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12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See terms. A lot of this really comes down to Trump's mindset that to be a great president, to be a historic president, you need to add to the sovereign land United States, and that adding Greenland would put him in the annals, in the history books. Welcome to the long game. I'm Jake Sullivan.
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And I'm John Finer.
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A
So, John, do you want to set the table for today's episode?
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B
So we're going to return to a topic we covered in an earlier podcast, but that's come back front and center in the news, obviously over the last week or two, and that's Greenland. We'll recount some of the recent develops, including some that are just off the presses this morning with President Trump speaking in Davos. We're reporting this on Wednesday.
- [01:38]
A
Well, I think then we should zoom out beyond Greenland to other implications for what the president's actions mean for the future of geopolitics. So I think we should put some time in the second half of the episode to a net assessment of Trump's approach to China and Russia, what he's trying to accomplish, the leverage he's using, whether the US Is coming out ahead or behind when it comes to the competition with China and Russia.
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B
One year in, that seems appropriate and a good time to kind of take stock.
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A
Before we dig into Greenland, though, I think it's worth spending one minute on Iran because that issue has not gone away. Of course, it's what we devoted last week's episode to. But before we get to Iran, I think we should spend one minute on another major national security issue, which is just how damn old the planes are that fly America's senior officials around, including the American president. People may have seen the news that when President Trump took off in Air Force One to fly to Davos, the plane had to turn around and return to Andrews Air Force Base because there was some kind of technical electrical issue, some minor electrical issue that spawned some conspiracy theories online. Maybe there's something else going on here, but I think, John, you and I both know what you see is what you get, because we've flown a lot on these planes on Air Force One, but also on a lot of other US Government planes. They are decades old and they are very much prone to breaking down. So this felt quite familiar.
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B
So you won't often hear us expressing tons of sympathy or empathy for President Trump as he travels around the world doing things that sometimes we object to. But in this case, the fact that his plane had to turn around did resonate a bit. I think that's probably happened to both of us on a number of occasions. These planes are old, even Air Force One, they break down not infrequently. They can't travel very far without stopping to refuel. I remember basically every time we used to travel to Asia, whereas commercial aircraft can do that in one hop. We would have to sometimes stop twice in Alaska, maybe in Japan, if we were on the way to Southeast Asia or Beijing. And it's not as if this is the lap of luxury it is usually for the president or the Secretary of State. They have a nice bed, room to sleep in. The rest of us are pretty much working the entire time in seats that don't lean back. So this is a bit less luxurious than many of the people that mock us for flying around the world on fancy government planes probably would believe if they saw it up close.
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A
No doubt. I remember one time when I was traveling with Secretary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State, we were in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We get to the airport and get informed. Her plane, which is one of these blue and white 737s, or maybe it was a 757, was broken down, wasn't going to be able to take off. So we kind of looked around, said, what can we do? Turned out that General Petraeus, who at the time was still in office, flew down to pick up Secretary Clinton and fly her home. That's kind of an unusual carpool to have Petraeus and Clinton both flying, because Clinton's Plane was broken, but par for the course, and that was 15 years ago. These are still the same planes. They're just getting older. So this is a public service announcement to the Congress. Maybe it's time to get a few new planes so that America can actually get the its top leaders to where they need to be, when they need to be there. Nothing quite says American power like the president's plane having to turn around because of a malfunction and, you know, showing up in Davos later than he expected. So I think it'd be nice to get some new planes. I don't think it's just some kind of boondoggle or some kind of luxury. It's actually necessary for statecraft in the modern era.
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B
Bipartisanship in action. New planes for the Trump administration. Although, to be honest, you get why we end up in this situation. If you walk up to Capitol Hill and say, look, we need millions, maybe tens of millions of dollars for a new fleet of aircraft, you can imagine how that goes over for any administration. So while we're out, happy to advocate for that for our. For our counterparts.
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A
Amen. Amen. So, briefly on Iran before we dig into the main event of Greenland. Last week, we talked through the possibility of Trump taking military action to follow through on his threat that he would strike Iran if Iran killed protesters. Of course, Iran killed a lot of protesters. The numbers are still a little unclear, but it does seem like an absolutely overwhelming use of repressive and lethal military force by the Iranian security services. Thousands and thousands of people killed, more killed in this crackdown than we have seen in previous crackdowns in Iran. And yet, so far, President Trump hasn't taken military action. What appears to have happened, although it's still a little bit uncertain, is that the Pentagon offered him a limited set of targets and he wanted something more, something bigger, something, in his words, quote, decisive, whatever that means. And Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, also reportedly told him, don't just do something symbolic. If you're going to do something, do something significant. Of course, as we discussed last week, other leaders in the Gulf called him and said, don't do anything at all, because we need to calm things down, not ratchet them up. But since we recorded this podcast, President Trump has now dispatched an aircraft carrier to the region, the Abraham Lincoln. It's making its way there. He has now dispatched additional air power which has flowed into the region. He is flowing in additional air defenses to protect American personnel. Should Iran respond. If the US Were to take military action and this is all what Central Command, the American military command that covers the Middle east, would call setting the theater. So the theater is getting set. And I think it's important for our listeners to watch this space because we could see US Military action in Iran in the coming days or weeks. John, what's your take on where things are today and what our listeners should be watching for?
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So I'll acknowledge I was wrong up till now about this, because I expected there to be military action sooner than we've seen it. But I think the main message of what you just laid out, and it would certainly be my view as well, is that this story is not yet over and has not yet even necessarily reached a new chapter. I think the use of force by the United States against Iran is very much still on the table, potentially even in the near term. And the fact that they have taken these steps that are intended both to make the strikes more effective, but also to buy down a bit the risk of Iranian retaliation against us because we're better able to defend ourselves, actually means this is very much still in play, which you are hearing people close to the Trump administration, Lindsey Graham, and others continue to signal. So this is very much in the watch this space category. And I don't really believe, I suspect you also don't really believe that the Israelis, beyond their desire to have the theater set, are actually going to urge restraint on the president about the possibility of taking military action against Iran. I suspect now that the forces are there, they will be okay with this.
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Yeah. When I saw the report that said Bibi called Trump and urged him not to strike Iran, I was like, you got to be kidding me. There's no possible way he did that. The refined reports suggest he said, make sure the theater set A and B, if you're going to do something, do something significant. That sounds more plausible to me now. Do something significant or do something decisive. What exactly that means is hard to say, especially since the protests have, in fact, died down for now in the face of this absolutely brutal crackdown. So maybe they wait for a trigger of renewed protests. Maybe they wait until they get a clear shot at some of Iran's leaders, even the Supreme Leader. Maybe they just choose to hit a series of military and security targets and then just say this was to impose costs for the crackdown and to try to deter future crackdowns. Or maybe they try to leverage this big buildup to get some kind of deal. Witkoff's still out there seeking a deal on the nuclear file and other things. All of that's possible, I suspect we'll be back on this issue before too long, one way or the other. So as you and I have both said, let's watch this space. But for now, we could turn to the issue of this week. Every week seems to bring a new absolutely significant and almost blot out the sun issue in this week's issues are.
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First impression, not the kinds of issues that administrations have chosen to wrestle with before in most cases.
