From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

And we continue our discussion of the events, the extraordinary events in Venezuela over the last several days.

Over the last hour, you've heard a couple voices of the native Venezuelans who live in Rochester and are expressing, their feeling of desperation, frankly, a feeling that, however it had to happen, they want to see change, and they're desperate for it, that the people have been desperate for it, and that somehow they hope this leads to not only a life without Maduro in charge, but a life with a much more prosperous future for people in Venezuela.

This hour we're talking about conflict and about what this might portend for the future, this kind of action, what this might mean for international relations, and how conflicts start and end, and how this sort of fits into that framework with Doctor Hein humans, who is author of War and Punishment.

Professor of political science and director of the Peter D Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation at the University of Rochester.

Hi, and welcome back to the program.

Thank you for being with us.

It's a real pleasure.

Thank you for referring to my first book, maybe the second book where it's lead as an international conflict.

It's more relevant today, apparently.

So we're talking about today.

I mean, the last few days here, I was surprised simply because we've been seeing the the drug boats targeted in, with extrajudicial means, and we've seen the administration almost flippant about it.

But that is one thing.

It is another thing to go in the middle of the night and take the leader of the country and his wife out of their palace and say, well, that's it.

We're running the country now, and here we are.

Were you surprised?

Yes, I was surprised, honestly.

But there's a lot, a lot of angles that are that are worth discussing about this, and I don't quite know where to start.

So, maybe, you know some people.

Yeah.

Where do you want to start?

Do you want to talk about comparison motivations?

So I want to start with the first question I have is related to the a question that a listener had last hour.

One of our listeners wanted to ask the Venezuelan guests if it mattered to them what this administration's motivations are.

And they essentially they essentially said it didn't because they're so desperate that their disposition is if it's about oil, take the damn oil.

If that's what you want, take it.

Just get us out of this.

Get us out of this life under, Chavez, under Maduro, and let us rebuild our country.

And I understand that that desperation is so authentic, and it just poured through last hour.

It's hard to hear that and not feel hope for the people of Venezuela.

Do you think the motivation of of the Trump administration matters here?

Yes, tremendously.

I mean, for one, if the Venezuelans are thinking they want to get a better regime, that is still very much the question, because I see no reason to believe that the military is going to be willing to give up its power and its control, its the military that's propped up maduro and, the whole system of bribery and corruption and revolves around the support of the armed forces.

And I see no reason for them to change their mind.

And what the Trump administration is saying, they have to change or we will change it for them.

Well, yeah, we've seen that, in other countries, we've seen it in Iraq, we've seen it in Afghanistan.

That is very hard to do.

Requires boots on the ground.

And and you can't just, you know, decapitation of one leader doesn't really change the fundamental apparatus of the state.

There is a really good book by a friend of mine, Alex Downes.

That talks about foreign imposed regime change.

And it shows overwhelmingly that it backfires, that it doesn't work.

It almost never works because the new regime you're going to install has its own interests, and they don't necessarily align with the interests of the Trump administration or any other American administration.

They have their own agenda.

So, you know, there are many possible reasons, that administration could have done this.

And, some might be beneficial in the short run for the Venezuelan population.

Some might be in the long run.

We know, by the way, that there is no claim to bring back democracy.

There was never raised as a, as one of the motivations for the, for the strike.

So I'm, I'm, I'm not as optimistic by a long shot as, your, your previous guests were.

Okay.

And regarding the, the reasons that regime change operations tend to fail, I want to listen to a bit of sound we have from Stephen Miller last night talking to Jake Tapper on CNN.

Now, Stephen Miller, former student.

What's, my former student.

I'm sorry.

Say again, my former student, Stephen Miller.

Yeah, the Stephen Miller and the Trump administration.

Did you want to say a little bit more about that before we listen to this clip?

He said that I asked him in 2003 what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he said, I want to be number two in the white House.

And I said, oh, when do you want to achieve that?

He says, in the next 15 years.

I said, wow, okay.

Well, who would be the president in 2003?

And he said, Donald Trump, maybe.

What?

The guy is very smart, I did where was this?

And Duke, is in policy.

122 you had him at Duke.

Yeah.

This is two story.

I mean, I do a lot of homework here, and you could have told me this before the book.

Wow.

Okay.

Here's a there's no question.

He's a very smart guy, and he has a long term vision.

He does have a long term vision.

I mean, I think I mean, one of the mistakes people make in trying to analyze this administration is they assume because Trump doesn't read and Trump is is not an intellectual, that there are there's nobody with an agenda that's actually, well thought out in his administration.

Well, you know, that's good.

He could bring this up, particularly in this context, because it looks like, there could be various people in this administration who wanted to strike, but for different reasons.

So there was some kind of log roll, right?

Marco Rubio.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Stephen Miller, we'll talk about, motivation.

I mean, but I would love to hear the clip.

Okay.

Was he a good student, by the way?

I'm.

He was very good.

Very good student.

Yeah, yeah.

So in in the interview with Jake Tapper, he was essentially saying that the reason that other operations have failed is that super powers have not acted like super powers, that they have maybe changed a regime, but then they've been weak.

They've not acted with strength, they've not asserted their interest proudly, and that it is time for the United States, in his words last night, to act like the superpower that it is.

