Venezuela and the State of American Strategy (Neon Liberalism #59, with Giselle Donnelly)

Join Samantha and Giselle Donnelly, foreign policy analyst and American Enterprise Institute alumna, as they discuss the recent attack on Venezuela. Does this reflect a considered strategy? Or multiple factions "working towards the sleepy Führer"? Can we make predictions about future American foreign policy, or is it all just chaos?

Neon Liberalism can be heard on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube, on Amazon, and elsewhere via its RSS feed.

Transcript

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:00:00]**
Welcome back to Neon Liberalism. I am Samantha Hancox-Li. On January 3rd, America woke up to discover that we had attacked Venezuela early that morning—and not just attacked them, but that we had raided their capital and kidnapped their president and were bringing him back to New York City, apparently to stand trial.

This came as a surprise to almost everyone in the country, I believe. And so I think it's at the same time clearly pretty important, and something I would like to understand—to understand where Trump's foreign policy is going, and what we can see about the emerging picture of Trump's strategy, such as it is.

So to try and get a better read on that, I'm very excited to have on Giselle Donnelly. Giselle Donnelly is formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, a foreign policy analyst, and in the midst of writing four books about the colonial origins of American strategy. The next book in that series, *The Fourth Kingdom*, is going to be out this May, so I really think she's going to have a pretty useful perspective on what's just happened. So yeah, Giselle, welcome to the podcast.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:01:34]**
Samantha, thanks for having me. It's a delight, and thanks for sharing your audience.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:01:39]**
All right, so I guess first question is, let's just get some groundwork here. What actually happened? What just happened in Venezuela?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:01:50]**
It's better to think of this as kind of a very large-scale raid—almost like something out of an action movie or something like that. Although really the condition-setting part of it—the awful, semi-military technical term—began a long time ago with the build-up of the forces in the region. We got an immense amount of naval power and air power in the region. So there's this cocoon of firepower, if you will, that sort of surrounded—something like the bin Laden raid, if you will, because it was over really, really quickly.

And I don't know that there's been a complete tick-tock written on the snatch operation, but that's what it was: a company of Delta Force, the Special Operations helicopter unit that supports many of these kinds of operations, and like two FBI agents to make this a law enforcement operation rather than a military kidnapping—which is, in plain terms, what it was.

So it was over and done with really quickly. And as we've seen, there's nothing resembling a day-two plan for this, except to wag our fingers at the Vice President of Venezuela, an even worse Chavista than Maduro, who's assumed, at least for the time being, the throne, if you will, in Caracas. So if you look at it through the sort of adventure-movie tactical lens, it was very high speed and low drag, but that's about the best you can say for it. How it fits into anything resembling a larger strategy, and what the strategic consequences of this thing will be—much harder to discern and much more likely to be a mess than a success.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:04:19]**
So I was very struck by, like you say, the technical competence of the raid itself—that this is something, news reports are coming out that they've been training for for some time. And I mean, give it to them, they did pull it off. They actually did get Maduro. No American deaths, no Black Hawk Down situation. They bring him back. And then what?

It's this question. I think at first there was some speculation that, oh, this is going to be regime change, or this is going to lead to civil war. But so far, none of that seems to have happened. So what's the situation in Venezuela right now?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:05:04]**
Well, that's a little bit murky too. As I said, the Vice President is the nominal head of the regime, if you will—the governing structure remains the same. How long, whether that's stable or secure, you'd have to be a much more adept Venezuela expert than I to be able to predict that.

But the idea that there won't be a succession struggle there strikes me as highly unlikely. The country is full of guns, armed gangs with God knows what allegiance to the government or antipathy one for the other. And according to some press reports that have come out, the government has ratcheted up political repression.

There's a very strong democracy movement in Venezuela, as evidenced by the leader of that movement being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. But she was dissed by Trump and doesn't seem to have too many prospects for actually governing, even though she won the last election that was held. So again, the idea that there's going to be a healthy and stable government or society that comes out of this, and that simply removing Maduro will solve any problems in Venezuela—highly unlikely, just to euphemize it.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:06:55]**
"Highly unlikely" is a good way to put it. And I think it's interesting that we have not seen government collapse and replacement by a democratic government. We haven't seen a dictator seize power. We haven't seen implosion and civil war. But as of right now, it seems like the normal mechanisms—okay, the Vice President is in charge now.

