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

Welcome back to the Silk and Steel podcast.

I'm your host, Karl Zah.

This is one of our, this is a second recording,

I believe, a third recording for 2026.

And a lot has happened in just the first half of January.

So I'm glad that I'm able to catch up with you,

Dr. Warwick Powell, again, Dr. Warwick

about a returning guest from Australia,

expert on international relations, particularly on China.

So now we're at a critical juncture,

again, in the Sino-American relationship.

It looks like Trump is going all out, you know,

like, he really knows what's good for television, right?

So he's going after Venezuela,

going after Greenland, and also Iran.

And he all preface all three,

as this is how he is going to clip China's wings,

so to speak, right?

Because the justification for going to Venezuela

is working at deny China and Russia photo in Latin America.

And the justification for Greenland, again,

is to keep check Chinese and Russian influence expanding

in the Arctic as a result of the Arctic

throughout opening up as a part of the climate change.

And Iran, there's a protest in Iran,

and Trump, you know, has now is making,

is encouraging, encouraging the protesters.

But at the same time, he's also slapping,

threatening 25% tariff on any country

doing importing oil to Iran.

But this is not really any country,

because China imports about 90% of Iranian oil exports.

So this is really aimed at China.

Where should we begin, Dr. Warwick, Dr. Paul?

Well, as you say, Carl, good to see you.

I'm happy new year.

It's been a rollercoaster ride already, hasn't it?

And we are only two weeks into 2026.

But of course, these events don't take place in isolation, do they?

And what we've seen happen in Venezuela,

what we're seeing unfolding in Iran,

and of course, what we're seeing,

getting prepared in Greenland,

a part and parcel of, I think, a very consistent framework

that Donald Trump has brought to America's approach

to international affairs and the affairs of its region.

And that is to pursue global primacy

whilst adjusting to some new realities.

The national security strategy that was announced late last year

spoke a lot about the need for America

to recalibrate how it approached the global environment.

It had obviously changed.

But it didn't abandon primacy at all.

What it, of course, articulated was a revised approach

to how it would do that.

And part of that approach is to assert itself

in the Western hemisphere.

The fact that the United States

has been asserting itself and meddling

in the politics of countries in Latin America now

for the best part of almost 100 years, you know,

in a sense makes this particular episode all them all predictable.

And unfortunately for the countries in the region,

they've really had a chance to get themselves stabilized

and get themselves onto an economic development trajectory

that doesn't at least involve some sense of vulnerability

to American political and economic interference.

So we're seeing a bit of that.

As far as China's concerned,

look, I think in a funny kind of way,

China clearly lives inside the head

of everyone inside the Beltway for free, right?

The obsessions about China as being the threat to America

really I think leads to not only irrational

irrational assessments and decision making,

but also cultivates this incredibly character,

the caricatured view of the world, right?

Now, in the Biden days, the caricatures was,

you know, the good guys and the bad guys,

the autocrats versus the Democrats.

In the Trump caricature world,

there's a lot less of that,

but there's still nonetheless a lot of cartoonish

conceptions of China and other parts of the world.

And if you take this question of oil,

well, you know, about 4% of China's oil

comes from Venezuela.

It's hardly going to make that bigger difference.

Venezuela's oil output is about 1% of global oil output.

But yes, there's proven reserves.

There's a lot of them.

So the cartoon character is,

it has the largest proven reserves in the world.

But the reality as ExxonMobile's executive pointed out

is a lot more complicated than that.

Just because there's a lot of something under the ground

doesn't mean that somehow it's easy to get,

easy to transform and easy to make use of.

And I think the reality is is that America has talked

at self into this oil business in Venezuela

based on some historical exposure,

but also really based on a cartoon character

of what Venezuela really means

in terms of the global oil game.

So look, it's been a crazy start.

The kidnapping of a leader of another country

is not something you see every day.

And the fact that the Americans went in

opens a lot of questions, of course,

not only about American attitudes towards international law,

but about what the dynamics are on the ground.

And there's lots of theories.

And we might touch on some of those later

or we might not let's see how we go.

But look, that's at least the Venezuela stuff as I see it.

Right.

But what do you say to people

who are saying, well, if China and Russia do nothing

as US going after, you know, friendly countries,

what, how is that gonna, you know,

put a check on United States, you know,

especially as other countries will be looking at this

and possibly reevaluate the relationship

vis-a-vis China, Russia, and United States.

Yeah, look, there's a few bits to unpack there.

And look, there's an odd sense, particularly,

well, across a diverse cross-section of the body,

politic globally, that has this sense that China and Russia

should always be doing something,

that they always need to react to every incident,

every event, that there's some tactical requirement

for some kind of an explicit responsive action, right?

And yet, I don't think that either of those two countries

or the leaders in those two countries,

view the world through those kind of lenses.

