521. Trump’s Naval Blockade: Is America Becoming a Rogue State?

25:58Rory Stewart:If it's right that what the US is becoming, that the architect of the global system is itself becoming a rogue state, I think there are three broad parts that we could be going on over the next five years. One of them is what the US is gambling on, which is that we all suck it up and acquiesce. Britain, Europe, cut side deals, Canada folds. We don't have any options. We can't really go anywhere else. We have to accept it. Second option is that actually we collapse into global chaos that a lot of other countries begin to think, well, screw it. US does this. Well, we can do our own naval blockades.

26:35Rory Stewart:We can blockade the Black Sea. We can blockade the South China Sea. we can bomb people, we can assassinate people. And why? Well, because if another state were to do this now, what exactly was the US supposed to say? And the US say we can't like, we don't like it, but they can't say anymore, you violated global norms, or you've done something. The third possibility, though, is the one that you're pointing to, which is the emergence of a new global order. China would have an interest in that. And a lot of that would be China in the developing world and Africa. But the big question, I suppose, is Europe, and in particular, Germany.

27:11Rory Stewart:Is Germany really prepared to put itself behind thinking about how Europe could become more non-aligned? This is UK, Ukraine, we'll get onto your conversation with Zelensky in a second, Canada, thinking about how Europe genuinely can become a sovereign, independent actor with its own values. And then I think, bolt on the gulf, because one of the things that we keep forgetting is the impact on everyone else in the world. I mean, the sad thing about these US papers is, I mean, they're great, but obviously, a lot of it is focused on the impact on the US economy. And the impact on the US economy is relatively muted.

27:50Rory Stewart:Yeah, compared to the rest of the world. Well, I was looking at a recent model. I mean, you know, these are difficult things to predict, and it's maybe an exaggeration, but capital economics, which is a reputable think tank, predicts that Qatar's economy will contract by 13 % this year, that UAEs may contract by 8%. To put that in context, under normal growth conditions, that would be seven years it would need to get back the growth. South Korea is spending billions on trying to underpin its welfare state. Malaysia, South Korea is struggling to get the helium to build their semiconductor chips.

28:28Rory Stewart:All the inputs into the Chinese economy are being choked, particularly around polyethylene. The European economies, Germany's growth rate, you know, I was saying we're relying on Germany. Germany's growth rate now been massively downgraded. Hence this sense that we keep coming back to of an American presidency that behaves like the bankers during the 2008 financial crisis. They take the risk and the rest of us suffer the consequences. I'll give you a few other more figures from the Gulf. So stock exchanges in the Gulf, Dubai, 15 % drop since this all started, Qatar, 10%, Abu Dhabi, 5%. Travel and tourism industry is reckoned to be losing$600 million a day.

29:08The projected loss of economic output due to contracted growth, reduced exports, and general disruption of the oil sector, 200 billion. So that's the Gulf. And you're right, the Americans, in part because they've become much bigger producer of oil and gas, they're not feeling as much. But here's a really interesting thing. The University of Michigan has been measuring consumer sentiment since 1952. OK, and we'll put the graph in the in the newsletter. But it is since in the last six weeks, it's fallen to the lowest point at any time in history, including previous wars and pandemics. Inflation is that they're going to get hit by it.

29:52They're not going to get the interest rate cut that he's been been going on about. Now, the oil price has actually dipped just below$100 a barrel this morning, I think. But we're still talking about it going from$60 at the start of March to$70 fairly recently. So it's a 70 % increase, whichever way you look at it. And Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, she's outlined that the European Union's bill for fossil fuel imports since the war began has risen by more than$22 billion. So it's economically catastrophic. It's environmentally catastrophic. and it's all caused by this one guy and his decision with Netanyahu to do what they've done.

30:36Rory Stewart:And just to underpin, the whole point about this is it is entirely unnecessary. I mean, we just have to keep underscoring this. Somehow we forget in the coverage that Iran did not pose an immediate threat, right? Its nuclear weapon program was years of completion. Its uranium was buried under rubble. They were in the middle of negotiations with Oman in Geneva. There was no reason to trigger this. And everything that he's done since is him trying to respond to the chaos that he himself has unleashed. And Iran still has escalation ladders. There's still stuff that Iran could do to make the world suffer much more, shutting down the Red Sea.

