Just weeks after ousting Venezuela’s leader, Donald Trump is now courting crises on two other continents.  Trump’s quest to own Greenland and support for populist movements continue to roil Europe, while the Middle East braces for possible war as a U.S. armada barrels toward Iran. 

Transcript

Note: this is an AI-generated transcript and may contain errors

Jon Bateman: Right now, Donald Trump is knee deep in two roiling global crises. One is in Europe, where Trump's quest to seize Greenland has tested transatlantic ties like never before. The second crisis is in Iran, where an enormous U.S. Armada is headed right now and major war could break out at any time. It's frankly hard to keep up, let alone understand these events, even for professionals. So I spoke to Dan Dresner, a leading scholar of global politics, whose writings are read in the halls of power. Dan just got back from the Munich Security Conference, where presidents and prime ministers were wrangling over these crises. We talked about why Europe and the U.S. Are still so obsessed with each other, whether Trump could really do to Iran what he did to Venezuela, and how ideas can still matter in an age of showmanship and raw power. I'm John Bateman, and this is the World Unpacked.

Dan Drezner, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. You just got back, I think, from the Munich Security Conference. For those who don't know, this is the kind of annual pilgrimage that world leaders and foreign and defense ministers in the West and otherwise will come and talk about what's going on in the world. So you were there. I was. What's going in the...

Dan Drezner: I think people were still recovering, frankly, from what sort of moves on Greenland, the future of both the transatlantic relationship and the global order, dealing with all that has happened since January 20th, 2025.

Jon Bateman: So in many ways, it sounds like the U.S. And the ructions of the Trump administration are just the axis around which all conversations are revolving in Europe right now.

Dan Drezner: Yeah, I think that's safe to say. I mean, Europe for the longest time has always been, well, you know, the bedrock of our security concept has been the transatlantic tie has been the U.S. Security umbrella. And you know to be fair, the current administration, there have been complaints from U. S. Administrations in past years, slash decades about Europe contributing more. But it has obviously taken a much nastier tone over the last year. And it's also taken a more sort of cultural tone in terms of or the Trump administration saying we don't like the direction Europe is going, you need to change. So there was a lot of, I would almost say like people in the different Kublai-Ross stages of grief about coping with the state of the transatlantic relationship. You could argue if Davos was about denial and anger, we're in the bargaining phase now. So Uh...

Jon Bateman: Let's split apart those two different messages from Washington. One is about Europe needs to pull its weight into defense alliances, spend more money, build more capabilities. The other is a cultural political critique, which I think has surprised a lot of people, that the administration in the US is on this wanting to reach into European politics and weigh in on immigration, free speech and censorship, and the like. Which one of those is more threatening right now to Europe?

Dan Drezner: So I would actually say it's more the second one, the cultural one. To talk about the security one for a second, one of the things that Trump has managed to secure from Europeans is this pledge for 5% of spending of GDP on defense. Now, that 5% or the definition of defense is very loose. So it was easy. Lots of accounts.

Jon Bateman: Right, lots of accounting games you can play with that. And play with that, yeah.

Dan Drezner: Right, also like infrastructure spending and like you could put a lot under defense in quotes. But that said, I also think the Europeans, and this came through in Munich, the Europeans recognize we are in a more insecure environment than we used to be. We're dealing with the largest land war in Europe since World War II, a war that has now lasted longer than Russia's involvement in the Great Patriotic War. And so there are legitimate security concerns, particularly on Eastern Front about how are you going to deal with a more malevolent Russia. So on that, there's somewhat more meeting of the minds. Obviously, I think Europeans would prefer if they could count on the United States. But since the US has been obviously a little more erratic in terms of its commitments, I guess there's a recognition among Europeans of we do need to get our act together. Now, there's question of how that'll work and a question of whether they can do it properly, but at least they seem committed to that. The cultural side of things, I think, is the thing that has truly taken Europeans by surprise. And whether you want to say it was sort of JD Vance's nastier tone at last year's Munich Security Conference or Marco Rubio's somewhat warmer version of it. I mean, Rubio had less critique and more like, this is the direction we want to go. We want you to come with us. So it was more diplomatic, as it were. Let me ask you that.

