>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Well, our connection this hour was made in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where a contingent of European soldiers from NATO nations have been arriving over the past four days.

They are calling it Operation Arctic Endurance.

And the message to the United States is clear.

Even though this is a small group of soldiers, NATO nations are intent on defending Greenland from any incursion by the United States.

France sent 15 soldiers.

Germany sent 13, Sweden sent three, Norway two.

The UK one, the Netherlands one.

Meanwhile, the people of Greenland engaged in demonstrations over the past weekend, calling for the United States and for President Trump to stay out.

But President Trump has only heated up his rhetoric.

And yesterday, the prime Minister of Norway took the extraordinary step of publicly releasing a text from President Trump in which Trump admitted that he is angry that he didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

And he blames the Norwegian government for that.

Trump wrote, quote, I no longer feel an obligation to think poorly of peace, although it will always be predominant, but now can think of what is good and proper for the United States of America.

The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland.

End quote.

Republicans in Washington have stayed mostly silent on the matter over the past 24 hours.

This hour, we're having a conversation about the almost unthinkable possibility of war within NATO, and we'll discuss the view from Russia, the future of U.S.

alliances, and more.

My guest this hour is Dr.

Randy Stone.

He's director of the center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester, a professor of political science as well.

Welcome back to the program.

>> Thank you.

Evan, good to be with you.

>> For for the folks who think probably like I have at moments in recent weeks that the world is not going to see war over Greenland.

Sometimes I think about, you know, Crimea, the Falkland Islands, places that are not the biggest places on the map, but that can lead to power struggles and conflicts here.

Is it possible that there is going to be war over Greenland?

>> It's possible that there could be some limited military clash somehow through some kind of miscalculation.

But I think that's a really unlikely scenario.

wars between democracies are incredibly rare.

there are all sorts of reasons why that shouldn't happen.

It doesn't make any sense.

the most likely scenario is that Donald Trump will end up backing down from this, getting something or other that he could have had much more easily as a concession, and proclaiming that to be a victory.

but that shouldn't distract us from the amount of damage that's been done by all this bluster and raising all these threats.

I mean, the the, the, the damage to NATO is really significant.

the damage to America's reputation as a country is devastating.

it I think it will take us years of decades, really good leadership to dig ourselves out of this hole.

And we don't have good leadership.

so this is this this is this is this is an important turning point.

I don't know whether this weekend is the turning point.

the Trump presidency is certainly a turning point in the decline of the United States as a world power.

>> Wow.

and you think that the only way back would be what?

>> The the way that you dig yourself out of a reputational hole is you apologize, you convince the world that you have seen the error of your ways.

You show great deal of humility the way Germany did after World War two.

and it took generations for the rest of the world to begin to see Germany again as a reliable partner a country that was dedicated to to human rights and to democracy and so forth.

And it took very long term, very careful leadership for Germany to pull that off in cooperation with NATO and a robust set of international institutions.

>> Do you think it's that serious that that's what the United States could be facing here?

>> Well, the United States has not committed a Holocaust.

the, the the degree of reputational stain is not the same.

But the amount of time involved to dig yourself out of a reputational hole, is, is comparable.

we've fallen from a much greater height.

Germany was not a particularly prestigious member of the international community.

after World War one.

And of course, it got only worse from there.

and the, the Hitler regime was horrific.

so it it was, it was digging itself out of a very, very deep hole.

But the United States was at a very high position of international prestige and leadership.

at the beginning of the Trump administration we led the strongest coalition of Democratic, allies the world had ever seen.

We had won the Cold War.

we had designed international institutions that everyone in the world wanted to be part of.

We had contributed to developing the economies of the poorest countries of the world and had invested substantially in raising public health.

And and so forth in, in, in the globe, the United States was at a pinnacle of international leadership.

It had a very, very strong reputation.

And it's lost a lot of that of that reputation, because that reputation was based on decades of consistency, of credibility.

Now, there were missteps.

There were a lot of places where a particular American presidents made bad mistakes and jeopardized that relationship.

And then we had to invest more in order to rebuild it.

and that that happened over the last 80 years.

But we started the beginning of the Trump administration in 2025 at a very high point where the Biden administration had successfully convinced our allies that the first Trump administration had been an aberration.

