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donald Trump's second term is more radical than his first he's shaking up America and creating huge uncertainty for the world trump is redefining America's goals its relationships its whole place in the world he's pressuring friends and reaching out to adversaries this is making people everywhere wonder what's next are we next what is his plan trump can seem so unpredictable and so impulsive that many assume there is no plan no road map no strategy but it might not be that simple
0:37
in fact plenty of what Trump is doing aligns with established strategic ideas ideas that could help us understand what he's doing and anticipate what might come next well that's what this video is all about we're going to take a detailed look at three theories that are out there first realism that Trump is embracing a foreign policy vision based not on principles but on power second the reverse Kissinger that Trump is trying to repeat a coup of 20th century cold war diplomacy at least its
1:15
mirror image and third spheres of influence that Trump is seeking a world where great powers openly dominate their backyards any of these strategies would have historic implications for the world so we're going to work through them one at a time unpacking the logic and looking at evidence that they are part of Trump's plan a historian of US foreign policy will break these ideas down for us through a highlevel strategic lens what are America's vital interests in the world and what kinds of
1:52
military uh deployments and alliance commitments should the United States make to secure those vital interests and experts on Europe Russia China and India will spell out the potential implications in critical regions both risks and opportunities i think this disruption was necessary the ashes of disruption um something new can be built i think Taiwan has been pretty anxious it's very risky dangerous and increasingly unpredictable before we get started I want to give you a heads up
2:27
about a few things first of all this is not a Trump bashing exercise nor is it about sugarcoating anything you're going to hear critical and supportive voices second these are still early days and other issues from trade wars to domestic politics are also in the mix in this video though we have a tight focus on foreign policy strategy and third our discussion will involve extrapolation from current evidence things will change this is about a longer view not about individual
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events what we hope is that by the end of this video you'll have more of a sense of where Trump could be heading ways to interpret the actions that he takes what strategy they might fit into their chances of success or failure and what that would mean for all of us okay let's go you have to be thankful you don't have the cards you're buried there your your people are dying remember this the meltdown between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zalinski in the White House it
3:34
would be a damn good thing strip away the rage and we find pointers here about our first theory that Trump is a realist a realist approach to the war in Ukraine uh would try to uh get the war uh to conclude uh through a compromise uh on both sides sooner rather than later steven Worheim is an expert on realism this is how he defines it well realism for international relations scholars and practitioners is an orientation toward foreign policy that says that states do
4:12
and should uh pursue their concrete national interests in a fairly hard-headed way you'd be a tough guy back in the Oval Office hard-headed sounds about right but you're either going to make a deal or we're out and if we're out you'll fight it out i don't think it's going to be pretty but you'll fight it out but you don't have the cards it can be opposed uh to idealism the idea that the pursuit of values uh should guide foreign policy or in fact will guide states conduct realism versus
4:50
idealism power versus principles let's look at that for a moment with one of Joe Biden's appearances with Silinski no nation can be truly secure in the world if in fact we don't stand up and defend the freedom of Ukraine from the face of this Russian brutality and aggression and back to Donald Trump i don't think you'd be a tough guy without the United States back to Biden we support a just and lasting peace one that respects Ukrainian sovereignty and its territorial integrity and back to
5:26
Trump and as you know our country doesn't have much raw earth so we're going to be using that taking it using it for all of the things we do so really big shift there from Biden to Trump from rhetoric based on principles and justice to judgments of power and advantage now let's zoom out from this shift on Ukraine to a wider world view a realist critique would be that President Biden leaned too hard into the idea that the United States should lead a a rules-based international order that uh
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it should frame foreign policy in terms of a struggle between democracy and autocracy president Trump portrays other countries and perhaps the international order as a whole uh as having uh uh been to the detriment of the United States as having perhaps even exploited the United States over at least the past several decades the shock waves are being felt all over the world there is an implosion of the international rules-based order gautam Chikamani is vice president of
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India's most prominent foreign policy think tank the OF he says this order was already crumbling until yesterday there were two order one was the one that did not follow the rules which is China or to some extent Russia uh America and EU are supposed to be uh the the the creators and the followers of the rules-based order Europe looks like jokers to us and they talk about values but they pursue their interests Now Trump's skepticism could deal a fatal blow in his second term it seems
7:09
