[SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying.

[SPEAKER_01]: The new world struggles to reborn.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.

[SPEAKER_01]: With those words, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm G.T.

[SPEAKER_01]: here of the nation magazine, this podcast is sponsored by the nation, and why the available on all podcasting platforms.

[SPEAKER_01]: This week, we're recording on a Friday where the news that sort of on the headline of the New York Times is that Secretary of War, as he calls himself, P.T.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exeth, is said out an aircraft carrier the Gerald Ford to the Caribbean.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the times correctly disguises as a major escalation.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it often does feel like over the last few weeks we are do see to be in the run-up to some sort of war with the United States and the government of Venezuela.

[SPEAKER_01]: perfectly honest, it is an actual war already because if you're blowing the ships of another country in international waters, I mean I'm sorry that is an act of war.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's I met to my mind there's two big questions like what is it actually going on?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a variety of explanations which we'll get into.

[SPEAKER_01]: And perhaps the other more curious thing is the famous Sherlock Holmes, the dog that does not work.

[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean if you're having a run up to war and there is no protest or the opposition party, such as it is, I would say virtually nothing about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So to talk about this, I'm very happy to have on [SPEAKER_01]: Van Jackson, he's a professor of international relations at the University of Victoria in Wellington, writes prolifically on foreign policy and podcasts as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Especially focused on the United States in Asia.

[SPEAKER_01]: He has a co-author or a recent book, which I wrote about, for the nation, called the rivalry peril, [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that actually, that's sort of bipartisan militarism might be a good way into this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to ask Ben to just maybe, first of all, basically describe what is going on here and then what are the possible explanations?

[SPEAKER_01]: How does this fit into a larger American politics of what one can see as a resurgent attempt to reassert American military power around the globe?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, first of all, thanks.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big, big fan of your writing and of this show a long time listener, but the, like, superficially, you know, the Trump administration, obviously, is marketing this Venezuela war as narcoterrorism.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's, of course, [SPEAKER_00]: profoundly stupid because 0% of black market fentanyl comes from Venezuela, almost all of it comes from Mexico, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's just like that's an insane proposition, it's not serious.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then like the other day Rubio Secretary of State, he said, if people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, if that's your threshold [SPEAKER_00]: Then you're basically saying you're going to be doing illegal war forever, because there's never going to be a world where like [SPEAKER_01]: drug supply doesn't meet demand and yeah, you know, I mean, this is a classic sort of South American and you know, Latin American perspective on this like, you know, we would be selling these drugs if there wasn't a market bar at And the United States is the world's biggest consumer of all sorts of narcotics So yeah, it seems like there's a kind of two way street here [SPEAKER_01]: that's not I mean I would have to ask a third point this is a little bit of a progression I have to say historically if you want to prevent the drug trade like getting starting a American war is not all you do that because traditionally the American military you know whether it's in Vietnam or Afghanistan or in Central America with Nicaragua [SPEAKER_01]: has been a gateway.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's certainly true of this sort of current era, special forces, you know, like Seth Harp with his recent best-selling book, on the Fort Bragg Cartel, it is, it is, happens to be the case that these special forces are big conduit for the drug trade.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like even on its own level, it's like a paradoxical activity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, it's, it's insane, but I also think, like, so Vincent Bevans had a thing recently where he wrote about [SPEAKER_00]: Trump administration, he said they're not seeking regime change, although they are, they're seeking regime collapse and his distinction was that like, there's going to be a power vacuum that results from the attempt that regime change, which is how it always goes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to go cleanly.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not just going to have a democracy swoop in post-meduro.

[SPEAKER_00]: like it's going to be profoundly devastating, destabilizing to the Western Hemisphere.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they will call it a regime change and so far as they [SPEAKER_00]: are just willing to be neocons, but like what they're really doing and we shouldn't lose sight of it is regime collapse.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that's interesting about that is there's like somewhat like he's not wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something to that or it's like just flatly correct, but [SPEAKER_00]: it takes the Trump administration's own sort of rhetoric about this, like a little too seriously, like a little too on the nose, like the idea that like the Trump administration is trying to solve a policy problem, called drug trafficking, or that they're trying to solve a policy problem, called immigration, like that's not serious, that's not, [SPEAKER_00]: they want to do violence and they want to concentrate and wield the power of the state without fetters with impunity and that means existing in a state of exception that means existing in like a continuous emergency condition, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you need to like this drug stuff is completely trumped up.

