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- [00:00]
Rory Stewart
Thank you so much for listening to the Rest Is Politics. Here's a thought for Christmas, you can gift somebody membership to the Rest Is Politics. Plus ad free listening bonus episodes, early access to Q and A book discounts. So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to therestagepolitics.com and click Gifts.
- [00:20]
Alistair Campbell
This is the most significant document we've seen. It's the sort of bible of Trump foreign policy.
- [00:26]
Rory Stewart
It's one of the most seismic documents of Trump's presidency. It's confirmation of a changed worldview.
- [00:34]
Alistair Campbell
It's America ripping its own mask off, saying we're all the worst things that our enemies always said we were.
- [00:40]
Rory Stewart
It is America amazing. Russia and China kind of neutral. We don't really worry about them too much. But then it says Europe bad.
- [00:49]
Alistair Campbell
We're not partners or allies anymore, we're vassals. And if we twitch a tail, we're going to be punished beyond imagining.
- [00:56]
Rory Stewart
And it makes Europe more vulnerable than we've been in our lifetime.
- [01:01]
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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- [03:39]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Rest is Politics with.
- [03:41]
Rory Stewart
Me, Rory Stewart, and me, Alistair Campbell, and Rory. We're going to devote the whole episode to the US national security strategy. You and I both read it. We've read it several times. I think it's one of the most seismic documents of Trump's presidency. It's confirmation of a changed worldview, and it's one that we're all of us going to have to deal with. And I think it's going to confront all of us with some very, very difficult decisions. Politicians, all of us. I think this is a really, really important document. So I think it's sensible that we devote the whole episode to it today. Although it's had quite a lot of coverage, I'm not convinced that people have really woken up to just how seismic and how big this thing is. It's consistent with a lot of the things that we've heard. It's consistent with Project 2025. It's consistent with America First. It's consistent with JD Vance's speech in Munich last year. It's consistent with a lot of the posture that Trump has been taking in foreign policy. But when you see it all down, written down in print, page after page after page after page, what did you make of it when you first read it?
- [04:50]
Alistair Campbell
Well, it's astonishing. So I know you've also been looking at some of the past national security strategies. I geeked out and went all the way back to George W. Bush's 2002. I read Obama's, I read Biden's, and I read the first Trump strategy. This thing comes out of a completely different universe. And in fact, actually almost the biggest contrast is with the first Trump strategy, which was written by a woman called Nadia Shadlo, who was brought in with Fiona Hill, who we interviewed on leading and was an attempt to provide an alternative, I guess, more realist idea of American foreign policy. But this thing is totally different. So let's just hit the highlights and maybe we can dig into the detail in a second. The first, most dramatic thing is that it's very, very short and it's very, very blunt, particularly about Western Europe. In fact, it effectively is a strategy that says we're not going to talk about what the Chinese military is doing, we're not going to talk about what the Russian military is doing, we're not even going to mention North Korea. So those three big threats, peer competitors to the U.S. which have been the center of every U.S. national security strategy for decades, their militaries barely feature in one of those countries. It's just excluded. We're going to essentially say we're not very interested in Africa. We don't have much to say about what people are doing in the Middle east or Asia. Our real focus is on saying Latin America effectively belongs to the United States. This is called the Trump Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is about the US Being dominant in its own hemisphere, particularly in relation to Latin America. And Western Europe is up in headlights as the one region of the world where they say minority governments are trampling on democracy and human rights. That's a reference to the idea that in France and Germany parties, the governments are trying to control far right parties, and that the US Needs to resist the current trajectory of Europe. In other words, resist this whole liberal democratic move and instead put its weight behind what it calls patriotic parties, for which Reid far right parties, and that America's allies in the region are the countries of central Eastern Europe, by which they mean countries like Hungary. The Trump Corollary essentially says that no foreign powers can have troops or own critical assets or minerals or rare earths, or have critical investments in Latin America. Foreign, of course, does not include the United States. The United States, by implication, can have troops in Latin America, can own critical assets, but nobody else is allowed in.
- [07:31]
Rory Stewart
You see, I think it's even more kind of malign than that in a way, if you think about it. So Monroe just people who don't know their American history. James Monroe was the American president and the Monroe doctrine was in 1823. And it base it was basically saying European colonialism you've had your day. Get out of our, this is our sphere now. We won't interfere in Europe, you don't interfere here. But then we had, and I love the way that Trump sees himself in these great historical terms because we had the Monroe Doctrine then we had the roosevelt corollary in 1904, which is what opened the door to them, say, well, okay, we can do Latin America as well. Okay, because we don't want those pesky Europeans coming back in it. So we've got to remember this. America, Europe, history is, it's this sort of fits within that. So what Trump is saying, his corollary, as you say, is that they can, they have the right and the power to intervene in wherever they think their interests are a risk, but nobody else can come anywhere near them. That is basically what they're saying.
