Is This MAGA Foreign Policy or Something Else Entirely?

0:01This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:16I'm Steve Stromberg, an editor for New York Times Opinion. I'm joined by opinion columnists Masha Gessen and David French. Hello. Hi, Masha and Steve. I'm just a fair warning. I have got two wonderful grandkids visiting me today, so you might hear some little voices in the background during our discussion. I look forward to it. Masha, David, you both write about international law and justice and, of course, about President Trump. David is also an Iraq war veteran and a former JAG officer. They've both written columns about the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the capture of Nicolas Maduro and his wife, who are now in New York City to appear in court.

0:57In the weeks leading up to this Saturday's strike, many observers speculated that a major military action might be coming. The Trump administration had been blowing up suspected drug running boats off Venezuela's coast and massing military resources in the area. Briefly, in a sentence or two, what was your very first reaction to the news of the military action and capture of Maduro? David? You know, I would say the very first thought that came to my mind was the ends do not justify the means here. I'm very pleased to have Maduro gone from Venezuela. However, I'm not pleased in the way that it was done.

1:35And my concerns about the latter far outweigh my happiness or satisfaction about the former. Well, we'll definitely get into that. Masha, what did you think right after you heard about the strikes? Well, I'm impressed with how civilized David's first reaction to the news. His mind was probably not fit for a family newspaper. But I agree. And I was looking at it partly through the eyes of a lot of Russian dissidents who I think in our dreams we see somebody swooping in and removing Putin. But not like this, because, yeah, I agree the ends don't justify the means. And the means here are the means of really demolishing any semblance of hope for international law, for respect for norms, for a post-World War II order that we hadn't still given up hope of creating.

2:38Well, let's get into some of that. David, how does this strike compare with previous U.S. military operations? And I'm interested specifically in how the Trump administration's justifications stack up relative to history, to international law, and simply to what countries should do, should have to do to justify military action. Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm not going to be one to sit here and defend all prior military actions before this one. There have been many lawless military actions, especially in Central and South America, over the many years of American history. But I would say even by the standards of some of our most brazen kinds of lawless military action, this one stands out.

3:22You know, when I talked about the ends don't justify the means here, I was talking an awful lot about the lawlessness of the action itself. So first, it's an aggressive war. It's an aggressive war waged in violation of—without legal justification for aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter that we're a party to, by the way. Ever since the First World War, the Western powers have been trying to come to a world order or a world consensus against the notion of aggressive war without a direct attack on the United States or an act of collective self-defense according to treaty, for example. Going in and seizing the head of state with military force is an act of war.

4:05And when you look at the justifications, though, it begins to become even more disturbing because what they're looking back at is a historical record, and they're relying a lot on the 1989 invasion of Panama. Right. Now, that's a real problem for them for one reason and for us in the world order for another reason. So the problem for us as we're looking at it is really there's just no real comparison between the two in the sense of what were the events leading up to it. Right before the invasion of Panama, the Panamanian government declared a state of war against the U.S. So that's a big difference.

4:42Number two, the Panamanian government had killed a Marine, seriously injured another, had taken another into custody where they had brutally beaten him. So you had direct attacks on American military forces. You had not congressional authorization for war, but you had a bipartisan consensus here. You had some congressional action afterwards as well that essentially ratifies much of the president's action. That's very, very different from here. This is completely unilateral. Now, the other thing that's a real problem, I think, for the nation going forward is the legal justification that the administration used in 89 had its own problems.

5:24And in 89, they used a Bill Barr legal opinion to justify the actions in Panama that essentially said, when there has been an indictment of a foreign person, like in that case, Manuel Noriega, in this case, Maduro, then there's going to be a way in which American law enforcement can then execute that indictment, perhaps with the assistance of the American military. Now, why is this such a problem? What is short circuit of the entire process of declaring war? We don't need an authorization for the use of military force against Saddam Hussein. Let's just indict him for trying to kill George H.W.