And I mean, I get the impression, again, I'm not a Venezuela expert, that she's not just a figurehead the way that the Vice President might be in America. She seems to be a real politician within the regime. So it seems like, well, we got Maduro, but the regime is just still there doing business as usual.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:07:38]**
Yeah, that's what it would initially seem. Maduro and Chavez before him were at least adept politicians. And we have no idea whether she—again, the press reporting on her is that she's a pretty hardcore ideologue, even more so. And again, Maduro and Chavez were adept politicians, wheeler-dealers, if you will. So whether she can manage all the factions remains to be seen.

In governments like this, succession is a really hard problem, and it doesn't usually end well for the successors. So again, I'm not a Venezuela expert, but just looking at it as a structural problem, the idea that things are going to just cruise along—and how really intrusive is the Trump administration going to be?

Trump and JD Vance and others are posting a lot of videos saying "we're running the place," giving orders with a ten-foot pole, by video and by Truth Social post. How much resonance that has in Caracas, I don't have any idea. I mean, again, you have to discount these things—the ability to order someone else's society without intruding pretty heavily on it, and having the means of power to... you can only bomb so many targets.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:09:36]**
We've certainly seen that with the Houthis in Yemen, where we dropped all kinds of bombs on them, and they're still there. So I don't want to spend too much time on the Venezuela side of things, because it is so opaque from the outside. Doesn't seem like much has happened yet, but it could.

What I want to talk about is Trump and the Trump side of things. I think it is unfortunately inevitable in this situation—like you've been saying, they've kind of been posting like they're already running the country, and a deal has already been made for American oil companies to go and loot Venezuelan oil. And so that seems mostly to be hot air at the moment. They're not actually running the country, as far as anyone can tell.

But I guess I want to ask you this question: what do you think they were trying to do here? What was their goal?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:10:41]**
To peer into the mind of an aging, increasingly demented, malignant narcissist is asking a lot. Even though we've got a lot of evidence—Trump says something every ten seconds—finding a pattern in the madness is really quite difficult.

I think the explanation that sticks with me the most is that Trump is so narcissistic—it's just all inside his head, really. And there's no... it's just like who he's pissed at and who he wants to reward, which also changes sort of on a daily basis.

So those people who are laboring to construct the "Donroe Doctrine," or whatever name you want to put around it, are kind of engaged in a futile pursuit, I think. I mean, I suppose it's found some expression, like in the national security strategy document that came out not too long ago. So there's re-emphasis on the Western Hemisphere and American sort of imperial spheres of influence. And we're looking at the world as our playground, the Chinese playground, the Russian playground.

So there is some consistency in the approach, but this is such a diversion from what American strategy has been, not only since 1945, but I would argue—I see traces of consistent behavior that extend all the way back to the colonial period. So this is way off the map or outside the playbook of what the United States has been doing, not just since 1945 but really for almost forever.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:13:05]**
So that's interesting. I mean, the Donroe Doctrine—unfortunately, we do have to talk about it. They've posted this image of Trump standing across the Americas like Cecil Rhodes standing across Africa in that famous cartoon. There's that national security strategy—I talked about that a little bit with Joe Steve a couple of weeks ago—that like you say, seems to really, really emphasize American domination of the Western Hemisphere.

And I guess you've talked—I mean, you're writing about the colonial roots of this kind of thinking. So what is this line of thought? Maybe it's all a muddle in Trump's head, but this seems to be something that crops up repeatedly with this administration. What is this style of thinking, this kind of strategy?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:14:02]**
Well, I think the quote of the last 24 hours came from Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, who said "we were the regional predator"—like Trump is the velociraptor. And I'll be damned if it really goes too much deeper than this.

He has, as many people have observed, reptilian elements to his thinking. And it is really just all about dominance and submission, alpha males versus betas and cat ladies and all kinds of other instinctual impulses that don't add up to anything that could be described as a consistent strategy.

