Stephen M. Walt

“And there are indeed lessons to learn from his ouster. Economics matters. You can't govern badly forever and expect people to not notice. Infrastructure matters. You can't ignore basic metrics of how you compare with your neighbors on health care or quality of life and not expect your people to care. And corruption is very unpopular. People hate kleptocracies and ultimately they do rise up.”

“Well, the predatory part is that the United States has, under Trump, in his second term, essentially adopted a zero-sum approach to all of its relations, not just relations towards adversaries, where all great powers tend to act in a fairly assertive and predatory fashion. But Trump is also acting that way towards some of our closest allies. You see this in the tariff policy, trying to extract concessions on economic terms by threatening other countries with tariffs, including some of our closest allies. Their guiding credo is, what's mine is mine and what yours is negotiable.”

“Right. This was a term of art really in the 1990s, where we labeled countries like Libya, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and some others rogue states. The qualities that we associated with that back then was countries that are largely indifferent to international norms and international law, countries that were threats to peace and security in their region. This is an administration that almost seems to take pleasure in showing just how powerful it is, and just how little it cares about the opinions of others.”

“I think the biggest difference, the thing that's really striking and that I didn't expect when Trump came back in, was that the United States has sort of abandoned all efforts to wrap the mailed fist in the velvet glove. The United States has been a very powerful country for a long time and we've sometimes played hardball, certainly with our adversaries and sometimes with our allies. But especially with our allies, we tended to do that reluctantly. We listened, we tried to accommodate their concerns whenever possible.”

“This is why what we've done in Iran, I think is so egregious and likely to have such dramatic effects. First of all, we went ahead and did this even while negotiations were underway, and we did it without consulting any of our allies, without preparing the American people. It was a willful decision by the president as well. That indicates the opposite of a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Also, we did it without thinking through what the implications of this were going to be, not just for the United States, but the implications for our allies in Europe, who are more dependent upon external oil and gas.”

“The thing about balking, about just saying no is nobody really wants to pick a fight with the United States if they can avoid it. So one of the things you can do is eventually agree to whatever Trump is asking you to do and then don't actually deliver it. Think of the way that children often resist what their parents are trying to get them to do. They pretend to do it, but they don't really. So you can promise to invest in the American economy. Say you'll do it over five or 10 years and then a couple of years in, you say, well, gee, we're having some problems over here.”

“And the Carney speech was a remarkable performance, and it was remarkable to me in two senses. One is he was calling for medium powers to work together, not so much to contain the United States, so it wasn't really balancing, but to simply reduce their own vulnerability and to defend key norms, rules, and institutions that facilitate cooperation. Second thing that was interesting about the speech, of course, was it was delivered in a very calm matter of fact. We're not angry at America tone.”

“I mean, I think Orban's fate shows you the risks of a autocratic regime where increasingly the leader is surrounded by sycophants, doesn't necessarily have an accurate sense of what's going on in the country, has lost whatever touch they once had that got them into power and kept them in power. So they no longer understand exactly how unpopular they've become. I think Orban was surprised by the outcome here, and part of that was because he was now trapped in a sycophantic bubble. I worry that that's actually what's happened to President Trump.”

“China has gone to enormous lengths over the last decade or more to represent itself as a stable, tranquil, reliable partner, that it's the defender of world order. What can the United States offer you? The United States can offer you some weaponry, perhaps maybe some protection and a lot of economic pain. What can China offer you? China can offer you solar cells. China can offer you wind power. China can offer you batteries. China can build roads and bridges and train lines for you.”

“Well, I can't resist saying, a rogue state declines gradually, then suddenly. Yeah, that's from Hemingway's famous definition of, how did I go bankrupt gradually, then suddenly? The United States built up an enormous network of influence over the last 75 years, really extraordinary influence in both military and economic spheres, financial spheres. But the more we exploit them, of course, the more others began to see the downside, and they begin to hedge, they begin to diversify.”