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- [00:00]
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- [00:02]
Charlie Sykes
Did I talk too much?
- [00:03]
Donald Trump (Impersonation or Audio Clip)
Can't I just let it go?
- [00:05]
Charlie Sykes
I was thinking so much.
- [00:11]
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- [01:04]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Shirley Sykes. Welcome to the first podcast that we're recording in 2026. We're just a few days in, and the United States is already threatening military action or some sort of aggression against Colombia, Greenland, Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Venezuela. I think we bombed Nigeria in the last few weeks. And meanwhile, we are coming up on the anniversary of January 6th. That was five years ago today. So welcome to 2026.
- [01:43]
Anne Applebaum
What a welcome. You. You've made it sound like it's going to be a great year.
- [01:47]
Charlie Sykes
You know what? I was clinging to the hope that 2026 would be a better year than 2025, but, I mean, it has begun. Qu? With a bang. And really, we're very fortunate to be joined by the Atlantics. Ann Applebaum. By the way, Anne's podcast, Autocracy in America, is set to be released this Friday morning. Keep an eye out for it. And obviously, we want to talk about the events of the weekend and then put it in the context, including your piece, where you warn us that Trump's global dominance may leave Americans with nothing. But can I just start with this very, very strange moment, the sort of the defining moment of the weekend after the attack on Venezuela and the seizure of President Maduro of Venezuela, one of the world's genuinely deplorable bad guys. But Donald Trump said at the press conference, and I want to play this because it was such a remarkable moment where he's talking about how we're going to be running Venezuela. For anyone who thought this was about democracy or about anything other, let me just play the audio of this for you.
- [02:59]
Donald Trump (Impersonation or Audio Clip)
We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in. And we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. And it has to Be judicious because that's what we're all about.
- [03:31]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, judicious. Because that's what Donald Trump is all about. I mean, if Donald Trump is about anything, it's about being judicious, isn't it? And what did you make the word.
- [03:40]
Anne Applebaum
That comes to mind?
- [03:40]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that absolutely. It's going to be. He's going to, we'll put that on the when he renames the Washington Monument the Trump Monument, it will be no judicial anyway. So what did you make of that moment? They kind of backed off and they kind of moved away that maybe it's now going to be strike and coercion or maybe we're just going to quarantine them. But he was reading from a statement that somebody had put in front of him and you can always tell because his affect was, shall we say, low energy. So what did you make of the we're going to run Venezuela without and in suggesting that maybe there'd be boots on the ground, but they seem to have backed off on that.
- [04:22]
Anne Applebaum
So we are clearly not running Venezuela. To run Venezuela you would need 100,000 people, right? I mean you would need an occupying force, you would need someone who could insert advisors at all levels of the system and transform it. And we're clearly not doing that. And actually what, what I had several thoughts following that press conference, but one of them was a thought that I think, you know, Donald Trump and his policy in the way it gets made is very often misunderstood. So he's, it's people imagine that he must have a strategy. You know, he wouldn't do these dramatic things if there wasn't a strategic long term goal. You know, someone hadn't thought through how, how we would deal with Venezuela over the now that we've removed its leader, what is America's place in Latin America and so on. I believe that Donald Trump doesn't have strategies. What he is interested in is dominating or winning any particular given moment. He likes dramatic actions. He likes to do things that get him attention and make him the winner. And he did that successfully in Venezuela. What happens next? What happens to the country? What happens to the country's really unbelievably impressive and well organized democratic opposition? What happens to the political prisoners? What happens to the regime? What happens to the paramilitaries who still have their guns and the other groups who control some parts of the country where the government doesn't even reach anymore? He doesn't really care. And I think the lack of energy you were seeing was him saying I've done what I was interested in doing in Venezuela, and now I don't really care what happened, happens next.
- [06:13]
Charlie Sykes
And, And I'm. I'm kind of bored.
- [06:15]
Anne Applebaum
Yeah, I'm kind of bored. And all these questions don't really interest me. And. Let's talk about something else. And, you know, and the, The. The dismissiveness that he, the way he. I mean, to me, the real shock was the way he spoke about the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, who's. Whatever else you can say about her, she's an extraordinarily brave woman who has fought for democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela for many, many years and who has lived in hiding for the last year, year and a half. I actually interviewed her in hiding some months ago. She has lost touch at times with her family. She's away from her friends. She's seen her supporters be beat up and jailed and harassed. And for Trump to dismiss her as a nice woman who isn't respected in Venezuela was. Was actually bizarre. And I've heard a lot of. I've spoken to several Venezuelans in the last few days, and I've also seen them writing and saying things. And I think for Venezuelans, that was in some ways the bigger shock.
