Has Trump's Foreign Policy Already Peaked? — with Ian Bremmer

0:00Over the years, ARK Media has become where people go to actually understand Israel and the Jewish world. Our subscribers make that possible. Join us at ARK Media.org. And to our subscribers, thank you.

0:17Ian Bremmer: You are listening to an ARK Media podcast. Even if there are folks that in the United States in this case that feel like the abused spouse by Israel, and there are some that do feel that way. There are a lot of young people, Democrats and Republicans that say, we shouldn't be supporting Israel. But the reality is that the response to that will be a hedging strategy. It will not be a decoupling strategy. It's inconceivable to me that a Democrat or Republican administration in 2029 would decouple from Israel any more than they would decouple from NATO. But having said that, I do think that the United States has done a lot of damage to its long-term alliances.

0:58Ian Bremmer: And I think that Netanyahu has done a lot of damage to Israel's long-term relationship with the United States by putting himself above the interests of the country. I believe that. I think most Israelis believe that.

1:19It's 12 p.m. on Thursday, July 28th here in New York City. It's 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 28th in Israel. as Prime Minister Netanyahu is meeting with President Trump at the White House, a meeting that might shed light on the next phase of the Iran war. There's a conventional narrative out there that since the end of World War II, America's foreign policy has been built in part on having the strongest military and economy in the world and a network of alliances that provided geopolitical and security leverage to the United States. And so the narrative goes, then came Donald Trump, who implemented a very different policy, one in which America has not withdrawn from the world.

1:57It is still striking enemies, arming partners, pressuring allies, and reshaping the global economy, but its relationships are becoming more conditional and more transactional. Allies are spending more on their own defense, but they're also hedging, wondering whether a commitment from Washington is only good until the next election. This policy might've been a long overdue correction. America's allies have often been accused of free riding. international institutions have constrained Washington, and a tougher United States may be forcing other countries to carry their own weight. But pressures both at home and abroad have been mounting.

2:33And with the midterm elections coming up here in November, our guest today argues that President Trump's foreign policy may have reached its peak. Have the Iran war, Venezuela's regime change, and the transactional foreign policy met its ceiling? For Israel, this question is not theoretical. Is Israel the exception to this question? Bound to America by military, intelligence, political, and cultural ties too deep to break? Or is Israel a preview of the alliances America will retain? Indispensable, deeply integrated, but increasingly transactional. Our guest today has spent years thinking about America's foreign policy and what happens when no country is both willing and able to sustain international order.

3:16Ian Brimmer is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group and GZero Media, both of which we'll link to in the show notes, which provides nonpartisan news and analysis of global affairs. He's the author of numerous books. Our conversation right after this brief message. Hi, I'm Daniel Hartman, president of the Sholem Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. And I'm Yossi Klein-Halevi, senior fellow at the Sholem Hartman Institute. What's more important, to be feared by your enemies or morally true to yourself? Should Israel strive to be a nation among nations or should it accept the fact that it is now a fortress apart?

3:55What do Israelis and diaspora Jews owe each other? If you're Jewish. Or a friend, an ally. These questions have been gnawing at you these past few years. For some of you, like for us, these questions have been keeping you up at night. And for some, they've been simmering in the background, waiting for answers.

4:12Ian Bremmer: But dilemmas don't always have clear answers. What they do deserve are honest and respectful debates. And as it happens, Yossi and I love to challenge each other to get to the bottom of things. We look at current events through a lens that speaks to us most deeply, a Jewish lens. So if today's Jewish dilemmas are on your mind, tune in to our conversation on For Heaven's Sake, a partnership between ARC Media and the Sholem Hartman Institute. You can find For Heaven's Sake on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you there. Ian Brimmer, welcome to Call Me Back. Hey, Dan.

4:51Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you this way. Just saw you in person, but we'll do this. We'll have this conversation virtually and I guess pick up on some of the conversations we've recently been having, including our banter this morning, where you really got me thinking about this idea of peak Trump foreign policy. So I just want to set the table here. 18 months into Trump's presidency, we've seen the Fordow strike, Venezuela's regime change, tariff wars with allies, NATO spending pledges, and a posture that treats every relationship, it seems, as negotiable or renegotiable. You and I probably disagree on this, but that's okay.

5:27If you had to briefly define Trump's doctrine, not what Trump says he's doing, but what you, as an analyst interpret that he's actually doing? And I know that it's based on your observation. And also you spend a lot of time talking to different leaders around the world, including elected leaders of American allies in Europe and elsewhere. So that's also like an input, I think, into your answer. How would you and they describe the Trump doctrine?

5:54Ian Bremmer: Well, how I would describe it is a combination of two different things, which are not really completely aligned. One is this idea that the United States is the most powerful country in the world by a long margin. It is taken advantage of by allies and adversaries and that the U.S. should use its power, should weaponize its power unilaterally to get better deals and better outcomes one-on-one with all of those other countries. And it should do that through tariffs. It should do it through industrial policy. It should do it through or else leverage. You invest in our country or we're going to stop defending you, all that kind of stuff.

6:35Ian Bremmer: And then at the same time, there's also a whole bunch of Trump interest in commercializing and monetizing the position of the presidency to benefit himself and his family. And those two things sit together uneasily. But I would say that you couldn't talk about the Trump doctrine if you only described one of them. You'd need to describe both. OK, so if the doctrine is coarse to some degree, I think Trump officials would say, you know, we could we cajole our allies. We consult our allies. But, you know, I think you're basically saying it's a lot of coercion. And then things happen. Deals follow.

