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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Authoughts podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. Isn't Joe? I love

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Speaker 2: doing American history episodes in part because I feel like

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Speaker 2: my own knowledge of American history is fairly simplistic. And

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Speaker 2: I do remember a huge culture shock when I went

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Speaker 2: from high school to college. And I think I told

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Speaker 2: this story before. So I went to college university in London,

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Speaker 2: and I had always heard the American Revolution described as

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Speaker 2: the American Revolution, right, and then as soon as.

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Speaker 3: I get to the UK, what did they call it?

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Speaker 3: What they call it?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they call it, I think the American War of Independence,

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Speaker 2: which has a different tonality too, definitely, but it definitely

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Speaker 2: demonstrates just how subjective tensions, conflicts, and policies can actually

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Speaker 2: be in history, depending on who you're talking to. And

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Speaker 2: we're going to talk about not just a pretty subjective

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Speaker 2: American policy, but one that has been reinterpreted and amended

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Speaker 2: many many times.

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Speaker 4: In the past. Right.

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Speaker 5: So obviously for us this has been a venezuela week,

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Speaker 5: and there's all sorts of immediate questions that are sort

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Speaker 5: of most directly relevant to we've been talking about the

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Speaker 5: market elements mostly, we talked about oil, we talked about

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Speaker 5: the sovereign debt, et cetera. But then there's all these questions,

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Speaker 5: of course about international law and what is legitimate and

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Speaker 5: what is illegitimate. And I mean, I couldn't even believe

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Speaker 5: the headline when I saw it that we had arrested

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Speaker 5: I know, I was flabbergant.

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Speaker 3: I just the idea that.

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Speaker 5: If we'd arrested a head of state from another country

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Speaker 5: is just absolutely job smacking. And then people talk about

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Speaker 5: international law, and then they say, this international law even

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Speaker 5: exist and so forth, and what it feels like to

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Speaker 5: some extent truly uncharted territory here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, uncharted territory. But people are drawing on a parallel, yes,

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Speaker 2: which is the Monroe doctrine. Yes, the Monroe doctrine of

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Speaker 2: I think it was eighteen twenty three, I want to say,

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Speaker 2: basically said that America would assert its dominance over the

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Speaker 2: entire American region. And since then it's changed a number

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Speaker 2: of times. But the way it's being talked about now

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Speaker 2: is as the Trump corollary or the Donroe doctrine, which

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Speaker 2: was described in the National Security Strategy Document that the

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Speaker 2: Trump administration put out back in December, and that one's

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Speaker 2: a little different. So we keep seeing these amendments to

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Speaker 2: the doctrine. By the way, I should just say, do

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Speaker 2: you remember back in twenty thirteen, John Kerry explicitly said

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Speaker 2: that the Monroe doctrine was over, it was dead.

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Speaker 3: I don't remember that.

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Speaker 2: And now it's back, it's arisen.

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Speaker 3: Some version of it is certainly back. You know.

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Speaker 5: It's very interesting because the US clearly has a longstanding

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Speaker 5: history of various operations, overt and covert, of involving itself,

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Speaker 5: shall we say, with the politics and domestic affairs of

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Speaker 5: our neighbors, particularly in the South and Central America and

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Speaker 5: so forth. I suppose any country is naturally going to

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Speaker 5: have some security interest in what's happening. It's proximity. I

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Speaker 5: don't think that itself is particularly weird. I really like

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Speaker 5: this term the Donro doctrine because there's two things. There's

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Speaker 5: this long standing history that the US wants to have

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Speaker 5: a role to play in everyone else's politics among our neighbors.

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Speaker 5: But then there's this other element with Donald Trump specifically,

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Speaker 5: where it feels like a lot of our policy and

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Speaker 5: principle is Essentially, he's the president and it's in his head,

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Speaker 5: and his ideas are legitimate because they're his ideas and

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Speaker 5: he's the president, so yes, there's precedent, there's norms and

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Speaker 5: so forth, and then there's this sort of novelty that

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Speaker 5: everyone's trying to read his mind.

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Speaker 3: And we're in this very very strange.

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Speaker 5: Situation which has come up on our last two episodes,

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Speaker 5: in which you have the president talking about oil.

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Speaker 2: And ex implicitly yeah, and yet people.

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Speaker 3: Say are like skeptical. It's very strange.

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Speaker 5: It's a very strange situation because you have torpiicly it's like, oh,

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Speaker 5: he admitted it, it's about oil, and yet everyone's like,

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Speaker 5: is there's something else in play beyond here.

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Speaker 3: It's the total inversion for.

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Speaker 5: How people have talked in the past about the legitimacy

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Speaker 5: or illegitimacy of how we involve ourselves internationally.

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Speaker 2: That was part of the original Monroe doctrine as well.

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Speaker 2: There was this weird tension between like pro democracy, anti colonialism,

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Speaker 2: keep the European powers out, yeah, and America basically kind

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Speaker 2: of creating its own in formal colonies. That tension has

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Speaker 2: always been there, and we should talk about that we

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Speaker 2: should talk about whether or not there might be, you know,

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Speaker 2: different strategies at play in Venezuela, different goals. And I'm

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Speaker 2: happy to say we do, in fact have the perfect guest.