- [07:18]
Charlie Sykes
You know, I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, in the, in the past, look, I mean, this is not the, the first time that American presidents have invaded other countries, but there was no even attempt at pretense that this was about democracy. And I think it was the way that he brushed. Brushed away the democratic opposition. I mean, we ought to, like, put this in the context that Nicolas Maduro was very, very unpopular. He was defeated in the 2024 election overwhelmingly. They basically rigged it and stole it. The democratic opposition is quite impressive there. Maybe her big sin was that she won Donald Trump's Nobel Prize, but he just brushed it aside. So give me some sense of where we're at in terms of regime change, because people thought we were going in there to install the democratic opposition. He seems completely comfortable with dealing with the regime in place. Although what's going on with the vice president? Well, give me your sense of what's going on with the vice president, because they were suggesting that was it Dulcie Rodriguez would work with them, and then she had a very, very defiant statement. More recently, she sounded more conciliatory. But this is still the Maduro regime in power, and at least it feels as if he's comfortable leaving them in power as long as they will do his bidding. And Cut him the deals that he wants. What's your read?
- [08:45]
Anne Applebaum
That's very possible. That's what it looks like. So the big word that he isn't using and that nobody else is really using is legitimacy. He's not very interested in whether the new regime is legitimate, whether it has the support of the people, whether it's going to enforce the rule of law. He seems to believe that he can deal with Delsey Rodriguez or whoever else comes after her in such a way that the US Needs will be met and everything else doesn't really bother him. And so he'd be very happy to deal with an autocratic Venezuela as long as it's an autocratic Venezuela that allows US companies to operate there. And that's the impression we have so far and stipulate this could change in the next few days. And it is, it is a really radical shift in language. And so you are right, the US has done. You can look at past incidences. I mean, I suppose the most similar one is Panama from a couple of decades ago when the US did remove the leader of Panama, although that was in a very different context. And again, it was with an attempt to make sure that he was replaced by somebody legitimate. There was, there was a regional agreement. There were many, many different things were different about it. What we now have is Trump being uninterested in allies, uninterested in creating a sense of legitimacy or continuity. We now have, of course, he's uninterested in democracy, he's uninterested in transparency. And he just wants some kind of nicer regime in place who will cooperate in the way he thinks. And there are many, many ways in which this could go wrong, starting with the fact that oil isn' that just lies around on the ground. And all we need to do is send in a team of guys to go in and get it and bring it back to the United States. You know, it's a. Something that has to be dug out of the ground. And apparently Venezuela's oil infrastructure is very weak and out of date. It would require years. I saw one commentator who said it would take a decade in order to begin to get Venezuelan oil pumping again. It's also. I'm not an oil engineer, so I can't, I can't give you all the details, but apparently the geology is very difficult and the kind of oil it is requires special refineries. So it's not something that is just going to. We're just going to go down there and flip a switch and it's going to come on again. But he appears to think that, I mean, he seems to think that now the issue is over and we can just move in. I mean, to do a big oil investment of any kind, for any US Company to want to do that, they would need to work with a government that has a long term future, to have some kind of stability of contracts, to have some kind of rule of law, to have some kind of assurance that if they put a billion dollars into an oil investment, they'll get a return on that. And none of that is in place right now. So everything is still very, very much up in the air. The other thing that he's left out is the factor of the opposition itself. I don't know that they have a plan yet, but I am certain there will be one. And they will organize protests, they will begin to test the new regime. Will the Delsey Rodriguez regime, or whatever we're going to call it, will it allow them to appear in public? Because in the last, in recent months, people in the opposition have been arrested, beaten, harassed. Will that continue? And if that does continue, will the US Allow that to continue or will the US React? I mean, there's so many open questions here. And I mean, I think part of Trump's attitude, and this is one of the things I talk about in my piece, comes from this belief that big powers get to dictate what happens, and small countries don't have any agency and they won't get to decide what happens next. But I think pretty fast we'll discover that Venezuelans do have agency. I mean, there will be parts of the regime that want to continue doing whatever it was they were doing before, and they're going to try and find ways to do that. The opposition is going to try to make its presence felt. The person who was elected president of Venezuela, it was not Machado, it was Edmundo Gonzalez. She was not allowed to run, but he ran in her place. He won two thirds of the vote. The opposition was able to prove that. They will come back and they will say, you know, we were the legitimate government. You know, there will be many things that will happen and the Venezuelans will initiate those things and the US Will be, you know, will be in the position of what are we the protector? Are we the guarantor? Are we the, are we the overseer? I mean, what is our role here? It's still unbelievably unclear.
