Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Authoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. Isn't Joe? I love
Speaker 2: doing American history episodes in part because I feel like
Speaker 2: my own knowledge of American history is fairly simplistic. And
Speaker 2: I do remember a huge culture shock when I went
Speaker 2: from high school to college. And I think I told
Speaker 2: this story before. So I went to college university in London,
Speaker 2: and I had always heard the American Revolution described as
Speaker 2: the American Revolution, right, and then as soon as.
Speaker 3: I get to the UK, what did they call it?
Speaker 3: What they call it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they call it, I think the American War of Independence,
Speaker 2: which has a different tonality too, definitely, but it definitely
Speaker 2: demonstrates just how subjective tensions, conflicts, and policies can actually
Speaker 2: be in history, depending on who you're talking to. And
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about not just a pretty subjective
Speaker 2: American policy, but one that has been reinterpreted and amended
Speaker 2: many many times.
Speaker 4: In the past. Right.
Speaker 5: So obviously for us this has been a venezuela week,
Speaker 5: and there's all sorts of immediate questions that are sort
Speaker 5: of most directly relevant to we've been talking about the
Speaker 5: market elements mostly, we talked about oil, we talked about
Speaker 5: the sovereign debt, et cetera. But then there's all these questions,
Speaker 5: of course about international law and what is legitimate and
Speaker 5: what is illegitimate. And I mean, I couldn't even believe
Speaker 5: the headline when I saw it that we had arrested
Speaker 5: I know, I was flabbergant.
Speaker 3: I just the idea that.
Speaker 5: If we'd arrested a head of state from another country
Speaker 5: is just absolutely job smacking. And then people talk about
Speaker 5: international law, and then they say, this international law even
Speaker 5: exist and so forth, and what it feels like to
Speaker 5: some extent truly uncharted territory here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uncharted territory. But people are drawing on a parallel, yes,
Speaker 2: which is the Monroe doctrine. Yes, the Monroe doctrine of
Speaker 2: I think it was eighteen twenty three, I want to say,
Speaker 2: basically said that America would assert its dominance over the
Speaker 2: entire American region. And since then it's changed a number
Speaker 2: of times. But the way it's being talked about now
Speaker 2: is as the Trump corollary or the Donroe doctrine, which
Speaker 2: was described in the National Security Strategy Document that the
Speaker 2: Trump administration put out back in December, and that one's
Speaker 2: a little different. So we keep seeing these amendments to
Speaker 2: the doctrine. By the way, I should just say, do
Speaker 2: you remember back in twenty thirteen, John Kerry explicitly said
Speaker 2: that the Monroe doctrine was over, it was dead.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: And now it's back, it's arisen.
Speaker 3: Some version of it is certainly back. You know.
Speaker 5: It's very interesting because the US clearly has a longstanding
Speaker 5: history of various operations, overt and covert, of involving itself,
Speaker 5: shall we say, with the politics and domestic affairs of
Speaker 5: our neighbors, particularly in the South and Central America and
Speaker 5: so forth. I suppose any country is naturally going to
Speaker 5: have some security interest in what's happening. It's proximity. I
Speaker 5: don't think that itself is particularly weird. I really like
Speaker 5: this term the Donro doctrine because there's two things. There's
Speaker 5: this long standing history that the US wants to have
Speaker 5: a role to play in everyone else's politics among our neighbors.
Speaker 5: But then there's this other element with Donald Trump specifically,
Speaker 5: where it feels like a lot of our policy and
Speaker 5: principle is Essentially, he's the president and it's in his head,
Speaker 5: and his ideas are legitimate because they're his ideas and
Speaker 5: he's the president, so yes, there's precedent, there's norms and
Speaker 5: so forth, and then there's this sort of novelty that
Speaker 5: everyone's trying to read his mind.
Speaker 3: And we're in this very very strange.
Speaker 5: Situation which has come up on our last two episodes,
Speaker 5: in which you have the president talking about oil.
Speaker 2: And ex implicitly yeah, and yet people.
Speaker 3: Say are like skeptical. It's very strange.
Speaker 5: It's a very strange situation because you have torpiicly it's like, oh,
Speaker 5: he admitted it, it's about oil, and yet everyone's like,
Speaker 5: is there's something else in play beyond here.
Speaker 3: It's the total inversion for.
Speaker 5: How people have talked in the past about the legitimacy
Speaker 5: or illegitimacy of how we involve ourselves internationally.
Speaker 2: That was part of the original Monroe doctrine as well.
Speaker 2: There was this weird tension between like pro democracy, anti colonialism,
Speaker 2: keep the European powers out, yeah, and America basically kind
Speaker 2: of creating its own in formal colonies. That tension has
Speaker 2: always been there, and we should talk about that we
Speaker 2: should talk about whether or not there might be, you know,
Speaker 2: different strategies at play in Venezuela, different goals. And I'm
Speaker 2: happy to say we do, in fact have the perfect guest.
Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Greg Grandin. He is
Speaker 2: a professor of history at Yale and the author of
Speaker 2: the new book America America, a New History of the
Speaker 2: New World. So Greg, welcome to odd Lots. Thanks so
Speaker 2: much for coming on.
Speaker 4: Oh thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: How important has the Monroe Doctrine actually been in the
Speaker 2: history of American policy and development.
Speaker 6: Well, it's certainly been influential, and it's certainly been cited
Speaker 6: repeatedly over the years. I mean, first, I think we
Speaker 6: need to back up and say exactly what makes it
Speaker 6: a doctrine?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we just never voted on, no court ratified it.
Speaker 6: It didn't actually assume the status of doctrine until a
Speaker 6: couple of decades after it was pronounced in eighteen twenty three,
Speaker 6: when James Monroe was president at the time. And this
Speaker 6: was around the time that most Spanish American nations were
Speaker 6: breaking from Spain and their successful wars of independence, which
Speaker 6: were much longer and dragged out than the US War
Speaker 6: for Independence. By eighteen twenty three, it was fairly clear
Speaker 6: that Spain was going to lose its empire, and the
Speaker 6: United States finally decided that was going to issue a statement.
Speaker 6: And you have to understand that the doctrine itself, or
Speaker 6: Monroe's statement, it's really just a kind of you know,
Speaker 6: four or five non contiguous paragraphs in the State of
Speaker 6: the Union Address of six thousand words.
Speaker 4: You know, you have to cut a.
Speaker 6: Cherry pick through the State of the Union Address to
Speaker 6: find what is the doctrine. And it's hesitant, it's cautious.
Speaker 6: The United States wasn't really sure where it wanted to
Speaker 6: land on any given issue, and there were obviously tensions
Speaker 6: and differences of opinions within Monroe's cabinet. I mean, to
Speaker 6: put it in more modern terms, you had isolationists, you
Speaker 6: had internationalists, you had unilateralists, or you had different people
Speaker 6: thinking of different ways on how the United.
Speaker 4: States should address.
Speaker 6: And deal with on the one hand, these new republics
Speaker 6: that were coming into being in South America and in
Speaker 6: Central America and in Mexico, and on the other hand
Speaker 6: their former colonial rulers in Europe. And so it was
Speaker 6: actually written by John Quincy Adams, who was Monroe's Secretary
Speaker 6: of State, And as I said, it was insert in
Speaker 6: different parts, and it's true, it is a bit of
Speaker 6: a contradictory document. On the one hand, it announces that
Speaker 6: the United States considers the independence of Latin America at
Speaker 6: the time Spanish America to be irreversible, and that it
Speaker 6: was recognizing a number of states that had established effective
Speaker 6: sovereignty and unbroken with Spain. Did warned off Europe, not
Speaker 6: just Spain, but any country Spain might recruit to help them,
Speaker 6: or the Holy Roman Empire or Great Britain against trying
Speaker 6: to conquer or reconquer the Americas, any part of the Americas.
Speaker 6: So that's the kind of anti colonial part of the doctrine.
Speaker 6: And again in quotation marks the doctrine. Then other paragraphs
Speaker 6: said that the United States and Spanish America, being of
Speaker 6: the Western hemisphere, shared certain special interests and ideals, although
Speaker 6: it didn't specify what those interests and ideals were, but
Speaker 6: people kind of presume they meant the difference between monarchy
Speaker 6: and republicanism. But at least there was a kind of
Speaker 6: gesture to a kind of shared fraternity of nations that
Speaker 6: had common interests, and so that's another part of the
Speaker 6: Monroe doctrine. And then there was the part that was
Speaker 6: referenced that it didn't exactly grant the United States much
Speaker 6: power in terms of leasing the hemisphere. It was a
Speaker 6: vague sentence that said the United States would interpret events
Speaker 6: that happened anywhere in the Western Hemisphere on how they
Speaker 6: bear on the quote peace and happiness of the United States.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 7: So so it was a document that could appeal to
Speaker 7: a lot of different constituencies within the United States, like
Speaker 7: Thomas Jefferson's expansionism, this notion that you know, the New
Speaker 7: World was shared a certain unity of purpose.
Speaker 6: John Quincy Adams was a famous isolationist and unilateralist, and
Speaker 6: so there was this notion of the United States could
Speaker 6: act if it wanted, if it's sort of threat. And
Speaker 6: you have somebody like Henry Kilay who imagined a kind
Speaker 6: of large American system, a mercantile system in which the
Speaker 6: US would be a great manufacturing base in Latin America,
Speaker 6: Spanish America would supply re sources in order to rival
Speaker 6: in the United Kingdom and the Empires of Europe. But
Speaker 6: the point being it really wasn't much of anything. Latin
Speaker 6: Americans did like it. I mean, they had a lot
Speaker 6: of time to read. It was a different period. There
Speaker 6: were no iPhones, you know, people read closely and said, oh,
Speaker 6: that's an interesting paragraph. And what they read and liked
Speaker 6: mostly was they thought it was They read it as
Speaker 6: a kind of anarchust brief for their own anti colonialism.