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Exactly. You and I didn't exactly have a Greenland playbook and invade Greenland or browbeat and coerce the Europeans and the Danes into giving Greenland. But President Trump is trying to write that playbook now. You know, John, as we were preparing to discuss this issue, you pointed out to me that Denmark actually plays the US men in hockey in the Olympics on February 14th. That is going to be quite an interesting matchup. I wonder if there's a Danish Herb Brooks who's planning a big pregame speech before they take on the Americans who loom over the horizon.
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B
We both like hockey. The US probably on balance, would be the favorite in that game. But it also reminds me a bit of just after, early in the Trump administration, the president started trying to kind of coerce and bully Canada about becoming the 51st state and referring to then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the governor as opposed to the prime minister. The U.S. played Canada in hockey and that game was a bloodbath. Within seconds of the opening face off, there was a giant fight that I think was indicative of the level of tension between the two governments and in some ways maybe even the two countries, although I don't think there's frankly much tension between the American people and the Canadian people. But leave that aside. So this one could be interesting for any number of reasons. The geopolitics, what actually happens on the ice, although we will be rooting for the United States.
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Yes, we will. Now, you mentioned we both like hockey. You and I both grew up playing hockey. You in Vermont, New Hampshire, me in Minnesota. I think the differences kind of end there. Your youth or the similarities end there. Your youth hockey career ended with you winning the state championship. My youth hockey career ended with me asking my coach if I could go in and him saying, well, that depends, Jake, do you want to win or do you want to play? So not that auspicious, but hopefully the US Will come through, win gold. But also hopefully the Danes show up and play well as well and give some dignity to their people. So that brings us on to Greenland. And what the heck is Trump up to?
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You know, I think we were preparing to discuss this morning about a series of steps that the president has taken to escalate both militarily and economically, potentially against the Europeans in Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland. And then today, Trump threw, as he's wont to do, another sort of wrench in the narrative. And we'll get to that. But basically, over the course of the last week, there were a series of steps that the United States took that made it seem like there was the very real possibility of conflict or at least military action. He first sent a letter to the prime minister of Norway ccing essentially a bunch of other leaders of European countries saying more or less that because he was not awarded the Nobel Prize, which he blames on the Norwegian government, even though they say, and I think they probably right, that they don't have any real role in choosing the Nobel Prize winner for peace, because he didn't get the Nobel Prize, quote, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, although it will always be predominant. But instead, he said he'll do what's best for the United States. And in this case, what's best for the United States, and this is a phrase he keeps coming back to, is complete and total control of Greenland. And if you're not going to do that through peaceful means, he didn't say we will go to war, but the implication quite clearly is we will be willing to go to war. He also announced right around this same time that the United States would be imposing tariffs on countries that have been opposed to his designs on Greenland. A 10% tariff on these countries starting on February 1st. And if the United States does not control Greenland by the summer, 25% tariff starting on June 1. And when asked if he was serious about this, because he's backed off of tariff threats previously, by the way, including in the context of Iran, where he threatened every country doing business with Iran that he was going to tariff them, hasn't followed through on this. He said, I 100% will, when asked if these tariffs were going to happen. So understandably, this brought all kinds of anxiety and debate and deliberation in Europe about how to handle this major escalation by the American president against a territory of a NATO ally and sovereign European country.
- [14:40]
A
What seems to have really set him off was a group of European countries, Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK The Netherlands and Finland. This group of countries sent troops to Greenland for a training exercise, Arctic Endurance. And Trump seems to have looked at this, thought this was an affront and lashed out with this tariff threat and this statement to the Norwegian prime minister that since he didn't get the Nobel, he was now going to shift his thinking to more warlike tendencies, like going to take Greenland. That group of countries put out a quite strong joint statement in response to Trump's tariff threats. But I would say overall, the immediate European reaction was somewhat divided. You had Macron, the president of France, pushing back very hard publicly against the tariff threat, which then caused Trump to turn around and say he was going to put 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne, which would be a shame. On the other hand, you had the UK prime minister saying he wouldn't join in counterterrorifs or in a retaliatory response. You had the prime minister of Italy kind of blaming the victim, saying the Danes needed to do a better job in dialogue and not have misunderstandings with the US you had the president of Poland basically saying, this isn't really a European issue. This is an issue between Denmark and the United States, essentially throwing Denmark under the bus. So you have this kind of mixed bag of European responses, although in advance of Trump arriving in Davos earlier today, and we're taping this on Wednesday, the Europeans were beginning to start to send signals that they would take some kind of economic response to Trump's tariff threats if he were to follow through with them. So the momentum was beginning to build for some European response. Exactly how strong, exactly how united, I think was still very much up in the air. So then Trump arrives in Davos and what happens next?
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Well, I think there were two things at the risk of bearing the lead a little bit longer, which we will get to, that happened to just over the last few days that I think were part of what determined Trump's response in Davos. One is that there was a major stock market reaction early this week that was widely read by analysts as being against President Trump's threats and menacing of Greenland, upwards of 2% decline in some of the major indices. That kind of thing is not lost on a president who pays pretty close attention to the markets, as we've seen in the past. The second, and one thing that makes this crisis, which I think actually genuinely is a major US European transatlantic crisis, and we're speaking about it in a pretty measured way. But I don't want to understate the degree to which, one, this is quite severe and unprecedented, and two, and I think we'll get to this kind of crazy and unnecessary in the sense that much of what President Trump is demanding he could have without going about it in the way that he has. But leaving that aside, one other difference this time has been that not just the sort of center right, center left leadership of key European countries, but also the far right in a number of these countries. The AfD party in Germany, which President Trump has supported Nigel Farage. It'd be hard to find a European political official who wants to be closer to President Trump than Nigel Farage.
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He's, I mean, he shows up at Trump rallies, you know, shows up at.
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Trump rallies, shows up at Mar A Lago, leads in some of the polls of a, you know, UK election that could take place in a few years. And Marine Le Pen's far right party in France, a lot of these leaders have spoken out quite strongly and surprisingly against President Trump. In the context of Greenland. The far right in France called this commercial blackmail. Farage called it a very hostile act. There's no other way I can put it. The German AfD leader Alice Weidel said this violated a fundamental campaign promise, namely not to interfere in other countries. Another AfD leader called this wild west methods of President Trump. Trump, these are his friends in Europe, not the countries. He likes to bully the leaders. He likes to bully and tweak. And so I think probably at least on some of the people around Trump, this reaction played a role in what he ultimately did.
- [19:06]
A
Well, there's one more thing too, John, that we should just put on the table. That happened, which was kind of modest in scope, but sent ripple effects and raised questions about the direction of market travel. And that was that one of the big Danish pension funds said it was exiting U.S. treasuries. Now it said its decision was driven by what it sees as poor US Government finances and not by Greenland. But this was widely seen as basically a move by a state owned pension fund in Denmark, sending a message to the rest of Europe, hey, maybe we need to rethink the degree to which we are overweighted in the US Dollar and US Treasuries. And people were beginning to write and speak about the, that this could have on the broader treasury market. So this is one more factor at play here.
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100 million bucks, I think, worth of Treasuries. But a strong signal, as you say. So all of this is, is kind of the, the buildup to widely anticipated speech by President Trump in Davos. Did you watch?