that he's giving up on the rules-based order and saying that if the rules are not being followed why should America alone follow the rules this is of course one of the cornerstones of Trump's whole political platform that America comes firstly swear during every single day of the Trump administration i will very simply put America first america first has its own heritage and US political thinking going back to the isolationists of the last century they went beyond realism with a desire to
7:46
keep the US out of foreign entanglements entirely some have called Trump an isolationist at the minimum you can see a family resemblance between these ideas america First does lean in a realist direction it's certainly not an idealistic cast of mind for many around the world this is more honest than Trump's predecessors america first has always been America's grand strategy he has just brought it out in the open uh it's no longer covert secret implied this is overt
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in-your-face you know unabashed unapologetic and to be clear Joe Biden's approach to the war in Ukraine was not all about defending democracy it also pursued its own view of US interests there's also some criticism that one can make towards the approach that the Biden administration has pursued towards Europe and towards Ukraine in the past which was uh basically not focused on ending the war in Ukraine and reaching an end state lyanna Fix is a German foreign policy analyst at the Council on
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Foreign Relations she's in Washington DC based on the assumption that ending this war wasn't necessarily uh fully in the US interest not a priority interest because this war led to a diminishment of Russian power in Europe now Trump is turning that on its head he sees himself in a neutral role and he his primary aim is to get into a working relationship to a normalization of relations with Russia trump gave javeins and for Lyanna fix this involves Trump's own brand of realism let me tell you you
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don't have the cards i would say Donald Trump is a realist businessman but that's different than um a traditional realist who see the world just through the lens of measuring nuclear power measuring military power measuring economic power that's not Trump that's not where his thinking comes from he wants to reset relations because he thinks he can do deals with Russia he can do business deals with Russia and he doesn't care whether Russia acts as the aggressor or not this is a dramatic
10:03
pivot from an approach that's ostensibly based on principles yet also aimed at weakening Russia to an approach that rejects principles as irrelevant and sets a goal of getting on with Russia here in Europe the consequences are profound so Europe has perceived itself so far as the last island of multilateralism of the rules based order which is a comfortable and cozy and warm position fuzzy position to have um but it doesn't help you in a time when uh our is really defined through military
10:38
power you see the impact in Germany where a new leadership has brought in a dramatic plan to build up its military europe is in the fundamental dilemma that it only has two choices either it rearmms and buys enough time for this rearmament which will not be done by tomorrow um continuing US protection during that time or it opts for an implicit impeasement of Russia that US protection might not continue for long consider what realists think about NATO realists have tended to be critics of
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NATO enlargement from the beginning of the process after the Cold War that process brought in the Baltic states which are now seen as most exposed to a potential Russian attack i think that uh President Trump would probably be reluctant to fight for the Baltics if that means uh engaging in fullcale warfare with Russia the United States when it committed to uh on paper defend the Baltic states uh was not thinking that that commitment might actually come due so we should all be
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concerned about this problem from a structural perspective it's not just a an oddity of of President Trump so Europe is now facing the possibility of having to defend the Baltics without US support early on Trump's team also ruled out enlarging NATO further to include Ukraine and Vice President JD Vance came to Germany to deliver a further shock for the Europeans that was if anything deeper we were there jd Vance just gave a speech here at the Munich Security Conference and it was wild vance's
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address was a fullthroated attack on European democracy and it raised the prospect of a really profound rift between America and Europe now jolted into action the European Union is urging all its members to rearm i thought Europe was going to continue to drift in its strategic slumber but suddenly it seems to have woken up if Europe can get together by this and take care of its own security I think Trump would have achieved far more than he ever could on any other parameter i
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think Europe was drifting and I think this shock was necessary but others argue that if shock treatment has been Trump's goal he's overshot the marken and gone beyond what realism can explain this is this is going to be great television i will say that sometimes what President Trump pursues uh is maybe less tied to concrete gains or losses for the United States than how it affects the narrative of President Trump's uh position on the world stage and that can take uh the president in
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maybe a non-realist i think that Trump is coming from a realist place with a caveat alexander Gabuyv is an expert on Russia and China based in Berlin it's clear that the US alliance network is what makes the US the predominant player in the global system and this is an asset that no other uh peer competitor be China or adversary be it Russia nobody can match that and the most unrealist part of Trump's foreign policy course is the heavy blow that he has delivered to this very network of
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allies so it's clear that realism is not the whole story there's more going on so let's get to our second theory one that suggests a much bigger plan not focused on America's allies but on its two biggest rivals