5:59Bush and then use the 101st Airborne and First Marines to protect the FBI when they arrest him. No, that's absurd. That's a self-reinforcing bootstrapping of war-making power into the executive at the expense of the Constitution. So there are big differences with previous American military engagements and also the legal justifications for past American military engagements is being bootstrapped into this one or being brought into this one in a way that's extremely dangerous sort of for the future of separation of powers and accountability of the executive. So you don't buy the argument that this is not in fact a military action, but actually something more like a law enforcement action.

6:43Totally absurd. It's just totally absurd. It doesn't pass the straight face test. If you use the U.S. military to enter into a foreign capital and seize the head of state. I don't care if you have a couple of FBI agents with you. This is an active war. Imagine if you had an indictment of Donald Trump for, say, some sort of financial crime in the United Kingdom or France or whatever, and they execute a raid in the White House with air support. Would we sit there and go, what a spectacular police operation that was just executed. No, everyone would know that was a brazen act of war. There's nothing civilian about this, despite the fig leaf of the FBI presence in the actual attack.

7:33Now, Masha, you've observed Vladimir Putin as closely as anyone. You mentioned him a little bit earlier in this podcast. What is he thinking right now? Well, let me just pick up where David left off and then I'll go to Putin. I think this is one of those times that the Trump administration has sort of done something where an increase in quantity really creates an entirely new quality of phenomenon, right? Things that are somewhat like this invasion of Venezuela have happened before. The United States has gone to war without the authorization of the United Nations. The United States has engaged in regime change.

8:15Presidents have carried out strikes on foreign countries without briefing Congress. But the combination of all of that, the scale of all of that, the amount of time that has now passed without Congress still being briefed. We're taping this on Monday morning, and from what I understand, there still hasn't been a briefing for Congress, and we're two days out from the operation. And then the rhetorical framing of it, the sort of Trump standing in front of reporters and repeating in various ways, we're going to run that country. All of that just puts us in an entirely different kind of territory, and I think terrifying.

8:56And as for Putin, I think that early on Saturday, there were some commentators who sort of said, oh, Putin is probably upset because Maduro was his ally. Venezuela has been historically an ally of Russia. But I think actually this operation comports with Putin's worldview perfectly. He views the world as a place that some very powerful men can carve up. They can make backroom deals and they can decide where their spheres of influence are. It's sort of the other post-World War II order. It's not the legal order, the liberal order that we usually refer to. It's not rights-based. It's not human rights-based.

9:45It's men sitting around in Yalta saying, you take that and we'll leave you alone and we'll take this. And this is exactly what Putin has been advancing in his speeches and his articles and in his actions for more than a decade. So to him, this is a signal that his hands are untied in Europe. And let's dig a little bit deeper on that and the broader implications. and Yalta, of course, being the site of a summit at close to the end of World War II in which the major allied powers determined the post-war territorial order in Europe. I'm reminded of a 2012 presidential debate in which President Obama criticized Mitt Romney for adopting the foreign policies of the 1980s.

10:34Is that something like, the 1980s are calling, they want the foreign policy back? Trump is reaching back to something more like 1908, maybe. 1823. Well, speaking of that, on Saturday, he invoked the Don Roe Doctrine, which seems to envision splitting the world into three major spheres of influence led by the United States and Russia and China. That gives off sort of a Cold War vibe. Trump's desire to dominate areas physically close to the United States reflects even older thinking, right? He seemed we did we invaded Iraq. And the problem was that was 10 ,000 miles away, whereas this is in our backyard, he seemed to say on Saturday.

11:13So does any of this make sense in the world of the Internet and B-21 bombers rather than, you know, steamships and cavalry charges? David, why don't we start with you? So it's, you know, when you said the 80s called, and in the case of Trump, I was, you know, we all have our different date range. I was thinking 1880s and sort of the gunboat diplomacy of the Gilded Age. And, you know, look, I don't necessarily think that technology is changing that dynamic as much as technology might be changing the consequences of conflict the way it does so often. You know, the Industrial Revolution made conflict so much more deadly.