7:13Objectives we want met from those countries follow as well. So give me the scorecard. Where did this approach actually produce a durable outcome in terms of U.S. interests? and where did it produce compliance, but not necessarily durability in a long-term relationship, real loyalty to the United States?

7:32Ian Bremmer: So clearly it produced with USMCA in Trump's first term, which at the time he described as the best deal that the US had ever signed in trade. And I mean, that was an exaggeration perhaps, but it wasn't a wild exaggeration. It was a meaningful improvement on a NAFTA deal that only actually reflected about half of the trade that was happening between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. So it was a more advanced trade deal that helped integrate one of the most powerful trading blocks in the world with supply chain and tourism and political alignment and trust and all the rest. So I thought that was a big win.

8:09Ian Bremmer: I thought chorus between the U.S. and South Korea that Trump got done in the first term, also a big deal. The Abraham Accords, which many leaders say could never happen without a two-state Palestinian solution. And he got that done. I thought that was a big win. And on Abraham Accords, it's striking. I continue to marvel at the degree to which, the extent to which they've endured. So some said what you just said, which is this kind of normalization will never happen without an Israeli-Palestinian solution. And you're right. Obviously, it did happen. But then the next question is, well, once there's a war in the region, the Abraham Accords won't endure.

8:41And here we are.

8:42Ian Bremmer: Right. And they've endured. That's a big deal. Absolutely. And then we've got the Venezuela attack on Maduro, his removal. And no, it's not a regime change in terms of the people, but it's actually a regime change in terms of the policies. Again, far greater success than would have been expected. And no other president would have made, I think, that kind of a sudden decision, at least not among the Democrats and Republicans that were plausible in the last few electoral cycles. So those would be the ones, the big ones that I would focus on in terms of wins and durable wins, by the way. But then you have a whole bunch of failures.

9:23Ian Bremmer: And some of those failures are spectacular, like you saw with the U.S. effort to put tariffs and then an effective blockade, a boycott on the Chinese. That was a massive failure that Trump had to completely back down on and is now acting as, you know, at best and equal and frequently a supplicant with Beijing. I would argue that the Iran war has been a significant foreign policy failure of Trump. Trump's promise to end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He didn't mean 24 hours, but he meant quickly his effort to redo the relationship with Putin, a complete failure. But then you have the less spectacular failures that really undermine American influence and trust.

10:11Ian Bremmer: And this is, you know, the unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA without coordinating with allies, the Iranian nuclear deal, or unilaterally breaching the terms of trade agreements without coordinating with allies, or the effort to take Greenland, which was far more serious and substantive than it should have been, especially since there was literally no chance it was going to happen. and yet really undermined relations with some of America's most steadfast, though clearly much weaker, allies in the world. And so, yeah, I spend a lot of my time speaking with American allies around the world and their level of mistrust of the United States on the back of a lot of those decisions is far greater than you and I would have ever anticipated possible back when Trump first came around in 2017.

11:03And the corollary to that, though, is this notion of unpredictability, that Trump is an unpredictable actor in geopolitics, and that is a double-edged sword. One could argue it's all those things you just said. The other side of that is the unpredictability is a huge asset. If you were to make that case to those allies you're speaking to, to those American allies who feel that America can't be relied upon, can't be trusted, if you were to say yes, but America could use some unpredictability in this very dangerous world, how would you make that case?

11:37Ian Bremmer: Well, I guess you would try to say that it's useful for the Americans to be more unpredictable with adversaries and not cozy up with adversaries. And therefore, because those are countries that don't have aligned interests with the United States long term, and you can achieve more with those countries as a consequence because they know you're more powerful and they don't know that you won't take them out. Like we saw with Maduro. I think the unpredictability with Maduro ended up being a real asset. But the problem is that Trump frequently acts most unpredictably with countries that are some of America's most steadfast friends who will do almost anything the Americans ask if they sit down and say this is really important.

12:21Ian Bremmer: Whether it's join us in a war in Afghanistan and put your own soldiers at risk or whether it's we need you to invest a lot in this project that we're doing because it's really important with us. I mean, there are a lot of countries that they may not be strong countries. They may not be growing as much as the U.S. is. They may not be as productive, but they do trust and rely on the United States. And those things are advantageous. And Trump has certainly blown up a lot of that. So on balance, I see the unpredictability as a negative. It is a double edged sword. Again, I'm no one. I am super happy when I can give the president credit for things that he's done well.

13:02Ian Bremmer: I would prefer him to succeed. Dan, it is not up to me. The U.S. needs to be unpredictable, but the U.S. needs to be unpredictable within the context of rule of law, right? Rule of law is important. Rule of law is like what makes you the superpower. The reason America is the most powerful country in the world is because we are capable of out-innovating, out-competing with a fair set of rules that are clear and transparent to all, everyone in the world. And we also can attract the best talent of everyone from the world to the United States. And Trump's personal, consistent willingness to put himself above the interests of his country, of his party, of his cabinet, of his team, those things do inexorable damage, in my view, long term to the United States.

13:50You wrote a piece in March of 2025 in which you said, and I'm quoting here, the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy is clear. Allies and alliances are expendable and America is stronger alone. Yeah. So I guess my first question is, do you still believe here we are now over a year later? Do you think we've headed more in that direction? The sense that America is alone or has it leveled off?