And it's going to do that in Venezuela.

It could do that in Cuba.

It could do that in other Latin and Central American countries.

And then he said, and what could be next is Greenland.

And listen to what Stephen Miller said about that.

Greenland should be part of the United States.

The president has been very clear about that.

That is the formal position of the U.S.

government.

Right.

But can you say that military action against Greenland is off the table?

You're going to be military action against Greenland.

The the Greenland has a population of 30,000 people.

Jake.

The real question is, but what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?

What is the basis of their territorial claim?

What is their basis of having?

Greenland is a colony of Denmark.

The United States is the power of NATO for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO, NATO interest.

Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States.

And so that's a conversation that we're going to have as a country.

That's a process we're going to have as a as a new community of nations.

So you can't not going to get off the table that the U.S.

would use military force to seize Greenland.

You, Jake, I understand you're trying very hard to which which, again, is your job, I respect it is great to get exactly the headline right.

That catchy headline trying to get an answer that says Miller refuses to rule out the the United States should have Greenland as part of the United States.

There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context that you're asking of a military operation.

Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland today, in response to the clip you just heard, the Prime minister of Denmark said that if the United States tries to seize Greenland by force, it will be the end of NATO.

Yes, it will be so, you know, there's a couple of interesting things here.

And I'm and I'm going to ask you for a little bit of rope, maybe to hang myself, but, to explain something, please do the audience.

So this is a very famous kind of, basic insight in political science that, from game theory, that's called the prisoner's dilemma, where there is a prosecutor and he has two guys that he's, suspects of a major crime, but he only has enough evidence to convict him of a minor crime, and he tells them, you know, if both of you stay silent, I have enough to convict you and put you in jail for two years.

But if one of you rats, the other one out, the one who rat the other one out goes free, and the one, who stay silent, goes to jail for four years.

If you stay both silent for, If you both say silent, I will, I, you know, you go to two years in prison.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So, so the idea is, And if you both rat each other out, I'm sorry.

If you're both ready to, each other to go to jail for three years now, there is an outcome here which is optimal.

Which is that, both stay silent and they do get two years.

But individually, it is rational for them to read each other out so both about each other out.

So the equilibrium is that both about each other.

And the important thing here is that there is a collective outcome.

But you've at each other out, which is worse than what you could get, but you can't get there because it's individually rational, not rational to get there.

There was a fundamental insight in political science, in the 1980s with a famous, very famous book by Robert Axelrod called The Evolution of Cooperation, that you actually can get an outcome where both sides cooperate and stay silent.

And it is by playing the same game over and over again.

And you would develop a strategy called tit for tat.

If you ratted me out in the previous round, I read you out in the future.

And then so it goes back and forth and back and forth.

And in that situation, if you play the same game over and over again, it is indeed best to cooperate.

If there is a credible threat that somebody will defect in the future.

So the thing that I'm seeing happening here, in the case of Maduro, and in what Miller says, is that he thinks this is a one shot game, he thinks that this situation won't be iterated.

We won't get be in in a situation where somebody will enforce norm compliance by defecting themselves against the interests of the United States in the long run.

Right.

He thinks this game, it's a one off.

It's a one off.

But he's wrong.

Well, that's the fundamental question we're going to get because as political science, as have been argued for the last 30, 40 years, Bob Coyne became very famous for it.

And other people say that institutions and the international world order and the rules based order is stable because we played the game over and over again.

So here's the counter intuitive thing that I that I hinted at before.

We you sat at the table that, you know, some people say like, oh, some really bad things are going to happen.

And, you know, China is is going to respond and do terrible things.

Russia is going to be respond and do terrible things.

Now, I don't think that those are particularly, acting in the best interest of the rules based international order, but perhaps somebody in Europe will do something, quote unquote, terrible.

And people in the United States would yell out, oh, how can they do that?

It's horrible.

But, you know, that takes some action, you know, against the interests of the United States.

But if you want to inform and enforce compliance in the long run so that the United States again, basis, you know, acts according to the basis of the rules, of the rules of the of the current world order.

There has to be some way to tell them it has, you know, they have to think about this as an iterated a game, the game that's played over and over again.

And if they don't play nice, other people won't play nice.

And in the long run it will be to the detriment of the United States.

Of of, defecting and not, you know, not playing by the rules.

Well, and so let me take that in a couple different directions.

First of all, I again, I think Miller would argue, and I can't speak for him.

He is a very smart guy.

I think he would argue that the reason it to one off is because of the power dynamic, that this is not a game with equal power, that this is not a prisoner's dilemma because there's not two parties involved who have an equal shot at, you know, you have equal stakes in things.

He would say the United States is the one with the power.

So this is not a prisoner's dilemma.

We are exerting our power.

We're not going to have this escalate in the future into extrajudicial kidnapings pulling heads of state out of palaces because we're able to do that, because we're the strong guys and we have the authority and we have the, he would say, the moral authority.

You're not going to see that become a norm because of the power imbalance.

But it's not it's not a it's not a one off between the United States and Denmark.

Right.

Because the other other countries in the world also have interest in living in a world which is, you know, guided by some stability that we know how the game is going to play and play out and that we can actually more or less predict how all the actors will behave, because that creates stability and we want that.

