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- [00:00]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com this episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Now, a lot of politicians like to talk about the future of renewables, but Fuse is on the ground building clean energy for the here and now.
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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- [00:53]
Alistair Campbell
I'd love to know how many of our listeners have 20 acres of land. We should maybe find out. You can watch the energy revolution from the sidelines, or you can join it today.
- [01:01]
Rory Stewart
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- [01:11]
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- [01:48]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to an emergency podcast from the Rest Is Politics with me, Alistair Campbell.
- [01:54]
Rory Stewart
And me, Rory Stewart.
- [01:56]
Alistair Campbell
And the reason, I'm sure you are all aware, is because of what's been happening in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro was the subject, along with his wife, of a pretty remarkable military operation overseen from Mar a Lago in Florida by President Trump, who is certainly starting out the year very much in the style that we suggested he might when we spoke on the podcast on New Year's Day. Maduro has been in power for some time. He was he, he followed Hugo Chavez, who has been something in the thorn of successive the side of successive American administrations. Trump has been building up military options in the Caribbean and frankly, as he said in a press conference he just finished now Maduro knew that he was coming for him. I don't think he could have known he was coming last night. And one thing that was absolutely key to this was the element of absolute surprise. So, Rory, how surprised were you when you heard that Maduro. Maduro was on his way to an American warship from there to travel to a court in New York?
- [03:10]
Rory Stewart
Well, I think astonished that he managed to catch him, because Maduro has been expecting this to happen for months. As we've been reporting on the podcast, the US has massed an aircraft carrier, an enormous number of marines, some of its top stealth fighters, all off the coast. In fact, you can almost see them in the Caribbean from the mountain next to Caracas. So Maduro has been expecting an American invasion, expecting an American abduction, and yet they managed to do it, and they did it with Americans wounded, but apparently no casualties. It looks as though the logistics of the operation is that the US Seemed to have switched off electricity, or at least this is the early story about how they did this. Took out the air defenses, flew in helicopters, including one man that we're told by the admiral overseeing the operation was 49 years old, which is an encouragement to me as I have my 53rd birthday today. Happy birthday, and thank you. And have. Is extracting Maduro the big question, of course, which we need to get into is, is this remotely legal? To which the answer is not. What does this mean for international relations around the world? And what's the future of Venezuela after the removal of Maduro? Where do you want to start with any of this?
- [04:26]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I think let's start. Let's start with legality. And it's interesting how.
- [04:30]
Home Depot Advertiser
What?
- [04:31]
Alistair Campbell
Rory, you know America better than I do. What does PSA mean?
- [04:35]
Rory Stewart
I don't know.
- [04:36]
Alistair Campbell
Well, JD Vance has put out a social media post saying psa. To all those who are saying this wasn't legal, I just. I don't know what PSA means. But I'm saying.
- [04:47]
Rory Stewart
Please. There's a terrible revelation I'll have to look up on my phone. It's a revelation, obviously, of our complete tech incompetence.
- [04:55]
Alistair Campbell
Well, no, it's. I think it means. I'm guessing please stay away or please shut up.
- [04:59]
Rory Stewart
Public service. Public service announcements.
- [05:02]
Alistair Campbell
Sorry. One of our team. Okay. Public service announcement, basically, was saying, shut up if you think it's illegal, because it's not. Why? Their definition of legality in relation to this is that they are. They, America, are under threat from a terrorist narco state and a cartel led by Maduro. Now, what a Supreme Court would say about that? I have no idea. Most of the international lawyers I've heard on the airwaves today have said there's no legal basis of this at all, because on the United nations, you either have to have a resolution from the United Nations. Well, that didn't happen. Or there has to be a sense of an imminent threat. Now, the reason for this big military buildup, I guess, has been to indicate, to give a sense of some kind of threat. Otherwise, why are you sending your biggest aircraft carrier down there? But I think that is, frankly, for the birds. I think what this says, we've said this so many times in recent months, in particular, when we were bringing the end of the year together, is that so far as Trump is concerned, the rules just don't count. There are no, there is no international law that he's going to kind of put this through the lens of. There has been no contact with the United Nations. There has been no sort of understanding that other voices might want to have a say before he does this.
- [06:24]
Rory Stewart
And more fundamentally, for a US Domestic audience, no consultation with Congress. So people would point out that President Bush, of course, went to war in Iraq without a UN Resolution, but he did get a vote in Congress authorizing that intervention. Congress is feeling particularly bruised. You've got senators coming out saying they were effectively lied to. Congressional committees called in the administration and said, are you planning regime change? And we're apparently told no regime change was. Was planned. And Trump's and Rubio's defense of this in the press conference that you were watching appear to be that they thought Congress was leaky and couldn't be relied upon to, to keep a secret.