[SPEAKER_00]: The immigration stuff is completely trumped up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like they need to inflate threats everywhere to justify emergency to then therefore justify the use of state power.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they're not trying to solve problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like that that's really important because I see a lot of these critiques of the Trump administration, which are fair minded, which say like oh, the Trump administration is going to destabilize everything and that's going to cause a flood of refugees and immigrants coming in across the border of course, so they're it's an own goal.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're making their own problem worse, but yeah, but that's not a valid critique that that critique assumes that the Trump administration's actually trying to solve a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not obvious that they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually obvious that it's the opposite.

[SPEAKER_00]: They need excuses for emergency politics, basically.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense what you're saying already.

[SPEAKER_01]: You just seem like it's a pretextual or, you know, the war is the solution itself.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the extraneous ideology, the extraneous ideological explanation are ways you get to that solution.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the idea of a lot is just in terms of the historical origins of this, the whole phrase, narco-terrorism, calls to mind two separate, you know, ventures that have created states of exception.

[SPEAKER_01]: One is the war on drugs and the other is the war on terrorism.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is like a wrapping up or a use of this sort of existing ideological structure.

[SPEAKER_01]: of the war on terrorism and the war on drugs to justify this position.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you're saying like, you know, the goal is the violence is the goal or the violence, you know, exists where it's all say, like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, first just to like reiterate the point you just made what we're seeing like what we're observing is like the war on terror and the war on drugs and the war on immigrants it's congealing into this yellow fruit salad of death, you know, it's like we're that's that's the observation right that's the social science brain.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the dependent variable, and then it's like, how do you, you know, and Venezuela is a key part of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the the foremost side of that now, and so like how do you account for it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the idea a lot, like, there is an ideological explanation here that has purchase, but it's not enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Monroe Doctrine, it's an imperialist foreign policy doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: The 1904 version from Roosevelt is what has [SPEAKER_00]: MAGA has in their mind when they talk about the Monroe Doctrine, which is like we are going to exclude other empires from colonizing this place and we will do wars on behalf of that goal if we want to, under the guise of the Monroe Doctrine, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is kind of happening and you can call that an ideology and within the Monroe Doctrine, it's counter socialism, [SPEAKER_00]: regime change in Venezuela against a nominally socialist government, you know, in the minds of mega anyway, like that contrasts with the crypto fascist Malay and Argentina, who they're pumping $40 billion into, and they're also opposed to Lula in Brazil, who's a kind of, you know, left populist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, [SPEAKER_00]: You start to see that like, okay, Venezuela slots into a larger sort of anti-socialist pro far-right government set of policies.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a way that you could think of that as ideology.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rubio specifically though has been like the guy in the Trump administration who is trying to make all of this about great power competition.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's like, yeah, he's right wing Latino who wants regime change, you know, and he's sold the Trump administration.

[SPEAKER_00]: He sold Trump personally on that from what I've read, but he's also trying to like graft all this Latin America imperialism stuff onto as is like he's justifying it as like part of the global chess board of great power competition.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because Venezuela is friendly with China, they broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan, you know, not so long ago.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, in the case of Ruby, I mean, it makes a lot of sense in terms of his own ideological trajectory.

[SPEAKER_01]: That he did, we was the sort of favorite candidate of the sort of Neo Conservatives in 2016 and has that sort of old Republican party.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Bush era Republican party kind of worldview.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a way in which he's been as well putting it as part of the global test for it against China is a way of solving the political problem, you know, combining Fushia or a republicanism with the Trump's magazine.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a way of creating a popular front on the right along that basis.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think Rubio's actions as you described, we make a lot of sense [SPEAKER_01]: Um, the, in terms of, uh, you know, like Magga, their own like ideology.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, obviously anti-socialism is a big part of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, there's another component, which is this, uh, which maybe I'm not sure Rubio's on board with, and maybe his global chess board is a way of, uh, creating wiggle room.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, like the sort of hardcore, [SPEAKER_01]: bag of people like Bannon, they do see, you know, try to hard back to the old right Republican tradition of sort of hemispheric dominance.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, not just the Sir Monroe documentary, but the idea that the US should try to offshore in the Middle East and in Europe so that they can concentrate on, you know, where it's real assertion of power has to be, which is a Western hemispheric.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once these aspects of that in Trump, I mean, the sort of obsession with Greenland, you know, Alex and Canada, taking over the Panama Canal again, it is a kind of hemispheric vision.