So it's not just Denmark that has a has a role to play, it's the rest of the world also that has an incentive to quote unquote, punish the the player who defects.

This is how the World Trade Organization has made a set up of many of the other international institutions.

I set up that because everybody has an interest in this.

If you defect against one other guy, even if it's tiny guy, the other guy said, like, hey, we got to ensure norm compliance, because if the United States doesn't comply and nobody does anything about it, then the whole world order will unravel.

And this is, of course, the danger.

I'm sure that the you're that you're thinking about, that the whole order will indeed unravel.

I'm sure I look at not just Taiwan, not just Russia justifying its actions even more boldly.

But I don't know where this goes now.

But this is I mean, so I agree with you.

I mean, it is it is a genuine danger.

I can just tell you, though, that it is not in the long term interest of any country to do this.

You know, it may be short term, you gain, but in long term everybody will be worse off.

Now, yes, I know the public doesn't necessarily believe that or see that.

The logic of that does the empirical work that that backs is up.

But it is possible that, you know, the politicians, for venal, selfish reasons or strategic reasons of their own country will be kind of playing along with letting the, rule based order disintegrate in the hope that they can benefit in the short term.

But in the long term, something will have to come in its place.

And I don't know.

Okay.

So now let me take it a different direction.

There's no doubt that Maduro has become a brutal and frankly, illegitimate dictator.

I mean, the 2024 election is pretty a pretty good example, right, of you to talk about rigged elections or stolen elections.

There's one.

But I mean, this is the question for the for the courts in the United States, right?

Is he to present?

Because if he is, then the courts can prosecute him, then the United States can prosecute him.

There is an exception for heads of foreign states.

Yes, but the Biden administration, at least for a time, tried to recognize what it viewed as the legitimate winner.

Yeah, of that election last year.

Well, this is going to have to be fought out in court, right?

I mean, Noriega was different.

It was clear that he wasn't really the president.

Right.

But so couldn't the Trump administration argue?

Look, the guy is not the president.

He is a thief who is trying to position himself as the head of state.

And he's not.

And we're taking him out of there.

They will, of course, in the end, of course, will decide that, I mean, but there's other countries that recognize him as legitimate.

I mean, that's true, right?

So it's I mean, I agree with you that he is not legitimate.

I agree that he stole the election.

That is right.

That is beyond that's beyond doubt.

But it's kind of weird that it's, you know, this situation of incredibly international importance is going to be fought out in the courts in New York City about whether the guy is the president or not, which is going to be a large part of the, of the, of the, of the case, the impasse.

I feel, is that I feel the desperation of not only the two guests from Venezuela who were on the program last hour, but the demonstrators in the street in I mean, in Venezuela, there's not a whole lot of demonstrating in the street against, against, Maduro even now because of fear.

But certainly Venezuelans around the world celebrating.

I, I feel their desire to see change.

And part of me wants to say, look, we can't just sweep into palaces and pull people out of bed and stick them on a plane and say, you're out.

Because when we do that today, to your point about the prisoner's dilemma, where is the next time that happens?

Under what authority does it happen?

What does Russia want to do?

What does anybody want to do?

And do we then have the authority to tell them they can't when we did?

I mean, I think that's a problem of an escalatory spiral I don't want to be in at the same time, this is going on decades now of people who have been oppressed, who have been impoverished, who've had their lives stolen from them, their freedom stolen from them, they tried to have an election, and the world recognized that Maduro is illegitimately staying in power.

And they're kind of like, well, you know, so they feel like, fine, pull him out of the palace.

This was not option one here.

So what do you do?

What do you tell a country that's being oppressed and say, well, sorry, we cannot pull your dictator out of the palace.

You're gonna have to find another way to do it.

When they are totally oppressed.

The question is, you know.

Of course.

Do you have a choice?

I mean, what happens if you do remove them?

Are you better off if you do remove this guy?

Like, everybody was very happy that Saddam was toppled, right?

Statues were torn down.

You know, and this is what, foreign imposed regime change very often brings about.

First, people are very happy, and then he's like, okay, what comes next?

The problem with what's going on at the moment is that it's not really clear what comes next.

Right.

Is the, the the vice president supposedly is the brains of the operation, right?

Maduro was the brawn and the and the vice president was the smart person in the administration.

But it's propped up by the military.

I mean, I, I if I were the Venezuelan military, I'd be worried.

But I would think like the United States and certainly this administration, which argued so vociferously against the, you know, foreign adventures by a previous administration that this administration of all would not, send troops on the ground to defeat the military and take over the country.

Trump has been sort of equivocating on that matter.

He had one point, said there was not going to be troops on the ground.

And then he said he wouldn't rule it out.

I do we have the sound of is it Trump talking about I want to listen to President Trump talking about who's in charge now and what the expectation is.

Let's listen to it where there now and what people don't understand, but they understand as a as I say, this, we're there now, but we're going to say until such time as the proper transition can take place.

So we're going to stay until such time as we get to run it essentially, until such time as a proper transition can take place.

This is all vagueness, right?

I mean, Rubio walked it back.

I says, oh, we're going to put something like this.

What?

He says, no.

