Latest / UK Column Radio / Global Chaos—Breaking Down Trump's Moves on Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland | Silk and Steel

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Global Chaos—Breaking Down Trump's Moves on Venezuela, Iran, and Greenland | Silk and Steel · UK Column Radio

0:01
Welcome back to the Silk and Steel podcast.
0:04
I'm your host, Carl Zah. This is one of our.
0:08
This is a second recording, I believe, Sir, recording for
0:13
2026. And, you know, a lot has
0:16
happened in just the first half of January.
0:21
So I'm glad that I'm able to catch up with you.
0:24
Doctor Warrick Powell. You know, again, Doctor Warrick
0:27
Powell, a returning guest from from Australia, expert on
0:33
international relations, particularly on China.
0:37
So so now we're at a critical juncture again in the Sino
0:43
American relationship. It looks like Trump is going all
0:47
out, you know, like he, he really knows how what's good for
0:54
television, right? So he's going after Venezuela,
0:57
going after Greenland and, and, and also Iran.
1:01
And he all practiced all three as this is how he is going to
1:05
clip China's wings, so to speak, right, Because the, the
1:09
justification for going to Venezuela is working to deny
1:13
China and Russia foothold in Latin America.
1:16
And the justification for Greenland again is to keep check
1:21
on Chinese and Russian influence expanding in the Arctic as a
1:26
result of the Arctic route opening up as a part of the
1:30
climate change. And, and, and you're wrong,
1:33
you're wrong. There's a, there's a protests in
1:37
Iran and, and Trump, you know, has now is making, is
1:42
encouraging, encouraging the protesters, but at the same
1:46
time, he's also slapping, threatening 25% tariff on any
1:50
country doing importing oil to Iran.
1:53
But this is not really any country because China imports
1:56
about 90% of Iranian oil exports.
2:00
So this is really aimed at China.
2:03
Where, Where should we begin, Doctor Warwick.
2:06
Doctor. Paul Well, as you say, Carl,
2:08
good to see you and happy New Year.
2:11
It, it's been a roller coaster ride already, hasn't it?
2:15
And we are only two weeks into 2026.
2:19
But of course, these events don't take place in isolation,
2:22
do they? And what we've seen happen in
2:25
Venezuela, what we're seeing unfolding in Iran, and of course
2:29
what we're seeing getting prepared in Greenland, a part
2:34
and parcel of, I think, a very consistent framework that Donald
2:39
Trump has brought to America's approach to international
2:44
affairs and the affairs of its region, and that is to pursue
2:48
global primacy whilst adjusting to some new realities.
2:53
The National Security strategy that was announced late last
2:57
year spoke a lot about the need for America to recalibrate how
3:02
it approached the global environment.
3:04
It had obviously changed, but it didn't abandoned primacy at all.
3:08
What it, of course, articulated was a a revised approach to how
3:13
it would do that. And part of that approach is to
3:17
assert itself in the Western Hemisphere.
3:20
The fact that the United States has been asserting itself and
3:24
meddling in the politics of countries in Latin America now
3:27
for the best part of almost 100 years, you know, in a sense,
3:31
makes this particular episode all them all predictable.
3:35
And and unfortunately for the countries in the region, they've
3:40
rarely had a chance to get themselves stabilized and get
3:45
themselves onto an economic development trajectory that
3:47
doesn't at least involve some sense of vulnerability to
3:50
American political and economic interference.
3:53
So we're seeing a bit of that as far as China's concerned.
3:55
Look, I think in, in a funny kind of way, China clearly lives
3:59
inside the head of everyone inside the Beltway for free,
4:02
right? The obsessions about China as
4:05
being the, the, the, the, the, the, the threat to, to America
4:11
really, I think leads to not only irrational assessments and
4:19
decision making, but also cultivates this incredibly
4:25
caricatured view of the world right now.
4:30
In the Biden days, the caricatures was, you know, the
4:33
good guys and the bad guys, the autocrats versus the Democrats.
4:37
In the Trump caricature world, there's a lot less of that, but
4:43
there's still nonetheless a lot of cartoonish conceptions of
4:48
China and other parts of the world.
4:50
And if you take this question of oil, well, you know, about 4% of
4:55
China's oil comes from Venezuela, It's hardly going to
5:01
make that big a difference. Venezuelan oil output is about
5:06
1% of global oil output. Yes, there's proven reserves.
5:13
There's a lot of them. So the cartoon character is it
5:17
has the largest proven reserves in the world.
5:19
But the reality, as Exxonmobil's executive pointed out, is a lot
5:24
more complicated than that. Just because there's a lot of
5:27
something under the ground doesn't mean that somehow it's
5:31
easy to get, easy to transform and easy to make use of.
5:36
And I think the reality is, is that America has talked itself
5:41
into this oil business in Venezuela based on some
5:45
historical exposure, but also really based on a cartoon
5:49
character of what Venezuela really means in terms of the
5:53
global oil game. So look, it's been a crazy
5:57
start. The the kidnapping of a leader
6:01
of another country is not something you see every day.
6:06
And, and the fact that the Americans went in opens a lot of
6:09
questions, of course, not only about American attitudes towards
6:12
international law, but about what the dynamics are on the
6:15
ground. And there's lots of theories.
6:17
And, you know, we might touch on some of those later or we might
6:19
not. Let's see how we go.
6:20
But look, that's at least the Venezuela stuff as I see it.
6:27
Right. But what what do you say to you
6:31
know, people were saying, Oh, well, if China and Russia do
6:35
nothing as US going after, you know, friendly countries, what
6:42
how is that going to, you know, put a check on United States,
6:47
you know, especially as other countries will be looking at
6:50
this and possibly re evaluate the relationship vis A vis
6:56
China, Russia and United States. Yeah, look, there's a few bits
7:01
to unpack there. Look, there's a, there's an odd
7:03
sense particularly well across a diverse cross section of of the
7:10
body politic globally that has this sense that China and Russia
7:16
should always be doing something, that they always need
7:19
to react to every incident, every event, that there's some
7:23
tactical requirement for some kind of an explicit responsive
7:29
action, right. And yet I don't think that
7:33
either of those two countries or the leaders in those two
7:35
countries view the world through those kind of lenses.