And we'd gotten back to where there was belief that the United States was going to continue to be a reliable partner.

And when the United States asked its allies to do something, they were willing to do it, even if they weren't sure it was a good idea, because it was the United States that was asking, well, it's going to take a long time to get back to that.

>> So let's take two points, though, that I think the Trump administration has been trying to impress upon people as it pursues the acquisition of Greenland.

The first is that people like Stephen Miller have made clear, and I think probably JD Vance as well.

But certainly anybody in the administration now is signing on to this idea that the world has changed, that the world is much more like it was before the 20th century, that it is a dangerous place and it will be ruled by power and the order that held is not going to be the order that holds in the future, and that it is wise to see the world as having changed in that way.

And the United States is acting accordingly.

It is acting in our interest in this hemisphere.

We see that in Venezuela, it is going to act in its interests with Greenland.

So that's one idea, the second being the president keeps saying, well, you don't want Greenland in the wrong hands here, and we're we're the head of NATO.

We're the leaders of NATO.

We're the strongest.

We're going to be in charge.

So Russia isn't in charge or China isn't in charge.

So let's take that latter point first, and then we'll talk about how maybe they see the world order of change.

But what do you make of this argument that we need to be in charge of Greenland.

So other nefarious powers are not.?

>> I think that's just an excuse.

Denmark, is their their prime minister pointed out over the weekend is is ready to say yes if the United States asks for anything in particular in Greenland, do we want to reopen our 16 mothballed military bases in Greenland?

Sure.

We've had that.

>> For decades.

>> That's right.

We have under a 1951 treaty.

we have the right to build military bases anywhere in Greenland.

We want to anytime we want to.

If we want to put up missile interceptors and radars and all that sort of stuff that Donald Trump says is necessary for his his golden dome dream.

that is something we can do right now.

And if we need any additional permission for anything, Denmark is happy to comply.

It's actually very beneficial to the United States not to have to run everything directly.

That's kind of the genius of American leadership.

After 1945.

Was that instead of running an empire, we managed an alliance.

That was why we won the Cold War.

The Soviet Union was trying to rule an empire, and the United States was managing an alliance.

We could count on voluntary cooperation by lots of of other countries, and we didn't actually have to pay the costs of running everything.

So we don't have to provide health care and education to the indigenous people of Greenland.

Denmark is doing that for us.

Donald Trump wants to take over that responsibility and cut off their health care and their education.

it's better for us if we don't have to deal with the sometimes difficult relationship between the indigenous people and the Danes.

The Danes handle it much better than we would be able to, most likely.

>> Well, this past weekend, we did see the population of Greenland is about 57,000 people, and we did see demonstrations.

the New York Times had a really interesting compilation of just talking to people on the street.

There are they talk to a number of people who are in their 40s and 50s who talked about leaving Greenland.

If the United States tries to take over where they would go, what would happen to their elderly parents?

what they would fear for their children?

It was a really compelling video series.

I would encourage people to watch that.

but the president would say, well, I don't want to take away their education, health care.

In fact, on Sean Hannity's show, he's talking about giving every person in Greenland 100 up to $100,000 cash.

>> Sure.

>> And no.

>> Well, do I believe anything that he says at face value?

Certainly not.

>> I mean, and that does sound like a bribe.

but regardless, now let's kind of pull back to the world order question.

And I think you kind of answered that in talking about the way that the Soviet Union tried to dominate their spheres of influence versus the way the United States managed alliances, well, now you've got Stephen Miller explicitly saying this is a dangerous world, and we're going to behave like a superpower.

Finally, Miller thinks we haven't been behaving like a superpower, and he thinks it's time to exert influence in obviously in Venezuela, yes.

Where they're talking about running that country, they're already talking about dividing oil sales.

And they convened a summit of oil executives.

I presumably legally, I don't even I mean, that's just bizarre to even think about.

But they talk about deposing the leadership of Colombia.

Then they got some concessions from the Colombian leader.

They talk about Cuba.

They talked about Mexico.

They're striking inside Mexico.

They're talking about Iran.

I mean, the amount of military adventurism is so far beyond what was talked about in this camp.

