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Foreign.
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Welcome back, everybody, to a special episode of what really Matters. I'm Jeremy Stern with you in Los Angeles. I'm here, as always, with Walter Russell Mead of tablet, the Wall Street Journal, Hudson Institute, and the Hamilton School at the University of Florida. Walter, you've been in Davos all week at the World Economic Forum, which I gather Donald Trump has helped made, maybe not great, but at least relevant again in his own way. So we're going to skip the regular formatting this week and cover the thoughts, impressions, observations, reflections, et cetera you've made in three different dispatches you filed from Davos. The first was about how kind of whereas denial was the main attribute of Davos last year, fear has been the primary factor this year. The second was about Trump and his speech in which the Matter of Greenland featured heavily and really kind of about how the US As a whole at Davos this year has been both more dominant and more unpopular than it's ever been. And then the third kind of about Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech in which he spoke about how kind of the moral gap between Europe and Trump isn't as large as the Europeans would like to think it is, and that while maybe their diplomatic behavior is preferable to America's, their actual actions and revealed preferences from the standpoint of a besieged country on the front line of defending the west are often not. So let's take each of these in turn today. Let's start with the mood changeover from last year to this year, from denial to fear. Tell us what you mean.
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Well, things were beginning to change last year at Davos, and maybe first of all, I should just, you know, say a little bit, because maybe not everybody listening to us is sort of Davos aficionado. You know, the World Economic Forum. It's an organization that for many years has over half a century has been having these conferences annually every year in Switzerland. Kind of started out as mostly a European business conference. Politicians began to come because there were so many business people here. Then it became global. More people from the US came, ultimately Russia and China after the end of the Cold War and so on and so forth. India's big now the Gulf, but also a lot of NGOs and so on. A lot of the climate activism. Davos used to have all these climate demonstrators, and they kind of invited them inside the tent, and it turned out that they had a lot of influence for a while in developing the agenda this year. Interestingly, as the agenda has moved away from sort of the climate change sustainability Stuff that was such a big deal in the recent past. We had actually more demonstrators again. So my first day here, we were like, you know, you couldn't get through the roads because, you know, once again, the World Economic Forum had become the enemy of the Greens. So interesting changes. And you do see, you know, you've got. For people like me who do a lot of kind of writing about international affairs, we're definitely the poor relations here at Davos. I mean, there's a lot of billionaires, a lot of CEOs, and then there's sort of us, you know, what wretched ink stained drudges who, instead of partying till all hours of the night, have to like, go back to our miserable hotels and type away at our, at our, at our columns or what have you. But it's what that also means, though, is that it's a great time to, to get together and see what other people that you, you know, who you read every day or so on what they're thinking and to get behind the headlines a little bit with them. So when I talk about things like the mood at Davos, that's, that's a very fancy way of saying what some of the people I hang out with are thinking and feeling at a given, given moment. And there definitely was a shift, I think last year there, there was, there was a lot of fear, beginnings of fear, but the predominant reaction was, we can make this, we can work with Trump. We've had Trump before. It wasn't that big of a deal. There was perhaps more of a confidence still that it would be an easy thing to, to work with, relatively easy to settle the war in Ukraine in some reasonable way. This year, with Trump's 2.0, a lot more in the news, a lot more aggressive, more internationally activist than the first time around. And also with the war in Ukraine actually going pretty badly, you know something, we were getting stories like 600,000 people have fled Kyiv. With the increasing Russian attacks on the electricity grid and so on, it's a different feel. There's more anger at the United States. This was all obviously accentuated by the Greenland issue that pops up. But fear, anger, uncertainty about what lies ahead. This was a very different Davos. And Trump, who not only came himself this year, but brought a huge delegation of senior American officials, and there was an America House close to the Congress Center. I should probably say a little bit about all that. What happens is this is a sleepy ski resort. Most of the time I'm actually staying in Cloisters, not Davos. This is Where Prince Charles, now King Charles used to hang out all the time. And I, I hear from people in the, in the town that he and his family would just kind of walk around here, you know, and nobody would say anything and, and it was very casual. What I've discovered is they treat me just like that here, just like Prince Charles, very casual. No one gets excited when they see me. But up in Davos itself, which is maybe a, you know, it's a, it's maybe a 20 minute, 25 minute drive when things are fine. But when the security which gets very tight when you have like 40 world leaders up there, you know, can be two or three hours, it can be pretty exhausting. Up in Davos you have this promenade street outside the super security zone where only people with white badges are allowed into the super secret part and then, but along this promenade people set up stands and you know that the regular stores empty out of all of their goods and they put up these facades. So you have like, you know, the big Saudi Arabia show or come see Palantir erects a building, a pre, preassembles one of these buildings that it just, you make from prefab materials. And so there's this elaborate center. There are unbelievable number. Indian states have big exhibits. You walk up. And so this