Whatever Trump says, and the trouble isn't no one really
believing anything comes out of his mouth anymore.
At the end of the day, you need to sit down with the very people
whose annihilation you tried to seek at the beginning of this
war. And I don't think that is a
problem that Donald Trump has fully come to terms with yet.
Anyone who deals with Donald Trump sits there like biting
their fingernails because they know that one slip can make the
whole thing go wrong. Hello and welcome to Trump
World. I'm Matt Fry in London.
And I'm Anish Kristana, also in London, visiting during Easter
or spring break, as they call it in the US And today we're
talking about Donald Trump maybe thinking that the war in Iran
could come to an end. I mean, that's a big maybe, and
I'm sure we'll come to that. But the question a lot of us are
wondering is what it means for geopolitics after it, not least
because right now, Matt, Donald Trump is saying that he would
think again about NATO membership.
And not only Donald Trump, his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
who's normally normally a bit more careful over these things.
Now, we have heard them threaten to leave NATO before.
But why do you think it's different this time?
Well, first of all, the language, Anushka, I mean,
Donald Trump is giving an interview to Reuters as we
speak. And the word that he's used is
that he is disgusted with the way that NATO has behaved over
its non involvement in trying to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
Disgusted. This is not a word that we've
heard before, even though Trump has held all sorts of insults at
NATO in previous months. Senator Marco Rubio, former
senator, now Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also given an
interview to Fox News where he normally quite mild mannered and
reasonable, has been saying more or less, we've got to think
about this relationship. If they're not helping us out in
our war, then why should we help them out with their war?
And I guess he was hinting at Russia and Ukraine and all that
situation. Now, the it's rather odd that
Marco Rubio should be saying this one because he doesn't
normally say abrasive things. But also because he was actually
one of the people who allowed a law to pass in the Senate with a
2/3 majority in 2024. Whereby it is stipulated that if
America wants to leave NATO or other alliances like it in the
future, it needs a 2/3 majority in the Senate or indeed an act
of Congress. So Marco Rubio's was one of
those people who said at the time, we don't want this kind of
threat that Trump issued in the first administration ever to
become a reality. But like many people in Rushka,
Little Marco, as he used to be called by Trump, has been on a
journey. Well, someone I was just talking
to was arguing that little Marco is trying to look in two
directions at once. He kind of wants to still be the
pragmatic Secretary of State, and that is the messaging that
they're getting from him behind the scenes.
But at the same time, he wants to be the next president.
And So what Donald Trump thinks of you and what you say in a
moment like this is really important.
I mean, when you hear this sort of stuff about NATO, my first
thought is to both call people in the embassy, the British
Embassy in DC, but also call people in the Foreign Office
here in London. And it is kind of quite
interesting to hear what they're saying about it.
I mean, they're trying to still say cool heads pragmatism.
Keep calm and carry on. Keep calm, carry on.
I said to them, well, it's getting harder.
And they were like, it is hard. It absolutely is hard.
There is this kind of idea that Donald Trump is getting really
frustrated. He's getting frustrated because
the war isn't going in the way that he had hoped that it would
go, but that, you know, for NATO involvement in something, there
are steps that you have to go through.
He didn't go through them. He went ahead with this war with
barely any notice at all to the allies that he's now hitting out
at. And then the other factor in
this, which I think is really fascinating, is what people
think in their own countries. The reality for Keir Starmer is
this is not a popular war here in the UK.
And so, you know, really actually, let's just listen to
him. He is kind of bending over
backwards to say on my own man. This is not our war.
We will not be drawn into the conflict, that is not in our
national interest and the most effective way we can support the
cost of living in Britain is to push for de escalation in the
Middle East and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which is
such a vital route for energy. To that end, we're exploring
each and every Diplomatic Ave. that is available to us.
And so we have this kind of strange situation where for Keir
Starmer, the kind of local political demand is to be anti
Donald Trump and anti the Iran war.
But for many of the, you know, diplomats behind the scenes, the
importance of the relationship continues.
But just one, you know, on that political thing, I thought it
was interesting. I interviewed Kemi Badenoch
earlier this week for Channel 4 News and she has been on a
journey, hasn't she, Matt? At the beginning of this, she
and Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, were basically saying
how could we not support the US anymore?
And then both of them have looked at the polls and realized
actually what Donald Trump is doing right now is not very
popular either here or in other countries.