They're engagement in the world

and the design and prosecution of their strategic approach

to national development and how they contribute

more broadly to a global environment that suits

their objectives, which is stability

and economic development, ultimately leads them

to take a much longer historical view about what's going on.

So we tend not to get knee-jerk reactions anyway.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that, I think people need to be realistic

as well, you know, I mean, there's only one country

in the world that's always been in a position,

certainly for the best part of the last 40 to 50 years,

to intervene militarily, willy-nilly anywhere in the world,

and that's the United States of America.

No other country actually has set itself up

to be able to do that.

And there's actually a good reason for that.

One, China, for example, has focused the development

of its defensive capabilities around the idea

that it needs to be strong in its own environment

to defend itself.

And it's done that in the context of a 75-year encirclement

enabled and anchored by the myth of the American military

and navy, with forces and missiles operating out of Japan,

Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, right?

So China's approach has been about ensuring

that it's not vulnerable to attack.

It hasn't been about being a global policeman.

It hasn't been set up to go and intervene

wherever America decides to do something.

Similarly, I think the USSR and Russia,

subsequently, isn't set up to do that either.

Okay, so I don't think it's even realistic

for people to think like that.

There's no strategic objective from China

or Russia's point of view in that regard,

and they're not set up to do it.

So there are strategic and material realities

that literally means that China and Russia

aren't going to somehow suddenly leap into any and every theatre,

just because the Americans are.

But I think that there's a third thing,

which is also quite interesting and worth bearing in mind.

And that is that, and I speak mainly,

I guess, from the point of view of how those in China

would be thinking, I think, strategically

about the evolution of the global landscape.

And that is that there are forces at work

that no single country can actually bend.

And these forces are incredibly powerful.

They're the forces related to the shifting patterns of commerce,

the ongoing developments of technologies, et cetera, et cetera.

And those dynamics, and I might add in that,

the slow de-dollarization of the world,

whether US dollars no longer the obvious global reserve

and the emergence of currency multiplier,

and all of these things are happening.

And they will continue to unfold

regardless of these sorts of individual events, right?

And so there's nothing in a sense that can stop it.

So trying to intervene and commit resources

and in some ways expand real resources,

as well as potentially put lives at risk,

and also jeopardize, I think,

a kind of soft power as well.

And I'll touch on that in a moment,

by intervening ultimately,

won't bear fruit because it's not going to fundamentally

change the forces and the trajectory of global

economic and social development.

In terms of this soft power question,

I think people often talk about the United States

having incredible soft power, right?

But many surveys increasingly point to the fact

that China is actually received far better

in many parts of the world,

and especially in the global south and the United States is.

And for China to be able to achieve that outcome,

despite the fact that arguably it's communications

and propaganda capabilities are well-chored

of a Hollywood and all the training and capability

that that brings to the table,

suggests that in fact,

a consistent focus on non-interference,

economic development, non-judgmental collaboration,

investment trade, and those sorts of things,

ultimately bears fruit.

So whilst countries may be nervous about the fact

that the United States clearly has a president

who is willing to capriciously intervene

militarily in places,

and they will consequently seek to keep their heads down

and out of harm's way in the short term,

their long run move is actually to hedge

against American militarism, not to cave into it.

And that means consolidating and strengthening

their economic relationships in particular with China.

And the last thing I'll say on this point is,

and this is the economic issue,

but we saw this during the course of 2025,

with the trade wars as they were unfolding post-2nd of April.

And what we saw was actually the demonstration

of Chinese material capability.

Sure, China doesn't have a military

that can go around the world

and match the American's toe-to-toe

wherever the Americans want to go,

especially in the Caribbean,

which is within a stone's throw of the United States, right?

China isn't able to do that,

but what it is able to do

is deliver economic capacity for countries,

whether it's infrastructure,

whether it's access to markets,

whether it's access to new technologies,

and it's those things that will ultimately stand

not only China in good stead,

but ultimately contribute to the ongoing

structural transformations of the world

in the direction of a more multipolar

and a fairer global system.

What we're seeing from the US is a reaction to that.

The United States is clearly experiencing

a chronic case of displacement anxiety, right?

And those in Washington who've lived the life

of entitlement, global political entitlement

are clearly feeling very displaced.

And you know, displaced people

with a sense of entitlement

backed by a truckload of hubers together

with access to a $1 trillion per annum defense system,

you know, highly incentivized the lash out.

What do you say about the people who say,

oh, there's, you know, using some,

what I call a reverse domino theory, okay?

So now, United States is going,

going after Venezuela.

You're wrong, you know, maybe Greenland,

but this, this eventually they will, you know,

if China and Russia wait and wait on their hands,

they will be next target after Venezuela

and you wrong has fallen.

You know, what do you say to that?

Yeah, then nuclear powers.

There's no need to have a further discussion.

The United States might be heavily displaced

and behaving like an extremely anxious major power,

but the United States doesn't have a death wish either.