Jon Bateman: Yes. Why do they care? Why do people in the national security apparatus of the Trump administration have such an investment in what they would describe as the future of European civilization as distinct from more conventional foreign policy issues.

Dan Drezner: I would give two answers to this. The first is the sort of foreign policy version, and the second is the, frankly, darker and uglier version of this. The foreign policy of it is that this is an administration that is profoundly and deeply skeptical of both the rules-based international order specifically, but also multilateralism in general. This is an Administration that believes, why would we ever engage in a multilateral negotiation? Because doing that just empowers smaller states and allows them to sort of caucus against us. We prefer a hub-and-spoke arrangement where everyone is negotiating bilaterally with us. If that's your belief, and that's certainly a belief, the EU represents an existential challenge to that because the EU is actually a multilateral body, you know, a super national organization that takes a bunch of middle and smaller powers and agglomerates them so that it is in trade areas or in other areas potentially a counterweight to the United States, and they don't like that. So that's the sort of more realpolitik argument for why they would do this.

Jon Bateman: There's also, I think, a tie-in there, too. So after Rubio went to Munich, he went to Hungary and Slovakia. And Hungary in particular is really a fly in the ointment of EU politics. And so if we build up some actors that are often the ones vetoing or slowing down European unity, that could just advantage the US in transatlantic negotiations.

Dan Drezner: Sure, I think the United States will do, at this point, this administration is keenly interested in preventing the EU from acting in a coherent way, particularly in areas where there are policy disagreements on regulatory standards, on AI, even to some extent on posture towards Russia and Ukraine, absolutely. There is also the darker element of this, though, and I don't think you can ignore that, particularly, in Rubio's speech, which is... I think that there are elements of this administration that don't like Europe because they believe that mass migration is making Europe less white and less Christian. That came through loud and clear in Rubio's speech, where he talks about the sort of glory of Western civilization and gave what I would literally describe as a pro-imperialist speech. There was a section of that speech where he talked about how Europe had been expanding its borders for 500 years. You know, you had done great things. And then after 1945, you stopped. And I'm like... Yeah, there was a reason for that. It was called decolonization, and it was actually something, by the way, the United States was a proponent of at the time.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, it's really interesting because this is often a major flashpoint in US politics. When someone like President Trump says, let's make America great again, what is the era in which he was defining as great and why? And I think a common view on the right is that America was at its greatest prior to the 1960s. And then the critique of that from the left is, well, that's pre-civil rights movement. That actually is a complicated statement, right? What Rubio almost seemed to be doing is bringing that same flashpoint into Europe. And to say, from an American perspective, Europe was at its greatest prior to what you might call the European equivalent to the civil rights movement, which was decolonization.

Dan Drezner: No, and that came through loud and clear where he talked about all that Europe had accomplished. And his definition of sort of Western civilization was an extremely narrow one. It was grounded in religion. He referenced Christianity three times. No other religion got mentioned. It wasn't even Judeo-Christian. It just Christian. And, you know, he talked about various cultural achievements. But the interesting thing that Rubio didn't mention or what wasn't in his speech, was the whole Western liberal political tradition. Yeah. You know, the John Locke's and the Adam Smiths and the John Stuart Mills. And the thing that legitimately makes Western civilization great, I would argue, is the idea of a civic sense of nationalism, not one born out of ethnicity. So the idea of civic nationalism is that if you become a citizen of a country, you are proudly a member of that country, and you can be nationalist for it. On the other hand, there's a more ethnic, narrower view version of nationalism that Because no, it's blood and soil. And that was really what Rubio was actually kind of saying there. And that's not something the Europeans are going to go along with at this point.

Jon Bateman: Very logical and expected, that people like Rubio, Trump, Vance, their attempt to intervene in this debate about what is Western civilization hugely parallels the debate in the US about what is the nature of America, and what are we trying to preserve and protect and conserve if you're a conservative. On the other hand, there always seems to be something odd about an American going abroad and encouraging other countries to be more nationalistic. That may or may not redound to our benefit. Like, for example, you know, so the AFD party in Germany. So that is a party that has been kind of like, morally and politically boosted by the Trump administration.

Dan Drezner: Vance met with them right after his Munich security.