[SPEAKER_01]: But again, that's an ideological explanation.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'll share that, like, that does really, you know, gets us where we want to be.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like, what do you think about that is part of the world view?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's an important piece of this and like you're going to see they've already been you know showing a lot of leg indicating that or foreshadowing that we're going in this direction of like quote unquote hemispheric dominance.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Monroe Doctrine 2.0 is part of that and the forthcoming national defense strategy is also going to signal that sort of shift.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a there's a there's a kind of farce in that too because [SPEAKER_00]: Who is challenging American dominance in the Western Hemisphere?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's nobody that comes remotely close.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's nobody who comes remotely close to challenging American dominance globally.

[SPEAKER_00]: Galactically, interplanetarily, except for China, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this, the focus on Western hemisphere, like that, it's insufficient, you cannot justify that on its own terms.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like with that kind of suggests is like a focus on quote unquote homeland security, which is a fascist term in itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: the homeland is part of the Western Hemisphere.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like doing the internal war against your self and on, within North America, that is as much what the Western Hemisphere means to these guys as Latin America.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think for foreign policy nerds, we think Western Hemisphere, we tend to think like Latin America, but like, this is as much about ice in the war on immigrants as anything else, [SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, I mean, I mean, it wasn't there like this sort of controversy between Haggisath and the Pentagon in terms of, um, uh, I guess, uh, divide over whether the sort of main adversary, uh, is China or whether it's like America itself, like, you know, like, whether you made it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a sense of which like, yeah, if you see the Western Hemisphere as the United States and then it's backyard and it's porch like Canada and in America Then yeah, if you're a main focus is going to be, you know, the war within your of your own people There will be a reconquest of the United States itself and then there's a five-product a certain dominance over a re-asserting dominance or [SPEAKER_01]: over the neighboring countries, that seems to be part of the vision at work here, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and this actually gets to like maybe two different versions of a materialist explanation for for this, which the first, and I think this, there's a lot to this again, resource extractivism, you know, Venezuela is the world's largest proven oil reserve spot, it's a country that's rich with deposits of gold and coal tan and diamonds and like, [SPEAKER_00]: prior to any of the spent as well as stuff coming to the surface, I had a kind of ongoing argument that the crisis of capitalism, which is in evidence everywhere, everywhere you look, like that it was going to be followed by a turn to not financialization, that's the the most recent stage of the crisis, but actually primitive accumulation, imperialist form policy [SPEAKER_00]: primitive accumulation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, I mean, in Marxism that has like specific meaning, but I mean like primitive accumulation has like dispossession, settler colonialism, minerals extraction, ethnic cleansing, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So that is in evidence in all kinds of parts of US foreign policy, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Ukraine, Panama, Canal, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, West Bank settlements, defense strategists that I know have been right not that I know in a critical way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been writing about doing this thing that they call minerals for military assistance as like a paradigm for doing deals all over the world, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's like in a world of declining growth, you have all the surplus capital, where does it go?

[SPEAKER_00]: where you have to unlock new surplus value somehow in a world that's generating less value.

[SPEAKER_00]: So surplus capital needs something, primitive accumulation is a way of unlocking new value, but it's just in the most barbarous, horrific kind of way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's something to that because Venezuela's rich with resources, [SPEAKER_00]: It seems a little crazy to me like like as if we invaded Iraq for the oil, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean that is the way like, Trump at least like literally thinks about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, like, we didn't get the oil, you went in there.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, I was just gonna say, but like, I do think that like the premiere of you like you're like, you're like, you're like...

[SPEAKER_01]: it seems to be like it's a way of getting Trump and then maybe some of us people on board that I know that when they were trying to keep the United States in Afghanistan and from first term, they started to tell Trump, oh there's these rare minerals in the Ukraine and this also a way which like this sort of Ukraine war has been sold to Trump that you know like the US can get like all these deals on minerals in Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_01]: So but like on what level of [SPEAKER_01]: like offering like I don't know that like any sort of cost benefit allows us they play a bit of the cost of going in there the uh...

uh...

season that these these properties and like how are you like I [SPEAKER_01]: My mind can't quite get around the process.