was this year, the Americans put, put up a big thing in one of the churches very close to the conference center, very desirable location. So this was a much bigger deal. The American presence, the administration was clearly pushing it. And what they were doing was they were pushing, they weren't just saying, hi, we're here, we love you, we want to work with you. No, it was a huge visible presence aimed at saying, we don't like any of you people. You people have really made a mess of everything. And we are here to tell you exactly where and how you are wrong. It was really an incredible display. And at the same time that people were peering here and making videos, very stern speeches, they were contributing op eds. I think Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had one in the, it ran in the ft. So by the time Donald, it came for Donald Trump's big speech and he had actually two very significant appearances here, the Greenland sort of panic was at its height and he was demanding, you know, full sovereignty, military occupation. And furthermore, if any Europeans oppose it or even aren't enthusiastic enough about supporting it, he's going to put tariffs on top of them, on top of what they're already paying. And people were shell shocked. So when there's a big kind of arena, you Know, the biggest conference hall in the. In the whole development is where they have the big speakers. The line to get in when Trump was going to make his speech was insane. And everybody standing in line, clawing, you know, desperately hoping they're going to get a place in there. It's like the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation or editor in chief of a major publication, you know, people who are normally the big celebrities, and everyone bows and scrapes to them and scatters. Palm, palm fronds before their advancing feet. All right. No, they're like, you know, regular pros in this horrible scrum. And all for Donald Trump. And so the display of dominance was. Was insane. It was. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything like it. One of the people crammed in next to me said, this isn't a political conference. This is Woodstock. But of course, it's Woodstock, where almost everybody in the audience hates the act. It really was one of the most extraordinary kind of weeks I've lived through.
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I mean, what. What do you chalk that up to exactly? Is it that, you know, people don't hate Trump in exactly the same way that they profess to, and they're kind of. They can't take his eyes off him just in the same way that we can't, or is it that they felt the need to actually be there to hear what he had to say, even though he was obviously going to be all over the news and social media immediately afterward? I mean, what. What, like, what.
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It was a combination. It was a combination. Part of it is he is the greatest living entertainer. You could see them. They didn't really want to laugh, but, I mean, you know, but they would have to laugh at some of his jokes because they are, in fact, funny. And then there was the kind of feeling that so many Americans have with Trump, where he does something that is just so over the top and crazy and ridiculous. You laughing is the only thing you can, too, right? So, yeah, it's. It's the same. You know, globally, people are feeling the same thing that a lot of Americans do about Trump, which is, you know, that might be. I never. I wish you had never been president. I. I wish he had, like, you know, I wish he'd burned down at one of his casinos or something, but I can't not watch. I can't not be here. So there was definitely that, but it was also. There was more in that people were saying, you know, people seriously believed. And you probably remember this before. It's. It's four days ago. But people were really talking about this is the end of NATO, you know, and, and so, and, and how unthinkable that is, especially if in a Europe where if there is no NATO, like the Russians can be in Berlin. Everything is at stake and we have absolutely no idea which way the cat will jump here. And Trump knew this, knew that he had them all exactly where he wanted them to be, crowded in abject supplicant and completely realizing that what this one man says or does is going to have massive consequences for their lives and that they have no way of affecting the decision that he's going to make.
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Yeah, it's insane. So back home, I mean, at least on certain parts of the Internet, you would kind of have thought that, you know, Trump's speech was predictable Trump and it was just him being, you know, kind of predictably awful. Whereas the big bar burner speech, the one that really mattered was Mark Carney's speech. Was that on the ground, as big of a deal as it seemed later.
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On Twitter, I mean, people were very enthusiastic and just kind of loved the speech. Ah, this is what we really need. But to me, at least it rang a little bit hollow. The whole thing seemed a little performative to me, for one thing, at the same moment that, you know, I mean, what Carney did, he goes to China and he makes a couple of nice speeches and reduces tariffs on EVs. Right. Trump is meanwhile, like, you know, selling high tech computer chips to China and is in a lot of ways trying to kind of stabilize the US China relationship, even as he doubles down on some of his other rivalries. So it actually, when you think about it, Carney was not actually really going against US Policy. He wasn't saying, okay, I'm going to really work with China to undermine Trump in some way. I also have to think, I don't know, things are changing, the technology is changing. But last I looked at this, Jeremy, one of the problems that EVs have is that battery range and all is really a lot less where it's cold. Last I looked, Canada was pretty cold. And so I'm not sure that it is the hottest market for EVs. So I felt like a lot of this was performative. Now, I'm not saying that people don't have some strong feelings about it, but that it was more, it was more. People were happy that it's a little bit maybe like the feeling people have back home. Very, you know, very, very anti Trump people. They're just really happy to hear a politician say some anti Trump things, even though intellectually they know this is not all that relevant.
