486. Does Maduro’s Capture Put Greenland at Risk?

0:29Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. superpower, we will behave like a superpower. We will assert American interests without apology. Can you rule out taking Greenland by force? And Stephen Miller absolutely refuses to rule it out. No one will take seriously a weak and divided Europe, neither enemy nor ally. Otherwise, we are finished. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Now, a lot of politicians like to talk about the future of renewables, but Fuse is on the ground building clean energy for the here and now. And they're making it happen thanks to you. Fuse Energy is putting the power in your hands by inviting you to refer land to Fuse that can then be used for renewable projects.

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1:53Welcome to The Rest is Politics. I'm me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. We should explain the slightly formal setup, which slightly looks as though you've just pulled off a coup d 'etatum. We're about to address the nation. So maybe you should explain where we are. We are in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova. And behind me is a Moldovan flag. And behind you, a flag of the European Union? In a building which was a Soviet building. So really, the architecture tells the whole story of why we're here in Moldova, which is that this is a country which was part of the Soviet Union, achieved its independence, hence that flag, and is now, under Maya Sandu, the president, moving towards joining the European Union.

2:30A country stuck between Romania and Ukraine, right on the front line of the confrontation with Putin and Russia. And we've spent a lot of last night, a lot of today, trying to get a sense of that Russian strain. And we'll get onto that in the second half of the podcast. Yeah. And I think also just to tell people, the reason we're here was to interview President Sandhu, and that will be out on leading on Monday. And in the second half, we will talk about Russia and Ukraine and indeed Moldova. But I think for the first half, we probably have to talk about Donald Trump and Venezuela again. Yeah, so we did an emergency podcast shortly after it happened.

3:04Let's begin with that. Rethinking that, do you think in the immediate aftermath, I guess we went pretty soon after the abduction happened, are the things we missed, things we got wrong in retrospect, what's developed over the last two, three days? And I'd encourage people to listen to it. I mean, because we're both Western and we consume a lot of British, European, American media, I wonder if we underplayed the extent to which China would be watching this and working out a very different way to react to the way that we've seen other leaders react to it. We can maybe come on to that. As to what's happened, I mean, a large part of what I think happened on the day and is happening now.

3:48first of all it is incredibly serious it is hugely consequential but at the same time i think there is something horribly theatrical and performative about the whole thing i thought that the portraying yesterday of maduro every single step of the way being filmed taken out of his custody onto a helicopter flown into this van doors open cameras able to see him shackled legs and hands all of Which, of course, I mean, it's completely mad. It's completely unnecessary to shackle his legs. This is purely for cameras. Of course it is. I mean, where's he going to run to? He's surrounded by about 10 guys with machine guns, all with DAA, DEA written on them.

4:26So it's all performative. And it's all, as well, designed to send a message back to Venezuela to those who have stayed behind. And we can get on to where Vice President, now Interim President Delce Rodriguez is, and what her status within this is. but I think it was it was performative to that extent but I think the other thing if you remember one thing we did say on Saturday night I said I can't help wondering and worrying about what Mark Carney and Metta Fredrickson are thinking about watching this and I think from Metta Fredrickson's point of view it's become horribly clear that when Trump goes on about taking Greenland in whatever shape or form and whatever that means.

5:09He is as serious as he was about taking out Maduro. Well, we've kept coming back to this. And of course, we interviewed Meta Federson, the Prime Minister of Denmark on the show. And one of the interesting things there is that she was still trying to tread this very delicate balance because Denmark is a small country, very small country, very dependent on the United States, very keen not to alienate the US. But I think as we've been saying for a year, we've said repeatedly, it hasn't happened yet. I keep predicting that he's going to invade Greenland. It hasn't done it yet. Do you literally mean invade?

5:41I have said, I think on the podcast many times that if we're trying to think about what Trump could do next, your Michael Wolff story, that he's a reality TV star who wants to generate a big story, Greenland is an obvious story. It's an obvious spectacular. And if you think about him and his legacy to add to the United States the largest single bit of territory that the United States has acquired since it took Alaska from the Russians to late 19th century to be the president who has suddenly made America look like the risk board. Make America bigger again. Yeah, is almost irresistible for him.

6:18And maybe we'll stick with this for a second just before we go back to Venezuela, because you encouraged me to watch a rather interesting interview done by Jake Tapper from CNN with Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is Trump's deputy chief of staff, his head of policy, the major man driving most of his ideas on immigration. And this was in a few ways. And on national security. Yeah, a big interview. A lot of it about Venezuela, justifying what they did on Venezuela. But then he moves on to Greenland. So maybe tell us a bit about that, and we'll put a link in there. Well, he spoke with complete contempt about a NATO ally.