- [08:33]
Alistair Campbell
It is the most startling announcement of a vision.
- [08:36]
Rory Stewart
And it is a vision and it's a rival to the vision, as you say, that has been preceded in the national security strategies of both the Republic and Democrat presidents. Recent national security strategies have all focused in some part on the threat from climate change. The only mentions of climate change in this one are, are to basically sort of do their usual net zeros, a made up load of old nonsense. So it's a massive change on that front as well. The big winners in this, without a doubt, are those countries that were defined in every previous national security strategy as America's chief adversaries. There is literally nothing on North Korea, which, if you remember this time in Trump's first term, he was on his fire and fury mode because North Korea was developing nuclear weapons. They have continued to develop nuclear weapons. They now have four times as many as they had when he was doing his fire and fury. And they are not even mentioned. Russia and China in his 2017 National Security Strategy were front and center as America's adversaries. They were trying to damage American interests. Now, that assessment was right in that China has continued to do the things that they criticize them for. Then Russia has gone even further with an all out war in Europe. If you're reading this from a Russian perspective, you're basically thinking they've sort of copied and pasted a lot of our thoughts and on the Europe stuff. So there are four paragraphs on Russia, four paragraphs. There are several pages on Europe, four paragraphs on Russia, and none of them are critical. None of them point out who caused this current war. They are back to the position of seeing themselves as a mediator. They talk about bringing A swift cessation so that we can get back to stable relations by which they mean business as usual, lots of money for our rich friends. And the reaction to this around Europe has been very, very interesting because you had the coalition of the willing again yesterday. You had Starmer, Merz and Macron meeting Zelenskyy in Downing street and they looked a bit more worried than they normally do. And I think they're right to look a bit more worried. But the question is, how do they react to this? And before I hand back to you, Roy, let me just read you one of the reactions to this document. And it came from a guy called Matthias Muzdorf and He is a 59 year old cellist who has an attachment with a Russian university, but he's also a member of the German Parliament and he's the foreign affairs spokesman for the alternative Deutschland, the AfD. And he said this. Everything the AfD has always said is now United States strategy. 1. Migration suicidal for societies. 2. Islam does not belong in Europe. 3. Russia is not an enemy, but pursues the same interest in terms of stability.
- [11:32]
Guest or Additional Speaker
4.
- [11:33]
Rory Stewart
Remigration. Kicking people back out, even if they're German citizens, is necessary. 5. Nations form diversity, not leftist rubbish. This relates to Trump saying that the nation state is the single most important unit in the world. 6. Freedom of opinion is essential brackets provided it's our opinions. 7. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution must be dissolved. This is the entire basis of the German Constitution. They have an Office for the Protection of the Constitution to prevent a return to this awfulness of the past. 8. Politicians must take responsibility. Those who have trampled on these values in the past belong in prison. 9. Media and NGOs must be cut off from state funding. 10. Undemocratic, patronizing. International treaties must be dissolved and organizations that oppose national interests must be left behind. Now that is actually a pretty. It's biased, but it's a pretty fair assessment of what the American document says. And for them, we talk a lot about democracies not interfering in each other's politics. The Americans have interfered directly now in the politics of every single European country by saying these are the parties that they want to win.
