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The Opinions
Is This MAGA Foreign Policy or Something Else Entirely?
00:42:36
M. Gessen and David French on why the ends do not justify the means in Venezuela.
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:47]
B
I'm Steve Stromberg, an editor for New York Times Opinion. I'm joined by opinion columnists Masha Gessen and David French.
- [00:55]
C
Hello.
- [00:55]
A
Hi, Masha and Steve, just a fair warning. I have got two wonderful grandkids visiting me today, so you might hear some little voices in the background during our discussion.
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B
I look forward to it. Masha. David, you both write about international law and justice and of course, about President Trump. David is also an Iraq War veteran and a former JAG officer. They've both written columns about the US Attack on Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York City to appear in court. In the weeks leading up to this Saturday's strike, many observers speculated that a major military action might be coming. The Trump administration had been blowing up suspected drug running boats off Venezuela's coast and massing military resources in the area. Briefly, in a sentence or two, what was your very first reaction to the news of the military action and capture of Maduro? David?
- [01:53]
A
You know, I would say the very first thought that came into my mind was the ends do not justify the means here. I'm very pleased to have Maduro gone from Venezuela. However, I'm not pleased in the way that it was done. And my concerns about the latter far outweigh my happiness or satisfaction about the former.
- [02:16]
B
Well, we'll, we'll definitely get into that. Masha, what did you think right after you heard about the strikes?
- [02:22]
C
Well, I'm impressed with how civilized David's first reaction to the news is. Mine was probably not fit for a family newspaper, but I agree. And I was looking at it partly through the eyes of a lot of Russian dissidents who I think in our dreams we see somebody swooping in and removing Putin. But not like this because, yeah, I agree the ends don't justify the means, and the means here are the means of really demolishing any semblance of hope for international law, for respect for norms, for a post World War II order that we hadn't still given up hope of creating.
- [03:09]
B
Well, let's get into some of that, David. How does this strike compare with previous US Military operations? And I'm interested specifically in how the Trump administration's justifications stack up relative to history, to international law, and simply to what countries should do, should have to do to justify military action.
- [03:29]
A
Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm not going to be one to sit here and defend all prior military actions before this one. There have been many lawless military actions, especially in Central and South America, over the many years of American history. But I would say even by the standards of some of our most brazen kinds of lawless military action, this one stands out. You know, when I talked about the ends don't justify the means, here I was talking an awful lot about the lawlessness of the action itself. So first, it's an aggressive war. It's an aggressive war waged in violation of, without legal justification for aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter that we're a party to. By the way, ever since the First World War, the Western powers have been trying to come to a world order or a world consensus against the notion of aggressive war without a direct attack on the United States or an act of collective self defense according to treaty, for example, going in and seizing the head of state with military force is an act of war. And when you look at the justifications, though, it begins to become even more disturbing because what they're looking back at is a historical record and they're relying a lot on the 1989 invasion of Panama. Right now that's a, a real problem for them for one reason and for us and the world order for another reason. So the problem for us as we're looking at it is really there's just no real comparison between the two in the sense of what were the events leading up to it. Right before the invasion of Panama, the Panamanian government declared a state of war against the US So that's a big difference. Number two, the Panamanian government had killed a marine, seriously injured another, had taken another into custody where they had brutally beaten him. So you had direct attacks on American military forces. You had not congressional authorization for war, but you had a bipartisan consensus here, you had some congressional action afterwards as well that essentially ratifies much of the President's action. That's very, very different from here. This is completely unilateral. Now, the Other thing that's a real problem, I think, for the nation going forward is, is the legal justification that the administration used in 89 had its own problems, and in 89 they used a Bill Barr legal opinion to justify the actions in Panama that essentially said when there has been an indictment of a foreign person, like in that case Manuel Noriega, in this case Maduro, then there's gonna be a way in which American law enforcement can then execute that indictment, perhaps with the assistance of the American military. Now, why is this such a problem? What a short circuit of the entire process of declaring war. We don't need an authorization for the use of military force against Saddam Hussein. Let's just indict him for trying to kill George H.W. bush and then use the 101st Airborne and 1st Marines to protect the FBI when they arrest him. No, that's absurd. That's a self reinforcing bootstrapping of war, making power into the executive at the expense of the Constitution. So there are big differences with previous American military engagements and also the legal justifications for past American military engagements as being bootstrapped into this one or being brought into this one in a way that's extremely dangerous, sort of for the future of separation of powers and accountability of the executive.