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it's February 1972 us President Richard Nixon lands in Beijing on a trip that would change the world the motorcade sweeps through the city giving Nixon's team glimpses not just of Chairman Mao but of Lenin and Stalin adorning Tiennaman Square this trip was about establishing relations with Mao to draw him away from those Soviet connections and it worked it was a coup of Cold War diplomacy pulled off by Nixon's legendary strategist Henry
15:27
Kissinger fast forward to October 2024 donald Trump is holding one of his last pre-election rallies with the media personality Tucker Carson as they near the end Trump gets on to
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geopolitics we are a nation in very serious decline and look at what these stupid people have done they've allowed Russia China Iran North Korea and others to get together in a group biden united them it's a shame the stupidity of what they done i'm going to have to ununite them and I could think I can do that too i have to ununite them ununiting Russia and China it's actually an idea that's been floating around for years that under Vladimir Putin and Xiinping Moscow and Beijing have become
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dangerously close and that the smart play for the US right now is to try to pull them apart it's a move that would carry strong vibes of that Nixon Kissinger coup of the 1970s but in today's world it would be in reverse there's a lot of talk of a reverse Kissinger this time the overture would be to Moscow to move it away from its alignment with the People's Republic of China under Putin and Xi Russia and China are deeply intertwined economically diplomatically and
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militarily it's a relationship built on the two leaders shared antagonism towards the US so a reverse Kissinger I think could take two different forms first it could in be a really ambitious attempt to break the strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing uh to bring uh Russia over to the side of the west or at least the United States but this first idea might be a stretch for a number of reasons there are limits to the historical analogy you know the context is just not
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the same amanda Xiao is director for China and Taiwan at the Eurasia Group Consultancy nixon was able to arrive at a rush with China in the 70s and distance Beijing from Moscow because there were already problems in the Sino Soviet relationship and that's not the situation today um Russia is relatively dependent on China in terms of security and economically neither Russia nor China want to go back into confrontation mode and this puts limitations to how much dent you can create between Russia
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and China so how much of a dent might be possible more modestly a reverse Kissinger could entail giving Russia more options making it less dependent on China for the long term and therefore limiting what a more robust uh Russia China partnership might do in the future and I suspect that it's that latter form of thinking that is informing the uh the current administration more than the idea of uh being able to heal Moscow completely away from China let's dig into this if
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the Trump administration really means to attempt this it'll have to be highly attuned to the risk of getting played the Russians are ready they've seen attempts to drive a veg uh between Russia and China for a number of years now including from Trump's administration uh they are not very happy about their level of dependence on China but they have much more trust in China than they have in the US previous US attempts to reach out to Russia widely seen as failures most
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famously the Obama era reset complete with a physical prop for the top diplomats 5 years later Russia seized Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2021 Joe Biden tried to stabilize things with a presidential summit just 8 months after that Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into the rest of Ukraine so the risks of failure are significant alexander Gabuya watches Putin and Xiinping closely he takes us through the considerations for the players involved first of all the
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Americans the US needs to be very clear right of what elements of China Russia access is it most concerned about and what can it do about that and probably you would rank the intelligence sharing sharing of weapon designs military cooperation all of this exercises that are stepped up in terms of size and in uh the signaling towards the US allies like the strategic patrols of uh nuclear armed bombers this military cooperation has been one of the most worrying elements of the
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China Russia partnership for the US but what could the Americans do alexander Gabuy spells out their potential next moves then you would try to offer Russia incentives and you can probably say "Hey China is a towering presence in your economy so why don't we provide incentives to gradually undo the sanctions regime and help you to restore your economic ties with the Europeans bring back some American investment let's go to the next player Vladimir Putin what will his calculations be he's
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certainly aware that Russia's relationship with China isn't exactly equal [Music] longer term the more leverage China has the more it's likely to exploit that and to cut deals with Russia that are favoring China more than they are favoring Russia and without some briefing space is uh something that you want to have trump's approach could look like providing exactly that for Russia breathing space and Putin could make some enticing offers of his own in return you can offer an idea of