14:13Ian Bremmer: Ah, that's a great question. The fact that I think that we have passed peak Trump means that foreign leaders are starting to think more about what America will continue to stand for once Trump is gone, 80 years old, not going to be there after 2029. then they're just thinking about how much trouble he can cause because so much of what he has tried to do has been wildly constrained by the courts in terms of trade and tariffs by his own republican party by the way in the courts some of the constraints on him have been by justices on the in the courts that he appointed that he appointed absolutely absolutely and by a 6-3 supreme court that is conservative, but is independent.

14:57Ian Bremmer: Right. I mean, because again, Trump's disruption and Trump's ability to damage American interests comes much less from his party affiliation, from his conservatism, which is weak, than from his willingness to engage in actions that have nothing to do with those things. The Supreme Court is quite consistent in acting in ways that align with a 6-3 conservative court, but it also fundamentally is oriented towards rule of law and towards checks and balances and towards support for what they believe to be in the interest of the country. At no point does the Supreme Court justices, are they acting to support them in favor of themselves at the expense of the country.

15:37Ian Bremmer: They never do that. That's an enormous and enduring strength of America. That's also true of America's professional military. The fact that around the world, allies are increasingly seeing that there are meaningful constraints on Trump, constraints internally from the court system, constraints externally from what happens when Trump is punched in the face by the Chinese or by the Iranians, or even by the Europeans, the little Europeans. But on Greenland, when he said, we're gonna take it, we're gonna put tariffs on you, and he threatened tariffs directly, they said, for the first time, we will hit you with our anti-coercion instrument, and Trump backed down and got nothing for it.

16:19Ian Bremmer: So when even the Europeans can back you down as Trump, now granted, on an issue that he was even more unpopular on than Epstein, which was Greenland, even more unpopular. So he was truly underwater on this issue. But the fact is that the Nordics were able to show that on an issue that mattered to them much more than it mattered to Trump, they were able to back him down. And I think that all of that has shown leaders around the world that they can focus more on the structural changes in U.S. leadership, which have to do much more with not supporting free trade, focusing more on industrial policy.

16:58Ian Bremmer: Trump's a symptom of that. He's not the cause. Much more on tighter border security. Heck, we're seeing that all over Europe. We're seeing that in Asia, too. That's not a surprise. focus much more on burden sharing on security. Obama wanted that. He just was ineffective at pushing for it. Like those things will persist. Trump putting himself above the interests of the country, that will not persist. And I think that reduces the level of disruption going forward. Okay, so the way you're describing it here, it's like it was kind of in one direction, like your piece in March of 25, that America was increasingly alone.

17:35And now it's beginning to fall off a cliff, this sense that America is alone and this perception that America will continue to operate alone. But even if you just look at the last year, year and a half, the Iran war, you know, the U.S. needed Qatari airspace and Gulf basing. It needed the Israeli military. And while NATO members hoffed and puffed, they ended up raising their spending commitments as far as their own defense is concerned. So I guess there was a sense that America was alone. But I wonder over this last year and a half or so whether America was actually that alone.

18:07Ian Bremmer: It's funny. I was having a conversation with our mutual friend, Rory Stewart, the other day. You know, Rory, he ran against Boris Johnson for PM in the UK. He was cabinet minister. Nice guy. And he described the relationship that Europeans see with the United States as one of an abused spouse where you have no choice. You've got to stay in our house, even though we're treating you badly and we're hitting you because you can't afford to be on your own. Right. And I pushed back pretty strongly against that formulation because this is not like an abuse spouse. You either leave or you stay. That is not what is happening with allies around the world.

18:45Ian Bremmer: What they see is that they still need the United States and they're not going to cut off trade and they're not going to end NATO. but they need to be in a position of less vulnerability where unilateral predation from the United States will never affect them the way that it did when suddenly Trump comes in and breaks all the China. And that means doing some things that America should be happy about, which is building their own strength, building their own resilience so that America has stronger allies, but also doing some things that America will be much less happy about, which is spending a lot less money on American military industrial complex and spending it on themselves instead and trading more with other partners and doing more technology with other partners because you're worried about an American kill switch.

19:32Ian Bremmer: And both of those things are happening. So no, America at no point was alone because America's built up its alliances over many decades. And so even if you're eating your seed corn, you still can harvest all of the crops that have already been produced. But when you look forward in the future 10, 20 years, the strength and the durability of those alliances will be significantly reduced. There will be permanent damage because these countries recognize that they do not want to be in a position of that level of dependency and trust with the United States. And both of those things are happening simultaneously.

20:07Ian Bremmer: So if it was 90 % resilience and reliance and trust on the United States, maybe it goes to 70 if you're Canada. Maybe it goes to 60 if you're Germany. You know, maybe it's 75 if you're Japan. But the point is the dial is moving. Okay, Ian, you spent a lot of time tracking the Russia-Ukraine war. You've mentioned it a couple times in this conversation. I want to drill down a little bit because it does feel to me like something big is changing in the arc of the war. Oh, yeah, definitely. Maybe it's been changing for a while and we're only beginning to really focus on it. So my first question, before we get into Trump's role in all of it, as it relates to the frame for this conversation, can you just give us a quick detour?

