How have global relationships with the U.S. changed in the last year?

0:00Today on State of the World, how have global relationships with the US changed in the last year? You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. It's Tuesday, January 20th. I'm Greg Dixon. One year ago today, President Trump took office for his second term. And in that year, many relationships between the United States and countries around the world have begun to be redefined. To look back at a consequential year in global politics, we're going to hear a conversation between four of NPR's international correspondents.

0:39London correspondent Lauren Frayer leads the discussion. She asked each of her colleagues about how leaders in their region view the changes of the past year. We'll hear from Charles Maines, who's based in Russia, and China correspondent Jennifer Pack. But we start with NPR Mexico City correspondent Eder Peralta. He says Trump's interventionist policy in Latin America, most recently with the removal of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces, is seen as a return to the past, when the U.S. frequently flexed its muscles in the Americas. Trump came into office talking, we need Greenland, we need the Panama Canal back, we're going to bomb Mexico.

1:19And so it was just a reminder that Trump was not an aberration necessarily for this region. But I think at the same time, there was sort of like this feeling that the United States was on the decline, that China was rising, and there was so much influence of China and Russia on the American continent. I mean, I was in Venezuela in 2019, and it was like one of like the first moments where the United States failed to stage a coup in Latin America. They tried to, you know, to force the government of Maduro out at that time. They had recognized Juan Gabaido as the president, and nothing happened, right?

1:56There was this huge popular uprising. Nothing happened. And I remember thinking at that moment, wow, maybe this is a real shift in the Americas when the United States can't pull off a feat like this in the Americas, which had, you know, they had long done what they wanted in the Americas. Of course, we're in a very different point right now, now that the U.S. has taken Maduro. And Charles Maines in Moscow, how has the past year in these changes looked from your patch? No, it's interesting because, you know, when Trump came to power in 2016, there were all these big hopes that he might, you know, revive these relations with Russia.

2:32And the line here was that Trump failed only because the deep state or entrenched interests in Washington wouldn't let him. But now what we see is Trump really kind of unleashed. And so there's been this roller coaster year here where initially there were these big hopes of ending the war in Ukraine, largely on Russia's terms. But meanwhile, distracted by Ukraine, Russia suffered all these foreign policy setbacks. Venezuela, of course, being one. It's Russia's ally. And Maduro was Putin's ally. But also in Syria, in Iran, what we're seeing happening right now, there's this kind of line here that Russia can't protect its friends.

3:09And this humiliation was really amplified by the success, I'll put that in quotes right now, of Trump's special operation in Venezuela. Because, you know, what Trump was able to do by taking Maduro, this is what a lot of Russians thought they maybe should have done in Ukraine with Vladimir Zelensky. Jennifer, welcome. You're NPR's new China correspondent. How do leaders and people in your region see the changes the past year? Well, to set the scene, Chinese officials have always painted America as a hegemon, a bully, a paper tiger, and a hypocrite. So if we look at trade, for example, which has been the biggest sticking point between the U.S.

3:47and China this past year, You know, China's rise over the past four decades has been largely thanks to American consumers buying Chinese goods and also American businesses coming in to invest, setting business standards and passing on their know-how. And for the U.S., it seemed like it was going fine when China was manufacturing American-designed iPhones, for example, or cheap shoes. Not so fine now that China is leading in, you know, future tech. And suddenly they say Americans are calling it, you know, China shock 2.0. So they're always consistently pointing this out, especially in the Chinese state media.

4:25So there was recently this music video generated by AI that was mocking U.S. hypocrisy, reposted by the Chinese embassy in the U.S. on X. It's a cartoon American eagle dressed in a suit representing America singing. And he says, you know, when we lead, meaning when America's leading, it's called progress. But when China does it, oh, that's overcapacity. Yeah, let's hear it.

4:58For people on the ground, I think there's been a bit of mixture of both amusement and maybe worry that this world is kind of feeling more surreal. There's a return to the law of the jungle. You know, America just does what it wants. Basically, it's a free for all. The law of the jungle is what they keep saying. Same time, though, I would say on a human level, the people that I talk to quite a lot, if they can afford it, they still really want to send their children or they themselves want to study in the U.S. for college. I might just jump in here and tell you about Europe, you know, where I'm sitting.

5:31You know, Europe is suddenly realizing whether it was when Vice President J.D. Vance came to the Munich Security Conference last year or this new U.S. national security strategy that's popped up on the White House website, the transatlantic alliance is no longer the bedrock of U.S. foreign policy. And if you look at the past sort of 80 years, Europe probably gained the most from those years in terms of economic prosperity. You know, the U.S. guaranteed Europe's safety and security for the past 80 years, allowing Europe to build these like robust welfare states. And so there's sort of whiplash now in terms of like the treatment that Europe is getting from, you know, Vice President Vance and President Trump, whether it's, you know, making fun of London's mayor or making fun of Europeans.

6:15But there are also really big questions now about how Europe is going to handle its own security. Europe has nowhere close to the fire power that the U.S. has, is not unified the way the U.S. is. And Russia and Ukraine are literally on Europe's doorstep. Charles, you wanted to say something. Yeah, I think Russia sees itself as a co-equal with China. I think if anyone who looks at the trade or the economic might of China and Russia would say that's not the case, Russia is the younger brother in this partnership that they have. But still, yes, Russia uses this multipolar world to kind of promote itself as a leader.

6:51Yeah, I mean, China has described its relationship with Russia as close as lips and teeth. Who's the lip and who's the teeth? That's a good question. I don't think that that was defined. I hadn't heard that because everyone talks about the friendship with no limits. That seemed like that was close enough. That's a great image. I love it. I love it. Eder, you cover Latin America now, but you used to cover Africa. How does this changing order affect Africa? How do Africans see it? I mean, I think this predates President Trump, right? I mean, the United States has taken, you know, they've been bombing Somalia for years through different administrations.