I thought it was interesting to hear Georgia Maloney also for
from an Italian perspective, have to calm down on her special
relationship with Donald Trump. And this is Georgia Maloney, who
was one of the few European leaders actually invited to his
inauguration. I mean, she's, you know, she is
Donald Trump's favoured Western European leader, even more than
Keir Starmer. So all these leaders, whether
it's, you know, Georgia Maloney, obviously the Spanish Prime
Minister has already been in the doghouse with Trump for some
time. And there were calls yesterday
to have Spain expelled from NATO even as Trump was musing about
leaving the organization himself.
You've got the French also using very robust language against
Donald Trump. This is from Macron.
He used to fancy himself as a Trump whisperer.
The German Chancellor came out with some very strong words as
well. I think in all those countries,
it's a lot easier, frankly, to take a public stance against
Donald Trump. By the way, Germany, even the
Afd, right, the right wing populist Afd that was supported
by Trump and by Vance and by Elon Musk, they've also come out
against this war and against the idea of any German involvement.
Now it's, it's easier for them to do that because they don't
have this special relationship with America.
And by that I mean a special military relationship with the
United States. And I was speaking to General
Sir Patrick Sanders, former chief of the, of the the General
Staff here in the UK. And he was saying that, you
know, it's tricky for us because even though we have complete
autonomy over how we use our nuclear weapons in Britain or
anything else for that matter, the kit is only, only works
because it's being maintained in an American garage.
So you can still drive your car, but unless you go back to the
American garage to tweak it and fix it and do the MOT every now
and again, you won't be able to drive it.
So we have a much, we're much more dependent than other
European nations on America's security umbrella than they are.
So that puts us in a really tricky position.
And the other thing he mentioned, and he was pretty
appalled by the language that that Trump has used about his
allies. And he made the point that you
just made as well, that you heard from your friends at the
embassy that if you don't consult allies, how can you
possibly win them over to an exercise like, you know, trying
to take on Iran? But he made the point that by
not allowing the Americans to use those two British bases,
Fred Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia from the very
beginning of the war, that really spot the relationship.
And in his view on that very narrow question, we should have
yielded because we ended up doing so anyway.
We should have yielded and that would have allowed us to
maintain a little bit more of the moral high ground.
But the overall impression that that he left me with is that on
one hand, NATO is much stronger than it was.
Remember just a few years ago, Emmanuel Macron before the the
Russia, Ukraine war was saying NATO is brain dead.
Well, it's not brain dead. It has a very clear purpose,
especially in Europe. But and it's got more funding
because of a combination of Trump's threats and Putin's war.
Everyone is spending more on defence.
Everyone is thinking about defence, but if you're sugar
daddy and that's let's face it, that is what you know, America
is to NATO decides to, you know, to channel, you know, Freddy
Krueger or, or Dirty Harry, then you've got a problem.
You know, and, and this use of language by the Americans, you
know, basically, you know, dissing their allies, being rude
about their friends. This is not the way to keep an
alliance alive. And I think that is a
fundamental problem. And of course, you know, just as
you know, we were all wondering whether Trump would pull out of
NATO yesterday and he was again insulting the Brits.
You know, the the palace, as in Buckingham Palace, confirms the
fact that King Charles the Third will, after all, go and visit
the United States for his royal state visit at the end of April.
It's got to be quite awkward, isn't it?
Very. Awkward, but in a way it's one
of the cards that the UK government is playing because
despite the rhetoric, they still want to have where they can, a
decent relationship with the Americans.
They're working incredibly hard behind the scenes to try and
make sure that goes well. They know that while Donald
Trump will slag off, you know, Keir Starmer till the cows come
home, he's not going to slag off the king.
You know, remember that meeting, but Keir Starmer with Donald
Trump early on where honestly speaking to people inside
Downing Street at the time, the choreography, the days they
spent thinking about it. And at the heart of it was that
letter, that letter about the king, which they see as the kind
of special thing they're going to play with Donald Trump.
And although the king goes as the king, he goes really on
behalf of the British government.
And so getting the kind of coordination of that right is
seen as incredibly important for both sides in terms of improving
this relationship. Again, it's also interesting
just talking to people behind the scenes, which bit can they
do to try and ease the relationship?
And the thing they're working on is, OK, we don't support the
offensive attack on Iran, but we do support getting the Strait of
Hormuz open, not least because we need it in the UK.