- [12:46]
Alistair Campbell
I'd like to take a second just to look at the history of these national security strategies, because I think it's difficult to see how radical Trump too is without quite getting them. So you can almost see the whole story of American power in these strategies. These traditionally are very complicated interagency processes where the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA and Many, many others, U.S. treasury feed into a very complicated process. Somebody holds a pen and a president then signs off. And they're actually often unbelievably impressive. They're often much clearer than the British equivalents. They're not full of waffle and platitudes. They lay out a very clear idea of what America thinks is going on. So to go through them and you can almost see the whole story of American power here. The 2002 strategy, which was produced when you were in government, is George W bush straight after 9 11. And this is a document that says America is at a position of unparalleled power and influence and that the future of the world is liberal democracy, free markets and free trade. That America is going to work through its alliances, that it's profoundly proud of, NATO, the UN and the post war orders. And it's always going to be on the side of democracy, free trade and free markets against its adversaries around the world. And the combination of American strength and the strength of these ideas will lead to an inevitable push of democratization. Fast forward, we then get Obama in 2010, just eight years later, and suddenly the national security strategy is a very different America. It begins actually with much more of a sense of American weakness. This is just after the financial crisis. So Obama is saying security for the US actually begins with fixing things at home. He's beginning to signal American withdrawal from the world. It's all about burden sharing. But again, alliances are right at the center. So if alliances are there for Bush as a way of reinforcing American values, for Obama, alliances are there to share burdens. We then get to Biden's strategy. I'm going to come back to Trump one in a second. Biden's strategy is, and you've talked about this in the past, is a vision of America where the fundamental balance is between democracies and what he calls rule respecting countries, in other words, American allies who are not democracies. He probably means the Gulf monarchies, for example, but who are nevertheless their allies against what he calls the non democratic revisionist states, in other words, Russia and China, North Korea, Iran. And that strategy is all about alliances and it's all about accepting that the world can't be stopped at borders. So it emphasises climate change, it emphasises pandemics. Of course, you know, things like Covid and Ebola, transnational terrorism and the way that actually we're in a global world that has to work together. But the most interesting one of all, and I'll finish on this, is if you get to that extraordinary first Trump strategy. The first Trump strategy is an attempt to define a realist strategy. Those other ones that I've described so far are pretty idealistic. They're all about democracy, liberty, international institutions. This one is the best attempt, for me at least, to provide a plausible conservative vision of American foreign policy. It's one that would actually resonate with the type of Tory that I would be. And it says, look, America can't do everything in the world. We have to be prudent, we have to think about our own national interests. When we're doing development projects, we have to emphasize how America can benefit. But it then says, in the end, we have to call out evil where we see it. We have to recognize that America's generosity has been good for America. So it tells the whole story. This is Trump One tells the whole story since the Second World War in terms of America setting up these international institutions, funding NATO generosity. But it says that has been good for American security and prosperity. It says, we may not be able to do everything and help everyone, but that doesn't mean that we can help no one. It says there is absolutely no moral equivalence between our democratic allies in Europe and countries like China and Russia. So it's actually about trying to bring a defence of the post war liberal order and the American national interests together. And that is what's all gone out of the window. We're now in a world where America is basically saying the strategy, and it says it again and again on every page. America is going to be the most powerful country in the world, the richest country in the world, the technological leader, the unparalleled military. We're going to dominate the globe. Nobody can touch us. There's going to be no risk. We're going to be completely invulnerable and we're going to do it with no alliances, no partnerships, no international institutions. We're going to be the most powerful country in the world and we're going to do it alone by drawing up drawbridges around us. And that paradox, the fact that you're trying to, on the one hand, dominate the world and on the other hand, say you want to have nothing to do with the world is the problem that runs through the whole document.
- [18:00]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. I didn't go as far back as you did. I remember some of the national security strategies we were in government, but I did reread the 2017 and it's a different world. And you mentioned Fiona Hill and her role. I was told that the person who was holding the pen in 2017 was McMaster a kind of serious grown up guy. Now, as you say, normally this is a process. It's an interagency process, and it sort of takes quite a long time to put together. You have the feeling with this one that they've basically. And this is the power of somebody like Trump and the clarity with which he communicates himself, even with all the inconsistencies. He has written a classically Trump introduction to the. The thing, the new one, which essentially is all the bluster, all the bravado. I've solved all these wars, even though Thailand and Cambodia is already kind of unraveling, but I've solved all these wars. America has done more in my first year than they've done in the four years of Biden failure, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the worldview in this one, the worldview 2017 was very much Russia, China, bad, America and Allies good. Okay, this one, it is America amazing. Russia and China kind of neutral. We don't really worry about them too much. The Gulf monarchies, why shouldn't they be allowed to chop up people like Khashoggi? It literally says, we've got to stop hectoring the Gulf about their traditional ways of rule. I think we know what we're talking about there. But then it says Europe bad. So that is why this thing is such a change. The other inconsistency with this, the nation state is the most powerful thing we're talking today on the day that Australia is bringing in its social media ban for children under 16. And it's really interesting thinking about that. That is the nation state doing something that it thinks is good for its country and its young people. But the enemy of that are these tech giants, mainly from America, who resent any form of intrusion into their regulatory world. And one of the most. Let me just give you a couple of things that I spotted online this week. Musk got fined. X got fined $120 million by the European Commission for sort of various scams and misinformation stuff going on. His response, the EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent their people. And do you know the first response? Medvedev, former president of Russia. Exactly.
- [20:36]
Alistair Campbell
And just to calculate that, I think that's something like, I don't know, I get my figures wrong, but it will be something like 1/3 of his wealth. I mean, he's 3,000 times richer than that. Fine.
