Ian Bremmer: Trump’s “Political Revolution” Is 2026’s Top Global Risk

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, this year is off to a turbulent start and a new global risk report by the Eurasia Group is sounding the alarm, calling 2026 a tipping point. In an unusual shift, it identifies the United States as the principal threat to the global order and offers a stark warning as President Trump tests the limits of his own executive power. Ian Bremmer is the group’s founder and president. He joins Walter Isaacson to break down what he calls the American political revolution.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Ian Bremmer, welcome back to the show.

 

IAN BREMMER: Walter, great to see you.

 

ISAACSON: Well, let’s start with Venezuela, of course, and the capture of President Maduro. You referred to it in your beginning of the year report as the “Donroe” Doctrine. Of course, referring to James Monroe’s doctrine of the 1820s, that we should have South America or all the Western Hemisphere as a sphere of influence. Could we go back to that type of sphere of influence? Does this make sense?

 

BREMMER: We couldn’t go back to it on the economic side because China, of course, is the dominant trade partner with most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere, and they’re not about to leave. Mexico, of course, the U.S. has been pushing hard against Chinese trans shipments. The Mexicans, really reliant on the United States, have significantly increased their tariffs against China. But that’s, broadly speaking, not gonna work. 

 

Militarily, of course, the U.S. is dominant, and not only in the Western hemisphere. And that is exactly where Trump just had a staggering success with a six month in-process plan to remove Maduro and bring him to see justice in the United States. And other countries in the region are absolutely put on notice as a consequence of that. And not just in the Western hemisphere. This is a Greenland issue too. Trump has made very clear that he intends to have Greenland. He wants sovereignty over it, and he is not debating that with the Danes right now. So this is a really big shift to the law of the jungle in America’s backyard.

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait a minute. You said it’s a staggering success — just called it the law of the jungle. But man you say, “the law of the jungle is dangerous. What applies to your enemies one day can apply to you the next. Make no mistake where the world is heading here.”

 

BREMMER: Yeah. Well, staggering success for Trump in a headline is very different from U.S. influence in five or 10 years. I mean, Trump is clearly really pleased that Maduro is out, and that whatever next government comes in, so — not regime change, more like regime roulette — is gonna do America’s bidding or else that military can be used against them. So he sees that as a win. But long term, the United States is not China, it’s not Russia. It doesn’t have leaders for life. It has elections every four years. And just as Trump did to Biden, and Biden did to Trump before him, and Trump did to Obama, the next president can change things. And when you have an independent judiciary, when you have an election cycle, when you have two different political parties, you know, you don’t want to have law of the jungle. You wanna actually be constrained by rule of law with institutions that you set up because they align with you over the long term. Unfortunately Trump’s efforts to secure a law of the jungle in a G-Zero world, as I put it, long term, is much more beneficial for the Chinese than it is for the United States.

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait, you say it’s beneficial to the Chinese, you say we’re not gonna be able to have economic dominance. But the Chinese, who have lent large billions of dollars to Venezuela based on oil revenues, they now seem like they’re gonna be cut out of this equation.

 

BREMMER: Well, actually in the hours after Maduro was removed — despite the US boycott on tanker traffic — over 12 tankers were allowed out. That was by the United States to ship over oil to China. And Trump said the Chinese will be able to get their oil. The United States is quite excited now. Trump is gonna go to Beijing and meet with Xi Jinping coming up in April. And this relationship is precisely what Trump calls a G2 now. Why is he affording the Chinese such incredible deference when he’s beating up on Venezuela, he’s beating up on his own allies? And the reason, of course, is because the Chinese have shown the willingness and the capability to hit the Americans back hard. 

 

So there’s a really big difference between Trump announcing FAFO, “fool around and find out,” to Nicolas Maduro, and people talking about TACO, “Trump always chickens out,” when you discuss how the Americans need to back down to the Chinese. And the real question, if you want to think, Walter, about how the U.S. will engage with other countries around the world, is where do they fall on that spectrum between FAFO and TACO? The Europeans today, at least from America’s perspective, look a lot more FAFO-like, and that is a problem for Europe.

 

ISAACSON: Stephen Miller just said Greenland should obviously be part of the U.S. and that “nobody’s going to fight the United States…over the future of Greenland.” So when we speak next year, on this day, who’s gonna control Greenland?

 

BREMMER: We don’t know. There’s no plan for taking over Greenland, but Trump says he wants one. And that means American sovereignty over Greenland that —

 

ISAACSON: What would that mean to NATO then?