And as much as you get a lot of blow

via eating on social media, you know,

with a bunch of people beating their chests,

I don't think there is one person in Washington

who thinks that pressing that red button is a good idea

and engaging in a direct military conflict

with any of the other major nuclear powers

is not a good idea.

And I seriously doubt it's going to happen,

which of course doesn't mean we're not going to have

incredibly tense situations

and all sorts of proxy conflicts all over the world.

I mean, one of the tactical moves

and perhaps even strategic moves

that the United States is making in this context

is that it's going to stir up a lot of trouble everywhere, right?

This is partly how a declining Hegemon

seeks to hold on to what it's got.

As other countries find strength through collaboration,

the best move for the Hegemon is to seek to disrupt that.

If anybody works through any game theoretic experiment,

this is exactly what you'll get.

In fact, on my sub-stack last year,

sometime I worked through this game scenario

and really did it for my own interest, but I published it anyway.

Which really looked at the dynamics

between large groups of actors

who are coordinating and collaborating,

a single actor who doesn't want to

and what that single actor is likely to do.

Well, that single actor is likely to try to divide and conquer.

And that's what we're seeing from the United States.

Look, the US isn't going to take on Russia or China, right?

That's the reality of it.

But it is going to seek to cause disruptions,

to parts of the world that will then have flow on effects

to China and Russia in terms of their economic development,

their ability to influence outcomes.

The United States is clearly concerned about

not only the sort of generic sense of loss of influence,

but with influence comes a fear

that its material conditions will decline further.

And so if you read, say, Bridge Colby's work

on who's architecting this shift to China

and an attempt to pull back from Europe,

get the Europeans to take on more load.

One of the key drivers of that is the claim

that China is reaching a point

where it can fulfill this regional hegemonic role.

It's not an America's interest

because if China did that,

it would deny America access

to the fastest growing economic region of the world.

So America's concern is underpinned by concern

that it's going to be cut out of the economic largest

of Asian growth.

And many of these concerns, I think,

are driven by very fundamental,

not only strategic defensive interests,

but just frankly, what's going on in Greenland, Iran

and Venezuela are not what you traditionally call

strategic defense interests, right?

These aren't great power political requirements

because none of these places actually threaten

the United States, right?

These are resource driven.

The United States is concerned about losing access

to resources and funnily enough,

this is exactly what drove American settler expansion

over the last couple of hundred years as well.

And so deep inside this DNA is this worry

that it's going to run out of resources

and so it takes them over.

You mentioned that China offer a very attractive alternative

to US-led, unipolar world dominance

in that China is investing in infrastructure,

is providing a alternative to the US hegemony.

But what if you already mentioned,

US is trying to display the spoiler row,

is trying to destabilize,

the mean now is China builds and US bombs.

What if US decide to dedicate itself, too?

Okay, China, you're going to build and roll project

in these countries,

well I'm going to go into these countries,

I'm going to militarily intervene,

I'm going to do color revolution,

I'm going to do region change.

And wouldn't that be detrimental to kind of the new order

that China is trying to build?

United States military planning always worked on the idea

of being capable of fighting two full-on peer wars.

It can't do that anymore.

It can act as a spoiler, I'm sure,

but it won't have the resources to sustain any of this stuff.

One of the things we've learned about this is

to sustain any of this stuff.

One of the things we've learned about the United States military system,

its industrial systems and the logistic systems that backs it up

is that it was never designed for sustained warfare

and it certainly has never been designed

for sustained successful occupation and nation-building, right?

So if you look at the last 20 odd years,

United States, of course, comes out of the gates really fast.

It's got the most advanced technologies

that can fly in, that can bomb the crap out of a place,

and then it leaves again, right?

Mission accomplished, no Americans hurt.

Everyone is able to cheer about it.

The flag goes up and victory is declared.

The question that Americans never seemed to want to ask

is, well, what next?

And it's the what next bit that creates the problems, right?

Obviously, as a follow-on from bombing the crap out of a place

because you've now destroyed the economic foundations

of a particular region.

You've firstly, of course, given rise to massive human displacement,

much of which will end up affecting America.

So what happens in, for instance, Latin America

is, is that every time the economy is there,

the economies there are adversely affected is,

well, you get a flood of people moving to North America.

And yet North America, the United States of America,

in particular, is desperately keen to stop all of this from happening.

But it's going to create a rod for its own back, right?

So these wars, this spoiling activity is resource-intensive.

And yes, it can sustain a lot of things at a,

I often say, at a warfare without war, kind of level, right?

Which is disruptive, it creates risks,

there'll be sabotage, there'll be information war campaigns,

and those sorts of things.

But ultimately, sustaining this at global scale

is actually very, very difficult.

Now, let's not forget that countries are also not without

their own capability of ultimately responding as well.

So in the event that American resources become increasingly

stretched, then the capability of these countries

to respond and deal with these problems actually improves.

