Furious World Leaders Freeze Trump Out of New Alliances

0:29Ben Meiselas:We'll see you next time. Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments? When the killer's identity is about to be revealed. During that perfect meditation flow. On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad-free podcast episodes, so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad-free, included with Prime.

1:25Ben Meiselas:with 12 grams of protein, brain nutrients like magnesium and lion's mane, and zero weird stuff. And right now, you can get 20 % off all IQ Bar products, plus free shipping. Try our delicious IQ Bar sampler pack with seven plant protein bars, four hydration mixes, and four enhanced coffee sticks. Clean ingredients, amazing taste, and you'll love how you feel. Refuel smarter, hydrate harder, caffeinate larger with IQ Bar. Go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20 to get 20 % off all IQ Bar products plus free shipping. Again, go to eatiqbar.com and enter code BAR20. World leaders are absolutely furious at Donald Trump and his regime, and we have seen a flurry of activity among world leaders forming their alliances to counteract Donald Trump's threats.

2:17Ben Meiselas:Threats to invade the Western Hemisphere, threats to attack Europe, threats against the world. Let's take a look at what's going down. You had France's president, Emmanuel Macron, giving a very important speech the other day where he said, it's time for new partnerships. It's time for new alliances. The international order is now changing. And he says, this idea that might is right means that what happens if Donald Trump invades Greenland, if Canada becomes the 51st state, if Taiwan gets invaded by China, Europe needs to be prepared for these things to happen as they may be imminent. Here's what French President Emmanuel Macron has to say.

3:04Ben Meiselas:Play this clip. It is not enough to

3:11Ben Meiselas:simply conclude in the face of this withdrawal that the end times are near. No, the time has come. to come up with new partnerships, as is the case, as I said, for defense. And the next issue is international governance, which is a broad topic. And it would be naive to say that all is well when I have just told you how chaotic it is. That might is right seems to be reigning, and people are wondering if Greenland is about to be invaded or if Canada is about to become the 51st state or if Taiwan is under threat. Many of you discussed this with me. Actually, on the contrary, I think that times are right to reform international governance.

4:04Ben Meiselas:And perhaps it is the only opportunity to do so. And perhaps the right time has come to get more involved with the United Nations, given that the number one member no longer believes in it. the second has less faith in it. And people are questioning all the values that we have defended on a daily basis. Then you have the prime minister of Italy, Georgia Maloney, and she says, let's talk about what deterrence means when it comes to Russia. She says the word deterrence comes from the Latin de via de telere, meaning to scare. You must be strong enough to scare your enemy to cease and desist from the possibility of attacking you.

5:05Ben Meiselas:It is strength. It is scaring that needs to be asserted against people like Putin. And I think the implication was also against people like Donald Trump, because if you're not scaring them, they think that they can dominate you, especially as Donald Trump is saying that he is the predator and the Trump regime. People are saying they are the predators of the world and they will invade, invade, invade. Meanwhile, you have Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada stating the following. Canada and Germany are working together to strengthen their Euro-Atlantic security. He said he spoke with the Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany earlier today to talk about the ongoing negotiations toward a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, deepening our trade cooperation and our support for sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Denmark, including Greenland.

5:59Ben Meiselas:Now, this follows Germany and France speaking two days ago with other European countries about developing potential war plans against the United States if the United States invades Greenland, which would trigger the obligation of the other nations in NATO to go to war against the United States. Such is the condition of the international disorder caused by Donald Trump. And for every action, there are opposite reactions and consequences. So for example, Moscow and Beijing, they're actually applauding Trump's invasion of Venezuela. Now, sure, it may mean, well, they don't get their oil as cheap from Venezuela, but that Venezuela oil is not all that great to begin with.

6:48Ben Meiselas:It costs a lot of money to refine. And so China, for example, is like, this actually gives us an opportunity to forge better relations with Canada. We can buy Canadian oil, help prop up the Canadian economy, and maybe we get our EVs into Canada. More significantly, though, I think for China and Russia, beyond that they are just look to new opportunities in the world, is that it now gives them justification to pursue a might means right mentality. And if the Trump regime is lawless, reckless, malicious, then who's stopping them? They can just say, hey, we want Taiwan. We want Ukraine. We want Taiwan.