7:39
Their engagement in the world and the design and prosecution
7:44
of their strategic approach to national development and how
7:47
they contribute more broadly to a global environment that suits
7:52
their objectives, which is stability and economic
7:55
development, ultimately leads them to take a much longer
7:58
historical view about what's going on.
8:01
So we tend not to get knee jerk reactions anyway.
8:04
So that's the first thing. The second thing is that I think
8:09
people need to be realistic as well.
8:11
You know, I mean, there's only one country in the world that's
8:13
always been in a position, certainly for the best part of
8:16
the last 40 to 50 years, to intervene militarily Willy nilly
8:22
anywhere in the world. And that's the United States of
8:24
America. No other country actually has
8:28
set itself up to be able to do that.
8:32
And, and there's actually a good reason for that one.
8:37
China, for example, has focused the development of its defensive
8:40
capabilities around the idea that it needs to be strong in
8:45
its own environment to defend itself.
8:48
And it's done that in the context of a 75 year
8:53
encirclement enabled and anchored by the might of the
8:57
American military and Navy, with forces and missiles operating
9:05
out of Japan, Korea, the Philippines and Australia.
9:09
Right. So China's approach has been
9:11
about ensuring that it's not vulnerable to attack.
9:16
It hasn't been about being a global policeman.
9:20
It hasn't been set up to go and intervene wherever America
9:23
decides to do something. Similarly, I think the USSR and
9:29
Russia subsequently isn't set up to do that either.
9:33
OK, so I don't think it's even realistic for people to think
9:36
like that. There's no strategic objective
9:40
from China or Russia's point of view in that regard, and they're
9:43
not set up to do it. So there are strategic and
9:46
material realities that literally means that China and
9:51
Russia aren't going to somehow suddenly leap into, you know,
9:58
any and every theatre just because the Americans are.
10:01
But I think that there's a third thing which is also quite
10:06
interesting and worth bearing in mind.
10:08
And that is that, and, and I speak mainly, I guess, from the
10:12
point of view of how those in China would be thinking, I think
10:16
strategically about the evolution of the global
10:19
landscape. And that is that there are
10:21
forces at work that no single country can actually bend.
10:27
And these forces are incredibly powerful.
10:30
They're the forces related to the shifting patterns of
10:33
commerce, the ongoing developments of technologies,
10:37
etcetera, etcetera. And those dynamics.
10:40
And I might add in that, you know, the, the slow de
10:43
dollarization out of the world where the US dollar is no longer
10:46
the the obvious global reserve and the emergence of currency
10:51
multipolarity. All of these things are
10:53
happening and they will continue to unfold regardless of these
10:59
sorts of individual events, right?
11:02
And and so there's nothing in a sense that can stop it.
11:07
So trying to intervene and commit resources and in some
11:12
ways expend real resources as well as, you know, potentially
11:18
put lives at risk and also jeopardize, I think a kind of
11:24
soft power as well. And I'll touch on that in a
11:26
moment. By intervening, ultimately it
11:31
won't bear fruit because it's not going to fundamentally
11:34
change the forces and the trajectory of global, you know,
11:39
economic and social development. In terms of this soft power
11:42
question, I think, you know, people often talk about the
11:45
United States having incredible soft power, right?
11:48
But many surveys increasingly point to the fact that China is
11:53
actually received far better in many parts of the world, and
11:57
especially in the global South in the United States is.
12:00
And for China to be able to achieve that outcome, despite
12:06
the fact that arguably its communications and propaganda
12:10
capabilities are well short of of Hollywood and.
12:13
And all the training and capability that that brings to
12:16
the table suggests that in fact a consistent focus on non
12:22
interference, economic development, non judge, mental
12:26
collaboration, investment, trade and those sorts of things
12:31
ultimately bears fruit. So whilst countries may be
12:35
nervous about the fact that the United States clearly has a
12:39
president who is willing to capriciously intervene
12:43
militarily in places, and they will consequently seek to keep
12:48
their heads down and out of harm's way in the short term,
12:52
their long run move is actually the hedge against American
12:55
militarism, not to cave into it. And that means consolidating and
13:00
strengthening their economic relationships, in particular
13:03
with China. And the last thing I'll say on
13:05
this point is, and this is the economic issue, we saw this
13:08
during the course of 2025 with the trade wars as they were
13:12
unfolding post 2nd of April. And what we saw was actually the
13:18
demonstration of Chinese material capability.
13:20
Sure, China doesn't have a military that can go around the
13:23
world and match the Americans toe to toe wherever the
13:26
Americans want to go, especially in the Caribbean, which is
13:31
within a stone's throw of the United States.
13:35
China isn't able to do that. But what it is able to do is
13:40
deliver economic capacity for countries, whether it's
13:44
infrastructure, whether it's access to markets, whether it's
13:47
access to new technologies. And it's those things that will
13:51
ultimately stand not only China in good stead, but ultimately
13:57
contribute to the ongoing structural transformations of
14:01
the world in the direction of a more multipolar and a fairer
14:06
global system. What we're seeing from the US is
14:09
a reaction to that. the United States is clearly experiencing A
14:12
chronic case of displacement anxiety.
14:16
And those in Washington who've lived the life of of
14:20
entitlement, global political entitlement, clearly feeling
14:27
very displaced and, you know, displaced people with a sense of
14:32
entitlement backed by a truckload of hubris, together
14:38
with access to a $1 trillion per annum defense system, you know,
14:46
highly incentivized to lash out. What do you say about to the
14:52
people who say, oh, there's, you know, using some what I call a
14:56
reverse domino theory? OK, so now United States is
14:59
going going after Venezuela. You're wrong, you know, maybe
15:04
Greenland, but this, this eventually they will, you know,
15:10
if China and Russia wait and wait on their hands, they will
15:14
be next target after Venezuela and Iran has fallen, you know,
15:19
What do you say to that? Yeah, they're nuclear powers.
15:24
There's no need to have a further discussion.