The recent presidential campaign, that to me, it's hard to tell if the president has this worldview or if he's just influenced by the Stephen Miller's around him.

But clearly, the people in the white House think that the world is dangerous enough that the United States has to behave like a strong power that will exert its influence eagerly.

And I want you to describe what you think, how that will affect international alliances or relationships.

If this continues to be the way the United States behaves.

>> Well, that's right.

That's so.

The question about world order.

The United States is an incredibly powerful country.

No country has ever had the the influence, the resources that the United States has.

And as a result, it is has been able, through long patient engagement, to shape the world order to create a situation in which international law has power, where institutions are very important, where most countries in the world, most of the time regard the alphabet soup of international institutions as the menu from which they draw their strategies.

And even the United States, although it has attractive outside options and can act outside of institutions very effectively if it chooses to, finds that its activities, its policies are much more effective, much less expensive, much more credible, and much more legitimate if it acts through these international institutions, they act as a power multiplier.

So a realistic evaluation of the world would say that a lot of us power in the world relies on these long term investments that we've made in institutions like NATO, like the World Trade Organization, like the International Monetary Fund, the world Bank, in a network of treaties about human rights and about the environment, about trade and about intellectual property rights and all sorts of things that the United States is vastly more powerful and influential because it has constrained itself to make credible commitments to this.

This infrastructure of institutions.

And then we have informal influence within those institutions so we can when it's really important, we can manipulate them in various ways to even multiply our power further.

When we do, it stretches the institutions, makes them a little less credible, a little less legitimate.

So when we're being farsighted, we don't push the envelope too far.

This this was possible because the United States was very powerful, and the United States is sufficiently powerful that it can change perceptions of what the international order is like by acting differently.

Well, I've long observed that, whether the so-called realist perspective on international relations, which is the one you described that suggests the world is a dangerous place, every country has to act for itself.

no one will defend you if you don't defend yourself.

Right.

Strike first, ask questions later.

that perspective seems a lot more credible when you have neoconservatives running the white House.

And the institutional liberal perspective on international order that I just described is much more compelling when you have liberals running the white House.

The United States is sufficiently powerful that we can kind of make either scenario be very real.

if we invest our efforts that way.

But we have much more influence if we work through institutions and, and rule of law, and if we can make credible promises, who wants to make a deal with someone who's bound to renege?

you know, Donald Trump prides himself on the art of the deal, but his history has been one of reneging on his deals and bankrupting the people who relied upon him.

and defaulting on his loans.

Right.

And now he's doing the same thing at the international level.

We've built up this tremendous capital of trust and credibility, and he's spending it down to get short term something.

but it's going to take a long time to rebuild it.

>> Well, let me give you two different scenarios then, and tell me what you think could happen.

The first is that in 2028, Marco Rubio wins the presidency and he comes out and says, yes, I was a part of the Trump administration, but we're going to do things differently that I that he might say he considers himself more of a reaganite, perhaps neoconservative, but respecting of alliances, a different sort of approach.

And he wants to apologize to our allies for some of the damage and move forward.

The second scenario is that someone like a Josh Shapiro wins the presidency and says, there is a new day in America, and there's a new day in international leadership, and to our allies and to our partners around the world.

What you have been experiencing is over, and you're going to have the leadership that you deserve.

What you are suggesting is that the damage that's being done now won't be mitigated by a few weeks of a new presidency in 2029.

Is that right?

That's right.

Why?

>> Well, I mean, I think it took most of the Biden presidency to undo the damage of the first Trump administration.

And the first Trump administration was much less damaging than the first year of the second Trump administration has been and the United States electorate had only elected Trump once, and it and he had not won a majority of the of the electorate.

So it was easy to say that, well, this was an aberration.

It's not going to happen again.

and we got through it.

All right.

so so our allies were prepared to give Biden a lot of of, of credit.

They also knew him very well.

So it was relatively easy for him to rely on his personal relationships with all of the leaders of Europe.

this will be different the second time around.

Donald Trump has demonstrated that the American electorate is not reliable.

It cannot choose between good leaders and bad leaders.

there's no reason to expect that we won't choose another right wing populist in the future.

and so our allies have to negotiate with us, keeping in mind that they might be negotiating with someone much, much worse.

after another four years and I think anyone who's part of the current administration will be tainted.