7:31Ben Meiselas:Trump's foray into Venezuela emboldens Russia and China's own aggression. It goes on to say how they see this as an opportunity. Both Russia and China want to prioritize manipulating Trump to achieve more important interests for themselves than just Venezuela, right? And Venezuelan oil. I mean, if you even think about what that ExxonMobil CEO said during that bizarre press conference Donald Trump had in the White House on Friday, and they said it is uninvestable, is what Exxon said, Uninvestable unless there are massive structural changes in that country, not propping up Delcy Rodriguez and Díaz Dado Cabello, the henchmen, and Delcy was intelligence services before.

8:19Ben Meiselas:They're Maduro's peeps. They're Maduro's peeps. I think it's also significant to note that while Donald Trump withholds air defense missiles, it's taking its toll on Ukraine right after the United States invaded Venezuela, Russia began escalating its attacks on Ukraine. They shot an Orishnik, an intermediary ballistic missile at Lviv. They also struck Kiev. As Yulia Srevdenko explains, last night for nearly five hours, Russia struck residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Kiev and other cities. More than 240 drones and 36 missiles were used in the capital. Four people were killed.

9:03Ben Meiselas:25 were injured in parts of Kiev. Electricity and water supplies were disrupted due to damage to substations, power lines, and generation facilities. Work is underway to restore power to more than 500 ,000 people there. Russia deliberately targeting district heating plants. This is terrorism by Russia. So because of the U.S. withholding air defense missiles, You see the Arishniks hitting Lviv. You see 10 out of 22 caliber missiles, which usually get shot down. Eight of 13 ballistic missiles, 226 out of the 242 UAV, the Shahi drones, the Gerber drones, and the imitation drones have now been able to hit targets where they're usually shot down.

9:52Ben Meiselas:Kiev's mayor Klitschko urged residents to temporarily leave the city as Russia targets the critical infrastructure there. Also, Brazil's president, Lula, he's been cooking over the past 24 to 36 hours. As Alonso Gurmendi writes, in the past 36 hours, Lula has quietly held high-level talks with the leaders of Canada, Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, specifically on Venezuela. He's cooking, Prime Minister Carney of Canada says, spoke with President Lula of Brazil. We discussed the situation in Venezuela. We are steadfast in our support for a peaceful, negotiated, and Venezuelan-led transition process that respects the democratic will of the Venezuelan people.

10:42Ben Meiselas:Also, the European Union agreed to a sweeping trade pact with four South American countries earlier this week that would create one of the largest free trade zones in the world. So as the United States tariffs, the world threatens to invade the world. We see the European union entering to this agreement, a Mercosur agreement with Brazil, with Argentina, with Paraguay and Uruguay, um, and, uh, creating this, uh, uh, free economic zone of about 700 million people. Here you have the UK defense secretary, John Healy. Here's what he has to do. Here's what he just said about Putin escalating the attacks on Ukraine since the United States invasion of Venezuela.

11:33Ben Meiselas:Play this clip. It's the big challenge to Putin. He talks about peace, but he's stepping up and escalating his attacks, not attacks on the Ukrainian military, but on civilians and cities like this. And there were 90 Shade drones attacking Kyiv last night, many with targets at residential buildings like this. It's brutal. It's cynical. It's exactly why we've got to work so hard to help Ukraine secure a peace. And then we heard from the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and he describes this is how I've been saying it. I'm like, ICE is a paramilitary force in the United States, like the collectivos, like the Nazi and Italian fascist brigades.

12:18Ben Meiselas:Here's how he describes it as they no longer just persecute Latin Americans, they're killing US citizens right now. Here, play this clip right here. Well, I think they need to reflect first and we, Latin America, need to come together. Many people took to the streets in Venezuelan cities, a huge number of people in Colombian cities, and social unrest erupted in parts of the United States over an event unrelated to them, but because of the murder of a citizen by ICE. for us, ICE operates the same way as the Nazi and Italian brigades, the fascists. And it has reached to the point where they no longer just persecute Latin Americans in the streets, which for us is an affront, but they also kill citizens of the United States.