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partnership where Russia and the US could work together on some of the international crisis that the US deems important like beat Houthies beat it Iran you can contribute to control over nuclear weapons and then you can do very basic economic deals and the obstacle to that are the US sanctions that need to be dismantled for Putin this could be a rich opportunity i think that Vladimir Putin sees Donald Trump as a gift that keeps on giving and if Trump is ready to
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offer carrots you would just dangle this ability to do reverse Kissinger in front of Trump's nose you will pocket all the carrots that are coming your way and if your major obsession are the adversaries in the west uh if that's your worldview then the detrimental blow that Donald Trump delivers to the transatlantic unity over Russia is definitely a gift that you want your pocket and then you see Trump as not only realist but also very transactional with short attention
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span who is ready to break the rules who is seeking short-term profit and seeking various deals including commercial deals including deals with people close to him and underlying all of this Putin's bet that Xiinping remains his crucial partner in the long run you will also find a way to talk to the Chinese saying "Hey Trump is offering us these things we are willing to entertain this opportunity because we know that Trump is there for 4 years he is out of the picture so we are absolutely not
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interested in rocking the boat of our bilateral relationship with you China so let's think how both of us can play Trump and what are the symbolic concessions that we can offer to Trump that he is under the impression that oh our relationship is eroding while in reality will only fortify and solidify our bond those apparent concessions could involve the things we heard about earlier so for example uh why don't we cancel this symbolic flights of nuclear armed
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bombers right they don't bring that much to the table frankly we will cancel that we'll make a big fast and then Trump will think that his policy is working why we don't we kind of reduce the scale of the mutual military exercise for the next four years while at the same time we will fortify the economic conditions but there is at least one area where the US and Russia could work towards something meaningful i do think President Trump is genuinely concerned
25:04
about the possibility of nuclear war um it's a frequent um topic that he returns to the last treaty regulating US and Russia nuclear weapons expires in 2026 it was the most positive outcome of Obama's reset renewing it could bring benefits to both sides i think that the Russians are interested the Russians will be happily going into that direction because uh they are embarking on uh a costly military modernization they want to expand their conventional military uh compensate for
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losses of equipment in Ukraine so if there is a way to uh avoid a nuclear arms race with the US the Russians will be happily doing that the question is that Trump really wants to bring China into this conversation and the Russians understand that China is absolutely not interested before it reaches the same level of convers of nuclear deterrent as the Americans and the Russians so there's a major China angle in the nuclear weapons issue too let's take a look now at China's calculations if it
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sees Russia and the US starting to get along would Xiinping really have no concerns likely there is some uncertainty and sensitivity and anticipation of a shift in dynamic between Beijing and Moscow as a result of improvements in the US-Russian relationship you know Putin will have more leverage in its dealings with Beijing in a scenario where sanctions on Russia are lifted but for sheed that does not change the really big picture china's own highest level strategy
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it's alignment with Russia is strategic and not tactical and as long as that um condition holds that competition with the US will continue and that Beijing views Washington as its primary and long-term adversary so we've seen a significant number of dangers for the US around even this limited idea of a reverse Kissinger but the potential upsides are clear too so what would it mean for other global players for some improving US-Russia relations would be welcome in its own right like
27:37
in India which has strong ties with both Washington and Moscow it would be wonderful if uh US and Russia get together because India and Russia are already there together i think the days of binaries are over i think uh if Russia and America do get closer it doesn't mean it will be at the cost of Russia and China if India and America get closer it will not be at the cost of India and Russia but back in Europe the US getting meaningfully closer to Russia would
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compound the shock to the system that we heard about in part one and the prospect is feeding the idea that Europe might want to stabilize ties with China to hedge its geopolitical bets this would certainly be an opportunity for Beijing which has long aimed for its own geopolitical coupe to split Europe from America china sees both challenges and opportunities in the geopolitical shifts that are occurring right now and so I think from the Chinese perspective um
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even if there is some anxiety about the China Russian relationship they see potential for gain in the European one but for Europeans there are warnings against going down this road i think that would be a naive illusion from Europeans china is both an economic and a security threat to Europeans the fact that these discussions are happening shows the degree of disruption that even this modest version of a reverse Kissinger could bring but Trump and his administration could believe