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A
You know, I have a hard time watching these speeches, to be honest, so I tend to read them after the fact. I was kind of required to watch this one because were taping just a couple hours after it took place. So I did have the pleasure and the privilege of watching it. And I would say two or three things stood out to me. The headline for sure is President Trump saying, I don't want to use force. I won't use force to take Greenland. And that's kind of what beamed around the world immediately out of the speech. And there was an immediate market reaction to that, that. The second thing that stood out to me about the speech is that he explicitly referenced the stock market in it, which kind of goes to show you Trump likes saying the quiet part out loud. He tends to narrate his own thinking on things that this was looming large in his mind. So he says, I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money. Now, he kept calling Greenland Iceland, which raises some questions about just how important it is to the United States if he can't even correctly identify what it is. So Iceland's already cost us a lot of money, but that dip is peanuts compared to what it's gone up, and we have an unbelievable future in that stock. That stock market is going to be doubled. So he was clearly focused on this issue as he headed into Davos and clearly trying to send a message to the markets. Hey, go back up. I'm not going to go to war with Denmark or with other European countries over Greenland. And then the third thing that I thought was quite striking from the speech is he basically said, NATO does nothing for us. NATO has never helped the United States. We'd be there for NATO, but NATO is essentially useless from the point of view of the United States. I think this has got to be especially galling or the Danes, because Denmark, of all countries, has just been an incredible ally. Among the countries that participated in Afghanistan, Denmark had the highest per capita casualties other than the US and the UK it was not guarding the rear. Danish troops were fighting alongside U.S. marines in Helmand. It was the most effective military participant in the coalition in Libya. When we asked them to come into a naval coalition to defend the Red Sea against the Houthis, Denmark raised its hand and said yes. A lot of European countries wanted nothing to do with the misbegotten US Invasion of Iraq. But even there, the Danes said, hey, we'll participate. And when it comes to Greenland. And you alluded to this, they say yes to everything we ask of them on Greenland and would continue to, which raises the question about why this whole issue of control is even necessary. So the Danes, in particular, I think, have got to look at these comments about how NATO has done nothing for the United States and say, wait a second, have we lived through the same last 20 years that you have? The only time that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty has ever been invoked was after 911 by our European allies in defense of the United States. And the Danes put their money where their mouth was by deploying troops and having them fight on the front lines. But Trump was really doubling and tripling down in his speech, essentially about how useless NATO was. And that really stood out to me in the final analysis. He said basically, you can say yes to giving us Greenland and we will be very appreciative, or you can say no and we will remember. But he left it at that. He didn't re up his tariff threat and he explicitly took the use of force off the table, at least for now.
- [23:53]
B
So the other thing about Denmark as an ally, which, by the way, President Trump has mocked, he has tweeted at least once, maybe a couple of times, about the fact that all, all Denmark is offering in terms of defense of Greenland is a unit comprised of few soldiers running dog sleds, which is not true. They're doing a bit more than that. Maybe not quite enough, but the dog sled unit is a real thing and actually has an interesting history which we looked into in preparing for this. It's called the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol. Sirius, spelled by the way, S I R I u, like SiriusXM, like Sirius XM, probably not named after it. And it is an elite Danish unit that traces its history back to World War II. It was actually formed subsequent to World War II, but there were actually dog sled units patrolling Greenland During World War II, we discovered, and they actually were critical in identifying German weather stations on the eastern coast of Greenland in 1941 that the Germans were using to help prepare for and conduct the Battle of the Atlantic and the U boat operations that the Germans were using against Allied shipping lanes. Those weather stations, after being discovered by these Danish dog sledders, were destroyed by US Air Force bombers flying from Iceland, which historians, military historians believe was actually a significant step in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. So President Trump was quite dismissive of this. I understand why he was. It's a funny punchline of sorts. But even this aspect of his attack on Denmark, it turns out, actually is rooted in something that's quite positive and probably should be celebrated and not mocked.
- [25:41]
A
I just love the sled dog program. But, John, people probably shouldn't tell President Trump about the U.S. navy's marine mammal program. When I read about these sled dogs, I immediately thought about a program which I've gone to see in, in person. We train bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. This is not a joke. This is for real. And it goes back to the 1960s. We train the dolphins to search for and mark the location of undersea mines that could threaten the safety of those on board either military or civilian ships. And we trained both the dolphins and the sea lions to assist security personnel in detecting and apprehending unauthorized swimmers or divers that are trying to infiltrate vessels or harbor facilities. Basically, this is part of our perimeter security for Navy facilities. The reason is because dolphins possess the most sophisticated sonar known to science. And both dolphins and sea lions have this excellent low light vision and ability to do directional hearing underwater. So they can detect and track undersea targets. And they can also go hundreds of feet under the surface that regular divers can't do. And there is no technology today that is as good as the animals in carrying out these programs. So I've actually had the opportunity to meet these dolphins and sea lions serving the United States of America. I mean, it's unbelievable. And maybe at some point along the way we should devote an entire episode just to how animals help protect the national security of the US and its allies. But the sled dogs reminded me of that. It just goes to show you both the ingenuity of our militaries, frankly, and the remarkable capabilities of some of these beautiful animals. So I'm glad you raised that. I hope Donald Trump does not cut the marine mammal program. RFKJR HHS secretary recently announced new federal dietary guidelines.
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B
Declaring war.
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A
Today our government declares war on added sugar. Also ending war. We are ending the war on saturated fats. In his tenure as head of hhs, RFK has ended the war on protein and declared war on ultra processed foods. And on the old food pyramid. You can see the food pyramid here. It's upside down. A lot of you will say, but it was actually upside down before and we just righted it.
- [28:16]
B
The Trump administration has pushed companies to.
- [28:18]
A
Eliminate food dyes and in the first bill signing of the new year said schools can now serve whole milk, whole milk, and it's whole with a W. For those of you that have a problem on Today explained the push from the top to revamp the American diet. Today explained drops every weekday. In the mid-1980s, Nintendo basically single handedly saved the gaming industry with the Nintendo Entertainment System. And then a toy company convinced Nintendo that maybe the future of gaming wasn't controllers, but was instead this weird arm sleeve glove thing that let you control video games with your fingers. It was called the Power Glove, and it was awful. This week on Version History, a new chat show about old technology retraced the whole story of the Power Glove, which failed spectacularly, and also kind of invented VR. That's Version History. Wherever you get pirates. What's your expectation, based on what you saw today, about what Trump's actually going to do as a next step? And what's your expectation about what the Europeans are going to do now that they've sat and heard this thing?
- [29:32]
B
So the other thing he said in the speech was he called for immediate negotiations to discuss, I think, what he called the US Acquisition of Greenland. He said that. That before he took the use of force off the table, at least for now. And that when I heard it, I thought, well, that's a fairly positive statement because he's talking at least about a negotiation at this point, not the US Just imposing its will. So one big question, I think, is how do the Europeans respond to those negotiations? How do the Danes in particular respond to that call for negotiation? And do we start down the road of discussing something I'm quite confident they don't want to do, which is allow the US to actually acquire Greenland? But do they have ideas about other ways in which they can provide access to Trump and the United States to what he says he needs, which is basing and minerals and ownership, without going all the way down the path towards the US Acquiring Greenland? By the way, the other thing in this speech that makes me nervous from the perspective of NATO, and I think you were right to raise what he said about NATO. On the one hand, he said a positive thing, which is the US will 100% be there for a NATO country. By the way, he doesn't always speak that way. So those of us who want to look on the bright side should pocket that, but then call into question the value of the alliance to the US but he also said something, I think almost inexplicable, which is, of course, the reason the United States needs to acquire Greenland is because if we're only leasing it or we only have licenses to it, why would we ever defend it? Well, what is the NATO alliance other than a commitment of the United States to defend territory that we do not own allied countries that have full sovereignty over their territory. So on the one hand, he's saying something somewhat reassuring about the US Commitment to NATO. On the other hand, he's at least implying that anything we don't own is almost fair game, at least when it comes to Greenland. But if that's the principle, how do you feel if you're a NATO country?