Is there an end goal, a state of affairs that the Trump administration is pursuing? Is it just sort of expansionism and bullying for its own sake, which I think accounts for a lot of it? You see this in the sort of foreign policy expert community, which is just confounded and can't seem to get its arms around what the administration is about. I mean, again, I just come back to the point that it just doesn't seem to add up to anything except sort of animalistic gratification of Trump's self-image and the image of his followers who just want to be on top.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:16:00]**
I think there's a lot to that. There's like one kind of model of strategy and foreign policy that I think most of us are familiar with from our lifetimes, where you're going to write up a big strategic document that says: this is what we want from the world, these are the kinds of policies we're going to pursue, these are the ones we're not going to pursue. And then you just kind of crank through that deliberative process.

Like when the United States went to war in Afghanistan, there was no mystery as to why we were there. People understood pretty clearly what that was about. You might disagree with the war in Iraq, but there was a clear purpose. You might think the purpose was a bad idea, that the strategy doesn't work, but you understood because they told you kind of at length what that was about.

Whereas I think you're right to say that with Trump, it is this kind of instinctive zero-sum mindset that says: if somebody else is winning, then that means that I'm losing, and if somebody else is losing, then that means that I'm winning. The most important thing is always posturing at being the dominant partner in any relationship. And that's how they see their personal lives, it's how they see domestic politics, it's how they see foreign policy, I believe. And it doesn't necessarily add up to a strategic picture, but it adds up to a recognizable mindset and a recognizable set of instincts.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:17:35]**
Yes, but it also makes it—other than the fact that there's a good chance that he will lash out at whatever object is closest, or on his television screen, or on Fox News that he's watching—it makes him completely unpredictable. He doesn't know. He's a bully, but he's a bully driven, I think, principally by fear—and fear in his own weakness. He assumes that he must be weak unless he does something bold. He has to prove that he's not weak all the time.

Which again means that when he lashes out, it's very difficult to predict in what direction it's going to go. But he sort of behaves as though, compared to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin, he's like the guy who's trying to be a bully, whereas they are natural—their sort of dominance is taken for granted. And he's always like the kid scrambling to be part of the bully club or something like that.

So it's an instinct, but it doesn't lead to predictable behavior. And like at least fifty—I don't know—he balks, chickens out, sort of on one thing and another as frequently as, or more frequently than, he follows through on things.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:19:19]**
No, I think that's right. And I think that's an important thing to see as an emerging aspect of Trump's policy—this kind of opportunism, rather than pursuing a deliberately thought-out approach the way that China and Russia... you can kind of see what their national strategy is oriented around. You might think it's a bad idea, but you kind of understand what they're trying to do.

Whereas I think Trump is much more opportunistic. And I think Midnight Hammer, the attack on Iran, is another example of this. It's not like he had this long-term policy that we want to do X, Y, and Z to Iran. But when Israel and Iran are in their—don't call it a war—offensive last year, they're throwing missiles back and forth, and then Israel launches this major campaign to basically destroy Iran's air defenses. And that's this moment, I think, when Trump sees an opportunity. He has this—gotta give it to him—like a nose for weakness, for a moment when he thinks: okay, I can get in there without too much cost, without getting entangled.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:20:39]**
Yeah, the Israelis have already done all the hard work. "I can swoop in, send in some B-2s, drop a few deep penetrators or whatever, declare victory. My base of support will lick me to death, and nobody will... it'll all—I'll do something else tomorrow when another opportunity pops up."

One thing that I think we might—just to bring Venezuela back in—I mean, I think I'd be really interested to know exactly what the Rubio factor was in this. Because he is the descendant of Cuban exiles, he's got the Cuban exile, anti-Castro, anti-communist heritage, if you will. And given the months and months of build-up prior to the snatch operation—there was clearly some, that wasn't an overnight twitch to do that. That took a lot of preparation and a huge amount of effort to create the conditions where this could happen.

So I think it would be just interesting to know how much of a hand Rubio had in it. And maybe Trump just decided, okay, damn it, let's get this done—once he figures out, as he's seeing the incredible technical acumen of the American military, he's like a kid with a toy. "Oh, man, I didn't know that we could do that. Let's do it again."