Jon Bateman: Okay, so that's a great concrete example. I don't think that party is in favor of a robust German defense budget or a kind of NATO as a powerful counterweight against Russia. So that seems to, is there a contradiction there between the ideological project of encouraging national conservatism in other countries and the tangible American first foreign policy of, actually we want these countries to... Be strong military allies against Russia.

Dan Drezner: There are some contradictions, although I would argue that if you take a look at something like the National Security Strategy that the U.S. Published in late November, you can see them trying to reconcile this, which is I think that this administration's view of the world is one grounded in spheres of influence. And the National security strategy that came out was sort of articulated of our sphere of influence from the Trump administration's perspective is the Western hemisphere, which means that they view Europe as a secondary theater. And, you know, you occasionally hear this, you heard this from Rubio in Munich, and you occasionally hear from others in the administration saying, we're pursuing our national interests. We understand that everyone else is going to pursue their national interests, and that's sort of one of those casual lines they throw out to indicate we're not just like talking about the U.S., but I don't know if they've thought that through fully in terms of what does it mean if you have, particularly Europeans. Pursuing their national interests in such a way that, occasionally, it might subvert U.S. National security or at least...

Jon Bateman: Weaken it. Or even Russian or Chinese, because I think the more Trump embraces this Don Roe doctrine of America as the preeminent actor within the Western hemisphere, it's raised this question about whether we also would grant China or Russia their spheres of influence. Bridge Colby, a senior US defense official, was asked this question in Munich. And he said, no, we can have our sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. And we're not granting that China or Russian would have their spheres of influence. The next question, of course, would be, like, how-

Dan Drezner: How does that make sense? Yeah. Welcome to the cognitive dissonance of this administration's foreign policy. And that's the problem, which is I'm not sure a spheres of influence approach is terribly viable in the first place, to be clear. Japan and South Korea would have strong feelings about this. The Europeans would have a strong feelings, but this our allies in the Middle East would have strong feeling about this, and this is where the administration seems to simultaneously say, oh, we're going to have our sphere of influence, of course, and there might be the occasional rhetorical gesture of. You know, we recognize that China and Russia are also great powers. But as you said, you know, you asked Bridge Colby about this, he's going to give you a different answer. And this is where I think the administration is not entirely speaking from the same page. And so we don't know where this is going to go. And my concern on this is that, you now, this administration is lousy when it comes to signaling its intentions across a variety of areas, to the point where last year you had the acronym TACO emerge. Of Trump always chickens out, which happened on Greenland, but now, you know, as we're having this conversation, the U.S. Is a massing force in Iran. And it's really a fair question to ask if the U S is going to go through with it. You don't normally assemble all this force unless you're trying to actually going to exercise it. But I don't know what the end game is there. I'm not sure they know what the game is.

Jon Bateman: Same thing happened in Venezuela. We massed a huge military force near Venezuela. I had a former ambassador to Venezuela tell me, well, you don't do this and then not use it. And I thought to myself, well, you could actually not use that. But he was right. We did use it, so the same thing could happen again in Iran. We should come back to Iran, but you've brought up several times that A year ago, JD Vance went to Europe and gave a much harsher version of what Marco Rubio gave when you were in Munich. So what do you make of that? The difference between then and now, is that any kind of signal that the softening of the rhetoric, even if the message is the same, is that kind of recognition in Washington that we've gone too far, we've offended too many people, this is actually a constituency worth bringing back into our orbit, or is that purely a function of different personalities, their different communication styles and political aspirations within the U.S. Government? That's a great question.

Dan Drezner: I do think it in part is a recognition by this administration that they have perhaps, you know, needlessly roiled the Europeans on a variety of issue areas. So what was interesting was, in the month before this, Trump's Greenland comments were obviously pretty, you know seismic in Europe. But just as controversial, and I don't think this got covered quite as much in the United States, was Trump's comment of, oh, Europeans contributed nothing to Afghanistan or Iraq. Yeah. And that was a really interesting.

Jon Bateman: He said they stayed a little bit back from the front lines.