- [20:46]
Rory Stewart
No way. Way more than that. Way, way more than. If you're not a trillionaire. It's peanuts. It's literally peanuts. But the EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries. Brackets like Australia, who we're going to try and try and sort of do in because of this silly social media thing so that governments can better represent their people. And Medvedev agrees. But get this one, Rory Kirill Dmitriev, who we talked about recently, he's the guy who's the sovereign wealth fund guy from Russia who's been dealing with Wyckoff and Jared Kushner to try and sort of carve up Russia between American and Russian business people. He says this EU bureaucrats have turned into enemies of free speech. This in a country where X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, Chat, Snapchat are all banned. Enemies of Western civilization and enemies of themselves. And the first response to that one, Elon Musk. The EU woke Stasi commissars are about to understand the full meaning of the Streisand effect. This is where the Streisand effect is this thing where Barbra Streisand tried to stop somebody taking pictures of her house and it led to there being more pictures of a house. That's what that's about. She's basically saying Europe is making a big mistake in taking on him and this sort of so called free speech space. Now, what this says and what this is underlined by this document is that Europe, which felt very, very comfortable in this relationship with the United States, is now sensing, we know, that Russia is an enemy. And Yvette Cooper's making a speech about some of the hybrid warfare that they're doing these days that is sort of escalating. I think she's making that speech today. We know that Russia sees us as an adversary, but what this document says is that America is looking at Europe in a similar vein. And the reason I pointed to the body language at this meeting yesterday of Starmer, Macron and Merz is that at some point we are going to have to confront this. And the reason they don't want to confront it now is partly because we are still reliant on American intelligence in Ukraine. We are still reliant on the ability to buy the weapons have that we, that we need to help Ukraine from them. But as we build up our defence industries, I think we are kidding ourselves if we think that we're in the same space that allows us to sort of feel great if Donald Trump comes to on a state visit and rides around Windsor Castle in a carriage.
- [23:10]
Alistair Campbell
One of the things that we've Seen with the interviews with Mike Pompeo and others on leading is that America believes that there will be no blowback, there'll be no resistance. So this is a document that effectively says we can insult our allies, we can humiliate them, we can tell elected governments that their minority government's abusing minority rights, that we can support far right parties against our elected partners and there will be no consequences. Their vision for it is Europe will take it lying down. Europe will spend 5% of GDP on defence and they'll spend most of that buying American kit. They will accept us saying we're going to resist the entire direction of European liberal democracy. They will accept as saying, in effect, we want to dismantle the European Union and return everybody back to sovereign independent states and hand these states to far right parties.
- [24:07]
Rory Stewart
Can I just jump in there? I think this relates to the thing about Musk. Even Germany, even France, even the UK on their own. Not as powerful as we used to be. The only body in the world, I think that is, that's showing a bit of intent and the competence to take on some of these tech bro billionaires and trillionaires in muscle, soon to be is the European Union and the European Commission. That is why they have set themselves the target of seeking to destroy it. And I think we should understand that is what this is about. This is about trying to destroy the one international organization that still believes in the rule of law, that still believes in human rights, that still believes in international law. And we have taken it for granted that America would always believe in those things too. And that belief has gone.
- [24:55]
Alistair Campbell
So they believe that we have no alternative, that we're just going to have to tolerate being humiliated, weakened financial pressure. We're also going to accept opening up all our economy to American tech. We're going to come and support them in their policies in the Pacific and put our troops behind them. Look at what they're proposing on Gaza, which is no American troops on the ground, but the British are going to provide 1,500. The French will provide a thousand, the Norwegians, the Germans will all put. We'll just do what we're told. We're not partners or allies anymore, we're vassals. And if we twitch a tale, we're going to be punished beyond imagining. We're going to be hit with tariffs and they're going to reveal that our entire tech stack depends on the United States. We got a little hint of this. We didn't cover it completely. But do you remember when these sanctions came in against the head of the International Criminal Court, me, America, shut off all his email accounts. Microsoft, a private company, was ordered by the United States government because this guy had been sanctioned by Trump to essentially shut off his entire access to data it the computer system. They've just done this to uae. They've come in and they've said to uae, you cannot balance this against China. You are going to be 100% US integrated in every aspect of your AI, data and tech from one end to the other. And if there are any Chinese components, we're going to shut you down. And UAE has caved. And they will rely on being able to pick off country against country and they'll feel, well, we're doing it pretty successfully. They're not holding together. It's not as if we stood up for Canada. It's not as if we stood up for Europe. We thought, oh, well, okay, we'll get our 10% deal and we'll let Europe be screwed. Europe's not standing up for Switzerland. Switzerland gets hit with 37% tariffs. Poor old Switzerland. Oh, dear. Canada's being hit. Oh, dear. Japan's being hit. South Korea's being hit. We're not holding together at all. So their gamblers. Yeah, you and I will say, this is outrageous. Our vassal slave status is being revealed. But if you're Pompeo, you just shrug and say, there's absolutely nothing they're going to do about it. They're going to have to do what they're told.