And since the operation, he's now convinced that special operators can do anything, anywhere, anytime, with no casualties. I mean, we've been incredibly lucky. You land a helicopter in the middle of a nasty place—you're rolling the dice. When it goes right, it's a miracle, and that's why they train and train and train and train. But it's so risky. What's going to happen if we keep doing this? There'll be a Black Hawk Down, or an Iran Desert One deal. They're just so risky.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:23:17]**
No, I think that's right, both in terms of the actual risk, but I think the fear of stuff like Black Hawk Down, and especially the fear of Iraq and Afghanistan, really shaped Trump's thinking. When he really, I think, saw how Iraq kind of destroyed George Bush's political project, and he saw we got bogged down there—and "I don't want that to happen to me personally."

I think he's trying very hard to avoid anything that could be an entanglement, anything he can't get out of. I think he is, like you talked about, a bully who's deliberately avoiding tough fights and only picking gambles that he thinks are a sure thing. But like you say, there's never a sure thing.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:24:10]**
Yeah, well, it's like his marriages and his other personal relationships. He selects his wives and his partners based on how quickly he can get rid of them if he needs to, or buy them off or whatever. Long-term commitments and fidelity are not traits high on the Trump profile.

So you're right—this is sort of zipless strategy, if you will. And yeah, he wouldn't, has never made a—which means he's not doing strategy. If you're not thinking about the long term, there is no short-term strategy. Those are called tactics. Strategy is inherently a long-term kind of a thing. And Trump just does not... you're right. It's not that he's not competent at it—it's that he's afraid of it, and he's afraid of what, as you say, could be the personal reputational consequences of it.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:25:28]**
Yeah, so I think that's right. I think there's something I kind of want to go back to, which is your comment about Rubio. And like you say, Rubio's family situation is a little complicated. I don't think he's actually descended from right-wing Cuban... he's descended from left-wing Cuban exiles. It's complicated. But he is a Cuban exile, and he's very, very anti-Castro, anti-Castroism, very anti-communism.

And he's made some remarks publicly about, "Oh, because we took out Venezuela, that's going to cut out support for the Cuban regime, because they're dependent on Venezuelan oil to some extent, and this will encourage Cuba to do something, something." And it seems kind of like a familiar neocon kind of story about "we're just going to bring democracy to Cuba somehow." But whether that's really what Trump was thinking—unclear.

But what I want to ask you about is another strain that's kind of been running through this, and that is, I think, a very familiar refrain for a lot of people on the left—which is that this is a war that's about oil. And Trump has said a lot of stuff about oil. They can't shut up about the oil. So what is the role of oil in all this?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:26:46]**
Well, there's oil in quotation marks and then there's actually the fossil fuel energy industry. As was written almost immediately, and possibly even before: Venezuelan oil sucks. It's all in the Orinoco Valley. It's heavy. Requires an immense amount of refinement, so on and so forth. It's hard to get out. The oil markets are glutted at the moment, and fossil fuels are gradually losing out to renewables over the medium term, not even the long term.

So the energy industry as it actually exists is completely different from the "oil thing"—the myth of oil that captivates Donald Trump. This was his analysis of Iraq: what went wrong in Iraq is not the insurgency or the futilities of counterinsurgency or whatever—it's that we didn't take the oil. "We're gonna pack it up in C-17s and fly it out of there. We're gonna take it over."

Trump has this very territorial, materialistic, 19th-century view of everything, almost. And so, as for the left, oil is kind of a bogeyman, but it's an idea more than it is a reality. The same is true for Trump. It's a desired object, but mostly a mythical construct in his mind.

If you really wanted to control fossil fuel resources, personally I'd go for Saudi Arabia over Venezuela. It would probably be easier to conquer. The royal family would be a more pliant proxy than the Chavista party in Caracas. So it's nonsensical, but it's a mythical construct, particularly in Trump's mind. You wonder, like the people who are even semi-economically literate in the administration—what does Scott Bessent think of this? I wonder. Other than "Trump is perfect."

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:29:48]**
Yeah, I mean, I think that's great. I think that comes back to some of what we've been talking about—is this just kind of an instinctual thing for him? He has certain kinds of ideas about: if we should be going out and we should be grabbing resources, we should be grabbing stuff, and that's what winning is.