6:50He actually said at one point, you know, what right does Denmark have to hold on to Greenland? Well, the right that was agreed in law between you and them sometime way back when. He talked about, and it's interesting, when Trump was talking about Venezuela, I've yet to hear him use the word democracy in terms of what he's trying to achieve. And likewise with Miller, he was not talking about democracy. He was basically saying when Trump says he needs Greenland for American security in the Arctic, then that is what he means and they're going to do something about it. Just to quote, because I watched it on your recommendation, And Jake Tapper, the CNN interview, keeps saying, can you rule out taking Greenland by force?

7:28And Stephen Miller absolutely refuses to rule it out. You know, the answer, normal person would say, is, oh, yes, of course we can rule out taking Greenland by force. Don't be absurd. You know, it's a Denmark. Worse than that, he actually said, he said, I wrote it down as well. He said, we are a superpower. We will behave like a superpower. We will assert American interests without apology. And he said, the U.S. is the power of NATO. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the U.S. Well, you could make that case for Scotland. You know, Scotland is part of the UK, part of NATO. And I think it's worth just interrogating that a little bit because Miller is the chief propagandist for the regime.

8:03He's the guy who, after the killing of Charlie Kirk, made that Goebbels-like speech. So if I'm right that Trump is moving towards taking Greenland, we will hear these lines again and again and again, and we need to start challenging them. One fundamental line is Greenland is absolutely essential to the security of NATO because Russia can use the Arctic, China could come in, and therefore the United States obviously has to make Greenland part of the United States. Now, there's a number of claims there. Number one, this isn't an administration that actually behaves as though Russia is an existential threat.

8:38If they really believed Russia was an existential threat, they'd be doing different things in Ukraine. In fact, it's an administration that keeps assuring us that Putin has perfectly reasonable demands in Ukraine. If you just gave him use in Ukraine, he's not going to cause trouble to anyone anyway. So how does that stack with, we need Greenland because Russia is an existential threat? Number two, there is no limit basically to the number of troops that the United States could keep in Greenland. They have actually radically reduced the number of their troops in Greenland. There's no reason for them to own Greenland if what they're saying is this is vital to NATO security.

9:09the corollary is logical and obviously therefore it has to be part of the united states not true the only conclusion is if they think it's vital they need u.s troops there but they've decided not to put u.s troops there despite the fact that denmark is happy for them to keep troops there well there's three there's three things the first is denmark is already one of the biggest spenders in europe i think it's three but they're at three percent of gdp on defense so they can't really call them out on that they already have an american base there and the danes are very happy for them to grow that base and indeed to start other bases.

9:39And what's more, they're minerals and rare earths. The Danes are very happy for American investors to go in and check it all out. There doesn't appear to be that much demand. So I think what's happening with Denmark, and if you're Danish, I think this is kind of terrifying right now. With Venezuela, what happened was this slow, steady buildup of a narrative, and the narrative was drugs. And this is what you call rolling the pitch? Is it rolling the pitch? It's kind of rolling the pitch, but it's more than that. It's more putinesque is giving reasons for actions that you may already have decided to take and we now know that they have decided to take that we know that from the guy the joint chiefs of staff chairman who was explaining how they've been planning this for months so what it was doing was giving a narrative to the world because he has the bully pulpit for the world about why venezuela was a threat to the united states even though i've yet to hear a single international lawyer and i don't I think Stephen Miller counts as an international lawyer, give a credible reason why this was legal under the UN Charter.

10:41Just to remind people, so the story is that Maduro was formally running a cartel smuggling cocaine into the United States. whereas in fact all the detailed evidence including a very long 80 page report that we shared on saturday suggests that yes there are people in the venezuelan government who have facilitated drug cartels and movement or turned a blind eye or taken bribes but not only is maduro not running a cartel but in so far as venezuela is producing cocaine most of that cocaine is going to europe and that the actual flow of drugs into the united states venezuela is a relatively small part of this is the point that you keep making and the one that he's been making the drug that he's been talking about that has been posing this threat the threat he talks about is actually fentanyl which isn't coming from from venezuela so the narrative that's being created about greenland and denmark is as you say as you say the strategic importance of the arctic the fact that russia this great threat to america even though donald trump keeps saying peter's his best friend could exploit it.

11:47So they have to have greater control of that space. And secondly, the narrative is that Denmark is not a reliable ally. And if you remember that, that is exactly what J.D. Vance said when he went there. Just remind people of that for a second again, because that was one of the most astonishing things. Denmark had made it very, very clear that the American vice president was not welcome in Denmark. And he flew, despite Denmark saying he wasn't welcome to Denmark, turned up in Greenland in this Danish territory, gave a big speech, and then there has been the capture of two American citizens who appear to be American intelligence agents trying to stir up a separatist movement in Greenland against the Danes, a classic hybrid warfare disruption.