- [07:01]
Alistair Campbell
Well, and the other thing that, that Rubio said was that this was because this was. And the operation, I think we should hand it to the American as a military operation. This is. This was absolutely extraordinary. And Dan Kane, who's the, the head of the, you know, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he did a presentation at the end of the press conference after we'd had Trump's kind of, often he's one of his weaves, which went from sort of, you know, what happened to how bad Maduro is to how they're bringing down crime in New Orleans and all sorts of crazy stuff. Then Hexer's doing one of his kind of, you know, pumping his chest, Fox News type things. But then the. Dan Kane did a, I mean, genuinely interesting presentation about what, how the preparation went. And the point he made was that they prepared for this. They'd rehearsed it. They Obviously had somebody very, very close to Maduro. They knew where he was moving, they knew where he was planning to be. But they said that the weather was key and they essentially, they've been waiting for several days to do this. So I guess that's why they do have a point in saying the minute you start talking to anybody about this kind of thing, you've got to keep it reasonably tight. But no congressional law, no congressional authority, no international discussion or consultation. Keir Starmer's just in an interview with the BBC where he said he had no idea, hadn't had a discussion, which, you know, fair enough, you might expect that. But I think it goes to the heart of this that Donald Trump now thinks that he, when he says he's the leader of the free world, that is how he sees himself. He was very. And I think this goes back to, we had that discussion not long ago about the national security strategy. He mentioned it specifically. He mentioned the Monroe Doctrine, specifically this idea that the United States kind of owns that part of the world, owns that hemisphere. He even said at one point they, some people are now calling it the Donro Doctrine, you know, bringing himself right into the heart of it. And, and this is what it feels like to me is that they are basically saying, we do what we want here. And likewise, there was a question at the press conference just before we, we came on where he was asked about Colombia because the, and he has basically said that the Colombian guy, to use Trump's phrase, needs to watch his ass because there is, in his words, flooding drugs into the United States as well. And he repeated that today. He said, you know, yeah, he does need to watch his ass. He's also been talking about Claudia Scheinbaum in, in Mexico and saying that, you know, we've given her the chance to say she says she runs Mexico, but actually the cartels run Mexico. So he's, he's kind of indicating, do what we say now and then maybe we won't get too aggressive with the rest of you.
- [09:49]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, let's, let's, let's, let's hit the next thing, which is, of course, the problem here, which is Maduro was undoubtedly a profoundly unpleasant, evil man. This is a guy that clearly lost the election, which we said in 2024. He's the guy associated with murdering and torturing opponents. He's taken the Venezuelan economy to a fifth of its former size. It's a recession of 80%. It was the wealthiest country in Latin America. It's now one of the very, very poorest. And we now have a situation in which there are maybe 8 million refugees outside the country in which the oil infrastructure is destroyed, the water infrastructure is destroyed, the electricity is destroyed. It's a truly miserable place. And again, as we had these arguments around the toppling of Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi or indeed the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have to find a way of balancing three different things. Number one, is this an evil guy? Yeah, absolutely, he's an evil guy. And people are very, very relieved that he's gone. Number two, is this legal? Is this the right way to do it? I think our conclusion here is no third final thing. I think the question is, what then happens? And I think what's grossly irresponsible about this, as so often, is the question of the day after. And whatever you, you know, at least with these other interventions, there was some attempts at planning, there were months of papers being put together. This really does feel as though he's standing up, making it up at a podium.
- [11:26]
Alistair Campbell
Well, on that very point, he was asked. I mean, the, the. We came on air just as the press conference was coming towards its conclusion. But up until that point, virtually every single question was, what do you mean you're going to run it? How long are you going to run it for it? Who's going to run it? And he basically said, well, these guys standing behind me. Well, that was Pete Hexus, the Secretary for War, Marco Rubio, the Foreign Secretary. I think it was Ratcliffe who was there, the head of the CIA, Stephen Miller, your friend, who makes those wonderful speeches that draw on Gobles and this guy Dan Kane. They're not going to be sitting in Caracas sort of work, you know, organizing the public infrastructure and so forth. The other thing that came through loud and clear and actually Rubio said something very, very interesting. Rubio, I think, was allowed to speak because Hexith been allowed to speak. You know, these guys, like they've got egos and. But he didn't have a script. And so he just went up and did this kind of rather rumpty tumpty. You know, you've got to understand, you're now dealing with a president. When he says something, he means it and what have you, and doing the usual sort of praise of Trump. But I actually think that there was something, the way that he was describing Trump, which was essentially saying, take this guy at his word. And when he said that and said, you know, so we've been going after Maduro, I was sitting there thinking, I wonder what Mark Carney and Mehta Fredriksen, the Prime minister of Denmark is thinking, if they're sitting watching this now, because that was, they basically kept saying, no, America is the only military power that can do this kind of thing. We are the greatest country in the world. Anybody who threatens us in any way anywhere in the world, we're going to go after them. Now, that was a pretty, pretty heavy message.
- [13:13]
Rory Stewart
Well, on that, let's, let's look at the, the day after problem. So this is not Panama. The, the most optimistic scenario, when people are talking, they, they talk about the removal by George Bush Sr. Of the general in Panama. But Panama is 1980, by the way.
- [13:33]
Alistair Campbell
Rory, that was exactly the same day. It was January 3rd when Noriega got.
- [13:38]
Rory Stewart
My birthday again and again. I know, always happens on my birthday. Yeah, always happens on my birthday. So Noriega is the optimistic scenario, which is the US Got involved in Panama, they toppled the general, put in a new government, and broadly speaking, things worked out. I mean, Panamanians will say, wait a second, 300 people were killed, 27Americans were killed. But in the great legacy of international catastrophes, Panama went pretty well comparatively. But, but, but Panama is tiny. Compared to venezuela, you know, 3 million people. Compared to 30 million people.
- [14:13]
Alistair Campbell
There was a massive, 8 million, 8 million, as you say, who are living outside, who are outside, many of whom may want now to come back.