So I can't imagine that Rubio could overcome his association with the Trump administration, given some of the things that he said.

as, as as, as secretary of state and a Democrat would have a much easier time of building a case that that something really was different in their administration.

But I think it will take a number of consecutive Democratic administrations in a row to rebuild the the, the belief that the United States is reliable.

And I don't think it's likely that we'll get a lot of Democratic administrations in a row.

>> Okay.

the other thing I want to ask you before we turn to asking you what you think the view is on this from Russia or perhaps from Beijing?

When when the president of the United States meets with María Corina Machado, for example, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, you know, and she's a Venezuelan opposition leader, he has already said that she's not strong enough to lead the country.

He has demeaned her.

But then he meets her in person, and as he often does, as we saw it with Mamdani, he softens when he meets people in person.

He's very he's very easy to influence in person by charm.

And she presents him the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize medal, and he takes it and keeps it for himself, which he has done.

And then he writes to the Norwegian prime Minister that maybe this would all be different if he had just won the Peace Prize.

He's singularly fixated on the Nobel Peace Prize.

And he admits in his in his letter, well, you didn't give it to me.

And now I'm not worried about peace.

And Greenland is going to be ours.

It if that doesn't trigger a response even within his own party.

I mean, I suppose we're long past that point, doctor Stone, because we've seen the first transfer of power that was not peaceful in American history, and he was rewarded for that with another term.

But but if that doesn't trigger something, then I don't.

I guess nothing will.

But I suppose at this point, there's no reason to believe that this will fundamentally change his standing within his own party.

Or do you see it differently?

>> Well, yeah, it's remarkably unguarded.

he's revealed an awful lot about himself in this whole series of interactions.

he he really looks very childish.

and I think that should give his supporters some pause.

We have seen that some Republicans have begun speaking out.

Lisa murkowski spoke out pretty strongly.

and there's congressman from Nebraska who I saw spoke out strongly a couple days ago.

on behalf of traditional American foreign policy commitment to our allies not picking fights with democracies over stupid issues.

and I take some heart in the fact that his public approval numbers are so low.

I think the reason that one of the reasons that he's had such a death grip on the Republican Party is they couldn't see how they could get reelected in November with without his support.

They're afraid of being primaried.

he seemed to be the one brand that was working for them.

and so he has been able to get people to do remarkable about faces.

Marco Rubio as an example.

Yeah.

Ted Cruz is another example.

But this all falls apart if they realize that, well, Donald Trump is leading us to disaster.

He's not leading us to to salvation.

And so the latest CNN poll from Friday suggested that his, his public, his approval rating had dropped to 39%.

>> He's cratered with independents.

>> That's right.

he still has pretty strong support, quite strong support among MAGA Republicans and Republicans.

in general, I think nine out of ten say that they give him positive approval rating, but is terrible with with independents and of course, almost no support among Democrats.

about a third of people think that he cares about people like them.

is there was a, a belief a year ago that 45% thought that he had about the right priorities, and now it's about 36%.

that, 55% thinks that his policies have worsened the economy.

the 53% think that he's not capable.

intellectually, of of being an effective president, 58% think that his first year has been a failure.

65% say that they're not proud to have him be their president.

I think this is this is this is remarkable.

This is a substantial change.

People are paying attention and the, you know, the the the MAGA Republican core that just watches Fox News and or gets their news from YouTube.

they are they're hard to shake.

Because they're almost impenetrable to information.

but the rest of the country is really, really sick and tired of Donald Trump.

And that's got to erode his support in Congress, which will which will take out the, the significant power that he has wielded over the last year.

>> Well, one other point, perhaps along those lines, because you're citing a lot of polling and we're talking about what would, in your view, what it would take to rebuild the fractured or frayed alliances, the premise of that conversation is everything that has already happened.

It does not take into account that there are three more years of this, and that there is a lot that could still happen.

So what worries you the most?

>> Well, I, I was frankly a little bit concerned that you know, Venezuela might turn out to be a a political coup for him.

it had he played his cards.

Well he could have turned that into quite a foreign policy success.

by supporting Machado as the legitimate leader of the country and by restoring democracy in the hemisphere.