15:27
The United States might be heavily displaced and behaving
15:30
like a extremely anxious major power, but the United States
15:36
doesn't have a death wish either.
15:37
And, and as much as you get a lot of bloviating on social
15:41
media, you know, with a bunch of people beating their chests, I
15:44
don't think there is one person in Washington who thinks that
15:48
pressing that red button is a good idea.
15:51
And, and engaging in a direct military conflict with any of
15:57
the other major nuclear powers is not a good idea.
16:01
And I seriously doubt it's going to happen, which of course
16:03
doesn't mean we're not going to have incredibly tense situations
16:07
and, and all sorts of proxy conflicts all over the world.
16:11
I mean, one of the tactical moves and perhaps even strategic
16:14
moves that the United States is making in this context is that
16:18
it's going to stir up a lot of trouble everywhere.
16:21
This this is partly how a declining hegemon seeks to hold
16:26
on to what it's got. As other countries find strength
16:29
through collaboration. The best move for the hegemon is
16:34
to seek to disrupt that. You know, if anybody works
16:37
through any game theoretic experiment, this is exactly what
16:42
you'll get. In fact, on my sub stack last
16:44
year sometime, I worked through this game scenario and really
16:50
did it for my own own interest. But then, but I published it
16:53
anyway, which really looked at the dynamics between large
16:56
groups of actors who are coordinating and collaborating,
17:00
a single actor who doesn't want to and what that single actor is
17:03
likely to do. Well, that single actor is
17:06
likely to try to divide and conquer.
17:08
And I mean, that's what we're seeing from the United States.
17:11
Look, the US, isn't it going to take on Russia or China, right?
17:16
That's the reality of it. But it is going to seek to cause
17:21
disruptions to to parts of the world that will then have flow
17:27
on effects to China and Russia in terms of their economic
17:31
development, their ability to influence outcomes.
17:34
The United States is clearly concerned about not only ascent
17:38
at this sort of generic sense of loss of influence, but with
17:41
influence comes a fear that it's material conditions will decline
17:46
further, right. And so if you read, say, Bridge
17:50
Colby's work on you know who's who's architecting this shift to
17:57
China and an attempt to pull back from Europe, get the
18:01
Europeans to take on more load. One of the key drivers of that
18:05
is the the the claim that China is reaching a point where it can
18:11
full fulfil this regional hegemonic role.
18:15
It's not in America's interest because if China did that, it
18:18
would deny America access to the fastest growing economic region
18:21
of the world, right. So America's concern is
18:25
underpinned by concern that it's going to be cut out of the
18:29
economic largesse of Asian growth.
18:34
And, and many of these concerns, I think are driven by very
18:41
fundamental, not only strategic defensive interests, because
18:43
frankly, you know, what's going on in in Greenland, Iran and
18:49
Venezuela are not what you traditionally call strategic
18:55
defence interests, right? These aren't great power
18:58
political requirements because none of these places actually
19:02
threaten the United States, right?
19:04
These are resource driven. The United States is concerned
19:08
about losing access to resources.
19:12
And, and funnily enough, this is exactly what drove American
19:17
settler expansion over the last couple of 100 years as well.
19:21
And so deep inside this DNA is this worry that it's going to
19:25
run out of resources, and so it takes them over.
19:32
You mentioned that China offer a very attractive alternative to
19:38
US-led unipolar world dominance in that China is investing in
19:45
infrastructure, is providing a alternative to the US hegemony.
19:52
But what if you already mentioned US is trying to
19:57
display the spoiler role? It's trying to destabilize, you
20:01
know, the the the the mean now is China builds AUS bombs or
20:06
what if US. You know, decide dedicate itself
20:10
to OK, you know, China, you're going to build your building Rd.
20:14
project in these countries. Well, I'm going to go into these
20:17
countries, I'm going to militarily intervene.
20:19
I'm going to do color revolution.
20:21
I'm going to do regime change. And, and, and wouldn't that, you
20:28
know, be, you know, detrimental to the kind of the new, new
20:36
order that China is trying to build?
20:40
United States military planning always worked on the idea of
20:44
being capable of fighting 2 full on peer wars.
20:49
It can't do that anymore. It can act as a spoiler, sure,
20:54
but it won't have the resources to sustain any of this stuff.
20:57
One of the things we've learned about the United States military
21:00
system, its industrial systems and the logistics systems that
21:04
backs it up is that it was never designed for sustained warfare.
21:11
And it certainly has never been designed for sustained,
21:14
successful occupation and nation building, right?
21:19
So if you look at the last 20 odd years, the United States, of
21:22
course, comes out of the gates really fast.
21:25
It's got, you know, the most advanced technologies that can
21:28
fly in, that can bomb the crap out of a place and then it
21:31
leaves again, right? Mission accomplished.
21:34
No Americans hurt. Everyone is able to to cheer
21:38
about it. The the flag goes up and and
21:43
victory is declared. The question that Americans
21:46
never seem to want to ask is, well, what next?
21:51
And it's the what next bit that creates the problems.
21:55
Obviously as a follow on from, you know, bombing the crap out
22:00
of a place because you've now destroyed the economic
22:04
foundations of a particular region.
22:06
You've firstly, of course, given rise to massive human
22:10
displacement, much of which will end up affecting America.
22:15
So what happens in, for instance, Latin America is, is
22:18
that every time the economy is there, the economy is there are
22:21
are adversely affected is where you get a flood of people moving
22:24
to to North America. And yet North America, the
22:28
United States of America in particular, is desperately keen
22:31
to stop all of this from happening.
22:33
But it's going to create a rod for its own back, right?
22:35
So these these wars, this spoiling activity is resource
22:41
intensive. And yes, it can sustain a lot of
22:44
things at, at AI often say at a, at a warfare without war kind of
22:49
level, right, which is disruptive, It creates risks.
22:56
There'll be sabotage, there'll be information war campaigns and
22:59
those sorts of things. But ultimately sustaining this
23:03
at global scale is actually very, very difficult.
23:07
Now, let's not forget that countries are also not without
23:09
their own capability of ultimately responding as well.