- [27:03]
Rory Stewart
And they may have a point, but it's very hard not to think, if you look at this in a kind of historical sense, that there's an awful lot of arrogance and hubris going on. And I think that's what you objected to when we interviewed Pompeo. I should just say, by the way, I think I'm right. Rory. I think I heard Francesca Albanese, who interviewed and leading the UN rapporteur on the Palestinian occupied territories where she's been, have had her verified status removed on social media platforms, getting buggeration in relation to bank accounts and all sorts of stuff. So this is clearly a game that they're playing.
- [27:37]
Alistair Campbell
Just quickly on this one, asa, because I'm obsessed with this. You know, we covered that stuff around decarbonizing the fleet. So there was this meeting in London, 10, 15 years time, what sort of vessels you buy, and America sabotaged it. But I only just realized that talking to diplomats who were there, American officials, and I heard this directly from diplomats there, came up to individual officials from individual companies and countries said, if you don't vote for us, you're not going to get a visa to the US and we're going to shut down your bank account. So this very naked America controls the dollar, America controls the financial system, America controls the tech stack, and we will use it to actually threaten individual diplomats at negotiations.
- [28:16]
Rory Stewart
Okay, Roy, let's have a quick break and then back for more.
- [28:24]
Alistair Campbell
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- [29:34]
Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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Guest or Additional Speaker
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- [31:35]
Alistair Campbell
As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and Division one, national consensus still stands firm roast potatoes, oh God, all this British stuff.
- [31:49]
Rory Stewart
If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to the Rest Is Politics?
- [32:03]
Alistair Campbell
Plus, it's the thoughtful kind of present ad free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q&As, book discounts, and perhaps I think most interesting, it's our miniseries, available only to members, focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J.D. vance, and we're doing many more. More subjects to come.
- [32:23]
Rory Stewart
So think of this as a civilized gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?
- [32:32]
Alistair Campbell
And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No cues, rapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.
- [32:42]
Rory Stewart
So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to the Rest Is Politics and click gifts.
- [32:54]
Welcome back to the Rest Is Politics.
- [32:56]
Alistair Campbell
With me, Alistair Campbell, and me, Rory Stewart.
- [32:58]
Rory Stewart
So we mentioned last week that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, didn't go to NATO, even though the regular foreign ministers meeting, he was the only ones. And they all turned up, apart from Rubio. He sent the deputy this guy Christopher Landau, and I've been checking into him as well. So I'm thinking, well, maybe he's just a kind of, you know, your average deputy, and he'll just sort of, you know, toe the line with you. He said this when these countries, and I think we Say these countries, there's a hostility there already he's talking about Europe. When these countries wear their NATO hats, they insist that transatlantic cooperation is the cornerstone of our mutual security. But when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are utterly adverse to U.S. interests and security. Censorship. They're obsessed with this nonsense. Economic suicide, climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for sovereignty, promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, and get this one, support for Communist Cuba. This is a sort of form of madness that they are finding every reason they can to see Europe as being hostile. And I think we shouldn't shy away from the fact. And I get why it's impossible for Starmer to say this, impossible for Macron to say this, impossible for me. But when they say things like this is now back to the paper, the security paper. It is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. But then goes on to say that the worry about this is that certain NATO members are on track to become majority non European. Now, what does that mean? What that means is majority non white. And that, I think, is what links this back to Vance, back to Project 2025. And we should be in no doubt. I go on a lot about, you know, too many governments don't have a clear, long term, compelling strategy. This is a clear, compelling, by their lights, long term strategy.