- [14:19]
Rory Stewart
Panama had a massive military base, and of course, it was vital to US national security interests because of the Panama Canal. And so this is a completely different context. There are no American boots on the ground. Trump says he's not worried about boots on the ground, but there aren't currently any boots on the ground. This is a country which has, as I say, gone through an 80% economic recession, where there's barely often electricity or water supply for two, three days in a week where people are in such dire poverty, as you say, eight and a half million people have left. So now let's think about what reconstruction is like. And the big story is going to be about the, the regime itself, which is still there. I mean, as you've pointed out, the Defense Minister, Maduro's defense Minister has been on television attacking these strikes. The Defense minister, the Interior minister, the vice president, who reportedly is on their way to Mexico, to Russia. All these people are still in place. Right?
- [15:19]
Alistair Campbell
Well, is that, is that, Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. The vice president on the way to Russia, Is that just a kind of a fake news thing or a. Because Rubio, Trump said. Rubio didn't say. But Trump said that Rubio had had a conversation with her with D. Rodriguez.
- [15:34]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [15:35]
Alistair Campbell
With, with the, the Vice president. And then the other thing is that one of the, the names that's been added to the indictment, this is an old, this is a rolled over indictment because there's an indictment against Maduro in 2020. Narco, terrorism, cocain, etc. One of the names that's been added is actually the very, very powerful Interior Minister and, and also Maduro's wife and son. So I'd be very, very surprised if she's on her way to Russia. Anyway, let's, let's see, let's see.
- [16:05]
Rory Stewart
And just, just to sort of, I mean, to give people a little bit of a glimpse behind the scenes of how we're trying to pull this podcast together and who we've been talking to. I've been talking quite a lot to Andres Velasco, who was the finance Minister of Chile. Yeah. I've been talking to Michael Reed, who was the Economist correspondent, Latin America. I've been reading a lot by a man called Javier Corales, who's from Amherst, who has done an amazing analysis the regime and I on that latter point. The military is the key here. So there is something like, you know, multiples more generals compared to the average soldier in Venezuela compared to anywhere else on Earth, like 20 times as many generals as you would expect. And every general has a monopoly somewhere in the economy. They control the economy, they control the ports, they control mining, they control oil. As well as doing illegal stuff. The judiciary is also tied in. So Maduro had also corrupted the judiciary, which is one of the reasons why when he stole that election, the judges still voted for him. So the first question is, what are all these senior people, Interior minister, defense minister and all these generals who actually run the country, what are they going to make of what's happened? Let's say the Nobel prize winning leader appears and says, okay, I'm coming in.
- [17:27]
Alistair Campbell
And I'm going to bring Maria Corina Machado.
- [17:30]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. Machado comes in and she says, I'm going to bring transitional justice. I'm going to prosecute people who are connected with the Madara regime. Only at the very top I won't go down, but at the top I'll go this right. They're going to be thinking, hold a second. I own a large mining concession. I don't trust Donald Trump, I don't trust this amnesty. Why on earth am I going to take any risks on this at all? And it seems to me either they will try to cling on to power and do some kind of deal with Grenell, who's Trump's envoy, and do some oil deal, in which case you have basically a regime even worse than Maduro's, run potentially by the former defenseman or current defense minister. So because Maduro is not like Stalin, he's not even like Saddam Hussein. This was not a personalist dictatorship, this was a big system, a Hugo Chavez system. Maduro was a relatively kind of introverted figure who rose up within this big system. So just taking him out doesn't remove the structure of the whole state.
- [18:34]
Alistair Campbell
And just on that you see Chavez, I think Chavez, whatever people think about him and like Maduro, a terrible man and used power for its own ends, etc, etc, but he did genuinely have a kind of charisma and a force and a power and a personality. Maduro doesn't, didn't have that in, in the same way. And one of the reasons I think he was put there in the first place is precisely because of that Chavez who was dying. Like a lot of people, when they're on the way out, they don't really want to be followed necessarily by somebody who's, you know, going to immediately take over and be absolutely brilliant. So Maduro, as you say, is the leader of, and this is where the Americans do have a point. He's the leader of a pretty criminal organization where he's got hold of the government and he's kept hold of the government and he uses it for his own, his own ends and his own power. And this guy, Diosdado Cabello, who's the one who's been added to the indictment, he is like his really big enforcers, right hand guy. Now all of these people, his vice president, the Defense minister, the interior minister, they've all been on the airwaves basically saying this is outrageous. America is, is an empire out of control. People need to take to the streets in defense of us. They've got these things called collectivos, which are these sort of, you know, civilian groups that are, that go around and keep control. They're now out on the streets basically saying, you do not come out and celebrate this. Leave the celebrations to those that are happening in Chile where they're being organized to say this is marvelous because the new president's friend in the White House is doing this great thing. And then the other thing which I think lends itself to your theory, they're slightly making this up as they go along, military success notwithstanding, is that Trump looked genuinely surprised by some of these questions coming at him. So then sort of say These guys are going to run. It basically means these guys are now going to start to work out how it might be run. And the other thing he did, Rory, he said that. And this may be clever, I don't know, he kept talking about there was a second wave ready to go. He talked about. And, you know, we. We keep saying he's. You've got to think of him as a kind of TV presenter. He actually said in an earlier interview today, you know, I was watching it, like the most amazing TV show. I was watching it as it was happening. These guys were moving so fast. And then he said at the press conference, you probably. You guys are probably never going to get to see what I saw last night. It was amazing. Right. But he then said we had a second wave of attacks ready to go. And he was very explicit that. I think when I say explicit, the message he was putting out to these people, you know, Delcey Rodriguez and her brother who runs the parliament and all this stuff, was, unless you come on board, you are going to be hit by the second wave. I think that's what he was saying. And meanwhile, the other thing I think we should probably talk about, Rory, is how other international leaders are meant to react to this. Because what happens now if. Let's just say that the. We, the Venezuelan military don't cave, that these Venezuelans who are part of Maduro's clique and who are up to their neck and no good as well, that they just decide to assume power and take power, she gets sworn in as the president because that's the way the Constitution works. Along they go, if that happens, then Trump is signaled and Rubio says take him at his word, then the second wave comes. Surely now, the only thing that might even begin to stop that is if world leaders somehow coalesce to say, hold on, Donald, is this really, really, really sensible? And there is very, very, very little sign of that.