- [31:26]
A
Yeah, no doubt about it. The point you made on negotiations is important. It's interesting because just a few days ago, it seems like a lifetime ago, but literally just a few days ago, the Danish foreign minister and the Greenland foreign minister were in the United States meeting with senior White House officials. And what came out of that meeting but an agreement to launch a negotiation to discuss the US Interests in Greenland generally. Now, from the Danish and Greenland perspective, that was not about acquisition. That was about, as you said, ways in which Denmark and Greenland could satisfy US Needs without handing Greenland over and giving up sovereignty of it. The US Came out after that and basically said, no, no, no, no. These talks are only about acquisition. So it'd be interesting to see whether they can find a way to each describe a diplomatic dialogue in their own terms, the Danish and Greenland side and the US Side, and just kind of park these things in negotiations for a while, or whether we're going to get back to another round of escalation with Trump ramping up threats and pressure and the like. I think what the Danes would like to see fundamentally, is just an ongoing dialogue about Greenland, where they can speak to issues of military access, issues of rare earth extraction and other mineral and natural resource development, where they can speak to the quote, unquote, threat that China and Russia pose to Greenland. And I say, quote, unquote, because we saw Senator Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, come out and basically say, I haven't seen any acute Chinese or Russian military threat to Greenland. I don't know what the administration is talking about. But deadline Denmark and Greenland are open to a dialogue about what it will take to satisfy US Concerns in that regard as well, to the extent that they're valid or they exist. So best case scenario is this does get parked in some kind of dialogue on an ongoing basis and that we end this pattern of threat and escalation on the Greenland front. But history kind of tells us that President Trump ramps up, backs off, ramps up, backs off, but but never entirely gives up on continuing to press for getting Greenland. And I keep kind of coming back to the question of why. What, at the end of the day, when you set everything else aside, is really motivating him here? What is it that makes him wake up in the morning or go to sleep at night and say, I need Greenland? I mean, neither of us have deep and penetrating insight into the psyche of Donald Trump. But do you have a, do you have a view on that question?
- [34:04]
B
Well, I don't think the Russia China threat is the motivating factor. Sure, Russia is a significant security threat in the Arctic writ large. Russia, by the way, has a tremendous amount of Arctic territory and coastline. So Greenland is maybe relevant to that conversation, but it's far from the whole story. China, obviously not an Arctic nation, although has increasing interest. It refers to itself, I think sometimes as a near Arctic state, whatever that means, I think to kind of underscore its desire to play a bigger role. But Denmark has been pretty good about boxing the Chinese out. There are two instances in particular I learned a bit more about in Preparing this. In 2016, China was on the cusp a Chinese mining company of buying an abandoned naval base in Greenland. And the Danish government stepped in and blocked that acquisition. And by the way, blocked it because they said, we have this 1951 defense agreement with the United States and we want that to be what drives our security considerations. We don't want to do anything to undermine that. That's pre Donald Trump, by the way. 2016. Then in 2018, during the Trump administration, a Chinese owned firm won a contract or appeared about to win a contract to build a major airport in Greenland. And again the Danish government and the Greenlandic government decided to themselves step in and subsidize that airport and keep the Chinese out. So they are obviously well aware of Chinese designs and have taken steps long before they or coerced to do so to keep the Chinese at bay. So what you've described this kind of positive potential off ramp of a negotiated increased level of US Access, maybe increased commitments on the part of Greenland and Denmark to keep US Adversaries out of Greenland or away from Greenland. That seems very much on the table. Does not seem like it will be enough to satisfy at least the current public demands of President Trump.
- [36:06]
A
I think there's kind of two other things to say about Trump's mindset on Greenland. One, your point about defending leases. I really do think that a lot of this, and we've said this on previous episodes, really comes down to Trump's mindset that to be a great president, to be a historic president, you need to add to the sovereign land of the United States and that adding Greenland would put him in the annals, in the history books and, and just getting more preferential basing access and preferential mineral rights access and better cooperation on China and Russia, that's not going to get them there. And that is the difference between the United States, in effect, defending something it owns and something it doesn't own.
- [36:48]
B
In his mind, he said in the speech today that the United States had basically. He didn't say conquered, but that was basically the subtext. Greenland, during World War II. Defended World War II. Had World War II. And the dumbest thing we could have possibly done was give that back at the end. By the way, the United States had a lot of territory after World War II that we gave back to European countries, to Asian countries. It is actually part of what I think helped build the modern world in a positive way, is that that was not, for the United States, a war of conquest. We don't tend to wage wars of conquest. That's a good thing. But in his view, we had this valuable resource, we won it, it was ours, we gave it back. Huge mistake.
- [37:30]
A
It was a striking. He was withering in his criticism of the Truman administration for not just seizing the truth.
- [37:36]
B
Truman, who can't defend himself.
- [37:38]
A
That we had taken. Yeah, exactly. Now, the other point I was going to make is I've seen this interesting commentary online that actually one of the things that is causing Trump to be so obsessed with Greenland is the Mercator projection. Basically, on the maps that we see, Greenland appears massively larger than it actually is. It actually kind of looks almost like it's the size of Africa, when in reality, Africa is about 14 times bigger than Greenland. Greenland is actually closer to the size of Saudi Arabia. But when you look at it on a map, it just looks massive. So Trump's looking at this massive piece of land because the size gets exaggerated as you move towards the polls on these Mercator maps. So I do wonder if we ultimately have to blame Mercator and his maps for mariners from centuries past for our current travails.
- [38:26]
B
When it comes to Greenland, Saudis are going to be very unhappy. You've got him now focused on how big their country is. Look at it.
- [38:33]
A
Exactly. I should have come up with a different reference point there. I do think it's an interesting counterfactual whether if President Trump had come at this in a totally different way, if he had played nice, if he had been much more carrot than stick, if he had tried to wedge or exploit the divisions in Greenland about the relationship with Denmark, the prospect for a different kind of relationship with the United States, if he'd put big incentives on the table, whether there was a way to achieve his outcome over time. I don't know the answer to that question. It probably couldn't have been done in a four year time period anyway, which is all that he cares about. But if there was any chance of going down this road, President Trump's mode of operating has completely ruined it, because what he has done is pushed Greenland and Denmark even closer together and made it impossible, really, for any political faction in Greenland or any voice in Denmark to say, hey, yeah, we should be open to a conversation with the United States of America about purchase or acquisition or anything. So. So I think one has to ask whether there were alternative ways to go at this, if this was a real thing Trump wanted to do. As it stands right now, I think this is way off the table from every conceivable credible voice on the other side of this transaction. And there is no way that Denmark and Greenland, no way are going to say, okay, yeah, at the end of the day, we've rethought it and we're prepared to sell it to you or grew, give it to you.