- [13:37]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, it's unclear, except that as you point out, Donald Trump is clearly much more interested in the Venezuela oil than democracy. You Know what I thought was really striking. We've gone through some of the striking things from that Saturday press conference was just sort of how naked the. The desire to get the oil. And he keeps referring to it as our oil. And the Venezuelan oil is going to pay for all of this. Hello. You know, has the United States waged war for oil in the past? Yes, but at least it's put a fig leaf on it. At least it pretended that it had some sort of legitimacy. But this is very much about the oil. And, and quite frankly, you know, that seems to be damning. Going back to your first point. Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.
- [14:20]
Anne Applebaum
No, I was going to say, but it's a very strange point because first of all, it's not our oil. We don't own.
- [14:25]
Charlie Sykes
Yes, I know.
- [14:26]
Anne Applebaum
We didn't ever own any oil. There. There were a couple of moments of nationalization when some oil drilling equipment was nationalized by the Venezuelan state. I don't know the full history, but it happened in different phases. And so you could argue that US Oil companies deserve to be compensated for that equipment. But the oil has, you know, the oil has always been Venezuela's oil.
- [14:55]
Charlie Sykes
Is there oil.
- [14:56]
Anne Applebaum
And then as I, as I. And as I've already said, the oil is not something that is going to start flowing tomorrow. It's going to take a lot of time and energy and money to bring it out of the ground. And it's not clear that how enthusiastic other people are going to be American companies will be to do that. So even if it was a war for oil, it wasn't very well thought through.
- [15:18]
Charlie Sykes
So I want to talk about the new Trump world order that seems to be emerging, this global dominance. But let's stick with the attack, because over the weekend, Marco Rubio went on, I think, all of the Sunday shows, and he was asked in various ways, what was your legal. What is the legal predicate for what you are doing? Under what law does the United States have the authority to take control of another country, its economy, its governance? And what was interesting is that Rubio never really gave a good answer. I mean, he talked about leverage, sanctions, drug trafficking. And by the way, this is not about drugs. We'll get to that in a moment. He didn't cite any statutes or any authorization or constitutional theory. And the fact that Congress played no role in this whatsoever. I mean, obvious Congress did not authorize this action. Congress was not even informed, which was really extraordinary because even in the darker moments of American overreach, there was some consultation with Congress and They essentially said we didn't think we needed to talk to Congress, inform Congress we don't trust Congress. So that struck me as another step, another bridge cross, another red line cross. So could you talk to me a little bit about just sort of not even going through the motions of regarding Congress as having a co. Equal role in this war?
- [16:49]
Anne Applebaum
No, there are two elements of that. I mean, one was the failure to build any popular acceptance of this action, of this war. I mean, there was really no effort to sell it or explain it to the American public. I mean, a little, kind of desultory after the fact and a little bit in advance, but nothing to judge justify aircraft carriers, huge numbers of troops, major military operation. I mean, none of that was explained or discussed with the American people. And as you say, it wasn't discussed with Congress. In our system, Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war. Now, it is true that that has atrophied and that as we've had the growth of a more imperial presidency, Congress has had less and less of a role and has often played the role of kind of cheerleader, letting the presidenc do whatever he wants. But you're right, this is a new moment when the President has decided he doesn't have to tell Congress at all. He can just make a big decision like this without, you know, really without formally consulting anybody. I mean, I think some senators were, got some phone calls in advance of the operation. Rubio seems to have called a couple of Republican senators, but no, no Democrats were contacted. The formal bodies in Congress that are responsible for, you know, for big intelligence and military decision were not contacted and nobody was included at all. And so that makes it in by, you know, forget about the international system. That makes it by the standards of our system that, you know, once again, you have another legitimacy question. You know, there's a question of legitimacy in Venezuela, there's a question of legitimacy in the United States. And this isn't how we do things. Even when we do bad things or even when we do things that turn out to be mistakes, we do them within the bounds of our Constitution and within the bounds of our system, or that's, that's what's supposed to happen and has often happened actually. Actually, in the past. We fought the Cold War over many decades over many different kinds of administrations with many different kinds of congressional leaders. But there was always an attempt to create support in Congress to get congressional funding. It was part of what the United States was, is that you had a president and Congress working together. Now you have an absolute split and separation and that. And that casts another shadow of, of, of legitimacy on what just happened.