Speaker 6: Spanish Americans were very much vocal in their idea that
Speaker 6: the doctrine of conquest was no longer valid, the doctrine
Speaker 6: of discovery was no longer valid. There was no undiscovered
Speaker 6: land in the New World waiting for Europeans to stumble
Speaker 6: upon and claim as their own, and they read the
Speaker 6: Monroe Doctrine as largely supporting that position, especially the part
Speaker 6: that warned Europe against trying to reconquer any countries that
Speaker 6: had claimed their independence. But over the years it was
Speaker 6: interpreted it in a different way. Politicians and diplomats, particularly
Speaker 6: in skirmishes with Europe, say Great Britain, when Great Britain
Speaker 6: wanted to build a canal through Central America. That was
Speaker 6: around the time that those kind of vague, scattered remarks
Speaker 6: were elevated to the level of doctrine, and it became
Speaker 6: the Monroe Doctrine or the Doctrine of Monroe, and from
Speaker 6: that point forward it was progressively incorporated into something we
Speaker 6: might call customary law. I mean, again, what makes a
Speaker 6: doctrine a doctrine and who gets to enforce it? It really
Speaker 6: is just a question of power. It goes to what
Speaker 6: you were talking about in the introduction about what is
Speaker 6: international law and how is it enforced? I mean, most
Speaker 6: countries have statements of principles. The United States gets its
Speaker 6: own doctrine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, Because, like to some extent,
Speaker 5: when I think about American involvement, it's like.
Speaker 3: All around the world at any time.
Speaker 5: We sort of feel the need to fight against communists, right,
Speaker 5: that seems to be a very common thing, and fight
Speaker 5: for democracies or any country that sort of has something
Speaker 5: similar to our we have government or something like that.
Speaker 5: We seem to be on principle we have to be
Speaker 5: the ones or we feel compelled to intervene. And then
Speaker 5: here is this geographical element that seems very different. Can
Speaker 5: you talk a little bit about the intersection of the
Speaker 5: geographical impulse to sort of exert your influence among your
Speaker 5: neighbors and how that intersects with this other I don't
Speaker 5: know what we call it, principle, a doctrine, etc. Where
Speaker 5: there are just certain kinds of leaders that we don't like,
Speaker 5: and when they're in power, we do what we can
Speaker 5: to eliminate them.
Speaker 6: Yes, and this ghost of the history of the United States,
Speaker 6: its relationship to its own hemisphere and.
Speaker 4: The power that it is exerted over the.
Speaker 6: Latin America and Spanish American Brazil, and then efforts at
Speaker 6: times to go global, to become a more global superpower.
Speaker 6: There's you know, there's long different iterations of this in
Speaker 6: which the United States kind of tries to escape the
Speaker 6: boundaries of its hemisphere and become a world power at
Speaker 6: different moments, and then and then it falls back to
Speaker 6: the Western hemisphere. This has happened over and over again.
Speaker 6: It happened with the Great Depression. It happened in some
Speaker 6: ways with you know, after Vietnam, the United States turned
Speaker 6: back to Latin America. It happened after the certainly after
Speaker 6: the catastrophic War on Terror. I mean, in many ways,
Speaker 6: what's happening now with Trump is an example of this,
Speaker 6: this kind of you know, Trump is his own problem
Speaker 6: and a lot of the things that are wrong is
Speaker 6: of his doing, but he did inherit a country that
Speaker 6: was in profound crisis as a result of the catastrophic
Speaker 6: War on Terror, the financial crisis, the inability of politicians
Speaker 6: to deal with corporate wealth and inequality. And so there
Speaker 6: is a kind of turning back to Latin America. And
Speaker 6: we can get to this a little bit later if
Speaker 6: you want. But Trump's actions in Venezuela are a perfect
Speaker 6: example of what happens when you know the United States,
Speaker 6: you know it's bid to go global, fails, and it
Speaker 6: has to return to its hemisphere. And that's why the
Speaker 6: Monroe doctrine is so important. Latin America is the first
Speaker 6: place in which the United States got a sense of
Speaker 6: itself as an overseas power. You know, it was able
Speaker 6: to project its power, its financial power, it's cultural power,
Speaker 6: it's military power beyond its own borders. And even saying
Speaker 6: that is a little bit tricky because the United States
Speaker 6: borders were always changing. I mean the United States borders,
Speaker 6: the expansive nature of the United States where it actually
Speaker 6: took Texas and took Mexico. So it wasn't just that
Speaker 6: it was dealing with Latin America. It was literally gobbling
Speaker 6: up Latin America on its way to the Pacific, but
Speaker 6: setting that as working within the hemisphere and learning how
Speaker 6: to deal with other nations. Latin America is absolutely central
Speaker 6: to that, and that's one of the reasons why the
Speaker 6: Monroe Doctrine rises in importance, because it supposedly provides a.