20:46What's actually happening in

20:47Ian Bremmer: the Russia-Ukraine war right now? So the Russians are losing extraordinary numbers of troops, both dead and injured. They have well over a million casualties at this point, more than And you've seen since World War II, it's an astonishing amount of damage they've done to themselves. The Ukrainians have far fewer troops on the front lines. They have shifted from a personnel-intensive strategy to creating the most advanced drone and unmanned ground vehicle army, armed forces, of anyone in the world. so much so that the Gulf countries are working as fast as possible to get access so they can defend themselves more effectively against the Iranians.

21:32Ian Bremmer: And I think that will be successful. That's one change. The Ukrainians are no longer losing territory to the Russians. They slowed them down, and now they're starting to retake small amounts of territory. But the principal action is no longer on the front lines. The principal action is now about the Ukrainians striking Russia deep inside their territory. Western Siberia, St. Petersburg during Russia's Davos, Moscow, taking out retail hubs and centers, distribution centers, refining so that Russia now has to import gas from India, which they didn't before. So the consumers are starting to really feel it and they're starting to get angry about the war.

22:15Ian Bremmer: Those are the things that have changed. The single thing that has changed it the most, believe it or not, was Elon Musk. Elon, back in February, cut off the access of Starlink for all the Russians. And he made that decision individually. He's been supporting Ukraine quite a bit, though not consistently, but quite a bit over the course of the last four years. But the Russians also had access. Once he cut off the access, the Russians no longer had a drone army that was effective because they are well behind any technology that the Americans can field themselves. So suddenly they no longer had active defenses that would be effective against Ukraine.

22:53Ian Bremmer: And that really changed the nature of the war. And also, of course, the Europeans have dramatically stepped up their aid and assistance to Ukraine to fill the hole that was provided when American taxpayers were no longer subsidizing the Ukrainian fight and defense. Okay. Now, the narrative also is that President Trump, I don't know if it's accurate. Maybe it's accurate from a rhetorical sense, but I don't know from an actual policy sense. But that being said, there's this narrative that President Trump changed his approach to Putin or to Ukraine, depending on how you want to apply it. As of when?

23:29When did he change that? I mean, the narrative is over the last few months, there's been a pivot. Oh, yes, there is. The most stark illustration of it was the meeting with Zelensky in Ankara. Yeah. Yeah. So describe what's going on from your perspective as it relates to the White House on the Russia-Ukraine war.

23:43Ian Bremmer: Yeah. Best meeting that Zelensky ever had with Trump was in Ankara in the NATO summit. You and I are taping this on Tuesday. I suspect today's meeting will also go quite well. Trump likes a winner. And so even though Zelensky was the guy that refused to open an investigation to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden when Trump demanded it and said, I will stop sending these javelins to you, I will cut them off, even though Congress has supported him. if you don't open this investigation into my political enemy, which is kind of an astonishing thing. And of course, Trump gets impeached on the back of that call, but he never forgave Zelensky for that.

24:18Ian Bremmer: But as we know, Trump can turn on and off if you're no longer useful to him, or if you're suddenly a loser, you're suddenly a winner. And so Zelensky went from being a loser that he could push around and forced to accept a strategic minerals deal and forced to accept a ceasefire with no preconditions. Suddenly, Zelensky looks like a winner. And remember, the biggest change in policy that we saw from the U.S., Trump comes in, he cuts off actual money for the Ukrainians. So the American taxpayers were paying about 50 % of external aid for Ukraine under Biden. That goes to zero. And the Europeans and the Canadians at the margins step up and pay for it.

24:58Ian Bremmer: So the first thing that happens under Trump is the Americans are no longer paying any money for Ukraine. Secondly, there's a disastrous meeting that happens between Trump and Zelensky last year in April. He says, you don't have the cards. J.D. Vance basically rips him one. They kick him out before lunch. And then they suspend intelligence cooperation for just over a week. But then quietly, they redo that cooperation. There was lots of talk and engagement with the Russians about how we could do all this business with you. We could do a lot of personal business with you if you just end the war, a ceasefire.

25:37Ian Bremmer: And by the way, you know, with the present lines of territorial conflict and the rest, but that never happened. So the effort of Trump to engage with the Russians, which was real, so inviting him to Anchorage and the limousine ride in the Beast and not coordinating with the Europeans, that was real. But because Putin refused to accept it, it never went anywhere. And then the Ukrainians start performing better. And in the last meeting, the Trump administration decided they were going to provide licenses to the Ukrainians so they can start building their own patriots. And now we see Raytheon is moving to start creating that that would allow for the Ukrainians to have much more effective defense going forward in months.

26:20Ian Bremmer: And so that would be a big deal if it happens. So I do think there's been a shift in policy, but you are correct, Dan, that the shift has been more about rhetoric than it has been about policy because, in my view, Putin refused to play ball. If Putin had been prepared to play ball with Trump, there was a big opportunity from there. I think it would have been a meaningful break in the transatlantic relationship. Putin chose not to. Putin turns out to be one of the worst strategic leaders that you and I have ever seen globally. OK, so what did Putin miscalculate about Trump? Because it actually relates exactly to what we're getting into earlier in this conversation, our conversation about the unpredictability of Trump is an asset is a liability.

27:02I think your view is that Putin really miscalculated. So what was the miscalculation? miscalculation?