- [40:07]
B
Yeah, I'm the last person who should be holding himself out as an expert on the art of the deal. There are these people who are offering theories online and elsewhere that actually this is the ultimate example of President Trump's negotiating style and action. Maximalist demand move back to a more moderate position. It's actually quite extreme, but it looks more moderate by comparison to the maximalist demand. And then you end up getting more than you would otherwise get. I think the other argument here is the one you made, which is the totally over the top maximalist demand creates almost a sense of abject humiliation on the part of the counterparty in the negotiation, such that they just cannot possibly take any version of what is on offer from the United States. And he may have achieved that in this negotiation, we'll see how things play out.
- [40:53]
A
And if he gets more in the way of military presence or mineral rights or so forth, some of his supporters will say, see, that's what he wanted all along. And of course, the answer to this is the answer you gave a little while ago, which is, the Danes have been actively offering all of that from the very beginning, and not just from the beginning of this Trump term, but throughout. Any time an American president has said to them, we've got a concern about China, or we'd like to work further on our space force presence and our missile defense capabilities. The Danes have said, absolutely, bring it on, let's do it. So if the art of the deal is beat the crap out of an ally, cause a rupture, a word we will come onto in a minute in the international system and then get something you could have got just by picking up the phone and calling. That's really not particularly artful and is kind of the best we can hope for at this point. The other possible case here as we go forward is that that three months from now, or two months from now, or two weeks from now, we're talking once again about dramatic escalation because Trump has returned to bullying and coercion and moved off his dabo speech and forgotten about the stock market dip. We just don't know which way this is going to go. We'll have to watch as things go on. What we do know is that Russia is just loving this, cheering it on. Their foreign minister has called it a deep crisis for NATO, has basically compared Greenland going to the United States to Crimea going to the Russian Federation. And they're looking to stoke the issue, first because it reduces transatlantic solidarity, which they see as a positive generally and specifically on Ukraine. And second, because it bolsters their case for Russia's land grabs at the point of a gun. And I think China is also just loving this. They basically think America acting like a big bullying imperialist state opens up a pretty wide envelope for them and reduces the pressure they would feel from the United States, rallying the free world together to push back on Chinese aggression over Taiwan or the South China Sea or anything else. So the broader geopolitical implications of this are really quite profound, and I think it's important for us to spend a few minutes on that before we turn to this net assessment.
- [43:14]
B
Right. So for both Russia and China, a major strategic objective is fracturing fragmentation, division in the West. And I think they see this Greenland dispute as a major, major development that's positive for them. Largely for that reason. A less effective NATO, maybe less unified support, therefore, for Ukraine is right in Russia's wheelhouse of geopolitical desires. And for China, I think they see this more or less as evidence that the United States talks a good game around the world about what a good and positive actor it is. But at the end of the day, ultimately it's just as self interested, if not even more so, than we portray China as being. And so I think this is going to be quite helpful to them and their diplomatic relations with other countries. And we have seen some developments in that regard over the course of the past week. You used a phrase, I think, about US Policy when it comes to Greenland bullying and coercion. There's another country that has been been subject to US bullying and conversion that took a few significant steps on the world stage over the course of the last week. And it's another Arctic country and it's our neighbor to the north, Canada. And in particular, it's Prime Minister Mark Carney. Yeah.
- [44:38]
A
So Prime Minister Mark Carney, who basically came to power because Trump was so bullying and coercive to Canada that there was this Trump bomb. Trump for the incumbent party, the Liberal Party in Canada. And Mark Carney came in as the successor leader of that party to Justin Trudeau, who had been Prime Minister for many years. He basically rides a wave of anti Trump sentiment into the job. So a few days ago, he goes to Beijing and he pronounces a, quote, new World Order, and reaches an agreement with China, a provisional agreement, a preliminary agreement that basically reduces Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for China lowering its tariffs on canola, lobsters, seafood and peas. Glad that peas got into that deal. Nothing quite like Canadian peas. Now, the United States had worked hand in hand with Canada to impose these 100% electric vehicle tariffs. We did that in the Biden administration. Align allies and friends to take on Chinese overcapacity in the auto industry to make sure we're protecting our own auto workers. Get the US and Canada both to have 100% tariffs on these electric vehicles from China. Canada has now dropped those, allowing at least 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market on a preferred tariff rate. Trump responded to that by basically saying, if you can get a deal with China, you should do that. He said, that's okay. That's what he should be doing. Then the more dramatic move came. Not that that wasn't dramatic in its own right. Mark Carney goes to Davos and gives what has to be described as a remarkable speech declaring an end to the international order of the past several decades. And he had a particular line that I think stood out to all of us, which was this. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. And what he essentially was arguing is that we've entered an era of great power competition where the middle powers, like Canada, like Europe and others, need to essentially pull together to accumulate strength, to gain their own strategic autonomy, and to build resilience against the pressure from the big powers. And here he equates, makes equivalent in his speech, the United States and China, casting them essentially as equal challenges. And he says, with respect to the United States, Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security. That assumption is no longer valid and concludes by saying we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values but also the value of our strength inverting, actually a Bidenism. Joe Biden talks frequently about how the US shouldn't just rely on the example of our power, but the power of our example. Here Carney is flipping that and saying Canada actually needs to show its strength, needs to bear its teeth a bit, bit vis a vis the United States, as well as vis a vis other great powers. This speech, I think, got one of the few standing ovations ever in the history of Davos. I think he gave voice to what a lot of people in a lot of parts of the world are thinking. And it was a seismic event. I believe in how we think about this moment, this era in the international system, because there really is really, in a way is a kind of before Carney calls this out and after Carney calls this out, demarcation in this era. Trump responds to him by saying basically something that Mark Carney would have predicted he'd say, which is Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make statements. I think Mark would say, that's exactly why I made my statement. But John and I read this speech very carefully. I reread it, I thought a lot about it. I have a lot of different reactions to it, many of them pretty gloomy. While I have great admiration for the formulas and the forthrightness with which Mark Carney spoke, the implications of it are quite disturbing from the point of view of the long term national security interests of the United States. But do you want to talk about your reaction to it?