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Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Greg Grandin. He is

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Speaker 2: a professor of history at Yale and the author of

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Speaker 2: the new book America America, a New History of the

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Speaker 2: New World. So Greg, welcome to odd Lots. Thanks so

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Speaker 2: much for coming on.

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Speaker 4: Oh thanks for having me.

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Speaker 2: How important has the Monroe Doctrine actually been in the

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Speaker 2: history of American policy and development.

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Speaker 6: Well, it's certainly been influential, and it's certainly been cited

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Speaker 6: repeatedly over the years. I mean, first, I think we

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Speaker 6: need to back up and say exactly what makes it

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Speaker 6: a doctrine?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and we just never voted on, no court ratified it.

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Speaker 6: It didn't actually assume the status of doctrine until a

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Speaker 6: couple of decades after it was pronounced in eighteen twenty three,

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Speaker 6: when James Monroe was president at the time. And this

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Speaker 6: was around the time that most Spanish American nations were

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Speaker 6: breaking from Spain and their successful wars of independence, which

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Speaker 6: were much longer and dragged out than the US War

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Speaker 6: for Independence. By eighteen twenty three, it was fairly clear

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Speaker 6: that Spain was going to lose its empire, and the

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Speaker 6: United States finally decided that was going to issue a statement.

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Speaker 6: And you have to understand that the doctrine itself, or

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Speaker 6: Monroe's statement, it's really just a kind of you know,

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Speaker 6: four or five non contiguous paragraphs in the State of

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Speaker 6: the Union Address of six thousand words.

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Speaker 4: You know, you have to cut a.

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Speaker 6: Cherry pick through the State of the Union Address to

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Speaker 6: find what is the doctrine. And it's hesitant, it's cautious.

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Speaker 6: The United States wasn't really sure where it wanted to

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Speaker 6: land on any given issue, and there were obviously tensions

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Speaker 6: and differences of opinions within Monroe's cabinet. I mean, to

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Speaker 6: put it in more modern terms, you had isolationists, you

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Speaker 6: had internationalists, you had unilateralists, or you had different people

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Speaker 6: thinking of different ways on how the United.

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Speaker 4: States should address.

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Speaker 6: And deal with on the one hand, these new republics

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Speaker 6: that were coming into being in South America and in

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Speaker 6: Central America and in Mexico, and on the other hand

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Speaker 6: their former colonial rulers in Europe. And so it was

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Speaker 6: actually written by John Quincy Adams, who was Monroe's Secretary

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Speaker 6: of State, And as I said, it was insert in

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Speaker 6: different parts, and it's true, it is a bit of

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Speaker 6: a contradictory document. On the one hand, it announces that

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Speaker 6: the United States considers the independence of Latin America at

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Speaker 6: the time Spanish America to be irreversible, and that it

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Speaker 6: was recognizing a number of states that had established effective

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Speaker 6: sovereignty and unbroken with Spain. Did warned off Europe, not

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Speaker 6: just Spain, but any country Spain might recruit to help them,

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Speaker 6: or the Holy Roman Empire or Great Britain against trying

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Speaker 6: to conquer or reconquer the Americas, any part of the Americas.

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Speaker 6: So that's the kind of anti colonial part of the doctrine.

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Speaker 6: And again in quotation marks the doctrine. Then other paragraphs

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Speaker 6: said that the United States and Spanish America, being of

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Speaker 6: the Western hemisphere, shared certain special interests and ideals, although

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Speaker 6: it didn't specify what those interests and ideals were, but

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Speaker 6: people kind of presume they meant the difference between monarchy

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Speaker 6: and republicanism. But at least there was a kind of

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Speaker 6: gesture to a kind of shared fraternity of nations that

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Speaker 6: had common interests, and so that's another part of the

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Speaker 6: Monroe doctrine. And then there was the part that was

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Speaker 6: referenced that it didn't exactly grant the United States much

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Speaker 6: power in terms of leasing the hemisphere. It was a

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Speaker 6: vague sentence that said the United States would interpret events

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Speaker 6: that happened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere on how they

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Speaker 6: bear on the quote peace and happiness of the United States.

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Speaker 4: It was.

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Speaker 7: So so it was a document that could appeal to

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Speaker 7: a lot of different constituencies within the United States, like

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Speaker 7: Thomas Jefferson's expansionism, this notion that you know, the New

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Speaker 7: World was shared a certain unity of purpose.

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Speaker 6: John Quincy Adams was a famous isolationist and unilateralist, and

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Speaker 6: so there was this notion of the United States could

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Speaker 6: act if it wanted, if it's sort of threat. And

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Speaker 6: you have somebody like Henry Kilay who imagined a kind

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Speaker 6: of large American system, a mercantile system in which the

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Speaker 6: US would be a great manufacturing base in Latin America,

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Speaker 6: Spanish America would supply re sources in order to rival

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Speaker 6: in the United Kingdom and the Empires of Europe. But

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Speaker 6: the point being it really wasn't much of anything. Latin

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Speaker 6: Americans did like it. I mean, they had a lot

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Speaker 6: of time to read. It was a different period. There

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Speaker 6: were no iPhones, you know, people read closely and said, oh,

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Speaker 6: that's an interesting paragraph. And what they read and liked

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Speaker 6: mostly was they thought it was They read it as

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Speaker 6: a kind of anarchust brief for their own anti colonialism.