And it's the kind of muscular, successful foreign policy that would play very well, I think, with his with his supporters.

But as with everything else in this administration, it's it's done incompetently.

So he's chasing after oil.

He's making foolish statements.

it's the policy isn't coordinated.

>> He's aligning with the VP.

>> That's right.

With with.

>> Delcy Rodríguez.

>> With the authoritarian leadership of the country.

so and then he he moved from there to other adventures all over the place.

Right.

Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and now Greenland Iran.

right.

so.

It seems unlikely that he's going to pull off a success because his foreign policy is so so incompetently managed.

>> Let's let's take this only break, and then we've got some phone calls that we're going to work through.

I've got a few emails I want to read, and I do want to hear from doctor Stone.

what he thinks the view is from, you know, our foreign adversaries in the Kremlin, in China.

or perhaps elsewhere.

Dr.

Randy Stone is director of the center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester.

We'll take some feedback from the audience on the other side.

Coming up in our second hour, we sit down with three local small business owners.

They're talking about how they are trying to get by.

With inflation continuing to be a problem with costs continuing to rise, especially for food, for coffee, for bakery goods.

We're talking to the owner of a coffee shop and a local bakery and a local restaurant.

How they are trying to get creative, to get customers in the door and so they can stay in business.

That's next hour.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

This is Ben in Rochester.

Hi, Ben.

Go ahead.

>> Hi, Evan.

so first off, just to make sure, because I had some issues coming in.

Can you hear me just fine.

>> I can hear you just fine, sir.

>> Okay.

so how best to word this while being mindful, of course, that I am on the air.

I feel like there's a lot of focus at the moment in the current conversation about support for Trump's policies on electoral math, for lack of a better way to put it.

and I think that's rather heavily misplaced right now.

And here's what I mean by that.

And I'll keep this as brief as I can.

Sure.

There's a lot of talk about how is he going to maintain support with Republicans in Congress?

Is he maintaining support?

you know, who's who's still supporting him and who's beginning to speak up?

Let's be real honest with the situation.

We're talking about the potential of invading Greenland.

And he's got, what, maybe 4 or 5 ish elected Republicans willing to say, well, we're not really fully on board with that.

That's that's peanuts.

That's peanuts.

He's got the support he needs as far as politics goes.

The reason why a lot of these people are still supporting him is not because they necessarily agree with him.

I don't think every single Republican agrees with him on his plan.

They're afraid.

They're afraid.

They're afraid that he's going to point the finger at, and they're not worried about getting voted out of office.

They're worried about, you know, what happened to Marjorie Taylor Greene or to other people.

They're worried about him pointing to his supporters and implying, hey, go get that one.

And that's where we really are right now.

And and that is not something we fixed by, you know, figuring out what the next, how to navigate the next election.

That's that's a societal issue that we are going to have to really have an answer to.

And I don't like any of that conversation, admittedly, because, I mean, I have a history degree understanding sort of the events leading up to things.

It's sort of been my big focus for a long time.

And when I look at all this, it's terrifying.

But it's terrifying because it feels like we are so focused on how do we get through the next election, how do we get the next?

This is a generational beyond that issue, we can't focus on Gates-Chili next election.

I got to live in this country for the next 30, 40 years.

You know, it doesn't matter if we get to the next election, if 25% of the country is still ready to shoot somebody because Trump tells them to.

And I don't think that's going to pass on beyond Trump, you know, whether it's JD Vance or anybody else, I don't think they're going to carry on.

But there's going to be that hard core group.

And when we talk about people trusting America or not, like on the world stage, Europe, the rest of them, that's what they don't trust.

They don't trust those people.

And and more importantly, they don't trust the rest of us to actually stand up to that, because they're looking over here and they're saying, yeah, sure, we're going out and protesting in Minneapolis.

That's great and all, but they're watching things over here and they're I mean, I have friends online who are like, you know, you've all got your Second Amendment.

Why aren't you overthrowing this?

And that's not me doing a call for violence.

I want to be very clear.

That is not what that is.

>> Meant, Good.

>> But your viewpoint is like, you guys talk a lot about American values.

Americanness.