- [22:20]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, I mean, the. And, and of course, the real key here is Latin America itself. So when he stole the election of 2024, or most blatantly stole the election, the Biden administration signaled very, very strongly to Mexico, Brazil, Colombia that they were not going to intervene, they weren't going to topple him. But if Brazil, Mexico and Colombia did it, Biden's administration would be standing behind them with financial support and all forms of reconstruction support. And Biden, in fact, recognized the guy that won the election as the proper leader of Venezuela. And nobody didn't. Nobody actually did anything. In fact, Brazil is rather interesting here. Lula, who's now out there saying, this is absolutely terrible. This is a challenge to international law and state sovereignty is the same Lula, of course, who turned up to visit Putin and watched his big military parades and hasn't called him out for the invasion of Ukraine. So there's a lot of weird double talk here. But it has to be ultimately, not Britain, but Latin America that decides how to come behind this and what to do. I don't think they're going to want to put troops in on the ground. Very, very unlikely that Brazil or Mexico or Colombia is going to want to put in troops. Argentina maybe he could try to lean on Melee, but it's the last thing that Milei feels that he can afford to do, I would have thought, at the moment. So then we get to the question of all this stuff that has been talked about again and again. People have obviously been talking about regime change in Venezuela for more than a decade. So there are all these think tank papers we can put in the links if people are interested. I looked at 10 of them, right, all the way from Brookings to AEI, war games, etc. And they keep coming back to the stuff that will be very familiar to you and to listeners who remember the stuff from the Balkans in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is, firstly, you need to think about what do you do about the former regime elements. So in Iraq, those were the BAATH Party. How many of them do you prosecute? Well, if you prosecute too many and sack too many, then you have a massive resistance movement moving against you. If, on the other hand, you forgive them all and say it's all great and you can all keep your mining concessions, 80% of the country says, what the hell is this? We didn't sign up for a revolution to have these Corrupt Generals keep 80% of the mining concessions. Secondly, what do you do with your colectivos, who you just mentioned? So we don't know 200,000, 300,000 of these people who control all the food distribution. They're not in the jungle, they're in the barrios. They're in the urban centers. And they've been armed. They're paramilitary groups. So again, the story needs to be demobilization, disarming of these groups, guns to jobs. There's this horrible so Condidia. But in Colombia, you were doing it with 14,000 people. Here you're talking about doing it with 300,000 people. Now, again, people say Venezuela has all this oil, so we've got to get the economy going and that will pay for all this. Stuff. Well, Venezuela has got oil, but oil production is now about a fifth of what it was at its peak because basically there's been no investment in any of it. It's much worse than Iraq. You remember in Iraq, everybody was struggling 2003, 4, 05 to get to the production up to million, 2 million barrels, because it turned out that the whole thing was welded with rust. But in Venezuela, it seems, at least on the basis of professional energy economists, even worse that sorting out the electricity system, the oil system, could take five, 10 years before you get decent revenue coming in.
- [25:58]
Alistair Campbell
But this was the other thing that, again, back to Rubio's point, take Trump at his word, when, if you remember the time of Iraq and there was a whole sort of thing run against George Bush. Oh, it's all about the oil, okay. And Bush would be at pains to say, no, no, no, no, it's not. Trump is very close to saying it's all about the oil. And he was basically saying that, you know, he actually said at one point, I mean, you know, it's pathetic. They've got all these reserves. It's pathetic how much they've been pumping. Well, of course, there is a sort of massive oil embargo against Venezuela, but they do have massive oil reserves. We said this on the podcast a few weeks ago, that America has been producing a lot of oil, but because through fracking and the shale gas stuff, it's very, very thin, weedy oil, whereas Venezuela has lots of the. The black stuff. And what Trump was saying today is that American oil companies will go in there, they will help make Venezuela great again, they will help Venezuelans get rich. But of course, the oil companies, they're not going to do it because they're a charity, because they're not charities. So this is, I think he's been very, very clear that the Venezuela getting the Venezuelan oil industry working properly, presumably, then if they do manage to get some sort of governance going, then getting sanctions lifted, getting the embargo lifted, etc. But it seems. So that is such a big thing to try to do that unless you've actually planned that through. There's a lot that can go wrong.
- [27:26]
Rory Stewart
The big question, did you get a sense from the press conference? Because who it is that they're proposing is going to be the government of Venezuela? I mean, is it going to be the Maduro regime without Maduro, or are there going to be elections and then some new democratic government comes in? Because you could imagine the former, couldn't you? You could imagine Trump in full cynical Real politic thinking, I don't care, I'll get rid of Maduro and I'll cut a deal with the next general in line. We'll put in the oil companies, it doesn't matter. It's an autocratic leadership in which case you're just going from bad to worse.