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Speaker 6: Spanish Americans were very much vocal in their idea that

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Speaker 6: the doctrine of conquest was no longer valid, the doctrine

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Speaker 6: of discovery was no longer valid. There was no undiscovered

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Speaker 6: land in the New World waiting for Europeans to stumble

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Speaker 6: upon and claim as their own, and they read the

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Speaker 6: Monroe Doctrine as largely supporting that position, especially the part

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Speaker 6: that warned Europe against trying to reconquer any countries that

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Speaker 6: had claimed their independence. But over the years it was

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Speaker 6: interpreted it in a different way. Politicians and diplomats, particularly

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Speaker 6: in skirmishes with Europe, say Great Britain, when Great Britain

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Speaker 6: wanted to build a canal through Central America. That was

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Speaker 6: around the time that those kind of vague, scattered remarks

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Speaker 6: were elevated to the level of doctrine, and it became

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Speaker 6: the Monroe Doctrine or the Doctrine of Monroe, and from

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Speaker 6: that point forward it was progressively incorporated into something we

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Speaker 6: might call customary law. I mean, again, what makes a

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Speaker 6: doctrine a doctrine and who gets to enforce it? It really

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Speaker 6: is just a question of power. It goes to what

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Speaker 6: you were talking about in the introduction about what is

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Speaker 6: international law and how is it enforced? I mean, most

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Speaker 6: countries have statements of principles. The United States gets its

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Speaker 6: own doctrine.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, Because, like to some extent,

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Speaker 5: when I think about American involvement, it's like.

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Speaker 3: All around the world at any time.

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Speaker 5: We sort of feel the need to fight against communists, right,

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Speaker 5: that seems to be a very common thing, and fight

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Speaker 5: for democracies or any country that sort of has something

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Speaker 5: similar to our we have government or something like that.

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Speaker 5: We seem to be on principle we have to be

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Speaker 5: the ones or we feel compelled to intervene. And then

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Speaker 5: here is this geographical element that seems very different. Can

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Speaker 5: you talk a little bit about the intersection of the

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Speaker 5: geographical impulse to sort of exert your influence among your

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Speaker 5: neighbors and how that intersects with this other I don't

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Speaker 5: know what we call it, principle, a doctrine, etc. Where

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Speaker 5: there are just certain kinds of leaders that we don't like,

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Speaker 5: and when they're in power, we do what we can

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Speaker 5: to eliminate them.

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Speaker 6: Yes, and this ghost of the history of the United States,

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Speaker 6: its relationship to its own hemisphere and.

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Speaker 4: The power that it is exerted over the.

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Speaker 6: Latin America and Spanish American Brazil, and then efforts at

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Speaker 6: times to go global, to become a more global superpower.

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Speaker 6: There's you know, there's long different iterations of this in

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Speaker 6: which the United States kind of tries to escape the

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Speaker 6: boundaries of its hemisphere and become a world power at

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Speaker 6: different moments, and then and then it falls back to

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Speaker 6: the Western hemisphere. This has happened over and over again.

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Speaker 6: It happened with the Great Depression. It happened in some

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Speaker 6: ways with you know, after Vietnam, the United States turned

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Speaker 6: back to Latin America. It happened after the certainly after

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Speaker 6: the catastrophic War on Terror. I mean, in many ways,

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Speaker 6: what's happening now with Trump is an example of this,

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Speaker 6: this kind of you know, Trump is his own problem

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Speaker 6: and a lot of the things that are wrong is

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Speaker 6: of his doing, but he did inherit a country that

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Speaker 6: was in profound crisis as a result of the catastrophic

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Speaker 6: War on Terror, the financial crisis, the inability of politicians

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Speaker 6: to deal with corporate wealth and inequality. And so there

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Speaker 6: is a kind of turning back to Latin America. And

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Speaker 6: we can get to this a little bit later if

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Speaker 6: you want. But Trump's actions in Venezuela are a perfect

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Speaker 6: example of what happens when you know the United States,

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Speaker 6: you know it's bid to go global, fails, and it

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Speaker 6: has to return to its hemisphere. And that's why the

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Speaker 6: Monroe doctrine is so important. Latin America is the first

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Speaker 6: place in which the United States got a sense of

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Speaker 6: itself as an overseas power. You know, it was able

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Speaker 6: to project its power, its financial power, it's cultural power,

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Speaker 6: it's military power beyond its own borders. And even saying

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Speaker 6: that is a little bit tricky because the United States

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Speaker 6: borders were always changing. I mean the United States borders,

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Speaker 6: the expansive nature of the United States where it actually

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Speaker 6: took Texas and took Mexico. So it wasn't just that

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Speaker 6: it was dealing with Latin America. It was literally gobbling

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Speaker 6: up Latin America on its way to the Pacific, but

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Speaker 6: setting that as working within the hemisphere and learning how

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Speaker 6: to deal with other nations. Latin America is absolutely central

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Speaker 6: to that, and that's one of the reasons why the

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Speaker 6: Monroe Doctrine rises in importance, because it supposedly provides a.

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Speaker 4: Kind of guideline for that.