[SPEAKER_01]: How would they actually do this?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, like, like, like, I don't deny that they want to do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and how much is it a driver?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, of course, if you control the area, you can exploit it the heck out of it if you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: but is that really like as you're sitting around in the situation room and you're trying to like decide what to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the thing that's going in your mind or is that just how you're appealing to Trump because you want to do it for other reasons, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I know it's it's it's a little bit uncertain about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't deny it.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I do think that there is something going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: with, like, especially where minerals, I mean, I think the current crisis with China kind of indicates that you know, like, I guess, you know, given where things are heading with boundaries and stuff like that, the US might feel like there is a problem and there's a lack.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, and historically, I mean, you know, like, yeah, could not necessarily direct control of oil, but, you know, access to oil supplies has been like a major part of American foreign policy.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, currently there's [SPEAKER_01]: Like, is this really even like the best way to go about doing it?

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it goes back to like the old question about like, you know, worthwhile.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you just wanted oil, so they have to say it was like more than willing to sell it to you, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm sure that the regime and Venezuela would do like, you know, happy to be like sort of a copper door, uh, uh, doing this sort of grant work of, uh, resource extraction.

[SPEAKER_01]: and get their own cut but I mean like it just yeah I don't I mean like there's something here but I'm not quite sure I understand quite the mechanics of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah it raises more it just like with oil and Iraq.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a non-factor but it's not the it can't be the primary factor because it raises too many other questions that go that are hard to answer you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there is a more straightforward sort of, you could call this a materialist reading for Venezuela, which is like the spectacle of diversionary war while to distract from crashing the economy.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, in the same way that Republicans, they do a kind of like identity politics and culture war politics as a distraction from their economic agenda, so they wage class war, but they get every, they do, they do the waging of class war partly through culture war stuff, you know, and the spectacle of like foreign wars and little military adventures can have that same effect.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, and yeah, I don't idea.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that that seems to me has a lot of plausibility and there's a lot of traditions.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's a sort of idea of the splendid little war.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and the sort of again Roosevelt, yeah, yeah, but I mean, war has kind of like entertainment, bread and circuses.

[SPEAKER_01]: for the masses, but particularly, like, I mean, ties in with the sort of larger crisis or anxiety one sees.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think one sees this stuff as purely ideological or cultural, but, you know, like, all the sort of anxiety of masculinity and, you know, declining testosterone, you know, the sense of, you know, like we need, like, like, you know, men are on the way down, [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in the context of, I don't think people often partner with this enough, but I mean Trump is coming in the wake of the United States like losing two like significant wars.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like really being unable to tame either Afghanistan or Iraq to their satisfaction.

[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like a general consensus emerging that these like, you know, very costly endeavors were like huge failures [SPEAKER_01]: And once he's just in Hexan, I mean, this whole idea is going to remasculize the military and make it like tough again.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that, you know, and in Trump himself has said, I mean, you know, like he has said that, you know, the United States has not won a war, so it's like 1945.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like a true B&B.

[SPEAKER_01]: Something that like America presidents don't usually talk about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's totally a feminist reading, too, like the libido [SPEAKER_00]: deal death and conquer and dominate, you know, um, yeah, very disturbing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, one of one of the troubling things here is like as Trump moves from bombing and drone striking boats in the Caribbean to what he calls land action or whatever, you know, it's hard to imagine that there's [SPEAKER_00]: like large-scale troop deployments into the country, like occupying like in any rock war style, but it's totally conceivable that they're going to just launch a war from the air, you know, like just drop in bombs and drone strikes and [SPEAKER_00]: The idea, and if the goal is regime change, then you have a, you know, coercion theory contest going where it's like, you're trying to impose costs and pain on the people and on the government in Venezuela, rain down terror, basically, until something breaks internally in Venezuela, and then they feel the need to throw off Maduro or something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: theory of the case.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, that's not how coercion works.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that is not a plausible goal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so once again, you're committed to a course of action, ironically, you're trying to win a war, finally, because you haven't won since 45.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's, if that's the standard, there is no way you're going to win this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, you're not going to bomb your way to regime change.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, I guess it has always been a strain of the military just so complex as fantasized about that, you know, we are power, but yeah, we historically the case that, you know, you can't really affect anything unless you are willing to put troops boots on the ground.