- [35:04]
Alistair Campbell
I just had the delight of being on a stage with Alex Brucevitz, who many listeners won't have heard of, but almost all Americans will have done. He's the big America first Trump social media champion. He's 29. He now talks like Trump. His hand gestures imitate Trump. And I challenged him exactly about this. I said, you know, I read the national security story. What does it mean that the majority will become non European. You mean non white, don't you? And he went, no, no, no, no. I just mean you're being overrun by people from poor third world countries who are violent and carry weapons and are going to destroy your countries and don't share your values, Right? And of course, he has part of a movement that has this new idea of heritage Americans. So I said to him, you know what would happen if I said to you, America is going to become majority non American within a few decades. What would you interpret by that statement? Right? These people are European citizens talking about race, aren't you? It seems as though their idea is that a real American is a non indigenous American who arrived between about 1600 and 1850 voluntarily, and everybody Else is somehow not really a real American in the same sense and I guess the same vision of Europe. The other thing though, that I don't get, and I'd love your view on this, is what is their long term thinking? Because this is a policy that talks about making America strong and invulnerable, but doesn't actually name any of the actors, any of the countries that really threaten American strength and vulnerability. China, Russia, North Korea. Instead, what it does is it weakens allies and probably, I think, turns allies into adversaries. It dismantles organizations like the European Union, rearms countries in Europe, gets proto fascist parties like the AfD into Germany, hands them big defense budgets, so creates a Europe with heavily armed nationalist governments without any European Union cover on it, and therefore creating a much more dangerous, unstable, conflict prone world, which will give huge opportunities for Russia if it wishes to increase its influence in Europe. So all of this over the medium term makes America weaker, much more exposed, much less secure. So what's in their heads? I mean, they can't be stupid. So what are they doing? Why have they pushing a vision that will make exactly what they fear just as Musk, I think, is trying to create the civil war that he claims already exists in Britain. What's going on here?
- [37:48]
Rory Stewart
Well, it's funny, I was talking to somebody yesterday who's writing a book about Putin, and we were discussing what it must be like to be working alongside Putin, the Putin of today rather than the Putin, say, of 20 years ago, when, you know, there was a debate about which direction he was going to take Russia. And we now know there's no doubt about the direction he's taken Russia in. And Putin is now surrounded by people. When we talked to Radek Sikorsky, the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, he made this point that Lavrov used to be a kind of a foreign minister who was taken seriously because he injected into the debate he had his own ideas. He's now just a complete vassal for a dictator. Now, I think what we've got with Trump is, you know, and I was thinking about as this document was being put together, this security strategy, it is, it is Trumpy. And through and through he has written this introduction and then everything that follows flows from that. I think they believe, they really believe that this is going to make them the richest, most powerful country in the world ad infinitum. I think they believe that. Now, I think what I haven't heard is a sense of how the Democrats intend to handle this, because I think there is. Let's just imagine because Trump's ratings are falling. He keeps saying the opposite, but his ratings are falling. They're actually quite low for a serving president. Why? Because the economy is not doing that well for the people that he said he was going to help. Let's imagine it gets worse. And let's imagine the Democrats are able to make the link between the worsting economic conditions for working people and this isolationist, far more aggressive foreign policy. I think that opens an opportunity for the Democrats. But I think, honestly, Rory, I think the answer to your question, why are they doing this? Is because Trump believes this is working. And all the people around him have to confirm that bias in everything they say and do every day.
- [39:52]
Alistair Campbell
One more question for you. Why on earth, if that's what you thought about the world and were doing, why would you say it? I mean, this literally makes no sense to me at all. If you genuinely have a worldview where what you're going to do is screw over your allies, bully your way into their markets, weaken them economically, destroy the European Union, why would you say it? A traditional gangster would go around being polite. In fact, the traditional American policy, even when it was doing naughty things, was to frame it in positive language. You know, this is a partnership. We share values, we have common interests, et cetera. What I simply cannot understand is if you believed this stuff, if you really were that cynical, that aggressive, really wanted to destroy the world order, it doesn't help you to say it so explicitly. Why on earth would you announce your Evil plan? No Dr. Evil announces their evil plan.
- [40:51]
Rory Stewart
Well, because go back to what we've said about Trump for some time, that he sees the world in very, very simple terms. America has to be the most powerful country in the world. No other country can threaten America. What happens over there is none of our business. So China, they can have another massive sphere of influence. Russia, they can do what they want. The one we worry about is Europe, because actually, they can be a bit of a threat to us, particularly on the commercial business side. So Russia and China, they've read this report and they've thought, yeah, we like that.
- [41:26]
Alistair Campbell
Maybe domestic audience authenticity playing well with the MAGA base. I mean, maybe even if it's a mad thing to do to signal to Europe what you're about to do to them. Maybe they're less concerned, actually, with the real impact of this, just more interested in creating media chat provoking, keeping the whole reality TV show going.