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And then Zelenskyy's speech, the most recent one. What did you make of that and its significance in the message and how it was received?
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Well, first, I actually spent a lot of time with the Ukrainians at this Davos, and I'm honored they asked me to be on a panel at, at Ukraine House, where I was, I think, as a foreign minister of Norway and Finland and some Ukrainian leaders. So I'd been kind of getting some background on how things are there. And this is a really hard winter. I think it's, you know, the war is terrible and the fighting front has been terrible, and obviously there have been sacrifices and people have been displaced from their homes. This is the first winter where the war has really come home for people. I visited Kyiv twice since the war began, and you wouldn't necessarily know the war was not front and center of daily life. But when you're talking about temperatures of 20 below zero Fahrenheit and, and the Russians knocking out the power and the heat for a whole section of the city, you're suddenly in a very different territory, and the grimness of the struggle has sunk in. You add to that the kind of psychology of knowing that Trump is not exactly all in for a Ukrainian victory in the war, and also that the Europeans aren't really going to save you, can't save you. And even if, and they're not going to do everything they could, it's getting grim and hard. And on the other hand, you know that a Russian victory is going to be hellish. The Russians make no secret of the kind of repression that that's going to be brought. I mean, the, you know, the ugliness, ugliness of continuing the war is less than the ugliness of losing the war. And of course, your fate, to a certain degree, does depend on Donald Trump, who is as mysterious and unpredictable. So try to put yourself in getting a feel for that level of stress. And something like, I think six to 800,000 people have fled Kyiv in this latest phase of the confrontation. You know, there was this kind of undercurrent of things have turned dark and serious. And the Europeans, I think, had hoped, and the Ukrainians, too, had hoped that the wef. The Davos thing would be about Ukraine. The idea was there going to be a big summit on Ukraine, and that's why Trump would come and talk about Ukraine. But he didn't. He came and he talked about Greenland, which I think may have been a bit Intentional that if you don't want to talk about. If you don't want people talking about a subject, give them something else to talk about. And that happened. And so there was a kind of a hijacking of the whole. Whole conference. But anyway, Zelensky originally, you know, was going to come, then he wasn't going to come, then he decided to come, which can Davos is normally much more scripted than this. And so this year, the uncertainty in global politics was sort of there, visible in the, you know, and things would jump around certainly more than I'm used to seeing them do here. So Zelensky came and spoke and his speeches, again, very well attended. Lines to get in. Not lines like Trump, but lines, I would say a little bit better than Musk, because, of course, you know, out of the blue, Elon Musk came. I mean, what a, you know, conversation with Elon Musk and, And Larry Fink. I mean, what a, you know, what. What an amazing kind of a. An entertainment that. That people are putting on. And Zelensky really was speaking out of this very dark place. And you knew that his audience was not just the people he was speaking to, but he's also the people back home wanted and needed to hear a message from him. And it was, I would say, realism and resistance and courage. You kind of listening to this, you were reminded why so many people around the world kind of fell in love with him at the beginning of the war. The war has been going on a very long time. He saved Ukraine in the beginning. And this was a seasoned warrior who, you know, a lot of his illusions are lost. A lot of the illusions other people had about him are lost. You know, the Ukrainians are very familiar with his faults at this point. And, you know, there are lots of people who argue about this decision or that decision, etc. Etc. Etc. But he's still the guy on whom the fate of this nation depends. Depends. So, again, it's very dramatic to be in the hall for something like that and to see be there as he makes a kind of a plea for the country. But. But it was what interested me and what I found striking and what I think, what I hope people in Europe really take to heart is that ultimately his criticisms of Europe are the same as Donald Trump's or very, very similar. That is, you talk as if, like, having an intellectual conversation will stop a war, or you're always talking about the beautiful future that you would like to have, but you never do the things that are required to make that future real to me. That was a very powerful, I'm not sure that many people in the hall fully processed the kind of indictments the, that that was there. But it was, you know, it was, it was blistering. You know, you talk about all this, your solidarity with Ukraine, but you know, the Russian frozen assets, what are you doing about them? Russian ships full of oil are sailing up and down by European coasts every day. You do nothing. And part of the reason you do nothing is because you've allowed yourselves to become so weak that you're afraid. So it was, in a sense, we think of Zelensky and Trump as almost the opposite ends of the global spectrum, but there was a bit of a horseshoe effect here where both ends are seeing the inadequacy of Europe. And that ultimately for me is the biggest takeaway of this wef, that there's a hole in the world order where Europe used to be. It's not a complete void. They've got money and so on. But the sort of continual political, intellectual, cultural decay of Europe and the failure of the European Union to develop effective decision making mechanisms or clear lines of workable policy has now gone to the point where Europe is no longer have. Europe no longer has the weight in shaping the world that it used to have. And as a result, whether it's Trump, whether it's Xi Jinping or whether it's Vladimir Putin, very, very different forces and people are pulling the world in different directions. And that, I think was, was, was a big takeaway from this week.