27:08Ian Bremmer: Well, I mean, the biggest miscalculation was that they could fight a war in Ukraine and it would be good for them, that they would take a bunch of territory, they would get rid of Zelensky and they would win. And of course, the problem is that no matter how good your advisors are, and in Putin's case, his advisors are, you know, mixed, a mixed bag, good on the financial side, crappy on the defense side. But if you don't listen to them or if you create a culture of fear so that they're unwilling to tell you or they become super corrupt, you get bad information and you fail. And Trump has some of this problem too with the memorandum of understanding with the Iranians.

27:40Ian Bremmer: You know, like the Iranians are told one thing, Trump's told another, you know, suddenly you can't execute on an agreement. So if you have good advisors, you should want them to tell you the unvarnished truth. And Putin, after invading Ukraine, we have stronger Europe. We have the top defense capability in Europe is Ukraine. They are incredibly angry at the Russians and will fight them for like a generation if they need to. You have NATO having been expanded and you have the United States still providing significant support to the Ukrainians. And Putin, by working with Trump, could have really driven a wedge inside Europe when Orban was still there in Hungary, when they were like, you know, back when J.D.

28:26Ian Bremmer: Vance was saying, let's support the AFD. I mean, if you're Putin, you should have leaned into that. This was the because Trump hates Europe, but Trump hates Europe, not for the reasons that Russia hates Europe. He hates Europe just because it's a bunch of bureaucrats that acting together are harder to deal with by the United States. If you can just deal with them individually, divide and conquer, you can get much better deals because you're stronger than they are. So, of course, he loved Brexit. Of course, he wanted the French to do a Frexit. Like, of course, he asked Macron about that all the time.

28:57Ian Bremmer: But Putin should have used that. Now, I think I'm not inside Putin's head. And I've been sanctioned by the Russian government. For what reason, I have no idea. Probably because we have a Putin puppet as part of our puppet regime. But that's not he's not speaking metaphorically for our listeners. He actually has a I do. I think that Putin, who has a much closer, much longer standing relationship with Xi Jinping. Right. I mean, Putin's leader for life. Xi Jinping is leader for life. Even if he thinks that he can run circles around Trump, even if he thinks Trump is transactional and useful, Putin is thinking in longer term than Trump could be and then Trump would be.

29:36Ian Bremmer: And so ultimately, I think that Putin was unwilling to change his policies on the back of some sort of short term promises that were being made by the American president. And just briefly, before we move off of Russia and Putin, as Putin seems to be increasingly cornered, and as you're saying, he's miscalculated on Trump, this increasing speculation that Putin could use a quote-unquote tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine to just, because otherwise he's losing this war. Listen to you, it sounds like he's losing this war and he's on a path to losing this war. And what are the tools in this toolbox that he could use to really change things up?

30:15And there's obviously this increasing question and speculation about whether or not some kind of nuclear weapon use would be one of those tools.

30:23Ian Bremmer: Yeah. Well, I mean, in the Biden administration, there was a period of time early in the war when they believed that Putin was reasonably likely to use a tactical nuke. He was losing territory quickly. And there were, you know, false flag operations being planned that the U.S. intelligence had information on. And there were direct calls between Biden and Xi Jinping, Biden and Modi, between Bill Burns was running the CIA and his counterpart in Russia being like, if you do that, we are like directly going to be attacking Russian troops in Ukraine. So like, you better rethink that as a possibility.

30:56Ian Bremmer: They were assessing, I heard 20%, I heard 40%. I was almost knocked off my chair when I heard that at the time. So, I mean, never say never, but I think there are lots of things that Putin could do that are well short of that, that would be problematic. So one thing that Putin's already doing, it seems very clear to me, is providing satellite information to the Iranians to assist them in attacking American bases in the Gulf. And Zelensky has spoken about that. But I mean, before Zelensky mentioned it, we've seen that the strikes that the Iranians are doing on these bases, they're not just hitting the bases.

31:32Ian Bremmer: They're actually hitting real-time targets. They know exactly what is where, whether it's like aircraft, radar, you name it. They're not doing that with help. Now, most of those are getting knocked down by defenses, but those that are getting through, you're not seeing like, you know, just random craters all over the place. They're hitting their targets. So I think it's very clear that the Russians are helping them. And we know that there is asymmetric warfare going on where the Russians are conducting espionage and they are supporting arson and they are blowing up critical infrastructure in the Baltic countries, in the Baltic Sea, in Poland, in other frontline states.

32:12Ian Bremmer: So Russia's willingness to increase their warfare against NATO countries at a time when they feel like they are fighting against NATO in Ukraine, that those countries are directly giving the Ukrainians the ability to strike deep into Russian territory. I think that they're much more likely to increase that. A tactical nuclear weapon, And I think it is plausible, but it's very unlikely, especially at a time when the Kazakh president, Tokayev, just came out a couple of days ago meeting with Putin and saying, you really got to do a ceasefire. This is a disaster where China's own leadership has been saying, this is going badly.

32:52Ian Bremmer: We'd be much happier if you could just stop this war. You don't need to give back the territory that you hold right now, even though that's their in principle position is sovereign territory, in part because of the Taiwan position as part of the sovereignty of mainland China, but they're not happy. The level of outrage and opposition to Putin, if he were to use a tactical nuke, I think is what makes it a true weapon of last resort. And we are very far from last resort. We'll be right back.

33:28I'm Debra Pardes, the host of ARK News Daily.

33:31Ian Bremmer: What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters. But it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. That's why we started ARK News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't waste your time. On most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully a little bit smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes.