The last thing to remember is that much

of American defensive capability.

And I say defensive, really, and I happen to use

the word defensive capability when they're

being sent all over the world, bombing other people.

But anyway, American military capability

is contingent upon its ability to source reliably,

a whole swath of raw materials and intermediate inputs

from, I guess what, Chinese supply chains.

Reports by consultants of the Pentagon,

Gavini, for example, identify that an American warship

is dependent upon supplies from about 10,000 Chinese firms.

The exposure to Chinese supply chains,

not only in rare earth, but in all sorts of other things,

to actually make the American military industrial complex

functional is huge.

So if the United States seriously wants to play this game,

then it needs to do two things, really.

Firstly, it needs to find alternatives to China

as supplies for all of this.

Ergo, it's desperately trying to create a rare earth industry

out of the blue.

And secondly, of course, it's got industrial system problems

anyway.

So not only do we have input supply chain problems,

we've also got industrial system problems.

The United States military industrial complex

is not set up to ramp and scale in ways

that would be meaningfully necessary in the event

that it wanted to become the global spoiler.

It simply doesn't have the capability

to make enough stuff.

So spoiling efforts are going to be, I think,

quite tactical, if you will.

They will be annoying, but they aren't going to be

of a scale in terms of breadth or in terms of duration

that will ultimately enable it to prevail in this game.

That being the case, what is it trying to do?

Because I don't think anyone in the Pentagon, by the way,

believes that America can sustain any of these long-term campaigns.

The sensible people in the military

actually still learn some mathematics.

Though there are people who doubt the depth

of the strategic maths that these folk learn.

But nonetheless, I think they've got some basic understanding

of materials and maths.

And I think they know that this ambition

is actually materially not viable.

So they're going to have to do something else.

So I think what's going on is that there's

a little bit of a displacement reaction.

There's an attempt to, I'll use it.

Not sure whether it's an Australian phrase alone,

but dogs tend to piss on their posts to mark territories.

And I think that there's a bit of that going on as well.

So I think that the United States feeling a little bit vulnerable,

sensing displacement as the unquestioned Hegemon

is, in a sense, marking its territory.

And it's doing that in really the only way

that it now knows how to.

And that is to go and bludgeon somebody,

to drop some bombs on people,

and then threaten them with some economic coercion.

That's fair.

But why is Trump going after Goon then?

I'm trying to get my wrap my head around that

because all the justification for US taking Greenland

is supposedly because Greenland has occupied

a very strategic location.

It sets at the Greenland, Iceland, UK gap.

And it's a whole in America's defense, and it to be plugged

because pretty soon the Arctic ice cap will melt

and there will be a lot more Chinese shipping through the Arctic

that's the China and Russia will increase

or activity in the Arctic so we must counter that.

But it doesn't really fly if you look deeper

because US already have access to Greenland

as a, you know, US have military base in Greenland.

US have, because Greenland is part of Denmark

and Denmark and United States, both in NATO.

US have all the military access they want in Greenland.

So they don't need to grab it as, you know,

for giving the reason, you know,

if it just fair, just geo-strategic reasons.

So that, and in doing so, Trump is really

antagonizing the Europeans, of course.

And I think the Europeans are not gonna do much

because the European leaders are pretty spineless.

And, but even so, it is poisoning the transatlantic

alliance and why is he doing that?

Why is he at the risk of destabilizing NATO,

destabilizing transatlantic alliance?

Why is he making a graph of Greenland, you think?

Yeah, it's a great question because as you say,

the United States could achieve everything that it wants

from a strategic point of view in relation to Greenland

without doing anything other than exploiting its position

within NATO, expanding its current military presence

and lo and behold, surprise, surprise,

they could even invest in Greenland and conduct trade

and economic development, right?

And expand their presence through all of those

pretty normal means.

So why would they do, you know, the grand takeover?

It's hard to understand, but perhaps there's some ways

that we could at least gain an appreciation for

why you'd go to these links.

One, I think President Trump does see himself

as a president of historic consequence

and a president of historic consequence

needs to have trophies, okay?

So I think Greenland is an easy trophy

to be a president of historic consequence.

The second reason I think is that there are some resources

in Greenland that perhaps the risk assesses

in the United States believe it should not be left

to indirect channels of control,

that the United States would be better off

having absolute control by controlling a territory.

That may be a second reason.

So it's a question of risk calculus.

Can we afford to leave this as something

that we indirectly control through NATO,

but don't quite control?

I think the third thing though is that it's quite clear

that President Trump does not have a lot of time

for the Europeans and this is a one way

of really demonstrating to the Western Europeans

who's boss and I think in the process,

ultimately from the United States point of view,

trying to through this lock-in Western Europe

as a subordinate to Washington's global power position.

There are some risks in all of this as you touch on.

It spoils the relationship between

the Western European populations more than necessarily

the elites in Brussels and the United States.