7:34I mean, Trump comes in and bombed Nigeria. And let's not forget the closing of USAID. That is the biggest footprint that the United States has on the African continent. I mean, if you, and I, you know, I traveled pretty widely on that continent, and it's the USAID food aid that you see everywhere, that U.S. flag stamped everywhere, right? And that's gone now. In the U.N. In the U.N., but it's gone now. The WFP, right? The World Food Program, which is, you know, very much funded by the U.S., that's gone. If I can piggyback on what Eder was saying, USAID has been sort of a target of the Russian government basically back since 2012 when they labeled them a foreign agent or a lot of the grantees that got funds from USAID foreign agents.

8:25But what's interesting is beyond USAID, you have this, you know, the retrenchment or basically the closing. We'll have to see if it's going to last of the Voice of America, of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. You know, that has a huge impact on the information space. And that's where, for example, in the former Soviet Union, even more so not in Central Asia than in Russia, it plays a huge role in kind of modifying or counterbalancing some of the state messaging. You know, the U.S. has gone completely absent there. They're totally relegated that space to Russian propaganda, state propaganda, Russia Today RT.

9:02But it's just remarkable to see that the U.S. has no voice, even as they're being so muscular in other ways in the world stage. We've certainly seen the Trump administration try to discredit the U.N. We've seen Israel try to discredit the United Nations and all of its agencies over the during the Gaza war. If we've returned to this sort of muscular raw power as a as a global dynamic, how does the U.N. look now? Weaker, stronger than before Trump's second administration? I mean, China has been actively working very eagerly with these organizations, making sure that it's going on all of the different committees.

9:43And I don't know if the UN is stronger, but certainly China wants to prop it up. It wants to portray itself as a stable actor, complete opposite to Trump or whatever the U.S. is offering right now, because it's leaning into this narrative. Whether that's actually true is another story. What I would see is that, you know, going forward, the thing that I think is very certain is business, security and politics are now forever linked. They cannot be, you know, removed from each other. Gone are the days that, you know, for China and Southeast Asia, they have territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

10:17And for a long, long time, they would say, hey, we're going to set aside the South China Sea issue. Let's talk trade because that's also very important. And the U.S. and China also did that, right? Let's put the Taiwan issue a bit separate. Yes, we have some disagreements on there. We will adhere to the one China policy, but we're also supplying arms to Taiwan. You know, but let's talk trade. Let's talk trade on a broader level. So I think gone are the days when you can kind of unlink those three things. I think the backdrop of all of this that's happening with the UN, I feel, is a very real disillusionment with not just democracy, but with the big international institutions.

11:00I think El Salvador is a perfect example, right? They have elected a president, Nayib Bukele, who has thrown tens of thousands of people in jail without any due process. And the Salvadorans are like, what do we care about due process? What has the international, all these international human rights group, what have they gotten us, right? We used to live in fear and now we live in security, like screw all those international laws and, you know, people trying to protect human rights, right? And I think that argument has won out in a lot of places, especially in Latin America where you have huge problems of security, right?

11:44People are being extorted, they're being killed, they're being kidnapped, right? And they just want somebody to fix it. And so I feel like the disillusionment with the institutions on the ground is kind of maybe what's also playing out on the world stage. I wonder if we can take out a crystal ball and talk about the future. How will people look back on this time in 10 years, 20 years? I'll be the cynic. Maybe we'll look back on it as a return to what the world wants to be, which is a return to a time where might makes right, where sheer power and violence is what gets you what you want. And that has been the history of the world for most of recorded history, right?

12:35We just happened to be born in a time where it wasn't like that. And maybe this is the return. That's interesting, Ada. You know, there's this conversation happening in Russia these days with the war in Ukraine and with repressions under Putin, where people say, well, maybe that period of, you know, essentially Gorbachev, the end of the Soviet Union, the 90s, which were chaotic, but it was, you know, democratic or certain there were a lot of there were a lot of freedoms, that this was an aberration, you know, that Russia is reverting back to its natural state. And that we just happen to be falling, I just happen to kind of fall into this country at a moment when it was experimenting with these ideas, that we're alien to it.

13:19And so now that they're suddenly back into this kind of, you know, this is about empire, it's about stamping your foot over what's yours. and in terms of what's allowed inside the country, in terms of personal freedoms, there are limits. And this is something that Russians, you know, by default gravitate to. I'm not so convinced that's true, but that's certainly an argument here that's on the rise. I think the opposite for Europe. Like I do not see European leaders embracing their imperial pasts. And we do see sort of far right movements going up in various places. But I think that Europe stands to lose the most.

14:02Europe is clinging to those sort of 80 years since since World War Two when the transatlantic alliance meant everything. And I think about in 10 years, you know, there are so many unknowns. Will there be U.S. military bases in Europe? Will there be more defense spending? Will Europeans take a hit to their welfare state to fund armies that they might need? And there are going to be huge labor disputes across Europe, I think. Yeah, there's definitely going to be a lot more uncertainty. That's what China's government has been saying. I would say that they would look back maybe at this point as the I told you so moment, which is that this is what we thought was always the case.

14:44Yes, you masked it with all this talk about democratic institutions and ideals. But this is has always been the ultimate goal. And this has always been what the US has been. And now the rest of the world sees it like we do. I think that's the Chinese stance on that. That was NPR China correspondent Jennifer Pack. We also heard from London correspondent Lauren Frayer, Moscow correspondent Charles Maines, and Mexico City correspondent Eder Peralta. This conversation is part of the podcast series NPR Explains, The Changing World Order. You can find more stories from that series exclusively in the NPR app.

15:28That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.