Speaker 4: Kind of guideline for that.
Speaker 6: Now, over the years that Monroe Doctrine itself has expanded,
Speaker 6: Presidents explicitly expanded over a boundary dispute in Venezuela and
Speaker 6: Guyana in which the United States was supporting Venezuela and
Speaker 6: Great Britain was supporting British Guyana. Grover Cleveland declared that
Speaker 6: the Monroe Doctrine granted the United States absolute sovereignty over
Speaker 6: the whole Western hemisphere. That's a pretty big jump from
Speaker 6: you know, we're gonna interpret any event that happened somewhere
Speaker 6: on our peace and happiness.
Speaker 4: There's on a peason happiness.
Speaker 6: To buy Fiat our will is law in the hemisphere.
Speaker 6: And then in nineteen oh four, along similar lines, Theodore Rosa,
Speaker 6: when he was president, he expanded the doctrine with his
Speaker 6: own corollary to what he called international police power. To
Speaker 6: suppress chronic wrongdoing in Latin America. Now, I must say
Speaker 6: that most of that chronic wrongdoing was provoked by US
Speaker 6: banks and US mercenaries and US oil extractors. And you know,
Speaker 6: there's a long history and of like forcing loans on
Speaker 6: countries that they can't pay off, and it leads to
Speaker 6: all sorts of instability than civil war.
Speaker 4: And then the US government is called in to.
Speaker 6: Settle the problem that these private interests created. So Roosevelt
Speaker 6: expands the Monroe doctrine into a kind of standing universal
Speaker 6: police warrant that will allow the United States that act
Speaker 6: whenever it will and whenever it wants.
Speaker 2: So didn't FDR also reinterpret it, But it didn't last
Speaker 2: long another Roosevelt reinterpretation.
Speaker 6: No, not really, but FDR actually reverse course one hundred
Speaker 6: and eighty degrees.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: In nineteen thirty three, he renounced the right of the
Speaker 6: United States to intervene in his longstanding demands by Latin
Speaker 6: American jurists and politicians and diplomats to give up the
Speaker 6: right of conquest. I mean, the United States continued to
Speaker 6: hold on to the right of conquest throughout the nineteenth century.
Speaker 6: Basically justified the war with Mexico Indian removal. The right
Speaker 6: of conquest was taught in US textbooks up until the
Speaker 6: nineteen twenties. Latin America had revoked the right of conquest
Speaker 6: with its independence. Because Spanish American nations came into the
Speaker 6: world together already a league of nations, seven nations that
Speaker 6: had to learn to live with each other on a
Speaker 6: crowded continent. The United States came into being a single
Speaker 6: nation on the eastern coast of a great land mass
Speaker 6: that it imagined as empty.
Speaker 4: Obviously it wasn't empty.
Speaker 6: There was Native Americans, that was Mexican, and spanions, but
Speaker 6: the United States. There was no doubt that the United
Speaker 6: States was going to reach the Pacific, and it held
Speaker 6: on and use the doctrine of conquests in order to
Speaker 6: justify taking all of that land. Latin America was constantly
Speaker 6: trying to force the United States to accept that the
Speaker 6: doctrine of conquest was abrogated, was void, and it wasn't
Speaker 6: until nineteen thirty three that it did. And it was
Speaker 6: Roosevelt who did that, and he recognized the absolute sovereignty
Speaker 6: of Latin American nations and he gave up the right
Speaker 6: of intervention. And that was an enormous turnaround in US power.
Speaker 6: It didn't weaken US power by any means. It actually
Speaker 6: strengthened it because I focused it. It taught the United
Speaker 6: States how to exercise power more efficiently, and it organ
Speaker 6: Latin America.
Speaker 4: It was ten years of goodwill.
Speaker 6: That really got Latin America kind of on board for
Speaker 6: the coming war against fascism. There was a lot of
Speaker 6: fear among strategists within the Franklin Roosevelt administration that all
Speaker 6: of Latin America could have gone the way of Spain.
Speaker 6: I mean, a lot of the sociological variables that led
Speaker 6: to the rise of fascism or.
Speaker 4: Falangeism in Spain were present in Latin America. There was a.
Speaker 8: Large group of servile peasants, small group of land owners,
Speaker 8: patrician conservative Catholics, increasingly militant unions and peasants threatening the
Speaker 8: power of the landed class.
