At Davos last week, Mark Harney, the

prime minister of Canada, gave a speech

that sent shock waves through the

international community.

>> Let me be direct. We are in the midst of

a rupture, not a transition.

>> It was a remarkable speech by a Canadian

prime minister.

>> It's like a moment of clarity.

>> It received a very rare standing ovation

with praise not only in Davos, but

around the world. To understand why this

speech this has been such an

international relations earthquake, I

think you need to understand something

about him. Carney is as establishment as

you get. He is a technocrat's

technocrat, former governor of the Bank

of Canada, former governor of the Bank

of England. for Carney, this kind of

figure to come out at Davos in front of

all those assembled government elites

and business elites at this moment when

Trump is threatening tariffs on Europe

in order to take over Greenland. For him

to come out and say that we are living

in a rupture, that the old order in

which you could have values-based

relationships with the United States of

America is over. for Carney, the leader

of Canada, America's both geographically

and in many ways spiritually closest

ally to say this, that is a break point.

I think that's a moment, a week that's

going to be remembered for a long time.

Beneath Carney's analysis of what is

happening here is an idea I've been

following for some time called

weaponized interdependence. And this

idea comes from the international

relations theorists and professors Henry

Ferrell and Abraham Newman. It's in

their book, Underground Empire: How

America Weaponized the World Economy.

And the basic concept is that over time

in this globalized woven together world,

there are a lot of ways in which being

on American technologies and in American

financial markets gave us leverage. And

that was fine for our allies, for the

world, so long as we didn't use that

leverage too much. But now we've begun

to make that a way we can harm them, a

way we can extort them, a way we can

control them. And that has really

changed the nature of the bargain. Henry

Fail is an international relations

professor at Johns Hopkins University.

He is author, as I mentioned, of

Underground Empire and of the Excellent

Substack Programmable Mutter. I want to

have him on to talk me through Carney

speech, these ideas, and if the old

order is ending, what that might mean

for the one to come. As always, my

email, Ezra Kleinshowny Times.com.

>> Henry Frell, welcome to the show.

>> I'm delighted to be here.

>> So, I want to begin with this clip of

Mark Carney, the prime minister of

Canada, speaking at Davos.

>> Let me be direct. We are in the midst of

a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of

crises in finance, health, energy, and

geopolitics have laid bare the risks of

extreme global integration. But more

recently, great powers have begun using

economic integration as weapons, tariffs

as leverage, financial infrastructure as

coercion, supply chains as

vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual

benefit through integration. When

integration becomes the source of your

subordination

>> when integration becomes the source of

your subordination. What is he saying

there?

>> So in a weird way it feels to me like he

is channeling things that Abe Newman and

I, my co-author on this book Underground

Empire started saying six or seven years

ago. And here I'm not claiming that we

are the people who discovered it. But

this was not the consensus when we were

writing and it has become a new kind of

consensus now which is if we think about

globalization. Globalization back in the

'9s and the 2000s. It seemed like it was

an incredible opportunity to build a new

kind of economic world in which markets

dominated rather than geopolitics. So

you have all of these ideas floating

around about we're past the world of the

Cold War. We're past the world of the uh

Berlin Wall and we're now in a new world

where it is going to be possible to

rebuild politics around market

competition. You don't have to worry

about your neighbors invading you. You

don't have to worry about all of these

political risks. Instead, you just focus

on being the most competitive market

that you absolutely can be. And this

leads to enormous amounts of integration

of the sorts that Carne is talking

about. So, we see supply chains becoming

global. We see these financial systems

which are focused on the United States

becoming uh means through which people

can send money back and forth without

really worrying or thinking about the

politics behind it. And we see this

entire plumbing for this new global

economy becoming established. And all of

this seems great and awesome and

functional. But we're in a world now

where as Carney says the plumbing has

become political. All of these means

that we use to integrate the world, all

of these financial systems, all of these

uh trade and production systems are

suddenly being turned against countries.

And the United States, which actually

has been doing this in a much quieter

and uh perhaps less threatening way to

many countries at least for decades, is

in fact the country that is pushing this

the hardest. G

>> give me some examples of this. Give me

an example prior to Trump of the United

States doing this in a quieter way and

then give me an example of what Carney

is talking about now when he says that

great powers are using economic

integration as weapons and he clearly

means us.

>> Okay. So this uh really began post

September 11th, 2001 when the United

States it looks at this attack that has

happened and it tries to figure out what

are the ways in which terrorists have

been able to take advantage of this

poorest international system of

economics which allows them to send

money back and forth uh and they begin

to start thinking about what kinds of

tools can they use to stop it. So this

really begins I think it really begins

to get going with a measure against a

bank which is very closely associated

with North Korea. Uh the United States

begins to target that bank and uh so you

see suddenly when that happens a massive

flight of money away from the bank the

bank nearly goes under.

>> When you say they target that bank slow

down a little bit.

>> Yeah.

>> What do they do?

>> So here okay so there's this whole

complicated system and let me just

explain maybe the best place to start is

with the dollar. So if you are an

international bank, you need to have

access to the US dollar because the US

dollar is the lingua frana of the global

economy. This is the uh currency that

everybody exchanges in and out of. That

means in practice that you have to have

correspondent relations with a bank in

the United States, you are effectively

you become subject indirectly or

directly to US regulation. Because if

you don't have these banks which allow

you to uh these banking relations which

allow you to clear transactions through

US dollars, you effectively stop

becoming an international bank. And so

this then means that you are in a world

as the United States discovers where it

is possible for the United States to

effectively declare that a bank or

another institution is a pariah. That

nobody should have anything to do with

it. And any bank which wants to maintain

access to the US dollar which means most

banks in the world is going to respect

that demand from the United States. So

suddenly the United States is able to

turn the entire global banking system

into a means of power projection and it

uses this first against uh terrorists

obviously then against rogue states such

as North Korea. But we begin to see over

the uh intervening years that we get

more and more ambitious. And I think

that the most important example of this

came with respect to Iran. And so the

Obama administration uh very carefully,

very very slowly uh ratchets up

pressure, withdrawing the ability of

Iranian banks to use the international

system and also ratcheting up pressure

against any other uh any other bank in

any other country which wants to touch

the Iranian system in any way. And Iran

suddenly discovers that it cannot get

paid for its oil anymore. It is having

to barter. It has it has to barter for

say we will send you x amount of oil and

in return we will get 500 tons of grain

or we will get a uh crate load of

zippers. All of these uh crazy things

that Iran has to do in order to uh try

and get paid and Iran wants to get out

from under that. So this I think is a

good example of how it is that the

United States is effectively able to use

this power to cut an entire country out

of the global financial system. Iran

does figure out ways around this over

time. Uh it does especially under under

the Trump administration begin to figure

out alternative shadowy payment systems.