Dan Drezner: Now, beyond that not being factually correct, what was interesting about that was that that was the first moment that you saw right wing, far right wing parties in Europe break with Trump. So, like, even, you know, Nigel Farage or the Reform Party was like, I can't go with you on this. That is not accurate. You know, and you saw that similarly, I believe, from, you know, parties in France and I believe even Germany, although I'm not sure about that one. Um, but like they were That was the moment where you actually saw even far-right parties say, you crossed a line here. And so you could argue that one of the arts of diplomacy is asking for things in a nicer way. And Rubio certainly did that compared to Vance. But it wasn't just Rubio. If you listen to Mike Waltz, for example, I was at the panel he was at. He's the UN ambassador, right, former national security advisor. He was talking about making the UN great again. Now again, this winds up being a schtick after a certain point. Bye! But what became through louder this time was the idea that the United States was not interested in destroying these institutions. Now, whether that actually happens or not, I don't think Trump wants the end of NATO on his watch. I don't think he wants the UN pulling out of New York on his Watch. So yeah, I would say it was a softer tone and a recognition that maybe they had overstepped. But the walk back was, again, retorted.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, if you want to look on the bright side from a European perspective, you could say, well, they're showing up to these events, right? I mean, you can imagine a whole nother universe in which there's just total diplomatic disengagement. And in a weird way, saying that Europe is erasing its civilization and it needs to pull back from the brink, that's also a way of saying we care, right, that this was kind of part of Marco Rubio's speech that. We the Americans, no matter how tough we are on you, do feel a deep kinship and actually care about what happens here. Maybe if there was a plan of totally deleveraging from the European military situation, maybe you just wouldn't even go and you wouldn't care.

Dan Drezner: If you say what you will about the Trump administration's approach to Europe, it's not one of disinterest. It is one of caring deeply, apparently, how Europe defines itself and how Europe views the world. And again, it sort of the...if you remember when Trump was inaugurated and the thoughts about what MAGA foreign policy was, it was often said, well, it is isolationist or it is realist. And the thing about those kinds of principles are they don't care what happens in other countries. And that's partially true. I don't think. The Trump administration really cares what's going on internally in places like China and Russia, but it turns out they care deeply what's going on, internally, within Europe and in other allied countries.

Jon Bateman: So we've talked about these two messages that the US is deploying in a place like Munich. On the one hand, spend more money on your defense, take more responsibility. On the other hand, pull back from this woke brink. So there has been a response in Europe on the first message in terms of policy change. They are spending more money. They are trying to become more militarily autonomous. What about on that second message? Have we seen any European countries? Actually try to become more restrictionist on immigration or pull back from the kind of tinkering of the digital sphere or hate speech laws? Or is there a stubbornness there that these are our issues? And don't tell us what to do.

Dan Drezner: I think it varies. When it comes to migration, to be fair, the Europeans have taken measures on this because of the waves of migration that they've had to deal with. You talked about Hungary before, Hungary pursued a relatively restrictionist migration policy. You've seen Italy and other countries who are, for lack of a way of putting it, the front lines in terms of dealing with this kind of migration. They've taken positions on this as well. What there hasn't been is a European-wide position, to my knowledge. But like my you know Dealing with large waves of migration has been something that lots of countries have had to cope with. And there's no question that on occasion it can potentially be destabilizing. But I think it's also a question of how you do it. I think Americans underestimate how utterly appalled the rest of the world is at scenes of what's going on in, let's say, Minneapolis, for example. Because whatever you think about mass migration, that is a lousy way to try to enforce it. Yeah. It's not very popular in the United States either. It's very popular, yeah, exactly. So if it's not popular here. You can only imagine what the reaction is in Europe. And I mean, I was in, about two weeks before Munich, I was the Gulf, and they were appalled by this. We're talking about places in the Persian Gulf, not exactly known to be like bastions of liberalism. Yeah.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, and they don't treat migrant workers very well at all.

Dan Drezner: No, but what they don't do is send people in camo gear to, like, drag them out of their homes, or at least they don t film that.

Jon Bateman: Interesting. So the ICE saga has reached a point where when a US foreign delegation arrives in a country, even a very illiberal country, this is part of the conversation. That's fascinating.

