threats easily and be able to respond to them. Access, spacing and overflight allows us to have forward deployed forces that can go into different theaters of operation at a lower cost and much faster. So, you know, if you look at a lot of the events over the past couple of years in the Middle east, we've been able to kind of deploy assets and forces really quickly because we've had those kind of touch points and bases in Europe, same thing for counterterrorism operations in Africa. So those are really, really important in the day to day operations of the Department of Defense and how it's able to kind of prevent threats from emerging at home and to kind of contain them and tackle them elsewhere at a much lower cost. And then the kind of core mission of NATO itself we should also talk about which is deterring Russia. Right. And we're much more able to do that because we have those relationships and those assets and those and facilities in Europe than we would be able to do here. And that's probably part of the reason why, you know, honestly, a lot of Americans don't really think about Russia as a major threat to the United States today is because NATO is essentially a victim of its own success and has been extremely successful in kind of providing and meeting that core mission. Of course, it's really hard to capture and qualify, right. When a threat doesn't happen, it is so much easier to know when it does happen. And that's part of the reason why I think a lot of folks are not necessarily tracking beyond Article 5, what it is that NATO and those alliances that are bilateral relationships that we have within that framework, why they matter.
- [23:58]
John Drennan
The one thing I would add on that about the Secretary General, quote, you know, I think the Secretary General is beholden to the members of the alliance because he doesn't have his own independent power. He's not the head of state anymore. He was the former head of state of Netherlands, not anymore. And so I think his approach has been to really lean into this. We need to keep the US Inside the tent at all costs. And I need to figure out ways to make sure that the US does not ultimately leave the alliance or the problems that even if he recognizes personally that the US is causing these problems within the alliance, his major incentive is to keep the alliance, alliance together. And I think, I'm not saying that as an excuse for some of the more interesting turns of phrase he's had when speaking about the president specifically or seemingly apologizing for U.S. behavior. But I do think that his approach is running counter to some of the other countervailing approaches in Europe now. So his comments that you referenced, I saw got a direct response from the French government. The Other allies are probably going to be starting to push back a little more on that approach going forward. As a result of everything that we've been talking about here today.
- [25:22]
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- [30:07]
Molly Roberts
So that covers us and our allies, but we've also mentioned many times our adversaries and specifically Russia. How is Russia seeing the crisis? And as, again, we've touched on a little bit here, what does this mean for the war in Ukraine and for Trump's efforts to end it?
- [30:26]
John Drennan
So I think at its core, Russia is benefiting from everything that's been going on without even having to act. NATO's weakened cohesion is going to make it more difficult to achieve its objectives when it comes to both supporting Ukraine now and, as Ari already mentioned, deterring Russia going forward. So I'll start with the Russia specific piece. I think fundamentally Russia views NATO as a threat. It's come to that threat perception over the past 20 or so years. So anything that weakens NATO cohesion is going to be viewed as positive. One of the ways that has manifested it is particularly in driving a wedge between the United States and Europe. But in this case, Moscow hasn't had to be the one to drive the wedge. It's the Trump administration itself that's doing that. And so the Russians have basically been able to sit back and watch. I think one of the ways we've seen that is that Putin himself didn't make any public comments about the crisis until about a week ago. So when we were really in the depths of it and it was basically to say that it's none of our business, we're staying out of it. But other Russian officials have had commentary and it's taken several flavors that reinforce both their arguments around Ukraine and broader past comments that they've had around Western hypocrisy. So for instance, the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that Crimea is no less important to the security of the Russian Federation than Greenland is to the United States. And here he's not necessarily trying to convince anybody of this fact, but rather is asserting an equivalence that normalizes this territorial revisionism approach by great powers. Lavrov and other officials have also tried to place Russia as the defender of certain international law concepts, things like sovereignty, territory, integrity, self determination. They've drawn a lot of parallels between the Greenlanders and the people in the regions they've claimed to annex in Ukraine and Crimea, in Ukraine proper, in the Donbas and in Crimea around self determination. But then at the same time they've also tried to say that Denmark's sovereignty needs to be respected. And then these comments have also had an anti colonial flavor. They've often pointed to the long history of poor treatment by the Danes or, or the Norwegians before them of the Greenlanders. So the audience for these remarks is probably not the Europeans or even Americans, save maybe some of the more EU skeptic, pro Russian engagement folks in Europe. But it helps instead to spin a narrative at home where the government can reinforce its messages to the population around why it's fighting in Ukraine and also to countries in the global south where it's helpful to point out Western hypocrisy. US hegemony issues related to US hegemony specifically as it's seeking to build partnerships there. So going forward, I would honestly expect more of the same, perhaps efforts to emphasize these narratives in the information space. But I don't think there's going to be any direct Russian action around this stuff. It's more watching the US and the Europeans tear each other apart. There's been other small ways that I think the Russians have been trying to leverage this opening and we've, so we've seen over the past few weeks a few major European governments call for re engaging with Russia. And I don't think that's re engaging because we're going to seek normalization now. But rather the relationship has been so frozen over the past few years that now makes sense to try to start talking to the Russians at least a little bit. And so the, the Putin and the Russian government may see this as an opportunity to, you know, and again, I don't think they're going to conclude that they can do the maximalist peel the Europeans away from the US but rather interpret this as a window of opportunity to potentially exploit. And so for European security, I think we've seen some short or at least the shape of some short, medium and long term consequences on the short term around Ukraine. Ukraine, the crisis and potential future crises risk diverting both attention, government attention and potentially resources away from the goal of supporting