- [19:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. So before we move on, I do want to just go, go back to this question of, of the hypocrisy of all this and the fact that this was that they didn't provide much of a pretext. You know, there was a lot of rhetoric about drugs and drug dealing and being a narco terrorist and all of that. I'm going to play some audio here. Trump was asked about this by the media afterwards, and I thought was this was a very, very interesting exchange where this reporter, you know, says, you know, you said that Maduro is responsible for drug trafficking and. But you recently pardoned a drug trafficker. And I just want to play this because it's sort of an indication of the, this kind of the incoherence or the not even pretending element of all of this.
- [20:02]
Anne Applebaum
You recently pardoned the former president of Honduras who was convicted for many drug trafficking. Can you explain how these two situations.
- [20:09]
Charlie Sykes
Are going to be?
- [20:09]
Donald Trump (Impersonation or Audio Clip)
Well, the. I endorsed, as you know, the winning president, the man who won in Honduras. I endorsed the man who won in Chile. I endorsed the man who won in Argentina, and we are doing very well with that whole group. What the man that I pardoned was, if you could equate it to us, he was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump. That didn't work out too well for them. This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly. He was the head of the country. He was persecuted very unfairly. And there are a number of them. And we felt that it was a very unfair situation that happened to him.
- [20:46]
Charlie Sykes
Jesus Christ. I mean, this is your thoughts on, on. On that. Basically, because the president of Honduras was legally extradited, he was tried, he was convicted, he was jail. We know that he was a major drug kingpin. So interesting question that if we've now gone to war because the president of Venezuela is involved in drugs, how do you explain the fact that you just pardoned the president of Honduras? I mean, Ann, it's just. This is like a hypocrisy with hair on it.
- [21:21]
Anne Applebaum
He can't explain it. And it's further proof of what I said at the beginning. There isn't a strategy. There isn't a consistent legal theory. There isn't. You know, this is a. It's a series of the Trump administration's actions are. It's almost like a string of individual actions that aren't necessarily connected to one another. I mean, my guess about the Former president of Honduras, was that some, you know. Well, it's more than a guess, but, you know, some friend of Trump or donor of Trump, for whatever reason, wanted him freed and persuaded him or paid money into one of his, you know, in one of his investment accounts, and that's why he was freed. And so the freeing of the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug dealing, has nothing, in Trump's mind, has nothing to do with the situation in Venezuela. He's not interested in enforcing a principle or a policy about drugs and heads of state in the Western Hemisphere or anywhere else he's interested in. He treats everything one by one in this situation. What's the advantage for me in the situation of the president of Honduras, somebody persuaded me that it was good for me to let him go. In the situation of the president of Venezuela, I've decided that it looks pretty dramatic to stage this arrest and to use the full might and power of the very expensive US Military to do this act. That makes me look good. And I really do think that's how he thinks. I don't think it's how everyone in the administration thinks. And there probably are people who are interested in the legal niceties and who would maybe like to enforce, you know, enforce rules about drugs, but Trump himself just doesn't care. And you can hear from his answers, his rambling answers, in which he moves from thing to thing, and he immediately shifted to saying the Biden administration was mean to this guy. I mean, what. I mean, what does the Biden administration have to do with that? I mean, he was an indicted drug dealer, and because he doesn't care and because he doesn't see any links or put anything together, he can't explain it. So it's sort of deeper problem than hypocrisy. I mean, it's just the lack of any strategy whatsoever.
- [23:43]
Charlie Sykes
So, speaking of strategy, who's next? I mean, this seems to have been the parlor game over the weekend. Who's next? I mean, Marco Rubio floating the idea of Cuba, Donald Trump talking about intervening in Iran, open speculation about going after the cartels in Mexico or removing the president of Colombia. We are in a moment of real instability here where you get the sense that now they've sort of waved the big stick. It's like, all right, we've established our hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. We can talk about the severes of influence, and isn't the Don Row doctrine, basically, I run everything. I run everything in north and South America, and I am prepared to do it exert my will on every country, every, every regime in this, in this hemisphere. So what's, what's next? What do you see going, going ahead?