So we can focus in on that. And, you know, they were really
pleased. On the fringes of the G7 meeting
in Paris, Yvette Cooper was talking to Marco Rubio, trying
to persuade him that Britain had had a really positive role when
it came to the Straight of Hormuz.
And they were delighted when Marco Rubio goes on TV and says
Britain has played a really important role there.
And I think they still think, even though Rubio is saying this
stuff out loud, that they did make some achievements there.
So I think they hope that focusing on the Straight of
Hormuz plus the king could be really positive for them.
We'll make. It sound far too easy I think.
Anyone. Who Deals with Donald Trump sits
there like biting their fingernails because they know
that one slip can make the whole thing go wrong.
Best. Laid plans right.
So I mean, I it's interesting when we just on this
relationship. So when, you know, in the last
two weeks and we've been talking a lot about this, you know, even
though Trump hasn't been insulting Keir Starmer and Keir
Starmer has this kind of Love Actually moments down again when
he stands up and reminds Trump that he's a, you know,
sovereign, you know, the Prime Minister of the sovereign
nation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
We always said, well, underneath it all, you know, on the next
level, the relationship is absolutely fine.
You know, British Spooks are talking to American Spooks and
the top brass is talking to each other.
Well, what I've been hearing from people in that world is
actually, it's not quite what it was.
So they've been quite a few occasions now where, you know, a
British top spy will be asked to leave the room when there's a
discussion between, you know, under the Five Eyes agreement
between between an American and an Australian and the New
Zealand, they said Britain, could you just, could you just
do you mind just going out? Can you imagine that, right?
The Brits being excluded on occasion.
It's not happening as a matter of course, but it's been
noticed. Or for instance, if the
Americans want to, you know, as a matter of course, get
permission for one of their bombers to land at Fairford.
Normally that is just a rubber stamp.
You literally, you know, as long as it takes for someone to to
sign that piece of paper, it's fine.
Now it's, it's taking a few hours.
There are a few doubts that creep in.
This is the beginning of that relationship on the procedural
level potentially getting eroded.
And the mood music is set at the top.
And it's not good. And that brings me back to the
king. So if they decided, if Starmer
had said, OK, King Charles, you're not going to America,
that would have been a massive that would have been the nuclear
diplomatic option. And Trump would have been so
upset. He would have tried to, I don't
know, maybe sink the island or something.
Or I mean that that for him, that would be the worst thing
possible. Obviously that was not an
option. I didn't think they even
contemplated that for one minute.
And there was a pop. There is a well possibility here
for the king when he stands up at the state banquet in the not
yet quite built ballroom, so the old ballroom in the White House
and gives his address to the nation, to the host nation, but
also to his nation. He can.
There is room there for reminding us and them of some of
the common principles and values.
And I, I'm waiting for that very brilliant scriptwriter to put in
a couple of really subtle lines that can be seen as criticism,
but very veiled criticism of, you know, going it alone and
shooting from the hip and all that kind of stuff.
But to find those that write, you know, form of words without
insulting your host is going to be really, really tricky.
And you never, never know what's going to happen with Donald
Trump. But you're right that that
relationship behind the scenes. And we've got a big military
contingent working in the US who are actually embedded entirely
inside the US military, but are feeling a bit more cut out of
some of the conversations. And vice versa.
It sounds like some some things are going on vice versa because
there's a lack of trust in the other direction, all of which I
think adds up to a difficult situation and which everyone is
just assuming that post Trump it will calm down.
But let's see the other thing that's shifting dramatically.
And I'm interested what you think of this is where do the
geopolitics go after this? You know, a few weeks ago I was
talking to someone who was basically arguing, watch out for
what China does because ultimately they'll want to come
in and be the kind of grown up in the room, try and play
peacemaker. And Matt, that is kind of what
we're seeing, isn't it, in terms of these conversations between
Pakistan and China. What do you make of that?
Well. You know, yes.
And it started some time ago. I mean, ever since Trump, you
know, started off with Liberation Day and the Chinese
basically said we're not going to put up with this.
And they raised tariffs. Even more than that.
We had this sort of trade tit for tat war, which the Chinese
ultimately won because they had leverage over rare earth metals.
Ever since then, we've seen the Chinese basically say to the
world community, we are predictable, we are stable, we
are the designated adults driving this rather chaotic car
that is the world disorder at the moment.
And they have used the Iran war, you know, again, as an
opportunity to to make that point.
So first of all, they have, you know, they have some history in
this because China was instrumental in getting the
Saudis and the Iranians to talk to each other.