So there are real limits to this. uh but

uh these techniques are perfected uh

from administration to administration

and they're handed on a little bit like

a baton in a relay race. This is not to

say that this is uh the product of grand

planning. At every moment I think these

are officials who are desperately

improvising to try to uh do whatever the

policy need of the moment demands. But

over time they create this entire

ramshackle system for coercion which

turns out to be pretty extraordinary and

to have pretty extraordinary powers. One

example of this that was striking to me

was the Trump administration sanctioned

you know some top judges and prosecutors

of the international criminal court

because of bringing suit against

Benjamin Netanyahu. Tell me a bit about

that moment and what happened. So really

what's happening here is of course the

Trump administration sees the

International Criminal Court and all of

these other international uh

organizations as being uh in a sense

illegitimate and this is uh not just

about Trumpism itself. This has always

been a tension between the United States

and this global system. On the one hand

the United States does want to take

advantage of it. There are many people

in the United States who see global

human rights as being a very very

important thing that we need to protect.

But the United States like every other

country does not want itself to be uh

constrained by the system when the

system acts against it. And so the

United States has never actually signed

on to the International Criminal Court

and both Democrats and Republicans have

been somewhat resistant to it. So then

when uh the Trump administration sees

what is happening with Netanyahu, it

begins to go after these uh

international criminal court officials.

And what happens then is that these

officials, they suddenly find they can't

use credit cards because credit cards

all rely upon these payment systems. Uh

they can't use Google. And so you

discover that there's this entire

incredibly boring seeming infrastructure

of uh institutions of communication

systems of money that is really what

underpins our ordinary life. It's

possible to live without access to these

systems uh as these uh judges uh who

have and other officials who have been

targeted have discovered. But it is a

real pain. What Carney is describing

here, what he describes as a rupture,

not a transition, is not just the use of

these tools, but the use of these tools

for something. What to you is the

rupture he's describing. So here I think

it is worth going back to this whole

idea of the uh liberal international

order and uh the way in which this term

comes into being. It's really two

academics. It's uh Dudney and Iikenberg

who come up with this idea and their

argument is pretty straightforward that

the United States is incredibly powerful

and that that power is actually a

problem for other countries. If you are

uh a another country who wants to uh

deal with the United States, you worry

that it is too powerful for you uh that

it might in fact you you you might make

some concession and then the United

States decides it wants a little bit

more and it wants a little bit more and

you find yourself in a a situation of

complete uh vaselage of complete

dependence. And so their argument is

that the way that the US has worked over

the uh decades after World War II is to

create something which amounts to a kind

of international quasi constitution.

That is a set of relationships through

which it binds itself through which it

effectively makes it more difficult for

itself to abuse at least its allies uh

other countries uh which are dependent

upon it. And so from this perspective,

the more that the Trump administration

takes that role, the more that the Trump

administration decides to use that

leverage, the less other countries want

to trust it. And this is why I think

many people uh like Dudney and

Iikinbury, people who felt that the

liberal international order was a

wonderful thing. why they are uh

extremely despondent about the world

because they see from their perspective

the United States has uh effectively

having thrown away this massive

advantage because if you are uh

self-restrained in this way you actually

are able to encourage much richer much

deeper integration with other countries

and everybody ends up better off as a

result

>> you've called what we're doing the

initification of American power tell me

about that idea

>> okay so this is a term which we are

taking very directly from Cory Doctoro

who is a science fiction writer and

general thinker who is uh also I guess a

a shitster since we have used the sword

already and so he uh uses this to talk

about the way in which the platform

economy works and so more or less his

argument is that the platform economy

typically platforms start out as being

absolutely awesome uh you have these

wonderful uses which you can make of

Google search and whatever it is

beautiful you have incredible access to

information uh but Over time, the

platform has these incentives to uh get

shittier and shittier and shittier uh

for the uh user. It basically uh it it

begins to see uh the ways in which the

users are not the customers. The

customers are of course the advertisers

and so you find for example if you're

using Google these days uh you uh look

up a restaurant, Google does not want

you to go to that restaurant's homepage.

It wants you to click on some affiliate

link to Door Dash or somebody else. So

you order via Google rather than uh via

the uh restaurant. So our argument is

that uh if you look at the ways in which

United States power and United States

hedge money works, it's kind of like a

similar system. Uh that is that we are

seeing the increased initification of

all of these platforms that the United

States provides that the world relies

on. So the dollar clearing system we've

already talked about the way in which

the US is able to use the dollar in

order to leverage its advantage against

other countries. We can also think about

weapon systems as being uh very similar.

Once you buy uh for example a fifth

generation fighter uh aircraft, you are

not just buying the aircraft. You're

buying into this extensive platform

which you need to support the aircraft

to provide the information that uh

allows you to uh figure out where to uh

target uh things. all of these other

bits and pieces and the United States

can possibly shut that off. So this is

one of the big dilemmas that Canada

faces I think is that Canada is very

very deeply bought into these platforms.

Uh Canada is more deeply integrated into

the United States military structure I

think than any other ally and suddenly

it's in a world where it has to make

some extremely difficult choices. Does

it try to withdraw from these military

platforms? What kinds of consequences

does that have? You know, once a

platform becomes inchitified, you're

kind of like somebody trying to figure

out, do you leave Google or do you stick

with Google? Do you leave uh Facebook,

do you stick with Facebook? Uh none of

the choices that you have are great. I

want to hold for a minute on the

motivation of initification, which is as

I understand um Cory's argument, the

very simple way to put inification is

that when these tech platforms want to

attract people to the platform, they add

a lot of value to the user. you are

using early Google search, early

Facebook, and it really does what you

want it to do. You almost cannot believe

how good it is for no cost to you at

doing what you want it to do. And over

the time when you're locked in, and it's

very, very hard to get out. They then

move from adding value to your life to

extracting value from you. they, you

know, cover you in ads and they

manipulate you and they, you know, draw

your attention in and and do all these

things that that that that change the

bargain. And that Trump and the people

around him seem to have seen the the

liberal world order under American

leadership as something kind of similar.

That now it is so hard for other

countries to extricate themselves from

it, from us, that you can begin to

squeeze them. And to not squeeze them is

to leave money, tribute, power on the

table. You could maybe make Canada the

51st state. You could maybe have

Greenland. You can certainly get all of

these countries to give you better trade

deals to put money in your pocket.

But that's all built on this theory that

they can't leave.