13:15Ben Meiselas:And while all of that's taking place, you've got Donald Trump saying to Denmark, Mark, we're going to do this the easy way or the hard way when it comes to Greenland. Here, play this clip. I would like to make a deal, you know, the easy way. But if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way. Now, I want to bring in the former White House Deputy National Security Advisor, John Feiner. Feiner also served in the Obama administration, where he was the chief of staff to the Secretary of State Kerry at the time. And he was also, as I said, in the Obama administration. And then in the Biden administration, rather, he was the former White House Deputy National Security Advisor in the Biden administration.

14:01Ben Meiselas:Obama, he worked in the Secretary of State as the Chief of Staff. Let's bring in John Feiner right now. By the way, John Feiner also hosts a podcast with our friend Jake Sullivan and the podcast Former National Security Advisor for Biden. That podcast is called the Long Game Podcast. Check it out. It's great to see. I've got a lot to discuss with you. I want to talk, though, about just more broadly what you see is taking place with whatever the heck this foreign policy is of the Trump regime. I think Marco Rubio, early on, and people were listening to him in January, started talking about this idea of spheres of influence.

14:44Ben Meiselas:And he mentioned three countries and what he said. He said the United States was the West. He said Russia controls its area, which seemed to indicate Europe also. And then it said China. Then he said China controls Asia. And that was what he said. In foreign policy circles, people were talking about that. But now are we seeing the kind of manifestation of that vision? How would how would you from your perch? What do you see? So there's always a risk with this administration that when you start to characterize a strategy or a vision or a doctrine, we sometimes say in foreign policy, that you're actually imposing more coherence on their approach than it's actually warranted.

15:27But I'll give a shot, which is I think they actually start one step more abstract than what you just said, which is they basically subscribe to the view that in foreign policy, might makes right. And not just might makes right as a descriptive matter. That's how the world works. But might makes right is how the world should work, according to them. So from that flows this idea that big countries, strong countries are favorable to us. We like them better. We want to work with them. and they should have more prerogatives in their own region. So for the United States, we should have special prerogatives in the Western Hemisphere, including apparently choosing who governs certain countries.

16:06And we just saw what happened in Venezuela. But it also, I think, and most concerningly, suggests that they're going to give special deference to Russia when it comes to Europe, as you just said. They're negotiating right now. They're trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war, which I think is a good thing, by the way, to be negotiating. but a bad thing if what they're going to do is ultimately defer to what Russia says it needs. And then when it comes to the Indo-Pacific or Asia, China has strong views about how that region should be organized. And the United States has always stood by our allies and our partners in that region through deterrence to try to prevent China from imposing its will.

16:43And it seems like this administration is at least implying that it will take a different approach. And so I think if you are U.S. allies in Europe, U.S. allies in Asia, you're quite concerned by this entire approach and this entire worldview. And if you are in the Western Hemisphere, you've got to get buckled up for what could be even more U.S. intervention than we've already seen.

17:04Ben Meiselas:Why don't we take the regions and let's go, you know, one by one and let's go kind of Western Hemisphere. I mean, obviously, in the Biden administration, if you wanted to, it wasn't a surprise that the American military might was strong enough. If you wanted to assert yourself and invade Venezuela or make these threats like you could do it. But I've always thought that part of power is restraint and that actions have consequences. What you do in Venezuela, in addition to infringing on sovereignty and a world order, and which let's be very clear about, you know, in areas that Trump seems to ignore the sovereignty part and just say, hey, Canada, 51st state, hey, Greenland, we don't care, you know, about that.

17:53Ben Meiselas:But then there are consequences, too, that you have to think about, well, how is that going to impact other regions? So describe a doctrine of power with restraint and how, why it's wielded and not wielded in certain areas. Yeah, look, there's a let's start from a perspective of something. At least I agree with the Trump administration. And I suspect you do, too. I won't I won't speak for you, which is that the Maduro government is a terrible government. Maduro himself is a horrible authoritarian dictator who, you know, no one has any any love lost for any tears shed about the fact that he's no longer governing Venezuela.

18:32That is fundamentally a good thing. But the key point is the one that you made. There are a lot of bad people around the world, a lot of bad governments around the world. And the United States is a very powerful country and at least in theory has the ability to go in and disrupt any number of these governments, go and grab criminals in any number of places. There are good reasons why we don't just go around the world doing that. One is, you know, my view, and I began my career as a journalist covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which started, by the way, as a relatively easy intervention, the initial invasion to topple the Saddam Hussein regime and quickly spiraled totally out of control at enormous cost to the United States in terms of number of service members we lost, economic cost and our standing in the world.