Dan Drezner: On the free speech thing, I think that was the most important difference, perhaps, between Rubio and Vance. Vance hammered that home in his Munich speech. Rubio never touched it. And part of the reason is that, particularly like in Germany, for example, they have very valid reasons, given their history of why they don't want Nazi imagery necessarily on the web. And the First Amendment approach that the United States has This is. Unique in that sense, you know, and there are other countries that have different histories for which there are reasons why you don't necessarily want to have, you know, particularly potent symbols broadcast. And that's an area where Europe is not going to budge.

Jon Bateman: So I don't know if you saw this, Dan. I think this was just reported this morning that the Trump administration has built or nearly built a website called freedom.gov, the purpose of which would be to enable Europeans to securely VPN or whatever out of whatever restrictions or legal protections exist there to get access to a more American style Uncensored Internet. Was kind of mind-blowing because this is a policy play that has been used in places like Iran, China, Russia, privacy protecting or anonymizing software like Tor. That was actually developed by the US State Department. This is the first I'd heard of something like this potentially being deployed to a European audience. Apparently, the plan was to do this just before Munich, but they decided not to for whatever reason. I don't know what to make of that, but that could be the future.

Dan Drezner: It demonstrates where U.S. Foreign policy has traveled over the last 18 months, where, you know, it used to be that the U. S. Was viewed as sort of a beacon of democracy and liberalism, and the idea was you're gonna focus your fire on authoritarian countries, and so provide them, you know provide the citizens of those countries with alternative sources of information that are, you now, less censored and more accurate. At the same time that you're talking about this initiative. The administration is shuttered or basically dramatically hamstrung Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Liberty, a variety of US outlets that have been designed to counter propaganda in a whole variety of more authoritarian countries. And it does raise the question of priorities. I mean, you can argue, and I know there's some who have, that European censorship laws are more, not draconian, but certainly more liberal. And maybe you You could have that debate. But why are you allocating so many resources to it when there are residents in China and Russia that surely, surely you're gonna get more bang for the buck by making sure that the residents of those countries have access to unfiltered information.

Jon Bateman: If I were to give like a steel man case for this, we really don't have that much influence over the political informational practices of a country like Russia or China. These are deeply consolidated authoritarian regimes. We find ourselves having some influence with our friends. This has come up in the Middle East context a lot. But people will often say. Well, why does Israel get so much more critiques for its human rights practices than the surrounding Arab countries, which are much more illiberal and in many cases have much worse human rights? And often the response is like, well, yeah, we can't really do that much about those, but we consider Israel to be kind of within our realm, within our friendship or civilizational sphere. Is there any sense to an argument like that?

Dan Drezner: Well, first of all, the next time the Trump administration criticizes Israel for its human rights record will be the first time the Trump administration criticized Israel for it's human rights record. Yes, not Trump for sure. But the larger point I take, I think that kind of approach... I mean, look, there is an argument to be made that, and this is part of my own research on coercion, that you're gonna have more success influencing allies than adversaries on occasion. That said, there are two rejoinders to this. The first is that very often that influence is better when it's done behind closed doors rather than loudly and publicly because if you do it loudly and publically, you're incentivizing, you know, leaders in those allied countries to not necessarily back down because there are political costs for doing so. And second, that kind of argument is deeply ahistorical because it allides what the States did during the entirety of the Cold War. Where you want countries, you want to make sure that protest movements in authoritarian countries get access to information. And it might seem like it's not necessarily going to accomplish anything in the short term. Authoritarian societies tend to look pretty solid right up until the moment that they're not. And so I still think you're going to get a bigger bang for the buck if you try to counter, let's say, Chinese propaganda in China, or certainly Russian propaganda in Russia.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, and Iran clearly shows that the US government, even under the Trump administration, is very interested in protest movements and dissension happening in unfriendly authoritarian regimes, right? I mean, I think part of the reason why we have this armada heading toward the Persian Gulf right now is that President Trump truthed out to the Iranian protesters, America has your back, and now... He feels like he needs to have their back.