23:13
So in the event that American resources become increasingly
23:16
stretched, then the capability of these countries to respond
23:20
and deal with these problems actually improves.
23:23
The last thing to remember is that much of American defensive
23:26
capability, and I say defensive really, you know, I mean, how
23:29
can you use the word defensive capability when they're being
23:32
sent all over the world bombing other people?
23:34
But anyway, American military capability is contingent upon
23:38
its ability to source reliably a whole swathe of raw materials
23:43
and intermediate inputs from, guess what, Chinese supply
23:47
chains. Reports by consultants of the
23:50
Pentagon, Gavini, for example, identify that that a an American
23:57
warship is dependent upon supplies from about 10,000
24:00
Chinese firms. Right.
24:02
The exposure to Chinese supply chains, not only in rare earths
24:07
but in all sorts of other things to actually make the American
24:11
military industrial complex functional is huge.
24:15
And so, you know, if the United States seriously wants to play
24:19
this game, then it needs to do 2 things really.
24:22
You know, firstly, it needs to find alternatives to China as
24:25
supplies for all of this. Ergo, it's desperately trying
24:29
to, you know, create a, a rare earths industry out of the blue.
24:38
And and secondly, of course, it's it's got industrial system
24:42
problems anyway. So not only do we have input
24:45
supply chain problems, we've also got industrial system
24:48
problems. the United States military industrial complex is
24:52
not set up to ramp and scale in ways that would be meaningfully
24:58
necessary in the event that it wanted to become the global
25:02
spoiler, right? It, it simply doesn't have the
25:06
capability to make enough stuff. So it's spoiling efforts are
25:09
going to be, I think quite tactical, if you will.
25:14
They will be annoying, but they aren't going to be of a scale in
25:21
terms of breadth or in terms of duration that will ultimately
25:25
enable it to prevail in this game.
25:28
That being the case, what is it trying to do?
25:31
Because I don't think anyone in the Pentagon, by the way,
25:34
believes that America can sustain any of these long term
25:37
campaigns. The sensible people in the
25:39
military actually still learn some mathematics though, you
25:46
know, there are people who doubt the depth of the strategic maths
25:49
that these folk learn. But nonetheless, I think they've
25:51
got some basic understanding of materials and maths and I think
25:57
they know that this ambition is actually materially not viable.
26:03
So they're going to have to do something else.
26:05
So I think what's going on is that there's a little bit of a
26:09
displacement reaction. There's an attempt to, I'll use,
26:14
I'm not sure whether it's an Australian phrase alone, but you
26:18
know, dogs tend to piss on their posts to mark territories,
26:22
right? And, and I think that there's a
26:25
bit of that going on as well. So I think that the United
26:29
States, feeling a little bit vulnerable, sensing displacement
26:34
as the unquestioned hegemon is in a sense marking its
26:38
territory. And, and it's doing that in
26:41
really the only way that it now knows how to, and that is to
26:46
gun, bludgeon somebody, to drop some bombs on people and and
26:52
then threaten them with some economic coercion.
26:57
That that's fair. But what, why is Trump going
27:03
after Greenland that, you know, I'm trying to get my wrap my
27:06
head around that, because all the justification for US taking
27:11
Greenland is, you know, supposedly because Greenland has
27:14
occupy a very strategic location.
27:16
It sits at the Greenland, Iceland, UK gap and it's, it's,
27:22
it's a, it's a hole in America's defense and it to be plugged
27:25
because pretty soon the Arctic ice cap will melt and the, the,
27:31
there will be a lot more Chinese shipping through the Arctic.
27:34
That's a China and Russia will increase their activity in the
27:37
Arctic. So we must counter that.
27:39
But it doesn't really fly if you look deeper, because US already
27:43
have access to Greenland. As a, you know, US have military
27:48
base in Greenland. US that because Greenland is
27:51
part of Denmark and being Denmark and United States both
27:55
in NATO, US have all the military access they want in
28:00
Greenland. So they don't they don't need to
28:03
grab it as you know, you know, forgiven the reason, you know,
28:07
if it's just fair, just geostrategic reasons.
28:10
So that and, and in doing so, Trump is really antagonizing the
28:16
Europeans, of course. And I think the Europeans are
28:19
not going to do do much because they, the European leaders are
28:23
pretty spineless and, and, and, but Even so, it is poisoning the
28:29
transatlantic alliance. And why then why is he doing
28:34
that? Why is he at the risk of
28:37
destabilizing NATO, destabilizing transatlantic
28:41
alliance? Why is he making a grab for
28:43
Greenland, you think? Yeah, it's a great question
28:46
because as you say, the United States could achieve everything
28:51
that it wants from a strategic point of view in relation to
28:53
Greenland without doing anything other than exploiting its
28:59
position within NATO, expanding its current military presence.
29:04
And lo and behold, surprise, surprise, they could even invest
29:07
in Greenland and them and conduct trade and economic
29:10
development, right, And expand their presence through all of
29:14
those pretty normal means. So why would they?
29:17
Do you know the the grand takeover?
29:22
It's hard to understand, but perhaps there's some ways that
29:26
we could at least gain an appreciation for for why you'd
29:31
go to these lengths. One, I think President Trump
29:38
does see himself as a president of historic consequence, and a
29:43
president of historic consequence needs to have
29:48
trophies, OK. So I think Greenland is a is an
29:52
easy trophy to be a president of historic consequence.
29:58
The second reason, I think, is that there are some resources in
30:02
Greenland that perhaps the risk assessors in the United States
30:07
believe should not be left to indirect channels of control
30:16
that the United States is, would be better off having absolute
30:20
control by controlling a territory.
30:23
That may be a second reason. So it's a question of risk
30:25
calculus. Can we afford to leave this as
30:28
something that we in a that we indirectly control through NATO
30:32
but don't quite control? I think the third thing though,
30:37
is that it's quite clear that President Trump does not have a
30:41
lot of time for the Europeans. And this is a one way of really
30:49
demonstrating to the Western Europeans who's boss.