Speaker 6: You know, that was Spain, but was also Latin America
Speaker 6: writ large. And if Latin America fell to Falangism, then
Speaker 6: you know, the United States would be kind of cornered
Speaker 6: between Nazism, fascism, and Falangism. Roosevelt's conceding to Latin America's
Speaker 6: demand to give up the right. Intervention basically tilted the
Speaker 6: playing field to the left in Latin America. You know,
Speaker 6: Roosevelt tolerated economic nationalists. He let revolutionaries in Mexico nationalized
Speaker 6: standard oil and appropriate massive amounts of US owned property,
Speaker 6: and they created an enormous goodwill and set the stage
Speaker 6: for the United States's entrance into World War II from
Speaker 6: a position of strengthen you and continental unity.
Speaker 5: So you mentioned, okay at various times the jurists in
Speaker 5: Latin America, and they push back against this notion of
Speaker 5: American absolute sovereignty in these fights. This gets to a
Speaker 5: question I see it debated on Twitter a lot. What
Speaker 5: do you say to someone who says international law doesn't exist?
Speaker 5: What is international law doesn't exist? And how is this
Speaker 5: term useful or not?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm an a historian, I'm not a lawyer a jurist,
Speaker 6: so I tend to see things in turns of power relations.
Speaker 6: So I think I see law as a moral venue
Speaker 6: that is created, that creates a set of normative principles
Speaker 6: in which people can fight over. So, you know, obviously
Speaker 6: the international law doesn't exist in some void in which
Speaker 6: absolute justices is.
Speaker 4: Going to happen.
Speaker 6: You know, the most powerful country decides the exception, and
Speaker 6: you know, the United States. To the degree that countries
Speaker 6: like the United States submit to a system of international law,
Speaker 6: it usually was during moments of weakness, like when Roosevelt
Speaker 6: did it in nineteen thirty three, at the height of
Speaker 6: the Great Depression and with fascism on the rise. But
Speaker 6: it does create these norms and these principles that people
Speaker 6: fight and argue over, and so yes, and the liberal
Speaker 6: international law order that has supposedly governed the world since
Speaker 6: the creation of the United Nations in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 6: The hypocrisies and the variances and the exceptions are many,
Speaker 6: and there's always workarounds, and the United States and the
Speaker 6: Soviet Union certainly found ways to skirt, you know, any
Speaker 6: kind of limits that were placed on them by international law.
Speaker 6: But it does kind of create a venue right, a
Speaker 6: moral arena in which right and wrong could be understood
Speaker 6: and argued over. You know, there's very other, very little
Speaker 6: recourse for poor and weak nations to defend themselves. I mean,
Speaker 6: we can go back to ducidities right, the strong to
Speaker 6: do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must,
Speaker 6: and the conceit that there is such a thing as
Speaker 6: international law that is somehow transcendent of power relations is
Speaker 6: you know, it might just be a conceit, but it
Speaker 6: still at least creates terms on which nations could deal
Speaker 6: with each other. And you know, and again Latin America
Speaker 6: and the United States is absolutely a perfect example of that.
Speaker 6: For Latin America's commit meant to sovereignty and cooperative relations
Speaker 6: was largely forged in relationships living under what was becoming
Speaker 6: the most powerful nation and world history, as it moved
Speaker 6: across the Pacific, as it took Texas, as it took Mexico,
Speaker 6: as it took Cuba, as it took Puerto Rico, as
Speaker 6: it took Panama. You know, so you had these jurists
Speaker 6: like writing law books and coming up with these legal
Speaker 6: principles and the way they get implemented though often is
Speaker 6: really about power. So you know, Argentine the legal theorist,
Speaker 6: for instance, Luis Drago, for instance, at the early twentieth century,
Speaker 6: when Italian and British and German war boats were showing
Speaker 6: up at Venezuela trying to collect debt, debt that had
Speaker 6: gone back to the colony that European banks were claiming
Speaker 6: that Venezuela owed because of the Spanish crown, you know,
Speaker 6: contracted loans in seventeen seventy six, and whenever they did,
Speaker 6: Drago issued a principle, the Drago doctrine, that you cannot
Speaker 6: use coercion to collect debt. Now, the United States collected
Speaker 6: plenty of debt through.
Speaker 4: Coercion, and we could.
Speaker 6: They can look at Donald Trump and what's going on
Speaker 6: in Venezuela right now. But the United States kind of
Speaker 6: liked the Drago doctrinn They didn't want Italian and German
Speaker 6: and British warships flitting around the Caribbean bombing the coast
Speaker 6: of Colombia or Venezuela trying to seize hold of the
Speaker 6: custom house to get the receipts. They thought that, okay,
Speaker 6: so we'll support the Drago doctrine. This, this will give
Speaker 6: us a leverage and keeping Europe out of our backyard.
Speaker 6: So you kind of see the back and forth between
Speaker 6: law as a kind of moral principle that transcends social power.
Speaker 6: But then it's hot, you know, it's obviously subordinated and
Speaker 6: implemented through social power.