19:19and what I guess I'm getting at is that wars should be necessary. If you're going to use this tool of a policy which has a lot of risk associated with it and a lot of risk that you start with some limited mission, grab Maduro, bring him to U.S. court, subject him to justice, next thing you know you're threatening the new leader of Venezuela, which Trump has already done, and threatening to go back into Venezuela, maybe with boots on the ground, and then coming out and saying actually it's not the new leadership of venezuela that's in charge the united states is in charge and might actually be in charge for several years to come and whether or not americans think that it's a good thing that maduro is gone as i said i i believe it's a good thing that he's gone the notion of the united states governing venezuela for the next several years given all of the challenges we have at home and and the trump administration shifting its attention getting distracted by this adventure which did not pose a direct threat in a serious way to the united States that warrants a military intervention, I think is going to age very badly over time.

20:19Ben Meiselas:Because you still essentially have the Maduro regime in place in Venezuela. I mean, it's not Maduro, but you've got Delce Rodriguez. She's now been sworn in, might I add, with the ambassador of Russia and the ambassador of China giving her hugs along with the ambassador of Iran. I mean, that wasn't a signal. I don't know. I don't know what else is. And then you have Diodados Cabello, the enforcer, the interior minister, you know, there who's still out there running the collectivos who are repressing people on the streets of Venezuela and Lavrov and RT and Sputnik and all the Russian media. They seem to still be saying we got a pretty good relationship, you know, with this government and Donald Trump saying the oil companies love this and the oil companies are saying, actually, we need one hundred billion dollars in subsidies if you want us there, because you know, that oil, it's a little muddy and we have to refine it and we don't feel comfortable doing it on our own.

21:17Ben Meiselas:So, and then Trump's bringing Machado over in the weekend where he's going to be saying, give me the Nobel peace prize. And I, so it seems already to your point, you look at all those factors and it's like, did you think about these things? Like, what are you doing? Yeah. Look, I think that Saturday press conference on the day that this operation was conducted. And by the way, this operation, they should get some credit for the extraordinary skill of the execution of this operation. And by they, I really mean the U.S. military. I got to see up close how many difficult things the U.S. government asks our military to do and how extraordinarily they perform almost 100 percent of the time.

21:55And that includes in this case where, by all accounts, they took no serious casualties and executed this mission. But in that press conference where Trump could have described this as very limited mission, very successful operation. We got this bad guy. We're going to put him on trial. And now, you know, I want the Venezuelan people to decide their future. He made two, I think, just critical mistakes. And it's not clear that these were planned. He may have just said these things, which which happens, obviously, with him sometimes. One is that when he was asked about the democratically elected leaders of Venezuela in an election that took place during the Biden administration in 2024, which we believe was won very clearly, maybe two to one by the Venezuelan opposition, a candidate named Edbundo Gonzalez, who was sort of the handpicked ally of Maria Carina Machado.

22:42He said, Gonzalez, Machado, man, they don't have a lot of support inside Venezuela. So I'm not sure we want to turn the country over to them. And then he made this comment that I think he's going to live in infamy about the United States now running the show in Venezuela. So whether that was intentional, whether that was kind of an ad lib, they now kind of own that approach. And other administration people have tried to back away from it and say, actually, you know, we're going to do this a different way. But every time he's asked, he sort of doubles down on what I think are these two critical mistakes that are going to define this this operation for the foreseeable future.

23:19Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about Asia. You know, the Biden administration did a lot to work multilaterally, trilaterally. I mean, the famous photo of Biden next to South Korea, Japan, you know, all together, you know, bringing people together in Asia. It was a pivot to Asia, famously, is what Obama said as well. And now when the president of Taiwan asks to use U.S. airspace and Xi Jinping calls Donald Trump and says, don't do that. Donald Trump doesn't even let the president of Taiwan use the U.S. airspace. Now, after Takeishi, the prime minister of Japan, was pushing back on Trump for not having her back after she supported Taiwan.