31:17Rory Stewart:Again, the Houthi may be weaker in Yemen, but as we keep saying, they don't have to hit every vessel going through the Red Sea. They don't even have to hit one out of 100. Just do one. Yeah. They may even just have to threaten that they might hit one out of 100 for the insurance price to go up, people not be prepared to sail through. So, it's a situation in which unnecessarily, for no reason that remotely fits US national security, US interest, he has launched a war which is crippling the global economy. But this is my final point for, and then back to you before we go to a break. But the other thing I slightly disagreed with in your conversation with Dominic is this idea that the midterms is going to change everything.

31:58Rory Stewart:I agree, he's going to almost certainly lose the midterms, almost certainly lose the House of Representatives and the Senate. But I'm not so sure that Dominic's analysis that he's going to be a lame duck applies. It would have been true with previous presidents, but this is a guy that doesn't want to run again, rules by executive order, largely ignores most of the norms and institutions anyway. so i i think and you can see this in his statements he's now openly saying yeah oil price remain up cost of them remain up probably remain up through the midterms may even go a bit higher no normal person would say that and it's beginning to suggest to me he doesn't care too much about what happens in the midterms well i i i must admit i i i'm closer to you on that than than to dominate because in the end regardless of the midterms which hopefully will be terrible for him regardless of that he will still be the president of the united states and he's established to a certain style of governing, then I suspect he'll continue.

32:52Now, hopefully, Congress will finally get its act together and start to sort of put some proper accountability on this lot and what have you. But I don't think it can be remotely guaranteed. And let me just say on the economic stuff, you were quoting one of these companies that sort of analyses this stuff. I was reading a report from another one, which said that Europe and Japan is going to be hit far harder than the United States. So Europe's got some really big choices. You mentioned Merz. Interestingly, Merz yesterday, I watched a thing he did. They've got a little of a sort of political problem going on with this row between one of his ministers and other members of the coalition.

33:30But he was pretty hard over in criticising Trump on some of this. The other thing I've found, Maloney's been criticising him in particular in relation to his attack on the Pope. I mean, this underlines the narcissism that we're dealing with here. The Pope's job is actually sometimes to speak truth to power and to say wars generally aren't very good. OK, and that's kind of what he's saying, at which point Trump comes out and basically says he's pro-Irradian and he's soft on crime. I mean, the guy's nuts. I think we've got to stop pretending this is a normal president. Your point about the Today programme, I don't listen to the Today programme every day.

34:12But I was speaking to somebody last week who does, who's a member of the cabinet, who said that last week, or was it the week before, five out of the seven days of the week on the BBC main bulletin at seven o 'clock began with the words Donald Trump, or a variation thereof. What he says is deemed to be newsworthy, even when it's completely insane and actually needs a bit of context.

34:38Rory Stewart:Maybe my final point for the break, Rory, is I've said to you before that one of the worst periods of my time with Tony Blair were the fuel protests 20-odd years ago now. These fuel protests that are kicking off in Ireland are looking really bad, and I suspect they're not going to be the only country. I'm in France at the moment. There's quite a lot of garages saying no diesel. The cost, I was speaking to somebody who says that their bill for their heating fuel has doubled since this thing started. So this is going to eat into every country's politics and economics everywhere. And all because, as you say, this guy decided, I'm going to take out Iran, even though everybody has told me, who's thought about this before, this is a crazy, crazy thing to do.

35:21Rory Stewart:Well, quick break, and then back to talk about this extraordinary interview that you did with Zelensky. See you soon.

35:35Rory Stewart:welcome back to the rest of this politics with me rory stewart and me asked campbell so rory how much did you how much do you wish you'd been with me talking to zelensky a lot a lot that was that was very very sad it's the great interview it's the one that we've been aiming for now for for four years and you finally pulled it off and there was looking at blue-footed boobies and seals. I was tempted to try to join for my boat, but I can assure you, you would have been really, really angry with the internet speed off a boat in the Galapagos. Probably, probably. Just so that our listeners and viewers understand, I did postpone it once.

36:12You did, because I was on a plane. Yeah, but I thought, no, I can't turn down two days. No, no, you can't.