Speaker 2: What's your sense of the actual goals behind the Venezuela
Speaker 2: move because if you look at the National Security Strategy document,
Speaker 2: they talk about the US reasserting its pre eminence in
Speaker 2: the Western hemisphere. And I don't know how you measure
Speaker 2: pre eminence, right, that seems a pretty broad term. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Trump has talked very explicitly about Venezuelan oil belonging to
Speaker 2: the US. There's no regime change on the horizon. They're
Speaker 2: not pressing for that. So what is the ultimate goal
Speaker 2: of all of this, What are they aiming for?
Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's odd to say, as I said earlier,
Speaker 6: Trump is doing what a number of its predecessors have
Speaker 6: done during moments of the US kind of recession of
Speaker 6: US power in the world. They turned back to Latin America.
Speaker 6: But in some ways it's pure Trump, right, It's just.
Speaker 4: This theatrical spectacle. You know, he said it was about oil.
Speaker 6: Well, first it was about immigration, then it was about gangs,
Speaker 6: then it was about fent and oil and drugs, and
Speaker 6: then he landed on oil, getting our oil back. Oil
Speaker 6: is trading at an all time low. Maybe not an
Speaker 6: all time low, but it's pretty low. The market is
Speaker 6: filled glotted with oil, and to get Venezuela back online
Speaker 6: is going to cost an enormous amount of capital investment,
Speaker 6: and there's not a lot of oil companies that are
Speaker 6: rushing you're going to rush into Venezuela, then do that?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: I think Trump there was just playing to his base.
Speaker 6: I think he was, you know, I think his base
Speaker 6: likes the idea of Trump as a pirate, Trump as
Speaker 6: a colonial plunderer, you know, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we'll get our oil back.
Speaker 6: You know, just like with the Iraq war in two
Speaker 6: thousand and three, There's always ways to get oil, right,
Speaker 6: There's many ways to get oil.
Speaker 4: Like, you don't have to.
Speaker 6: Start a global war on terror in order to secure
Speaker 6: Iraqi oil. You could have just you know, made a
Speaker 6: deal with I'm saying and got the oil. You could
Speaker 6: have did the same thing with you know. So material
Speaker 6: interests are always understood through a prism of ideology, and
Speaker 6: so part of it was that Venezuela has been in
Speaker 6: crisis for a long time.
Speaker 4: And that's a whole nother story for a whole nother show.
Speaker 6: And you know, a hegemon like the United States can't
Speaker 6: have that kind of crisis. I mean, millions of Venezuelans
Speaker 6: were fleeing the country I mean, you don't have to
Speaker 6: be carrying water for Trump's nativism and its border policies
Speaker 6: at all to say that that kind of disruption and
Speaker 6: that kind of chaos can't go on forever in a
Speaker 6: regional hedgemon's hinterland, and so you have to kind of
Speaker 6: do something. The question is what are you going to do?
Speaker 6: And Trump seems to like these targeted attacks, right, whether
Speaker 6: they're in Iran, whether in Nigeria. You know, these one
Speaker 6: and done attacks, and I think he was sold on
Speaker 6: the idea that, you know, if they just took out
Speaker 6: Maduro and left the Maduda state intact, because it is
Speaker 6: very much ingrained and embedded in Venezuelan society. I think
Speaker 6: there were a couple of intelligent people in Marco Rubio's
Speaker 6: State department that didn't want to see a repeat of
Speaker 6: two thousand and three with what happened after Debeedification in.
Speaker 4: Iraq, the complete chaos.
Speaker 6: So Trump was convinced that, you know, you do this
Speaker 6: one and done thing and then you just kind of
Speaker 6: continue to threadn in the country in order to it
Speaker 6: corresponds to his way of being. There's no morality, there's
Speaker 6: no normative sense, there's no idealism. You know, normally when
Speaker 6: presidents turned back to Latin America to kind of regroup
Speaker 6: or rebalance after global crises, they kind of come up
Speaker 6: with new kind of world views to widen their electoral base,
Speaker 6: that deepen their coalition to you know, they try to
Speaker 6: create a sense of hegemony.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: So you had FDR using Latin America to put forth
Speaker 6: a kind of social democratic continental New Deal. Then Reagan
Speaker 6: after Vietnam a kind of muscular anti communist liberalism, but
Speaker 6: understood in moral terms, kind of reassertion of American purpose.
Speaker 6: American sets of itself as a defender of world freedom,
Speaker 6: you know, and these become kind of governing ideologies that
Speaker 6: are durable. They last, I mean, the New Deal coalition
Speaker 6: lasted for decades up until the nineteen seventies. Reaganism lasted,
Speaker 6: you know, at least until Baraco bum if not even
Speaker 6: even further. In terms of the worldview, I mean, Trump
Speaker 6: isn't even trying to cobble together a new worldview, right,
Speaker 6: Trump isn't coming up with any kind of you know,
Speaker 6: he's not doing it for freedom. He's not doing it
Speaker 6: for individual rights. He's not he's certainly not doing it
Speaker 6: for social democracy. You know, he's demanding tribute, right and
Speaker 6: just trying to turn Venezuela into a vassal state. And
Speaker 6: I think that speaks to the moral emptiness of him
Speaker 6: and his and his political movement.