[SPEAKER_01]: which I mean, you know, like Trump, all indications are that he is in.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it does become a kind of, you know, spectacle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, what has to be frank, like a incredibly costly spectacle.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, you know, real people have already died.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: and many moral times, like this, you know, infliction of pain is real.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if it is all, but without, as you say, a coherent explanation is to, like, how this achieves your goal, then it is, like, something disturbingly, like, you know, like a war just for show.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean something that you had tweeted out which I think maybe we're expanding on is like the sheer pointlessness of it all and the sheer like it's not there is not it is not I mean like you know I was of the age of [SPEAKER_01]: uh...

you know uh...

being partially formed by the uh...

uh...

uh...

uh...

uh...

rock war uh...

George w uh...

bush is a war and uh...

you know like at the time like you know like i it did make a lot of that story but but it was actually like like what's more career that we're seeing now love like and it and it's still had aspects of which they're you know even though they're violating [SPEAKER_01]: core principles of international relations, they were still trying to make some sort of case based on human rights, the idea of an international order or consensus, in a way that, you know, of even like having allies, in a way that they're not doing now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, both in terms of like not, [SPEAKER_01]: It's like having a case or having a coherent explanation and then also like not even like you know bothering to make a case they're not like going out there and telling me a market people like there's this is the threat there Weapons of raster starts to we have to do it for you know like they're not even bothering to you know Come up with a an elaborate lie But it's a it's a it's a incredibly shoddy like we're not even trying to provide proof of [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's so much in what you just said.

[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, international relations scholar, like that's how I'm trained, they find all of this just totally confounding, because if you're a reference point, if you're a unit of analysis is like the nation state, as a serious thing, as a real thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't make any sense, like this, this, this is totally pointless if you have a conception of the national interest that you take seriously.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm critical as any good leftist would be of like these kinds of constructs, but like the for international relations scholars, that's how they're trained, this all is just a profoundly confusing era and this specific case of Venezuela is super confounding, you know, which is why it's important [SPEAKER_00]: beyond the IR toolkit to materialist explanations and this kind of thing, but also to your point about the Bush Iraq War comparison, my goodness, dude, the Bush administration spent like 18 months trying to sell us on Iraq WMDs, mushroom cloud, all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Trump administration does not even care what we think.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're not making an effort at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're happy to move the goal posts or like change their rationalizations, which is, you know, I saw a band in the other day talk about like Trump 2028.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, look, 2028 is gonna happen for Trump.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it is it unconstitutional?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's the justification?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like he's willing to reverse engineer the rules to get to the outcome that he wants.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the outcome regime change in Venezuela is what they want.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it almost feels like they're just kind of like, dude, what do I have to say in order to just keep going down that path?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you actually use their rhetoric as like a serious thing to analyze, you end up feeling crazy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, I think that's right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, what you just said about it as your army of the way he sort of just defined a lot of the presidential actions, which he said was like after the first term, we got together.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we thought like, what's the best way to achieve our goals?

[SPEAKER_01]: And they said they coalesced our article too.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the idea that the president has the power to do all these things, like, yeah, we don't be Congress.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is the way that they've been acting, but it is an approach to politics where like the sort of like outcome comes first and then you, you know, the rationale comes second.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, I think with the domestic politics, the like, you know, like as unpleasant as nasty as it can be, you get understand like, you know, some of their outcomes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like it is a sort of entrenchment of photography, a self enrichment of like their allies, [SPEAKER_01]: democratic cities and states, you know, and entrenchment of a kind of police state.

[SPEAKER_01]: But with Venezuela, it's absolutely not clear what it is that they hope to achieve.

[SPEAKER_01]: Except a kind of, I mean, [SPEAKER_01]: feeling that they have to like like a certain dominant somewhere and I really go back to the fact that you know like what Trump's statement if they haven't won a war since 45.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would add that you know this is coming not just in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan but coming in the wake of where like you know in Ukraine it looks like whatever settlement there's going to eventually be it's going to be like you know like a humiliation on some level for the ice states.

[SPEAKER_01]: where they're going to have to like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: Israel has inflicted huge damage on its enemies and perceived enemies, but is still the case that after two years of horrific warfare they're going to have to accept that Hamas is still going to control Gaza that you know, like Yemen will still be under the who these that has well as still there, Lebanon, that you know, the the rating regime is still there like like you know, like [SPEAKER_01]: everything in the last 20 years 30 years is shown.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we know they can inflict huge pain on the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: But can they actually subdue anyone or get anyone to accept their legitimacy or go along with it?