It could add fuel to the growing nationalistic

political sentiments in Western Europe

where there are more people across more of the member states

who are unhappy with the direction that Brussels

is taking Brussels in both the EU sense

and in the NATO sense that there is a belief

that the political elite running the military

and that's called the economic arm of the European apparatus

have lost sight of their priorities.

They're no longer focused on the improvement

of European living conditions.

As much as they are obsessed by keeping the Americans

locked into an unwinnable war against Russia.

So I think that there's a fair bit of that sort

of stuff going on because without that sense

of personal triumph and leaving a historical mark

and perhaps that risk calculus question,

there really isn't a particularly huge need

to expend what I think would be quite a lot

of political capital to take Greenland.

Now, of course, I don't think that there are any impediments,

not only will the Europeans not be able to do anything,

I don't think it would actually take much.

There are a handful of ports and airports in Greenland.

There's not a lot of roads, there's 56,000 people,

there's an American base

and I would have thought that the United States

could in effect take charge of all of those critical

pieces of infrastructure, which is the connection

that makes it possible for people to come and go

from Greenland within two days, three days.

It wouldn't take much at all.

And so the real question is, in my mind,

is this just more the bluff and blunder

and we're going to see a great big Greenland taco

or is Trump actually going to make the move?

Yeah, we're all waiting to see how the fall

of this is going to be.

Now, let's pivot to Iran, because this is a big thing.

It looks like the previous 12 war

against Iran with Israel was enabled by the United States.

That was not successful, because Iran showed

that he actually possessed the firepower to fight back.

Now, the whole encouragement of Iranian protest

and Iranian civil strife, this is to be coordinated.

I mean, I see this on social media.

All the, you, your suspects are now jumping out.

All the ones who cheer for Venezuela intervention

are now, you know, suddenly they're all Democrats for Iran.

You know, they're all like poor for Iran,

embracing democracy and freedom and all that.

Is this United States trying to do

regime change on the cheek?

I mean, it's because they are currently

at their hands tied in the Caribbean.

So they're trying to try a different approach

to soften their perceived adversary in Iran.

Look, I think, well, there's a few things to piece together, right?

So the 12th day war came to an end with a ceasefire

that was actually requested by the United States.

And that clearly demonstrated that the United States

and Israel lacked the capacity to ultimately land the knockout blow.

The government in Tehran survived and has, of course,

since then sought to consolidate its position domestically.

I think also Tehran has begun to reach out a little bit more

or has become a little bit more open to greater dependence

on China and Russia, particularly in areas

such as military or defense-related technologies

and assistance, which Tehran had for a long time been

very reluctant to take on board those offers of assistance.

So there's been some change.

Now, the United States clearly was never going

to let sleeping dogs lie.

We know now that very recently Netanyahu visited Trump

and the discussion was about Iran.

But we also know now, and I've seen this in various reports,

including a story in Forbes that talks specifically

about the number of styling terminals that had been smuggled

into Iran and which had been operational in Iran

as part of the coordination mechanisms

for the recent round of public demonstrations.

Now, some 40,000 terminals have been smuggled into Iran.

And the reason they've been smuggled is because they were illegal.

Now, smuggling 40,000 terminals in

and then getting them into the hands of the people

that you're working with to coordinate these things

is not a fly-by-night activity.

They're not dropped from the sky.

It's not like you fly a drone over and just drop a bunch

of styling terminals, but are being butterflies all up and running.

The deployment of the styling infrastructure

I would suggest began if not before the 12-day war,

not long thereafter.

And the aim was to enable the mobilization of forces

inside Iran in an effort to destabilize the government.

We know that there was external interference

not only because of styling, but because there've been

quite a number of published stories now

in which the role of Mossad has been explicitly acknowledged.

The agents involved in the protests and behind the scenes

and fermenting the local anger.

Now, local anger, of course, does exist to varying degrees.

It's actually hard to generate opposition against the government

if there aren't certain things that give people a reason

to be angry about or give people things

to feel that they haven't nothing left to lose.

And of course, the economic circumstances

is the most obvious one.

All those other things you've mentioned,

the democracy and the human rights and whatever

the latest political fantasies are that liberals

in particular in the Westlatch on to,

they're a bit by the by, right?

But that helps broaden the Western support base.

But basically the agitation revolved around inflation.

And much of that, I think,

was occasioned by a dramatic devaluation

of the real, the Iranian currency.

And I suspect that since the 12th of,

or the 12th they wore,

there has been a progressive accumulation of real

by entities hostile to Iran

and that those, the accumulated real

was subsequently dumped,

causing a collapse in the value.

The real dropped, I think, something like 40% from memory.

Very, very quickly in the last month,

which of course leads to a rapid escalation in prices

as import prices rise.