Sure.

We know you're not all, you know, hardcore MAGA Trumpers, but we don't really see you actually putting them in line.

>> Yeah, let me just jump in, Ben.

So Ben saying there doctor Stone, kind of what you're saying is that the damage reputationally comes from not electing him once but twice, electing him a second time after January 6th and the idea that, of course, this isn't representative of all the American people.

But as Ben says, it certainly is your country now.

It is.

And what do you see there?

>> That's right.

I think Ben has a very good point that the problem in the United States is not just Donald Trump, it's that it's Donald Trump's supporters.

there is a significant portion of the society that has authoritarian values.

It doesn't particularly value democracy.

and that is, prepared to see.

>> Coercion against minorities and wants to impose a particular theocratic view of, of of of individual morality and has has a, has a whole agenda behind it.

I think that is still a relatively small portion of American society.

I think it's smaller, actually, than it was in in previous generations relative to the size of the country.

But it's very well organized and it can, given our peculiar 18th century political institutions, win national elections.

Right.

So it's it's it's the United States isn't unique in this respect.

About a third of the population of many, advanced industrial economies would, would support similar kinds of movements.

but our political institutions lend themselves to creating majority, support out of minority electoral support.

And that makes it a little bit more problematic in our case.

>> Ben, thank you for the phone call.

Paul.

And Brighton is next.

Hi, Paul.

Go ahead.

>> Hello, Evan.

belated happy New Year.

And I'll have to admit, I'm glad to hear a little bit of pessimism creeping into your your tone through this conversation.

as you know, as you know I think I heard somewhere that a a pessimist is a well-informed optimist, and what what I'm curious about is, do you do you think Trump will accept any level of the midterm results from you know, from dogcatcher up to mayor, up to governor, whatever it's going to be, whoever's going to be running.

Do you believe he will?

He will accept any results that don't go his way at the midterms.

>> Okay, Paul.

thank you, doctor Stone.

>> Well, this is the the elephant in the room, right in this conversation that there is some existential worry about the future of democracy in America.

my sense is that our chances of holding on to democracy are are better than 50/50.

There may be 60, 40, but I, as I think that probably we will get through this, but I don't think that we can responsibly say that we're sure anymore.

And not very long ago, I would have said the chance of democracy persisting in America was 99.9%.

Right.

So that is the change that we're feeling.

And that's that's why there is profound uncertainty, right in over this is having an effect on Republican politicians because they're not sure what kind of political system they will live in in the future.

They're not certain, right, that they actually have the independence that congressmen and senators have traditionally had in our political system.

So this is why it's really important we get through the next election.

>> If there's a 40% chance that our democracy is not going to hold, how much of that will we start to see unravel this year with the midterm elections?

Is this a big step here?

>> I think we'll get through the midterm elections.

>> You don't think we're going to see suspended elections?

>> I don't think we will.

I.

>> But you're not sure?

>> I'm not certain.

I think it's very difficult to carry that out in the United States, because we have a federal system.

and it there there are lots of very potent actors at the state level who can prevent that.

so I think it is very unlikely that that will happen.

now, depending on what happens after the election there might be some effort by by Donald Trump to, to to try to hold on to somehow run again, although that's unconstitutional.

you know, for, for reelection or to do something else that was extra constitutional.

he certainly is unreliable.

and if he is sufficiently healthy to be able to continue to to pursue these sorts of strategies when it comes time for the next presidential election, you know, that's a time when we have to worry about what is going to happen.

I think we will get through it.

but I can't be certain.

>> Paul.

I don't know what it means.

What you meant when you said you're glad to hear pessimism creeping in for me.

I want to be clear here.

My views on the world are not front and center here, although the audience gives me a little bit of room to be forthright when I feel like it's hard for me to have a conversation without some bias coming in.

But I've got a responsibility to everybody who listens to this program, including MAGA voters.

By the way.

Everybody.

So that doesn't mean we all have to agree on stuff we're not going to.

And Paul, I'm very concerned the people who employ me in this building allowed me to say on the air in 2015 and 2016 how concerned I was that Donald Trump could be president, not because I'm anti-Republican.

I mean, I grew up in a family of Republicans.

I have a lot of affection for small C conservative values.