 

BREMMER: Well, it would be a disaster, of course, for the non-American NATO countries. Now that doesn’t mean boots on the ground. I don’t think anyone is talking about an invasion. But there’s lots of ways to have influence over a country and get what you want if you’re so much more powerful as the United States is: political inducements and economic inducements, but also threats. And what we’ve seen is that the U.S. has cut off their negotiations with the Danes. They don’t wanna discuss this with Denmark. This is the Alice “through the looking glass” part of all of this, is if what Trump wanted were more access for U.S. bases in Greenland, more ability to have intelligence, surveillance, if he needed access for the Americans to exploit Greenland natural wealth and resource, all of that is on the table by just sitting down and negotiating with Denmark.

 

ISAACSON: This law of the jungle where might makes right, and we have the right to do these things. You said that could backfire on us. Let me read you something that was on China’s social media platforms. Postings that were allowed by the censor to stay on the platforms. One of ’em read “If the United States can arrest another country’s president, then China can absolutely arrest Taiwan’s president.” And then there was a comment following up saying, “It’s not that China is not able to, it’s that China doesn’t dare to.” Do you think this Venezuela action might embolden China to do something similar on Taiwan? 

 

BREMMER: Not in the near term, no. And that’s why this isn’t in the report. China, of course, sees Taiwan as a domestic policy issue, not a foreign policy issue. So they certainly believe it’s within their rights to do whatever they want with Taiwan. But they also understand that Taiwan is an island. It’s very heavily fortified and defended. And it also matters a lot economically to China, especially TSMC and their semiconductor production, all of which is an unacceptable risk for the Chinese to take against the United States — Venezuela, or no Venezuela. So this is really a capabilities issue, and it’s the fact that the Chinese are long-term players, they’re patient, and they’re building their capabilities. They’re biding their time with the intention of making a move on Taiwan when they believe it is to their advantage that time is not today.

 

ISAACSON: How does this Venezuela situation sort of affect Russian relations and even the sense that maybe Russia should have its sphere of influence, including large parts of Ukraine? 

 

BREMMER: Well — I’m gonna give you a similar answer, which is, again, the Russians didn’t need the Americans to make them feel like they deserve a sphere of influence. And they invaded Ukraine initially in 2014 with the illegal Crimean annexation and the little green men in Donbas. They saw that the Europeans, the Americans didn’t do very much about it. So then they went back for a second, much bigger bite at the apple in 2022 — the full on invasion. All of this comes well before Venezuela. So I mean, Trump — it was interesting to see the Russians, publicly, the Kremlin condemned the United States for this breach of international law, something the Russians have a great deal of expertise on and history, of course, themselves. 

 

But the Russian problem is that their military is nowhere close to as capable as the American military. I mean, if the Russians could have come close to pulling off against Zelensky what the Americans did to Maduro, you and I would be having a very different conversation right now about Ukraine and about Russia’s future. But Russia’s kleptocracy, its incapacity, its lack of wealth and productivity, and its lack of human capital — so much of which has died on the battlefield or has got the hell out of Dodge because they’re so scared of what would happen to them if they’re drafted, — that really undermines Russia future. So they’re gaining some land in Ukraine, but Russia’s losing everywhere else in the world.

 

ISAACSON: The next application of the “Donroe” doctrine might be Cuba. That’s where it would make sense. What do you think is gonna happen there? Cuba got, I think, a quarter of its oil and a lot of its resources from Venezuela. 

 

BREMMER: Yeah, that’s gonna stop. And we heard that Cubans were killed in the American operations in Venezuela, and they were providing a lot of intelligence and military advice to the Venezuelans. Certainly Marco Rubio believes that there is a domino theory that you get rid of Maduro and you get rid of the leaders in Nicaragua. And Cuba is the ultimate, you know, sort of last shoe to fall. 

 

There are a lot of leaders across Latin America that are aligned with President Trump. You just saw that election in Chile. You’ve got Milei in Argentina. In Colombia, elections this year will almost certainly lead to a right wing, pro-Trump figure, as opposed to Petro — who he can’t stand. But Cuba they’re not having elections. And for the Americans to deal with that you’re gonna have to engage in some level of direct intervention. Now, whether that starts with an economic blockade or whether that starts with diplomacy and a, you know, give you an ultimatum. They don’t have that plan yet. But I certainly expect that over the coming year, that plan is going to be drawn up.

 

ISAACSON: Mexico is an interesting case for the “Donroe” doctrine. He seems to be rather friendly with Mexico’s president, Claudia Scheinbaum. And yet he put it in the crosshairs in some of his comments this week. Tell me what to make of that.

 

BREMMER: I think that Claudia Scheinbaum has done a masterful job of understanding that she is in a very vulnerable position, that she needs the Americans. She has nowhere else to go. She doesn’t have a China play. She doesn’t have a Europe play. It’s all about trade with the United States, remittances from Mexicans living in the United States that’s —  tourism, you name it. And so she’s worked very hard to do as much as possible to shut down fentanyl, to secure and police the border, to listen to the Americans on transshipment of goods from China through Mexico. She’s putting higher tariffs on Chinese goods coming in. Everything that she possibly can. 