So the orchestrated campaign went something

along the lines of

secure a ceasefire,

a temporary ceasefire,

roll out a communications infrastructure

that you can coordinate and mobilize people,

buy up the real,

so that you can manipulate the currency,

short the currency when the time came,

short the currency,

cause inflation,

mobilize people,

get people out on the streets,

then mobilize social media

and hope that that is enough to destabilize the government.

The government has so far

by the looks of it successfully quelled

and responded to the demonstrations.

And this goes back to that issue of collaboration

with Russia, I think.

They managed to do that

because they were able to

intercept and ultimately stop

the, the Starlink capabilities.

Now, that in and of itself is significant

because that really does raise the issue more broadly

around how other countries will learn the lesson

about how to control their information space.

Because clearly the information space

and the infrastructure that impacts that space

is central to regime change operations.

The second thing that the government clearly did was

it blocked the internet.

And that not only,

well, that contributed obviously to the Starlink question,

but it also meant that it limited the ability

for external forces to intervene

with additional information campaigns.

The third thing,

and this is where I think it really,

where the policing response becomes very,

very interesting,

is that the Starlink requires a spatial signal.

So those who had the Starlink terminals

could be located.

And they have been.

Many have been,

and there have been many arrests

and many demonstration organizers

have been, quote,

rounded up and arrested, unquote.

Okay.

We know that there's been a lack of success

in so far as regime change is concerned

because one, the government's still there.

And two, President Trump has just earlier

tweeted a message to protesters

that help is coming, keep protesting.

And that, of course,

means that there has not been success.

The last thing which tells us there hasn't been success

and this is probably the more worrying thing.

Is that President Trump at, well,

the American embassy,

or the virtual embassy in Tehran

has also issued on its webpage

a message to Americans to get themselves

out of Iran.

And that would certainly be something

that any embassy would do

if they knew or expected

with reasonable confidence that their government

was planning an aerial campaign

to bomb the country.

And so I think that we are clearly

heading in that direction.

The one last thing I'll mention here

is that whilst we've seen a lot of

naval buildup in,

in and around Venezuela,

there has actually been some military buildup

in and around the Middle East

by the Americans,

but they have not yet sent in

a significant naval presence.

But nonetheless,

I think it is quite clear

that the United States

executed a plan that sought to,

if not successfully overturned the government,

create the reason for this second round

of military intervention.

And that reason is we have to enter the fray

because those awful Iranians

are killing and injuring protesters.

And it's incumbent upon us now

to, you know,

to go and do something about it.

So Iran is on tender hooks,

of course, as a result.

But the campaign to destabilize,

well, let's see how much instability there is,

but certainly insofar as

there being a regime changes concern,

I think that that has so far failed.

Yeah.

This is good.

To crank up the economic pressure on Iran,

the same way they have done in Venezuela,

trying to strangulate the economy,

you know, the U.S. Navy

pretty much put on an economic blockade

on Venezuela by stopping tankers

coming in to pick up a Venezuelan oil.

Now Trump is threatening

to place 25% tariff on any country

doing oil business with Iran.

Now, the thing is,

it's not any country that's

importing Iranian oil.

It's 90% of Iranian oil exports

go to one country,

and that's China.

Now, this is a little bit baffling

because China and U.S.

just had a trade war.

And he just briefly declared a choose

in South Korea

when Trump met with President Xi.

Why?

I would go back to the old days.

I mean, we're going back to the first half

of 2025 now.

It was tariff being raised on China again.

What's your take on that?

Well, I think that we've run the risk

from Trump's point of view.

I guess that that is what the effect is.

I'm not sure that that was actually the intended objective.

One of the things about the Trump administration

is that it tends to have a very limited array

of responses to circumstances.

And tariff is one of the top draw responses

that the President seems to draw on whenever he is displeased

or disappointed about something.

So, of course, outcomes to tariffs again.

But it's not just China that does business with Iran.

There's actually a whole list of countries.

I'll read them.

China, of course, the UAE.

Turkey, Iraq, India, Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan,

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Syria, Oman, Qatar, Malaysia,

Indonesia, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and France.

They all have some trade relationships with Iran.

So, is this 25% tariff going to be imposed on products

from all of those countries or not?

The tweet was effective immediately.

Well, it's been 24 hours or so since that tweet.

Is American customers applying a special 25% tariff

onto all goods coming through customs as of now?

I suspect not.

So, again, there's a difference between or a gap between the tweet

and the action.

But I think the response was not necessarily well thought through

because there are many unintended consequences.

I think it was an expression of frustration

that the regime change operation did not actually achieve its objectives.

I think that there's another frustration in all of that, too.

President Trump clearly has a been his bonnet about Iran.

He's not unlike many Americans of his generation, right?

Is that a real set against Iran?

But I think one of the real frustrations is actually the fact

that Russian technologies were successfully deployed to undermine

the principle coordinating technology

that had been smuggled into Iran to facilitate

this regime change operation.