Ukraine, which has been one of NATO's primary goals since the Russian full scale invasion. So we've seen, for instance, Denmark announced a new rotational presence to Greenland that's going to last at least through the end of 2026 and potentially into 2027. So those are troops that could be used, say in a coalition of the willing type arrangement that is deployed as part of a potential peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. We also saw there was supposed to be a major announcement of a post war reconstruction package for Ukraine on the sidelines of the Davos summit and that got postponed directly because of the crisis. So there's definitely some those types of short term effects that I think we could see a lot more of that if more crises occur in the medium term, the effects on NATO cohesion that Ari highlighted, it makes it much more difficult for NATO to do collective decision making around Russia and Ukraine policy. And then in the longer term, it really remains to be seen how the crises within the alliance undermine NATO deterrence. So if we have allies who are worried about a threat from within, as Ari said, the threat of the US against them, they will probably begin to question whether or not the US is going to respect Article 5 or come to their aid in potential future external crises. And then at the same time, extended deterrence is about signaling credible threats to a potential adversary. And so if Russia doesn't believe that any NATO collective threats or NATO collective signals are credible, then that will also contribute to weakening of the alliance's deterrence.
- [36:41]
Molly Roberts
Ari, anything to add either on Ukraine and how both our allies and Russia are having their actions influenced by the United States approach or on our other adversaries series, because of course, Russia is not the only one.
- [36:58]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah, I think you can basically copy and paste everything John said to the Indo Pacific and, you know, just to take a few elements of that and apply them to China specifically. And I think actually this one goes beyond just China. You know, for a lot of the adversaries, typically we think of the dprk, Iran, China, Russia, as the four kind of major ones that have been not in this national security strategy, but in prior national security strategy, is kind of seen as the major four that we need to state, adversaries that we need to think about and plan around. They've had this narrative that Trump is, I think, now reinforcing for years about the United States not being reliable, about the United States being a hypocritical actor that kind of, you know, is not really here to advance the norms and values of the international order that it claims it is advancing, but really to just maximize its own interests. And you can say, arguably in prior administrations you've had actions that kind of enforce that, too. But I think we're now seeing this happen on a whole other level because at least in the past, we didn't have an administration that was consistently kind of going after allies in a way, treating allies worse than it is actually treating adversaries. A lot of instances. And for I think all of these adversaries, a major goal for decades now has been to really push back against and try to drive a wedge among NATO between the United States and its allies, because they have seen that allied unity as a major obstacle to them achieving their own objectives. So then to zero in on China a little bit. I think when the PRC decides to go after Taiwan, we are likely to see some of the talking points that we've seen coming out of the Trump administration about Greenland in that case as well. I think they will use some of that narrative. And they're already kind of there's already some of that happening. And so it's going to be a lot harder for the United States to object to China going after Taiwan, especially if it happens, including if it happens militarily, if given what we've just seen over the past few days, but also cumulatively over the past kind of like decade of this back and forth in US Foreign policy. I think you're also going to see adversaries use the narratives that John was ascribing to deter other allies. I'm thinking here of Japan or South Korea, for example, from joining forces with the United States States from becoming more kind of interoperable with the United States and conducting joint operations, because, you know, it can point to the fact that if this is how the US Treats allies that in some cases have had a history of going back centuries with the United States. Why would it not? Why would it be a reliable force and a reliable partner for allies in the, in the Indo Pacific, especially at a time when we're saying that apparently we're not the Indo Pacific is no longer the kind of like priority here after we've been saying for the past decade that we want to pivot to the Indo Pacific, we want to compete with China, we want to compete in the Indo Pacific, and now we're kind of shifting that. So again, you can't really plan these things in four to eight year terms. You have to have a bit more of a longer view. And we're clearly not able to do that from administration to administration in a way that we were in the past. And then the last piece is again echoing what John said on distraction. I think China also welcomes the United States being distracted elsewhere because it means that the more distracted the United States is fighting its own allies within NATO, doing things in Latin America and so on and so forth, the less it's going to be able to plan for and commit resources and assets to the Indo Pacific. And that means that China essentially has this broad opening that it can use to increase its own influence and pursue its own goals. And then the last thing I'll say on again, the China piece is there is clearly some frustration within the administration with regard to allies trying to increase their own cooperation with China. And I think this is one of those cases where you can't have it both ways. You can't on the one hand, keep undercutting allies and imposing tariffs on them and also trying to take over their territories and, you know, threaten their sovereignty. And at the same time say, by the way, though, you can't cooperate with our competitor. So the president was frustrated. And the tweet we mentioned or the Truth social post we mentioned earlier, where he referred to Governor Carney, it had to do with, with China and the Canada China relationship. And, you know, you're seeing increased kind of interest from allies. You're seeing that in France as well. I wrote a piece about that in Lawfare a while ago where you're seeing allies that are turning more toward China and taking US Concerns about those relationships a lot less seriously, in part because again, going back to John's point, they need to diversify their own kind of relationships if they can't really quite rely on the United States. And also partially, I think the kind of warnings and concerns fall on deaf ear when, you know, The United States appears to kind of, you know, shoot from the hip every, every and, and kind of go after different actors at different points. It's a lot more difficult to be taken seriously if one day your kind of chief adversary is China, the next it's Greenland than it is if you're pretty consistent in the narrative that you, you're advancing. And I think we have moved far away from that consistency in the past year.