36:18Rory Stewart:You're completely right. Listen, the guy's a busy man. If he offers you an interview, you've got to take it. I mean, I thought it was a great interview, but there were a lot of things that were surprising and strange. I mean, but can I just start with what struck you about how he would compare to interviewing an American politician? So let's maybe take the governor of California, Newsom, as an example, or how he would compare to interviewing a British politician. I don't know, let's take Keir Starmer to take a couple of people we've interviewed. Okay. I was talking to Luke Harding, who covers Ukraine for The Guardian.

36:51And he was saying the great thing about Zelensky is if you ask him a question, he tends to answer it. And I did get that feeling. He knew roughly what we were going to talk about. I thought at one point, I worried he might get a bit fed up with all he's got to deal with, you know, do I really have to talk about our childhood and being a comedian and all that stuff. But actually he really seemed to enjoy talking about his past and about his mum and he has to phone her every day and all that stuff. So I think he was very open. He was very, very warm and kind of relaxed because at the start, Lisa from the Ukrainian foreign ministry, who was brilliant in helping us to get this thing set up.

37:27But she said, look, you need to understand, sometimes when he's very, very tired, he prefers to speak in Ukrainian. Okay. So they had an interpreter on standby. So I was chatting up the interpreter, explaining why it was always best if we kept the interpreter quiet or what have you. Anyway, Zelensky came on and Zelensky had the, all my questions were being translated to him, which is why there's sometimes a little pause at the end. But then he spoke in English and only very occasionally said to the interpreter, how do I say such and such? But he was very relaxed, incredibly energetic. He just literally just got back from Syria.

37:58And, you know, I think I said when we did the trip to Ukraine for the fourth anniversary, that every time he goes, even he as president, every time he goes in and out, he has to do 12 hours on the sleeper train. But he didn't look tired.

38:11Rory Stewart:And I think he was just, I found it very open, refreshingly kind of open. and I didn't find him theatrical. I mean, one thing that surprised me is that given that he was a, he's an incredibly funny man, he's a professional comedian. Yeah. But I sensed that the Ukrainian style of leadership is quite serious. It really inhabits the role of a wartime president. and compared to someone like Gavin Newsom, there isn't that much kind of lightness of touch. Maybe, I think, culturally, because he wouldn't consider that appropriate. I mean, it's... And often when you ask him a personal question, he would broaden it out to a sort of...

38:58Rory Stewart:He'd say, yep, of course, you know, we have these issues, but... And then he'd come back to the main thing. I saw that more as he... I don't think he liked making it all about himself. So for example, he would talk about his son becoming an adult before his time, or he talked about his mum, maybe feeling it more than he did. I didn't get the feeling that he wanted to make it all about himself, whereas a lot of politicians love to make it all about themselves. And I thought the other answer I thought was really interesting, which sort of relates to what you just said, was when I asked him when he was running for office, it was post-Crimea.

39:37Putin had already started his operation. Was there not a part of him that thought he might have to end up as a war leader? And he basically said no. He didn't ever think that was going to happen. So I think he was an accidental politician in some ways. And I think he became an accidental war leader, but I think he's brilliant at both.

39:54Rory Stewart:It's also, though, a reminder of how we can get our models wrong. Or at least I get my models wrong, because he was basically an inclusive populist when he ran. I mean, he ran a campaign where he refused really to engage with the conventional media at all. He ran off the back of being this enormous comedy TV star who'd acted as the president and was running to be president. And actually, his supporters registered a party named after this fictional thing. So, there was this sort of, everybody kept coming up with all these political scientists said, you know, it's this populist, hyper-reality, valence populism.

40:33Rory Stewart:But I mean, attempts to try to describe this, and people drew analogies with Pepe Grillo, who'd been a comedian who ran, or they even drew analogies with, of course, Trump, who'd been a reality TV star. So that would make one think, if one didn't understand Ukrainian culture, that he might be a bit more like Pepe Grillo or Trump. In other words, much more outrageous and free rolling and provocative in his speaking style. But actually, he isn't like that at all. Or maybe he hasn't been like that since the invasion. He's a deeply serious man, isn't he? Yeah. Or maybe it's harder in what is ultimately his third language.