30:55
And I think in the process, ultimately from the United
30:59
States point of view, trying to through this and lock in Western
31:07
Europe as a subordinate to Washington's global power
31:12
position. There are some risks in all of
31:15
this. As you touch on it spoils the
31:20
relationship between the Western European populations more, more
31:26
than necessarily the elites in Brussels and the United States.
31:30
It could add fuel to the growing nationalistic political
31:35
sentiments in Western Europe, where there are more people
31:40
across more of the member states who are unhappy with the
31:45
direction that Brussels is taking Europe.
31:51
Brussels in both the EU sense and in the NATO sense, that
31:55
there is a belief that the political elite running the
32:00
military and the, let's call it the economic arm of the European
32:04
apparatuses have lost sight of their priorities.
32:08
They're no longer focused on the improvement of European living
32:13
conditions as much as they are obsessed by keeping the
32:17
Americans locked into an unwinnable war against Russia.
32:22
So I think that there's a fair bit of that sort of stuff going
32:25
on because without that sense of personal triumph and leaving a
32:31
historical mark and perhaps that risk calculus question, there
32:37
really isn't a a particularly huge need to expend what I think
32:43
would be quite a lot of political capital to take
32:48
Greenland. Now, of course, I don't think
32:51
that there are any impediments. Not only will the Europeans not
32:53
be able to do anything, I don't think it would actually take
32:56
much. There are a handful of ports and
33:01
airports in Greenland. There's not a lot of roads.
33:05
There's 56,000 people. There's an American base.
33:08
And I would have thought that the United States could, in
33:14
effect, take charge of all of those critical pieces of
33:18
infrastructure, which is the connection that, you know, makes
33:22
it possible for people to come and go from Greenland within two
33:26
days, three days. It wouldn't take much at all.
33:29
And and so, you know, the real question is in my mind is, is
33:35
this just more bluff and blunder or, and we're going to see a
33:39
great big Greenland Taco or is Trump actually going to make the
33:44
move? Yeah, we're all waiting to to
33:49
see how the the the fall of this going to be.
33:53
Now let's pivot to Iran, because this is the one, this is a big,
33:58
big thing. It looks like you know the the
34:03
previous 12 war against Iran was Israel was enabled by United
34:09
States. That was not successful because
34:12
you wrong show that you actually possess the firepower to to
34:16
fight back. Now the whole encouragement of
34:21
Iranian protest and Iranian civil strife.
34:25
This seems to be coordinated. I mean, I, I see this on social
34:29
media. All the you, your suspects are
34:32
now jumping out. All the ones who cheer for
34:34
Venezuelan intervention are now, you know, suddenly they're all
34:40
Democrats for Iran. You know, they're all like for,
34:43
for Iran embracing democracy and freedom and, and, and all that
34:49
is this United States trying to do regime change on the cheap.
34:52
I mean, is because they they are currently had their hands tied
34:57
in the Caribbean. So they're trying to try a
35:00
different approach to to soften their perceived adversary in
35:05
Tehran. Look, I think, well, there's a
35:08
few things to piece together, right?
35:10
So the the 12 Day War came to an end with a ceasefire that was
35:16
actually requested by the United States and that clearly
35:21
demonstrated that the United States and Israel lacked the
35:25
capacity to ultimately land the knockout blow.
35:30
The government in Tehran survived and has of course since
35:37
then sought to consolidate its position domestically.
35:42
I think also Tehran has begun to reach out a little bit more or
35:48
has become a a little bit more open to greater dependence on
35:55
China and Russia, particularly in areas such as military or
36:00
defence related technologies and assistance, which Iran had for a
36:04
long time been very reluctant to to take take on board those
36:10
those offers of assistance. So there's been some change.
36:14
Now, the United States clearly was never going to let sleeping
36:18
dogs lie. We know now that very recently
36:22
Netanyahu visited Trump and the discussion was about Iran.
36:26
But we also know now, and I've seen this in various reports,
36:30
including a, a story in Forbes that talk specifically about the
36:35
number of Starling terminals that had been smuggled into Iran
36:41
and which had been operational in Iran as part of the
36:45
coordination mechanisms for the recent round of public
36:49
demonstrations. Now some 40,000 terminals have
36:54
been smuggled into Iran, and the reason they've been smuggled is
36:57
because they were illegal. OK, Now smuggling 40,000
37:01
terminals in and then getting them into the hands of, you
37:05
know, the people that you're working with to coordinate these
37:10
things is not a fly by night activity.
37:14
They're not dropped from the sky.
37:15
You know, it's not like you fly a drone over and just drop a
37:17
bunch of Starlink terminals and bada Bing bada boom.
37:22
It's all up and running. The deployment of the Starlink
37:27
infrastructure, I would suggest, began, if not before the 12 Day
37:32
War, not long thereafter, and the aim was to enable the
37:40
mobilization of forces inside Iran in an effort to destabilize
37:47
the government. We know that there was external
37:51
interference not only because of Starling, but because they've
37:55
been quite a number of published stories now in which the role of
38:02
Mossad has been explicitly acknowledged, the agents
38:05
involved in the protests and behind the scenes in fermenting
38:10
the, you know, local anger. Now, local anger, of course,
38:15
does exist to varying degrees. You know, it's actually hard to
38:20
generate opposition against the government if there aren't
38:25
certain things that give people a reason to be angry about or
38:30
give people things to feel that they have nothing left to lose.
38:34
Right. And of course, the economic
38:36
circumstances is the most obvious one.
38:39
All those other things you've mentioned, you know, the
38:41
democracy and the human rights and, you know, whatever the
38:45
latest political fancies are that liberals in particular in
38:49
the West latch onto, they're a bit by the by, right.