- [24:40]
Anne Applebaum
So, and there's an extra aspect to that. I will exert my will according to my personal whim. You know, there isn't a theory about democracy or about rule of law or about, even about narco terrorism. There's a theory about what I feel like doing is what I'm going to do. And that is, and that's what makes this era of, or this coming year of American history so actually hard to predict, dangerous and likely to create a backlash. Because what you're going to start to see all over South America is you're going to see, and actually all over the world is you're going to begin to see people hedging. So our allies will hedge, they'll be careful about how they deal with us. People will begin to form new kinds of unions and organizations. You will see in the Western Hemisphere people beginning to talk among one another about how do we resist the United States. You're hearing a little bit of that in Europe already in the discussion about Denmark and Greenland. The backlash to this is going to be suspicion of the United States refusal to, I mean, beyond refusal, nobody's going to believe American promises or American policy statements because we just don't know whether they'll be overthrown by the next whim of the, of the president. And with that lack of consistency, you'll see eventually an economic effect. You know, you'll, people will, you know, people will be wary of what kind of contracts they do with America. They'll be wary of investing in the United States. They'll be wary of accepting American investments. They'll be wary of buying American military equipment, for example, or other kinds of big American infrastructure investments. Because, you know, this is now an unpredictable, possibly dangerous country to be too close to. I mean, I personally know of political leaders who don't want to come to Washington because it's not a good idea to be in the same room with Trump. It can all go badly very fast. I mean, everybody saw what happened to Volodymyr Zelensky last February. And that will be the pattern, that we are not a guarantor of stability. We aren't a source, source of safety and predictability. We're a source of unpredictability. And that's why I actually, I can't answer your question. I mean, I don't know who's next. I mean, there is a deep connection between Venezuela and Cuba, the Cubans had Maduro had been surrounded by Cuban bodyguards, and Cuban security had been all over Venezuela. They were an important source of help and advice for the Venezuelan security system and, and maybe the army as well. And then Cuba was also very dependent on Venezuela for its oil. And so there is a possibility that you could see a weakening of Cuba because of what's just happened in Venezuela. I mean, these things are connected. And I should say, I mean, I wrote a book about the way in which dictatorships and autocracies, even with very different ideologies, are connected. And so there was a link also between Venezuela and Iran. They had a strong trading relationship and other kinds of relationships. And so this fall of Venezuela does. May create instability in other places. What the United States will do, though, is now no longer possible to predict because we don't know when Donald Trump wakes up tomorrow morning what he'll feel. And because there isn't a clear policy. We're not anti dictatorship, obviously. We're not pro democracy. We're not necessarily in favor of enforcing drug laws. We are sometimes, but sometimes we're not. We're interested in US Business, but not in a kind of consistent or careful way. If we were, then we'd be interested in the rule of law. Right. Because that's what business needs. And if we were interested in business, we would have consistent, predictable trade agreements with everybody, too. And we don't have that anymore either. So because of that, I can't give you a guess as to what. You know, which. And no one else.
- [29:05]
Charlie Sykes
I heard you make this point over the weekend, though, that the economic fallout for this for Americans, like, you know, American global companies, are going to find out that the rules, you know, many of the rules that have been put in place that have benefited them may be changed now. There may be this kind of skepticism about America's role. And it really, it is striking. You know, it feels as if shift. We have gone, undergone this tremendous shift from American exceptionalism to, I think this was your phrase, that now we're just the ordinary neighborhood bullying. That is sort of a throwback to the 19th century, where we just. We care about our concerns, we bully our neighbors. And there. And there's no loftier concern about freedom or democracy or, or even the fact that we are the good guys. And you said something that really stuck with me over the weekend. You said, you know, at a certain point, not only will the rest of the world feel differently about us, but Americans will start to feel differently about their own country. Can you talk to me a little bit about that, that, you know, we have been the good guys. We have been a force for something that we would cling to and that seems to be draining away.
- [30:15]
Anne Applebaum
So of course our foreign policy was always aspirational. You know, we aspired to do good things in the world, but there were elements of it that were indisputably good. I mean, the role the US played in international aid, which has now come to an end, the language that we use, the tools that we had to promote or talk about democracy around the world, these were widely admired in places like Venezuela actually, or Iran or Russia. And for a lot of people, maybe even more for foreigners than for Americans. You know, we stood for a set of principles and ideas and people wanted us to lead that path. And I think, you know, Americans had a, just made an assumption about our country that we were, you know, at least most of the time, we were the good guys. Not all Americans made that assumption and not all of them made it all the time. But for a lot of Americans, the idea that our role in the world is positive was part of their own identity. You know, we are. I'm American. That's good. When I travel around the world, I want people, you know, people are friendly to me because, because I'm American or even if I don't travel around the world, I like to think of myself as coming from a country that's powerful and rich, but also can be generous and, you know, and a loyal ally. And I think once that's gone, once the United States is really just a bully. And it's not just, you know, the far left or the far right who say that once really everybody feels that. And once the only thing we're seen as doing in the world is damage and destruction and chaos and instability, I think it will affect how people feel about the United States. And by the way, there's polling on this. This is not just my assumption. I mean, I've seen polls saying that Americans want. First of all, Americans like having allies. There's still, you know, despite everything that's happened, despite the language that is used by the President and others, there's still a huge amount of support for NATO membership. There's a feeling that Americans like feeling connected to other like minded democracies. We like being part of a democratic camp. We like being seen as the leaders of a democratic camp. And you know, once that is gone, then I think people will feel worse about themselves and worse about the country. And I've seen this happen in other places. When the nature of a regime shifts, you know, both for better and for worse. It really affects how people feel about themselves. And I, I, this is a, it's a very subtle psychological and it's going to be, you know, I can't tell you exactly how it will play out, but as Americans begin to think of their country as the bad guys, you know, as the, as a, as a global problem, it will affect our relationship with our government and with one another.