So how good is that theory? It's

somewhat good and it's somewhat not

good. So I think that the United States

did not set this up as a deliberate uh

kind of honey trap. This is not a world

in which the United States decided we

are going to pull everybody in and then

once we pull everybody in, we are going

to figure out ways to uh screw the

maximum amount of uh money and tribute

out of them that we possibly can. So I I

think I but I do think that this very

much is the way in which Trump and the

people around him view the world. they

they do see this as a world in which the

United States bluntly ought to uh be

getting tribute. So I had this I

remember uh 15 years ago I had this big

fight with the late David David Greyber

uh which was about whether or not the

world economy was a tribute system and

uh he was saying absolutely it is and I

was saying nope it was not. And I kind

of feel like the uh last year or so uh

Donald Trump has been doing everything

he can to possibly to prove that it is a

tribute system and to try and figure

that out. Now there are limits because

the more that you do this, the more that

uh other countries uh begin to try and

figure out ways to use what the uh late

political scientist uh James Scott uh

calls the weapons of the week. So they

begin to resist in different ways. I do

think we're beginning to see some of

that happening. Uh the more that you use

it as well, the less other countries are

going to be willing to buy into the

stuff that you offer. And I think one of

the really interesting test cases that

is coming up is AI because we see uh if

if you look at the political economy of

AI, the Trump administration's approach

to AI seems to be to uh offer it as

freely and widely as possible in the

expectation that everybody is going to

be so impressed with the uh ways in

which uh US AI companies have powered

ahead that they will have no choice but

to become dependent upon it. And then

presumably after that at some point the

US is able to use this as a new means of

power. It is effectively in control of

another of the great infrastructures of

the world. And I'm going to be really

interested to see whether countries

actually I'm sort of shrug their

shoulders and go for it or whether or

not they decide that actually it makes

better sense for them to build their own

platforms even if these platforms are

worse because at least these platforms

are theirs and cannot be used against

them. I want to pick up on the debate

you had with Greyber for a minute

because the idea that this liberal

rules-based world order was something of

a sham has been around for a long time

and it's something Carney talks about in

his speech. I want to play this clip for

you. We knew the story of the

international rulesbased order was

partially false. That the strongest

would exempt themselves when convenient

that trade rules were enforced s

asymmetrically.

And we knew that international law

applied with varying rigor depending on

the identity of the accused or the

victim.

This fiction was useful and American

hegemony in particular helped provide

public goods, open sea lanes, a stable

financial system, collective security

and support for frameworks for resolving

disputes.

>> Tell me what you make of that story he's

telling there. So I think that story is

exactly right and uh in a certain sense

this is the story that people I think

have known suchce that they have known

that this is in fact the true story. The

United States has always had a opt out

option uh to all of the arrangements

it's made. It has uh always been uh

willing to uh either implicitly or

sometimes explicitly pull out when it

feels that its national interests are

being significantly hampered by some

collective deal or arrangement. Equally

at the same time as Carney says the

services that the United States has

provided are useful. So this is uh the

ways in which you might think about a

rational hgeimon actually working which

is on the one hand you provide

collective goods. some of these

collective goods and sort of cost you

significantly. You probably pay for more

of them than the uh other countries that

you're protecting but at the same time

you get more out of the system as well

because you are able to shape the system

according to your particular needs,

desires and wants. So I think that the

interesting thing about what Carney says

is uh not that this is something which

is profoundly new. I and other academics

uh my colleague Martha Fineore have

talked about the incredibly important

role of US hypocrisy in uh securing the

order for a long while. This is not new

but the fact that Carney is uh prepared

to say this bluntly, plainly and openly.

This is new and this suggests that uh

whatever order Carney wants to build and

I think that there are still some

question uh marks open about how to

build it. it is uh going to be different

than the order that was before which is

not to say that it would not have its

own hypocrisies its own uh areas of

self-interest because that is a fact of

international politics but that it is a

recognition that the United States has

gone beyond the realm of hypocrisy into

the realm of uh pretty naked we want you

to do uh what we want you to do and if

you don't do this we are going to punish

you. But I guess if you're somebody in

Trump's orbit and when I listen to Trump

at at Davos in a very strange speech and

I listen to him more broadly, what he

always says is look how much we've done

for you. Look at how much of the burden

of collective security we've borne and

and these things that that Carney

mentions uh open sea lanes, a stable

financial system, collective security,

but the American political system is

still guaranteeing those in that leaked

signal chat uh where you saw, you know,

JD Vance and Hexath and everybody

debating whether or not to to to bomb to

OpenC channels again. One thing Vance

says uh in thinking about this you know

fight against what would be the Houthis

is that he can't stand that America is

again doing something on behalf of

Europe and they're not paying any of the

cost. So you know from the MAGA

perspective

American hegemony is still providing

these public goods we just want a fairer

deal for it. So I'd think that the way

that you would respond to that is that

the United States does pay a

disproportionate amount of the cost and

this has always been a problem with the

US and NATO in particular. I think that

there was bipartisan agreement around

this but also the United States has

gotten a disproportionate amount of many

of the benefits from it and also uh when

it comes to things like NATO it has been

the uh actor which has been able to set

the agenda. Uh, you know, there's a a

saying in uh Ireland, he who pays the

piper calls the tune. And the United

States has been capable of calling the

tune. The Trump calculation seems to be

that uh we can stop paying and we can

use our awesome terror and wrath in

order to uh provide a kind of substitute

in order to keep on being able to be a

uh a substantial power internationally.

uh and I don't think that that actually

works because its resources are limited.

If it is fighting a war in this place,

it is uh deploying the resources that

cannot be used in other places instead

of that. And we also have seen this uh

with Venezuela. It's very clear that

they had to pull in a lot of resources

from other places that meant that there

were other things that they weren't able

to do in the world at the time. And

there's also this weird kind of

disconnect that I see uh for example the

national security strategy which on the

one hand does seem to suggest that the

United States wants to withdraw from

some of uh its uh role as global

hegeimon. It wants to focus on really

controlling the uh western hemisphere

and sort of the uh notorious so-called

donro doctrine. But at the same time I

think the United States still wants to

be recognized as the 800B gorilla in the

jungle. It wants all of the awesomeness

and wonderful things which come with

that. And you can't do both at once. You

can't both withdraw from the world and

expect the world to continue to treat

you as a hedgeimon at one and the same

time. And this is the fundamental

dilemma that I think a lot of the Trump

administration uh thinking about these

things uh tries to skirt around and

doesn't do successfully. Something I

noticed in Carney's speech is he uses

the word

American only once and the word hegeimon

or hegemany four times and the only time

he uses American is to specify American

hegemony. Is that who we are to Canada

now to to the world

the hegeon? I think so. And uh so it and

also it should be I should say Canada

has always had a slightly weird

relationship with the United States. I

spent two years at the University of

Toronto and it is a wonder you know I I

had a wonderful experience there but it

also felt to me a little bit like my

native country of Ireland back in the

1970s and 1980s which was uh effectively

joined into the uh economy of a much

bigger neighbor the United Kingdom. and

this feeling of on the one hand uh you

sort of recognition that this was the

way that things were but also a

significant amount of resentment at this

uh fact of basic dependency. So I think

that uh that has always been there. What

I think is different is the sense that

the dependency is not on a uncaring

giant to the south who uh is going to do

things that are not in your interest

because it simply doesn't know or care

or recognize. I think that there is a

worry and a fear that the United States

genuinely has malign ambitions towards

Canada. Even if those malign ambitions

are not directly to be uh acted on in

the uh near future, uh the United States

is now actually a risk and a threat to

Canada in a way that it wasn't. The

>> one of the first things Donald Trump did

when coming into office was slap huge

tariffs on Canada and on Mexico.

And in doing so, he elected Mark Carney.