41:12So he's a Russian speaker, perfected his Ukrainian fairly late in life, and English is his third language. I got a sense of a very good, humoured guy, though. I mean, I talked to somebody when I was out there who said, don't underestimate how lonely he is. He's got very, very few people he can absolutely trust, 100%. He's got this amazing collection of world leaders that he has to kind of keep on board. And, you know, can he trust any of them? 100 %? Not really. Can any world leader really trust somebody who's running another country? Very frustrated and very suspicious about Trump, but can't really say that.

41:50And so I think actually his wife, and as he said in the interview they they met when he was she was a comedy script writer he was an actor and a writer and you know and he said that you know they have to sometimes just have a laugh and try to find things funny because if you don't have a sense of humor you kind of finished you know your world sort of literally collapses so i think he'd be conscious of not wanting to be flippant about anything but i got i always got the feeling of somebody who actually does have a lightness of touch but it's harder in a third language i think i'll tell you the bit i absolutely love though rory the bit i'm going to guess what i'm going to say no the bit where he the bit where where you

42:28Rory Stewart:basically say is trump on putin's side and he doesn't challenge you no no no it's similar it is something that i want people to believe it now it's when i suggested that the uk should join the european union on the same day as ukraine yeah i missed that no you're completely right and and and i think that was a really interesting argument because again you know we were talking just before the break about how if America becomes effectively a rogue state, there is an opportunity not for the world to descend into chaos, but instead to reorganize itself and Germany being the heart of that. But his story, which I thought was very interesting, is that what could happen is Europe could transform its security architecture if it took in the UK, Norway, Ukraine and Turkey.

43:16Rory Stewart:Effectively, what he's saying is if you actually want Europe to guarantee that it can defend itself against Russia, those are the countries you need to bolt on. So it's not just a statement about values, not just a statement about European extension, it's a solution to America withdrawing. It's so interesting. So we should say to people that also on YouTube, the film that I made in Ukraine, including the interview with Marta Kost, the enlargement commissioner. Now, I think she'd love to do something, be able to do something as kind of big and dramatic as that, but it's very, very hard because there are processes, there are rules, etc.

43:47But he's basically saying Europe has to become a bigger political project. And when he said it in those terms, just think about it, UK, I mean, okay, you mentioned George Robertson, and George Robertson is saying that we're not remotely in the state that we should be, but we're still one of the bigger European powers. You take UK, Norway, Turkey, and Ukraine, you're adding an awful lot of heft to any military alliance at a time when the americans do appear to be leaving us to it now we're still going to be it will take a long time to fill any gap that ukraine might be left by the united states and that's why he's pretty careful about how he speaks

44:26Rory Stewart:about them but it was it was fascinating wasn't it and and it again isn't something we hear much in the British press. So, of course, I guess listeners will understand why Ukraine joining the European alliance would transform it, because this is a country that single-handedly is holding back Russia on its own and has completely innovated and created whole new forms of drone warfare and is probably the most advanced innovative military nation on earth at the moment. Norway and the UK is interesting because he's making the point that we actually give the other flank against Russia. That's the Arctic flank, as he pointed out.

45:02Rory Stewart:But it's Turkey, maybe, that we don't talk about enough. Just how many soldiers Turkey has, how many weapons Turkey has, the heft that Turkey has in the region. And Turkey, of course, is NATO members. So, what you've got there is basically NATO plus Ukraine without the United States as being the absolute bedrock of containing Russia. And there's a logic to it. And logic is very powerful, too. And this morning, Zelensky, there's a post that we read, Zelensky, for the first time in the war, an enemy position was captured entirely by ground robotic systems and drones without any infantry. A robot entered the most dangerous zones instead of a soldier and took the positions, which you think, wow.

45:45And David Petraeus, who we interviewed, the former CIA chief and senior military figure in the US, he said that, you know, Ukraine is becoming one of the really major military forces in the world. I thought that bit of the interview was interesting. The other thing I found really interesting was his analysis of Putin and his disbelief, really, that Wyckoff and Kushner in particular, but Trump as well, feel they have to believe him. They have to trust him because they don't want to think that he might lie to them. This is a guy who lies to everybody.