- [49:15]
B
It, MARK Carney, Canada, these are America's closest friends, arguably anywhere in the world. So I think it's worth bearing that in mind when you digest everything that you just put on the table. Second, this is a prime minister of Canada who, as you said, owes his office, probably to the Donald Trump effect. When Donald Trump took office, Mark Carney was or the Labor Party later, Mark Carney's party was 26 points down in the polls, ultimately ended up winning that election as Trump attacked Trudeau. Trudeau stepped aside, as you described, and Mark Carney himself last year called China the biggest threat to Canada's security. This same prime minister, rather than just going to China and announcing some economic deals and keeping it relatively businesslike, which was an option, declares that China, which he had called the biggest threat to Canada's security, is now a strategic partner of Canada, which is choice to describe the relationship that way, and then gives this speech in Davos that, in addition to being many other things, is also, and I think we should probably call it out a bit of an anti American speech. And I understand the motivation for his anti American sentiment, given the hostility of American policy towards Mark Carney, but he did not focus his ire explicitly in the speech on Trump or the Trump administration. I also understand why he didn't do that. People tend not to want to provoke Donald Trump, and he did not give any reason to believe that once we get past the Trump administration, maybe there's a different future in which the United States and Canada can go back to the sort of mutually beneficial relationship we've had in the past, Quite the opposite. He has been clear for quite some time, most explicitly in this speech, that the world has changed, that Canada's interests have fundamentally changed, and there is no going back to the world as it was before, at least this second term of Donald Trump. So I think part of what remains to be seen is how many other countries are going to follow that path, maybe in their own ways. Chancellor Mertz has said similar things about the fact that the world is not going to go back to the way it was before, but without being quite as explicit as Mark Carney, and without following Mark Carney in the direction of hedging his relationships to be more friendly towards China or sort of, certainly not Russia. But I think that's one country to watch. Already President Macron has come out and said one thing the European Union needs in light of relations with the United States is more direct Chinese investment in Europe. He said that just after, I think, Mark Carney spoke. Macron is one leader, I think, who never likes to be outflanked by somebody in terms of not needing the United States anymore. He likes to be at the outer edge of countries that say they don't need the United States. So I'd imagine him to try to. To stake out more of that ground. And so it does feel like a significant moment in the trajectory of global politics, that America's closest friend, its neighbor, with whom it has enjoyed nothing but peaceful relations throughout our modern history. We fight about some things, trade being one particularly significant example, but basically as good a neighbor as we could have ever asked for. It's just now going into fundamentally different, different directions, with no reason to believe that that's going to change, even in the aftermath, potentially, of this administration.
- [52:45]
A
I basically had two main reactions to this speech. The first was it's logical. This is the natural result of Trump's foreign policy. If you bully and coerce and insult people for long enough, they're going to push back hard. If you act like a brutish great power power and not a positive and collaborative power. People are going to see you as such and they're going to react to you as such. So it's logical. But the second is that it's depressing. We spent the four years of the Biden administration basically seeking to align the free world around a common set of bold investments in infrastructure and innovation, in manufacturing, in resilient supply chains. And Canada was at the center of that. That and we spent the four years of the Biden administration seeking a common competitive strategy with our friends, our Democratic friends, vis a vis the People's Republic of China. And what Carney is basically saying is that ain't gonna work. Not just that ain't gonna work during Trump, but that ain't gonna work going into the future. We are going to treat the US And China basically as the same. My own personal hope is that a future American president, hopefully sooner rather than later, can actually rebuild from the wreckage. But what Carney's speech is saying is that is going to be a monumental task. The hill just got steeper to climb. Now, I think we both agree with Carney that things have changed, something new must be built. There isn't a going back. But I do want to resist his implication that the US And Canada and others can't work to build something new together under a new president. He's kind of cast this as there are the great powers, essentially the US And China, then there are the middle powers, and the middle powers all just have to work together. I think there is still so much scope over the long term looking out into the future of the US And Canada working together. Now, I acknowledge that's a lot harder to say given that Donald Trump was reelected. It is absolutely a reality that the US Is less predictable than we were before and we do have to face that squarely. But I just don't think it means that we have to give up on, on the concept of an alignment of like minded democracies and market economies over the long run. I think we in Canada have a huge amount to gain from each other in every dimension. And I think China remains a challenge for both of us. And Mark Carney was not wrong last year when he said that China was a huge strategic challenge for Canada. And frankly, Chinese electric vehicles and their policy of swamping the world with those vehicles to undercut American and Canadian Indian workers is a huge challenge, just as one example based on what he's done in the last week. So we'll have to see how things proceed. I think it was a clarion call. I think all of the plaudits that he's getting for it are understandable and a lot in that speech has to be admired. But I also believe that it is incumbent upon people who believe that the United States has a positive role to play in the world that we collectively have to step up, say to our friends in Canada and everywhere else, the Trump administration's policy is the policy today and will be for the next three years. But there is a long future ahead for this country and obviously for this world. And there are a lot of people here who want to be a part of a like minded effort among market democracies in the world to shape it in a way that is more peaceful, more prosperous and more secure, and that the US And Canada should be lockstep in trying to do that.
- [56:20]
B
I think another reason for some degree of optimism is one thing about having a several thousand mile border with another country is you have no choice but to find a modus vivendi and so find a way to live together and to make that relationship as constructive as possible, almost no matter what politics are happening inside either of your countries. And so the option of just kind of, of Canada turning its back on the United States and vice versa is not available to either country. And we'll see how this plays out. But I share your pessimism and slight air of depression about the last week's developments. Not something I think either of us would have hoped for or wished even on an administration, that we have real concerns about how they operate.
- [57:10]
A
And now, of course, we're going to have to see what happens between the US And Canada in the Winter Olympics hockey, because those are going to be two of the favorites going into it. So in addition to U.S. denmark, U.S. canada will be its own subplot which we will have the chance to watch unfold over the course of February.
- [57:28]
B
And that's before we even get to the United States, Canada and Mexico hosting together the World cup soccer tournament this year. So there's a point about inescapability of two countries with a long border.
- [57:43]
A
Very good point.
- [57:44]
B
Find a way to work together, together. Net assessment. So given everything that we've just described and also the developments in the big strategic relationships around the world world over the course of the last year and given that, by the way, just yesterday, I think we're taping this on Wednesday is the one year anniversary of President Trump taking office. US Walking out the door and into maybe slightly better lives, but different lives certainly in many Ways it felt appropriate to take stock of kind of where things are one year on. Do you want to describe what a net assessment is? This sort of wonky term that really the military uses, but that the government uses sometimes to talk about who's up and who's down?
- [58:45]
A
A net assessment is basically a comprehensive long term analysis that tries to compare the strengths and weaknesses of nations, military, technological, diplomatic, political, economic, basically all of those assets and liabilities of two nations to inform senior leaders about the overall balance of power between them and the strategic context within which they're competing. So a US China net assessment or US Russia net assessment will look at each country, tally up and place in a framework its various strengths and weaknesses in all of these domains, and make a determination over time about which is gaining in strength and capacity and which is losing in strength and capacity. And this is very much a Pentagon methodology. It is rigorous and disciplined. It has a certain science to it. And there is a team of people at the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon who have been doing this for decades and are absolute experts at it. Actually, Secretary Hegseth shut down the office in that assessment. Hopefully it will get rebuilt in some form over time because it's an absolutely essential muscle. Those guys do it in an unbelievably rigorous and disciplined way. We're going to be doing it in a less rigorous and disciplined way here on this podcast. But paying an homage to them, while you shouldn't hold any of the the lack of rigor or discipline in our commentary here over the next few minutes against those folks who really do these net assessments extremely effectively for the senior leaders and the President of the United States.
- [60:19]
B
Should we start by making the best case we can that the strategy this administration is applying to these great power relationships is bearing some fruit? In other words, how would they argue knew if they were making the case and doing their own net assessment and had not shut this office down, that their strategy was was working? When it comes to China and maybe.
- [60:42]
A
To some extent Russia, I invite you to proceed along those lines.