- [41:48]
Rory Stewart
But if you go back to what you said about Mike Pompeo, I think they will sit there and think, you watch, the Europeans won't fight back on this. So yesterday, for example, Keir Starmer made a point when talking about Ukraine, about how grateful everybody was to Donald Trump for taking this forward and getting us as close as we have now. Mertz, to be fair to him, he basically said this. And there's a lot in the American paper that we really disagree with now. I think that is a better way to approach this. I think we have to call this stuff out, even though there's a risk. There's a risk to it. But the other thing, Rory, I wouldn't underestimate, part of me doesn't want to say this, but I think we've seen enough of Trump now to know that the guy's a complete narcissist. He believes that he's popular in the polls. He believes that the American economy is doing better because because of tariffs. He believes that every country in the world sits there thinking we just want to be like America. And on the thing about where the pen was held on this one, I mean, I, there are various sort of versions of this, but I know there's quite a lot. I sort of do detect the, I detect the worldview of Stephen Miller for sure. But somebody who kind of is pretty well plugged in told me the guy holding the pen in the latter stages was a guy called Andy Baker, who is national security advisor to Vance and deputy national security advisor to Trump. So in quite an interesting position where he's covering both bases and he is the guy who apparently in the pre Munich was the one who was persuading Vance. We wanted to really go for them, really go for Europe and really go for Ukraine. Now there's been a consistency to that. And I think that they'll be sitting there thinking this is about American power, as you say, it is blatant and open. Now, we've said this. When he says America first, he totally means that. Okay. But where they see it going is the American economy has to go well. They have to really win all this battle for rare earths and quantum and all that stuff, which he thinks they're doing, not least because of the tariff game that he's been playing. So if that succeeds, he will say job done. If it doesn't succeed, and my sense is it probably won't, then I think there is a massive opening to his opponents, his opponents at home and his opponents abroad. The trouble with all his opponents abroad at the moment, they cannot out themselves as opponents because they're worried of the consequences. Does that make Sense.
- [44:12]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, I think that does. I mean, my final thing which is maybe too mad, is I sometimes wonder whether there isn't a sort of. That at some level they don't desire chaos. That if you subconsciously maybe they're actually, they're sort of, they're bringing on the Gotterdammerung, they're accelerating the whole thing. They're people who feel, I mean some of the tech bros talk about this explicitly, that they thrive in chaos. If you were to say, but you're creating a more violent, unstable, nationalistic, conflict prone, heavily armed world. There's part of them that's like, yeah, better than managing decline slowly. Let's have the apocalypse, let's have the Goddard Ammerung and let's produce a national security strategy that brings it on. They're like an aging prize fighter that wants to go out and sort of, kind of blaze of dramatic madness.
- [45:03]
Rory Stewart
I've used this phrase before about Trump, strategic chaos. You're sort of carrying on. You've got a few points that you never divert from America first, only I can resolve this. America's the most powerful country in the world. He's got a few things that he says every single time he makes an outing, but surrounding it is chaos. That's always been the case with Trump. But there is a strategy to it. That's the point. And I think what we're seeing here is the strategy that you and I have talked about a lot that Europe has actually seen coming. And I mean, you know Tim Snyder, who we interviewed and who's like us, very critical of Trump or what have you, but he wrote a very interesting piece of common where I saw it, but he basically pointing out there are within this document literally direct echoes of the Russian equivalent in terms of the ideological direction that it's, that it's pointing to. And so I, I think we, we've just got to accept, I think that this is a, this is a seismic change. It's a strategic change from their perspective. We can argue about whether that's sensible from their perspective or not, but it is real and it makes Europe, I think, more vulnerable than we've been in our lifetime. And I think you can see that in the desperation in that meeting yesterday. Yet another coalition of the willing. Yeah, but what we actually going to do, the answer to that is all we can do is build up our own defenses, our own defense industries and develop them and keep trying to buy time with Trump. But every step so far, you were one of the first people to point this out. You Said, listen, I think we, ages ago you said, we might just have to face the fact that in the Ukraine war, he's on Russia's side. Well, yeah, and that's become clearer. This is why I feel. So we're going to talk in question time about reform and their funding. And we've talked a bit today about the AfD. What Russia is banking on is that conventional politics, which is now being fueled by Trump and this document across Europe will lead to the fall of Macron replaced by the hard right. Metz replaced by the hard right. Starmer replaced by the hard right in the uk. Meloni already, I mean, she's, you know, doing quite a good job of not being as hard right as we thought she'd be, but she's still a very, very right wing politician. They were talking in this document about countries. They don't even say what they were. They saw, you know, that we, we're having to rely on these unstable democracies. They call them, them, whether they meant Romania, whether they meant Poland, I don't know what they meant. But they basically are saying, we want to call out their weaknesses, get their weaknesses exploited by the hard right. And that is a massive, massive, massive change. And, you know, I don't think we are waking up to it enough. And I think we've got, to our public, those who are tempted to vote for these hard right parties are way of saying, I don't like Keir Starmer. This is now, I think, a kind of a generational battle about what sort, not just what sort of country we want, what sort of world we want. There's another line. This is me speaking very much as a Brit. That really leapt out at me. Let me just read you this sentence. America is understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent and of course to Britain and Ireland. And I thought that was a fascinating piece of writing because basically he's saying, reminding us we're no longer part of Europe. Ireland, of course, is part of the European Union, but we're Britain and Ireland. But it's also sort of, I don't know if this is me being a little bit paranoid, a little bit too defensive, but I sort of felt that was a way of saying, you lot don't really matter that much. And if you think about the whole special relationship thing, this, this is virtually the only time that the United Kingdom itself is mentioned. So America is understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent and of course to Britain and Ireland.