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One final question before we get to your Davos tip. How much, if at all, did Iran and Venezuela figure this week?
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They were not, you know, Greenland really ate everything in the beginning. And, and again, just, you know, it's amazing how many instant Greenland experts there were. I mean, the number of people I met who could tell me all about rare earths in Greenland and oh, missile trajectories, the treaties, defense treaties. Everybody was just, I mean, I was amazed at, you know, all of this Greenland expertise in the world. Just astonishing. You know, the Iran, I was again, I was very surprised that, you know, because you, you read the papers. We still don't, obviously we don't know what's, what's coming. But a very, very powerful American carrier force is day by day by day by day moving toward Iran. People were not really talking about that. Completely fascinating. There was actually probably more conversation about the Board of Peace than there was about Iran. And let me tell you, that Board of Peace was one of the strangest things I have ever seen, was the Ceremony. First of all, there were all of these chairs arranged on the stage, and then there's this logo, which is really kind of a knockdown of the UN logo, only instead of the whole world, it's just like North America, South America, and it's in gold, which is appropriate. It'll fit right in in the Oval Office. And then one by one, the members of the Board of Peace are called out, and they're, you know, they're presidents and kings and foreign ministers and so on, and they sit in their chairs. Armenia and Azerbaijan were both on the list, are both members of the Board of Peace and Alpha. And this was a little bit of a complication because alphabetically, they're quite close together, but. But neither one would want to be seen exactly sitting next to each other. So what they did. So the way it just worked out, there just happened to be a table, a space separating the chairs, and then they also. And. But there's this larger chair in the front and center of the whole thing. And guess who is expected? You know, who is there? So when they're all. All seated patiently in their chairs, President Trump comes out and goes to the lectern and then goes into one of his rambling monologues, often recycling some of the same stuff he'd said the day before, which they had all heard the day before, and everyone in the audience had heard the day before. I don't think he went. He, you know, the day before, he spent a lot of time referring. Saying Iceland when he was obviously referring to Greece. You know, I've been in this business a very long time, but every now and then I. I see something. I. Not only have I never seen that before, I didn't think that was possible, but it turns out that it is, right? And, you know, that that was a big splash. But again. But still, nobody knows what it means. You know, is it just really. A bunch of people are interested in the Gaza thing. Is it just a PR thing? Is it, you know, the terrible fear stalking Davos is that Trump is going to replace the UN with this. And, you know, the leading EU countries were. Didn't join, but Hungary did, which everybody says, well, okay, well, that's Orban. That's what he does. But also, for some reason that I don't know yet, maybe I'll find it out. Bulgaria is a member of the Board of Peace. What's it about? Who can say? So it was really one of the most extraordinary weeks in world politics that I have seen, and I feel very fortunate and blessed to have Had a ringside seat at this incredible show.
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All right, that does it for our special Davos coverage. Let's end on the tip of the week. Walter, what is your number one Davos tip either for the town itself or for attending the wef.
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You know, this. This year I missed it because I was had to write an extra column. But I strongly recommend the Friday lunch at the Schatzalp, which is a hotel high up above the rest of the community where you have to. You take a cable car to get up to this hotel. And in good weather, which sometimes you get and sometimes you don't get, you have this amazing, sweeping panoramic view. They have trumpeters, you know, sort of these traditional, like, you know, enormous Swiss heralding trumpets. Yeah, I don't know what. I'm sure they have a name, Alpenhorn or something. I don't really know, but. And then, you know, lots of nice food and everybody gathers. That's. That's definitely on the list to do. But there's also a steakhouse in town that serves game. This may shock some of our readers, but I've. I've developed quite a taste for zebra steak at past World Economic Forum conferences.
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While the rest of us are eating insects, bugs for you, zebras for me.
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But you can also have, you know, bison and horse and, you know, whatever. Whatever your heart desires. But just try to get to know the people. If you ever get invited or you managed to like somehow shoehorn your way into this, you'd be. Almost everybody here does something interesting or has, you know, has some interesting tale to tell. And, you know, it's a conference. People come here to actually talk to each other. So walk up to strangers, talk to them. So now, Jeremy, you will be ready when you, when you, when you're called on to go.
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All right, there you have it. Thanks to our producer, Josh Cross. Thanks to Alex Vatana. But Hudson and my co host, Walter Russell Mead. I'm Jeremy Stern. We'll see you next week. And until then, please go rate and review us. This helps other people find the show.