Speaker 4: And Reagan and.
Speaker 6: FDR presided over majoritarian movements, right, they won overwhelmingly at
Speaker 6: the electoral you know, Trump pretty much is running a
Speaker 6: minority movement that is only in power because of the
Speaker 6: anti majoritarian political structure of the United States and Trump's
Speaker 6: dominance of the Republican Party. So he doesn't seem interested
Speaker 6: in all in turning trump Ism into a governing coalition.
Speaker 6: He just wants to continue to stoke the culture wars,
Speaker 6: continue to you know, stoke the grievances of tribal nationalism
Speaker 6: of the American Firsts, and hence the Monroe doctrine, you know,
Speaker 6: to bring it back to the Monroe doctrine, the Monroe
Speaker 6: doctrine and American First nationalism. There was always a strong
Speaker 6: kind of correlation between the two American First nationalists, right,
Speaker 6: even the pre Trump ones, the ones from the nineteen
Speaker 6: twenties and leading up into World War Two, they liked
Speaker 6: the Monroe doctrine because it wasn't universalist. It wasn't international law,
Speaker 6: it was customary law specifically related to US power within
Speaker 6: its hemisphere. And so the Monroe doctrine. It makes sense
Speaker 6: that Trump, as the standard bearer of today's iteration of
Speaker 6: America first nationalism, would latch on to the Monroe doctrine
Speaker 6: as a kind of substitute for liberal internationalism.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think this is maybe the most fascinating element of all,
Speaker 5: the complete lack of pretense, really, right, And obviously you
Speaker 5: mentioned at various times international policy has had some storyline.
Speaker 5: We all know what the story all. We were going
Speaker 5: to turn Iraq into a democracy, and then that would
Speaker 5: spread throughout the Middle East, and then there would be
Speaker 5: other democracies and then be rich, would be stable, et cetera.
Speaker 5: There's some story I think that is so striking about
Speaker 5: trump Ism, or at least this particular move, just sort
Speaker 5: of the complete lack of like a broader story you
Speaker 5: mentioned also, of course, which I think is notable about
Speaker 5: Trump foreign policy, this appeal of these sort of one
Speaker 5: and done things, because okay, there seems to be a
Speaker 5: post of rock, this sort of national backlash towards or
Speaker 5: certainly post Afghanistan, this backlash towards boots on the ground,
Speaker 5: long wars, forever wars, et cetera. But there also does
Speaker 5: seem to be this impulse of just yeah, but we
Speaker 5: still want to do something powerful, we still want to
Speaker 5: show that we're tough. And so then the way that
Speaker 5: they solved the problem is by these one offs. We're
Speaker 5: gonna do a one bombing run in Iran, We're going
Speaker 5: to arrest a foreign leader. Is there any precedent for
Speaker 5: that or is this truly like sort of feel uncharted
Speaker 5: territory when you think about these arcs of foreign policy?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, in Latin America, there are two precedents. One
Speaker 6: is obviously Manuel Loriega. In nineteen eighty nine, when George H. W.
Speaker 6: Bush sent about thirty thousand Marines in to capture Noriega
Speaker 6: on a warrant, basically to arrest. It was considered a
Speaker 6: police action, and that's how it was legally justified. Noriega
Speaker 6: was an ally of the United States. He was a
Speaker 6: CIA asset in the nineteen eighties. He was very much
Speaker 6: involved in the complexities of Iran contra, but he played
Speaker 6: all sides against the other. I think he was selling
Speaker 6: information and intelligence to Cuba. He was also working with Mossade,
Speaker 6: and when the Cold War ended and the Berlin Wall fell,
Speaker 6: his usefulness had largely come to an end, and the
Speaker 6: United States decided that they were gonna take a mat.
Speaker 6: There was a sy Hirsch report in the New York
Speaker 6: Times that detailed his deep involvement in drug running and
Speaker 6: it couldn't be ignored anymore, and so they went in
Speaker 6: and they arrested him. So that's one president. A lesser
Speaker 6: discussed one is in Haiti. In two thousand and five,
Speaker 6: Jean Patron Aristeid was president of Haiti and there was
Speaker 6: a US back coup. But it was one of these
Speaker 6: coups that were kind of carried out by democracy promotion
Speaker 6: organizations that were funded by AID and the National Endowment
Speaker 6: for Democracy that destabilized the country to the point where
Speaker 6: Iristeed couldn't govern and George W. Bush sent marines in
Speaker 6: and basically put a gun to his head and flew
Speaker 6: him to the Congo where he still lives now, where
Speaker 6: it's in exile.
Speaker 4: So it's happened before.