- [33:06]
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- [34:31]
Charlie Sykes
So I want to talk about what signal this sends to the rest of the world, including to Russia and China. But you mentioned Denmark. And this is one of those things that most of last year are going back and forth in thinking, okay, is Donald Trump just trolling us and joking about green light? I think it's increasingly obvious that they're not joking about this now. How serious they are, we don't know. You saw this over the weekend. This created a diplomatic firestorm of sorts where Katie Miller, who is the wife of Stephen Miller, puts out this, this X post with a map of Greenland with an American flag superimposed and the word soon. And the, well, you know, the, the Danes were not amused. Here's the statement from the Prime Minister of Denmark. I must say this very clearly to the United States. It makes absolutely no sense to speak of any necessity for the United States to take over Greenland. The United States has no legal basis to Annex one of the three countries of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Kingdom of Denmark, and that's Greenland, is a member of NATO and is therefore covered by the alliance's collective security guarantee. We already have a defense agreement between the Kingdom of Denmark and the United States that grants the U.S. broad access to Greenland. In addition, the Kingdom has made significant investments in security in the Arctic. I therefore strongly urge the United States to cease its threats against an historically close ally and against another country and another people who have stated very clearly they are not for sale. Now, this statement came after Donald Trump said something like on Air Force One, like, we have to have Greenland. So, I mean, this is not just one tweet from Katie Miller. This is. There's been a lot of, you know, buzz about all this, but that's a very strong statement from the Prime Minister of Denmark. Give me your sense of, like, the Europeans look at. Are you. Are you. Are they Afghans? United States really threatening a NATO ally for what reason?
- [36:37]
Anne Applebaum
I went to Denmark almost exactly a year ago and asked just at the beginning of this conversation, after the first mentions of Greenland had begun. And I've been in touch with some Danes since then. The mystery for the Danes from the beginning was that whatever it is that the United States wants to do in Greenland, it can do right now. So if American companies want to drill for minerals in Greenland, they're welcome to do it. If the US Wants to use shipping lanes around Greenland. Seen some conversation about welcome to do that, too. If the United States wants a military base in Greenland, you know, go right ahead. There's one there now. And not only that, in the past, the US without the knowledge of the Danish people, actually, actually kept nuclear weapons in Greenland at one point in the. In the past. And so the Danes have made Greenland more than accessible to the United States. It's there. There's nothing that the US US can want there or need there that they can't have right now. And so the question is, if given that that's the case, what do they want it for? Yeah, and the best answer that the Danes could come up with a year ago, and I don't think they've come up with anything better now, is that Donald Trump likes the way Greenland looks on a map. It's very large, particularly on the Mercator projection. You know, it looks very big up there, and it would add to his sense of bigness and grandeur. So, once again, it's not about strategy or, you know, it's about, you know, this impression of dominance or this impression of winning. There are some other theories, by the way, about people around Peter Thiel wanting to create a colony in Greenland or wanting to use Greenland as a territory to sort of reinvent the state and so on. I don't know how real any of that is, is.
- [38:26]
Charlie Sykes
Who knows.