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that it's worth it we do have a team of national security advisers around him who know that there is a danger in an axis of upheaval as it is called in closer relations between Russia China Iran and North Korea that is detrimental to US interest there's the possibility that in the future if the partnership among these four countries gets closer they could launch attacks that are coordinated that is the nightmare scenario for the US it's a key part of why the administration wants Europe to
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take more responsibility for its security the fear that the US might be overstretched in a two-front war in Europe and the Indo Pacific is a real and a legitimate fear that US defense planners have and something that Europeans have to take into account the Biden administration's approach to this threat was closing ranks with allies trump's appears to be the opposite reaching out to Russia to try to splinter the threat but there's another idea that Trump might want to go a step further to
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diffuse that threat altogether it's the third theory in this video and potentially it's the most disruptive of all let's get to
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it january 2025 another presidential plane touches down in a foreign land they call this one Trump Force One an unofficial plane for an unofficial trip before Trump's inauguration in fact there's no president on board instead Donald Trump Jr arrives with a message from his father he says hello we were talking to him yesterday so he says hello to everyone in Greenland okay [Applause] two months later Trump's senior is now in office making his first address to
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Congress with more to say to Greenland a little clearer now and I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland we strongly support your right to determine your own future and if you choose we welcome you into the United States of America what might sound at first like a friendly invitation even something comical then takes a turn we need Greenland for national security and even international security and we're working with everybody involved to try
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and get it but we need it really for international world security and I think we're going to get it one way or the other we're going to get it this was extraordinary a US president talking about getting a huge swathe of foreign land one way or the other within the month Vice President JD Vance was visiting troops in Greenland and promoting a video suggesting that an American takeover was inevitable this is not just history it is destiny now is the time to stand together again for
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peace for security for the future america stands with Greenland you look at how beautiful Trump has put similar pressure on Canada but if you look at Canada and would be cherished as a 51st state uh they don't pay their share of military in NATO they pay very little for military they're not protected at all and the reason is they think we're going to protect them without the US Canada really doesn't have a country and he set his sights on the Panama Canal a crucial trading route
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the Panama Canal was built by Americans for Americans not for others but others could use it we gave it to Panama and we're taking it back
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it's as if Trump wants to take control of America's backyard what is this well this idea has a long heritage that powerful countries should have a sphere of influence spheres of influence are associated with uh great power relations and empire uh from the 19th century into the 20th century uh one idea of spheres of influence uh is that uh almost inevitably major powers exert um predominant uh political influence uh among uh weaker neighbors there's no question that President Trump
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is employing spheres of influence thinking when he you know threatens to annex the Panama Canal Greenland or Canada trump's inaugural address also carried elements of this thinking the United States will once again consider itself a growing nation one that increases our wealth expands our territory builds our cities raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons and we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars president Trump
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explicitly referred to America's 19th century tradition of manifest destiny manifest destiny that was the idea that European settlers were chosen by God to expand westwards across America that goes back to uh the US Monroe Doctrine of 1823 in which the United States claimed a sphere of influence over the western hemisphere so the United States has claimed a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere for much of its history and President Trump makes us all
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confront that fact as with his America first slogan much of Trump's thinking here is not new but let's get back to what he's saying now about Greenland Canada and Panama whether he's serious about the threats you know is a question everybody is asking but the very fact that he's making them uh and generally not making annexationist threats outside the Western Hemisphere with the very notable exception of Gaza you know uh suggests that Trump recognizes the difference between US interests in the
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Western Hemisphere uh and perhaps its more limited interests overseas for some this amounts to imperialist expansionism for the 21st century like what many see in Vladimir Putin or Xiinping putin has illegally annexed parts of Ukraine and threatened much more and she claims control not just of Taiwan but of significant chunks of India but with Trump there is a twist [Music] with Trump it's difficult to say he is an you know to say well he's an outright imperialist as Putin is or as CJ Ping