46:21Rory Stewart:Well, there were a couple of other things, weren't there, which really struck me from your interview. One is him saying very flatly that Wyckoff had basically refused to meet him. I mean, I hadn't actually fully got this into my head that Steve Wyckoff, Trump's negotiator, is flying out to meet Putin in Moscow again and again and again and won't meet Zelensky. That's really odd. The second thing is he was explaining something that's quite difficult to explain and will have been very difficult to explain, particularly the US, which is why just putting a ceasefire in place, which must be very tempting for people, is not actually a smart idea.

46:56Rory Stewart:that if you were just to say, okay, let's just announce the ceasefire tomorrow, what actually happens is Russia uses that to consolidate its position, lick its wounds, remobilize its army, retrain its officer corps, retrain its NCO cadre, and find itself ready to project itself into another part of Europe. Now, that's a difficult message, but that's the central message, isn't it? That what he's saying is you can't just say, let's all pause. I also thought it was interesting, the phrase that he used, you can't just have a week of celebration. And I'll tell you what that put me in mind of, was Gaza.

47:33So Trump claims he's brought peace to Gaza. Well, there is a ceasefire of stores. We're still stuck. Nobody talks about it anymore. We're still stuck in phase one. And what's going on in Gaza? There was a brilliant, another read of the week for you, newsletter people. New York Times, Khada Abdul-Fatah. I don't know if you saw this piece in your week of reading, Rory. Rubble doesn't just destroy the past, it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today. This is a writer who's living in Gaza who wrote this unbelievably moving piece about just how awful their life is there right now.

48:11So Zelensky is basically saying that is, you know, yes, you can have a ceasefire, but please don't trust Putin to deliver on the promises that he made attached to the ceasefire?

48:23Rory Stewart:We don't find it easy to really get our heads around the permanent economic and total social damage done by war. Iran has probably in the last five weeks suffered 200 billion pounds worth of damage. Gaza, hundreds of billions. Ukraine, hundreds of billions. I I really felt this when I was in Aleppo a few weeks ago, just looking at a city destroyed and the impossibility of imagining that a relatively poor country with a limited budget can ever rebuild these buildings and get things back together. And of course, in Gaza, you've got the fact that, I don't know, one estimate is 72 ,000 people were killed in Gaza, that 749 have been killed since the ceasefire.

49:11Rory Stewart:And that a lot of the medical conditions that people were suffering were put on hold during the crisis. And now people are trying to go to hospitals which are barely functioning. There are about 20 ,000 people with acute and critical conditions who were not able to leave Gaza, despite that being part of the deal. And things actually paradoxically get worse in the aftermath, because it's a bit like what happened after the end of COVID, which is that everybody having been kept out of the hospitals, all the cancer treatment having been delayed, all the chronic conditions having been delayed, they're now trying to flood facilities which simply aren't functioning at all.

49:48Meanwhile, in Lebanon, we have 1 million people displaced.

49:54Rory Stewart:And as you said, I think in the first half, this very odd spectacle of so-called peace deals with just a Lebanese ambassador talking to an Israeli ambassador with Marco Rubio in Washington. It's the accumulation over the four years that we've done this podcast of just the amounts of damage, the hundreds of billions of pounds worth of permanent damage as well as death done by these wars. We've had 1.2 million casualties in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I mean, it's almost unimaginable for people who grew up in a world that seemed to be getting every year more peaceful, more prosperous, more stable, just the cost of these wars.

50:37i suppose the the piece of good news for ukraine was something that we're going to talk about in

50:44Rory Stewart:question time which was the election in hungary you know again zelensky was being quite diplomatic in the interview he just said look i'm not on the side of the guy in hungary didn't say who he was but uh he and he and he did make the very sensible observation that he wasn't sure it was a very good idea for orban that jd vance turned up to um help him in his in his campaign Before we go, anybody who hasn't seen the Zelensky interview, just go to The Rest is Politics Leading. You can also find it on YouTube. Rory, there's a book here. You've really got to learn German because some of the best books at the moment are coming out in German.

51:16This one, do you know Florence Gaube? No. Well, she works for NATO at the research place in Rome. Right. And she's written this book called Scenario, Die Zukunft steht auf dem Spiel, which basically means future is at stake. Okay. And it's absolutely extraordinary. A lot of it is about the battle of the Arctic, that we talked about on the miniseries with Ken Rosen. But essentially, she writes these chapters. And at the end of the chapter, you, that's you, the reader, or you, a diplomat, or you, the military, or you, you, we, you read it. She sets out a set of options that you can maybe take forward, partly to reveal just how complicated the world is right now, but also just to sort of get your mind thinking.