- [28:00]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, I, I, a part of me was thinking that, you know, I even had this weird thought that Donald Trump had actually persuaded the Nobel Prize committee. Listen, don't give it to me, give it to Maria Carina Machado, the Venezuela's opposition leader, because then she'll become the legitimate, such a powerful, legitimate force. But actually I don't think she even came up in the press conference. And when he was meant, when he mentioned it earlier, it was quite sort of cool. He wasn't sort of, you know, buying into her at all. And that's why I thought it was fascinating that he dropped in that Rubio had been talking to Delsey Rodriguez, who's the, the number two in the regime. So I think it's not impossible he'll try to cut some sort of deal with the, the sort of, you know, those who are left of the Maduro regime. A couple of things already from our eagle eyed listeners. Colin Jones has told us that Russia has denied the report that she's heading to Moscow. And then maybe there's another thing to hear that this worth is going into flame. Basilisk25:33 really interesting question in legal terms. How does the US try foreign nationals in their courts? How do their laws apply? And can you explain the 2020 indictment? I mean there is a precedent for this, of course, course. And this is, if I'd have been at the press conference, this is the question I think I would have asked. That is Juan Orlando Hernandez, this is the president of Honduras who was sentenced to 45 years in an American prison, in an American court because of similar offenses, narco terrorism, running drugs, as the elected head of a foreign government.
- [29:45]
Rory Stewart
And there was no after he stepped down, I think that the important thing is that he was not actually taken from his presidential palace while he was a serving president.
- [29:56]
Alistair Campbell
No, my point is though, he was a foreign politician whose crimes conducted in his own country because of the impact in America, an American court felt it had jurisdiction and it didn't. And there was no question about that within the debate in the American system. So the Supreme Court would let him away with that. But the point, of course, the big point is that Donald Trump, who says this is all about drugs and this is all about these terrible Latin American leaders bringing in drugs. This guy who got 45 years for doing exactly that. And what has Donald Trump done? He's pardoned them. So, you know, I think the thing with Maduro, what is extraordinary about Trump and you said when we did our kind of New Year's Day and we were both sort of discussing, well, what might we be looking forward to in the year, year ahead, and you, you she said, well, I think the thing to watch out for are the black swan moments, the things that we don't expect, but then suddenly they came along. Now, did any of us go to bed on January 2nd thinking we were going to wake up on January 3rd? And this has happened and this, by the way, has been planned for months, months and months and months.
- [31:07]
Rory Stewart
And this is also why your point about Rubio, Rep. Trump does what he says matters because of course, we didn't go to bed thinking that. But equally, now that it's happened, we think, well, okay, you know, we've been doing a lot of podcasts about this massive American buildup around Venezuela and the taking out of Venezuelan boats, and Trump making his normal ambiguous comments where he's frequently said his objective was to get rid of Maduro, and then sometimes he said it wasn't, and then sometimes it was, and back and forth, which is why Congress got them in and said, are you trying to do regime change? And was flatly told they weren't, and then they went ahead and did it. But that's exactly why one now needs to think about Trump saying, I'm going to help myself to Greenland, or Trump saying, Canada should be part of the United States, or the Panama Canal is going to come back. And this also relates to your reality TV point. I mean, what is Trump really trying to do? He's trying to make sure that he dominates the headlines every week or ideally every day with another spectacular operation. So if you really wanted to try to predict the next year, you could look at some of the things Trump says. But more than that, what you have to ask yourself every week is if the only thing you care about is creating headlines and you don't care about international law, you don't care about consequences. I mean, let's sort of, and let me just lean into that for a second, what he has done here, essentially, to say, I don't like this regime and I don't like this leader, so I'm just toppling him. Could be exactly done by China against Taiwan, could be done by Russia against Zelensky, presumably, could be done by Europe against Belarus, could be done in Uganda, Congo, Chad, Niger, and, and there are very, very good reasons why we created an international system, didn't do that. One of them is protecting small countries, but it's big. But there's another one which you'll be aware of. The one country I didn't mention, of course, is North Korea. Why don't we do it in North Korea? Because they have nukes. What do we create a world that encourages everybody to develop these horrendous weapons because the only protection they have from lawless activity by these sovereigns is to have nukes?
- [33:21]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. By the way, Roy, just as I said to you that Donald Trump had said that Rubio was, had spoken to the, the Venezuelan vice president. The reason I was looking at my phone was because someone just messaged me that at that very moment she was on Venezuelan television denouncing the whole thing as an absolute sort of scandal and the Venezuelans must rise up against it. So I think the other thing you mentioned, their consequences and the other thing we have to just figure and calculate into this is this, that, so Ukraine, let's just take Ukraine and Gaza yet again over the, the kind of short break that we've had from, from this yet again. We've had Trump having meetings at the, out of which he announces we're very, very close to a peace deal in Ukraine. And then two days later, Netanyahu was at Mar a Lago and he said we're, we're days away from the second phase of the peace plan being being implemented. And I think we're now probably going to add Venezuela to this. You know, we're going to be days away from the new administration taking shape. Now, the danger of that, this goes back to, you know, what happened, say, in Libya, what happened in all sorts of places when governments have been toppled is that any vacuum can get filled with any kind of badness and madness. And Venezuela is not without Maduro there. And by the way, I think he's a truly terrible human being, but the potential for instability is pretty enormous. So I think that the, the worry I have in this is that Trump has, I, I think that the psychology of this is, yes, he's clearly been, this has been on, on the cars for a long time. But I think a part of him just loves the idea of being at Mar a Lago. People think he's having a holiday and guess, guess what he's about to do. And then he does it. And then all around the world, every television screen in the world has got, we're sitting Watching a blank screen, waiting for Donald Trump to come and tell us what he's just done. And. Because that's what rocks his boat. Well, it floats his boat.