But Rubio system to me says there is no plan to be clear.

Trump said, we're going to run Venezuela.

Rubio said, no, we're going to run the policy.

Yeah, that's not the same thing.

Yeah.

How about I mean, how are you going to do that?

I mean, coercion, I mean, yeah, you can make it even more difficult for the I mean, yeah.

Okay.

So let's just a thought occurred to me.

So all these people are so optimistic.

This is so terrible.

This is so, you know, that the Maduro regime and the military have run the country into the ground.

What's the Trump administration proposed to do now is coerced.

And by making it even harder, right, by allowing no more oil to go, be exported.

So no more money, no more, you know, foreign reserves to, to Venezuela.

So it will make it only harder for the for the Venezuelan populist populist.

I'm I'm seriously concerned about that.

I mean, what do you do?

You.

Sorry.

Maybe I'm an idealist.

You fund, you know, Voice of America.

And you help, the opposition, coordinate, overthrow, the government, hopefully by democratic means.

But we defunded Voice of America this year.

I know, yeah, but, I mean, so the the point is, in these regimes, there's a small group that basically uses force to control the masses.

And the only way to masses that can overcome them is they can successfully organize.

This is what happened with churches, school, you know, in Romania in the in the early 90s.

And these other countries that, you know, the, the color revolutions that overthrew the communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe.

So the only way you overthrow them, if you allow if there's a way for the opposition to successfully mobilize and the government can help with this, this country could help with that, to take down election monitors and all that kind of things.

And, you know, but it's yeah, of course, you know, if the military's hell bent on holding on power and it's hard, you can see it.

That's what happened in Myanmar, right?

These guys, these disgruntled leader, are absolutely ruthless.

They kill a everybody in every civilian because the military, the Torquemada, wants to continue this hold on power.

And do you want to go?

Do you want to go?

I was in the Second World War.

Go all the way to Berlin.

Go all the way to Caracas, and, you know, you have to go through the jungles.

That's going to be really difficult to do.

That's.

I don't think that anybody in the world is willing to pay that price.

Let me then ask you also about another possible, motivation in what we are seeing.

Take shape now with, I don't think, President Trump, but more Vice President Vance, from what I read and the way that some people in the administration see a division of power around the world.

So J.D.

Vance, when he was a senator, running for Senate in Ohio, said, why do I care about Ukraine?

I don't care about Ukraine.

He essentially said, I it's not in my interest.

Why do Americans care?

You know, kind of let it let them be damned.

And he has governed with that disposition, but clearly he's showing more care for Venezuelans or claims to or claims to be concerned about Americans based on what's coming out of Venezuela, even though the drug boats, as we've talked about, are not sending fentanyl, Mexico and Asia are sending fentanyl, not Venezuela.

They're sending cocaine.

But the cocaine is often ended up in Europe.

And as much as the United States has a cocaine problem, it pales in comparison to fentanyl.

On top of that, the president of the United States just pardoned the former president of Honduras, who promised to flood the United States with cocaine.

So my head is spinning over like that is not a coherent set of explanations here, but the point I want you to address is the idea that some are forming, which is that the way Vice President Vance, a likely possible future president, sees the world dividing powers.

Okay, it's not a unipolar world anymore.

China.

We'll have Asia, Russia, we'll have Europe, we will have our hemisphere.

We will all have our backyards.

We will control our backyards.

We will try to leave.

So he doesn't care about Ukraine.

That's Russia's problem.

He cares about Venezuela.

And he wants our influence here.

And he wants our dominance here.

Do you see that taking shape in that way?

There are some people, so-called realists, who believe in that and that worldview, a world of spheres of influence.

I would like to I would like to go on about that and address it.

But would you mind if I if I take a step back and say, like, you know, what are the possible motivations?

Because, you know, Elizabeth Sanders was a very good professor and invites for good authority.

A blog, you know, rightly pointed out that various actors in this administration have various motivations.

And that, of course, is very kind of problematic because, you know, there's no means there's no clear, overarching goal.

Some people want oil, some people want supposedly drugs.

Stefan Miller allegedly, wants, a quote unquote war so he can invoke the Alien Rendition Act and deport millions of foreigners.

So that, you know, the fact that there's all these various kind of contradictory kind of motivations or policy goals really is, you know, is is problematic for me now, a world.

And as I told you before.

Right.

There's another motivation.

You know, I just want to throw this in for the listeners because of the really surprised me.

There is one motivation, which in my opinion, would have been kind of almost legitimate, to overthrow the Maduro, to take out Maduro.

And that is that Venezuela has been, more or less activating its claim to the as a keyboard, the western half of, of Guiana, there was a big referendum and then he put it on, and it's it should be included on the map in the map of Venezuela now includes that region as part of Venezuela proper.

And before that it was a on a regular model.

Eric Llamado knew it.

Now it's, it's officially part of Venezuela.

And the listeners have serious had serious worries about, Venezuela adventures.

And there might be a basis there to say like, hey, you know, guys, don't do this.

You know, but, you know, there is a serious and it's a real threat to to the sovereignty of Guyana.

It's surprising that nobody invoked that.

Nobody in this administration is saying we're trying to protect the human rights or the safety of the peace.