It's because I don't think the cult of one person should be given this much power and concentrated authority and that, yeah, I'm worried about it.

But I also want to listen to everybody and assume that everyone is persuadable in any direction, including me, by the way, and that doesn't change.

So I don't know how much I've changed.

Maybe I've changed a little, I don't know.

okay.

Back to your phone calls.

Let's get Jack in Greece, and then we'll grab Anthony and Victor, and then we're going to talk about what Russia and China think.

Okay, this is Jack in Greece.

Hey, Jack.

Go ahead.

>> Thanks, Evan.

Hey a couple of points.

I'll come back to the topic as written up.

the idea of Trump and Greenland and Norway what would it take to turn his base?

in a different direction?

you know I don't think this is going to touch much at all because we've spent we've we've heard for years how Europeans have been demonized by the right they, you know for a number of reasons.

They're not spending enough on defense and their culture, their values, everything, you name it.

So they've been demonized.

They're the enemy.

Just like liberals are the enemy.

of the hard right.

And we hear that coming out of people like J.D.

Vance, the Nobel Peace Prize, and you know, it comes back to when Donald Trump was being considered for election the first time.

One of the big criticisms was how thin skinned he is, how vulnerable he is to people buttering him up, flattering him.

And we're seeing that played out.

But people knew that coming in and they still took them, you know, and clearly it's so to President Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, right?

So there's this envy that he's got to get one, too.

So he writes this letter that's now been exposed.

And to my mind, it's such an erosion of our country and what we stand for.

You know, we we you know, we have we certainly have lots of faults.

We've done a lot of wrong things, but we generally stand up for doing the right thing.

And people, even the undermining of the U.S.

dollar and Donald Trump, I don't know how much wealth he's gained from Bitcoin and and pardoning people that were.

>> Not just Bitcoin, his own coins.

And the answer is what looks like his family has been enriched several billion dollars.

>> And and but but people still still buy into this.

So and the undermining of the value of the U.S.

dollar, the U.S.

dollar is the safe haven for the world.

Everybody turns the U.S.

dollar.

That's where the money goes and it goes there.

But what Donald Trump pushing bitcoin.

What's the I don't want to go off in the weeds there.

But that's to me that sounds like an erosion of the U.S.

dollar.

If nothing else.

>> Yeah I mean Jack there's a lot there.

I want to keen on the point where you talk about demonizing Europe.

I have some emails from listeners who think it's the other way around, who think that Europe is just the freeloader in the United States does all the work here.

they say that NATO is still a joke of an alliance.

It's the United States and everybody else.

Dallas writes.

I think of it like we're the parent.

Europe is just the 18 year old sleeping on our couch who just quit his job at Verizon because his boss made him do stuff, you know?

So, I mean, he says, what even is NATO?

So, okay, doctor Stone, Jack is concerned that we're demonizing NATO.

Dallas Charles a few others are emailing saying NATO's a joke.

The United States is finally pushing them to do something.

>> What do you think?

>> Sounds like the the email correspondence is supporting Evan's point that there it's become popular in certain quarters in the United States to demonize Europe.

Right.

And that's what they're doing.

Sure.

the the Europeans provide an awful lot of resources that multiply American capabilities when the United States asked them to go along for the ride in a couple of ill advised wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Danes went the poles went.

>> They participated, died.

>> Absolutely.

>> They supporting us?

>> Absolutely.

They they they went there because we asked them to even though they had their suspicions that maybe it wasn't a good idea.

and.

The.

The United States ends up spending more on defense than certain European countries did.

for example, after the Cold War, because the United States had a different set of priorities and a different set of objectives and wanted to expand power into areas that didn't have much to do with with Europe and the threat to Europe in the period after the Cold War dramatically decreased.

So naturally, they scaled back the size of their militaries.

most European countries retained the draft, which the United States didn't have.

That's a substantial tax on their populations.

And they did that in order to continue to abide by their NATO obligations.

>> And I have a couple emails of people making fun of the small numbers of European soldiers sent to Greenland over the weekend.

Again, France sent 15 Germany, 13.

Sweden, three.

Norway, two.

The UK one.

The Netherlands one.