- [07:07]
B
So you, you don't buy the argument that this is not in fact a military action, but actually something more like a law enforcement action?
- [07:15]
A
Totally absurd. It's just totally absurd. It doesn't pass the straight face test. If you use the US Military to enter into a foreign capital and seize the head of state, I don't care if you have a couple of FBI agents with you. This is an active war. Imagine if you had an indictment of Donald Trump for, say, some sort of financial crime in the United Kingdom or France or whatever, and they execute a raid in the White House with air support. Would we sit there and go, what a spectacular police operation that was just executed? No, everyone would know that was a brazen act of war. There's nothing civilian about this, despite the fig leaf of the FBI presence in the actual attack.
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B
Now, Masha, you've observed Vladimir Putin as closely as anyone. You mentioned him a little bit earlier in this podcast. What is he thinking right now?
- [08:15]
C
Well, let me just pick up where David left off and then I'll go to Putin. I think this is one of those times that the Trump administration has sort of done something where an increase in quantity really creates an entirely new quality of phenomenon. Right. Things that are somewhat like this invasion of Venezuela have happened before, right? The United States has gone to war without the authorization of the United Nations. The United States has engaged in regime change. Presidents have carried out strikes on foreign countries without briefing Congress. But the combination of all of that, the scale of all of that, the amount of time that has now passed without Congress still being briefed. Right. We're taping this on Monday morning. And from what I understand, there still hasn't been a briefing for Congress and we're two days out from the operation. And then the rhetorical framing of it, the sort of Trump standing in front of reporters and repeating in various ways we're going to run that country, all of that just puts us in an entirely different kind of territory. And I think terrifying. And as for Putin, I think that early on Saturday there were some commentators who sort of said, oh, Putin is probably upset because Maduro was his ally. Venezuela has been historically an ally of Russia. But I think actually this operation comports with Putin's worldview perfectly. He views the world as a place that some very powerful men can carve up. They can make backroom deals and they can decide where their spheres of influence are. It's sort of the other post World War II order. It's not the legal order, the liberal order that we usually refer to. It's not rice based. It's not human rights based. It's men sitting around in Yalta saying, you take that and we'll leave you alone and we'll take this. And this is exactly what Putin has been advancing in his speeches, in his articles and in his actions for more than a decade. Right. So to him, this is a signal that his hands are untied in Europe.
- [10:40]
B
And let's dig a little bit deeper on that and the broader implications. And Yalta, of course, being the site of a summit close to the end of World War II in which the major allied powers determined the post war territorial order in Europe. I'm reminded of a 2012 presidential debate in which President Obama criticized Mitt Romney for adopting the foreign policies of the 1980s. Says something like the 1980s are calling they want the foreign policy back. Trump is reaching back to something more like 1908, maybe 1823. Well, speaking of that, on Saturday, he invoked the Don Row doctrine, which seems to envision splitting the world into three major spheres of influence, led by the United States and Russia and China. That gives off sort of a Cold War vibe. Trump's desire to dominate areas physically close to the United States reflects even older thinking. Right. He seems we did, we invaded Iraq, and the problem was that was 10,000 miles away, or as this is in our backyard, he seemed to say on Saturday. So does any of this make sense in the world of the Internet and B21 bombers rather than, you know, steamships and cavalry charges? David, why don't we start with you?