Yeah.

Or the territorial integrity.

None of that.

It's not that it's not even being invoked by anybody.

Yeah.

And that struck me that it was not invoked by anybody.

Right.

So but I mean, we don't live in the 19th century anymore, right?

We have, a network of obligations, of interdependence, of trade, energy and information that, you know, you can't cut off like, you know, this vision really basically, proposes, like the, they can have zones of spheres of influence.

I mean, the United States needs Europe to buy its goods.

Simple as that.

Right.

South America has latent power.

They they can make life more difficult for for Europe.

You know, if you constantly have to make up things on the go, it will become much more difficult to do any kind of kind of transactions, any kind of trade and any create any kind of stability, if particularly if this is the worldview that Vance and these other proposed in India, also and in China and, and in Russia, then we are going to go, you know, even if the, you know, some somebody could make an argument, yo, you can get a concept of Europe like, early 19th century, don't be going to go through a phase of transition, which for sure is going to be bloody, which for sure people are going to stretch their their limbs and see how far they can go and how far they can push.

And that's going to be very violence.

And that just can't be that can't be good.

So let's take our only break the and we're going to come back with questions and emails from the audience for Doctor Heine, humans, who is the director of the Peter D Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation at the University of Rochester.

We're talking about Venezuela today.

We're also talking about the broader implications going forward here.

And we'll come back to your emails on the other side of this break.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next connections.

One local town is bringing back it's Living the Dream series in honor of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.

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The best, the worst.

Everything in between.

As the bills get ready to move out.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Had I known that hind humans had Steven Miller in class in 22,003?

I just had you on the show earlier just to try to get inside his head.

You have all kinds of great stories.

You probably can't tell them all on the air.

Yes.

Okay.

But I do think it's interesting that you have some insight into this person now who has a lot of power in this administration, and what is.

Before I get to some emails here.

What I find, again, maybe surprising is the word is that Stephen Miller had become in the last decade this this figure in American politics, though of, of sort of much more proud and out racism.

And, you know, Stephen Miller tweeted last week during the Christmas week, he watched the Dean Martin Frank Sinatra Christmas special and his response to watching Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra was not to say, well, that was nice.

It was to get on Twitter and say, who could watch this and want more third World immigrants?

I mean, what a bizarre guy who's obsessed with third world immigration.

But his foothold in power, it's not in the shadows anymore.

And he is a prominent leading voice in the administration.

Did you think that was possible a decade ago?

So I first of all, I don't think that Stephen Miller considers himself a racist.

I think that he genuinely believes that, white people are in danger of being oppressed and second class status, and that he needs to fight for that.

He has a worldview that I don't share.

And, and he fights very hard to defend it.

I did not expect he would end up in this world, but I think it's partially because of the weakness or the management style of, of President Trump that he likes chaos, around him.

He likes, conflicting kind of advisers who would duke it out.

And it's interesting, if you look at the first administration, most of the people who were in the Trump administration left halfway, got kicked out all the things, not Miller.

Miller is a miller is a stable, force in that administration and apparently has built up a lot of trust.

I mean, he is a smart guy, and he's dedicated, and he has a plan.

He wants to work for it.

And to me, what is happening is particularly at the moment is that it's striking that, there's there's different centers of power in the administration.

And I think that Rubio's desperately trying to establish himself.

And I don't think he's doing a particularly good job at it.

And, and, maybe Scott percent, but, Miller has very successfully established themselves.

And I think that that Vance wants to do this also with regard to the upcoming elections.

Yeah.

And so this is what I want to ask you about.

I want to put my student hat on and see what grade I get from me here, because I read the Siouxsie Wiles interview recently, the chief of staff of the president, who is really one of the people who kind of keeps order in the white House.

Trump has credited her with making sure his campaign was organized.

She is a obviously a very accomplished person, but she gives this interview where she is.

I mean, she said that J.D.

Vance is a conspiracy theorist.

She said that President Trump, while he doesn't drink, has the behavior of an alcoholic.

Yeah.

And I mean, it's amazing she's still on staff, all the things she said.

But one of the things she said in that interview with Vanity Fair was that she she is shocked at the way Ice is behaving.

She said Ice was not supposed to be pulling people off roofs and out of the kitchens of restaurants.

They were supposed to be going after the drug lords and that somebody screwed up here.

And when you read that, you go, well, she's lying.

Yeah.

Oh, no, no, she's not lying.

I don't think she's lying.

So here's my thesis.

My thesis is to your point.

The president has a lot of different viewpoints in his administration, and I think there are people like the Joe Rogan, the wild side who say, like, we shouldn't be pulling people who've been here for 30 years, who have kids off of roofs and deporting them.

And then I think you've got Stephen Miller who says, yes, he should.

And then I think you've got the president and you have people around who ran on a platform of pulling us out of world entanglements and a lot of not a lot, but a big chunk of the president's support are people who say, I don't want the United States to be the world's policeman.

We're not going to do that anymore.

We're not going to get in these foreign adventures anymore.

And then you got Stephen Miller, and I think Stephen Miller is winning in this administration.

But I don't think everybody agrees with that and that I don't think that all of this administration agrees with him.

But I think he right now is winning.