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Speaker 6: Now, over the years that Monroe Doctrine itself has expanded,

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Speaker 6: Presidents explicitly expanded over a boundary dispute in Venezuela and

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Speaker 6: Guyana in which the United States was supporting Venezuela and

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Speaker 6: Great Britain was supporting British Guyana. Grover Cleveland declared that

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Speaker 6: the Monroe Doctrine granted the United States absolute sovereignty over

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Speaker 6: the whole Western hemisphere. That's a pretty big jump from

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Speaker 6: you know, we're gonna interpret any event that happened somewhere

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Speaker 6: on our peace and happiness.

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Speaker 4: There's on a peason happiness.

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Speaker 6: To buy Fiat our will is law in the hemisphere.

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Speaker 6: And then in nineteen oh four, along similar lines, Theodore Rosa,

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Speaker 6: when he was president, he expanded the doctrine with his

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Speaker 6: own corollary to what he called international police power. To

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Speaker 6: suppress chronic wrongdoing in Latin America. Now, I must say

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Speaker 6: that most of that chronic wrongdoing was provoked by US

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Speaker 6: banks and US mercenaries and US oil extractors. And you know,

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Speaker 6: there's a long history and of like forcing loans on

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Speaker 6: countries that they can't pay off, and it leads to

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Speaker 6: all sorts of instability than civil war.

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Speaker 4: And then the US government is called in to.

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Speaker 6: Settle the problem that these private interests created. So Roosevelt

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Speaker 6: expands the Monroe doctrine into a kind of standing universal

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Speaker 6: police warrant that will allow the United States that act

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Speaker 6: whenever it will and whenever it wants.

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Speaker 2: So didn't FDR also reinterpret it, But it didn't last

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Speaker 2: long another Roosevelt reinterpretation.

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Speaker 6: No, not really, but FDR actually reverse course one hundred

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Speaker 6: and eighty degrees.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 6: In nineteen thirty three, he renounced the right of the

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Speaker 6: United States to intervene in his longstanding demands by Latin

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Speaker 6: American jurists and politicians and diplomats to give up the

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Speaker 6: right of conquest. I mean, the United States continued to

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Speaker 6: hold on to the right of conquest throughout the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 6: Basically justified the war with Mexico Indian removal. The right

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Speaker 6: of conquest was taught in US textbooks up until the

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Speaker 6: nineteen twenties. Latin America had revoked the right of conquest

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Speaker 6: with its independence. Because Spanish American nations came into the

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Speaker 6: world together already a league of nations, seven nations that

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Speaker 6: had to learn to live with each other on a

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Speaker 6: crowded continent. The United States came into being a single

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Speaker 6: nation on the eastern coast of a great land mass

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Speaker 6: that it imagined as empty.

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Speaker 4: Obviously it wasn't empty.

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Speaker 6: There was Native Americans, that was Mexican, and spanions, but

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Speaker 6: the United States. There was no doubt that the United

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Speaker 6: States was going to reach the Pacific, and it held

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Speaker 6: on and use the doctrine of conquests in order to

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Speaker 6: justify taking all of that land. Latin America was constantly

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Speaker 6: trying to force the United States to accept that the

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Speaker 6: doctrine of conquest was abrogated, was void, and it wasn't

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Speaker 6: until nineteen thirty three that it did. And it was

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Speaker 6: Roosevelt who did that, and he recognized the absolute sovereignty

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Speaker 6: of Latin American nations and he gave up the right

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Speaker 6: of intervention. And that was an enormous turnaround in US power.

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Speaker 6: It didn't weaken US power by any means. It actually

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Speaker 6: strengthened it because I focused it. It taught the United

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Speaker 6: States how to exercise power more efficiently, and it organ

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Speaker 6: Latin America.

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Speaker 4: It was ten years of goodwill.

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Speaker 6: That really got Latin America kind of on board for

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Speaker 6: the coming war against fascism. There was a lot of

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Speaker 6: fear among strategists within the Franklin Roosevelt administration that all

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Speaker 6: of Latin America could have gone the way of Spain.

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Speaker 6: I mean, a lot of the sociological variables that led

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Speaker 6: to the rise of fascism or.

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Speaker 4: Falangeism in Spain were present in Latin America. There was a.

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Speaker 8: Large group of servile peasants, small group of land owners,

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Speaker 8: patrician conservative Catholics, increasingly militant unions and peasants threatening the

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Speaker 8: power of the landed class.

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Speaker 6: You know, that was Spain, but was also Latin America

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Speaker 6: writ large. And if Latin America fell to Falangism, then

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Speaker 6: you know, the United States would be kind of cornered

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Speaker 6: between Nazism, fascism, and Falangism. Roosevelt's conceding to Latin America's

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Speaker 6: demand to give up the right. Intervention basically tilted the

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Speaker 6: playing field to the left in Latin America. You know,

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Speaker 6: Roosevelt tolerated economic nationalists. He let revolutionaries in Mexico nationalized

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Speaker 6: standard oil and appropriate massive amounts of US owned property,

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Speaker 6: and they created an enormous goodwill and set the stage

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Speaker 6: for the United States's entrance into World War II from

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Speaker 6: a position of strengthen you and continental unity.