- [35:38]
Rory Stewart
I mean. Yeah. So I think let's take that as the central insight into Trump, which is that it's about spectacular news creation, it's about reality tv. But there's a possibility that this is, for some time, almost the end of it. And we could have a repeat here of what we saw in Iran, which is that he sends in strikes, he makes great claims, and then he just leaves the regime in place, having hit it. So it's possible that what we'll see here is that he thinks he's done his job taking out Maduro, hopes that the new generals will cut deals with American oil men. And all the hope from Venezuelans for a new chapter and a new democracy may turn out to be completely false. And Trump may not be trying to do boots on the ground. That's one possibility. Second possibility, which I think would be very, very strange, but he could be drawn into it, is that he actually does try to put boots on the ground and America really does try to run Venezuela. That's certainly what he was talking about at the press conference. It makes no sense to me, because everything he's ever said about international intervention around the world suggests the last thing he wants to do is that. But it's possible. Maybe the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine is genuine American boots on the ground in its hemisphere and nowhere else, in which case, that is one of the most difficult things that you can take on. Now, here also, I'm getting. When I talk to. I talked to a couple of Venezuelans this morning, and I was getting real flashbacks to Iraq and Afghanistan, because, of course, the optimistic story is. No, no, no. I remember when we went into Iraq, everyone was like, oh, this is not Afghanistan. This is a much more wealthy country. It's got amazing oil reserves that make a lot of money. We're very educated people. And now, of course, the Venezuelans are saying, no, this is not Iraq. We're a very educated people. Ricardo Houseman is a Harvard professor. We've got this. It's not going to be easy, but a democratic transition was. All these wonderful technocrats will come back, they'll rebuild the country. There's incredible revenue. This is not a. It's not a primitive place. This is, you know, it doesn't have religious problems or sectarian problems. Right. So. But what I think is underestimated in this analysis is what, 25 years of smashing up a state does when people like Chavez and Maduro take your economy down by 80%, where nothing works in the infrastructure, where everything in the military and judiciary is completely hollowed out, where there's no civil society, where there's 200,000 thousand people in a paramilitary with drugs, where FARC and the Colombia guerrillas are on the border. Right. Come into that situation, as an American administration, you're completely finished. But even as a Venezuelan administration, you have a problem, which is that you're coming in as a result of an American intervention. It's not like Ahmad Al Shara in Syria, who did it on his own, who, however much people hate him, and however difficult that situation is, that was not an international intervention. He took that. This is a situation where whoever comes in will be accused of being an American puppet.
- [38:46]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. There's a very interesting point here from Spring in Paris, just for the record. It's unbelievable that one country just invades another country and captures the leader and nobody really blinks an eye. I've got to say, Spring in Paris, I think a lot of eyes are being blinked at this. I don't think you can say this is just sort of happening. And what I think people are struggling to deal with is what can you actually do about it? Donald Trump has just managed to establish himself. Look at the way that we. We. It seems we can't have a discussion about how you might end the Ukraine war without Donald Trump being central to it. Where's the United Nations? I saw. I saw Antonio Guterres quote about this today, and it was just. It just felt bleak. It was like he. There was no power in it. Keir Starmer, when he was interviewed, asked about it, he basically started talking about, well, we will be. You know, let's wait to find out what' happened. Let's get the details. You know, that nobody wants to upset this guy because they know that he can turn on them. And so I go back to the point I made earlier. I honestly think, if you're the Danish prime minister looking at this thing, Christ, if they can do this, let me ask. Greenland's a piece of cake for them.
- [39:57]
Rory Stewart
Let me add to this. Imagine you're Zelensky. How do you know there isn't a sealed and sealed indictment against Zelensky for institutional corruption and, you know, goodness knows what within the Ukrainian state, where some secret part of the Department of Justice has prepared it under wraps. He's abducted, he's taken back, he's put on trial.
- [40:16]
Alistair Campbell
I'll tell you what, if I was Zelensky watching that press conference, what I would be thinking is, God, I wish they'd bring this level of military might and expertise to my side against Russia, because, you know, they. They keep saying they've got the most powerful military world. No other country on earth, you could have done this. But, you know, when they want to, they can do it. And the fact is that in relation to. To Ukraine, I think, you know, you were one of the first people to say this, and I think you're. You're right that they. Trump is basically on Putin's side. And I think this. This plays into the thing we talked about in relation to Ali's. Understood the president of Iceland, president of Finland had said about these three. You know, the world moving into these three blocks. What America is saying in relation to the Western bloc, US Led, is that when they say US Led, they mean that. They mean they can lead anybody within their team, as it were. And when Hexus was at the press conference, he went up and, I mean, I find the guy ridiculous, and I think most American military people find him ridiculous, but he stood there and he basically said, you know what this is? This is America first.
- [41:26]
Rory Stewart
You know, he's also. Trump is also a very lucky. That operation could have gone wrong in any number of ways. Remember, this is basically something that has completely haunted the U.S. i mean, what was the Bay of Pigs? The Bay of Pigs was an attempt by the CIA to topple Castro. You remember the helicopters crashing on the way in to free the hostages after the Iranian revolution that brought down Carter.