- [60:46]
B
I appreciate that. So I think the best case you can make for the administration's strategy, especially vis a vis China, but maybe to some extent Russia as well, is that they are trying to buy the United States time and a degree of calm to reduce our dependencies, in particular on China. As the Rare Earths episode of last year revealed, China still retains significant leverage over the United States in some areas that we need to try to shore up. And so they are trying to strike deals, trying to keep the Temperature low. They recognize ultimately that this is going to have to be and will remain a competitive relationship with China. But they want to shore up, up our foundation of strength before going back to a higher degree of competition than they have engaged in over the course of the last year, and, by the way, reduce the prospect of conflict with China, which neither the US Nor China should want and most of the American people, by poll after poll after poll, think would be a disaster. And I think we would agree with them. So they're managing for that and trying to achieve some economic benefit in the process. But really what they're trying to do is they've identified these vulnerabilities. They don't want to fight China while these vulnerabilities exist. They want to shore up these vulnerabilities and then maybe go back to competition. So the evidence I would point to, if I were them, that some of this is working is to point to some of the advantages the United States retains. If AI is going to be the technology that defines the foreseeable future, maybe the most significant technological development of our lifetime or anybody's lifetime, who's alive today. The fact that the United States has the best AI frontier models and that so much private capital and public capital is pouring in to this sector and the defense innovation sector for that matter, is fundamentally a positive thing for US Strategic interests. We're still ahead at the frontier. Second, if they wanted to point to economic factors, they would, I think, point to the fact that the US Trade surplus with China is down. That has been President Trump's number one objective, he says of his tariff policy. And it's down year on year from when he took office. And tariffs, much as there were widespread predictions that they would drive up inflation. Inflation is not gone the way President Trump just asserted this morning in Davos, but it has not risen as much as many economists predicted it would. It stayed relatively stable year on year. China's growth, meanwhile, is pretty anemic. They announced 5% growth rate. Many people believe that that rate is probably higher than it is in reality, after growing at 8%, 10% over the course of most of the last decade. Their birth rate, which they just announced yesterday is now negative, is the lowest birth rate that China has had since 1949. And they are trending towards a population that is over a billion today, but would stabilize if they maintained this birth rate at something on the order of 600, which would have enormous social impacts and hurt their ability over time to continue to try to stay ahead by sheer size and scale on Europe, yes, it's messy, as we've been discussing throughout the course of the last hour, but NATO spending is way up. Mark Ruta just said that none of that would have happened without President Trump. And Ukraine, for all the challenges of dealing with with the Trump administration is continuing to hold on to the vast majority of its territory, inflicting an enormous cost on Russia. So people who predicted that the Trump administration coming in would lead to Ukraine losing the war, that prediction has not borne out. And finally, I think lots of people thought that Trump would destroy relationships all over the world by going around coercing, threatening, bullying, particularly on tariffs and other economic tools. And the reality is more countries than not have instead come forward to try to make deals and that some of these deals have been quite favorable ultimately, at least in the near term, to the United States. And then the final thing I'll say is we spoke in an earlier podcast about President Trump, the reasoning behind his decision to launch an operation that removed President Maduro from leadership in Venezuela. I think we expressed some skepticism about the long term prospects of how that would play out. But one thing he has stated that he is going to try to do is use that change in leadership to get Russia and China and Iran and Cuba out of Venezuela. This is those countries major foothold in Latin America. And reducing their access to Venezuela, their economic ties to Venezuela, their military ties to Venezuela would be a positive thing and could lead to knock on effects elsewhere in the hemisphere where up until now at least China has been making significant inroads in many countries in our own hemisphere. So that's the case I would make if I were them with the puts and the takes that their strategy is more or less working when it comes to competition with these great powers.
- [66:03]
A
I think that was a game effort. One of the challenges is that a number of the areas that you identified as American advantages or Chinese disadvantages were American advantages and Chinese disadvantages. One year ago when we left office and President Trump took office, the growth rate was roughly the same last year as it's been this year. The population decline has been a massive headache for China for many years now, going back to the one China child policy. And it's not at all clear that they're going to be able to easily fix it. When we left office, the United States had an AI lead. It still has an AI lead, but the Trump administration has actually taken a significant action selling advanced GPUs that were previously banned from being sold to China. That's allowing China to close that gap more rapidly. So I think on AI in terms of the AI competition, the steps this administration has taken have actually disadvantaged the United States and advantage China when it comes to the trade deficit. I do agree that over the course of the past year, the bilateral trade deficit between the US And China has closed quite a bit. And that is a metric the President said set and he has achieved progress towards that metric. Now, as you noted, the Chinese trade deficit with the rest of the world has exploded because China is continuing to flood the world with cheap products. And what does that mean for the United States? What it means is that even though we are buying less from China than we were before, we are not actually making more in the United States. There has been a number of net decrease in manufacturing jobs in the United States from when Joe Biden left office until one year later. Today, as we sit here, we have completely abandoned the field in clean energy technologies where China is running the table. And China is rapidly gaining in other technology areas like biotechnology. And that is partly because we have slashed basic research funding to the National Institutes of Health, NIH and to the National Science foundation, nsf, taking one of these premier American advantages, basic research funding from the US Government that has powered all kinds of great innovations in frontier technologies and reducing the overall envelope for it. So in most of the areas you described, I actually think even though we do still retain advantages, those advantages are ideal, either stagnating or declining relative to where they were a year ago. I do agree with you that Latin America is an interesting area where if President Trump were to capitalize on the steps he has taken with respect to Venezuela and other areas to actually try to reduce overall Chinese influence and activity in the Western Hemisphere, that could be an area where the US Would gain in a net assessment. But right now, I would classify things as just simply too early to tell. And as one example, the president of Argentina, Milei, a very close ally of Trump's, came in asserting that he was going to keep China out of Argentina. He has since decided, nope, he's got to have a very close economic relationship with China, as have many other countries in the region. And frankly, I would probably expect that to continue, notwithstanding what happened in Venezuela. For me, though, the way I would kind of think about this net assessment exercise is to put myself in the shoes of China for a minute and say, how are they seeing things with respect to some of the most foundational American advantages? And I think they would identify a small handful first, they would say, oh, the US has the best universities in the world, producing some of the best Talent in the world world. The Trump administration has gone war to war with many of those universities. That's a good thing from Beijing's perspective. The US Is able to attract the best talent, scientific and engineering talent, entrepreneurial talent, from around the world. No other country can do that the way the US Can. Oh, look, the Trump administration is putting up a not welcome sign. That's a good thing from Beijing's perspective. I mentioned the slashing of the research budgets for NIH and NSF and other entities that China looks at as being another massive strategic advantage for the United States and would say great, I'm glad the US Is reducing the resources that it's putting into maintaining its innovation edge over us. And of course then there are allies. And here China looks at America's alliance system, says we've got nothing like that, says if the US actually gathered with its allies, you're talking about a billion people, 60% of the world's GDP, an advanced technology and manufacturing ecosystem that even China at its scale can't compete with. And it was looking at that getting built painstakingly and systematically over the last few years. And now President Trump is taking steps actively to dismantle it. And in Europe they're saying let's have more Chinese investment. And in Canada they're flying over and talking about a new world order and cutting new trade deals. So. So the alliance system that shored up so much of America's inherent advantages vis a vis China, I think have been quite dramatically undermined. And the final point that I would make is that there are two quite rare commodities, attention and resources when it comes to long term strategic competition among great powers. President Trump's attention has been on the Western Hemisphere. It's been on Greenland, it hasn't been. And on the Indo Pacific, China notices that and feels it can act with a freer hand there. And similarly, when you think about our ability to resource a deterrence strategy on a military basis or an economic strategy in the Indo Pacific, President Trump is stretching the US Military thin in the Caribbean and now looking at another round of military action in the Middle east. And that is reducing the over overall footprint of the United States in the Asia Pacific, reducing the amount of resources being devoted to that region, and that plays to China's advantage as well. So when you add all of these things up, I think the net assessment of where the US is today versus where China is today, from one year ago, it seems like clear advantage China, and not just on tactical time bound issues, but on some of these elemental sources of American strength, strength, talent, attraction, basic science, research, universities, allies, and yes, frankly, the rule of law. And here, the erosion of those advantages, I think, are much harder to rebuild over time. And we're seeing that in living color, particularly on the alliance front, with the way in which our allies are saying we've entered a new world in which we see the United States basically the same way we see China. And this may be the biggest cost of all in just one year, in a second Trump administration.