- [42:50]
Molly Roberts
So I guess this is sort of an impossibly big question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is this the end of the world order as we know it? Is there any coming back from this? I mean, first of all, where are we going to be at the end of this administration? But then if the next administration is friendlier toward Europe, our allies, if the next administration wanted to take kind of a restorationist approach to those alliances, to the international order as we've grown accustomed to it over the past several decades, would that be possible? Or have things just shifted and it's different now?
- [43:30]
John Drennan
You're right, that is a difficult one. And I will try to give a couple ideas. I don't think I ultimately know the answer, of course, but I think Ari's absolutely right that the copy and paste method is here. And if there's one thing consistent about Trump's approach to allies, specifically, it's that they can and will be subject to US Coercion as the presidencies fit and in the same way that you would expect adversaries to be treated. And so I think, as we've been saying, this is going to have long term consequences. Trust feels like a kind of squishy.
- [44:09]
John Drennan (continued)
Idea.
- [44:11]
John Drennan
But the way it manifests in alliances is all the things that ARD was saying, all the benefits that we get from it that aren't necessarily these splashy, headline grabbing things like signing a base agreement for a small logistics base somewhere. But that logistics base has bigger effects on the US Ability to project power around the world. And so those things are going to be much more challenging to do going forward. I don't think that we will, let's say, in the next presidential administration, in a peaceful transfer of power, a Democrat comes to office. If they come in expecting to return to the either the Biden years or even the before Trump times, I think that is fundamentally not going to be possible. And so hopefully the relationships have not been destroyed to the point where a new type of arrangement can be achieved. But I think we're definitely on the path where the cumulative effects of this approach to allies is going to require some fundamental rethinking for whoever comes to power after President Trump.
- [45:21]
Ari Tabatabai
Yeah, I fully agree with everything John said, maybe putting something he said a little differently. There's a spectrum of things that can happen when it comes to the NATO alliance and what actions allies can take. We might not be at the tail end of said spectrum, which is kind of like where we would see NATO completely fall apart. But there are a number of steps that lead to that. And unless we are able to kind of walk some of those back, I think we will be on a trajectory where before we know it and before the end of this term, we will have a much more fundamental damage to the alliance. You know, I think President. President Biden really tried to kind of roll back the clock to 2016, where he really tried to kind of put allies and partners at the center of his foreign policy, and that wasn't as successful as I think he would have hoped. And part of it is because already after the first Trump administration, allies were looking at the United States and thinking, you know, we're. We can't rely on an America that goes from 2016 to 2020 and then 2024 that fluctuates this massively in the core kind of values and beliefs and interests that. That it. It's kind of pursuing. Right. And I think this is something that, to John's point, whether it's a future Democratic administration or a future Republican administration that tries to bring us back to a more traditional US Foreign policy is going to have to grapple with. And if the hope is that we can just kind of go back to what President Biden was doing in terms of trying to kind of bring us back to a time that is no longer here. I think we would be missing the boat, and we won't be able to fix the damage that's been done. We'll have to do a lot more really substantial rethinking here than I think is actually still even appreciated in our foreign policy circles.
- [47:22]
Molly Roberts
Well, I feel like that's as good or bad a place to end it as any. Thank you guys for answering even my impossible question very thoroughly and cogently. It's been great talking to you.
- [47:34]
Ari Tabatabai
Thanks, Molly. Thanks, John.
- [47:35]
John Drennan
Thank you so much for having me.
- [47:40]
Molly Roberts
The Lawfare podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free, you can become a link Lawfare material supporter@lawfaremedia.org support supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast. Please rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does help. And be sure to check out our other shows, including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. You can also find all of our written work@lawfaremedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patya with audio engineering by Kara Shillin of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music and as always, thanks for listening.
- [48:36]
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