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has ambitions to be because it's not necessarily a theory of imperialism that is driving that but he sees Canada and Greenet as assets i mean this is a good asset that is in your neighborhood and that you should own right across your street you have a beautiful house well why don't you try to buy it and that's something that Trump's history and business history um we've seen very often he has tried to pitch to buy property um that was not for sale the crucial element here is the idea of deal
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making and the idea well if I want to get something and I can either get it through pressure or through incentives I will do it even if that breaks every rule in international relations and every relationship uh the United States has with its allies and please everybody and sure enough Trump's attitude to his sphere of influence risks America's relationships and reputation far beyond the western hemisphere the rest of the world is watching we've ever had even
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better than it was at this moment today uh to meing and Donald Trump are the same this bullying I think Trump has become Xiinping so when the world sees that the two great powers of today China and um United States are the same they are not respecting rules based order they are pushing countries for instance Greenland may be taken over or Canada he wants to to be the 51st state and so on when when the rules-based order is out then what is the difference between
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China and the US and that brings us to the core of this spheres of influence idea and its disruptive potential because as we've just heard Donald Trump would not be its only subscriber this is very much the world view of Vladimir Putin and Xiinping vladimir Putin has chosen to be obsessed with dominance over former Soviet periphery particularly Barus and Ukraine that he views as part of the broader Russian nation i think China would welcome a carving up of the world into spheres of
38:52
influence for his part Trump has shown little interest in challenging either Russia's or China's claims to spheres of influence he doesn't understand why maintaining uh a sovereign independent prosperous Ukraine is uh in US interest and why the US should throw blood and treasure on countering uh this ravagious imperialist agenda of Russia trump himself has always shown relatively little interest in Taiwan for Trump you know Taiwan is really a chip to play in
39:32
the larger USChina uh relationship he is trying to move away semiconductor production to the United States to make the United States less dependent on Taiwan we've arrived at the I don't know trillion dollar question if Trump wants a sphere of influence and doesn't mind Russia and China having their own are these the makings of a deal of the century though an extreme version of what we could see if President Trump thoroughly applies spheres of influence thinking would be
40:08
that the United States China and Russia explicitly or tacitly agree that they will have spheres of influence uh that the United States would pull back from the spheres of influence that Russia and China claim And so you would have in this rather extreme scenario a basis for considerable um cooperation or at least alignment among the three major powers that could sound attractive for Trump but what would it mean for everyone else especially in those flash points most contested by the big three
40:49
it would likely spell the end of Ukraine's independence and bring the Russian threat closer to Western Europe taiwan would quickly lose its autonomy and China would take a significant step towards domination of Asia in its view a key reason for why neighbors like Japan Korea um the Philippines and India are pushing back in their maritime and land disputes at China is because of the US's backing and the US's encouragement um so in the Chinese view if the US retreats um these governments are more
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likely to adopt postures that are more accommodating asian powers would be forced to respond world is populated by middle powers and ascending middle powers like India that absolutely will not accept uh Chinese sphere of influence in northern Himalayas particularly in the territories that India claims are Indian or Chinese dominance in South Asia uh whatever Trump might agree to uh these countries see themselves as uh poles in this multipolar order in their own right
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uh and will deny other parties this sphere of influence so uh if it comes to India I hope he doesn't break the trust but if he does India will survive so uh we can take care of our defense we can take care of our borders we can take care of our seas we can take we can protect our trade and from Asia to Europe and the rest of the world would the risk of conflict really go away this is a very dangerous world because uh if the agreement is oh we have this overlapping sphere of influence and then
42:47
the big parties can dictate the terms and the smaller countries have just to accept their fate uh that opens the Pandora box for various type of regional conflicts between countries big and small that's just a taste of what this extreme scenario could entail if Trump were to pursue it he'd have to overcome significant push back at home for him to you know take dramatic actions to seed spheres of influence to Russia in Europe or to China in East Asia I think would
43:22
run into um a huge amount of resistance in his own bureaucracy in Congress in the media it would be a very difficult undertaking the entire region a lot of things are happening it's also quite possible that Trump himself is unwilling to go that far i think that uh if he believes that the US is entitled to own Greenland to control the Panama Canal or to include Canada as the 51st state it doesn't necessarily mean that uh he will give his adversaries the same luxury of having
44:03
this spheres of influence and to be sure members of Trump's team have spoken of the need to divert resources from Europe towards the Indo-Pacific suggesting the administration does want to defend its stake in Asia so crucial for global trade but there are also signals that they will demand that allies there do much more for their own defense leaving options wide open for Trump to try some deal making while remaining below the extreme scenario we've just run through