- [38:29]
Anne Applebaum
But that Greenland is a. Looks like a big piece of land and if we owned it and put the flag on it, that would look really good. That seems to be the main motivation, as far as anyone can tell. And that's a bad motivation. I mean, it's silly, it's wasteful. You're going to break up NATO for that. You're going to offend an all. You know, Denmark has been a very loyal ally. Denmark, the Danes fought in Afghanistan, they fought in Iraq. There were Danes who died in Afghanistan. The, you know, the Danes were one of the founding members of NATO. They've been, they have big investments in the U.S. you know, big important Danish companies, shipping and windmills and other things play a big role in, you know, in US commerce. You know, the Danish economy is completely integrated with the American economy. And, and everybody thought that was great. And now Denmark and the rest of Europe as well is suddenly faced with the possibility that the US might be a hostile power against whom they will have to defend Greenland. And I don't know, I don't think anybody wants to talk about what that means too much in public, but there are preparations being made, scenarios are being thought through. And what would we do if, if there was a US landing force in Greenland and how would Denmark react? And I can't tell you exactly what the plan would be, but certainly the plans are under discussion. And that's a very weird and very profound change, almost dramatic. I mean, 100%, 100 degree change, 180 degree change, whatever's the right number of degrees from where we were, where the US and Denmark have been for the last several decades. I should also say that as I understand it, and again, these things are. Because these things are illogical, they're hard to understand. As I understand it, what Stephen Miller and others and advance and others are talking about isn't what we just saw in Venezuela. Namely, we go in, we kidnap the Prime Minister of Greenland and we, you know, and we, and then we leave it alone. They're talking about, about capturing and owning and controlling and taking over Greenland and making it into a kind of U.S. colony. And that is something that will look a lot more like what Russia has done in Ukraine. I mean, I don't know that it would be violent. I Don't know that it would be. So, you know, the Russian occupation of Ukraine is similar in many ways to the Nazi occupation of Poland or indeed the Soviet occupation of Ukraine in the 1930s. You know, it involves terror. It involves forced. Forcing people to accept passports and forcing people not to speak Ukrainian and so on. I mean, it's a very vicious and brutal occupation. Maybe they wouldn't do that in Greenland, I don't know. But you would certainly need some kind of occupation regime in order for the US to control Greenland. And if that's what we're thinking about, then we're in very new territory, at least for the modern, post World War II United States. We have occupied other countries or we've played a role in other countries and so on, but the actual taking over of territory and the eradication of its identity and the replacement with a new identity, that's something we haven't done lately. And that would turn out to be a much bigger and much, much uglier operation, even more so than the one we saw in Venezuela. And again, has the Trump administration thought this out? Is there a plan? I mean, I. It's hard to say because they don't seem to make plans in the way that other past administrations have made plans. There isn't a policy process. They don't have input from different parts of the administration. They don't come to conclusions. They don't consult intelligence agencies. They don't do anything. So I don't know. But this would be a huge step. It would be, I mean, beyond damaging to NATO. It would destroy NATO. It would destroy the rest of our relationships with Ukraine, Europe. It would. And as I said, it would require a new way of thinking and a new way of behavior for American soldiers, not just occupying territory, but changing the nature of that territory, changing the identity of the people. And again, not something that we've done lately, and not something I'm sure we know. I think we even know how to do.
- [43:14]
Charlie Sykes
So this is a good segue to what, what happened in Venezuela, how it relates to what, what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Of course, you know, speaking of hypocrisy, Vladimir Putin denouncing the invasion of Venezuela, the attack on Venezuela. But let's talk about that. I mean, you know, clearly, you know, this, this Don Row doctrine seems to envision, you agree, you know, spheres of influence where, you know, Donald Trump controls the Western Hemisphere, Putin controls his. His sphere of influence. China controlled their sphere of influence. So there was these reports which I'm sure you've seen. Fiona Hill Talking about conversations that took place years ago in which Putin was basically saying, give me Ukraine and we'll let you have Venezuela. So what does this whole episode say about the relationship between Trump and Russia? I mean, on the surface it looks like Russia was saying, don't touch Venezuela, they're ours. And we denounce this. On the other hand, this is the ongoing very strange dynamic. How do you read the Trump Putin dynamic post Venezuela?