38:53
But you know, that helps broaden the the sort of Western support
38:56
base. But basically the agitation
38:59
revolved around inflation. And much of that, I think, was
39:06
occasioned by a dramatic devaluation of the rial, the
39:11
Iranian currency. I suspect that since the 12th of
39:19
or or the the 12th they wore, there has been a progressive
39:23
accumulation of rial by entities hostile to Iran and that those
39:33
the accumulated rial was subsequently dumped causing a
39:38
collapse in the value. So the value of the rial dropped
39:42
I think something like 40% from memory very, very quickly in the
39:46
last month, which of course leads to a rapid escalation in
39:52
prices as import prices rise. So the orchestrated campaign
39:57
went something along the lines of secure a ceasefire, a
40:03
temporary ceasefire, roll out a communications infrastructure so
40:08
that you can coordinate and mobilize people, buy up the real
40:12
so that you can manipulate the currency, short the currency
40:15
when the time came. Short the currency, cause
40:18
inflation, mobilize people, get people out on the streets, then
40:24
mobilize social media and hope that that is enough to
40:28
destabilize the government. The government has so far, by
40:32
the looks of it, successfully quelled and responded to the
40:36
demonstrations. And interestingly, and this goes
40:39
back to that issue of collaboration with Russia, I
40:41
think they managed to do that because they were able to
40:47
intersect and ultimately stop the the Starlink capabilities.
40:54
Now, that in and of itself is significant because that really
40:59
does raise the issue more broadly around how other
41:02
countries will learn the lesson about how to control their
41:06
information space because clearly the information space
41:09
and the infrastructure that impacts that space is central to
41:14
regime change operations. The second thing that the
41:18
government clearly did was it it blocked the Internet and that
41:25
not only, well, that contributed obviously to the Starling
41:27
question, but it also meant that it limited the ability for
41:31
external forces to intervene with additional information
41:34
campaigns. The third thing that, and this
41:38
is where I think it really where the policing response becomes
41:42
very, very interesting is that the star link requires a, a
41:46
spatial signal. So those who had the star link
41:50
terminals could be located. And they have been, many have
41:55
been and there have been many arrests and many demonstration
41:59
organisers have been quote, rounded up and arrested, UN
42:03
quote. OK.
42:04
We know that there's been a a lack of success in so far as
42:08
regime change is concerned because, one, the government's
42:11
still there and two, President Trump has just earlier tweeted,
42:17
you know, a message to protesters that, you know, help
42:19
is coming, keep protesting. And that, of course, means that
42:24
there has not been success. The last thing which tells us
42:26
there hasn't been success, and this is probably the more
42:28
worrying thing is that President Trump.
42:31
Well the American embassy or the the virtual embassy in Tehran
42:37
has also issued on its web page a message to Americans to get
42:43
themselves out of out of Iran. And, and that would certainly be
42:48
something that any embassy would do if they knew or expected with
42:53
reasonable confidence that their government was planning an
42:57
aerial campaign to bomb the country.
43:00
And so I think that we are clearly heading in that
43:03
direction. The one last thing I'll mention
43:05
here is that whilst we've seen a lot of naval build up in, in and
43:11
around Venezuela, there has actually been some military
43:15
build up in and around the Middle East by the Americans,
43:19
but they have not yet sent in a significant naval presence.
43:24
But nonetheless, I think it is quite clear that the United
43:28
States executed a plan that sought to, if not successfully,
43:37
to overturn the government, create the reason for this
43:41
second round of military intervention.
43:43
And that reason is we have to enter the fray because those
43:48
awful Iranians are killing and injuring protesters.
43:53
And it's incumbent upon us now to, you know, to go and do
43:57
something about it. So Iran is on tenterhooks of
44:02
course, as a result. But but the campaign to
44:06
destabilize, well, let's see how much instability there is.
44:09
But certainly in so far as there being a regime change is
44:13
concerned, I think that that has so far failed.
44:19
Yeah, this is to crank up the economic pressure on your round
44:28
the same way they have done in Venezuela, trying to strangulate
44:32
the economy. You know, the US Navy pretty
44:34
much put on a economic blockade on Venezuela by by stopping
44:40
tankers coming in to pick up Venezuelan oil.
44:43
Now Trump is threatening to place 25% tariff on any country
44:50
doing oil business with Iran. Now The thing is it's not any
44:56
country that's importing Iranian oil.
44:58
It's 90% of Iranian oil exports go to 1 country and that's
45:03
China. Now this is little bit baffling
45:07
because China and US just had a trade war and he just briefly
45:13
declare choose in, in, in, in, in South Korea when Trump met
45:18
with President Xi. Why are we, are we going back to
45:24
the old days? I mean, the are we going back to
45:26
the first half of 2025 now with, with, with tariff being raised
45:32
on China again or what? What's your take on that?
45:36
Well, I think that we run the risk well, from Trump's point of
45:40
view, I guess that that is what the effect is.
45:43
I'm not sure that that was actually the intended objective.
45:47
One of the things about the Trump administration is that it
45:50
tends to have a very limited array of responses to
45:56
circumstances and tariffs is, you know, one of the top drawer
46:00
responses that the president seems to draw on whenever he,
46:05
you know, is, is, is displeased or disappointed about something.
46:10
So of course, outcomes the tariffs again.
46:12
But it's not just China that does business with Iran, right?
46:16
There's actually a whole list of countries.
46:18
I'll read them right. China, of course, the UAE,
46:24
Turkey, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan, Armenia,
46:31
Azerbaijan, Syria, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia, Indonesia, South
46:37
Korea, Germany, Italy and France.
46:41
They all have some trade relationships with Iran.
46:46
So is this 25% tariff going to be imposed on products from all
46:52
of those countries or not? The tweet was effective
46:57
immediately. Well, it's been 24 hours or so
47:00
since that tweet. Is American customs applying a
47:06
special 25% tariff onto all goods coming through customs as
47:12
of now? I suspect not, right?
47:14
So again, there's a difference between or a gap between the
47:18
tweet and the action. But I think the the response was
47:25
not necessarily well thought through because there are many
47:29
unintended consequences. I think it was an expression of
47:32
frustration that the regime change operation did not
47:38
actually achieve its objectives. I think that there's another
47:41
frustration in all of that too. I mean, look, President Trump
47:43
clearly has a has a being his bonnet about Iran.
47:48
He's not unlike many Americans of his generation run that a
47:53
real set against Iran. But I think one of the real
47:58
frustrations is actually the fact that Russian technologies
48:04
were successfully deployed to undermine the principal
48:08
coordinating technology that had been smuggled into Iran to
48:13
facilitate this regime change operation.