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Speaker 5: So you mentioned, okay at various times the jurists in

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Speaker 5: Latin America, and they push back against this notion of

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Speaker 5: American absolute sovereignty in these fights. This gets to a

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Speaker 5: question I see it debated on Twitter a lot. What

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Speaker 5: do you say to someone who says international law doesn't exist?

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Speaker 5: What is international law doesn't exist? And how is this

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Speaker 5: term useful or not?

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Speaker 6: Well, I'm an a historian, I'm not a lawyer a jurist,

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Speaker 6: so I tend to see things in turns of power relations.

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Speaker 6: So I think I see law as a moral venue

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Speaker 6: that is created, that creates a set of normative principles

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Speaker 6: in which people can fight over. So, you know, obviously

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Speaker 6: the international law doesn't exist in some void in which

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Speaker 6: absolute justices is.

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Speaker 4: Going to happen.

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Speaker 6: You know, the most powerful country decides the exception, and

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Speaker 6: you know, the United States. To the degree that countries

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Speaker 6: like the United States submit to a system of international law,

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Speaker 6: it usually was during moments of weakness, like when Roosevelt

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Speaker 6: did it in nineteen thirty three, at the height of

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Speaker 6: the Great Depression and with fascism on the rise. But

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Speaker 6: it does create these norms and these principles that people

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Speaker 6: fight and argue over, and so yes, and the liberal

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Speaker 6: international law order that has supposedly governed the world since

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Speaker 6: the creation of the United Nations in nineteen forty five.

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Speaker 6: The hypocrisies and the variances and the exceptions are many,

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Speaker 6: and there's always workarounds, and the United States and the

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Speaker 6: Soviet Union certainly found ways to skirt, you know, any

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Speaker 6: kind of limits that were placed on them by international law.

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Speaker 6: But it does kind of create a venue right, a

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Speaker 6: moral arena in which right and wrong could be understood

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Speaker 6: and argued over. You know, there's very other, very little

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Speaker 6: recourse for poor and weak nations to defend themselves. I mean,

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Speaker 6: we can go back to ducidities right, the strong to

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Speaker 6: do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must,

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Speaker 6: and the conceit that there is such a thing as

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Speaker 6: international law that is somehow transcendent of power relations is

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Speaker 6: you know, it might just be a conceit, but it

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Speaker 6: still at least creates terms on which nations could deal

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Speaker 6: with each other. And you know, and again Latin America

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Speaker 6: and the United States is absolutely a perfect example of that.

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Speaker 6: For Latin America's commit meant to sovereignty and cooperative relations

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Speaker 6: was largely forged in relationships living under what was becoming

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Speaker 6: the most powerful nation and world history, as it moved

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Speaker 6: across the Pacific, as it took Texas, as it took Mexico,

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Speaker 6: as it took Cuba, as it took Puerto Rico, as

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Speaker 6: it took Panama. You know, so you had these jurists

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Speaker 6: like writing law books and coming up with these legal

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Speaker 6: principles and the way they get implemented though often is

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Speaker 6: really about power. So you know, Argentine the legal theorist,

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Speaker 6: for instance, Luis Drago, for instance, at the early twentieth century,

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Speaker 6: when Italian and British and German war boats were showing

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Speaker 6: up at Venezuela trying to collect debt, debt that had

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Speaker 6: gone back to the colony that European banks were claiming

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Speaker 6: that Venezuela owed because of the Spanish crown, you know,

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Speaker 6: contracted loans in seventeen seventy six, and whenever they did,

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Speaker 6: Drago issued a principle, the Drago doctrine, that you cannot

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Speaker 6: use coercion to collect debt. Now, the United States collected

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Speaker 6: plenty of debt through.

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Speaker 4: Coercion, and we could.

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Speaker 6: They can look at Donald Trump and what's going on

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Speaker 6: in Venezuela right now. But the United States kind of

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Speaker 6: liked the Drago doctrinn They didn't want Italian and German

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Speaker 6: and British warships flitting around the Caribbean bombing the coast

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Speaker 6: of Colombia or Venezuela trying to seize hold of the

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Speaker 6: custom house to get the receipts. They thought that, okay,

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Speaker 6: so we'll support the Drago doctrine. This, this will give

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Speaker 6: us a leverage and keeping Europe out of our backyard.

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Speaker 6: So you kind of see the back and forth between

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Speaker 6: law as a kind of moral principle that transcends social power.

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Speaker 6: But then it's hot, you know, it's obviously subordinated and

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Speaker 6: implemented through social power.

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Speaker 2: What's your sense of the actual goals behind the Venezuela

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Speaker 2: move because if you look at the National Security Strategy document,

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Speaker 2: they talk about the US reasserting its pre eminence in

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Speaker 2: the Western hemisphere. And I don't know how you measure

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Speaker 2: pre eminence, right, that seems a pretty broad term. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 2: Trump has talked very explicitly about Venezuelan oil belonging to

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Speaker 2: the US. There's no regime change on the horizon. They're

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Speaker 2: not pressing for that. So what is the ultimate goal

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Speaker 2: of all of this, What are they aiming for?

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Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's odd to say, as I said earlier,

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Speaker 6: Trump is doing what a number of its predecessors have

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Speaker 6: done during moments of the US kind of recession of

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Speaker 6: US power in the world. They turned back to Latin America.

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Speaker 6: But in some ways it's pure Trump, right, It's just.