And they kind of made-up in 2023 after more or less a decade of
real animosity. And almost, you know, we were
all talking at the time about the Sunni Shia war, the two
regional superpowers at each other's throats.
And there was some, you know, there was some very dodgy stuff.
The Saudis, of course, as you remember, were militarily
engaged against the pro Iranian Houthis in Yemen.
And all that was eventually put to bed.
And China played a role in that. So China has come up again and
said, you know, we can do much. We can try and do much the same.
We can bring everyone around the table.
And again, if you look at the kind of tectonic plates of
geopolitics at the moment, they have a point because number one,
there is a summit with Xi Jinping and Donald Trump that
was delayed for a month because of the war that's supposed to
take place in Beijing. So they're still, the Americans
are still looking ahead to that. That is an opportunity to bury
the trade hatchet once and for all.
And I don't think Trump would want to jeopardize that.
Secondly, China has good relations with Pakistan.
Pakistan has good relations with Iran, you know, and Pakistan is
seen as a also by the Americans as a potential honest broker.
So there's real diplomatic potential here for them to talk
to each other. The problem is Trump, you know,
what does he want? You know, is he actually
intending to, you know, invade Kaag Island?
And can he, which is another matter altogether, Does he want
to fight his way through the Strait of Hormuz?
And the Iranians quite rightly can say, listen mate, we've
we've had two negotiations in the last year.
One was ended by you joining Israel in their surprise attack
against us in June for the 12 day war and the other one was
ended on the 28th of February. Why should we trust a single
word that you say, whether it's brokered by China or by Pakistan
or by the man and the moon and obviously.
As all this is happening, the mood music we're getting from
Donald Trump is that he would like this to end, not least
because of the pressure he's coming under in terms of the
domestic population here. He's out giving interviews
again. The Telegraph was where he made
the comments about NATO. And in this interview that you
mentioned, Matt, with Reuters, he's basically said that maybe
they can get out of around very quickly and then return for spot
hits if needed. We're going to hear him set a
lot of this out. He's doing an address to the
nation. I think CBS has actually had to
break up one of its reality television program, Survivor
around this, which should make great for interesting watching.
Presumably in that address he is going to attack NATO allies and
others. Do you feel like this is a
moment now, a turning point, where he might start to pull
America out of this Well? Maybe Trump will feel like the
survivor. You know, they have a lot more
in common with the program on the other side of the screen, I
think. I mean, look, if he is
contemplating to call it a victory and walk out the exit
and, you know, as in you break, we break it, you keep it.
You know, in a version of the Colin Powell theory, then I
think there's a massive problem here because in the same vein
that American America can go back and do spot hits on stuff
it doesn't like in Iran, whether it's leaders or missile, you
know, units or enrichment programs, the Iranians, all they
have to do is fire one drone at a tanker trying to make its way
through the Strait of Hormuz And, and it's it's game over in
terms of insurance, in terms of the tanker traffic.
So it takes very little for Iran to remind people of its leverage
on the world's economic, you know, main archery and and to
open that archery up ultimately. And again, talking to Patrick
Sanders earlier, he confirmed this as well.
And he's a soldier, right. So in order to have a viable
future for the Strait of Hormuz, for the world's economic
archery, you need a political agreement with the regime in
Tehran, either a new regime, which we don't have, or the
existing regime which feels embattled and emboldened and
knows that with very little, it can do an awful lot of economic
damage. So you need that agreement and
just going in and out, you know, as the American military to ZAP
a few targets here and there. It's not going to make a huge
difference, just as, you know, unlike them who can make quite a
big difference by going for the occasional tanker or not.
So whatever Trump says. And the trouble is that no one
really believing anything that comes out of his mouth anymore,
whether you're the markets or, you know, even his own cabinet
perhaps, although they're still showing, you know, acts of
fealty. At the end of the day, you need
to sit down with the very people whose annihilation you try to
seek at the beginning of this war.
And I don't think that is a problem that Donald Trump is
fully. Come to terms with the end,
which feels like. A good moment to have a listen
to the conversation we've had with our guest, lawyer and
political scientist Anne Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America
and former State Department official under Hillary Clinton.
Anne Marie. Slaughter, thank you very much
for coming on Trump World. There's so much to talk about,
but let me start with this. You used to sit on a body called
the Foreign Affairs Policy Board under a different
administration, and that is one of the the jobs of the board is
to advise the Secretary of State, if I'm not mistaken.