Carney and, you know, the party he's

part of, Trudeau's party, were going to

lose the next election. They were

running far behind a sort of more

Trumpist

right-wing populist. And then Trump

stopped these tariffs on Canada, created

a nationalistic backlash in Canada. And

I think very clearly like through the

election to to Carney now creating this

you know figure who is beginning to be

one of the the leaders who opposes him

on the world stage which is to say that

there it's not just that we are

economically integrated but but highly

politically integrated and that the the

way Trump is acting is causing

backlashes and political turbulence in

other places often in ways that help

Trump's opponents by uniting the country

against us.

I'm curious how you think about that

dynamic of all this. So, it's a very

clear dynamic uh and it also is

something that you saw over the last few

days in uh Europe. So, when we began to

see the uh Trump uh Greenland crisis

really come to a head, that's something

we uh actually haven't talked about yet,

which is

>> Oh, we're getting there. Don't you

worry, Henry. Yeah. uh but but you saw a

lot of uh very clear nervousness coming

from uh people like Nigel Farage who uh

clearly do not want to be in a world

where Trump is making these moves

because if you think about this from a

nationalist perspective and all of these

parties which are to some extent uh to

some extent I'm sort of uh sympathetic

to Trump they are all nationalists in

one way shape or form all of them uh

clearly because they're nationalists

they are strongly attached to things

like uh territorial sovereignty

don't touch me and whatever. And the

Trump administration's perspective seems

to be uh not necessarily to want to grow

these parties, you know, sort of in in a

uh in a clear way. I think JD Vance

absolutely would love to do that. But I

think Trump's uh perspective very often

is a much more shortterm are these

people is doing a deal with them in my

interest or is it not my interest? And

you saw this, I think most uh

prominently, of course, was Venezuela,

you know, where the Venezuelan right

clearly sees Trump as a savior who's

going to come in and provide them with

the backing that they need. And the

Trump administration's attitude seems to

be these people aren't powerful enough.

Let's make a deal with some element of

the uh existing regime and see where we

go with that. I want to play you a bit

of Trump's

address at Davos, which which was, I

thought, a very unusual, rambling,

unfocused uh piece of rhetoric, but I

want to play you the part where he

focused on Europe, both America's

relationship to it and his.

>> The United States cares greatly about

the people of Europe. We really do. I

mean, look, I I am derived from Europe.

Scotland and Germany,

100%

Scotland, my mother, 100% German, my

father, and we believe deeply in the

bonds we share with Europe as a

civilization. I want to see it do great.

That's why issues like energy, trade,

immigration, and economic growth must be

central concerns to anyone who wants to

see a strong and united West because

Europe and those countries have to do

their thing. They have to get out of the

culture that they've created over the

last 10 years. It's horrible what

they're doing to themselves. They're

destroying themselves. These beautiful,

beautiful places. We want strong allies,

not seriously weakened ones. We want

Europe to be strong.

>> How would you describe Trump's view of

Europe?

>> So Trump's view of Europe is and you

know there it's sometimes hard to tell

what is Trump's view. What are the views

of other people in his administration?

Because I think that there is a very

very complicated relationship but I

think that uh here we see the JD Vance

version of the argument really coming to

the four. So the idea is here that uh we

are together in some kind of a

civilization implicitly or

semi-explicitly. This is a civilization

of white Christian people and uh we need

to make sure that this civilization is

strong and this civilization is being

weakened because Europe is weak because

Europe is allowing all of these uh

hordes of uh people who have different

skin colors who are very often Muslim.

It is allowing them to come in. And so

we are going to see the Europe that we

know is going to be a fun it's going to

fundamentally disappear over the next

generation to two generations.

>> Civilizational eraser.

>> Yes.

>> The Trump administration uses in its

national security strategy document is

that Europe faces I think it's quote

civilizational eraser.

>> What do they mean by that? What they

mean is that Europe is going to move

from being a white Christian or maybe

post-Christian because of course not

very many Europeans go to church

anymore. Uh but but a place which is

recognizably similar at least if you

look at at a photograph to uh the ideal

of what the Trump administration would

like the United States to uh look like.

It's going to move away from that to

being a uh a system in which there is a

majority non-white Europe uh non-white

non-European uh non-European observe

back to 10 generations uh population and

that this is going to be uh

fundamentally something which is going

to uh destroy uh their notion of what

European civilization is. So the idea

here is that the important alliance

the affinity is not between you know two

land masses but between two

civilizations and the Trump

administration doesn't recognize their

view of what civilization should be of

what America should be and what Europe

should be in what they think Europe is

becoming. So that's right and I think

that this is fundamentally it is a uh

push back against liberalism. It is a

push back at least against a certain

version of liberalism which is about a

uh about allowing systems where you have

a lot of people with plural identities

that this is messy, this is difficult,

this is uh but this is also an

incredibly important source of growth

and of life and of energy and that is

something that has to some lesser or

greater extent united uh the United

States and Europe over the last few

generations. You know, the United States

has been a country which has had wave

after wave of immigration. Many of these

waves have been seen as problematic. Um,

sort of I was uh, you know, my my uh my

equivalent sort of three or four

generations ago or five or six

generations ago inspired the no

nothings. Um, sort of Irish people

coming in sort of were seen as being a

fundamental civilizational threat.

Jewish people were seen as being

problematic in a variety of ways. We

still see

>> are by many members of the Trump

coalition. Yeah. And uh we and we see

this happening of course in Minneapolis

at the moment where uh people who you

know Somali people are being identified

and sort of by the Trump administration

as being uh evil, low IQ, a pirate

culture.

Exactly. So this so this so this is not

this has never been easy but there has

been at least some reasonable degree of

consensus and a stronger consensus over

the last couple of generations that uh

this is a good thing. That is what I

think the Trump administration is

pushing back against. And it also is

going handinhand with uh work by people

like Orban in Hungary who uh not only

share a similar perspective but also I

think have been extremely influential on

people such as for example Michael Anton

who is one of the uh major ideologues of

this uh way of thinking about the world.

uh you know Hungary has been pushing

something like this version of how we

need to have a a Europe which is uh

illiberal uh but uh uh you know

democratic as long as you describe as

long as you have uh the right

description of who the majority who the

people are who the system is actually

supposed to respond to and these are the

white native people these are not the

people who are coming in

>> so there's this dimension of the Trump

administration's

contempt for European government and

leadership as it exists and then there's

this side but increasingly central

fixation on Greenland. Why does Trump or

his administration but it seems at least

partly him want Greenland so much? So

there are a lot of different theories

about that and I think it's really hard

to know what goes into his head. I mean

he you know this could be a specific

fixation as some people have argued uh

based on the fact that Greenland looks

really big in the standard map

projection of the world. This could also

be other people have speculated that

this is something that uh various

Silicon Valley type people have been

arguing for a while. people I think uh

but I think that this is them trying to

uh in a certain sense retrofit a story

have said that there is a ton of

critical minerals of one sort or another

on Greenland that is going to become

more accessible as global warming

continues. I don't have a very strong

sense of what is actually driving this

uh this uh real obsession that Trump

seems to have had. Uh it is it is also I

think interesting however that he

actually seems to have backed off on

this obsession uh rather quickly uh once

he got real opposition. One argument

I've been hearing from more Trump

aligned figures

is that what we just saw play out was

classic art of the deal.