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Speaker 4: This theatrical spectacle. You know, he said it was about oil.

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Speaker 6: Well, first it was about immigration, then it was about gangs,

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Speaker 6: then it was about fent and oil and drugs, and

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Speaker 6: then he landed on oil, getting our oil back. Oil

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Speaker 6: is trading at an all time low. Maybe not an

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Speaker 6: all time low, but it's pretty low. The market is

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Speaker 6: filled glotted with oil, and to get Venezuela back online

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Speaker 6: is going to cost an enormous amount of capital investment,

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Speaker 6: and there's not a lot of oil companies that are

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Speaker 6: rushing you're going to rush into Venezuela, then do that?

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 6: I think Trump there was just playing to his base.

435
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Speaker 6: I think he was, you know, I think his base

436
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Speaker 6: likes the idea of Trump as a pirate, Trump as

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Speaker 6: a colonial plunderer, you know, and.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we'll get our oil back.

439
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 6: You know, just like with the Iraq war in two

440
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:50,320
Speaker 6: thousand and three, There's always ways to get oil, right,

441
00:26:50,359 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 6: There's many ways to get oil.

442
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 4: Like, you don't have to.

443
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 6: Start a global war on terror in order to secure

444
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,480
Speaker 6: Iraqi oil. You could have just you know, made a

445
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 6: deal with I'm saying and got the oil. You could

446
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:04,400
Speaker 6: have did the same thing with you know. So material

447
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 6: interests are always understood through a prism of ideology, and

448
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 6: so part of it was that Venezuela has been in

449
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:12,600
Speaker 6: crisis for a long time.

450
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 4: And that's a whole nother story for a whole nother show.

451
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 6: And you know, a hegemon like the United States can't

452
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:21,640
Speaker 6: have that kind of crisis. I mean, millions of Venezuelans

453
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:23,439
Speaker 6: were fleeing the country I mean, you don't have to

454
00:27:23,440 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 6: be carrying water for Trump's nativism and its border policies

455
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,119
Speaker 6: at all to say that that kind of disruption and

456
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 6: that kind of chaos can't go on forever in a

457
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:36,919
Speaker 6: regional hedgemon's hinterland, and so you have to kind of

458
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 6: do something. The question is what are you going to do?

459
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 6: And Trump seems to like these targeted attacks, right, whether

460
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 6: they're in Iran, whether in Nigeria. You know, these one

461
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:49,119
Speaker 6: and done attacks, and I think he was sold on

462
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 6: the idea that, you know, if they just took out

463
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 6: Maduro and left the Maduda state intact, because it is

464
00:27:55,520 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 6: very much ingrained and embedded in Venezuelan society. I think

465
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 6: there were a couple of intelligent people in Marco Rubio's

466
00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 6: State department that didn't want to see a repeat of

467
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 6: two thousand and three with what happened after Debeedification in.

468
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 4: Iraq, the complete chaos.

469
00:28:12,680 --> 00:28:15,239
Speaker 6: So Trump was convinced that, you know, you do this

470
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 6: one and done thing and then you just kind of

471
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 6: continue to threadn in the country in order to it

472
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 6: corresponds to his way of being. There's no morality, there's

473
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:31,360
Speaker 6: no normative sense, there's no idealism. You know, normally when

474
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 6: presidents turned back to Latin America to kind of regroup

475
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 6: or rebalance after global crises, they kind of come up

476
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 6: with new kind of world views to widen their electoral base,

477
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 6: that deepen their coalition to you know, they try to

478
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 6: create a sense of hegemony.

479
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 4: Right.

480
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 6: So you had FDR using Latin America to put forth

481
00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 6: a kind of social democratic continental New Deal. Then Reagan

482
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 6: after Vietnam a kind of muscular anti communist liberalism, but

483
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 6: understood in moral terms, kind of reassertion of American purpose.

484
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 6: American sets of itself as a defender of world freedom,

485
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 6: you know, and these become kind of governing ideologies that

486
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 6: are durable. They last, I mean, the New Deal coalition

487
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 6: lasted for decades up until the nineteen seventies. Reaganism lasted,

488
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 6: you know, at least until Baraco bum if not even

489
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,719
Speaker 6: even further. In terms of the worldview, I mean, Trump

490
00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:42,000
Speaker 6: isn't even trying to cobble together a new worldview, right,

491
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 6: Trump isn't coming up with any kind of you know,

492
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 6: he's not doing it for freedom. He's not doing it

493
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 6: for individual rights. He's not he's certainly not doing it

494
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 6: for social democracy. You know, he's demanding tribute, right and

495
00:29:55,120 --> 00:29:58,360
Speaker 6: just trying to turn Venezuela into a vassal state. And

496
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 6: I think that speaks to the moral emptiness of him

497
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:05,959
Speaker 6: and his and his political movement.

498
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 4: And Reagan and.

499
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:12,560
Speaker 6: FDR presided over majoritarian movements, right, they won overwhelmingly at

500
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 6: the electoral you know, Trump pretty much is running a

501
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,760
Speaker 6: minority movement that is only in power because of the

502
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:24,720
Speaker 6: anti majoritarian political structure of the United States and Trump's

503
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 6: dominance of the Republican Party. So he doesn't seem interested

504
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 6: in all in turning trump Ism into a governing coalition.