If you were still on that board, what would you be advising Marco
Rubio to do right now? Right.
This moment I would be telling him to stop this war as fast as
possible. I think Thomas Friedman had the
right idea that both Iran and the US should give up what they
value most. We should not want regime change
and should want the end of an Iranian nuclear weapon, and the
Iranians should want to give that up.
And we could end this war, you say?
That now that they have gone as far as they have gone, it
becomes quite difficult. So how do you extricate yourself
at this point? And then also, what do you think
they've got wrong about Iran in all of this?
Well. If Matt had asked me what I
would have advised the Secretary of State in February, it would
very definitely have been not to start this war.
And so, yes, we've gotten further than the administration
ever imagined. They radically underestimated
the power of the Iranian government to inflict pain and
indeed the the implications for the whole region.
So it is now really up more to Iran than to the US as to
whether we can stop this war. But I would say if the United
States has learned anything in the last 20 years, and I would
actually make that 30, it is that you cannot change a regime
by bombing from the air and honestly, even by sending troops
in on the ground. The Iraq war was a extremely
expensive and costly enterprise. Ultimately, Iraq has a better
government, but I don't think that's the way the Iraqis or the
US would have wanted it. So I think you let the Iranian
people work with their government how they're going to.
I wish we had not misled them to the extent we have, but that is,
in the end, in their hands. I wonder.
If that's part of the problem as well, Anne Marie, because
although lots of people are saying now we shouldn't have
done this, they shouldn't have done it was a war of choice.
That is not a choice they should have taken.
They never looked at the repercussions.
The Iranians are more resilient, etcetera, etcetera.
I don't remember hearing the same voices of clamour from
European leaders, you know, or indeed from some congressional
leaders or from journalists, you know, in January and in
February, when we still remembered what the Iranian
regime had done to thousands of protesters on the streets of
Tehran and other cities. I think either people didn't
take it seriously or they thought there was a kind of
moral cause because it was about regime change.
And, you know, we all lined up to say how brutal the the
ayatollahs were. And I wonder whether we're, you
know, we were missing a trick there as well.
We didn't warn him enough that if you do this, this is going to
happen. The only.
Warning this administration would have heated would have
been from the markets and we've seen that over and over again.
So had the markets started dropping the way they have
subsequently dropped at the very mention of the idea of going in
with force to to enable regime change, I think then that would
have given everyone pause. And you, yes, in hindsight, it's
easy to see, oh, well, the Iranians can control the Straits
of Hormuz. The Iranians can use their
drones, which they've been supplying to the Russians for
use in Ukraine for years now to inflict damage on soft targets
around the the Middle East and in the Gulf states.
That was foreseeable, not necessarily foreseen, but you
might have thought that the markets, certainly the oil
traders, would have at least been more perspicacious in
trying to game it out than this White House had been.
But we're also leaving out Israel, and that is a key
factor. I mean, just just very briefly
on the markets, is, is part of the problem here that America or
rather this administration became a victims, the victim of
its own success, both in Venezuela with a quick
extraction of Maduro, but also because the markets weathered
what should have been a really nasty year, 2025, really rather
well. I mean, the year to end, you
know, free trade around the world ended with with markets,
you know, whooping, you know, with joy.
And I just wonder if everyone took it all too lightly.
There was a sort of glibness about it all and in a sense, you
know, or hubris, for want of a better word.
And that's what happened, yes. I start my days these days
reading the Ancients and hubris is definitely in in play here.
I think that is right. There have been many analysis of
effectively the the disconnection between the state
of the markets and the state of the real economy by at least any
traditional measures where the markets feed on confidence and
there's a sort of mass psychological effect or some
might say a mass psychosis at times.
And so in this case it even here it's taken a while for people to
really understand we could be on the edge of global economic
cataclysm and for the markets to start moving up and down
depending on how likely it looks that we will end this war.
But I agree there was not that before.
I also do think that the success of the Venezuelan extraction, if
that's the way, that's certainly the way the administration
thinks of it, convince the president that, you know, he
could just take action. And the one place I agree with
him is that the international system has been very ineffective
at taking action. He also, you know, bombed Iran
with, with Israel in June without much impact.