- [41:58]
Alistair Campbell
He mentioned Trump couldn't stop himself from saying, think of all the operations that have gone under when I wasn't in power that have gone wrong. You're absolutely right. And of course you say he's lucky. The trouble with luck like that is it then breeds hubris and you then go and do the next thing and stuff doesn't.
- [42:18]
Rory Stewart
100%, because we could have been talking today after a catastrophic operation in which helicopters had gone down, Delta Force personnel had been killed, and Maduro had not been captured. And now it may be that Trump just invents some new thing, some new war, and moves on. And it doesn't really affect him. I mean, it's interesting to try to work out how much of a risk he was aware he was taking and whether he thought there were big downsides if it did go wrong.
- [42:47]
Alistair Campbell
Well, that's why I think you have to look regardless of what you think of him or Maduro, any the. The. There will be films made decades from now, about the, the military operation itself, it is an incredible thing that they did. I mean, Maduro must be one of the most protected people on earth. You know, he knows he's at risk. He's got enemies inside, he's got enemies outside. The whole business of security. I mean, I've seen lots of leaders and the security that, that surrounds them. He would be right up there in the top league of protection. Somehow they penetrated it.
- [43:26]
Rory Stewart
And not, not least, of course, the people that run his entire intelligence service are the Cuban intelligence. And the one thing that Cuban intelligence has done since Castro took over is create an entire enterprise that existed for one purpose and one purpose only, which was stopping the Americans assassinating or abducting Castro. So, and they did it very, very effectively. And those are the guys that run Venezuelan intelligence. So it really is astonishing and, and suggests very strongly that they had managed to penetrate right inside the core of Maduro's operation.
- [44:00]
Alistair Campbell
Oh, yeah.
- [44:01]
Rory Stewart
To be able to pull this off.
- [44:02]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. The guy, the guy, the military guy, Dan Kane, he said, you know, that we'd been working on intelligence, as we know, where he ate, what he ate, who he ate with, what is, what, pets he had there was like he's building this picture that they've been sort of tracking him. But they couldn't have done that, given who he is and the extent to which he's protected. They could not have done that without somebody very, very, very close saying where he's going and what he's doing.
- [44:28]
Rory Stewart
Now this is then an issue for China, Russia and others. So Venezuela was a big, you know, was one of their linchpin countries in Latin America. China made big, big loans to Venezuela. Russia in particular was cooperating with Venezuela in a whole series of things. There have been formal criticisms of it, but of course, as with Iran, yet again, Russia and China has demonstrated that they're not really willing to stand up for their allies. Now, Venezuela, you know, was the source of oil. Iran was supplying Russia with all those drones in Ukraine, a lot of its transfer of technology, and yet Russia made no attempt really to stand up for it. So it, it does raise some very interesting questions about this kind of multipolar world, which is the US seems to be able to do these operations and the other world powers are not really able to protect their proxies.
- [45:21]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, and I, I can't quite work out what I think of the responses because it was interesting going through some of the international responses. You know, China talk about this being a breach of international law and reckless and dangerous and, and so forth, and, and Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, saying similar things. But they feel quite soto voce to me. They don't feel like they're kind of really crying out for some sort of, you know, action to be taken against American relations. And, and the calls for the United nations to convene or whatever. They, they're coming from Venezuela, but I've not seen much else apart from that.
- [46:01]
Rory Stewart
Well, so let's imagine China then did decide that the time is ripe to do a strike against Taiwan. It's pretty difficult to understand how Trump could respond if he were to send a US Aircraft carrier from Guam or a couple of subs, they could be sunk relatively easily because you're very close to the Chinese mainland. China is a nuclear power. China has the ability to disrupt satellites in space. China is, in purchasing power parity terms, the largest economy in the world. Now it's completely integrated into the global trading system. I mean, these strikes that Trump are doing at the moment is demonstrating his power against weak states like Venezuela, but at the same time, he's shedding allies and actually scaring a lot of his allies. As a lot of this conversation has been about the fact that, as you say, if you're Canada or Denmark, you're not very, or Ukraine. There's nothing in this that makes you very keen to create a closer alliance with the United States. I mean, and it, it also, there's an element of it. I mean, maybe this is me going too far here, but there's an element of it that just seems childish. When I see Hegseth and Vance celebrating this, they seem like children. It's as though they really don't want to talk about what the long term consequences are. If you were to try to sit down and say, but what happens in six months time to the Venezuelan military economy? You know, what are you going to do about these paramilitary groups? How are you going to do a transition? They'd just be like, why can't you celebrate? We took out a bad guy. And if you said this isn't legal, they would say, why can't you celebrate? We took out a bad guy.
- [47:51]
Alistair Campbell
Well, you, we, we talked a while back to Jim Hines, Democrat politician in the States, and he came out and he made some very measured comments, just saying, you know, we have to be clear, we're the United States, we should operate according to international law. And this was put to Trump in when he phoned up Fox and Friends and he just said, these are weak Democrats, are weak stupid people, and we've had enough of weak, stupid people. And like I said, when I didn't know what psa but public service announcement. JD Vance Liter, he was celebrating and he was also linking it very, very directly to the. He actually said, we can get back our stolen oil. Their claim has always been that when Venezuela nationalized the oil industries, they basically stole American oil infrastructure, which is why that gives them the right to say, we're going to send in the oil companies and they're going to clean up. It was a, it's a, I don't know, it was a very, it was a very weird press conference as well. I mean, this was like a, you know, this is a massive moment. By the way, is that a full moon up there? I think it is.