And, of course, that technology comes from,

on again, off again, Bestie Elon Musk.

So, there's a lot of frustration in Washington.

And why 25%?

Why not 35?

Why not 50?

You know, why not 100?

I mean, it's just...

It seems to be very symptomatic that whenever something happens

that President Trump is unhappy about,

and it involves some third country,

the response is basically the threat of some sanction on somebody,

or the threat of some tariffs on somebody else.

In fact, President Trump just said that

any anti-terrorist position is basically

a pro-Chinese position,

which is a crazy thing to say.

But I think he also implicitly,

it's United States kind of implicitly admitting

he has lost in an open market, free market competition,

with China.

That's why he needs tariffs.

This is a reversal from like 19th century,

or early 20th century,

with United States going around demanding open-door policy

to China, for example,

to manage China, open its doors to all the foreign goods

and capital flows, et cetera.

And now it's United States that's putting up areas everywhere.

Look, it seems to be coming around, doesn't it, Ron?

Because in a liberation day,

it was all about rejuvenating American manufacturing,

bringing the jobs home, reshoring companies,

re-industrializing America in the heartland.

Well, none of it's happened.

In fact, manufacturing employment continues to fall.

But there's another question, too,

and that is,

is the administration's serious economic vision,

one in which American workers

are making t-shirts and jocks and socks.

Is that actually the serious vision?

Is the vision that American workers will somehow be mass-man

and manufacturing furniture by hand?

Is that the vision?

Because if that's the vision,

then America will never be globally competitive.

Now, of course, you can put tariffs right up

and ensure that imported alternatives are so expensive

that no one can afford to buy them,

and so they're forced to buy locally.

But it will be a higher cost-lower standard of living society.

So, is this the economic vision?

If the economic vision is to modernize industry,

then it's actually going to need to import a lot of things.

It's going to have to import everything it needs

to upgrade the electricity network.

From copper for the wires through to transformers.

It can't do that without importing capital equipment from China.

Does it want to have automated factories

that are high precision, high efficient low-energy?

Well, if it wants to do that,

it's either going to have to get the equipment

from expensive supplies,

some of which are in America,

but others will be in Japan and Germany and other parts of Europe.

Or it's going to have to find lower cost options from,

let me think, China.

Is that what it wants to do?

And so I don't think that there's any real clarity.

There's actually a cultural,

a culturally driven,

and an emotionally driven economic strategy,

if you can call it that,

which is really a politics of nostalgia.

We're going to make America great again.

And the idea of great is actually this cartoon image

of what America was like in 1950.

But this is 2025.

And I don't think there actually is a clear sense

of what America 2025 needs to look like,

or what more to the point America 2035, 2045 needs to look like.

Everything at the moment is defined

about what America must do to stop China.

And that doesn't advance America.

In fact, putting all of your efforts into trying to stop someone else

actually takes a lot of effort away from the things you could do

to make the quality of life of your own citizens a lot better.

But this is where America's at.

America's at a point car where it's domestic tensions and problems

are spilling over globally.

And the reason they spill over globally is because the

political elite want to distract people

from the domestic causes of the problems,

and they want to project the causes onto others in the world,

and at the same time generate a sense of cultural nationalism

that galvanizes a population against someone else.

Don't look to Washington for your problems,

let alone your solutions,

blame it on someone else.

And that's why until America can actually find a way

to come to peace with itself,

to fix its economic structures,

so that it's a fair applies,

a more productive place,

and a place where people actually have social mobility.

Well, America will always be

not at peace with the rest of the world.

But warwick, it's so much easier just to blame China and immigrants.

You know, that's the try and true method

for any U.S. politician expects to be

in heart economic times,

just blame China and immigrants.

And that's exactly what they're doing right now.

And I don't know whether it's working out for them,

but the dickhead Trump elected,

and then he had another three years to go,

unfortunately.

Yeah, so what is your crystal ball

for, you know, the rest of 2026?

How do you think, you know,

all these effort of Trump lashing out

to preserve the U.S. hegemony will play out?

Well, it's still messy.

Well, what are you messy, right?

So, you know, I asked a question before the,

well, what then question, right?

You know, declare mission accomplished,

but it's actually the what then issues

that create the real long lasting problems.

And the United States actually doesn't have

any coherent answer to the what then

for all of its interventions,

which leads you to think that in fact,

these interventions are not of any serious

substantial strategic nature at all,

and the expressions of the sort of deep anxieties

that the United States elite is feeling at the moment.

Let's not forget that this year,

2026 is a midterm election year.

President Trump has said on a number of occasions

that it is imperative that the Republicans hold

onto the House and the Senate,

because if not, he will be impeached.

He is deeply driven by personal requirements

to survive this electoral cycle.

And that will lead to, I think,

increased ratiness in responses.

Lots of populism.