So I I agree that there were not though sufficient counterweights
in advance, not. Just Venezuela and the June
strikes. But even back to Soleimani, when
you listen to Donald Trump, he sees these as one successful
thing after the other. I mean, he right now is
absolutely furious with NATO allies in a way that we've not
really seen presidents talk for. I mean, I don't think we've ever
seen a president attack a British Prime Minister in the
way Donald Trump has been doing. When you speak to the NATO
allies, when you speak to the people in the British
government, they say, well, you know, they can't just expect us
to go into a war where we haven't been told anything about
planning, etcetera. They're very holding, you know,
they're holding firm in their positions, But just how bad do
you think that situation is? Do you think post Trump it will
come back and those relationships will be rebuilt as
they were before? And I'm just really interested
in what you think of Marco Rubio in all of this, because British
officials usually say behind the scenes, Rubio's very pragmatic.
But right now he's talking like Trump about NATO as well.
Well, the. First thing I would say is that
the gap between what Rubio and others, but particularly Rubio's
say publicly and what he might say privately are very
different. And you really saw that at the
Munich Security Conference, where he effectively gave a
speech that said we are about a Western heritage of white
Christian nationalism and that's what we'll support in Europe.
And the Europeans gave him a standing ovation for which you
have to conclude that they are hearing different things in
private. And he has traditionally been an
internationalist on NATO. I don't think there will ever be
a going back to the NATO of the 20th century or of the 1st 20
years, say 24 years of the 21st century.
I think the sense that the United States is changing
demographically and hence politically, technologically,
that this century we will be looking South to where 30% of
our population is coming from already under 30 and soon the
whole population as much as we look east.
And indeed, W that means NATO is still important for a direct
attack. And I don't think the president
can successfully pull out of NATO before the midterms and
with this Senate. But the idea that the United
States was the anchor of NATO and the Europeans could rest
secure under the the nuclear umbrella, which there was always
a wither NATO question that's not coming back.
The the the alliance will have to be repurposed for a very
different world. Anne Marie.
Just on the very narrow question of our relations on this island
with Washington, I mean, the king is going in a couple of
weeks and Uska will be there to cover his visit.
We know that Donald Trump loves royalty.
He loves the king. He loved the queen.
His mother loved the queen. He's had two sleepovers at at
Windsor Castle. I mean, this is this really
matters to him. So if you were the British Prime
Minister, you know, considering how much he's been insulted by
Donald Trump and how much the British public absolutely can't
stand the man, would you send the king?
This is your, you know, your your most effective diplomatic
weapon. And if you had to send the king,
what would you get him to say? Oh my goodness.
An American should never presume to try to advise the King.
Nobody. That you should exactly do that
because, you know, you've been around that block with us a few
times some time ago, but you know, it's exactly, precisely
because you're a Republic that cherishes monarchy in a weird
kind of way. What do you think?
You know, what could the king say in terms of reminding the
president, his host of these values which are, which are so
valuable that have been trampled on the.
King is in a particularly tricky position because it is the 250th
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
And I remember the 200th anniversary when when Queen
Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to Washington and were hosted in
the White House. And I remember thinking then,
well, that's an odd way to celebrate a 200th anniversary of
breaking from the mad King, from the the British who were
imposing taxation without representation.
But I think what I that would be the frame for the visit if the
visit goes ahead. And I think just knowing a
little about the head of state versus the Prime Minister and
the desire of the king not to be publicly involved in politics,
the framing for the visit should be the 250th and should be, you
know, we, we, we parted 250 years ago and we have fought
together for those values critically sits certainly
throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
And in the end, that is the strength of the United States.
It is not transactional deals around the world.
It is the values we stand for, which honestly, at least the way
I learned my history, go back to the Magna Carta, even if we had
rather a rupture in 1776 and. Marie, can I ask you about
China? And China has kind of why did
it's time to some degree when it's come to the Iran war, but
it's kind of stepping forward now trying to take this
peacemaker role. It's come up with five points
with Pakistan. What do you make of both what
they're saying at the moment and also China's role during this
and likely afterwards? I would say that the
administration has handed China a gift that just keeps on
giving. From the moment this
administration took office in 2025 and started laying waste to
the international order that the United States, the British and
others had had created in 1945, China just needs to sit back and
let us shoot ourselves, both feet, both legs.
And this is the latest example of where, you know, countries
around the world are looking at this thinking you are inflicting
tremendous economic damage on us.
This is what started actually with with in 2022 with the Biden
administration, where in responding to Ukraine, to the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, we did not think through what's
going to happen with the sanctions, with what happens
with food prices and fertilizer prices for the rest of the
world. And much of the rest of the
world looked at that and said, it's a European war, it's not
ours. The Biden administration was
very surprised. China stepped in, took advantage
of what it could sell and what it could buy.