11:49The nuclear age can make it even more deadly still. But when Masha talks about this carving up of the world, I think that is really the key insight here. Because let's go back and let's look at why do we have this, quote, much maligned world order to begin with. And the reason why we have this much maligned world order to begin with is the architects of it, almost all of them had been through two world wars by that point. You know, World War I was so catastrophic, it was called the War to End All Wars. and it had roughly 16, 17, 18 million people who died in it. Well, the structures and institutions designed to prevent a World War II failed utterly, and largely because we didn't participate in them.

12:32And so then we had a World War II that was even worse than World War I, beyond human imagination how bad it was. And so after World War II, we try again. We try again with what are the institutions that we can create that can prevent a World War III. And that's the sort of the central animating virtuous purpose of, say, the United Nations. But this time we participated. We participated with the other four victorious powers, creating a UN, a UN Security Council. And you can barely hold this together with three of the five permanent members largely complying with the laws of war and sort of the rules of international engagement.

13:14So long as of the three, one of them is the United States of America. You can deter China. You can deter Russia, although we've had a failure of deterrence in Ukraine, of course. There's a way to deter. But if you take the United States and pull it out of the intended way the UN is supposed to function, the way the international institutions are supposed to function, and put it right beside Russia and China and believing not in the post-World War II order, but believing in spheres of influence and great power competition, more of like a pre-World War I order, then the whole thing cannot be sustained.

13:54It will collapse. And a lot of people look at this post-World War II order and say, I'm too Pollyannish about it. I look at it at rose-colored glasses. It's failed in many ways. yes, it has. There has been aggressive war. Millions of people have died in armed conflict since World War II. But what it has been very good at is that it's accomplishing its central purpose, which is preventing that global total war that we experienced two times in the previous century. And if you think you can just yank the U.S. out of it, you think we can go back to 19th century gunboat diplomacy and spheres of influence, which, by the way, it's never so neat that the great powers all agree on what their spheres are and harmoniously go about their business in their respective spheres.

14:44That is not the way this works. And that if you look at it from that standpoint of what was it designed to do, what has it done, as imperfect as it's been, it's blocked, it's stopped, it's prevented the nightmare. And when we mess with the systems that have prevented the nightmare, we risk the nightmare. And that's what makes me so concerned about where we are. You know, when we talk about the international order, the post-World War II order, very often the criticism and what comes to mind is about the economic order that was built. But in many ways, the economic order, you know, the IMF, World Bank, other institutions, All of that was ancillary in service of the primary mission that you described, which was preventing another World War I, preventing another World War II, ending the great power competition that resulted in these human catastrophes.

15:39catastrophes. We have a war on the ground right now in Europe, in Ukraine. Masha, I'm wondering, you know, they're very different situations, Venezuela and Ukraine. But I do wonder how you see this action in Venezuela interacting with the ongoing war in Ukraine. So they're different, but they're also similar. And I think it's actually a good moment to focus on the similarities, right? Obviously, the difference is that in one case, the United States went in, removed a dictator who had been holding on to power by falsifying elections. That's Maduro. In the other situation, Putin went in as an act of aggression to try to remove a legitimate democratically elected president in Ukraine.

16:32But the design of those missions was remarkably similar. What Putin envisioned was that he was going to bomb Kiev, swoop in, remove Zelensky, and using the rhetorical cover of liberating the people of Ukraine, of repairing infrastructure that had fallen into disrepair. I mean, you could almost, word for word, use Trump's press conference after the Saturday operation to write what Putin imagined he would be saying if his initial military foray into Ukraine hadn't failed. So I think that similarity is super important to keep in mind as we analyze what has happened to the world that we live in. And now four years into the war in Ukraine, Trump has been pressuring Ukraine to agree to a poor peace, a peace that would be hugely disadvantageous to Ukraine, but would give him a feather in his cap and would maybe get him finally the Nobel Peace Prize that he dreams of.