 

But she has a red line. And that red line is Mexican sovereignty that the Americans cannot send drones in, cannot send the federales in to fight directly against the narco cartels. They have to work with Mexico together. But I will tell you that over the — Trump in the first months was thinking about, Maybe we want to just use force in Mexico. In the last couple months, we’ve heard internally — people including Stephen Miller — say that Mexico is cooperating so well with the Americans, that maybe we don’t need to invade unilaterally. Maybe we can just work with them. And, and that is a testament to Claudia Scheinbaum working very hard and effectively, and her cabinet, with the United States.

 

ISAACSON: Your very first item on your risk list is the domestic political situation in the United States. It reminds me of the old Pogo cartoon — you may not be old enough to remember it, but  — “we have met the enemy and he is us.” 

 

BREMMER: He is us. Yeah.

 

ISAACSON: Yes. And so to what extent do you think we’re going through a political revolution that is a threat to our international standing?

 

BREMMER: Whether or not the revolution is successful, the reality of America struggling internally is making it much less reliable internationally. And this is the problem that, you know, Americans may not agree on which part of America is the enemy, but they seem to increasingly agree that the enemy is not Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. The principle enemy is inside the house. And Trump in particular really believes, and a lot of his supporters believe, that the government was weaponized against him. That these two unprecedented impeachments, the felony, felonies and the convictions — again unprecedented — and the near assassination occurred because Biden and the Democrats weaponized the power of government against him. And so he now believes that he must weaponize the administrative state, politicize it, as well as the Department of Justice, the FBI — the power ministries in the U.S. — to ensure that they can never come back to power and do that to him. And, and that is a very dangerous position for the U.S. It means that he is trying to break the checks and balances against the presidency. And so far he’s done a lot more of that than anyone would’ve expected a year ago, Walter. And the reaction, there has been pushback, but there’s been less pushback than anyone would’ve expected a year ago. And that, that makes this political revolution a real — <crosstalk>

 

ISAACSON: And you expected, a year ago. You said it was a bit overstated that our democracies, institutions would fall apart, that there were guardrails. Are you surprised at how problematic it was having the guardrails that protect our democratic institutions?

 

BREMMER: I’ll say that I’m a little bit surprised. I still think this political revolution will ultimately fail. I think Trump doesn’t have the popularity, the ability to see it through, and that there are still guardrails. I think that the judges in the United States — you’re gonna see the Supreme Court rule on IEEPA. You’ve just seen Trump be pushed back on using the National Guard in Chicago, for example. You saw his investigations against Letitia James and Comey get pushed back. So there has been some. 

 

The U.S. is a federal system. The states matter. They’re red and blue, but they are more technocratic in the way they are governed. And that also means the way that elections occur. But when I look at the weakness of the Democratic party, when I look at the, in inability and unwillingness of the Republican Party to be anything but completely loyal to Trump, when I see that the CEOs and the bankers are privately very concerned and wringing their hands, but publicly won’t criticize; when I see the role of the corporate media rolling over and paying off lawsuits that they know they could win, but they don’t want to be threatened or they want to make sure they get a new merger deal together; when I see the threat by Trump against public television, which you and I care a great deal about, all of those things do imply that we are in unprecedented times. 

 

ISAACSON: You write, lemme give you the quote. “With only three years left and Democrats favored to take the House of Representative in — Representatives in November’s midterm elections, Trump and his inner circle will grow more, not less risk-acceptant.” Tell me what you expect.

 

BREMMER: Well, it’s kind of like what we just saw on Venezuela. That, you know, when Trump feels like he doesn’t, he’s not succeeding in one area. He doesn’t sort of give up. He doubles down in another. And I think that Trump’s impulses – just as you saw after he lost the election in 2020 and he didn’t give up and go quietly into the night – he said, No, no, no. I’m rallying my people and we’re gonna do everything we can to overturn this fake election that has been rigged against me. I don’t think anyone that knows Trump thinks that this guy isn’t a fighter. This guy was almost killed, again, and he got back up immediately and raises his fist in the air. And it’s right in the West Wing big photograph. You go in and, you know, there, there’s the — in the White House, there’s this massive painting of Trump fighting. I think that Trump feels like, you know, he has everything to lose if the Democrats come back and he’s gonna do everything in his power with a lot of people that are much more loyal to him around him in his administration than they were in the first term to fight to ensure that his political revolution is successful.

 

ISAACSON: Ian Bremmer, thank you so much for joining us.

 

BREMMER: Thank you, Walter.