44:36
there's a more modest view of spheres of influence uh that might be more realistic and would have some upsides over Taiwan um President Trump could exchange public assurances with Xiinping to reaffirm the one China policy maybe even go a little bit further uh to suggest that the United States doesn't want to see Taiwan uh become independent that the United States would uh accept uh any peaceful resolution of crossstrait differences that would reached without coercion and
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some indicators of this would be fewer arm sales um to Taiwan um less uh public expressions of concern of Chinese coercion uh towards Taiwan taiwan is scrambling to strengthen its precarious position with promises it will spend more on its defense and its chip giant TSMC agreeing a deal on the manufacturing plants known as fabs to try to get into Trump's good books so Taiwan has um felt I think has been pretty anxious and has been feeling relatively uncertain about the direction
45:53
of um Trump's policy we saw that TSMC made a major announcement of an investment of hundred billion dollars in the US and plans to build um more fabs in Arizona so I think Taiwan is doing its best that it can to play the cards that it has um and we will see how the Trump administration um responds that's the fear that's unfolding in both Asia and Europe along the fault lines between the US Russia and China that they could be sacrificed in a great power game before they built up strength
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to defend themselves for the first time the European and the Indopacific theater or just in general the global dimension of um of of conflicts in Europe and the Indo Pacific it's so interlin and now we see through Russia's invasion of Ukraine that the patterns are so similar and the concerns are so similar about what if he abandons Ukraine will he abandon Taiwan that all Indo-Pacific partners are watching very closely what's happening in Europe and vice versa so the US allies in both
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theater are actually on the same side now concerned about what does it mean if the United States which has purposefully built these alliance relationship now suddenly let's um leaves its its allies out in the cold we're almost at the end of this video we've worked through three strategies that might help explain Trump's actions realism embracing power over principle a reverse Kissinger trying to pull Russia some distance away from China and spheres of influence a
47:42
global carve up for the ages we've seen evidence that all of these ideas are playing some role but is Trump equipped to see any of them through two character traits could derail him if bullying clouds his realism and if his impulse to disrupt overwhelms his execution let's take bullying first we've already heard about this concern trump has become Xiinping if that view becomes widespread it could bring unintended consequences if the two are the same if the both are
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bullies if both are pushing the boundaries of negotiation or rules in which they function or both are untrustworthy simply speaking then out of the total of 193 countries 120 have China as their biggest trading partners if you were to realign yourself you would naturally move to China as unintended consequences go pushing 100 plus countries closer to China would be a big one especially if India were among them india would like to continue to work with the US but if the US is going to
48:55
become a China then it's far better to engage with China and create imagine a world where India and China are one market such kind of logic it's not there in the government right now i haven't heard about it yet but imagine such a world you you created the EU now look at India and China uh together so I think these are the new options that will be on the table that's the thing countries everywhere will be putting new options on the table things they might never
49:23
have considered before and that brings us to the second risk for Trump his deep impulse for disruption i think Trump's um his unpredictability which he has achieved as he's wanted to um may prevent him from achieving any one of the very coherent scenarios that we've been discussing um he is happy to zig and zag um and often it seems as though tactical considerations performative considerations um are at the for him rather than a particular destination all three
50:05
approaches might be true at the same time uh two of them might be true on Monday and then the other true might be uh on Tuesday and then there is another combination on Wednesday uh whatever it is it's very risky dangerous and increasingly unpredictable that's the nature of disruption it's a rolling of the dice something that may run counter to the idea strategy but also presents opportunities for those ready to seize them in the totality of things which takes domestic uh
50:43
disruption as well as international disruption into account i'm positively inclined i think this disruption was necessary the fake liberalism had to be called out uh the extreme vocism had to be called out uh Europe had to be woken up uh and uh the world at large including India uh had to be shaken into not being lulled into a strategic sleep and I think Trump has done all of that the only my only uh apprehension is that uh is he trustworthy and at this moment I don't
51:20
know the ashes of disruption um something new can be built so for Europe that means um that for the first time they actually have a real pressure to build up their own security and defense so we've got a sense of the strategies or combination of strategies that Trump might pursue the goals and the pitfalls and we've got a taste of the dramatic ways in which the rest of the world might respond that is a measure of Trump's impact but the thing is he can't control
51:51
the outcomes nor can anyone else a whole universe of potential unintended consequences
52:06
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