505
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 6: He just wants to continue to stoke the culture wars,

506
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 6: continue to you know, stoke the grievances of tribal nationalism

507
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 6: of the American Firsts, and hence the Monroe doctrine, you know,

508
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 6: to bring it back to the Monroe doctrine, the Monroe

509
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 6: doctrine and American First nationalism. There was always a strong

510
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 6: kind of correlation between the two American First nationalists, right,

511
00:30:56,200 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 6: even the pre Trump ones, the ones from the nineteen

512
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 6: twenties and leading up into World War Two, they liked

513
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 6: the Monroe doctrine because it wasn't universalist. It wasn't international law,

514
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 6: it was customary law specifically related to US power within

515
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 6: its hemisphere. And so the Monroe doctrine. It makes sense

516
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 6: that Trump, as the standard bearer of today's iteration of

517
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 6: America first nationalism, would latch on to the Monroe doctrine

518
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 6: as a kind of substitute for liberal internationalism.

519
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 4: Yeah.

520
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 5: I think this is maybe the most fascinating element of all,

521
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:40,040
Speaker 5: the complete lack of pretense, really, right, And obviously you

522
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 5: mentioned at various times international policy has had some storyline.

523
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 5: We all know what the story all. We were going

524
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 5: to turn Iraq into a democracy, and then that would

525
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,160
Speaker 5: spread throughout the Middle East, and then there would be

526
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 5: other democracies and then be rich, would be stable, et cetera.

527
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 5: There's some story I think that is so striking about

528
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 5: trump Ism, or at least this particular move, just sort

529
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 5: of the complete lack of like a broader story you

530
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 5: mentioned also, of course, which I think is notable about

531
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 5: Trump foreign policy, this appeal of these sort of one

532
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 5: and done things, because okay, there seems to be a

533
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 5: post of rock, this sort of national backlash towards or

534
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:20,360
Speaker 5: certainly post Afghanistan, this backlash towards boots on the ground,

535
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 5: long wars, forever wars, et cetera. But there also does

536
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:25,960
Speaker 5: seem to be this impulse of just yeah, but we

537
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 5: still want to do something powerful, we still want to

538
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:30,120
Speaker 5: show that we're tough. And so then the way that

539
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 5: they solved the problem is by these one offs. We're

540
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,720
Speaker 5: gonna do a one bombing run in Iran, We're going

541
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 5: to arrest a foreign leader. Is there any precedent for

542
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,280
Speaker 5: that or is this truly like sort of feel uncharted

543
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 5: territory when you think about these arcs of foreign policy?

544
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 4: Yeah?

545
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, in Latin America, there are two precedents. One

546
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 6: is obviously Manuel Loriega. In nineteen eighty nine, when George H. W.

547
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 6: Bush sent about thirty thousand Marines in to capture Noriega

548
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,520
Speaker 6: on a warrant, basically to arrest. It was considered a

549
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 6: police action, and that's how it was legally justified. Noriega

550
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:09,840
Speaker 6: was an ally of the United States. He was a

551
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 6: CIA asset in the nineteen eighties. He was very much

552
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 6: involved in the complexities of Iran contra, but he played

553
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,240
Speaker 6: all sides against the other. I think he was selling

554
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 6: information and intelligence to Cuba. He was also working with Mossade,

555
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 6: and when the Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall fell,

556
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 6: his usefulness had largely come to an end, and the

557
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 6: United States decided that they were gonna take a mat.

558
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 6: There was a sy Hirsch report in the New York

559
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:41,480
Speaker 6: Times that detailed his deep involvement in drug running and

560
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 6: it couldn't be ignored anymore, and so they went in

561
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 6: and they arrested him. So that's one president. A lesser

562
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 6: discussed one is in Haiti. In two thousand and five,

563
00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:56,520
Speaker 6: Jean Patron Aristeid was president of Haiti and there was

564
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 6: a US back coup. But it was one of these

565
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 6: coups that were kind of carried out by democracy promotion

566
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 6: organizations that were funded by AID and the National Endowment

567
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 6: for Democracy that destabilized the country to the point where

568
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 6: Iristeed couldn't govern and George W. Bush sent marines in

569
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 6: and basically put a gun to his head and flew

570
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 6: him to the Congo where he still lives now, where

571
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:26,840
Speaker 6: it's in exile.

572
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 4: So it's happened before.

573
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 6: I think what is unprecedented is this idea that we

574
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:37,279
Speaker 6: are just going to accept oil tribute from Venezuela, that

575
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 6: we're just gonna give these directives to the Venezuelan government

576
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 6: and they're gonna send I mean, I mean we talked

577
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:44,839
Speaker 6: about international law.

578
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 4: All of this stuff is just.

579
00:34:46,880 --> 00:34:51,359
Speaker 6: Unilateral US projections of its power. I mean, the United

580
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:55,319
Speaker 6: States place sanctions on Venezuela, that's not international law. I mean,

581
00:34:55,760 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 6: the papers talk about it. As you know, Venezuela is

582
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 6: trying to violate sanctions by find the workarounds to sell

583
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:05,800
Speaker 6: its oil. It's like, why not, it's theirs, the United

584
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 6: States just putting his ancients on just because it's not

585
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 6: like it's not like the nations of the world voted

586
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 6: on putting sanctions on Venezuela. But in any case, I

587
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 6: think what is unprecedented is what they're working out, and

588
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 6: they seem to be working it out on a as

589
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 6: you go basis. It doesn't seem like they have a

590
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 6: clear plan.