And now you really are looking at, you know, global, a global
energy crisis. And when you look at what's
happening in Asia, China has both a reserve and a you know,
this is a reckless madman destroying the global order.
We stand for stability and sovereignty.
No mention of values, or at least not the values that we
have often fought for the human rights, the the and and
liberties, but of stability, development and calm Amory.
Like many of us, you were very impressed by Mark Carney's
speech at Davos about the rupture.
And and of course, he then laid out this rather vague but, you
know, sort of inspiring plan for the middle powers of the world
to get together. And you've written extensively
about that. I just wonder what you think
Realistically, the hope for US middle powers is when even the
middle powers, the middle mini powers of the European Union,
find it difficult to to sing from a common song sheet.
Yes. And I must say I've been reading
recently, Britain and France are major middle powers.
They are not great powers major. Middle Germany is major, major
middle, you know, and Italy's minor middle.
Exactly. Any power that is neither China
nor the US, maybe Russia or nor a small island state, everybody
else qualifies. I do think that the middle
powers have far more power than they realize economically.
So if you look at every state in the European Union and add
Switzerland, Norway and the UK, then add Canada, Japan, South
Korea and Australia, and that's leaving out powers in the global
S, just in the North. Those powers control 42% of
world GDP. That's a lot, right?
So if they could sing from the same song sheet economically to
say, you know, this war has to stop now or we don't buy or sell
or from, from either of certainly not from the United
States, from other warring powers, we are going to be a
bloc. They have a lot of economic
power and more military power than you might think at first
class glance, I think at least enough to defend themselves.
That won't happen until there is an even bigger crisis than this
one. When I write about middle
powers, what I'm basically arguing is this is like 1941
with the Atlantic Charter. Obviously there are differences.
It is not a global war. But until you have a crisis that
convinces everyone things must change, that overrides normal
politics. For instance, if the United
States or another power were to use a nuclear weapon, I think
that would do it with that. Or we may yet get a climate
crisis where millions of people die in a heat wave, something of
that magnitude. Then suddenly people,
politicians will realize this is not normal or these are not
normal times. Until then, I think Prime
Minister Carney and others can build relationships, create mini
lateral coalitions for specific purposes, and plan and wait and
be ready to seize that moment when it comes.
But the. Sad thing is that you'd
obviously we don't want that moment ever to come because it
would be a tragedy on a massive scale.
But without that moment you can't get real change.
I wonder whether the way the world is being handled or
mishandled at the moment by a number of players, you'll say we
are setting ourselves up for that kind of catastrophe that
will finally concentrate our minds.
I. Think that moment will come?
It could be an AI moment, but it will be something cataclysmic.
And yes, absolutely, we don't want that moment and we have to
hope that moment is not so cataclysmic that we really have
done ourselves in. But traditionally, if you look
at the history of international law, you look at the Geneva
Conventions, you look at the United Nations itself first, the
League of Nations, really from 1815 forward or from 1648
forward, it has been dramatic wars and other kinds of
associated crises that have created the momentum and the
moment for real change. Anne Marie.
Can I ask you about the two wars we're seeing at the moment,
Russia and Ukraine, as well as Iran?
On Ukraine, the language coming out of America is getting more
and more negative. You know, this idea that it's
not our war, stepping away from it.
How worried are you about that? And on Iran, Donald Trump
clearly wants out. He wants out quite quickly.
Do you think that's the direction we're heading in with?
Ukraine, even in 2022, from the stage of the Munich Security
Conference, Americans acknowledged that that Europe,
including Britain, the EU and, and, and Britain and others,
we're doing much more than the United States.
And that was not just economically, that was also
supplying weapons. Now, essentially what the United
States is doing is selling weapons to the Europeans to give
to Ukraine. We're unlikely to stop doing
that effectively. We have said to Ukraine and to
Europe, you're not completely on your own.
We're still supplying intelligence and other things.
But this is going to be up to you.
And Europe has every reason to do what is effectively a winning
strategy long term. As long as Russia's not winning,
it's losing. Russia is losing 30,000 soldiers
a month, which is a staggering number.
And as long as Ukraine can keep inflicting that kind of damage,
I think you can hold out for quite a long time.
So I'm, I'm less, I don't think the US holds the key to the end
of the Ukraine war in Iran. I think it's pretty clear this
administration wants out. It's signaling in every way.