Dan Drezner: Yeah, although I think the movement on Iran has less to do with... I mean, you're right. He did truth that out. I think it has less do with that and more trying to actually create a nuclear deal, a new nuclear deal that would presumably eliminate the Iranian threat for actually acquiring a nuclear deterrent in the region. Even there though, I am honestly not sure how this administration thinks this is going play out because The one pattern when you look at the Trump administration, or Trump when it comes to the use of force, is he doesn't like messy outcomes. He's a one and done kind of military, he has a one-and-done military approach. This is not gonna be a one and done military enterprise if we actually, you know, engage in airstrikes. It's gonna take a longer time. And so, you know. And also, by the way, I would add, having been in the Gulf, I can tell you for certain, It's not like the Gulf monarchies have any love for the Iranian regime. They don't. No. But they strongly prefer the weakened devil they know to the uncertain devil that they don't, so if the idea is that the Trump administration is hoping that this bombing is going to somehow create regime change, I guarantee you that is not what the Gulf states want.

Jon Bateman: So I went on the prediction markets last night to see what they're saying. Yes. Current going rate is 25% chance that the Supreme Leader of Iran will not be in office at the end of March. Does that strike you as high or low?

Dan Drezner: Um, it strikes me as about right, actually. I mean, the thing you can say about the Venezuela operation, and maybe this is the one parallel to Iran, is that the Venezuela operation worked incredibly well from a tactical perspective because the U.S. Had outstanding intelligence about where Maduro was and how to get him. You know, and you've read all the behind-the-scenes stuff about how U. S. Forces trained for this and, you know, to capture Maduro and his wife. The interesting thing with a rawn... Is I don't think the US intelligence on Iran is very good. I think Israeli intelligence on Iran very good, and so the question becomes, does the US launch a military attack because they believe that relying on Israeli intelligence on Iraq means they actually can engage in a decapitation strike and, you know, sort of engage in a knockout blow. And, you know, given the success in Venezuela, I can't rule out the possibility that they might actually be right this time. They might kill how many and, potentially, try foster some sort of regime change. I am deeply skeptical that that would actually happen. And by the way, this is also something about this administration where they're not actually engaged in regime change in Venezuela, for example. They snatched the leader, but it's been very clear from the Trump White House that they are comfortable with Delci Rodriguez there as opposed to Maria Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who probably won the... Or her movement probably won the election last year. It's almost like the administration. Doesn't actually care about the fundamental character of the regimes they're opposing. They just want, and I apologize for the language, during the Cold War, you know, you often had U.S. Leaders talk about allies that were less than democratic saying, well, you know, he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of the bitch. I think you were seeing an administration that basically says, we want our SOBs in power.

Jon Bateman: Can you do that play in Iran? Is there a son of a bitch in Iran that could take Khamenei's place, not necessarily overturn the regime, and maybe, like we're seeing with Rodriguez, not even change the rhetoric or the kind of overall diplomatic posture toward the U.S., but just kind of do us favors here and there on core issues?

Dan Drezner: You know, I'm not gonna rule out anything at this point. I mean, the very fact that you had Delci-Rodriguez, I mean at least if the rumors are correct, sort of help nudge Maduro out, suggests that maybe there is someone in Iran who might wanna do that as well. Although Iran is not Venezuela, you know. You know there are great powers that have a somewhat more vested interest in making sure that Iran stays relatively loyal to them. Although by the way this is another backdrop in all this. And it's funny, for an administration that claims that we want to end the war in Ukraine, one of the things you have to appreciate is that Russia being tied down in Ukraine has actually yielded some significant strategic benefits for the rest of the world, because that was how Assad falls in Syria, for example. They couldn't devote any attention to that. They certainly didn't devote any attention Maduro and Venezuela. I don't know what they're gonna do with respect to Iran. I don't know if they have the bandwidth to cope with that.

Jon Bateman: I don't know either. I mean, one of the things that happened is during the brief war last year over Iran's nuclear program. Israel took out a bunch of Iran's air defenses that were Russian made. My understanding is those systems have not been backfilled. I think just like American air defense systems are in high demand and hard to come by, the same is true of the Russian ones. And so there's actually still an opening there to strike Iran in part because Russia's not been able to replenish.