- [48:55]
Rory Stewart
Oh, yeah, it was a beautiful full moon with us and it's cold and we're both in Scotland, incidentally.
- [49:02]
Alistair Campbell
So. But this, he, he was, although we.
- [49:04]
Rory Stewart
Are both off to somewhere, quite excited Monday.
- [49:07]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, we are, we're going to, we're going to mold over and we're going to. And you see, the Daily Telegraph made her, made Maya Sandu their politician overseas politicians of the year. Anyway, he kept, he kept doing this thing where he had, it's really worth watching just for the sort of psychology of it because, and I mean, I sometimes wonder what the nerves you must go through if you're working for Trump. He had a script. He was reading from a script. I think he got through the first sentence before he went off script and did one of his little sort of rambles and weaves. But he did one right in the middle of this thing where he was talking about these, these people are sending violence, terror and subversion against. As he went on about Trender, you know, the bag, the Tre Agnia Gang. And he then sort of, we went through crime figures completely made up, by the way, I don't believe that crime in Louisiana is down to almost nothing. And likewise in New Orleans, he went through the crime figures for Memphis, Louisiana, New Orleans, Chicago. And they must be sitting there thinking he has just announced one of the biggest things of his presidency and certainly of his second term, and he's suddenly just wandering off into all these different sort of, of different areas. It was really quite mind blowing to watch. And then, and I think they must have been very, very relieved when he sort of, he brought it to an end. He also did say, by the way, about the oil thing. He said this was the largest theft of profit property in the history of our country. So that says to me, they're setting things up so that their supporters will, will go along with anything that says the Americans just go in now and they do take over the Venezuelan oil industry, which is potentially a massive, massive industry. So there we are. Rory, do you want to take some questions?
- [50:58]
Rory Stewart
Well, I think I'm almost coming to the end, so. Yep. Well, Rory, Rory Monroe had a good one. He said, you know, what would happen if Argentina tried to take the Falklands? So would Trump take the side of his new friend, Javier Milei, or would he take the side of his friend, his older friend, King Charles.
- [51:20]
Alistair Campbell
That presumably is Southern hemisphere?
- [51:23]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or would he pose as a neutral arbitrator? You know, it's all very complicated. There's a lot of history on both sides. And, you know, I've got to try to get them around a table here. And then there's been some good stuff also coming in the talk. Thank you very much. People coming in saying, is this distracting from domestic American politics? Absolutely. I mean, this is spectacular way of dealing with the fact that in fact, in many ways, employment figures, figures are not great, cost of living's not great, but spectacular attack. So, but most of all, I think we're in a world where nobody, and maybe this is the way to end. We have no theory for this. We have no theory of international law for this. We have no theory of post conflict reconstruction for this, because we can't even begin to see who's doing the post conflict reconstruction, what they're trying to create. I mean, you know, in Iraq or Afghanistan or the Balkans, at least it was still happening in the old liberal world order where the idea was supposed to be elections, free market systems and all this kind of malarkey. Right. Who knows what, you know, the Trump vision for a future of Venezuela is or what he's prepared to do to achieve it. And, and is it empire? I mean, is he interested in creating a new form of empire? Is he worried about the idea of empire? Is the idea that I'll is his legacy to take Greenland and maybe help himself to some territory in Latin America? And then how do Latin Americans respond now? How do leftist governments respond? How do more right wing governments respond? How do European governments respond? Is there a point beyond which Trump goes where finally Keir Starmer Macron Mertz come out and say, you are no longer a democratic liberal leader? You know, people are pointing out that he's now banned 10 people from entering the United States for criticizing him, whereas the British government, which he's saying is clamps down on free speech and isn't really anybody Never done, anyway.
- [53:29]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I'm. I'm. I'm sort of having second thoughts about going to the World cup up. I. I don't particularly want to be turned away at the border and I don't particularly want to be contributing anything to his economy right now. Anyway, we'll see. We'll. We'll see. Near the time. I must say, I. I think that I'm glad that we did this. I'm sorry that we interrupted into. Into your birthday. We've had a few comments pointing out. I mean, I should say that I'm. I'm in the kind of far north. I'm in the Scottish Highlands. Rory's a bit lower down. The WI fi is a bit better up here, I think. I think you've. You've got to get. You kind of go. Maybe you're not paid your bill.
- [54:03]
Rory Stewart
It's Elon Musk. It's Starlink.
- [54:05]
Alistair Campbell
Bastard. Bastard. By the way, you see, the Chinese are very. They. They've started to go for Mr. Musk, I noticed, about his Starlink use. Anyway, listen, I'm glad we did that because I think it would have been a bit remiss on a day that something so potentially consequential. Well, it's very consequential for Venezuela. It's very consequential, obviously, for me, for Maduro, but I think it's. I think this could have broader consequences that we'll be talking about for some time to come. But as you say, I will next see you in Moldova, a country I've never been to, so I'm very, very much looking forward to that. And we'll be interviewing the president, Maya Sandu, and we'll also be doing our normal podcast from there, which I suspect will be talking about Venezuela again.
- [54:49]
Rory Stewart
Thank you. And thank you to everyone for the happy birthday wishes. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.
- [54:53]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon. Bye. It.