12:35Get the independence movement going so that you then say, we're intervening for the rights to indigenous people. But the The more dramatic thing, which we've been saying I think for a year now, is that Trump doesn't even really bother that much with legal arguments. There's not even the hypocritical stuff that gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century did. When Britain was going around doing terrible things and taking other people's territory, they were always pretending they were doing it for a good reason. They were dealing with the slave trade, or some consul of theirs had been outraged, or they were protecting a missionary or they were dealing with some human rights abuse.

13:12Trump is almost the first person since Genghis Khan to say, I'm just going to help myself to territory. I'm not going to pretend, actually, this ever belonged to the United States. I'm not going to pretend the indigenous people need to do it. But instead, to quote Stephen Miller, the US should have Greenland. The word he and others have been using, I've noticed, I think Vance used this word as well, when they were questioning about, is this legal? and they talked about well we can sit here and talk about international niceties okay and so the nicety is the idea that there's such a thing as a sovereign nation i mean i read a statement from the so the prime minister of i suspect that most of our listeners would not be able to name the prime minister of greenland as steven miller said it's a very small it's a very large country with a very small population but it's a country it's a people it's a culture it's a history and they talk about them and he actually said you know we're we're not just some sort of tool in great power politics and yet that is how they are treated it's heartbreaking sorry i'm interrupting a bit but it is heartbreaking because in fact in many ways greenland has been through a very very difficult evolution since the second world war they were basically treated as a colony of denmark the local people who are related to the Inuit felt as though they were second-class citizens, as though the Danish crown had acquired this in quite a complicated period as Greenland was pushed back and forth through Scandinavian monarchies during the Middle Ages.

14:39Even England had an attempt to grapple. This is one of the American lines to take, by the way. Right, absolutely. But since the Second World War, there has been a lot of change. There's been a movement for much more autonomy. The Danish constitution has been changed. Much more development investment has gone in. And certainly, if I was a Greenlander, I would be much more comfortable with a Danish government than I would be being a Native American in a reservation in the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. I don't think you look at the United States and think, this is a country that really treats Native American populations well, really treats Inuit populations well, right?

15:18This idea that Trump is presenting himself as the champion of indigenous rights, what he's actually doing, and this is exactly the line, presenting it as a blank space on a map. He's basically pretending nobody lives there and the United States can just take minerals. A couple of things, of course, that it means that we're not talking about. One is Epstein and the other is the state of the American economy. Now, we were, I think, both moderately gobsmacked on Saturday that Trump was so brazen and so open about, this is about oil. And the American companies are going to come in and they're the biggest companies, the best companies, they're going to get lots of money.

15:50we're going to get compensated for the stolen oil, which was when the industry was nationalized. But I was just looking at some polling for Trump. Affordability, the Zoran Mamdani word. Trump is doing very, very badly on cost of living. 57 % bad on prices, 36 % good. 48 % of Americans saying they find housing, medical, groceries and transportation is putting them under massive financial pressure. 27 percent of americans since trump was elected have skipped a medical appointment because of the cost 23 percent have not taken a prescription and here's an interesting one 36 percent of trump voters from 2024 saying tariffs aren't working and that they're hurting the economy compared to 22 percent who's saying the opposite that's trump voters so i think there is because this is his genius, there is an element of this is just a gigantic distraction, but it is serious.

16:47I don't want to get away from the fact he is serious about what he's doing, but it is also having that political effect. Remember, Putin went into Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 at a time when the Russian economy was weak. It's a classic thing to do. If you're beginning to lose domestic support, if your domestic economy is weak, a great foreign adventure is a wonderful, wonderful way of getting people back on side. So I would have thought another reason to be even more worried about them acquiring Greenland is exactly those economic statistics. That if Trump's thinking, well, what do I do in the midterms or coming up for the next election to deal with the fact people are feeding it in their pocket and things aren't going wrong, let me deliver the greatest victory ever.

17:24Let me land on Greenland, let's put the troops out, let's have these maps showing something like a risk board with this huge territory added to the United States. But do you think that with this affordability issue, so the American oil companies are going to think long and hard about the cost that it will be demanded of them to go in and sort out what is a pretty wrecked oil industry in Venezuela. It will be some time before real money starts to come from that that is felt by American people could actually create an even bigger divide. The oil companies get richer, the rich get richer, the corporates do well out of his little play with Maduro.