[SPEAKER_01]: They can't.

[SPEAKER_01]: To me, like better than unless he's like, okay, let's pick an easy target.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's pick something.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let's find the lowest apple hanging from that tree.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can see if we can do that, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: You're telling me, it's like, like a log with hexa, like a push-up exercise, like a way of like look at let's just find something we can do and see if we can do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's one of the most troubling aspects of this for me and for a lot of us even though we maybe they want people wouldn't express it quite this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is just unbelievably elective.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's there's nothing there's all these explanations like we just walked through for like why this is happening [SPEAKER_00]: But there is no reason why this has to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, there's nothing forcing this to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like other than their emasculated libidos.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like, there's no, you could substitute any other country that's weak and they, it's the same, you know?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, like, I mean, you know, to return to the Iraq War there, I mean, there was a statement made at the time, by, you know, the late Michael Aladine.

[SPEAKER_01]: because it's kind of a big wig in that termination of the 30-year-old, where he, you know, famous he said, you know, like, you know, every 5 or 10 years, the United States has to pick some crappy little country and, you know, shivered against the wall, just to prove that it can, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's sort of, you know, like these kinds of displays of power that went solid.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, yeah, they could win and grenade that, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like they could, they could, they could pick up Panama or whatever, like.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have that feeling because like up until like I think This summer like there's actually signs that they were working towards some sort of rapper Schwant with Vadero That's like, you know like they had at least One end boy there who was like you know into co-stations with the regime and it's like no indication that that this was like coming at then at some point It doesn't even like yeah Marco Rubio just decided that well this might be a lay for him to [SPEAKER_01]: You know, reestablish his Ford policy credentials among Washington Republicans or whatever and get the travel station to sign on.

[SPEAKER_01]: to some version of Great Power's competition.

[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I mean, it is like totally, like almost a ridiculous degree of war of choice, or a war that's sort of like arbitrary to a faking degree.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think like, yeah, I mean, I probably have this conversation because I don't think that that's actually been like noticed or pointed out but that does seem to be the case.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, think about the millions like you and I, I mean, most people who are in the sort of elder millennial basket, [SPEAKER_00]: We formed a politics in our imaginations around opposition to the Iraq War, because partly because it was so egregious and just like blatantly not serving any kind of conception of security or the public good.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we did see millions of people show out in the streets to oppose the Iraq War.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think there's a single protest.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the streets about Venezuela and and that is super in some ways for good reason because we have, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: more important, I mean, more urgent, you know, I don't know if you can keep asking, but I mean, I already, I mean, to the extent, I mean, if once he's as a single unified hemispheric, you know, struggle, like, you know, like a assertion of dominance, and I think people the eyes, they're quite properly, if you're liberal, doing the sort of no king's thing, or, you know, like if they're a little bit more than that, what we're seeing Los Angeles and California, [SPEAKER_01]: a protest against ice that are like putting gears in the way of the machine.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, but it is the case here, here we are right, and this is actually something I wanted to sort of end on or get to.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's several aspects of this, one of which is I mean, one has to say, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like if there, you know, like as bad as the Democrats heaved in 2003, where Joe Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton voted for the war, but there was no like half of the Democrats in Congress voted against it, and there were many people, like, you know, even fairly conservative Democrats like Richard Burd, who were like, you know, very, it's smoking against that.

[SPEAKER_01]: It like what we're seeing now is there's a few people, and I want to give credit here, [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like Rokana, and others in Congress, where it's making out against the bombings of the votes.

[SPEAKER_01]: But if one looks at someone like Chuck Schumer, who is the leadership of the party in Congress, first of all, he's not doesn't ever bring any of this up voluntarily.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you have to like ask him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then if he is asked, what he will say is that, well, you know, like there's a war power issue [SPEAKER_01]: and involve us and get our approval on and you're good.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is like, you know, one is heard this from other Democrats, like Spamburg, like it basically is saying, like, yeah, just let us rubber stop those, you know, like, like, we just like, so, so, I mean, so, so, I mean, so, so I mean, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so [SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of the popular stuff, like if the leadership of the party is, you know, like so silent on this, that's also going to kind of like influence how things are great.