48:16
And of course, that technology comes from on again off again,
48:21
bestie Elon Musk. So there's a lot of frustration
48:26
in Washington and, and, and you know, why 25%?
48:31
Why not 35? Why not 50?
48:33
You know, why not 100? I mean, it's just, it's, it
48:39
seems to be very symptomatic that whenever something happens
48:43
that President Trump is unhappy about and it involves some third
48:46
country, the response is basically the threat of some
48:52
sanction on somebody or the threat of some tariffs on
48:55
somebody else. In fact, President Trump just
49:02
said that any anti tariff position is basically a pro
49:07
Chinese position, which is a crazy thing to say.
49:13
But but I think he also implicitly it's, it's United
49:17
States kind of implicitly admitting it has lost in a open
49:22
market, free market competition with China.
49:26
That's why it needs tariffs, you know, like this, this is a
49:31
reversal from like 19th century or early 20th century with
49:36
United States going around demanding open door policy to
49:40
China, for example, demanding China open its doors to all the
49:43
foreign goods of capital flows, etcetera.
49:48
And now, now it's United States that's putting up barriers
49:52
everywhere. Look it, it seems to be coming
49:54
around, doesn't it? Right.
49:55
Because, you know, Liberation Day, it was all about
50:00
rejuvenating American manufacturing, bringing the jobs
50:03
home, reassuring companies, reindustrializing America and
50:07
the heartland. Well, none of it's happened.
50:09
In fact, manufacturing employment continues to fall,
50:12
right? But there's another question
50:14
too, and that is, is, is the administration's serious
50:20
economic vision one in which American workers making T-shirts
50:26
and jocks and socks, is that actually the serious vision?
50:32
Is the vision that American workers will somehow be mass
50:35
manufacturing furniture by hand? Is that the vision?
50:40
Because if that's the vision, then America will never be
50:45
globally competitive. Now, of course, you can put
50:48
tariffs right up and ensure that imported alternatives are so
50:52
expensive that no one can afford to buy them and so they're
50:55
forced to buy locally. But it will be a higher cost,
50:58
lower standard of living society, right?
51:01
So is this, is this the economic vision?
51:05
If the economic vision is to modernize industry, then it's
51:09
actually going to need to import a lot of things.
51:13
It's going to have to import everything.
51:14
It needs to upgrade the electricity network right from
51:18
copper for the wires through to Transformers.
51:23
It can't do that without importing capital equipment from
51:27
China doesn't want to have automated factories that are
51:31
high precision, high high, high efficient, low energy, right?
51:36
Well, if it wants to do that, it's either going to have to get
51:40
the equipment from expensive supplies, some of which are in
51:43
America, but others will be in Japan and Germany and other
51:46
parts of Europe, or it's going to have to find lower cost
51:48
options from, let me think, China.
51:53
Is that, is that what it wants to do?
51:56
Right. And so I don't think that
51:59
there's any real clarity. There's actually a, a cultural,
52:04
A culturally driven and an emotionally driven economic
52:07
strategy, if you can call it that, which is really a politics
52:11
of nostalgia. We're going to make America
52:13
great again, right? And the idea of great is
52:17
actually this cartoon image of what America was like in 1950.
52:22
But this is 2025. And I don't think there actually
52:27
is a clear sense of what America 2025 needs to look like or what
52:34
more to the point, America 20352045 needs to look like.
52:39
Everything at the moment is defined about what America must
52:43
do to stop China, right? And that doesn't advance
52:47
America. In fact, putting all of your
52:51
efforts into trying to stop someone else actually takes a
52:54
lot of effort away from the things you could do to make the
52:58
quality of life of your own citizens a lot better.
53:02
But this is where America's at. America's at a point, Carl,
53:05
where it's domestic tensions and problems are spilling over
53:11
globally. And the reason they spill over
53:13
globally is because the political elite want to distract
53:16
people from the domestic causes of the problems, and they want
53:19
to project the causes onto others in the world and at the
53:23
same time generate a sense of cultural nationalism that
53:27
galvanizes a a population against someone else.
53:32
Don't look to Washington for your problems, let alone your
53:34
solutions. Blame it on someone else.
53:38
And that's why until America can actually find a way to come to
53:42
peace with itself, to fix its economic structures so that it's
53:46
a fairer place, a more productive place, and a place
53:49
where people actually have social mobility, well, America
53:53
will always be not at peace with the rest of the world.
54:00
A Warwick, it's so much easier just to blame China and, and
54:04
immigrants. You know, that's the try and
54:06
true method for any US politician, especially in hard
54:11
economic times. Just just blame China and, and
54:13
immigrants. And and that's exactly what
54:16
they're doing right now. And I I don't know whether it's
54:19
working out for them, but, you know, the they did get Trump
54:24
elected and, you know, and then he has another three years to
54:29
go, unfortunately. Yeah.
54:34
So what, what what is your crystal ball for, you know, the
54:39
rest of 2026? How do you think you know all
54:44
these effort of of Trump lashing out to preserve the US hegemony
54:52
will play out those domestic and abroad?
54:56
Well, it'll be messy, right? So, you know, I, I asked the
54:58
question before the well, what then question, right?
55:01
So you can, you know, declare mission accomplished.
55:03
But it's actually the what then issues that create the, the real
55:07
long lasting problems. And the United States actually
55:10
doesn't have any coherent answer to the what then for all of its
55:16
interventions, which leads you to think that in fact, these
55:20
interventions are not of any serious, substantial strategic
55:25
nature at all, but in effect, expressions of the sort of deep
55:31
anxieties that the United States elite is feeling at the moment.
55:35
Let's not forget that this year, 2026, is a midterm election
55:39
year. President Trump has said on a
55:41
number of occasions that it is imperative that the Republicans
55:45
hold on to the House and the Senate because if not, he will
55:48
be impeached. He is deeply driven by personal
55:53
requirements to survive this electoral cycle.
55:59
And that will lead to, I think, increased ratiness in responses,
56:05
lots of populism. So the promises to, you know,
56:08
bring down credit card fees, for example, this one, you know,
56:12
that there was that other stuff about, you know, extending
56:15
mortgages to make houses more affordable.