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A
It's, you know, when you said the 80s called, and in the case of Trump, I was, you know, we all have our different date range. I was thinking 1880s and sort of the gunboat diplomacy of the Gilded Age. And, you know, look, I don't necessarily think that technology is changing that dynamic as much as technology might be changing the consequences of conflict the way it does so often. You know, the industrial Revolution made conflict so much more deadly. The nuclear age can make it even more deadly still. But when Masha talks about this, this carving up of the world, I think that is really the key insight here. Because let's go back and let's look at why do we have this, quote, much maligned world order to begin with? And the reason why we have this much maligned world order to begin with is the architects of it. Almost all of them had been through two world wars by that point. You know, World War I was so catastrophic, it was called the War to End all wars. And it had roughly 16, 17, 18 million people who died in it. Well, the structures and institutions designed to prevent a World War II failed utterly and largely because we didn't participate in them. And so then we had a World War II that was even worse than World War I, beyond human imagination, how bad it was. And so after World War II, we try again. We try again with what are the institutions that we can create that can prevent a World War iii. And that's the sort of the central animating, virtuous purpose of, say, the United Nations. But this time we participated. We participated with the other four victorious powers creating a UN Security Council. And you can barely hold this together with three of the five permanent members largely complying with the laws of war and sort of the rules of international engagement, so long as of the three, one of them is the United States of America. You can deter China, you can deter Russia, although we've had a failure of deterrence in Ukraine. Of course there's a way to deter. But if you take the United States and pull it out of the intended way the UN is supposed to function, the way the international institutions are supposed to function, and put it right beside Russia and China, and believing not in the post World War II order, but believing in spheres of influence and great power, competition More of like a Pre World War I order, then the whole thing cannot be sustained. It will collapse. And a lot of people will look at this post World War II order and say, I'm too Pollyanna ish about it. I look at it at rose colored glasses. It's failed in many ways. Yes, it has. There has been aggressive war. Millions of people have died in armed conflict since World War II. But what it has been very good at is then it's accomplishing its central purpose, which is preventing that global total war that we experienced two times in the previous century. And if you think you can just yank the US out of it, you think we can Go back to 19th century Gunboat diplomacy and spheres of influence, which by the way, it's never so neat that the great powers all agree on what their spheres are and harmoniously go about their business in their respective spheres. That is not the way this works. And that if you look at it from that standpoint of what was it designed to do? What has it done, as imperfect as it's been, it's blocked, it's stopped, it's prevented the nightmare. And when we mess with the systems that have prevented the nightmare, we risk the nightmare. And that's what makes me so concerned about where we are.
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B
You know, when we talk about the international order, the post World War II order, very often the criticism and what comes to mind is about the economic order that was built, but in many ways the economic order, you know, the imf, World bank, other institutions, all of that was ancillary in service of the primary mission that you describe, which was preventing another World War I, preventing another World War II, ending the Great power competition that resulted in these human catastrophes. We have a war on the ground right now in Europe, in Ukraine. Masha, I'm wondering, you know, they're very different situations, Venezuela and Ukraine, but I do wonder how you see this action in Venezuela interacting with the ongoing war in Ukraine.
- [16:33]
C
So they're different, but they're also similar. And I think it's actually a good moment to focus on the similarities. Right. Obviously the difference is that in one case, the United States went in, removed a dictator who had been holding on for to power by falsifying elections. That's Maduro. In the other situation, Putin went in as an act of aggression to try to remove a legitimate, democratically elected president in Ukraine. But the design of those missions was remarkably similar. What Putin envisioned was that he was going to bomb Kyiv, swoop in, remove Zelensky, and using the rhetorical cover of Liberating the people of Ukraine, Ukraine of repairing infrastructure that had fallen into disrepair. I mean, you could almost word for word use Trump's press conference after the Saturday operation to write what Putin imagined he would be saying if his initial military foray into Ukraine hadn't failed. So I think that similarity is super important to keep in mind as we analyze sort of what has happened to the world that we live in. And now, four years into the war in Ukraine, Trump has been pressuring Ukraine to agree to a poor peace, a peace that would be hugely disadvantageous to Ukraine, but would give him a feather in his cap and would maybe get him finally the Nobel Peace Prize that he dreams of. And now the message that Venezuela sends, combined with this pressure that he's been exerting on Ukraine, is to the rest of Europe, which is that the rest of Europe is left alone with Russian aggression. And Putin has made it very clear that he's not going to stop at Ukraine and Russian hybrid warfare in Europe, which I think we're not really aware of in this country. You know, that's been raging for years and has really amped up over the last year. And that includes political meddling, sabotage acts of terrorism, and jamming radio frequencies in European airports. That has become almost routine.
- [19:00]
B
So let's shift focus for a minute. Let's look at how people are responding in the United States. David, the Venezuela attack violated one of Trump's most consistent campaign promises. And all three of his presidential races, he promised to end American interventionism abroad. It was crystal clear. He's now saying he will run Venezuela until a proper transition can take place. Not really defined what that is. He has threatened to intervene in Iran if peaceful protesters are killed. He keeps talking about Greenland. So this has riled people such as former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's criticized Trump and his focus on foreign policy rather than on domestic matters. How, if at all, does his flexing of American power abroad fit into MAGA's America first ethos? Can Trump defend or explain his actions to the MAGA base in a way that will satisfy his supporters?
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A
Easily, easily on this, because this is not their first rodeo when it comes to foreign intervention. I mean, the, the bottom line is, is that I believe a lot of maga's rhetoric about war has been much more a matter of internal Republican politics than it has been sort of deep seated principle. I do think that there are some people in the Republican coalition who are old school, longtime Patrick Buchanan types who might have some discomfort with this. But 99% of MAGA is not old school, paleo conservative, Patrick Buchanan types. MAGA truly is a relatively new phenomenon that is much more centered around the personal success of Donald Trump than it is around a particular ideology. And so had this mission failed, had a helicopter, say, been shot down and American soldiers had been killed, and it turned into like a desert one type fiasco like Jimmy Carter had in the, in the sands of Iran, that, that there might have been some rumblings, but this comes across as a big Trump win. And just to sort of like test out this hypothesis, this is not going to be an issue at all. And maga, I did kind of a perusal very, very late last night through some of the Twitter feeds of some of the people who've been most derived MAGA figures, who'd been most derisive and mocking towards people like me, for example, Reagan, Bush era conservatives. And I found them being, yes, very mocking and derisive. But against anyone who is criticizing the operation in Venezuela, this is not the Epstein files, and not even the Epstein files has really driven a true wedge between Trump and maga. They have opened some fissures, some very slight cracks. But this is not something that really hits at core, core convictions of some key members of the coalition. No, no, no, this is something else. The foreign policy part of the MAGA fight has not been a grassroots issue. So much of it's been a grass tips or grass tops issue amongst competing factions, ideological factions within the Republican Party who really don't have a lot of hold or purchase over sort of the populist MAGA movement itself. But I do think the instant something like this goes poorly for Trump, where he isn't seen as having accomplished something remarkable. And that military operation does appear to have been brilliantly executed. But that allowed Trump to adopt this victorious posture, which I think ultimately his base loves more than any given kind of ideology.
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B
Masha, how do you see this? Is MAGA just a Trump personality cult? They'll be happy as long as he seems successful? Or is it more complicated than that?
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C
Yes, it is just a Trump personality cult. Also, I think Trump is either discovering or remembering what other autocrats have known for a long time, that there's no easier way to build greatness. I'm using that in air quotes. Than to wage imperial wars. It's much harder to build greatness by making people's lives better at home. Trump has not been very good at that. But to project greatness by taking over neighboring countries, well, that trick is as old as autocracy itself. And it usually works. It works Particularly well in a fractured media universe like the one that we live in now. David is right that Trump is lucky to some extent in that this operation did go extremely well. To the extent that we can evaluate the military operation, what's going to happen on the ground in Venezuela, we have no idea. And nobody seems to have given that any thought. But even if it hadn't, the MAGA media universe is going to project that very far away place and events that are happening outside of anybody's field of vision as further proof of Trump's greatness.
- [24:03]
B
It does interest me that Stephen Miller, who's a senior Trump aide and immigration hardliner, early MAGA believer, somebody who actually really does care about specific outcomes, he reportedly favored the Venezuela attack, and I think he and folks like him might care because they want Venezuelan migrants to leave the United States and to prevent more from trying to come here. You know, do you think that is sort of enough to square the Venezuela attack with America First? What, what kinds of justifications are they going to come up with to sell this?
- [24:36]
A
You know, I think it's very important to understand that when Trump is saying America first and when this Trump movement is saying America first, it is now not something. We cannot think of it as isolationist. That is not what it is. It is spheres of influence. That's the way that we need to think about the Trump mindset right now. And so America first means just America runs its sphere of influence. This is the main consideration. If American national interests dictate that, say, Maduro needs to go, then unlike, say, previous administrations, which would say, well, Maduro needs to go, but we need to do this in a lawful way, that in that circumstance, what we have to do is exercise diplomatic economic pressure to achieve national interests. Well, the way the Trump administration views it is much more like Carl von Clausewitz. War is an extension of policy by other means. So if our persuasion fails, if our attempted diplomacy or economic pressure fails, well, then that's reason enough for war in the American sphere of influence. And you really began to see this from the first hours of the second Trump term, when Trump began to bully Canada and Mexico. At that point, it should have just really locked in. Oh, Canada and Mexico are like Trump's Ukraine. They're nations in our sphere of influence that we, as the big boy in the block, should be able to dictate terms to, to create economic arrangements that are more favorable to us. And their national interests don't matter at all. That's what America first is in this second Trump term. It is not Something that is truly isolationist. It's much more this quote, unquote, Don Rowe doctrine. And if anyone doubts this, I mean, look at the list, the laundry list of countries that he's saying need to have some sort of American intervention. He's talked about Colombia, he keeps talking about annexing Greenland. And at this point, I'm just not even chuckling about it anymore. Like, it sounded so weird and fantastical, but the guy won't let this go. And I still don't think it will happen. But it's so consequentially awful, and Trump is so erratic and so demonstrably willing to just act on his own authority, period, end of discussion, that I'm now worried that he might conceivably do something dangerous in Greenland. And in fact, the Danish government is concerned enough about it that where they recently put out a very clear public statement. And if you want to talk about something that would absolutely wreck NATO to its core, its foundation, it would be seizing the territory of a NATO country which could arguably allow that country to invoke Article 5 against us. Just imagine that for half a second. And so, you know, we're in a world right now where America first means America. American interests only matter in this sphere of influence. And he will use force liberally, liberally, to accomplish what he believes are American interests on his own authority, on his own accord. And this creates tension abroad. And when you engage in serial military activities without creating any kinds of public consensus at home, it creates tension at home. There hasn't been the kind of rally around the flag effect, at least that we've seen yet that has happened with Trump after the Venezuela operation that we've seen happen after many other military operations. I think part of it is he didn't prep the American public for it. He didn't sell it to the American public. He just did it. And so I think when you're putting all these things together, America first isn't isolationist. It's fears of influence based. And it's very, very, very aggressive. In this Trump second term.
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B
Spheres of influence, I guess, is the, the phrase of the month, maybe the phrase of our future. On that, yes, Trump is claiming some particular interest rights in the Western Hemisphere that was mapped out in the national security strategy that his administration recently released. But he also, as we mentioned before, he struck Iran in concert with Israel. He has tried to play peacemaker in Gaza, in Ukraine. So is spheres of influence even the best way to think about it? Is it that we have our backyard where we have a particularly Strong interest, but we really have interests everywhere that the United States can pursue and defend. How do you see this, Masha?
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C
Yeah. I'm going to mount an argument against using the term spheres of influence, because fears of influence generally implies using soft power and the threat of hard power to exert influence. That's not what we're seeing. We're seeing colonization of an entire country that's beyond spheres of influence. Right. And we need some other term for it. Probably something better than the Don Row doctrine, but at least I would favor that because it's new. And one thing that I want to add sort of to thinking through how Trump views all of this and how Malga views this, Trump is a president who watches himself on television and who has a remarkably good memory for some things. And I think that some things that he remembers are, during his first term, dropping the mother of all bombs for the first time and suddenly getting a lot of television buy in, even from the traditional liberal talking heads, and seeing that that was a way to assert himself as being presidential. Something else that he's clearly fixated on with very good reason is the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan during the Biden administration. And I think that when he compares the television images of the extraction of Maduro to the television coverage of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that inspires him to do more stuff like this. So rather than think about what is in American interest in any way that a Steve Miller might think about it, or even the. The totally unhinged national security strategy might articulate it, think about the way that he imagines the television picture, right? What's going to look great?
- [31:22]
B
That's, I think, an apt way to think about a lot of his psychology. He is, of course, a cable news addict, famously so. So how is this going to play short term, long term, across America? Successful military operations, and this one was really successful, generally attract public support. Could the American public see some logic in directing Venezuela remotely through coercion backed up by air and sea power?
- [31:52]
A
I think the actual realistic answer about American public opinion is that nobody is going to be talking about this very much, literally in days, not weeks, in days, if nothing else happens. So if they're. Even if there's some violence or chaos on the streets in Venezuela, people will check out from this. Why? Because Americans aren't there and their Americans aren't being harmed by it. And so there's a super long history of American intervention in South America. You know, this gun, the gunboat diplomacy era. There were serial inventions, interventions into Central and South America that didn't leave much of an imprint on American politics at home or American public opinion at home compared to other kinds of wars and conflicts. What American presidents do in Central and South America tends not to really matter to American public opinion unless there is a. It creates a crisis at home. So presidents tend to have this free hand, and that then allows them to do things like Trump did and create an environment in Central and South America that is actually ultimately ends up to be deeply harmful for the entire region. So the region itself struggles and suffers because of serial American engagement, serial American involvement, but the American people are largely checked out of it. And to me, that creates a particularly dangerous kind of situation. You can create the conditions for a foreign policy disaster largely immune from any kind of real public scrutiny and accountability. In the meantime, I know there's a lot of interest in this right now, but again, unless there's a big crisis, that will fade. And that gives Trump a lot of room to maneuver and to put us into a position that could get very dark very fast. So Trump's got a free hand for now, but he's unleashing chaotic forces. And if those chaotic forces create consequences during this term, he'll feel it. But I.
- [33:56]
C
And that will mean starting new wars, right?
- [33:59]
A
Potentially. Potentially.
- [34:01]
B
So I'm sorry, elaborate on that, Masha, if this becomes a crisis, he's going to be, what, invading, decapitating the regime in Havana. What's your prediction there?
- [34:14]
C
Well, you know, Steve, that we all know better than to make predictions. So I'm not going to name countries, but I'm gonna say that the autocratic playbook is distract from bad wars with new, better wars, because the television effect of Venezuela is going to be short lived. And David is absolutely right. Americans are going to stop thinking about Venezuela and stop talking about it in a matter of days. And so to have another hit, Trump is going to want to have another hit.
- [34:49]
B
David, you're nodding your head. Anything you'd add there?