591
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:24,560
Speaker 4: You're right.

592
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 6: They don't want it to be two thousand and three Iraq.

593
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:29,719
Speaker 6: They don't want boots on the ground. They know the

594
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 6: rank and file of Trump it has a very low

595
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 6: tolerance for casualties and fatalities, and America first nationalism doesn't

596
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,920
Speaker 6: want to be involved in nation building. But what you're

597
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 6: seeing is I think two distinct trajectories. On the one hand,

598
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:50,839
Speaker 6: they're imagining some system in which is that as well,

599
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:52,920
Speaker 6: it just continues to kind of pay a tribute to

600
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,720
Speaker 6: the United States through oil. But then when Marco Rubio

601
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 6: talks about it, he says, well, we have these different

602
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 6: phases of reconstruction and transition to democracy planned out in Venezuela.

603
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 6: So that kind of suggests more of a direct role

604
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 6: in pushing the country in a certain direction politically, not

605
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 6: just leaving it as it is, as long as it

606
00:36:14,360 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 6: continues to send the ships, you know, just like during

607
00:36:17,600 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 6: colonial times.

608
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 4: I mean the colony sent.

609
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:23,760
Speaker 6: The ships filled with gold to Spain, sending the ships

610
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 6: filled with oil to put off the Texas.

611
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,200
Speaker 2: All right, Greg, we're going to have to leave it there,

612
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,400
Speaker 2: but thank you so much for coming on all thoughts.

613
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:33,359
Speaker 2: That was fantastic, really appreciate it.

614
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:34,839
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks so much.

615
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 2: Having Joe, that was absolutely fascinating. The point that stood

616
00:36:51,800 --> 00:36:54,719
Speaker 2: out to me was this idea of going into your

617
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 2: own backyard to assert your dominance as a sort of

618
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:02,560
Speaker 2: replacement or offset to a line of multilateralism elsewhere in

619
00:37:02,600 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 2: the world. Like that kind of makes sense, and.

620
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 5: It's very interesting that there's this pattern, this historical pattern

621
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 5: in the United States that essentially Latin America is where

622
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 5: we go to dominate when we're internally weak. And of

623
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 5: course I think people would agree that the US is

624
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 5: feeling particularly weak on a number of angles. There's obviously

625
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,800
Speaker 5: the sort of existential threat anxiety about the rise of China,

626
00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 5: et cetera. So maybe is this kind of thing, Okay,

627
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 5: we are not going to be, at least for the moment,

628
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 5: the global power that we once were, et cetera. But

629
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 5: in the absence of that, at least we could still

630
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 5: establish that we get to decide.

631
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 3: Who the president of various Latin American states.

632
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 2: Right, Latin American dominant path. Yeah, by the way, have

633
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 2: you seen me Marco Rubio meme where he's like covered

634
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 2: in all these different flags from Latin America basically responsible

635
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 2: for everything.

636
00:37:57,480 --> 00:37:59,959
Speaker 5: I know I have seen the memes about the various jobs.

637
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 5: Is that Marco Rubio is y sort of de facto

638
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,560
Speaker 5: having to play on this. Rubio strikes me as like

639
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 5: a sort of interesting bridge figure between this sort of

640
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 5: because you know, I think of him as sort of

641
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 5: being like a sort of retro like cold warrior type

642
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 5: and someone who does probably have like believes like, oh,

643
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 5: we're going to like spread democracy throughout the world, and

644
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 5: wants to see Latin America sort of be you know,

645
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 5: run by liberal democrats, capitalist countries and so forth. But

646
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 5: obviously he's in an administration that does not have the

647
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:35,279
Speaker 5: same impulse for that, and so, you know, to some

648
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:39,400
Speaker 5: extent it feels like this operation it's like it's like

649
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 5: they're going to like split the difference, right, So he

650
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 5: gets to be involved in taking out a Latin American leader,

651
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 5: which he finds to be hostile. But the idea that like,

652
00:38:49,680 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 5: it does not feel like this administration is going to

653
00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 5: have much follow through in terms of, Okay, now we

654
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:58,360
Speaker 5: really want to set Venezuela on a new political course.

655
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 2: Right, I Mean, I guess we'll see, well what they

656
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 2: prioritize there. But in the meantime, shall we leave it there?

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Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.

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Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.

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00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 5: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.

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Speaker 5: Follow our guest Greg Grandon, He's at Greg Grandon. Follow

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00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,760
Speaker 5: our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman armand dash Ol Bennett

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00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 5: at dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more odd Lags content,

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Speaker 5: go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots with the

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Speaker 5: daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can

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Speaker 5: chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven

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Speaker 5: in our discord discord dot gg slash.

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Speaker 2: Odlines and if you enjoy Odlots. If you found this

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Speaker 2: conversation and our coverage on Venezuela to be useful, then

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Speaker 2: please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.

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Speaker 2: And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can

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Speaker 2: you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening

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Speaker 4: In