So the promises to, you know,

bring down credit card fees, for example,

this one, you know,

that there was that other stuff about them,

you know, extending mortgages to make houses more affordable.

All these sorts of things will be rolled out

to try to hold the base together,

that something's being done.

And if the Democrats oppose these things all the better,

because he's just going to say,

I tried and I need more votes to push it through.

So domestic considerations will,

as usual, be overwhelmingly critical.

The international staff is really a function of all of that.

Right? So a president who is experiencing

economic problems at home

will seek to muscle up militarily abroad.

And this is about building the stature

of the United States,

putting up the flag around which everybody can rally,

and imploring people in a sense to vote for the president

because the president is taking on the world.

And so there will be,

I think, more messiness,

because there's no coherence in it.

It is more what I've just said,

reckiness, which means, I think,

basically, a lot more mess

that will have long-lasting implications.

The mop-up will be difficult.

And I mean, and then on top of that,

you've got at the moment a mooted trip to Beijing in April.

Now, you know,

I think we've seen how China is dealing with all of this.

It's incredibly calm,

and unflappable.

It must be incredibly frustrating

for a politician who clearly thrives

on the cut and thrust of energy

and things to engage with a counterparty

who is so unflappable.

And by China,

will I think respond in a very cold calm manner?

It is going to be very consistent

in terms of what it's doing.

It really does have a very long-term view,

and it's not because there's some sort of cultural sense of, you know,

China thinks in millennia and all of that.

It's because China actually has developed, I think,

a sense that history has powerful forces

that individuals and even countries

can't actually change the course of.

But what you've got to do is figure out how you go with the flow

and how you might adapt to the ebbs

and the currents of history,

but you can't just willy-nilly go and enforce yourself on others.

And so China, I think, has reached a conclusion

that its position is strong.

It has solid support from around the world

because it is the stable institution,

if you will now,

around which global economic development can take place.

And it will hold its ground

when it comes to the United States.

You know, as I said earlier,

it's a nuclear power.

And, you know,

being a nuclear power with a strong economy

means that you will hold yourself

as a peer to the United States

and you will be treating the United States respectfully as a peer.

But you'll also expect the United States to treat you the same way.

And I think we're going to see a little bit of that as well.

But Donald Trump's going to have to sell all of this

as big wins coming into November.

Well, we already have the Canadian Prime Minister,

who went to China,

who is explicit goal of reducing dependence

on this trade relationship with the United States.

I mean, I think it's now...

There's two countries called that have deep relationships

to the United States, actually, from a trade point of view.

And, you know, Europe does as well,

but far less than it used to have.

And that's Canada and Mexico.

It has, actually, over the last 25 years,

progressively diversified away from the United States.

The US provides about, from memory,

now 12% of global import demand,

substantially less than what it did 50 years ago.

And it's just not as important in relative terms anymore.

That's all it is.

The structure of the world economy has changed.

The United States place within that has also changed.

These are not forces that you can somehow turn around

through sheer will.

These are the consequences of long, slow transformations

in structural competency within economic systems,

with people with the right knowledge and skills.

You know, we've talked about the fact that the United States now

has literacy and numeracy standards,

which are going down.

And they're actually not the standards that you need

for a modern industrial economy,

a digitalized industrial economy.

But now, you don't fix that with a click of a finger.

You're certainly not going to fix it with a few imported smarties

from around the world, mainly because part of your own country

doesn't want them, right?

But you're going to need to invest in a whole generation

of human capacity development, a whole generation.

This won't fix for 20 years.

This is the hard yards that the United States actually

needs to embark upon.

The fact that it's going through this period of chronic

displacement anxiety, I hope, is actually the moment

in which it comes to terms with these realities.

Not that it's an unimportant country,

but that it is just one of the big countries

that must begin to behave as a normal country.

I agree. I agree completely.

But it will remain to be seen whether

the U.S. finally accept its place

at just one of many polls in a multipolar world.

And thank you again, Professor Powell,

for making your time to speak to us.

I certainly have learned a lot every time speaking with you.

And I look forward to talk to you in the future,

because I'm sure there will be more things going on

the rest of the year.

For people who want to follow you on social media

or elsewhere, where would they go?

Yeah, my sub-stacks, probably the best place for sort of

more serious stuff.

WarwickPowell.substack.com

and people can find me on X as well with a handle

at B-A-O-S-H-A-O-S-H-A-N.

That's my Chinese name, where I'm a little bit more irreverent

and a little bit more flippant.

But I think that that probably suits that particular medium

a bit more.

So they're the two places.

And of course, I've got that little channel of mine,

which is really my way of engaging with research colleagues.

But people can find that.

I'm sure in the link below, because I can't even remember what

T-I-O talks.

That's right.

T-I-O talks with WarwickPowell.

So yeah.

Thank you, Dr. Bob.

And thanks everyone for listening in.

Until next time.

Okay.

T-I-O-S-H-B-