That's why you see this, I would call it imperialism or this aggressive foreign adventurism that a lot of people who supported Trump didn't expect.

Well, I mean, I don't think that, you know, Stephen Miller wants that foreign adventurism, as I said, a potential explanation for his support for his policies, that he can then say, look, now we can have the alien rendition act.

I mean, he doesn't want a war.

He wants the authority to be able to buy Greenland.

He want, I mean, he want.

Yes.

Creating conflict.

Well, yeah.

Okay.

So okay.

That's true.

But he wants to support the president.

He is.

He's very deliberate in his flattery of the president and support.

And everything the president says is brilliant and has to go, it I would be very surprised if he if he pushed for, annexation agreement or military.

Yeah.

Because do you agree that that would be the end of NATO?

Yes, it would be.

It would.

And it has many people in the world, particularly Putin, who would be quite happy about that.

And maybe also Trump would be happy about it because he wanted to get out in the in the first, in the first administration.

And, you know, the interesting thing is that, of course, many people at Trump voters will say like, yes, we've been, the world's policeman and, too long and we've been paying all the bills and, you know, and everybody's been free by any of us.

Most of them don't cede all the benefits the United States has gotten in return.

And they have been substantial, and more than people are aware of, just to name one obvious one that people remember is that old NATO countries came and, help fight in Afghanistan and, you know, without without, you know, without, without stenting.

So, so also also back about, about Steven Miller's role in the administration.

Does all the people like comments on Bongino and these other people who are seeing an opportunity to establish their own kind of power fiefdoms?

Right.

And these these people are ruthless.

So Susie Wiles may not be in favor of pulling these people off the street, but if it creates a power base for Bongino or for Homans, they're going to go for it.

It reminds me of what happened, you know, in, in the 1930s in Germany.

That is, these competing power centers were were set up and people were given enough rope to establish their, you know, their power to the end room.

With the, SA troops.

And then you had they had the paramilitaries, which actually had to be removed violently.

Then in the end, because he was a real threat to Hitler.

But, you know, these competing organizations of violence in these competing centers of power, as a way of controlling society.

And, you know, this this leads to inchoate policymaking and, actions that are not very well thought through.

Let me get some emails here.

Alex writes to say, if the Justice Department argues that Maduro isn't really the president because of the election last year and therefore they can prosecute him, doesn't that contradict with their backing of the current socialist government?

Wouldn't they be tacitly supporting it?

Munoz Gonzalez I think that's a good point.

That is a good point.

I mean, it's really I mean, it's very open.

I mean, there isn't going to be a, you know, an undoubtedly very smart and very accomplished judge who's going to have to go through all this and wailed.

It's like on the basis of what is he going to make basis?

Who is, you know, the president, on the basis of American law, you can't do it if he's going to do it on the basis of Venezuelan law.

This guy is not a specialist.

How well intentioned or bility is?

He's not a specialist on Venezuelan law.

Is he going to do it on the basis of international law?

People won't like that.

It's a it's a mess.

I mean, the the Trump administration has the precedent of Noriega and, you know, and and the and the court in that case said, no, he's not the, the president.

And they had a very strong case in that regard because he was a police commander.

He was never elected.

Never, you know, so he was really a dictator from the ground up.

Maduro is not the dictator from the ground up.

He got into power, quote unquote, technically, legitimately, initially, and then extended his power over and over again.

But know there's lots of there's lots of angles.

Yeah.

Alex, that's a really smart email.

Thank you.

This is an email from David who says this discussion needs to be placed in a broader historical context, namely, the two centuries of the United States claim an assertion of hegemonic dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

An 1829 quotation from The Liberator, Simon Boulevard.

He says the United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.

And, yeah, I mean, there's a long history there.

I mean, this is one of the reasons why Bolivar and the other and some others at the time of the independence, wanted to create a large, overarching confederation, very much like the United States, to actually to provide a counterweight that that project, failed, of course.

Yeah.

Well, it would be interesting to see, I mean, if the United States does, you know, keeps doing this stuff and keeps, you know, for example, also goes into Cuba.

Will the, other South American countries more or less bound together and, you know, try to, you know, form some kind of coherent bloc to oppose, the United States?

It's, you know, it happened once, so we know that the United States invaded, you know, Central America, several times, several times that wrote American countries.

But the most famous case that I think of is the John Walker filibuster in the 1850s of Nicaragua, where all these countries in Central America and all these leaders who hated each other's guts finally all got together and, you know, kicked the Americans out.

And, you know, that's a that's a historical precedent that is very much alive in Central America and particularly in Nicaragua.

You know, one of the reasons why, the, the American support for the for the Sandinista, for the, for, was it Somoza?

I think it was also, was was frowned upon.

There is a long history of American, intervening in the Latin American politics.

We have the coup in Chile.

We have other things.

It's very worrisome.

Sorry for that.

Yet I don't think.

I don't think David Immelt thinks this time is going to be different.

Yeah, yeah.

Before I grab a couple of phone calls, one other brief side question for Doctor Who Mount, who is talked to us a number of times over the last four years now, about Russia and Ukraine, just briefly, because obviously the Trump administration has forecasted some kind of peace there, while Russia has not shown any willingness to give it all.