Trump went in with an aggressive

negotiating position on Greenland. Maybe

he would use force. He would certainly

consider using tariffs. He scared the

hell out of the Europeans and he came

out with this framework of a deal that

gave under, you know, America under the

new telling of the Trump administration

everything we wanted, you know, at a

cost of of nothing. How do you think

about that that justification of

Trumpism that this is all just

negotiating and it's just allowing him

to get better deals than a more polite

president would? So, this is just I

think a complete uh delusional uh

delusional argument. I don't think that

there is any reasonable way in which you

can actually say that Trump got

substantial advantages from whatever is

going to come out of this that he would

not have gotten otherwise. So as best as

we can tell uh this is a deal which is

being negotiated via uh NATO and this is

going to probably involve some kind of a

deeper basing agreement which allows I'm

sorry the uh administration more control

over bases in the Arctic area. It also

provides perhaps some protection of

mineral rights against being bought uh

by China or Russia or others. These are

not things that uh would have been

difficult to negotiate for. These are

things that I think the Danish

government and the Greenland and sort of

autonomous uh government would have been

willing to give probably no matter what

right at the beginning of the situation.

So we have here, you know, Trump prides

himself on the art of the deal. One

important part of the art of the deal is

being willing to stick to deals so that

people are willing to make them with

you. And uh this is I think another

example of you know in a sense some sort

of how it is that Trump by keeping on

pushing pushing pushing. He uh creates a

world in which nobody is willing to

trust that he is going to stick by a

deal that he actually makes. And so uh

you your uh strength then becomes

whatever temporary concessions you can

win and uh that uh you and and over the

longer term people are less and less

willing to actually do deals with you.

>> I want to play you something again from

from Carney which felt in a way like his

version of a warning to America.

>> And there's another truth. If great

powers abandon even the pretense of

rules and values for the unhindered

pursuit of their power and interests,

the gains from transactionalism

will become harder to replicate.

Hegeimons cannot continually monetize

their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against

uncertainty.

They'll buy insurance, increase options

in order to rebuild sovereignty.

Sovereignty that was once grounded in

rules but will increasingly be anchored

in the ability to withstand pressure.

>> This seems to me to connect to what just

happened with Greenland, which is I

think the Europeans began to realize

that if they keep giving Trump what he

wants, he's never going to stop taking.

So they began to raise the the price. It

became clear he would face real

opposition.

What what Carney I think is arguing here

is that the more America acts like this

the higher the cost of acting like this

will become. Is he right? I think he is.

I think he is. So I think we are going

to see a world in which there are going

to be a lot of people who want to hedge

their bets who uh want to uh who are

going to be much more skeptical about

deep integration with the United States

in ways that could allow the United

States to take advantage of them. So

this is something that Carney pretty

clearly and explicitly acknowledges.

This is going to be uh not just

expensive for the United States, it's

going to be expensive for the countries

that are doing it as well. Canada, if it

wants to do this, is going to be poorer.

It's going to have to build its own

platforms. It's going to have to try and

figure out ways that it can uh insulate

itself. And insulating itself is going

to mean forgoing a lot of the advantages

of a globally integrated uh economic

system in favor of uh going it alone.

And so here this is I think Carney talks

about middle powers working together.

His ambition is to create a world in

which we have Europe, Canada, uh perhaps

Japan and South Korea, although they are

uh more dependent on the US in some ways

uh for security, uh working together and

trying to figure out some way to build a

minimal system in which they can all

have each other's backs. Uh you know,

the question is of course, is that going

to be adequate to the uh challenges that

they face? And I don't think it is. Is

it going it alone or is it balancing

hegeons against each other? You know

quite publicly right before Davos

Carney made a deal with China lowering

the tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.

He made a deal with Qatar that in a very

public way I think what he is saying and

and and threatening and even advising

other countries like Canada to do is to

make clear to America that if they're an

unreliable partner well over there is

China. Well, it's very very clear that

this does go together with uh making

deals with China for example on uh

things like electric cars where uh the

United States has seen these connected

electric vehicles as being both a

security and an economic threat and

carne is saying we are going to have

more imports uh whether the United

States likes it or not but I think

that's one possible way in which uh

other countries can respond which is

hedging between the fact that there is a

rising power which is China and the

United States. A second is uh going it

alone to a greater degree. That is

building your own independent resources.

And the third is uh building up the

capacity for deterrence. So in a certain

sense thinking about this as if we were

back in the cold war when the United

States deterred attacks against it by

having uh you know the nuclear button.

Uh the USSR similarly deterred attacks

against itself um but by having its own

nuclear and other forces. And we may be

moving back into a world in which

whatever kinds of uh commercial peace we

have may depend upon the capacity of

other countries than the United States

to begin to uh leverage these counter

threats so that uh people like Trump

back off when uh they are pushing too

far. One of the I don't know if it's an

irony or a failure

of the Trump administration's foreign

policy is that to the extent Trump had

in my view a distinctive foreign policy

when he kind of came into power in 2016,

it was that he so broke with the

Washington consensus on China. He was so

much more anti-China

than you know the either the Republican

or the Democratic party was at that

time.

and he, you know, began to move in the

second term the trade war with the world

into a trade war with China. He then

backed down from that. But he also seems

to be driving other countries into

China's arms. That China becomes the

only way to in a sense both punish the

US but also balance against it. Now,

that's dangerous because then you're

dependent on China. But Trump seems to

be ushering in a much more multi-olar

world by making it much more dangerous

for our traditional allies to be

dependent on us on our technology

companies. I think the uh experience of

the European Union with Starlink and

Elon Musk has become very sobering. Do

you really want to be dependent on, you

know, an an internet platform run by

such a mercurial and highly politicized

American, you know, billionaire?

You know, I sometimes joke that it's

hard to know what a like a Chinese

secret agent who rose to high levels of

American power would be doing aside from

this, but it really does seem to me that

he has strengthened China's geopolitical

position almost immeasurably.

>> I think so. So the uh carney bet I think

seems to be that it is much better to

have some reliance upon a predictable

authoritarian who is several thousand

miles away than an unpredictable uh

person with authoritarian tendencies who

is right across the border from you. And

that is not an entirely stupid uh

calculation by any means. Equally as you

say it does involve its own risks. And

the other interesting thing which I

still don't have a good sense of what is

driving it is the extent to which the uh

within the administration the China

hawks have uh pretty comprehensively

lost. So you have seen various people

being kicked out of the national

security council. Uh there was news

suggesting that people in the bureau of

industry and uh and security which is a

part of the department of commerce that

deals with export controls. They had a

special unit which was devoted to uh

looking at the uh development of Chinese

technology and the people from that unit

have effectively being pushed out. And

so I think we are seeing on the one hand

this uh you know the the

counterproductive policies that the

United States has which makes it very

very easy for Xi who is not under any uh

anybody's understandings a particularly

nice or benevolent individual. it is

much easier for him to seem like the

predictable somewhat safe alternative

and on the other hand there does seem to

be this pursuit of the deal or pursuit

of something which is really reshaping

the internal organization of the uh

Trump administration and pushing people

who are skeptical about China the people

who might perhaps have been linked to

Matt Potinger in the Trump one

administration those people are losing

and I I I really don't have a good

understanding of what exactly is

happening aside the administration to

make that happen.