56:18
All these sorts of things will be rolled out to try to hold the
56:24
base together that that something's being done.
56:28
And if the Democrats oppose these things, all the better,
56:31
because he's just going to say I tried and I need more votes to
56:34
push it through. So domestic considerations will,
56:39
as usual, be overwhelmingly critical.
56:42
The international staff is really a function of all of
56:45
that. So a president who is
56:49
experiencing economic problems at home will seek to muscle up
56:53
militarily abroad. This is about building the
56:56
stature of the United States, putting up the flag around which
57:01
everybody can rally, and imploring people, in a sense, to
57:06
vote for the president because the president is taking on the
57:09
world. And and so there will be, I
57:13
think, more messiness because there's no coherence in any of
57:16
this more what I've just said, ratiness, which means I think
57:22
basically a lot more mess that will have long lasting
57:26
implications. The mop up will be difficult.
57:29
And I mean, and then on top of that, you've got at the moment a
57:32
mooted trip to Beijing in April right now, you know, I think
57:39
we've seen how China is dealing with all of this.
57:42
It's incredibly calm and unflappable.
57:47
You know, it must be incredibly frustrating for a politician who
57:51
clearly thrives on the cut and thrust of energy and, and things
57:57
to, to engage with a counterparty who is so
58:01
unflappable. And but China will, I think,
58:05
respond in a very cold, calm manner.
58:09
It's going to be very consistent in terms of what it's doing.
58:12
It really does have a very long term view.
58:15
And it's not because there's some sort of cultural sense of,
58:18
you know, China thinks in millennia and all of that.
58:20
It's because China actually has has developed, I think, a sense
58:24
that history has powerful forces that individuals and even
58:30
countries can't actually change the course of.
58:33
But what you've got to do is figure out how you go with the
58:35
flow and how you might adapt to the the ebbs and the currents of
58:40
history. But you can't just Willy nilly
58:43
go and enforce yourself on others.
58:45
And so China, I think, has reached the conclusion that its
58:48
position is strong. It has solid support from around
58:55
the world because it is the stable institution, if you will,
59:00
now around which global economic development can take place.
59:04
And it will hold its ground When it comes to the United States.
59:09
You know, as I said earlier, it's a it's, it's a nuclear
59:12
power. And, you know, being a nuclear
59:16
power with a strong economy means that you will hold
59:21
yourself as a peer to the United States, and you will be treating
59:28
the United States respectfully as a peer, but you'll also
59:31
expect the United States to treat you the same way.
59:35
And I think we're going to see a little bit of that as well.
59:38
But Donald Trump's going to have to sell all of this as big wins
59:40
coming into November. Well, we already have the
59:44
Canadian Prime Minister who went to China with explicit goal of
59:49
reducing dependence on the trade relationship with United States.
59:55
I mean, I, I think it's, it's. Now, now there's there's two
1:00:00
countries called that have deep relationships with the United
1:00:04
States actually from a trade point of view.
1:00:06
And you know, Europe does as well, but far less than it used
1:00:08
to have and that's Canada and Mexico.
1:00:11
The rest of the world has actually, over the last 25
1:00:14
years, progressively diversified away from the United States.
1:00:18
The US provides about, from memory now 12% of global import
1:00:25
demand, right, Substantially less than what it did 50 years
1:00:28
ago. And it's just not as important
1:00:33
in relative terms anymore. That's all it is.
1:00:36
The structure of the world economy has changed, and the
1:00:39
United States place within that has also changed.
1:00:44
These are not forces that you can somehow turn around through
1:00:47
sheer will, right? These are the consequences of
1:00:51
long, slow transformations in structural competency within
1:00:57
economic systems with people with the right knowledges and
1:01:00
skills. You know, we've talked about the
1:01:01
fact that the United States now has literacy and numeracy
1:01:05
standards which are going down, and they're actually not the
1:01:08
standards that you need for a modern industrial economy, a
1:01:12
digitalized industrial economy. Now, you don't fix that with a
1:01:16
click of a finger. You're certainly not going to
1:01:18
fix it with a few imported smarties from around the world,
1:01:23
mainly because part of your own country doesn't want them,
1:01:26
right? You're going to need to invest
1:01:28
in a whole generation of human capacity development, a whole
1:01:32
generation This won't fix for 20 years.
1:01:38
This is the hard yards that the United States actually needs to
1:01:42
embark upon. The fact that it's going through
1:01:45
this period of chronic displacement anxiety, I hope, is
1:01:52
actually the moment in which it comes to terms with these
1:01:57
realities. Not that it's an unimportant
1:02:00
country, but that it is just one of the big countries that must
1:02:06
begin to behave as a normal country.
1:02:12
I agree, I agree completely, but it will remain to be seeing
1:02:19
whether US finally accept its place at just one of many poles
1:02:26
in a multi polar world. And and thank you again,
1:02:32
Professor Powell, for making your time to speak to us.
1:02:35
You know, I, I certainly have learned a lot every time
1:02:39
speaking with you and I look forward to talk to you in the
1:02:44
future because I'm, I'm sure there will be more things going
1:02:49
on the rest of the year for people who want to follow you on
1:02:53
social media or elsewhere. Where would they go?
1:02:56
Yeah, my sub stack's probably the best place for sort of more
1:03:01
serious stuff. Warwick powell.substack.com.
1:03:06
And people can find me on X as well with a handle at Bao
1:03:10
BAOSHAOSHAN. That's my Chinese name where I'm
1:03:17
a little bit more irreverent, a little bit more flippant, but I
1:03:20
think that that probably suits that particular medium a bit
1:03:23
more. So they're the two places and,
1:03:26
and of course I've got that little channel of mine, which is
1:03:29
really my way of engaging with research colleagues.
1:03:33
But, but people can find that I'm sure in the link below
1:03:37
because I can't even remember what TIO talks.
1:03:40
That's right. TIO talks with Warwick Powell.
1:03:42
So yeah. Thank you, Doctor Paul, and
1:03:47
thanks everyone for listening in.
1:03:49
On to you next time. OK.