17:44And now the message that Venezuela sends, combined with this pressure that he's been exerting on Ukraine, is to the rest of Europe, which is that the rest of Europe is left alone with Russian aggression. And Putin has made it very clear that he's not going to stop at Ukraine. And Russian hybrid warfare in Europe, which I think we're not really aware of in this country, you know, that's been raging for years and has really amped up over the last year. And that includes political meddling, sabotage, acts of terrorism, and jamming radio frequencies in European airports. That has become almost routine.

18:28So let's shift focus for a minute. Let's look at how people are responding in the United States. David, the Venezuela attack violated one of Trump's most consistent campaign promises in all three of his presidential races. He promised to end American interventionism abroad. It was crystal clear. He's now saying he will run Venezuela until a proper transition can take place. Not really defined what that is. He has threatened to intervene in Iran if peaceful protesters are killed. He keeps talking about Greenland. So this has riled people such as former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's criticized Trump and his focus on foreign policy rather than on domestic matters.

19:10How, if at all, does his flexing of American power abroad fit into MAGA's America First ethos? Can Trump defend or explain his actions to the MAGA base in a way that will satisfy his supporters? easily easily on this because this is not their first rodeo when it comes to foreign intervention i mean that the the the bottom line is is that i believe a lot of maga's rhetoric about war has been much more a matter of internal republican politics than it has been sort of deep-seated principle i do think that there are some people in the republican coalition who are old school longtime Patrick Buchanan types who might have some discomfort with this.

19:53But 99 % of MAGA is not old school paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan types. MAGA truly is a relatively new phenomenon that is much more centered around the personal success of Donald Trump than it is around a particular ideology. And so had this mission failed, had a helicopter say been shot down and American soldiers had been killed and it turned into like a Desert One-type fiasco like Jimmy Carter had in the sands of Iran, that there might have been some rumblings, but this comes across as a big Trump win. And just to sort of like test out this hypothesis, this is not going to be an issue at all in MAGA.

20:33I did kind of a perusal very, very late last night through some of the Twitter feeds of some of the people who have been most—MAGA figures who've been most derisive and mocking towards people like me, for example, Reagan slash Bush era conservatives. And I found them being, yes, very mocking and derisive, but against anyone who is criticizing the operation in Venezuela. This is not the Epstein files. And not even the Epstein files has really driven a true wedge between Trump and MAGA. They have opened some fissures, some very slight cracks, But this is not something that really hits at core, core convictions of some key members of the coalition.

21:17No, no, no. This is something else. The foreign policy part of the MAGA fight has not been a grassroots issue. So much of it's been a grass tips or grass tops issue amongst competing factions, ideological factions within the Republican Party who really don't have a lot of hold or purchase over sort of the populist MAGA movement itself. But I do think the instant something like this goes poorly for Trump, where he isn't seen as having accomplished something remarkable, and that military operation does appear to have been brilliantly executed. But that allowed Trump to adopt this victorious posture, which I think ultimately his base loves more than any given kind of ideology.

22:01Masha, how do you see this? Is MAGA just a Trump personality cult? they'll be happy as long as he seems successful, or is it more complicated than that? Yes, it is just a Trump personality cult. Also, I think Trump is either discovering or remembering what other autocrats have known for a long time, that there's no easier way to build greatness, I'm using that in air quotes, than to wage imperial wars. It's much harder to build greatness by making people's lives better at home. Trump has not been very good at that. But to project greatness by taking over neighboring countries, well, that trick is as old as autocracy itself.

22:47And it usually works. It works particularly well in a fractured media universe like the one that we live in now. David is right that Trump is lucky to some extent in that this operation did go extremely well to the extent that we can evaluate the military operation, right? What's going to happen on the ground in Venezuela, we have no idea, and nobody seems to have given that any thought. But even if it hadn't, the MAGA media universe is going to project that very far away place and events that are happening outside of anybody's field of vision as further proof of Trump's greatness. It does interest me that Stephen Miller, who's a senior Trump aide, an immigration hardliner, early MAGA believer, somebody who actually really does care about specific outcomes, he reportedly favored the Venezuela attack.