>> One of the framing devices in Carney's

speech comes from Vaklav Havl, the famed

Czech dissident who later became

president. And and let me play this part

for you. In 1978, the Czech dissident

Vaslav Havl, later president,

wrote an essay called the power of the

powerless. And in it, he asked a simple

question. How did the communist system

sustain itself?

and his answer began with a green

grosser. Every morning, this shopkeeper

places a sign in his window. Workers of

the world unite. He doesn't believe it.

No one does. But he places a sign anyway

to avoid trouble, to signal compliance,

to get along. And because every

shopkeeper on every street does the

same, the system persists

not through violence alone, but through

the participation of ordinary people in

rituals they privately know to be false.

>> Tell me about what Hav meant by that

story and and what Carney is saying or

suggesting and invoking it.

>> Okay, so the way in which I think about

Havl's story is to uh introduce another

academic. I'm a professor. So uh

professors I guess have professional uh

guild responsibilities. So it's a book

by a guy uh called Timmer Kuran who's a

uh somewhat conservative libertarian

professor in Duke uh called uh private

truths public lies. And so the argument

more or less is that this is uh you can

think about political society and

authoritarian regimes as being like a

collective action problem where if

everybody knew how much uh the uh regime

was hated, everybody could rise up

against it. And uh so the regime has a

lot of incentive to disrupt that kind of

shared collective knowledge of how much

the regime is loathed. And one way in

which it does it is by introducing

uncertainty. If you have everybody

having those uh those pictures of the

dear beloved leader in the shop window,

then everybody is uh unsure about

whether everybody else is actually as

willing to uh act against the uh beloved

leader as in fact they might be. So

you're in a certain sense you're

creating this uh corroded public

understanding and by doing that you're

preventing collective action from

happening. So I think what Carney here

is suggesting is that we have something

similar with respect to the way that

people talk about US hedgeimonyy right

now. On the one hand we have uh people

who really hark back to the good old

days and who still are a little bit

paralyzed. They don't know what to say.

On the other hand we have people who are

frankly calculating that their best uh

approach is to be craven to put the uh

sign out in the shop window. So we have

here um the uh head of NATO calling uh

Trump daddy and saying that you know

more or less daddy has to come back in

and to uh fix things and it's very clear

I don't think that anybody thinks that

uh the head of NATO actually believes

this but he is I'm sort of putting out

his uh picture and he is demonstrating

his devotion by so doing. So and this

means I think there's something

interesting and weird that happened at

Davos. So my sense of this and uh I

wasn't there uh is there are a couple of

things which have happened. One is that

I think that a lot of Europeans in

particular they have not been directly

exposed to the way in which Trump talks

and thinks about the world. So I think

people here in the United States are

pretty used to it. But from talking to

Europeans a lot over the last year I

think they just don't have any

understanding of how incoherent how

disconnected his way of thinking and

talking about the world is. I think that

speech actually was kind of shocking uh

to a lot of people who simply hadn't

realized how bad it had gotten. Also, we

saw the uh backing down on Greenland.

And I think this is creating a uh

greater degree of public uh consensus uh

to some extent among uh the uh among

these people who are in some ways

Trump's natural allies that there is

something deeply wrong that we do

actually need to start moving against

us. And one should remember that when

Havl was thinking about these things, it

took a uh couple of decades from Havl

being a uh a uh grumpy velvet

underground underground fan who was

trying to work with other dissident to

actually getting to be uh the uh

president of uh the Czech Republic. That

was a you know that was a long and

extremely painful period and it was also

a period where there was obviously a lot

of push back against Havl and other

dissidents who were targeted who were

punished who were humiliated. So I I you

know my the way that I think about this

is that uh the uh international you know

I think that the willingness to

completely capitulate is uh probably not

as strong as it was. But we are perhaps

moving into the uh one battle after

another realization that uh if you

actually want to do stuff about this you

you ought to do it but it is going to be

difficult. It is going to be hard and it

is going to be uncertain. my sense of

Davos and why it felt unusually

important this year given that it's

usually treated correctly with contempt

and why Carney's speech was so

significant and Trump's speech was so

significant

Trump coming in with the threat of at

that point by the way also force yes

>> to take Greenland I mean he then

disavowed that in his speech but but

initially that was something they were

keeping on the table threatening the

tariffs

And then you had so much of the world's

power elite, the European leaders,

business elite, all gathered together,

the people creating AI, the people, you

know, in charge of of great industries

to try to work out in this moment of, as

Carney keeps calling it, rupture, what

was really what is really going on.

And then Carney comes in and says

publicly in the voice of a very sober

world leader and a very card carrying

member of that global elite, right? A

former central banker, right? Carney is

not some wildeyed radical. He is as

Davos as Davos can possibly get.

It created a moment of

collective

admitting collectively admitting what

was already in some ways known but

inconvenient to to see right when a when

a marriage or something goes bad often

what has happened has already happened

but then there's a moment where the

participants see it and Davos seems to

have been a moment both because of what

Trump was doing and then in some ways

Carney creating

a point of coordination

in which people who saw it but weren't

admitting it admitted it. People who

maybe weren't seeing it saw it. And it

feels like we've moved through a sort of

a portal of of understanding what that

means in terms of action after it is not

obvious to me at all. But I think it's

hard to imagine

going back to the pretenses that were

operating before. And and by the way,

that Trump has been trying so hard to

destroy himself.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. This is not like something Carney

did to Trump.

>> In some ways, Carney and Trump are I

think quite agreeing on the nature of

what America

now is

and forcing everybody else to agree with

it too.