Speaker 6: I think what is unprecedented is this idea that we
Speaker 6: are just going to accept oil tribute from Venezuela, that
Speaker 6: we're just gonna give these directives to the Venezuelan government
Speaker 6: and they're gonna send I mean, I mean we talked
Speaker 6: about international law.
Speaker 4: All of this stuff is just.
Speaker 6: Unilateral US projections of its power. I mean, the United
Speaker 6: States place sanctions on Venezuela, that's not international law. I mean,
Speaker 6: the papers talk about it. As you know, Venezuela is
Speaker 6: trying to violate sanctions by find the workarounds to sell
Speaker 6: its oil. It's like, why not, it's theirs, the United
Speaker 6: States just putting his ancients on just because it's not
Speaker 6: like it's not like the nations of the world voted
Speaker 6: on putting sanctions on Venezuela. But in any case, I
Speaker 6: think what is unprecedented is what they're working out, and
Speaker 6: they seem to be working it out on a as
Speaker 6: you go basis. It doesn't seem like they have a
Speaker 6: clear plan.
Speaker 4: You're right.
Speaker 6: They don't want it to be two thousand and three Iraq.
Speaker 6: They don't want boots on the ground. They know the
Speaker 6: rank and file of Trump it has a very low
Speaker 6: tolerance for casualties and fatalities, and America first nationalism doesn't
Speaker 6: want to be involved in nation building. But what you're
Speaker 6: seeing is I think two distinct trajectories. On the one hand,
Speaker 6: they're imagining some system in which is that as well,
Speaker 6: it just continues to kind of pay a tribute to
Speaker 6: the United States through oil. But then when Marco Rubio
Speaker 6: talks about it, he says, well, we have these different
Speaker 6: phases of reconstruction and transition to democracy planned out in Venezuela.
Speaker 6: So that kind of suggests more of a direct role
Speaker 6: in pushing the country in a certain direction politically, not
Speaker 6: just leaving it as it is, as long as it
Speaker 6: continues to send the ships, you know, just like during
Speaker 6: colonial times.
Speaker 4: I mean the colony sent.
Speaker 6: The ships filled with gold to Spain, sending the ships
Speaker 6: filled with oil to put off the Texas.
Speaker 2: All right, Greg, we're going to have to leave it there,
Speaker 2: but thank you so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 2: That was fantastic, really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Having Joe, that was absolutely fascinating. The point that stood
Speaker 2: out to me was this idea of going into your
Speaker 2: own backyard to assert your dominance as a sort of
Speaker 2: replacement or offset to a line of multilateralism elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the world. Like that kind of makes sense, and.
Speaker 5: It's very interesting that there's this pattern, this historical pattern
Speaker 5: in the United States that essentially Latin America is where
Speaker 5: we go to dominate when we're internally weak. And of
Speaker 5: course I think people would agree that the US is
Speaker 5: feeling particularly weak on a number of angles. There's obviously
Speaker 5: the sort of existential threat anxiety about the rise of China,
Speaker 5: et cetera. So maybe is this kind of thing, Okay,
Speaker 5: we are not going to be, at least for the moment,
Speaker 5: the global power that we once were, et cetera. But
Speaker 5: in the absence of that, at least we could still
Speaker 5: establish that we get to decide.
Speaker 3: Who the president of various Latin American states.
Speaker 2: Right, Latin American dominant path. Yeah, by the way, have
Speaker 2: you seen me Marco Rubio meme where he's like covered
Speaker 2: in all these different flags from Latin America basically responsible
Speaker 2: for everything.
Speaker 5: I know I have seen the memes about the various jobs.
Speaker 5: Is that Marco Rubio is y sort of de facto
Speaker 5: having to play on this. Rubio strikes me as like
Speaker 5: a sort of interesting bridge figure between this sort of
Speaker 5: because you know, I think of him as sort of
Speaker 5: being like a sort of retro like cold warrior type
Speaker 5: and someone who does probably have like believes like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're going to like spread democracy throughout the world, and
Speaker 5: wants to see Latin America sort of be you know,
Speaker 5: run by liberal democrats, capitalist countries and so forth. But
Speaker 5: obviously he's in an administration that does not have the
Speaker 5: same impulse for that, and so, you know, to some
Speaker 5: extent it feels like this operation it's like it's like
Speaker 5: they're going to like split the difference, right, So he
Speaker 5: gets to be involved in taking out a Latin American leader,
Speaker 5: which he finds to be hostile. But the idea that like,
Speaker 5: it does not feel like this administration is going to
Speaker 5: have much follow through in terms of, Okay, now we
Speaker 5: really want to set Venezuela on a new political course.
Speaker 2: Right, I Mean, I guess we'll see, well what they
Speaker 2: prioritize there. But in the meantime, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 5: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 5: Follow our guest Greg Grandon, He's at Greg Grandon. Follow
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Speaker 4: In