Interestingly, Zelensky has Zelensky has said that they'll take NATO off the table there.

There's certain things that they would give.

Russia is not giving at all.

And you've talked about what ends wars.

Do you see anything that leads you to believe that?

We could see a negotiated settlement soon there?

Well, maybe, maybe the chances are somewhat better than the last years.

But I mean, because Wolinsky has lowered his aims significantly, right?

He's willing to make deals.

He's even willing to make a demilitarized zone in Donetsk.

So, the question is, does Putin think he can take the deal?

Because are more and more so the thing that strikes me so much about Ukraine is that that Russia has been so unwilling to change it, War, it keeps coming back.

De-Nazification, you know, NATO, small, small Ukrainian army, and it keeps saying the same things over and over again, where in reality they you know, in my opinion, I thought I would have thought that Putin can come back, said, look, we liberated Novo Russia.

I am the glorious leader, Czar Peter the 15th.

You know, venerate me, put up statues because I just, you know, rebuilt the legacy of Russia.

And he's not doing that.

And, you know, some people say that if he doesn't come up with or not, come back home with a big enough victory, there is going to be hell to pay for him.

Personally, I'm I'm a bit at a loss.

Why?

Otherwise he keeps, you know, so firmly demanding things that he can't get.

I mean, you know, it's it's unreasonable for him to think it's impossible that Ukraine will accept troop limits, that he wants.

It is impossible that Ukraine will accept any deal that, foregoes guarantees.

But.

And it's impossible, you know, because Putin painted himself in the corner for Putin to accept a deal where there are NATO troops or European powers in Ukraine to provide that guarantee.

So, okay, do you see anything that would leverage, a change in disposition in that one side is winning or losing, quote unquote?

Yeah.

Well, the thing I mean, somebody expectations have to change.

Right?

Then the expectations that would really have to change are Putin's at the moment.

And the only thing that I could think of is that know they keep well, there is supposedly a Ukrainian counteroffensive starting now in the last couple of days.

And if the you if the Russians cannot maintain the levels, of conscription of of basic manpower, then they are in trouble because then Putin might actually have to do, you know, general conscription, general mobilization.

And that's where the rubber will meet the road.

Let me get Ryan Rochester on the phone.

Hi, Roy.

Go ahead.

Hi, Evan.

I'm sorry.

I came in very late, but I heard Stephen Miller in Greenland versus a Guggenheim fellow who's a photographer here in Rochester who's currently doing, project on Greenland.

Of course, we give him a lot of grief saying, like, you could be on the beach when the Americans land, bring more cameras.

But he's been there a bunch.

I've seen a lot of photography.

What are we going to get?

What, pickled wolf fish or the guy who sells, well, sushi on the street, but wouldn't mind more customers?

Well, Go ahead.

Nine.

Well, you know, the question is, what do you get out of Greenland, right?

I mean, supposedly North Passage, you know, better shipping routes.

And if you don't want to have trade.

Right.

But anyhow, is there minerals involved?

Supposedly that's like.

Yeah.

And oh, the magic word of the moment.

I rare, rare earth minerals.

Yeah.

But there's lots of there could be lots of stuff and on the Greenland, I mean, I'm wondering I mean, I've been thinking like if I was Danish, you know, if I was Danish and if I was in a position of kind of authority and, you know, Prime Minister and minister of defense, what would I do?

Would I actually shoot back, you know, that the Danes did not shoot back in 1940, right?

The Germans walked in.

There was some shooting.

Six Danes died.

Right.

And then there were planes over Copenhagen.

And then it and said, would you shoot back if we landed troops in Greenland?

Yeah.

I mean, what Steven Miller is saying is nobody is going to be shooting over a territory with 30,000 people.

How are you going to actually force the Danes then to, to, concede Greenland to you?

I mean, they they that's the fun.

That is another fundamental norm of principle in the international nations of the last, at least the last 80 years.

You know, the principle of territorial integrity.

You can't do it because once you, you know, start pulling on that, on that, on that, a piece of rope, the whole the whole ball unravels because on everybody's territorial integrity is in question.

Well, you heard Miller say in that clip he said, well, what claim does Denmark have?

They have a claim, don't they?

Yeah.

I mean, like, what claim did United States have none.

Right.

We want to, you know, I mean, there is you know, the claim to green is of course is discovery.

It's a very old one.

And there is some kind of agreement with made made with the native inhabitants of Greenland, okay.

That, you know, they form some kind of protectorate, you know, colony status.

It it's accepted by the Greenlanders.

They they they approve of it.

And to say, like what claim do the other guy have when you have none yourself?

Like, just I want it.

It's just preposterous.

No, sorry.

Okay.

Well, sounds like you don't think that.

It sounds like you think Miller is just appeasing Trump's ego when he says that stuff, and he doesn't actually think we're sending gunboats to Greenland?

I think he is flattering the impulses of Trump.

And I think he's distracting from the Epstein files.

Well, so that's another thing.

I got an email from a listener who said, how come you and your guest haven't talked about whether this is a wag the dog?

And the implication being, this is a war in Central or South America to distract the American public from the Epstein files.

That's what Justin emailed.

Yeah.

I do you want to weigh in on that, hein?