>> Yeah. And I think that the way that I

would maybe reframe what you're saying

very slightly and a little bit more

abstractly as I say I am a professor is

that uh what we are seeing here is you

know there is an agreement about what

America is but where there is

disagreement is whether or not America

can continue to be that and can continue

to play the uh oversized uh role that it

has played in the world. So uh and you

know here you know so I think and I

should also say because I don't think I

said it it was a fantastic speech uh you

know as speeches go speech

>> yeah carney speech as speeches go this

was uh not simply a uh emperor's new

clothes moment it was an extremely

well-crafted rhetorical way of uh both

on the one hand pointing to the uh

pointing to what was happening now but

on the other hand explicitly admitting

and I don't think that it would have had

nearly as much force if it hadn't

admitted this, explicitly admitting that

a lot of what had preceded this during

the so-called good old days had perhaps

not been as good as they looked. So, I

do think that you're right, you know, if

if there is, you know, in a certain

sense, Carney speech, it's about a

rupture, but it's also clearly a very

visible effort to try to create public

recognition around that rupture from

which other stuff can perhaps begin to

happen. But whether or not that stuff is

going to happen, you know, it really,

you know, you you recognize that there

is a that there is a fundamental

difference in the world and you also

create collective knowledge that

everybody knows that everybody knows

that uh there is something different in

the world and that provides something to

build from but it is an extremely

uncertain uh foundation. Uh the other

thing that I think is really interesting

here is the uh this so-called board of

peace that Trump is building up uh which

uh does seem to me uh to be doomed to

failure. And you can think about this

very cynically. You could think about

this as being and I I do think that this

explains maybe 80% of it. It's a little

bit like uh True Social uh which is his

uh pet social media service in the

United States which is a platform

wrapped up in a special purpose vehicle

which is intended to uh profit him and

the people around him but it also is I

think a kind of a bid for a different

kind of legitimacy. So my co-author Abe

Newman who I've mentioned uh together

with Stacy Goddard has this piece which

they wrote recently on what they call

neo royalism which is effectively

arguing that what Trump and people

around him are trying to do is to create

a different kind of international system

which is based around clan loyalties and

based around people recognizing that

legitimacy does not come from the fact

that they are states but comes from

their relationship to Donald Trump. So I

think in a certain sense you could see

the Carney speech as pointing towards an

uncertain future and you could see the

Trump approach of the board of peace as

pointing towards a project which I think

is going to be extremely difficult for

them to actually pull off in which uh

the power of the world shifts to uh you

know shifts to people like Trump shifts

to other authoritarian regimes and

shifts in a sense to recognition of who

are the uh big powerful individuals and

those connected to them and uh in a

certain sense to a kind of the creation

of a dark davos. In other words, you

take, you know, the idea is you take

this consensus, which is this consensus,

which is really an elite consensus, and

you try to push it towards a very

different form of power, which is much

more based around sort of the uh, you

know, the the recognition of personal

relationships, creations of family

dynasties, all of these things that we

haven't seen since the 15th or 16th

century.

The Havvel story reminds me of something

that you've written about building on

the late political scientist Russell

Harden and you wrote there that power in

modern societies depends on social

coordination. That is just as true of

aspiring authoritarians like Trump as of

the people who want to mobilize against

him. Tell me a bit about this idea of

power as a coordination problem both for

you know the authoritarian or the

hegeimon and for those trying to create

some kind of alternative.

Okay. So here the idea and I I should

say this is building upon other people's

arguments is pretty straightforward. So

if you think about a transition in

political order and you can think about

this in the US context, you can think

about this in the global context. It is

a it is really an effort to try and

recreate collective knowledge,

collective wisdom, collective consensus,

everybody's understanding of the way

things work around a different pattern,

a different approach of one sort or

another. And so this creates advantages

and disadvantages for people like Trump

uh who in a certain sense you know they

want to recreate the system around

themselves and around their own desires.

Their advantage is uh if they are in

charge as the United States uh is in a

certain sense, it does have power in the

global system. If you're in charge, I'm

sure as Trump is domestically, if you're

capable of getting goons to do your uh

stuff for you, you are able to frighten

and to terrorize people and you're also

able to offer people incentives to get

on board. Uh so what you want to do is

to create a world in which everybody

knows that the uh sensible strategic

thing is to uh join the Trump coalition.

You want to create a world in which this

becomes just the general consensus.

Everybody knows that this is what you

want to what they what they ought to do

if they actually want to prosper and

succeed and have any chance. And so you

um sort of you you try to organize the

world around this. Equally, the problem

that you face is that the uh more that

you're capable of using this violence,

uh the more that you're capable of using

these uh tools, the more that people

will be nervous that if they sign on to

your side of the uh bargain, they are

going to uh perhaps delay their

punishment, but they're going to end up

being uh comprehensively uh screwed over

at some later stage in the process. So,

that is the strategic dilemma that

you're trying to solve. You're trying to

on the one hand bring people in. On the

other hand, you're trying to reassure

them that if they are brought in uh that

they are not themselves going to become

victims some way down the line. Uh the

other side of the thing that uh both the

world and that uh that that the uh

opposition in the United States have

going for them is that uh Trump is not

particularly good at this game of uh at

this game of sort of persuading people

on board and then sort of persuading

them that they will sort of get what

they want out of him. He is in a certain

sense you know sort of his short-term

transactionalism I think works very

heavily against him. Uh and I think you

see this for example sort of the best

example I think I I see of this is the

law firms. So you see this one firm Paul

Weiss which signs on uh very early it

crumples and sort of gives in uh in a

way that uh encourages other law firms

to give in as well. But once it gives in

it discovers that the deal that it

thought it was signing up to is not the

deal that Trump thinks that he wants to

have. And it's very clear that uh it

then becomes uh it finds itself in a

situation where it is going to get

squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and

squeezed

>> and reputationally destroyed

>> and reputationally destroyed. you know,

sort of young associates presumably do

not want to go with the firm who

capitulated uh and you find yourself in

an extremely difficult position. And

this wins short-term benefits for the

Trump administration, but it wins those

benefits at the cost of uh undermining

its long-term ability again to commit in

a certain sense to restrain itself. And

uh that is the one thing that is Trump's

fundamental weakness is he is incapable

of committing to restrain himself in the

future. And I think that this is perhaps

the single greatest flaw and weakness uh

that uh other people can push back

against. There's another weakness here

too or I think it's a weakness. You you

go back to the piece in which Havvel

offers up this story and he describes

the importance of the sign saying

something that is principled. Right? The

sign in his story is workers of the

world unite and that sign is on the one

hand an expression of obedience to the

regime but it is also a

inspiring or at least unobjectionable

slogan. And Hava writes that the sign

helps a green grosser to conceal from

himself the low foundations of his

obedience at the same time concealing

the low foundations of power. It hides

them behind the facade of something

high.

What always strikes me about Trumpism is

the absence of the facade of something

high, including in this Greenland

idiocy where he starts this particular

round by sending a letter to the leader

of Norway

saying that because you didn't give me

the Nobel Peace Prize, which by the way

is not given out by the government of

Norway, I don't have to worry so much

about peace anymore. I'm just going to

do what America needs and and I want

Greenland.

The pure like brutish, narcissistic,

gangsterish, it made him look terrible.