And this mindset that is really fixated on problems of the last century, in a way. The oil crisis was a huge thing that wracked the United States in the '70s—that once was a real problem. At the present moment, oil is relatively cheap. The United States, I believe, is the largest producer in the world, which is kind of unbelievable. Oil is fading in importance anyways. None of this adds up to a situation where there's any objective need to do this, and it doesn't seem like the industry is particularly interested in it either. It's just ideas in an old man's head.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:30:52]**
Well, but there's also—I mean, I don't know if you've noticed, in the last week or so, an additional talking point has been rare earths and minerals in Venezuela. So that is like the oil of the computer chip era.

Even as a myth, oil and fossil fuels fade into lesser importance. It's like diamonds in the 19th century, African diamonds—we have this compulsion to believe that the physical control of natural resources is an essential strategic interest. That still has a grip on Trump and people who think like Trump.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:31:56]**
So, one theory that I've seen bandied about, one of these new terms that people like, is "neo-royalism" as a theory of international politics. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about: what is neo-royalism, and do you think that's an accurate description of what we're seeing here?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:32:17]**
Well, I'm not quite sure what neo-royalism is, but I've been doing a lot of research on the original royalism, particularly because this was the context of the settlement of North America—very much shrouded in the English fear of absolute monarchy, both at home and in the form of Louis XIV, for example.

So people have been struggling initially, and there's still a lot of people who draw analogies between Trump and Viktor Orbán or more modern authoritarian forms of government. But particularly when you look at it with aesthetic eyes—Trump's obsession with gold filigree and arcs of triumph and glittering ballrooms and stuff like that—it's a personalist spectacle that legitimated Old World monarchies, arbitrary and absolute.

And I think in some ways, Trump conceives of himself as divinely ordained to rule. And again, his court—he has more court than administration—treats him that way. To watch a video of a Cabinet meeting looks like it should be shot in the palace of Versailles or in the Hall of Mirrors or something like that.

So understanding how a monarchy works, in many ways, is at least as enlightening as studying modern authoritarianism of the Orbán variety, for example. So if neo-royalism is an attempt to analyze Trump's behavior in that way, I think that's got a lot going for it, actually.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:34:42]**
Yeah, so there's some aspects of it that I find compelling, and some aspects I find a little dubious. Because a lot of these theorists seem to be still looking for material explanations. They say, "Oh, there's actually going to be an oil bonanza, or at least a money bonanza, when companies go into Venezuela, and it's about directing this money that's part of the Trump regime—the corrupt king and his clients and the distribution of rents."

I'm kind of dubious of this as a material analysis. I don't really think there's going to be a lot of money in Venezuelan oil contracts. I think that's all just fake. But I think that you're right, that it's the aesthetics of it, and the personal relations of it, that are really helpful to understand Trump—that this is a personalist regime, fundamentally, and that these people think in personalist ways.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:35:44]**
There's a cultural dimension and a sociopolitical dimension as well. That kind of seemingly eternal, God-ordained, divinely ordained—that kind of seemingly permanent hierarchical structure has a deep appeal to people for whom modernity is the challenge. And this whole participatory, pluralistic society thing is disturbing.

So yeah, materially, economically, strategically, militarily—it makes no sense. But culturally, emotionally, aesthetically, it exudes a kind of power. I mean, again, it's something I find repulsive, but you have to acknowledge its grip on people.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:36:53]**
I think that's right. The aesthetic clearly has a grip on at least some people in America. I don't really think the majority of Americans are going in for this, but clearly his base seems pretty into it.

And I think it's useful also in terms of understanding the chaos of these regimes—that we've been talking about, oh, Rubio has this idea, and there's this oil idea floating around, and maybe there's this other group that wants to recreate the Monroe Doctrine. And these are probably all actual people in the administration who are trying to talk Trump's ear off. In the Third Reich, they called it "working towards the Führer."