24:02Ben Meiselas:And then Xi Jinping said, or the Chinese government said, well, we're going to behead you and kill you. Like the U.S. seemed to symbolically fly an airplane like in the region to say, ah, we're doing this. So like they did that. But it just seems if you're in Asia right now, you're seeing the sphere of influence discussion. And I think you're realizing, you know, and this is why Japan's doing a military buildup, South Korea. Also, like the U.S. doesn't have our back. So like to me, fundamentally, the Asia policy has shifted. Xi Jinping sees it. He's been, you know, I think just outmaneuvering Donald Trump on trade like crazy.

24:39Ben Meiselas:And it's not like Xi Jinping didn't try to do the things with rare earth restrictions and and soybean stuff with Biden. But Biden checked it. You checked it by doing alliances in Asia to say we've got allies. And I think that now China says we don't have allies. What say you about Asia? Well, so I think in some ways the Biden administration and the Trump administration have a similar objective, strategic objective in Asia, at least one. which is that for the United States and China to go to war with each other would be a disaster, a disaster for both countries, a disaster for the region, a disaster for the world, given the economic cost of a conflict between these two massive, I mean, the two world's largest economies.

25:25But our approach to avoiding that conflict was through deterrence and through building up our alliances and our partnerships in that region, strengthening our relationship with the Koreans, strengthening our relationship with the Japanese, place, strengthening their relationship with each other, as you said, and then strengthening our relationship with countries in the region that sometimes are considered almost swing voters. Sometimes they're a little more in the direction of China. Sometimes they're a little more in the direction of the United States, countries like Vietnam and Indonesia, where after four years, we were in a much stronger position than we were when we started.

25:59The Trump administration's approach to this region, with the same goal, maybe, of avoiding conflict with China, is to cozy up to the Chinese, figure out what concessions have to be made to keep that relationship stable. And they've made enormous concessions just in recent months, in particular when it comes to export controls placed on advanced semiconductors, which you alluded to, in return, by the way, for very little from China. China has agreed for a year to license, to sell to the United States and other countries the rare earths that are one of the foundational building blocks of our advanced technology economy, but for a year, and then we'll see.

26:38But the Trump administration's approach to avoiding a conflict with China seems to be, tell our allies, don't be too provocative. Taiwan, don't be too provocative. Japan, as you said, don't be too provocative. And China, let's negotiate, let's talk. And I think one thing to look for over the course of the rest of this year is there are going to be several consequential meetings between President Trump and Xi Jinping. There'll be one in the United States. There'll be one in Beijing. There'll be a couple others at big multilateral events. And at every one of these gatherings, the Trump administration seems to want to put new things on the table for China just to keep the relationship in a relatively calm and stable, low temperature place.

27:19And these concessions do not seem to be getting enough benefit for us, for the American people. And I think those of us who watch Asia closely are worried about that.

27:28Ben Meiselas:You know, also they'll announce these trade deals, but then we'll never see the document about what the deal entails. And it's a handshake. And Trump will always say, here's what I've got. But we never hear China say anything. You know, they just go kind of silent and they'll use these broader platitudes of cooperation and equal respect and dignity, but they never say, yeah, that's our deal. And then it's like, well, they don't buy the soybeans that Trump said they were going to buy. The rare earth element deal, to your point, seems like a limited licensing deal, but then it also has restrictions.

28:05Ben Meiselas:China's discretion, if you have some military connection that therefore you, they could just turn it back on. So there's like that aspect of it. Like, so I don't, I mean, in a normal sense though, like, Like Biden didn't run around announcing I've done this deal. And it doesn't mean he didn't do deals. It was just like, talk to us about that aspect of it, though, because like isn't being careful with words here like important. And when Trump says these things that don't happen, like doesn't like China and other countries, like they know that now they're dealing with a foolish person who just wants to make PR statements and not do the things.

28:43So it's a really good insight. And I think this is actually a tactic that they have honed that they believe works for them, in spite of the criticism that you just described, which I fully agree with. And the tactic is basically make an announcement, grab a near term headline or chyron on cable, claim a big victory of some kind. And then if and as that unravels over time or doesn't quite pan out exactly the way the president or the administration has described, people's attention has that by that point sort of moved on. And nobody is really going to kind of hold them to what they've claimed. And people try.