34:06I hope to see you tomorrow.

34:13And we're back with Ian Brimmer. We talked about Russia. We talked about Russia supporting Iran and Iran's attacks against U.S. personnel and assets in the Gulf. As we've talked about earlier, Trump and Netanyahu are meeting in the White House on the question of the future of Iran and the Iranian threat and where the Iranian war goes. If your peak theory is right and leverage has already crested, what does this mean for what the administration does now on Iran and specifically on Iran's nuclear program?

34:44Ian Bremmer: That's a great question. So I think that over the last month, the main thing you've heard from the media covering Iran around the world has been the memorandum has been ripped up. And now we're back in a war pudding and the straits disrupted and the Houthis are hitting the Saudi tankers and all of this. And that is a correct reporting. But I would say at least as meaningful has been how constrained Trump has been in what he is and is not willing to do despite all the threats against Iran. So he is now on 10 separate occasions said, I'm going to blow up all of Iran's infrastructure if you don't X, Y and Z.

35:27Ian Bremmer: Right. And then he did finally actually hit some infrastructure. He had some bridges, I think two bridges and a power station. and then the iranians immediately hit a desalination plant like in kuwait i think he hit they hit one desalination plant in iran as well and hit some infrastructure in the gulf as well other gulf countries bahrain i think was hit right causeway things like this and then that was it that was it and then he said i'm gonna hit one bridge or power plant for every i mean it was to me is surprising given all of the american military in the region how much he's talked about regime change in the early days, how much he's talked about civilizational disruption, about blowing up the infrastructure, about taking the oil, 15 ,000 troops in the region, Carg Island, Pickaxe Mountain, all this stuff, right?

36:18Ian Bremmer: I mean, he said a few days ago, I'm going to hit Pickaxe Mountain now. He hasn't done any of it. Now, I think on the nuclear file, I could imagine not sending large numbers of troops because the military thinks it's too risky. But I could imagine Trump like doing some big B-2 bombers, bunker busters, hit that, and then come out and say, okay, now I destroyed the nuclear. So they promised they were never gonna do nuclear, but I made it so that they'll never have nuclear again. So then he could at least say, because so many of his war goals are not achieved, that he could at least say, ah, check that one.

36:53Ian Bremmer: And now it's your problem. Now you Gulf states can negotiate it. So if I'm right and this peak Trump disruption really holds, then despite the fact that he's willing to have higher oil prices for longer, we're not going to see significant escalation against the Iranians. We're not going to see massive infrastructure being taken out to cause the kind of economic damage that might force them to change what's been a very hard line stance against the U.S. and the Gulf states in their demand to control the strait going forward. If I'm right, we won't see that. And instead, Trump will be much more likely to say the Gulfies can figure it out.

37:39Ian Bremmer: You guys, we did our job. And so now it's Riyadh, it's Doha, it's Abu Dhabi. You guys negotiate with the Iranians. We don't need the straight. You're the ones that send the stuff through the straight anyway, which he has said publicly on several occasions. Yeah, but those countries being able to export through the strait matters a lot to global markets and to the U.S. economy. So, oh, no. But again, Trump says a lot of things. Right. But I'm just saying, like, he clearly he is not benefiting from continuing to have to talk about Iran six months in. He wants to move to Cuba. He wants to move to Don Roe Doctrine, where he has a lot more influence, a lot more wins.

38:17Ian Bremmer: Venezuela, Mexico, the friendlies in Chile and now Colombia and Peru, El Salvador, you name it. Western Hemisphere is looking a lot more attractive. Iran, not so much. And so if I'm right, we're going to see an effort to make that pivot sooner rather than later. And even if he doesn't, he is not going to significantly escalate. We'll see. OK, so what does all this mean for Israel then? You mentioned that this is he's leaving this for Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and for other Bahrain, et cetera, other countries, not even in the Gulf. You guys figure this out. Well, one country that has a huge stake in how they, quote unquote, figure it out is Israel.

38:53Right. And back to the whole peak Trump. What does it mean for Israel and what does it mean for the U.S.-Israel relationship?

39:00Ian Bremmer: You know, Israel, we believe, has 100 nukes. So when Trump says, if it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be an Israel, which is kind of an astonishing thing for the American president to say. Right. I mean, yes, he certainly is popular in Israel. He has done a lot in support of Israel. One could argue even more than Biden, who is a staunch Zionist, right, and has done so at the expense of some significant supporters within Cormaga as well, because, you know, they're arguing you're Israel first, not America first. You've seen a fair amount of that, right? Israelis would say, other than Harry Truman, who recognized Israel's right to exist and help it launch its independence or played a role in that, there isn't a U.S.

39:44president since Truman who's done more consistently across both of his administrations. I don't want to start debating. I'm just saying that that is the sense. He's done things that no other U.S. president from either party. No, we're not debating. Yeah.

39:56Ian Bremmer: I mean, I'm saying it. So despite that, the fact that he has said there wouldn't be an Israel without me. And again, he says all sorts of things. I mean, He was on a stage the other night. You're right. He says a lot of things. Yeah. But when you ask about reality, you say Israel has 100 nukes. Israel has by far the strongest military in the region. No one is close. The Abraham Accords are still in place in part because it's good money for both sides, but in part because Israeli's technological superiority in the national security space is very valued by the Emiratis, who are going to be there for a long time.