[SPEAKER_01]: And especially, you know, there are many other foreign policy things around, but yeah, I mean, like, what do we say about this about this sort of [SPEAKER_01]: general, like silencing complicity, and I think, especially in the case of Congress, I mean, the other aspect of the current era that this shows is just the complete degree to its Congress has been sideline, even like to a much more so than, like, you know, the classic Cold War or more on terror period, where at that point we see thought about the period of presidency and, you know, concrete free marginalized, but it was never like to this degree.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, the Democrats are as a party or totally worthless.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, they're a fake opposition.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not really doing anything about any of these problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're complicit in some of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I think if you have a kind of coherent account of things, [SPEAKER_00]: If you're opposed to the Venezuelan, the strikes on Venezuela, if you're opposed to regime change in Venezuela, you also have to be opposed to ice in vice versa.

[SPEAKER_00]: You also have to be opposed to the war on terror and the AUMF and these things all go together, like the idea that you're going to like selectively oppose these things doesn't make any sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: like a coherent politics and a coherent platform would have to confront all of these things together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the idea that like you're going to oppose ice in the streets, but not think twice about Venezuela, or that you're going to make a fuss about Venezuela, but you don't think that you're not particularly fussed about [SPEAKER_00]: ice kidnapping your neighbors.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like that's incoherence to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's just like if that's your politics, then it's opportunist or it's not thinking clearly or something.

[SPEAKER_00]: The democratic leadership is clearly not thinking clearly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, but they're thinking, and I'm like, to some degree, like I wonder, like, like, to start a like a serious opposition to this stuff, like on on on [SPEAKER_01]: elected Democrats, what would have to, as you say, you know, have a broader view that you incorporate the sort of real war on immigrants, and it also incorporates like a real, I mean, I think a lot of this stuff illustrates this sort of unfinished business of the war on terror, and the war on drugs.

[SPEAKER_01]: But all of these things have created and tremendous places for the president to do so.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't like troubling that the Democrats don't want to raise this in an issue, because like to my mind, it's sort of indicates that what they're thinking is, like, you know, well, you know, this might not be great, but once Trump's out of the way, you know, we'll have our own president and they'll want to have these powers, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Biden expanded ice, knowing that Trump could win and come back in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, we're part of the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, there's, I mean, that's the decision to avoid this, does seem kind of very deliberate.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as I said, I feel like, you know, like, it's something like, they aren't other things going on.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, obviously, for me, in terms of, like, foreign policy.

[SPEAKER_01]: I actually, when I love more time writing about the situation in the release than, you know, [SPEAKER_01]: Gaza because it's had an even like bigger kind of death toll and you know there's a lot like a long-term implications, but there's something about this that is very troubling but it's the fact that you know you can have like send an aircraft care you know before you first launched our little other the introduction of water that also visited an aircraft carrier [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, it's hard to think of like a more profiting example of a kind of, you know, like, in periodical decadence from that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like the thing that I bend over backwards every time I get a chance to explain to people is like, [SPEAKER_00]: This whole, your gunboat diplomacy using the world's largest military signal and aircraft carrier, the trillion dollar war machine, all this stuff, the national security like obsession, the beating heart of the American economy, being all this national security spending stuff, this is why [SPEAKER_00]: Americans have barren stores shelves.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cost of everything is going up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, even like the AI stuff, which is causing spikes in electricity costs, it's the National Security Keynesianism on which America's economy is based, is why the welfare state is being starved.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like the economic insecurity and precarity that most people are experiencing and their lives are getting [SPEAKER_00]: That's because we have a trillion dollar war machine and like making those connections and like unspooling that and like getting that, getting people to think about it that way, like, oh, look at how much my bread costs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're sending this $30 billion communication tool to the Caribbean, you know, like, do you think those are unrelated?

[SPEAKER_00]: They're very related.

[SPEAKER_00]: We just have to [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a good note to serve and on.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I will, uh, they encourage writers to, uh, check out, uh, van Jackson's writing figure the lot of it is on this very topic, the way to which the sort of warfare state has, you know, distorts like all politics.

[SPEAKER_01]: And they can be found it's the un diplomatic podcast and also it's also a sub stack.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I want to once again thank Jackson for being on this weekend with all this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, it's fun.