But again, it's not going to be up to us.
It may be that there are enough pragmatists in some kind of
leadership in Iran who have not been assassinated by the
Israelis to do a deal, but you need some very good
intermediaries and and some honestly, some good fortune.
Anne Marie. I just want to finish off with
one final question, which is this.
I know that Donald Trump wants out of this Iran war that he
himself started with the Israelis.
But let's say he can't get out smoothly or quickly or
elegantly, and he gets stuck. And maybe Kharg Island turns out
to be a bit of a trap for the US Marines, and the Israelis are
still upset that there isn't genuine regime change.
Is it conceivable in your mind, even in, you know, the the
darkest kind of reaches of it, that in this world where
everything seems to be shaken up, Donald Trump or the Israelis
could use a nuclear weapon to try and do something that they
couldn't do by conventional military means?
I have. Learned never to say that
something is inconceivable with this this administration,
including their very election back in 2016.
So it is not conceivable to me. I do think the nuclear taboo is,
is that crisis where suddenly the American people turn on the
administration and nations come together again.
When Putin suggested that he was going to use a quote, UN quote,
tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, a weapon that would
still be far greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, Suddenly the Chinese moved into, you know, swung into
action and essentially, as far as we can tell, let Putin know
that would be the end of Chinese support and that would be the
end of the war. So I, I truly think that that
that would be cataclysmic politically, both nationally and
globally, but I would, I think it'd be folly to rule anything
out with the man in the White House.
So you, when you said it's conceivable, you meant it's not
inconceivable. That's correct.
Anne Marie Slaughter, thank you very much for your time.
That was Anne Marie Slaughter. We leave Trump world this week
at what feels to me like quite a potentially large turning point
not just for the war in Iran, but the geopolitics much more
broadly. Beyond that, a moment where and
if you agree with this, Matt, where we're seeing the shifting
plates from the power of America, possibly to the power
and peacemaking nature of China. Let's see where that goes.
A moment where Donald Trump is looking for a way out, but then
we'll have to argue to the American public that he has
achieved his objectives and it sounds like that could be quite
difficult for him to do. What do you think?
Well. Yes.
And first of all, for us, I think, you know, to go from the
embrace of Uncle Sam, which we're all used to, to the
embrace, the slightly, the Stelia embrace of Uncle she is
something that perhaps, you know, we we haven't really got
our own head around, but that's maybe where we're heading in
terms of, you know, is this a key moment?
I mean, every week seems like a key moment.
I suspect to Nurska that Donald Trump will not remember this
week as a week in which he really, really, genuinely,
seriously threatened to pull out of NATO.
But the week in which his great beautiful project of the big
beautiful ballroom died a very sudden legal death because a
judge said he shouldn't have done it.
He couldn't. You know, you can't, you know,
take down this, this, this listed building that is the
White House or bits of it. What's the?
Judge going to do rebuild it well.
Exactly. This is it.
What's the judge going to do? But remember, on one of the
trips back from Mar a Lago to to Washington in, you know, Air
Force One, he went to the back to talk to the press and he
suddenly pulled out these enormous cards of what the
ballroom will look like. It was so.
Surreal that moment, Matt. So surreal.
He's standing there talking about this unbelievably
consequential war, and then he suddenly like, hang on a minute,
let me just pull this out. There was another moment when a
presenter on Fox News asked Donald Trump, do we know whether
or not the people in Iran are getting food and water?
And Donald Trump went, oh, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you.
But first, do you remember when we had lunch in Trump Tower?
Do you mind me saying that you're even more beautiful than
you were then? I feel like I have walked
through the looking glass. It is surreal.
Or when he went on about Sharpie pens.
Do you remember that? In the mouth and the Sharpie.
Boss said never happened anything.
The Sharpie pens, I mean, look, you know, just as having met the
guy, that's what he does in conversation.
He likes to call it the weave, but the weave and a time of war
when people are hanging on your every word can be very
perplexing indeed. I think let's stop weaving then,
right? And let's shut this down.
Trump Weld. Trump Weld has woven out for
this week another extraordinary week in American politics.
And of course, what happens in Washington doesn't stay in
Washington, does it? Not even you, I will be.
Back in Washington, DC next week, getting ready for that big
visit from the King. I'm so.
Jealous. I'm so jealous.
I will be here in London watching you, watching him
watching them. That's it from Trumbold.
Thanks for listening.