- [49:04]
Alistair Campbell
There's one small one on that, I think one word, a pompous word here is this whole question of legitimacy. In other words, the way that traditionally we thought about soft power is that it's very important for countries like the United States to have a degree of legitimacy, to have values, to have allies, to have partnerships, because those things actually make you stronger and safer. Other people have often, since Second World War, tried to tear the mask off the United States and say it's nothing but a brutal neo imperial power imposing its will on its vassals. And it's been very important for America to deny that and say, no, that isn't the nature of our relationships with the world. And that's really helped it. It's helped it build coalitions of allies, it's helped its project its values. It's used rules based international institutions in order to achieve a level playing field for American businesses, for American security. What's so odd about this document is it's America ripping its own mask off, saying we're all the worst things that our enemies always said we were. We are completely naked and transactional. These people are not our allies, they are our vassals that will do what we say. And in doing so, they're basically suggesting there's no point in soft power. There's no such thing as legitimacy, there's no such thing as values, that it's possible to rule the world through simply asserting your strength. And that's never been true. Historically, it's a mad vision. The Roman Empire didn't do it, the British Empire didn't do it, Ming dynasty China didn't do it. And there's a very good reason why you don't do that in the world.
- [50:40]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [50:41]
Alistair Campbell
You began by saying this is the most significant document we've seen. And I think it is. It's the sort of bible of Trump foreign policy. I think it's astonishing that they've chosen to rip the mask off and be quite so explicit. I think it's mesmerizing that the Vance contempt for Europe and the sheer aggression is put on paper in this way. And I think it suggests some very, very interesting things about the way they operate, that they can be that clear. But we're now in a world in which there can no longer be any doubt and shimming around, no longer people saying, oh, no, Trump doesn't really believe that that really isn't what their foreign policy is. This connects logically, absolutely clearly to Vance's Munich security speech, to Musk's support for the AfD, to Trump's statements at the United Nations. A common theme of a vision of America is going to be the biggest, most powerful country in the world. And it's going to do so by trampling on former European and Latin American allies and not really accepting that it faces a military threat from Russia and China. It's a recipe for chaos, but it's a chaos in which they somehow believe they're somehow going to thrive.
- [51:57]
Rory Stewart
Strategic chaos. There we are. Well, we'll be coming back to it again and again and again and again, I suspect. Right, question time tomorrow. Rory, I think we should talk about. We had a lot of questions about Nigel Farage getting a 9 million pound donation from a Thailand based cryptocurrency dealer. We're still getting a lot of feedback on the Zach Polanski interview, some of the things you said about some of his economic heroes and mentors. And we want to talk about that. We want to talk about massive problems facing young graduates at the moment, which I think is fueling a lot of this anger about inequality. And then we should touch on that really quite remarkable World cup draw, Mr. Sycofantino.
- [52:38]
Alistair Campbell
Great. Well, looking forward to talking to you then. So much more to do.
- [52:40]
Rory Stewart
See you then. Bye.
- [52:46]
Alistair Campbell
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- [53:20]
Alistair Campbell
As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and Division 1 national consensus still stands. Roast potatoes.
- [53:32]
Rory Stewart
Oh God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to the rest is politics.
- [53:48]
Alistair Campbell
Plus, it's the thoughtful kind of presentation. Ad free listening bonus episodes, early access to Q&As, book discounts and perhaps I think most interesting, it's our miniseries, available only to members, focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J.D. vance and we're doing many more subjects to come.
- [54:08]
Rory Stewart
So think of this as a civilized gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?
- [54:17]
Alistair Campbell
And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is, it's digital. No cues, rapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.
- [54:26]
Rory Stewart
So spread a little political peace and goodwill, head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts.