
Eurasia consultancy sees US political revolution as top risk for 2026
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Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I'm Gideon Rahman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week's podcast is about Venezuela. My guest is Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, one of the world's leading political risk consultancies. The US has toppled the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and brought him to New York for trial. But what comes next for Venezuela, Latin America and the wider world? This was one of the most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history. Donald Trump was in triumphal mood after the successful American military operation that ousted Nicolas Maduro. But many in the region, and even some American allies are deeply concerned, particularly because the US has also threatened to take action in other countries and territories in the Western Hemisphere, such as Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and even Greenland. Just before the Venezuela operation, the Eurasia Group issued its list of the top 10 risks for 2026. Number three was the Dunro Doctrine, the term used for Donald Trump's ambitions for US Dominance of the Western Hemisphere. So I began my conversation with Ian Bremmer by asking him how he expects the doctrine to develop over the coming year.
C
Well, let's say that Venezuela is happening, right? It's the same regime as it was. It's not regime change, it's regime roulette. They spin the wheel and they see which new folks pop up, but all part of the same regime. And Trump has made very clear he's keeping all the military in the region and very easily used and deployed, and they're prepared to use and deploy it if the Venezuelan government does not behave on a series of different issues the way that the Trump administration expects them to on economics, on security, on drugs, and maybe even on the way they treat the Venezuelan people. We shall see. But all of that is a lot hairier in terms of America's diplomatic capabilities than America's military capabilities, which were showed off and six months of planning and operational professionalism and they executed incredibly well on that. But of course, the most important part of Venezuela being Done is that Trump thinks a big part of Venezuela is done because he's now removed Maduro from, brought him to New York to face justice. And so he's looking around saying, okay, where else can I have a big headline success?
B
Yes, and we'll talk about that and the possibility that he'll do other things in Latin America in a second. But just sticking with Venezuela. I mean, you ended the section on the Dunro Doctrine talking about the risk of unintended consequences. And Trump and a lot of the people around him had initially positioned themselves as anti war, anti intervention because they said they'd learned the lessons of previous American interventions. Do you think the risks of this going wrong are quite high?
C
I think the risks of things going wrong are quite high in Venezuela. I'm not sure how much blowback those risks reflect on Trump in the United States because he's not looking at a large deployment of American troops and make Marco Rubio a Paul Bremer style pro consul or viceroy in Venezuela. So his interest in having American fingerprints and therefore costs associated with all of this, very, very low. The appetite is low. In fact, one of the reasons that he's talking about the United States taking the oil is very similar to the way he pressed Zelensky for critical minerals on Ukraine. Even though, Gideon, you and I both know that none of that is going to happen and is going to lead to money for years and years, if ever, well beyond Trump's presidency. And that's because Trump wants to tell the American people, no American lives are at risk, no American taxpayer dollars are being spent. And so if it turned out that things got really hairy in Venezuela and troops were needed, I think that Trump would probably go the mercenary route. I don't think he'd want American troops in harm's way. That really matters to him. So plenty of things can go wrong in Venezuela. You could easily have a very chaotic environment with continued drug export and lots of human rights depredations across the country. Lot of chaos. But that's very different from what we've seen in Iraq or Afghanistan over the past years. And of course, Venezuela is also a different country. We don't have the sectarian divides. They have a recent memory of democracy. There are a lot of educated Venezuelans and in the diaspora living in exile in the US In Colombia and other places who would love to go back. So I do think there is actually also an upside for Venezuela, and it's just way too soon to tell how successful things are going to be for them. But for the United States. I think Trump is trying hard to show that Maduro being taken out is the win and everything else is kind of gravy.
B
And indeed, he was not only keen to claim the win, he and Rubio began to talk about doing other things in Latin America in pursuit of the.
C
Doctrine which they embraced, the Donroe doctrine, they have now embraced publicly in the last 48 hours.
B
Yeah, absolutely. And they're talking about Cuba, they're talking about Colombia, maybe strikes against cartels in Mexico and Greenland, we'll come to in a moment. But of the Latin American targets, what do you think is plausible?
C
So a couple ways to talk about that. First, I think the most likely near term thing we will see beyond Venezuela, which is nowhere close to done, is military strikes targeted on cartels and drug infrastructure in Colombia. Petro is despised by Trump, but there's an election coming up in a few months and he's going to be out and the new president will almost certainly be aligned with Trump. So I don't think the impact of those strikes is significant. Even though they're very likely, they'll make headlines and show that Trump can deploy the military all over his backyard and no one can do anything about it. Mexico is much, much lower likelihood, would be much higher risk if it happens. Now, here you have a government that has actually worked very intelligently to keep Trump onside, Shane Bomb and her cabinet. And they're quite competent, understand that they, they have nowhere to go but the United States. They don't have a China card to play, a Europe card, a Latin America card. It's all about keeping relations with the United States comfortable and stable, especially as their economy is not performing extremely well right now. And they've done a lot, they've done a lot in policing the border, they've done a lot in going after fentanyl, and they've done a lot in also being transparent about their efforts and asking for American help and sharing intelligence and the rest of the. So much so that Stephen Miller, who in the initial months of the Trump administration had been one of the champions internally for unilateral American strikes against Mexican drug cartels, is now saying, you know, the Mexicans are cooperating so much, maybe we don't need to go in ourselves. So I've spoken a lot to the Mexican government. They are extremely aware of this. They understand that if they don't deliver spectacular wins on these topics, they that the United States is likely to intervene and that an intervention against Mexican sovereignty is a huge risk for them. It's a clear Red line. It would undermine Shane Bomb spectacularly and it would force her to respond in a way that on Venezuela, she's not aligned with what the US Is doing, but she doesn't have to do much other than make a statement, couple votes in the General assembly, that kind of thing. But if this were to happen, and again, I think it's unlikely, we be a huge problem. Nicaragua and Cuba, of course, are the ultimate goals for Marco Rubio, Cuba in particular. And there is no plan. And it will take them time to put a plan together. But he wants the end of this regime. I think the thing we need to watch most closely in the near term is what happens to Mexican oil exports to Cuba. Venezuelan oil exports, of course, are getting shut down, but actually, before the Maduro operation, Mexico was exporting more oil to Cuba than Venezuela was. And so I want to know what is Trump and Rubio, what are they going to say to the Mexican government about that oil export? Are they going to put significant pressure which will work to cut off the Cubans because the Cuban economy is performing badly and could well collapse? And I think that that is the more likely near term path of decision making for the Trump administration than the idea that they're going to draw up military operations against the Cuban.
B
Of course, if you get a collapse of the Cuban economy or further chaos in Venezuela, surely you'll get a lot more migrants.
C
That is absolutely correct. And that has been a debate between Rubio and Miller on Venezuela. Initially, Miller's perspective was shouldn't invade Venezuela because you could end up with a lot more migrants and has already produced 8 million of them, though most of them not coming to the United States. But eventually Miller got to the decision that nothing would be worse than Maduro. You couldn't have a worse outcome. Even chaos would be better than Maduro. So he got there. And you know, another thing that I should mention here, which I'm kind of intimating, but I'll state directly, is that on these decisions, a lot of the day to day has been internal sparring among a few advisers, and not all about Trump saying, here's how I think you should respond to that. It's been Ratcliffe, CIA, it's been Miller, it's been Rubio and a few other actors on the sidelines. So I do think when we're talking about these operations for Cuba, as well as what the next steps over the months in Venezuela is going to be, it's not just about watching what Trump is going to say.
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B
Of course, the thing that's making the headlines on this side of the Atlantic are the increasingly explicit, can I say, threats to Greenland, that the US Wants to take it over. How seriously do you take it?
C
It is by far the stupidest set of headlines that I have witnessed in geopolitics in the course of the Trump administration. Because, of course, any national security interest that the Americans want addressed, they could have addressed by engaging with Denmark, which Trump has not been doing, if they wanted more troops. And of course, the Americans have dramatically reduced the number of troops in Greenland. All they need do is ask if they wanted listening stations for intelligence. Same, they want to give Elon Musk a launchpad for Space X. No problem. Right. And the Danes have made that very clear to the U.S. but Trump has decided that he wants this territory to be sovereign part of us. He's decided it. And I cannot for the life of me understand what the national interest of the US Is in demanding that. I think the only way I can describe it is, is that there is a very significant gap between President Trump's personal interests and the interests of the United States as a country, and that he is acting on the former and has expressly told his advisers, I want you to draw up a plan that gets me Greenland. And they are now doing that. We're not talking about a military invasion. And this is, of course, what makes it very hard for the Europeans to respond to. I'm glad that the Europeans are finally taking this seriously. They were not taking it seriously enough over the past months, in my view. Venezuela certainly sharpened the mind, but it's obvious that if the Americans send in the airborne, that NATO is over in the same way. Gideon, as it's obvious, and you and I have talked about this for many years, if the Russians were to send tanks into the Baltics, it's obvious that NATO would be at war with Russia. But that's not what the Americans are going to do. They're not going to make it easy. This is all about asymmetric efforts to take Greenland. It's about carrots and sticks with the Greenlanders directly. It's overt and covert operations. It's economic, diplomatic information. It's public sector and private sector, friends of the family, all of that sort of thing. Right. And that's a lot harder for the Danes to respond to individually, for the Europeans to respond to collectively.
B
So you think that the talk of military action, which they have said they're not ruling out, is a form of psychological warfare, then pressure, rather than a real plan?
C
I think it's incoherence. You know, when Trump was talking about Canada as the 51st state, the media was asking the same questions, and Trump was being cute about it. And then Trump finally ruled out the military option. Marco Rubio has essentially ruled out the military option, and he is not just Secretary of State, but also National Security adviser. And he also is kind of at peak, Marco, right now, given what he just orchestrated on Venezuela. But you've had Stephen Miller and you've had Katherine Levitt come out and offer, let's say, more ambiguous discussions of how everything should be on the table. I don't think that this is a threat. I think it's a distraction.
B
Yeah, but one of the points you make, I think the fourth risk in your report is European weakness. So Europe, in many ways, is in disarray. And therefore, it seems to me, I mean, if your analysis is right, and I think I broadly agree, is very badly placed to respond coherently or intelligently to what Trump is doing on Greenland.
C
That's right. China's very well placed. Europe is particularly badly placed. I mean, if you wanted to put them on a spectrum. You know, Maduro thought that Trump was bluffing, but he had no friends that he could count on and no particular power. And Trump took him out. And Xi Jinping, he didn't bend the knee. He gave back as good as he got on critical minerals, on tariffs, and Trump had to back down. The problem is that from Trump's perspective, if the Europeans want to be able to defend themselves, they're going to need to convince President Trump that they have the capacity to cause real damage to Trump if he takes actions that the Europeans find unacceptable. And they have to be credible in what those threats look like and their willingness to implement on them. And so far, the Europeans have fallen far, far short of that, not least because Europe's most powerful countries have governments and leadership today in quite a bit of disarray, something you know very, very well.
B
Yeah, and I think also that, I mean, you said earlier if they were to do an aggressive action to basically annex Greenland, NATO would be over. And for Europeans, that's almost unimaginable. I mean, they may start having to imagine what that would mean and how they would respond, but doesn't seem to Me, they've really begun that process.
C
Well, the Europeans have for the last 20 years refused to countenance the possibility that we were moving away from a US led global order. I mean, when I wrote about the GZero World in 2012 and you and I knew each other back then, I would argue that European leaders didn't believe me, didn't accept it. They thought the US Would remain indispensable, would remain committed, committed to the architecture of free trade, committed to the architecture of collective security, committed to rule of law, committed to U. S Led multilateral institutions that they had created, committed even to the promotion of democracy, however occasionally badly implemented on and hypocritical. And they were wrong about all of those things. Kind of in a similar way to the Americans being wrong that integrating China was going to lead the Chinese to become American and change their political and economic system to be more like ours. The Europeans were desperately wrong about this and they needed to have been right and started investing on being right decades ago. So I do think that the European leaders that I speak with now, and you speak with now, I do think that they understand the analytic frame of the United States and they should understand that this isn't just Trump. Trump is a symptom, He's a beneficiary, he's an accelerant, but he's not the cause. I think they mostly understand that too, but my God, they are late to get to that understanding.
B
Indeed. Although interestingly, despite the power of the United States and the fact that the Americas are quaking, Europe is quaking. Your biggest political risk from the year we just started is the United States itself. I mean, American politics. Why is that? And can you spell out what the risks are?
C
It is the number one risk because we tabulate these in terms of likelihood, imminence and impact. And if the United States is trying to fundamentally and structurally change its own political system and the US Is by far the most powerful country in the world, it is hard for that not to be the number one risk. And that is what's happening. Trump is convinced and his administration agrees and his supporters are following that, that the Democrats under Biden weaponize the political system against Trump, leading to a unprecedented two impeachments, felony charges and convictions, and sadly precedented a near assassination. And so Trump believes that it is utterly urgent for him to, in response, weaponize the American political system against them, to politicize the power ministries, the Department of Justice, the FBI, to ensure the administrative state is loyal singularly to him and to end the checks and balances on the political executive. And as you see, in all of the different actions that Trump has taken to erode the norms of constraints on the American presidency and on the actual hard legal constraints of the American presidency, they are, in the first year, unprecedented in the first year, far greater than any observer had expected. And the pushback is significantly weaker than observers had expected. So we are firmly in political revolution territory. The question is, to what degree is Trump likely to succeed? And I am skeptical on that front. I think he will fail. I wish I were more confident of that. But for 2026, it's the process, the fight, the further erosion and breaking of, of political institutions and norms that is going to drive the principal risk.
B
Just briefly, though, could I put to you an attempt at optimism that there's a corrective in the system called the midterm elections. He is likely to lose those. He himself has more or less acknowledged that. And at that point, power begins to seep away, and the system might begin to repair some of the damage.
C
So, first of all, the midterm elections are in November, and this top risk report looks at 2026. So assuming you are right, and I do believe that the Democrats will take the House, though not the Senate, in November, you might begin to see that at the end of the year, and that would be in next year's report. It'll be more optimistic if that's the case. But first point, if that happens, Trump is likely to double down in his efforts. So he will be more contained, but he will also be more willing to accept risks. And that is a balancer. I think that if the Democrats take the House, that the constraint that you are speaking of is not from the House. It's not because the Democrats will be able to subpoena Trump and investigate him. He'll ignore it, and the Department of Justice won't uphold it. It's because after having lost, perhaps members of his own Republican Party and coalition will start to publicly stand up against him in ways that they have hitherto been completely unwilling to. And we will see how that plays out in 2027. Again, I believe that Trump will fail in his political revolution in part because his popularity is low. You're getting at this in part because there is institutional resilience in the military, in the judiciary, in the federal system, though, not in the corporations, not in the banks, not so much in the media, but not so much in Congress. But also one thing that we haven't mentioned yet, but we should, is Trump's policy incompetence. He is not programmed to pull off a political revolution. He is incredibly impulsive. He is easily distracted. If he really wanted to pull off a political revolution, he shouldn't be talking about Greenland. He should be focusing on tearing apart the Democrats.
B
He should.
C
If the Democrats are the principal enemy to the United States, then he should be using his power to destroy the opposition party. That's why Curtis Jarvin has recently come out against him, who is, you know, kind of a crazy person. Right. But he really wants the US to become a one party king led system and he sees that Trump is just not the guy that's going to do it. I do believe that Trump's narcissism and policy incompetence and lack of strategic nature and the profound loyalty that some of the very smart people around him have for him, no matter what, they can't push back. That that ultimately makes it much more likely that this political revolution fails.
B
So a pretty alarming perspective for the coming year yet. Final question. You know, when I open my own paper and turn to the markets pages, the markets keep going up. They had a very good year last year. All the Wall street pundits seem to think another good year ahead. Are they missing something?
C
A lot of oil production, demand relatively soft. AI is still taking off. That bubble hasn't burst. I don't have a call on that. Those things are driving incredible amounts of investment. Sounds pretty exciting. But the things that you and I are talking about are long term risks and the equity markets are not long term players. So, I mean, I do think that there is a gap between how capitalism serves the interests of humanity and how well governed and well regulated systems benefit and serve humanity. And they typically operate on different timescales. They need to operate together and right now they're not.
B
That was Ian Bremmer ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening and I'll be back again next week for another edition.
D
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Episode: ‘Regime roulette’ in Venezuela: Is Greenland next?
Date: January 8, 2026
Host: Gideon Rachman (Financial Times)
Guest: Ian Bremmer (President, Eurasia Group)
This episode explores the dramatic geopolitical aftershocks of the US-led ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the potential for further American interventions in Latin America, and the astonishing possibility of US interest in acquiring Greenland. Host Gideon Rachman and Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer dive into the risks, motivations, and strategic miscalculations at play in the Trump administration’s “Dunro Doctrine”—a bid for renewed hemispheric dominance.
Military Operation & Uncertain Path Forward
“They spin the wheel and they see which new folks pop up, but all part of the same regime.”
— Ian Bremmer ([02:09])
Risks & Constraints for the US
Political Optics
“No American lives are at risk, no American taxpayer dollars are being spent. And so if it turned out that things got really hairy in Venezuela and troops were needed, I think that Trump would probably go the mercenary route.”
— Ian Bremmer ([03:49])
Expansionist Rhetoric
Colombia, Mexico, Cuba
“If they don't deliver spectacular wins on these topics…the United States is likely to intervene and that an intervention against Mexican sovereignty is a huge risk for them. It's a clear red line.”
— Ian Bremmer ([06:32])
Migration as Unintended Consequence
“You could end up with a lot more migrants, and has already produced 8 million of them, though most of them not coming to the United States.”
— Ian Bremmer ([10:06])
Internal Dynamics
Outlandish Headlines and Strategic Confusion
“Trump has decided that he wants this territory to be sovereign part of US. He's decided it. And I cannot for the life of me understand what the national interest of the US is in demanding that.”
— Ian Bremmer ([12:03])
“Asymmetric” Tactics & European Weakness
Psychological Warfare?
Europe Ill-Prepared
“They were wrong about all of those things… they needed to have been right and started investing on being right decades ago.”
— Ian Bremmer ([17:06])
American Political Instability
“We are firmly in political revolution territory. The question is, to what degree is Trump likely to succeed? And I am skeptical on that front. I think he will fail. I wish I were more confident of that.”
— Ian Bremmer ([18:56])
Potential Midterm Corrective
“He is incredibly impulsive. He is easily distracted. If he really wanted to pull off a political revolution, he shouldn't be talking about Greenland.”
— Ian Bremmer ([23:03])
Market Optimism Disconnect
“There is a gap between how capitalism serves the interests of humanity and how well governed and well regulated systems benefit and serve humanity. And they typically operate on different timescales…and right now they're not.”
— Ian Bremmer ([23:59])
On Venezuela’s future:
“It’s not regime change, it’s regime roulette.”
— Ian Bremmer ([02:09])
On Trump’s interventionist strategy:
“He’s looking around saying, okay, where else can I have a big headline success?”
— Ian Bremmer ([02:09])
On US-Greenland brinkmanship:
“I cannot for the life of me understand what the national interest of the US is in demanding that.”
— Ian Bremmer ([12:03])
On European leaders’ miscalculation:
“They were wrong about all of those things. Kind of in a similar way to the Americans being wrong that integrating China was going to lead the Chinese to become American…”
— Ian Bremmer ([17:06])
On Trump’s policy flaws:
“He is incredibly impulsive. He is easily distracted. If he really wanted to pull off a political revolution, he shouldn’t be talking about Greenland. He should be focusing on tearing apart the Democrats.”
— Ian Bremmer ([23:03])
The episode delivers a hard-hitting analysis of America’s increasingly aggressive and erratic foreign policy posture under Trump—especially in the Western Hemisphere—and examines how these choices are turbocharged by internal political instability. In an era marked by “regime roulette,” global anxieties, and European disarray, Ian Bremmer and Gideon Rachman paint a picture of enormous geopolitical volatility, with subterranean risks ignored by both markets and many policy elites.
For listeners wanting a clear, unvarnished look at the risks facing the Americas, Europe, and the global order in 2026, this episode is essential listening.