I don't read that as that's supposed to be a big enough force to stop a United States military incursion.

The way I read that was that is a symbolic show that they're willing to put their blood on the line, knowing that anything could happen to say to us, you're not welcome in a military capacity here.

Go build a base.

Let's be a partner.

But we are protecting Greenland because of this.

The weird moment here.

I don't view that as anything other than symbolic.

What do you see?

>> I think the symbolism of it is that it was such a tiny, group that it could not be used as a pretext, for escalation.

What they're trying to do was send a very, very gentle signal.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

Yeah.

Anthony and Victor got to keep it tight.

Go ahead.

Anthony.

>> Hi, Evan.

Great show.

question for your guest.

You said 60 over 40, in reference to the ability to stay as a democracy.

If the Democrats do win the House and they do impeach him, do you think there will be enough spined Republicans that will vote to finally get rid of this nonsense that's going on in our country?

>> I think that would be very unlikely., it's not impossible that the Democrats end up getting in control of both houses.

And under those circumstances, I think it is much more likely.

but the, the threshold for actually removing a president after impeachment is is very high.

it should be high.

It's a it's a something that, that people are very reluctant to do.

so I think.

That that's an unlikely scenario.

>> It's a good question.

>> Yeah, it's a good question.

>> Thank you.

Anthony.

so what do you think the view is from Russia and from China on what's been happening with Greenland and recent events.

>> Oh, they're rubbing their hands happily.

They're very happy about this.

This is why this is this is.

Well, so, so Putin's line all along has been, well, you know Western democracy isn't really all that great anyway and the United States has really been out to expand its informal empire and so forth.

and this plays into his, his, his rhetoric.

It also allows him to say, well, you know, the United States wants to take Greenland.

That's fine.

We just want to take Ukraine.

And this normalizes his aggressive behavior.

XI Jinping has his eyes on Taiwan, and he's made no, no.

no bones about the fact that he intends to see Taiwan reunified with China one way or another.

many Chinese believe that this is inevitable.

This is necessary.

that it's their right to reassert their control over Taiwan.

and it's something that the the Chinese Communist Party sees as kind of an existential threat because Taiwan proves that Chinese people can live in democracy and have all the rights that pertain to democracy, and that's threatening to them because that is very attractive.

there are lots of people in China who would also like to live in democracy and have all the rights that people have in Taiwan.

And so this is that very troubling.

anomaly for them.

much the way West Berlin was a troubling anomaly for the Soviet Union that just drove them nuts, that there was this outpost of democracy in the middle of of East Germany during the Cold War.

So China has been deterred by the implicit threat that the United States would intervene if they tried to invade Taiwan.

And that threat was made very clear under the during the Clinton administration when the Clinton administration sent aircraft carriers to patrol the Straits and make it clear that the United States would defend Taiwan in spite of the fact that the United States doesn't actually recognize Taiwan as an independent country.

This was part of the deal that was made with China when China split with the Soviet Union in the in the 1970s.

But the United States maintained this kind of informal commitment to this country that we don't quite recognize, but which we know is a democracy.

And we know as an independent country that commitment has become increasingly questioned as China's military might has increased.

and it's now gotten to the point where it's not so clear that the United States could defeat China.

in a conventional war in the Pacific.

just a few years ago, the U.S.

military was quite convinced that they could defeat China.

It would take about six weeks to be able to to to defeat China in a in a naval war.

Now, they're really uncertain.

and China is building ships faster than the United States was building ships at the height of World War two.

so the the military balance is shifting rapidly.

Meanwhile, military technology is shifting very quickly.

And automation is becoming very important, and China is catching up with the United States in in A.I.

and in other crucial technologies.

So we may be at a turning point there.

If the United States takes its eye off of the ball, China may decide it's time to to take over Taiwan.

And when that happens, the United States will be the second most powerful country in the world.

>> The Taiwanese people are probably not enjoying what they're seeing in Greenland either.

>> Then?

Absolutely not.

Yeah.

>> thank you, doctor Stone, for your time.

You're generous with your time.

The director of the center for Polish and Central European Studies at the University of Rochester, a professor of political science.

Thank you for being here.

>> Thanks for having me, Evan.

>> We got more questions coming up in a moment.

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