18:01And the other thing is, you know, we've talked... Just as British geeks, though, I think I'm right in saying that in the early 1900s, a whole election was run on the Boer War in Britain. Nothing to do with cost of living in Britain. In fact, the economy had been suffering quite badly through an agricultural recession. Conservative and Liberal Party went into a khaki election, which was all about jingoism, international stuff for boards. JG – Jingoism with 30 ,000 Greenlanders, where you're going to put the entire US-Europe relationship at risk. Does a MAGA voter care about that? If the MAGA voter says, this guy has just increased the landmass of the United States by the largest amount in 120 years, handed all this extraordinary minerals to us, made America great again, secure again, big again, who except for a few Democrats on the Northeast are going to be worrying about European relations?

18:50I think it depends on the consequences. I think that it will take time for the money to come through. The kind of really weird thing going on in the oil industry is that their sort of absolute dominance in fracking and shale gas oil is actually has not been helping them because it's been driving the price down or up. So their exports are going to cock. I don't know. Look, I guess I'm just being optimistic from the sort of humanity perspective that there are enough people out there who actually won't necessarily watch Stephen Miller today as we did and think, God, this is disgusting, but will at least think, no, hold on a minute.

19:27No, hold on a minute. This is just going too far. Let me push you on another thing. What should Europe do about this? So I don't think anybody currently in the German Defence Ministry or the UK Ministry of Defence thinks it would be a sensible idea to put British or German troops in Greenland. Because if you do that, they say, the Americans could just land boats on another part of Greenland, claim the territory, and you've got a bunch of troops isolated and surrounded. So - But Horne McRoy is a NATO country. So - So NATO is dead at that point. So then, and NATO would be dead. So then the question is, what do you do to deter the United States?

20:03How do you think UK, Europe, about an economic package that hurts the United States so much that Trump backs off in the way that China spent years preparing for the moment when Trump was going to put tariffs against China, and they knew exactly where to hit him to get back. Well, just, I mean, I mentioned earlier about how I don't think maybe we thought enough about China last time. We'll come back to Europe, but I think on China, it's really interesting i think they're going to take a very legalistic approach to this they're going to basically be saying oh excuse me we've done lots of deals in venezuela we're you know we've got all these countries that you and i saying you're going to pick off here and there we've got legally binding deals with them so it'd be very sort of clever way of saying you know we're the rule we're the rules people and this is a cowboy and we've got to we've got to deal with it on europe listen you occasionally refer to my family whatsapp group and the the sometimes more more colorful views that get expressed than than i might say i know there is a big part of people who will have heard kia starmer on sunday morning and so i forgot say man just say the guy to say this is illegal say this say that say what whatever and kia starmer was very very deliberate not to do so and most of them i think sanchez is the only one spanish prime minister who's really come out pretty hard on this and the and the statement that kaya callas put together for Europe as a whole.

21:21Yes, it talked about the importance of international law, rules-based order, whatever. But they're all very, very conscious of the fact that not least in relation to Ukraine, we're not sitting here, not far from Ukraine. In relation to Ukraine, they all face the same challenge as before this. That is, how do you keep America engaged in Ukraine? Because without American support right now, both military and above all intelligence, it will be very, very difficult for the Ukrainians. So I think Keir Starmer, Merz, Macron, I think they're all prepared to endure a bit of sort of loathing and hatred from people who hate Trump.

21:55They can't say the things that we say. Absolutely. And I think, you know, the former head of MI6 has come out and said, look, let's be realistic. Latin America is not within our sphere of influence. We can't control it very much. But Greenland is. So to come back to the question, okay, I understand. Europe has decided it can't do much about Latin America. They've all just about said the right thing on Greenland. And what are they going to do, though, to make Trump see the consequences if he went into Greenland? I think they're probably going to have to do a version of what they've been doing on Ukraine ever since the damn thing started, which is to not to call him out too heavily publicly, but privately constantly be trying to pull him back to a more sensible position.

22:37So actually, they will have to have really difficult conversations where they say, look, you know, are you seriously saying you're going to tear up this alliance between America, the United States and Europe, which has kept Europe safe? Are you really going to do that? And if they get to the point where the answer to that might be yes, then I think there have to be some very, very, very serious thoughts about whether we have to be more open about the sense that America is leaving us behind. But we need a deterrent package. We need to be able to say to him, if you do this, this is the consequence of the United States.