51:57And what, I'm only halfway through, but what it, the basic message coming through, And she's somebody who's European, German, working in NATO and what have you. But what's coming through is that China and Russia are doing a much better job of carving up the world in the future as they see it.

52:18Rory Stewart:A little plug on that for another talking multilingual. I've talked about him in the past, but Odiana Vestad, who's a Norwegian and who you made this point, Dominic. being a Norwegian of course he speaks fluent English fluent German fluent French but also being Arne Vestad he also speaks fluent Mandarin and fluent Russian so he's right in the archives China Russia and his book The Coming Storm which draws parallels from the lead up to the First World War and tries to chart why he feels this is a moment like the lead up to the First World War I think is that is something that we might pair with this book which hopefully you're getting translated into English.

52:58Well, publishers need to do this because these German books, it is honestly, it's yet another book I've read thinking, God, I wish I'd written that book. It's really clever. And I love the way she sort of brings you in and says at the end of every chapter, she doesn't just say, and then what happens is this. She basically says, you can now decide, do you want to go to this bit of the future or that bit of the future? But the Arctic, The Arctic is so big in this. And George Robertson, you mentioned George Robertson, former Defence Secretary, former General Secretary of NATO, one of the three people who did the Defence Review.

53:32And he clearly really believes that we, the UK, are not well set up for this developing, changing world.

53:39Rory Stewart:Can I just finish with a bit of a plug to follow up? The Zelensky interview is really beautiful, but there's a lot of other great interviews on leading. So if people are doing a long car journey or going to the gym, catch up on the back catalogue. Naz Shah, a kind of blistering, bewildering interview about her experience. She's a British member of parliament of her early childhood in Britain and Pakistan and her family and incredible family trauma. One of my favourites that we haven't talked about enough, Sarah McBride, who is, again, will challenge some listeners, but is a transgender congresswoman talking in the most open, lovely way about what it is being trans.

54:20Rory Stewart:So, I would encourage people who find this debate uncomfortable and the many listeners who dislike the way that Alistair and I approach it, to listen to Sarah McBride and maybe come back to us and again, you know, have another go at us about that. But so many other wonderful things. I mean, if we're talking about the global order, Pedro Sanchez, the ones that are defying Trump, President Stubb, Gavin Newsom, Olive Schultz, all in the last few weeks. So please, please just have a look at the back catalogue. And actually, if you go back further, we've got some great interviews with Iran specialists, military specialists, intelligence chiefs, and the rest.

54:59And coming up on Monday, Anas Sawa. But meanwhile, do check out Zelensky.

55:05Rory Stewart:Congratulations again on Zelensky. And I thought startling and really, really matters. And the only thing that I would add as my final thought is he's in trouble in some ways because of what Trump's doing in Iran, because in effect, Russia is now making much more money from its oil revenue. It's probably one a year or 18 months, which it wouldn't otherwise have had when it was in real trouble on the front line. It's now economically stronger. And he will be worried, as he said, that they're firing a lot of the Patriot intercept missiles that he needs for Ukraine in Iran. I mean, it's another sign that Trump is not just heedless of consequence, but by doing this completely unnecessary, chaotic world economy destroying madness in Iran, he's actually totally undermining the West's position against Russia and against China by distracting and blowing all the credibility, legitimacy, see missiles and money on this unnecessary conflict rather than saving them for things that matter most.

56:08Although that's the reason why it is good news that Orban has gone and Magyar has indicated that he will no longer act as a bloc on the European money that is meant to be going there. I forgot, by the way, today we're recording this on Tuesday. One of the several prime ministers who sent me a message saying really enjoyed your interview with Zelensky was Jonas gas store in Norway. And Zelensky is in Norway today. So hopefully they're discussing this great plan. And Rory, I'm going to leave you with a little conundrum. If you had an acronym for a military alliance composing of the UK, Ukraine, Norway, and Turkey, what would you call it?

56:49There we are. Work that one out. And I'll see you at question time where we'll talk about Hungary. We'll also talk a bit closer to home about the upcoming Scottish, Welsh, and local elections and lots more. See you then. See you then. Bye-bye.