**Giselle Donnelly [00:37:37]**
That's one of my favorite phrases. Yeah, that's something that doesn't get appreciated enough.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:37:44]**
Yeah, that it's—well, everyone's just kind of like another scheming courtier trying to get the great leader's ear. And policy kind of emerges out of that mess, rather than out of a coherent "we're going to reject this idea, we're going to embrace this idea, we're going to develop a policy." It's just all people talking.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:38:05]**
Well, so you also get sort of the equivalent of court factions. And then there's a struggle to figure out who's going to be the Crown Prince, the successor. They're all jousting with one another. Behind the curtain, Scott Bessent is punching out people at Don Jr.'s club. It's like they're the Duke of this or the Prince of that.

And you're right—there's no making a policy or a strategy out of that kind of structure. And again, it's not like Trump is intensely involved in every... he is not Louis XIV. He is not Philip II reading every dispatch from every far-flung part of the empire. He's watching TV and truthing at four o'clock in the morning. So yeah, okay, I can get really carried away with this monarchical stuff.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:39:29]**
It's interesting, right? There's like one faction that I think is clearly making a play at the moment—this faction that wants to take over Greenland. Stephen Miller's wife, very soon after the operation, posts a map with Greenland with the American flag on it, and she's like, "Soon." And that post goes viral on the MAGA internet. They all like it. And now Stephen Miller's talking to CNN, saying, "Actually, Greenland naturally belongs to America."

And you can see different members of the regime—whatever, the administration, should I say "administration" rather than "regime"? I don't care—who are pushing this idea that was kind of floated around earlier: that the United States should take over Greenland. What do you think about Greenland?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:40:23]**
Well, it's an important place, okay, especially as—the thing I love about this—it wouldn't be important if there weren't global warming. So you can't have it both ways. Either there's global warming, or Greenland is not that important—it's less important than it is becoming.

But again, it's just an impulse. Nobody's thought through what—first of all, we have complete military access to everything in Greenland that we can get to. The Greenlanders and the Danes have given us everything that we want. We've actually reduced the amount of forces that we have stationed there. It's unclear, in a modern warfare environment, exactly how you would exploit the position of Greenland.

So there's a truth there, but we have everything we could possibly want out of Greenland at this point. So you have to look for an emotional explanation rather than a material or a strategic explanation for this. It's almost like, if they don't set their sights on something—it's like the old Woody Allen line, "If the shark stops moving, the shark dies." And the Trump administration is that way too with expansionistic rhetoric.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:42:08]**
I think that's right, that there is something about it that is about the aesthetics. But I think this comes back to something we've been circling around. I think it's also about Trump's personal ego.

I think he kind of looks back on his first term, and like a lot of people say, yeah, he didn't really get that much done. Was he a consequential president? What achievements does he have to his name? And that's driven a lot of what he's tried to do in this term—where he says, "I'm going to remodel the White House, I'm gonna tear down the East Wing and build a new thing. We're gonna build an arch. We're gonna have a battleship and name it after me personally."

**Giselle Donnelly [00:42:54]**
Don't forget the plane. They're naming the plane after him. "F-47"—why is it F-47? Is it "47" for Trump? The boot-licking is widespread and shameless.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:43:05]**
I hadn't even put that together. No, that's terrible. But I think fundamentally he looks at this wall of American presidents whose bios he wrote, apparently. And what does he think? He thinks: there's one thing I could do that would guarantee that I got my name in the American history books, and that's if I could add more territory. If I can add another state. I think that's, at some lizard-brain level, how he's thinking about Greenland, about annexing Canada, which they were talking about earlier in the administration.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:43:40]**
Yeah, no, I think you're quite correct about that. But there's also kind of a negative and dark—I mean, the things that are most likely to last... nobody will be able to get the Democratic nomination for president in 2028 unless they promised to tear down the ballroom, and hold ICE accountable, and abolish DHS, and all that kind of stuff.

So many of these things—and Trump knows this. I think he's afraid that these things will be transitory, that his efforts to create a lasting legacy are bound to come to end in tears. But the destruction that he's brought on the international system, on that—NATO is hanging by a thread. If we invade Greenland, then there is no prospect, even reasonably, of reviving NATO.