- [44:31]
Anne Applebaum
So there is a kind of theory of geopolitics that I have heard espoused in which there would be, that the way to achieve peace in the world is to have three spheres of influence that the US Dominates the Western Hemisphere, Russia dominates Europe, and China dominates Asia. And then the three leaders, Xi Jinping and Putin and Trump, could get together and make an agreement between one another to not interfere, and then we would have peace. This is a Russian idea. I mean, it's, and it, for a number of reasons is advantageous to Russia. One, because it gives them an excuse to behave the way they do in the, in their, in their immediate area. Also because it make, it puts Russia on the level of the US And China, which it is not. I mean, I, I, I wrote in the piece I published today, European economy, just the economy of the EU alone is 10 times the size of the Russian economy and the EU armies put together are much larger than the Russian army. So, I mean, there's no, there's no way Russia can do this. But they like themselves in that role. But it's clear that this idea of geopolitics that the way to run the world is through these dominant big powers dominate and small countries have to shut up. It's clear that this idea has been accepted and incorporated by some part of the Trump administration. You could hear hints of it in the National Security Strategy that was published a few weeks ago with comments about, you know, the, the Western hemisphere and the, you know, we need to lead there and, and very much downplaying competition with Russia and China as if that wasn't really important anymore. And, and what we need is to dominate our own area and, and, and leave the rest of the world aside. And so some, clearly someone has begun to act on, I mean, whether, as I said, whether it's a, whether it's coming directly from Russia, as you know, whether the Russians did make some kind of offer, you have Venezuela, we get Ukraine, or whether it's absorbed through the kind of MAGA Russia melded worldview that you can pick up on the Internet, I don't know. But it's pretty clear that there is a part of the administration that now believes that. I mean, think about what this entails. If this is now US foreign policy, you know that US foreign policy is now to dominate the Western hemisphere and to kind of pull away from everything else. It means that first of all, we no longer stand for any kind of universal values. This is as we were saying before, we don't stand for democracy, we don't stand for the rule of law, we don't stand for international law, we don't stand for the UN Charter, we don't stand for any of the things that we've stood for since 1945. It also means that we act in a way. We act as a colonial power in our area and we allow others to act as colonial powers in their areas. And sooner or later that would mean we lose. Lose that we would lose, certainly we would lose access to the Taiwanese chips that are so important to our industry. We would lose our contacts with Korea, Japan, we would lose our relationship with Europe. And those are huge trading relationships and partnerships, very deep economic relationships that go back many decades. And we would then somehow shrink to the Western hemisphere where we would be perceived as a threat and a bully by every other country. And sooner or later, I mean, it might take some time and it would depend on who is in power in which country. Sooner or later we would also begin to see countries arming themselves or preparing to act against us or looking for hedges, looking for relationships with China or with other states who could push back against us. It would be an enormous economic disaster over time. And this isn't something that's going to happen overnight. And it would entail, as I said, the end of any kind of American powered influence in the world. I mean, there could be other side effects. What would happen to the role of the dollar in the world? What would happen to the influence of US contracts in the world? And there are all kinds of rules and institutions and organizations that the US created or co created that have been useful to US business for many decades that would fall back part and they would be replaced by, I don't know, by Chinese versions or Chinese Russian versions or something else. And it's a huge diminishing of the U.S. role and a huge loss for the U.S. i think in terms of prosperity as well as influence. And yet this seems to be the thing that again, I don't know if it's everybody, I don't know if it includes Rubio, but it includes some piece of the policy making. Some, some of the people who who, who do have visionaries, who do think strategically in the Trump administration.
- [49:37]
Charlie Sykes
And, you know, people are listening to our conversation on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, and my hype, I don't know what your thoughts are, just, you know, this conversation we're having and remembering what's happened in the five years since then. It does feel as if the world has been turned upside down. This is the upside down reality. And a lot of it flows from that moment. What has happened to this country to the rule of law, to the assumptions about norms and constitutional balance since January 6th. This is a day that is not fading into the rear view mirror. But you have Donald Trump back in power, thinks of it as a day of law love. And I think we've seen exactly what a transitional point it was.
- [50:28]
Anne Applebaum
It's also important that to, to understand that after January 6, a different kind of person was attracted to work for Donald Trump. So anybody who hated America as it was or as it is, who dislikes American democracy or believed it weak or unnecessary, who, who believed in radical transformation of the United States into something very different, and that includes people who are white nationalists, it includes people who are Christian fundamentalists, who believe we should have a Christian state and not a secular state. It includes people tech authoritarians who think that they should run the United States rather than voters. All those different kinds of people were attracted to Donald Trump after January 6 For that reason, because they saw that he attacked the political system and he got away with it. And so for some people, that was repulsive and frightening and terrible. And for other people, it was a reason to work for him. And so one of the reasons you've seen so many transformative things happen over the last year, and I think the next year is going to be no different, is because Donald Trump is now surrounded by a very different class of people. And these are people who want radical, I would say, Bolshevik style revolution inside the United States and have a vision of a very different country. And they aren't all going to be able to achieve what they want. And some of what they want, some of them are going to clash. We've seen that happening already, too. So I'm not saying that they can succeed, but the transformative, radical, damaging and destructive things that have happened over the past year, I think have happened largely for that reason, because January 6th set a standard and the people who admired that moment are now in power.
- [52:33]
Charlie Sykes
Exactly right. Ann Applebaum, thank you so much. I appreciate all of your time and your insights today. And of course, you people can find your work in the Atlantic and your podcast. The new season begins this Friday. Thank you so much for joining me today.
- [52:48]
Anne Applebaum
Thank you.
- [52:50]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We are in a new year, but the mission is still the same. To keep reminding ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [53:15]
Donald Trump (Impersonation or Audio Clip)
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- [53:16]
Charlie Sykes
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