- [34:52]
A
Yeah, and I love Masha's formulation of playbook. Reading a playbook versus necessarily forming a prediction. The playbook here is historically quite clear, and with Trump, it's so far been clear. Authoritarian personalities, when they face military adversity, do not tend to sort of back away like somebody's touched a hot stove. They tend to double down. Because as Masha said, that is the way to glory. That is the quickest way to truly achieve, at least in their own mind, this stature, this power, this historical weight is accomplished through armed conflict. And one thing that we've seen is that Trump I think, and this is something that makes me very nervous. Trump, I think, believes he's hacked this system, that he's figured out how to use force in a way that Bush and Obama and Clinton and Bush before him and Reagan just didn't know. And that was never put an actual boot on the ground. Or if you do do it in such a way that the risk is minimal, and instead hammer, hit hard and leave and end it. Well, there's a reason why that has not been the pattern or practice of previous presidents who want to create enduring change, because it doesn't work. It can create some specific real world outcomes. When a Soleimani was killed in a strike, for example, that was a very significant real world outcome. But as a general matter, and of course, seizing Maduro is a very significant real world outcome. But a lot of those things, in the absence of actual real long term investment in a place and a region, et cetera, end up over time being little more than cosmetic or window dressing kinds of operations. They don't actually have an enduring impact. And so what happens is that creates more reason for more conflict in the future, because you haven't actually truly transform things on the ground. You just get one quick hit and another quick hit and another quick hit. But each one has risk, each one of these things. There is no such thing as having hacked war. And so this is what concerns me. You have a person who is unleashing forces, historical forces, that are not in his control, without any sense that he knows that he's doing this, and without any sense that he can handle the knock on effects of what he's unleashing. We have these rules and these international laws for very, very good reasons. They're not just dreamed up by a bunch of people around a conference table or trying to oppress America. No, that's a lot of hard earned wisdom and experience poured into these laws and rules and just disregarding them is going to unleash forces beyond Trump's control.
- [37:41]
B
And on your point about hacking the system, I think another element of his thinking is that, oh, those fools who came before me cared about things like human rights and democracy, and we will be much smarter in simply absorbing the current government, the preexisting government and its structures, no matter, you know, who. Who's in charge. It's a little bit more Kissingerian. Okay, let's wrap up. What specifically will each of you be watching over the next few days, weeks, months? Let's start with Masha.
- [38:16]
C
I don't know about watching, but I'll tell You what I've been thinking about and what I think we haven't quite touched on, which is I've been working on this series on international justice for the last few months based on the premise that we're at a real crisis point in international justice. Right. On the one hand, there's Ukraine, and there was real hope of seeing the multilateral structures of international injustice really kick into action because there was such robust consensus on what was happening in Ukraine, and then there was Gaza, and that consensus shattered. And so I've been sort of traveling around and talking to different people and covering different processes, and what has just happened, I think has really shattered an 80 year old hope for a world order that's not only intended to prevent global war, which David has talked about, and he's absolutely right, but it's also a fundamentally humanistic project. It's a project based on affirming the value of human life, on affirming the value of human dignity. And that's why it includes protections from war crimes, protections from civilian casualties, protections for asylum seekers. Right. All of that is part of our at least intended international order. And the Trump administration has been waging an attack on these multilateral structures since the beginning. Well, since really his first term, but really in just an all out way since the beginning of his second term. And this extraction of Madura under the COVID the rhetorical cover of pursuing justice is possibly a fatal blow to this hope of creating international justice.
- [40:12]
A
You know, what I'm looking for is, and what I'm concerned about is something we've been talking about kind of weaving throughout, which is what do Trump and his team mean when they sort of think about making America great again? Are they thinking about peace and prosperity or are they thinking about power and majesty? And I think it's becoming pretty clear that they are thinking more about power and majesty. And one of the reasons why I raise that is, again, if you look at some of that rhetoric from Stephen Miller, who he looks back at the Post World War II era as a time where essentially the Western world gave away its majesty and might well, wait a minute. The Western world post World War II has reached heights of prosperity and peace internally on the European continent, et cetera, that are unprecedented in world history and without compare in European history. No, there's not the same power and majesty, but there's infinitely greater peace and prosperity and critically, justice than there was into the colonial structure. But that is not what they're after. That is not the fundamental ultimate motivation. So we're talking about a movement very much animated by grandeur, by power, by majesty, by might. And when you understand that, you can begin to see sort of the scale and the dimension of the risks that we're facing going forward.
- [41:43]
B
David French, Masha Gessen, thank you for being here today.
- [41:47]
A
Thank you so much.
- [41:48]
C
Thank you, Steve.
- [42:10]
A
If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba, Christina Samulewski and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering, mixing and original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Aman Sahota. The Fact Check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.