The things that he's destroyed will be his legacy, not—and maybe that makes him more manic about these building projects, trying to create a legacy. But it's the negative side that is likely to last longer than anything else, I fear.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:45:14]**
Yeah, so I actually do want to ask you about that. On this podcast, I try to also be a little forward-looking sometimes, to not just dwell—

**Giselle Donnelly [00:45:25]**
There's so much shit to review, you forget to look ahead to the shit that's coming our way.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:45:31]**
That's right, we have to look ahead to the shit that's coming. Or I guess in this case, I want to ask you: okay, a new Democratic administration comes in in 2028. They're going to tear down the ballroom, and they're going to tear down the arch, and they're going to rename whatever ship he's tried to name after himself.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:45:53]**
Well, the ship won't be built, so there won't be a problem. They'll just cancel the program, which is par for the course. But the Navy—

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:45:59]**
Yeah, just yet another canceled large surface combatant. But instead of asking you about any of that, I do want to ask about: what would a future Democratic administration need to do to try and rebuild some of these more lasting things that Trump is trying to tear down?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:46:18]**
Well, let's imagine what that Democratic Party and that Democratic leadership will be like. And let's also assume, which I think is a safe assumption, that it won't be Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

Okay, so I really worry a bit about the strategic immaturity of not just the American left, but Democrats, and many just liberals who used to be sort of tough-minded liberals, sort of John Kennedy liberals, if you will. I'm showing my age here.

So what are the strategic instincts of an emerging Democratic Party leadership that we can imagine? But I really don't know. I think, sort of undoing Trump will get them going, get them started. But is there somebody there? First of all, trying to rebuild alliances after this would be just a Herculean task, I think. And I really wonder who amongst the Democrats could lead that effort, who would make arguments—the left is anxiety-ridden about the use of American military power, but it's something that's kind of essential in international affairs, or the building up.

I mean, so—who are the Democrats? And then maybe we can figure out what they might do.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:48:32]**
So, there was a post I was really struck by, by a leftist organizer, somebody I respect, at the start of the Ukraine War, where she was really tied up in knots about it. She's like, "I am opposed to war. I'm opposed to the military-industrial complex. I don't believe in the American military. But oh my God, the Russians are coming, and they are bad. They're committing war crimes. There are mass graves that they're digging up."

And so she was really personally torn up about: can I support military aid to Ukraine? Because that's going to involve this institution that I'm just kind of reflexively opposed to—the American military.

And I think that's an attitude a lot of people, whether they're leftists or on the liberal side, kind of have, right? "Well, I'm just opposed to all of that, so I don't think about it." And I think—I mean, to be a little bit critical here—I think we kind of saw the consequences of that under Obama. Obama comes into office and he says, "Okay, our rule is going to be: don't do stupid shit." And like, okay, I can see that's a good rule. We're not going to start another major land war. That's probably a good idea. But I think you also saw a lack of vision and execution under Obama.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:50:02]**
Absolutely. The Ukraine war began on his watch. And he was reluctant even to give or sell—a couple MLRS and ATACMS in 2014 would have had an exponential effect on that conflict. So I just—how far has that "no war" impulse stretched, sort of infected traditional liberalism? I think it's an open question.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:50:51]**
Yeah, so the way I kind of see it is: American power is something kind of like a fact. If a Democratic administration comes into office, they are going to be in charge of one of the largest and most powerful militaries in history. They're going to have weight in world affairs, whether you like it or not. And then you have a responsibility to use that power well—not to just say, "Well, I don't like power, so I'm not going to touch it." Power is still there.

And so I guess my question for you is: how, as liberals, should we start thinking about that? How should we try to start rebuilding that level of expertise on the liberal side of the political spectrum?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:51:42]**
I think there are two elements to this. One is to at least study history and understand the use of military power—understand that military power remains the ultimate resort of kings and theaters, and it's still—people are obscuring military power in the awful military acronym DIME, standing for diplomacy, information, military power, and economic power. Those are not four similar tools. Military power is a unique tool. It's a crude tool, but it's a powerful tool.

And then there's the other aspect of it: liberals and leftists have stopped thinking about war in and of itself, and the waging of war. And this distraction, or this fetish for Special Operations raids is, I think, really widespread. Everybody's got that. It's not just that Trump has this phobia of long-term military commitments—that's pretty widely shared across the political spectrum.