40:32Ian Bremmer: Right. So the idea that Israel is maximally vulnerable to Iran, irrespective of where this ends, I mean, Iran's been hitting out at a lot of countries around the region. Not so the UAE recently because the UAE has likely paid off the Iranians. Well, the Israelis haven't paid off the Iranians. Why aren't the Iranians hitting Israel? Well, part of it's far away, but part of it's because the Israelis can defend themselves and they can hit back a lot harder. so I've been in too many meetings where I've seen like Bibi Netanyahu talking to pension fund managers talking about the existential risk to Israel and then literally the next sentence talking about how important it is that they all invest in the best investment in the world if there's an existential risk to Israel it's not the best investment in the world if Israel can defend itself and can hit you back really hard then you should put a lot of money in Israel right that's fairly clear so I don't buy this idea that just because we've passed peak Trump, that suddenly Israel faces existential risk.

41:35Ian Bremmer: I don't buy it. And I think that when Rahm Emanuel comes out and says, we're gonna stop providing funding for Israel, the advanced industrial economy, he's not saying we're gonna stop sharing intelligence. He's not saying we're gonna stop engaging in an alliance. Not at all. I don't see people saying that. and bb himself said that they should stop after 10 years i guess it was or whenever taking american defense dollars as aid look the reality is the u.s assistance number to israel represents now a tiny fraction of israel's gdp that's small right so it's inconsequential it's not about the dollars it was big in the context of gaza right because it stepped up that's a different story yes yes but that was a contained period but my only point is it's not about the money now because of how much Israel's economy has grown.

42:27It's about the integration of the two security apparatus. It's about the partnership. It's not about the dollar.

42:33Ian Bremmer: And I would make the same argument that we made on NATO, which is even if there are folks that in the United States in this case that feel like the abused spouse by Israel, and there are some that do feel that way. There are a lot of young people, Democrats and Republicans, that say we shouldn't be supporting Israel. But the reality is that that's going to be – the response to that will be a hedging strategy. strategy it will not be a decoupling strategy it's inconceivable to me that a democrat or republican administration in 2029 would decouple from israel any more than they would decouple from nato i would be very surprised to see that but having said that i do think that the united states has done a lot of damage and to its long-term alliances and i think that not yahoo has done a lot of damage to its long-term relationship israel's long-term relationship with the United States by putting himself above the interests of the country.

43:23Ian Bremmer: I believe that. I think most Israelis believe that. But one administration official I spoke to at the beginning of this Trump administration, who's a senior official in the national security team, said to me, look, it's not that we're against allies. We just are really investing in what they call capable allies. Right. And this official listed four countries to me as model capable allies. India, Korea, Poland, and top of the list, he said, Israel. And he was not romanticizing the relationship with Israel. And he wasn't saying, you know, we're investing in this relationship because of shared values and shared histories and, you know, et cetera.

43:58It was about that Israel is the top of the list of those countries we think of as capable allies. And certainly during the Iran war, you heard Hegseth and General Cain talk about this a lot. You saw this in the Trump national security strategy. They point to Israel as this capable ally. To your earlier point, And I think increasingly Ukraine falls in that category, which is they sit, they look at countries like that and say, these are countries we get a lot out of.

44:19Ian Bremmer: Dan, I consider you for thought. I think you're a very, very bright fellow and you and I have known each other for a long time. And I consider you one of the sharpest analysts of Israel in the world. You know more about Israel than I do. I want to go to the other places that you mentioned because you said the top countries. and if Trump is, if this guy is saying that about Israel, but he's also saying about Poland, about South Korea, about India. Okay, Korea. I know the cabinet in Korea well. And I just had a senior cabinet official in my office last week. And we were talking about how the Koreans feel when President Trump extorts them, as they feel, for$350 billion that you will put into our country.

45:04Ian Bremmer: And we will have control over what happens with it. and we will decide what kind of profits come out of it. And they are absolutely hedging towards the Chinese to a faster degree as a consequence of feeling that the United States cannot be trusted in terms of their relationship with Korea. So if Korea, if Trump administration officials are saying Korea is one of the most important allies, they're most capable, that we should most be doubling down on, the Koreans don't feel that way. And if you go and talk to the Indians and India felt like they'd done a lot to align with the United States and then President Trump and his family are hot and heavy with Pakistan.

45:45Ian Bremmer: Why? Because there's money. Because they're investing directly and they're spending time and they're welcoming to the Oval and two-hour meeting here and two-hour meeting there and let's engage on Iran and you guys can be the folks negotiating and have made the Indian government feel that they should not trust and rely on the United States the way that they have in the first term. and the way they have through Biden. That is a meaningful negative. And when Trump kicked Zelensky out of the Oval Office, go talk to the polls. And by the way, you know Radek Sikorsky pretty well, as do I. Talk to Radek, the foreign minister, about how they feel, how trusted they think the United States is right now when they suddenly say, oh, we're gonna pull 5 ,000 troops out of Poland.

46:31Ian Bremmer: And Poland, by the way, committed to 5 % defense spend of GDP. So, you know, Israel better. But as I just look at the other three countries on your list, I go, shit, this does not appear to be comporting with what the senior officials said. At least the allies don't feel that way. And ultimately, even if the allies are wrong, they're the ones that are making the decisions about the future of their country. So there's got to be at the very least, there's a massive comm strategy. And I respectfully submit that it's more than that. Okay. Maybe, I mean, I'm not disputing everything you're saying. I do think maybe then Israel is an outlier then among the list in terms of, A, the strategic assets it's perceived to have, at least by this administration and by the security establishment in the U.S., that they don't want to, quote unquote, decouple with or mess with.

47:22And two, I do think what makes Israel unique to some degree is its cultural imprint in the United States. It's not just a foreign policy issue. Now, that cuts both ways, by the way, because we're seeing a backlash against Israel. Oh, absolutely. But I think what's understated or often missed, at least by the media here, is in big swaths of this country, including big swaths of the Republican primary base, there's this deep cultural connection to Israel that you just don't have in the context of any other foreign policy relationship the

47:50Ian Bremmer: U.S. has. Yeah, the first point you made, I mean, the uniqueness depends on how much you view the future of the Middle East as relevant for the United States. On the geostrategic side, I mean, China clearly is trying to occupy the commanding heights of the global economy and every technology that matters. And so I would argue that the future of the global economy is going to be decided much more either by the United States or by Asia and not by the Middle East. much as I love going to the Gulf States, going to Israel, going to Lebanon and the rest. I just don't buy it. So I think that you don't want to be relying on that argument.

48:28Well, can I just but I can I just challenge that, though? Yeah, I respect that argument. The only pushback I would have is the Middle East has this tendency to be a real nuisance, whether you think it's a power center in the world or not. It has this tendency to be a real nuisance that drags the U.S. Sure.

48:44Ian Bremmer: I agree. into quagmires and to the extent the U.S. gets leverage from, say, a country like Israel in the Middle East that says, look, there's been this unlike trend in Democratic and Republican administrations basically following the Bush, George W. Bush years to gradually pull back more or less from the Middle East. Obviously, Trump has done things that revert from that. But generally speaking, there's been this trend. And to the extent that Israel gives us leverage, so we don't have to be there so we can focus on Asia. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Sure. But I'm just saying, I just think that in general, the amount of time and effort and focus that is really spent on allies in Asia is likely to go up dramatically and allies in the Middle East and Europe is likely to go down.

49:25Ian Bremmer: Right. That's the future. That would be my general view. I think the cultural point, of course, is a very real one. And I completely agree with you that it cuts both ways. And you You and I both know that the recent polls among younger Americans have reacted very strongly to that, and that needs to be addressed. And I'm not speaking any news to you there. All right. I want to just wrap with just a sort of high-level question, which is, if you think about it, again, this is oversimplifying it, but indulge me. We've had these America First moments throughout our history, throughout our modern history.

49:57Isolationism after World War I. Obviously, the post-Vietnam retrenchment. And it just seems like every one of these periods, I mean, basically every president, many presidents, many nominees of major parties in the United States, when they win the nomination, they talk over even George W. Bush, when he won the nomination in 2000, talked about, you know, a we've got to get out of the business of nation building. I mean, they all use their own language. But actually, they're all kind of echoes or shadows of America first. And then there's a recognition there's a cost to that. And the costs become visible.

50:28And obviously, with the Bush, George W. Bush, the big inflection point was the response to the necessary, some kind of response to September 11th. We can go on and on and on. There's always some kind of big change once that president gets into the Oval Office and has to deal with the real world. So I guess the burden sharing, the alliances, the networks of alliances, they tend to stick more or less. So is that basically your thesis that this is a cyclical thing we're going through? We've reached to your point, peak, what you call peak Trump, and it's going to revert and post the next few months or even, you know, or shall we say, you know, let's say 2029 and beyond.

51:03It's going to look a lot more like what we're used to.

51:06Ian Bremmer: I wish it were that simple. I think that there's truth to that argument. I don't think it describes the entirety of the geopolitical space because we've gone through all of these previous presidents. You were living either in a Cold War, which was bipolar, or you were living post-Soviet collapse in a unipolar moment. We're not in that environment anymore. The military, the global security environment is still more unipolar than not in the sense that the U.S. remains the only country that can project global military power. But the global economy is clearly multipolar. China is a pole. The Europeans are a pole, even though they're the weaker pole.

51:50Ian Bremmer: And other countries like India absolutely coming up in that environment. Technologically, it's multipolar. And in some ways, it's technopolar. In some ways, core actors are actually technology companies themselves. And so it's very hard to revert to normal if you've done all of this shaking up and disruption and damage and there's a knock on consequence and the Americans realize, OK, that was too far. We've got to go back to more predictable. And we are. And the peak Trump drawback will create more normalcy from the U.S. But that normalcy will fit against a geopolitical backdrop that will be more complex, that will be more hedged, more diverse, will be less determined by the United States, either by a Washington consensus or by a NATO driven by the U.S.

52:41Ian Bremmer: Those things will be different. And I think that's super important. And by the way, another reason why Israel's power in the Middle East is so significant for Israel is because in that environment, being able to call more shots and have relationships with countries in the region that aren't dependent on the United States, incredibly important. So, I mean, like Israel-India is becoming a much more significant axis over time, right? Like that's something that the Israelis are clearly leaning into, but so are the Indians. And it's not because of the Quad, and it's not because of the Abraham Accords that they're doing it.

53:15Ian Bremmer: In many ways, it is a recognition of the patterns that we're talking about. Ian, thank you for this conversation and this little tour de force around the world. My pleasure, Dan. Kind of have you back on. No, it's fun too. Talk to you soon. Thanks, Ian.

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