And and much of Trump's transactionalism

has that quality where it is claiming

this honesty and its corruption

and its venality, right? Everybody is

like this. I'm just the one who's

willing to admit it. But it also creates

this vulnerability because actually

people aren't all like that and people

do cooperate and they do restrain

themselves and they do try to exist in

relationships with others and they are

committed to ideals and values and the

fact that it's pay me tribute not

workers of the world unite. I mean

that's some of where Carney is getting

his power here too, right? He is doing

something that is somewhat dangerous for

him to do, right? He's clearly taking a

risk by doing it. He's clearly

committing to certain ideals by doing

it. And I I do think a weakness of

Trumpism is that I don't think people

want to live in that world and he

doesn't pretend it's a different world

than it is. He just, you know, like the

mafia boss tells you to to, you know, to

pay your tribute and bend the knee or

something bad's going to happen. I think

that's right. And I think that also, and

this is something, you know, so again,

getting back into domestic rather than

international politics. So one of the

key moments in the uh in the fall of the

Berlin wall are these protests that

happen in Leipzig in a uh East German uh

city. And so these protests get bigger

and bigger and they begin to create a

collective understanding that in fact

the regime is wildly unpopular. And so

Suzanne Lman who's a political scientist

who wrote this classical article on this

she argues that what happens one of the

key things here is that the uh leipig

protesters they seem like normal people

they seem like good decent people you

would like to have as neighbors you know

so they don't seem you know so the East

German propaganda is that these are uh

evil weird freaks that these are um you

know so these are sort of dissident you

know they're scruffy they're whatever

it's the fact that these look like

normal ordinary people that actually

make this powerful. So I think what

we're seeing in Minnesota is we're

seeing uh ordinary people, you know, so

it's very very clear that the people who

are organizing, the people who are

pushing back, they are neighbors. They

are people who seem like very

straightforward, very ordinary

Midwestern people, uh people who are,

you know, sort of part of the community.

And I think that the uh killing of uh of

of good I think also I'm sorry you know

she does not seem like somebody who is

uh strange who is unusual

>> domestic terrorist in her language.

>> Yeah exactly. She is not a domestic

terrorist under any reasonable

definition of this. So I think so I do

think that this becomes more and more of

a weakness the more that you have uh

people who are out in the streets and

sort of dragging people off in cars.

you're, you know, there people are

getting beaten up, cracked ribs. Um,

there's this poor, uh, guy who is

dragged out in his underwear. I think

that this does create

>> this child used his bait to trap a

family.

>> This child used

>> now in detention.

>> Yeah. Yeah. and and you know so on the

one hand um sort of we do live in a

fractured media landscape where people

get you know so people are embibing all

sorts of uh content which uh supports

and reinforces their priors so there are

a lot of people who this does not get

through to but there also does seem to

be evidence from the uh polling uh that

in fact I'm sort of these stories are

actually connecting with people in a

different way so I do think that you

know the p a lot of the power of the

powerless in a sense comes from the

creation of a consensus and uh bluntly

speaking a moral consensus a moral

consensus that what is happening is

wicked what is happening is wrong what

is happening is is uh in some

fundamental sense evil and I think that

uh to the extent that the uh what the

Trump administration is doing gets on

the wrong side of that either

internationally or domestically it does

create a way for people to start pushing

back There's another framing device

Carney uses in his speech that that I

thought was interesting where he

references a a famous quote of

lucidities. I want to play it for you.

>> It seems that every day we're reminded

that we live in an era of great power

rivalry, that the rules-based order is

fading, that the strong can do what they

can and the weak must suffer what they

must. And this apherimism of Thusidities

is presented as inevitable as the

natural logic of international relations

reasserting itself.

>> Tell me about that line from

Thusidities. What he was describing and

what the lesson of it was maybe then and

now.

>> Okay. So the lesson is very

straightforward and it is a very

different lesson than many many people

take from it. People take this dialogue,

this famous dialogue in in Susides as

being evidence of a dog eat dog world, a

world in which the millions who are

desperately pleading that the Athenians

not massacre them. Uh you know they they

they make this plea and the Athenians

tell them you know sort of you know

you're tough luck. We're going to sort

of massacre your menfolk and we're going

to take your women and children away and

turn them into slaves. So this is seen

as being a kind of a expression of real

politique. This is not how Tusides

himself talks about it. It's very very

clear that the dramatic tension that he

is describing here is effectively a

description of Athenian hubris. It is a

description of Asen's willingness to

more or less do whatever the hell it

thinks it wants to do, whatever is in

its temporary interest in the assumption

that it is going to be able to keep on

getting away with it. And uh Tusides

also he has these uh passages where he

describes how this hubris really infects

the entire Athenian population. Uh this

is in fact a symptom of all that is

rotten in Athens. All that is rotten in

this purportedly democratic power. how

it is that they elect demagogues like

Cleon and sort of who guides this uh

notoriously unsuccessful expedition in

which uh many Athenian uh citizens and

so they end up themselves being enslaved

and uh the result is the gradual

collapse of Athenian hedgemony over the

entire miniature empire that it has

created. Athens finds itself being

occupied by Sparta as it finds its own

citizens and sort of being enslaved as I

say and also as it becomes uh broken

down and becomes effectively uh you know

so this happens after uh his lifetime it

becomes a secondary power at best even

in the Greek citystate system let alone

in the Mediterranean world as a whole

>> I think that's a good place to end

always our final question what are three

books you recommend to the audience

>> okay so I've got three books one of

which is uh directly connected to these

questions. It's uh by a woman a

historian uh called Mary Bridges called

dollars and Dominion. And so it is on

the one hand it is not about what is

happening right now. is about what what

is happening what was happening in the

beginning of the 1900s uh when the

United States was trying to build up the

kind of hedgeimonyy that we've talked

about during the course of this show and

uh it is really about how the people who

are trying to build it up look like some

of the people who are acting now I'm

sort of in the twilight of this uh

period they are uh very self-interested

they're kind of venal they're building

on their political connections and they

also don't have much of a clue of what

they are doing. So I think that what I I

take from this is on the one hand that

uh people you know sort of you know we

are in a chaotic world that very often

we tend to overestimate the Machavelian

cunning of the people who uh we are up

against. On the other hand even people

who are trying to bumble through they

can sometimes actually win they can

sometimes actually achieve what they

want to achieve. Second book is a book

that's not available yet but will be out

in the United States I think in maybe

two months. It's by uh Francis

Spuffford. Uh it's called Nonsuch. Uh so

Spuffford wrote this incredible book

called Red Plenty, which uh really I and

Abe took as one of our models for how do

you write a complicate a book about

complicated structures uh using uh

individuals in order to tell the stories

of how that those structures work. This

is a very different book in some ways.

It's a fantasy set during the uh World

War II blitz of London. Uh but it's also

a book about what is happening right

now. And it's a book that has in some

really interesting ways uh economic

systems and how economic systems uh work

woven through the narrative in ways that

you don't particularly notice but you

actually end up uh learning quite a lot.

And the final book is a book by Tinuan

which has just come out called the

score. And it's just a you know I don't

even know how to begin to describe this

book. It is about uh making pizza. It is

about games. It is about the big

structures that and sort of that shape

our lives and how they don't recognize

the knowledge and the wonder and the

intimacy uh that we have together and it

pulls together these desperate and many

other disperate things into this

incredibly compelling narrative. It is

just a uh you know it is just a

ridiculously beautiful book. We live in

times when it's very easy to just feel

unhappy and desparing and uh I think

that this is a book that brings back

joy. Henry Frell, thank you very much.

>> Thank you.