23:44And I think he and folks like him might care because they want Venezuela migrants to leave the United States and to prevent more from trying to come here. You know, do you think that is sort of enough to square the Venezuela attack with America first? What kinds of justifications are they going to come up with to sell this? You know, I think it's very important to understand that when Trump is saying America first and when this Trump movement is saying America first, it is now not something – we cannot think of it as isolationist. That is not what it is. It is spheres of influence. That's the way that we need to think about the Trump mindset right now.

24:24And so America first means just America runs its sphere of influence. This is the main consideration. If American national interests dictate that, say, Maduro needs to go, then unlike, say, previous administrations, which would say, well, Maduro needs to go, but we need to do this in a lawful way, that in that circumstance, what we have to do is exercise diplomatic economic pressure to achieve national interests. Well, the way the Trump administration views it is much more like Karl von Klauswitz. War is an extension of policy by other means. So if our persuasion fails, if our attempted diplomacy or economic pressure fails, well, then that's reason enough for war in the American sphere of influence.

25:08And you really began to see this from the first hours of the second Trump term when Trump began to bully Canada and Mexico. At that point, it should have just really locked in. Oh, Canada and Mexico are like Trump's Ukraine. They're nations in our sphere of influence that we, as the big boy in the block, should be able to dictate terms to to create economic arrangements that are more favorable to us. and their national interests don't matter at all. That's what America first is in this second Trump term. It is not something that is truly isolationist. It's much more this, quote unquote, Don Roe doctrine.

25:48And if anyone doubts this, I mean, look at the list, the laundry list of countries that he's saying need to have some sort of American intervention. He's talked about Colombia. He keeps talking about annexing Greenland. And at this point, I'm just not even chuckling about it anymore. Like, it sounded so weird and fantastical, but the guy won't let this go. And I still don't think it will happen. But it's so consequentially awful, and Trump is so erratic and so demonstrably willing to just act on his own authority, period, end of discussion, that I'm now worried that he might conceivably do something dangerous in Greenland.

26:31And in fact, the Danish government is concerned enough about it that where they recently put out a very clear public statement. And if you want to talk about something that would absolutely wreck NATO to its core, its foundation, it would be seizing the territory of a NATO country, which could arguably allow that country to invoke Article 5 against us. Just imagine that for half a second. And so, you know, we're in a world right now where America first means America, American interests only matter in this sphere of influence. And he will use force liberally, liberally to accomplish what he believes are American interests on his own authority, on his own accord.

27:18And this creates tension abroad. and when you engage in serial military activities without creating any kinds of public consensus at home, it creates tension at home. There hasn't been the kind of rally around the flag effect, at least that we've seen yet, that has happened with Trump after the Venezuela operation that we've seen happen after many other military operations. I think part of it is he didn't prep the American public for it. He didn't sell it to the American public. He just did it. And so, you know, I think when you're putting all these things together, America First isn't isolationist.

27:52It's spheres of influence based. And it's very, very, very aggressive in this Trump second term. Spheres of influence, I guess, is the phrase of the month. Maybe the phrase of our future. On that, yes, Trump is claiming some particular interest rights in the Western hemisphere that was mapped out in the national security strategy that his administration recently released. But he also, as we mentioned before, he struck Iran in concert with Israel. He has tried to play peacemaker in Gaza, in Ukraine. So is spheres of influence even the best way to think about it? Is it that we have our backyard where we have a particularly strong interest, but we really have interests everywhere that the United States can pursue and defend?

28:47And how do you see this, Masha? Yeah, I'm going to mount an argument against using the terms fears of influence, because fears of influence generally implies using soft power and the threat of hard power to exert influence. That's not what we're seeing. We're seeing colonization of an entire country. That's beyond fears of influence, right? And we need some other term for it, probably something better than the Don Rowe doctrine, but at least I would favor that because it's new. And one thing that I want to add sort of to thinking through how Trump views all of this and how Molligot views this, you know, Trump is a president who watches himself on television and who has a remarkably good memory for some things.