The sort of temptation, the idea that you can do something quick and easy and that will have long-term effects—again, the Maduro raid is only going to further enshrine, and this has been the case since September 11 as well—again, the idea that special operations forces and long-range firepower can do everything that you need to do in the world is really shared, unfortunately, by a lot of the American public.

And again, because it looks so cool on TV—even the President loves watching it on TV. It's like, again, the movies come to life. And it is an incredible capability, but it's a very niche capability in the broader strategic sense. You're not going to snatch Xi Jinping out of the Forbidden City.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:54:37]**
And even if you did, they just elect another Chairman, right? There'll still be the Chinese Communist Party.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:54:41]**
Yeah, so—and all we're just giving back all the sort of positive gains accrued since 1945, at least. That's an immense legacy that's just being flushed down the gold toilets.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:55:05]**
Yes, no, it is squandering a legacy. It is a betrayal of some of our closest allies for an old man's ego. It tears me up inside. And again, I could talk about that, but I don't think I really have much more to say than: this is just horrible.

**Giselle Donnelly [00:55:26]**
We can say it again. There are many things to say, but I have not said them all.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:55:34]**
Right. So I guess I want to ask a last question. If there's this temptation to use, like you said, long-range firepower and Special Forces raids because they seem costless—they seem like they're not going to entangle us—but maybe they don't achieve very much.

We do seem to be entering a time in history where there's just more and more risk of very serious war. There's a very serious war happening in Ukraine right now. There's always the possibility of a Taiwan contingency. I guess I would ask: how should we as liberals think about these kinds of possibilities?

**Giselle Donnelly [00:56:16]**
Again, I would begin with kind of trying to take a top-down, really sort of almost cartoonish approach to this. Do you want to maintain a global order? Or are you content to allow spheres of influence where adversaries and otherwise malign states will do things that are morally obnoxious to us and dangerous—eventually dangerous to us—because spheres of influence have a habit of rubbing up against one another and creating... if everybody's expanding, sooner or later, you're going to run into somebody.

That has been our habit. And we've always had—again, this is striking in the colonial era—how geopolitically and globally literate people like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were, or even their forefathers. They grew up in a world that was shaped by European great powers and imperial struggles. That was in their DNA. But it's not in our DNA anymore.

So, addressing these really first-order questions and allowing the logic of that to play out again: are you comfortable living in a world where China has arguably even more sway than we do? I'll be dead, but it might have consequences for my children.

And then just follow that logic. I don't think Americans would be happy living in a world where China's world is propped up and supported by an imperial Russian revanche. So, we're not really going to like that very much. It will diminish our lives, and not just morally, but it will diminish our power in the world. It will diminish our prosperity. It will make it harder for us to cohere as a domestic society.

And the only way to reclaim that is by reclaiming liberalism. The world peace that we've enjoyed is the product of American power and liberal ideas, in a way that's historically unique. So I would really hope that—I mean, this is what liberals should be devoting themselves to.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:59:35]**
No, I think that's right. I think if we want to put the pieces back together of that world of peace and prosperity, a future Democratic administration is going to need to go to our friends and allies with hat in hand to try and put together what Trump is tearing down. But I also think we can't retreat from the weight of American power that's going to be with us, whether we like it or not. So it's balancing those two things—that's the hard part.

**Giselle Donnelly [01:00:11]**
And I think one of the things that would sway opinions among disaffected allies is to show up with a clear capability to re-extend the security umbrella that has been good for Europe, has been good for East Asia—both in a security sense, but in a liberal political sense.

I mean, the idea that there are liberal democracies in East Asia, amongst the Confucian cultures, to use the old Huntington—is a good thing, and it is an emanation of American power to a certain degree.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [01:01:01]**
Yeah, I don't want to get into the Huntingtonian can of worms right now. That's a whole other episode.

**Giselle Donnelly [01:01:10]**
That's a kettle of fish that should remain sealed.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [01:01:15]**
Remain sealed. There we go. So yeah, I think that's a good note to end on. Giselle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

**Giselle Donnelly [01:01:23]**
It was a great conversation. Thanks for having me, Samantha.