- [73:01]
B
Tell you one other area. It's a very good list where China has sort of been on the march over the course of the last year. We've talked quite a lot about the Trump administration's decision to slash, maybe even zero out in many cases, US Foreign assistance, development programs, public health programs aimed at eradicating diseases that could end up and do end up in the United States. China has its own approach to international development. The signature element of that has been a program called Belt and Road that actually, over the course of recent years had been really struggling. It had generated a lot of negative attention inside countries because it had failed to deliver some of the high dollar amounts that had been promised. Some of the infrastructure projects, hospitals, transportation systems and other things had been very low quality. Labor had been mistreated if people inside these countries had been hired at all, as opposed to Chinese workers being brought in to construct these projects. And over the course of the last year, as the US has stepped back, Belt and Road spent more than $200 billion, which is a 75% increase from 2024 in Belt and Road spending, and has found, unsurprisingly in this vacuum that the United States has left a very fertile ground for continuing to push forward with these initiatives. So another way in which the Chinese have moved forward, and a mutual colleague of ours, Julian Goertz, who's a real China expert, directed my attention to this interview that the dean of the International Relations Institute at Tsinghua University in China recently gave to a website called Sinification, which sort of tracks debates in the discourse inside China on policy, on culture and, and what he is arguing, doing sort of a version of his own net assessment, but really just focused on the United States, is that we are transitioning from a democratic country to a more authoritarian country. He's not really being critical of that, by the way. He's aware of what sort of governments he lives under, that internationally the United States is shifting from being a republic to being much more of an empire with these quasi colonial policies. And he points to Greenland, and he points to Latin America that we treat countries much more. He doesn't say the way China does, but certainly the way I believe China does as opportunities for resource extraction and that many of our traditional friends, Europe and elsewhere, see this and no longer see us as like minded when it comes to how the world is organized. And so to me that is another way in which if you are the United States looking at how things have changed from 2024 through 2025 and into 2026, you have really ceded ground in terms of the erosion of this system that has led to our predominance now for 80 on years and that we are systematically contributing to dismantle over the course of the first year of the Trump administration.
- [76:04]
A
I noted that there's almost no better way to make sure you're keeping yourself honest in an assessment than looking at it from the other guy's perspective. And I think what you've just laid out in the Sign of Education piece, people should go take a look at that bracing reading for sure. And when I made my list of elements of the Net assessment last night, I had near the top of it the gutting of the US Development enterprise and the destruction and dismantlement of usaid. In getting carried away on my long list, I left that out. I'm glad that you brought it to the fore because I do think that's a really important, important one. I think we've run out of time to go into a deeper dive on a net assessment with Russia. Maybe we can save that for an episode we do on Ukraine in the coming weeks, but we should finish up with wrap. So John, do you have any coming attractions, anything that's on your radar screen that you think our listeners should be looking out for?
- [76:58]
B
We've mentioned a few sporting events on the horizon. The other significant event post Davos, which is going on this week and which mercifully neither of us is attending, but is the next big opportunity for the United States to sort of lay out its its worldview the way President Trump did is the Munich Security Conference, which is coming up in mid February, February 13th to 15th. By all accounts, JD Vance, who spoke there last year quite controversially, is going to be returning and giving the keynote U.S. address and given how much much President Trump's address today generated headlines and consternation and a lot of intense thought about what it all means. I suspect that will be another opportunity that people should look to. Anything on your list?
- [77:43]
A
The next deep SEQ model is supposed to be coming out in the next few weeks. They're really hyping it so I'll be interested to see what happens when Deep Seek. I believe it's version four lands and what that tells us about us China, AI competition. What are you recommending other people read?
- [78:02]
B
Sometimes in moments as just bizarre as the global moment that we are in fiction, even satire can be a better way to understand it than nonfiction or nonfiction podcasts. I'll recommend two novels. One is Our man in Havana by Graham Greene. The other is called Taylor of Panama by John Le Carre. They're both both Latin America focused, both, I think, quite satirical looks at the kind of operation the United States just conducted and the rationale for it. In Venezuela. They are not ripped from the headlines, they're actually decades old, many decades in the case of Graham Greene's novel, but I think hold up quite well in the current moment. And Taylor of Panama actually is a pretty good movie with Pierce Brosnan in it that came out subsequent to the book, so I'd recommend both of those.
- [78:52]
A
So interesting. I'm going to recommend two fiction books too, but not quite as on brand with the whole Latin America tie in as you've offered. My dad gave me Jaber Crow by Wendell Berry for Christmas and I just finished it and it's a remarkable book. It's about an orphan who becomes a barber of a fictional town, chronicles his observation of the town over decades. Really fundamentally, it's about finding meaning and belonging to a community and I think worth a read. And the other, I am not a science fiction guy, but I picked up this book called Project Hail Mary written by Andy Weir, who also wrote the Martian, which they made into a movie with Matt Damon. They're actually making this book into a movie with Ryan Gosling. It will take too long to explain the plot. I will just say it underlines the science in science fiction. There's a ton of science in it. It is is fascinating and totally worth people's time and attention. And with that, I think we can call it a day.
- [79:57]
B
Well, that's all for today. We'll be back next week with a new episode of the Long Game.
- [80:01]
A
In the meantime, please send us your questions and comments@long gameoxmedia.com and find us on substack@staytuned.substack.com the links are in the show Show Notes.
- [80:20]
B
That's it for this episode of the Long Game.
- [80:22]
A
If you like the show, please follow, Share with friends and leave a review. It really helps listeners find us for.
- [80:28]
B
Updates and more analysis in your inbox. Join the community@staytuned.substack.com the long game is.
- [80:35]
A
A Vox Media Podcast Network production Executive producer Tamara Sepper lead editorial producer Jennifer Indig deputy editor Celine Rohr senior producer.
- [80:45]
B
Matthew Billy video producers Nat Weiner and.
- [80:48]
A
Adam Harris supervising producer Jake Kaplan associate producer Claudia Hernandez marketing manager Leanna Greenway.
- [80:56]
B
Music is by Nat Wiener. We're your hosts, John Finer and Jake Sullivan.
- [81:01]
A
Thanks for listening.