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, I understand that, yeah.

So the story about the Wag the dog is you start a foreign adventure because the foreign adventure will actually increase your popularity or boost your popularity in the short run.

But the point is, it's in the short run.

So it only really pays if you think you can deal with the, the, the, the Epstein files and all the outrage that was associated with it in the short term while people are distracted, by, Venezuela.

But if that's not the case, if the files keep coming back, then the distraction doesn't really work because it's too short term.

There's a rally around the flag effect it had last six weeks, three months at most.

So it doesn't have the long term kind of, you know, otherwise, you know, Bush would have been reelected in 1992.

Yeah.

I would say there's one thing that does stand out with the Epstein files.

The Wall Street Journal report from last week was extraordinary.

And now no one is talking about it.

It was a report that indicated the you know, at first blush, you go, oh, Trump threw Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago.

Like maybe Trump was the good guy in the story.

And then you realize the reason Trump did it after all those years of traveling and doing all that stuff with Epstein and being in those parties and having the girls sit on his lap, as we've seen in the videos, is, he was told that Epstein was credibly accused of assaulting 15 year old girls, and they and the determination was not that Trump should go to the authorities, not the Trump should seek to have his powerful friend prosecute Epstein, but to say he shouldn't be allowed back to to the club at Mar-A-Lago, that's it.

I mean, no, knowing what he knew, Epstein can still do everything he's doing.

You just can't go back to his club in Florida.

I hadn't read that.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

That's a remarkable story and very well-sourced.

And no one is talking about it, so I don't know.

So maybe that's what Justin's talking about.

Me.

Now we're all talking about something else.

The Wall Street Journal, a Wall Street Journal.

Yeah.

So, okay, last, let me just squeeze in a couple because we just got we could do questions all day.

Let's see here.

Linda said given the close relationship between Trump and Putin, has your guest ever thought that they might have a silent deal between them, that a crisis will be created and Trump may then try to continue his presidency past this four year term?

So there are some people in my that's pretty conspiratorial.

Yeah.

But there are some people in my in my personal life who actually think that, you know, all of this is a preparation for, canceling the elections in the coming year, even, by saying, like, there's a war going on, it's good for Stephen Miller so he can have two, aliens active for the third time.

I mentioned it, and you can do things in wartime, but you kind of do it.

Other things I don't really believe it.

I'm not that pessimistic, I don't think.

I mean, to run a conspiracy, you have to have people who are very competent.

This is what Machiavelli talks about in the discourses in, book three, chapter six.

You know, you need competent people, to run the conspiracy successfully.

And I don't see much of that competence.

And lastly, a couple of listeners have said that, that they thought the first hour of the program today was was too shallow.

And I'm just going to say in response to that, I'm sorry, but that's baloney.

We need to hear from Venezuelans whether whether people like their views or not, whether people think that they are, too facile.

I mean, look, everyone's going to have a different perspective here.

And you heard Doctor Heumann say that while he wants to.

We all want good things for Venezuela.

Yeah, maybe you're concerned that, you know, maybe the celebration is premature and that.

What?

Well, let me let me, you know, let me answer.

I mean, in my in my opinion, there's room for analysis, but we need to also understand the emotion started playing what really is going on for people to be talking about people.

Right.

Yeah.

This is this is not theory.

Yes.

These are human lives here now.

And and both should come together.

But both deserve a place at the table 100%.

That's why this this program is structured this way this hour.

And one was not to sort of, you know, circumvent the other.

It was to understand that this is complicated and that no matter your feelings on the Trump administration, there are Venezuelans around the world who are desperate to have a chance to go home, who are desperate to see real leadership.

Our guest last hour pointed out that, you know, there are kids in their family who've grown up and never known anything but Chavez and Maduro, and that's not an easy life, and nobody wants that for them.

So yeah, you can't blame people for feeling the desperation of hope.

And it's good for people to recognize this.

There's, you know, you know, you you can talk about Venezuelans in the abstract.

Oh it's terrible.

But to hear actually then it hits you.

You know, it's we hear what these people feel in their, you know, their emotions and their aspirations.

Then it hits you in a place that you start to actually understanding and thinking, hey, these people suffering.

Maybe I should really think about what's going on in that part of the world.

Absolutely.

Now, does that mean that we we ignore the reams of history, the context, the geopolitics there?

I mean, a lot there's a lot to consider.

I certainly hope for everyone who's been desperate to go home, to have a peaceful place to live and raise their children, that they get it.

And but at the same time, we have to have a sober conversation, analysis of how you get there and what this all means.

And that's why we invited Doctor Newman's here, who is a professor of political science and director of the Peter D Watson Center for Conflict and Cooperation at the University of Rochester.

And as I found out this hour, a former professor of Stephen Miller at Duke all those years ago.

How long were you at Duke, by the way?

Six years.

Six years.

Okay.

Rochester's better.

It's good to hear here.

Rochester is better.

It is.

Thank you very much, as always, for being here.

Thank you for your expertise.

And we know that Jane will be welcome back many times to talk about these issues for all of us of connections.

Thank you for the feedback, listeners.

Thanks for joining the conversation, sharing your thoughts, sharing your insights.

And we'll keep doing that here on the public square.

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