23:09Right, well, in relation to Ukraine at the moment, I think that's impossible. And they're all aware of that, and he's aware of that. But let me just read you what Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said. No one will, this, and I don't know what stage this was of the, of putting together the statement of 26. And the reason it was 26, because our friend, Mr. Orban in Hungary, refused to put his name to it, because that's what he does. Tusk said, no one will take seriously a weak and divided Europe, neither enemy nor ally. It is already clear now. we must finally believe in our own strength we must continue to arm ourselves we must stay united like never before one for all all for one otherwise we are finished okay it's a rhetorical flourish on one level but i think both russia and trump and this sort of new america that's emerging they have to understand that europe for all its difficulties if it could get its act together it's way more powerful than russia and it could at least have the power to stand up to trump on some of these issues.

24:02But of course it doesn't because both of them brilliantly know how to do divide and rule. It's not just Ukraine, it's also Britain thinks it's got a better trade deal than Europe, so we don't want to annoy Trump or he might hit us there. Maybe the Swiss are worried about this. Finally, before we move on to the break and onto where we are today, running Venezuela. So, when we did this Saturday piece, we talked about Trump's astonishing statement in the press conference that these guys behind me are going to be running Venezuela, which made no sense. I mean, you know, this is a guy who is absolutely allergic to the idea, really, of American boots on the ground and running other people's countries.

24:44It now seems that what he meant by that is... They're going to be pulling the strings. Yeah, Maduro's regime basically would remain in place without Maduro. So all the same evil, corrupt, human rights abusing generals would remain. In fact, as soon as he did his abduction, there have been detentions of journalists, phones being taken, things being locked down, the regime is gone. And all the people in Latin America who were like, well, we don't like the way it was done or the legal justification, but thank goodness we finally got rid of the Maduro regime. They get Maduro lite. They get Maduro lite.

25:14And the idea is the United States running it, according to Miller, just means the US keeps a lot of troops off the border and runs it by threatening to abduct any future leader of Venezuela that doesn't do what the United States says. Now, I can see that the one view, which would be that the Venezuelan generals are purely self-interested and corrupt, and that that will be enough to make them compliant. But there's another view which would say, in the end, for better or worse, these are nationalist generals who've come from a left-wing populist tradition, who are very closely tied in with Cuba, it doesn't seem to me credible that they're all going to start jumping to America's tune just because Trump says, if you don't do what I say, I'll start abducting a few more people.

25:59Well, one of the people we mentioned on Saturday is the sort of little group that was just below Maduro, who now seem to be still in charge. And one of them was this guy, the interior minister, who's seen as like the real hard man. And he's all over the media in Venezuela and also our social media today, posing with these guys with machine guns uh just sort of posing like you do and essentially the message is we're still in charge any expression of support for what's happened to maduro there's a crackdown now if that goes on for okay trump could get bored move on to something else but if that goes on for too long then the question will start to measure well who really is running this place and you talk about and what they think if they're meant to be really sort of excited and pleased and thrilled that they've finally taken out maduro what do they then think if think well actually they've just been left in place to carry on do the same thing and meanwhile trump's not trying to do all this this stuff for his rich mates in the in the oil industry so i think we're that that is where i don't think we're wrong on saturday for all stephen miller's boasting that you know this was the most meticulous it was an amazing military operation have to give them that but what the planning was thereafter i think they're still making it up as they as they go along and i even wonder whether the whole Denmark thing right now is them creating another distraction don't forget it was started by Stephen Miller's wife and this is how ridiculous this whole damn thing is the reality tv show she got a map of Greenland and she covered it with the stars and stripes and posted a tweet saying soon and Miller was asked about it in that interview with Jake Tapper and he just sort of laughed you know it's like a big game and because they're so powerful they think they could do what the hell they want and when i don't know if you saw trump on air force one so they've just done venezuela and he's in a kind of you know he's one of his sort of real macho bravado moods so those kind of sycophant reporters are throwing questions at him so what about cuba sir well cuba's gonna fall we don't have to worry too much cuba's gonna fall iran well if they carry on with you know if they kill any of these protesters we're gonna you know i'm gonna get interested i'm gonna take charge there.

28:02Colombia. Very sick too. He's a very sick man, likes selling cocaine. His end is coming. So anyway, I think it's all bloody depressing, that's for sure. But anyway... And maybe the transition, we're going to the break now, but the transition then, as we move to Putin and Moldova, is the question of, if you are Vladimir Putin, what's to stop you abducting the president of Armenia or a Georgian opposition leader in exactly the same way that has just happened with Maduro. Better lay off Maya Sandhu. And I should say, Rory, as well, in case you didn't know, the rest is classified. Gordon and David have done a very, very good deep dive on the operation itself, which, as I said on Saturday, will be the stuff of movies into the future.

28:47Into the break, and then back after the break. See you soon.