Dan Drezner: Right. Although one of the questions then is how Iran retaliates. Iran has an awful lot of ballistic missiles. And so I think part of the...the other reason that the Gulf states are not thrilled about where the Trump administration is going on this is that they're gonna be the likely targets in addition to Israel at any kind of retaliatory strike by Iran. And if you remember last year during that very brief air war, it was almost Kabuki theater where the administration launched air attacks. Iran responded by saying, we're go and launch missiles at Qatar. And they had the courtesy to call in advance and say, by the way, we're going to launch missiles at gutters. So, you know, just be prepared for that. I don't know if that's how they're going to react this time. You might see escalation this time

Jon Bateman: As a longtime Iran watcher, I have to say, I've been surprised continuously about how Iran and its proxies have underreacted and underretaliated to almost everything the US and Israel has done in the last few years. There's never really been a successful revenge plot to the Soleimani assassination. There were these Kabuki theater missile strikes that we've seen. Israel took out the heads of Hezbollah and Hamas, and also a bunch of Iranian military leaders in Iran. No equivalent retaliation. So I can imagine why somebody sitting in the situation room or somebody sitting in Netanyahu's security cabinet would think to themselves, we have all the cards. Iran and its proxies have backed down again and again. And This is a moment in history in which decapitation strikes with minimal consequences have been.

Dan Drezner: It's possible. On the other hand, the thing you have to realize is that up until now, most of what Israel and the United States have done have not represented an existential threat to the Iranian regime. Based on what we're hearing now, this sounds a touch more existential. And this is the part where I'm not sure the administration has fully thought this through. If you're really aiming at regime change, if you're trying to say we are going to launch an all-out strike, Iran's not going to be constrained in its response. They're gonna go down swinging. And so it'll be interesting to see what the effect is on an Israel that, by the way, is I think pretty sick of, you know, a population that's kind of sick of what has happened in terms of fighting since October 7th. Or the Gulf states, which has so far been kept sheltered from this, if you start seeing attacks on oil facilities there. Does President...

Jon Bateman: Trump's base? Does his party want a war with Iran? Do the American people want a war with the Iran? I mean, one of the things that's striking about this moment with Venezuela, other military situations, including last year in Iran, is Trump seems to prefer to rely entirely on executive authority. He has not gone to Congress. He is not given the Oval Office speeches to try to. Rally his party and the American people to support these actions. And with Iran now, he's not really out there saying anything about it. So that's vulnerable.

Dan Drezner: What's the politics of this? So a couple of things on this. The first is, in partial defense of Donald Trump, he is hardly the first president who has engaged in executive action with minimal consultation with Congress. It's been true. Think about the Obama administration on Libya. Think about Biden administration with respect to aiding Ukraine. Unfortunately, this represents a sort of slow motion transfer of power from Congress to the presidency. Since, frankly, the end of the Watergate era. And so that's a significant problem that you have to recognize. The second thing, and this is always painful for me as a professor of national politics to acknowledge, is that Americans fundamentally don't care about foreign policy. They really don't. And there's a logic for why they don't care about it. You know, they are cared about... What they care about are bread butter pocketbook issues. You know, they care about their neighborhoods. They do care about the fundamental security of the United States, but none of what we're talking about in terms of Iran or Venezuela fundamentally affects U.S., you know, homeland security, which means that in some cases, there was a lot of belief that the MAGA coalition was more isolationist, was more, why are we spending so much overseas on military ventures instead of focusing on the home? Actually, it turns out that if Trump says he's for this, I mean, you saw how his base reacted to Venezuela. There's also polling that suggests that the MAGA coalition will be fine on going on Iran. And so there's this... I have to say, I wrote about this on the Substack, I kind of feel like we're living on an animal farm right now, where the novel by Orwell, where Trump came to power in 2016 in no small part. Because he was bashing the foreign policy of neoconservatives and, you know, Bush administration era officials who said, we want to make the world safe for democracy. We want to make the word safe for human rights. We are taking out bad actors. And Trump pointed out legitimately that this hadn't worked out terribly well. You're now basically seeing that articulation by the Trump administration. You know, not less the democracy and human rights, but more why are people complaining when we're going after bad actors like duro or. And the answer is, yeah, they're bad actors, but is this really the right allocation of resources, is this is really the priority in terms of what you should be focusing on?

Jon Bateman: We're seeing small pockets of resistance within MAGA, so Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson. They have been very concerned with the banging of the war drums toward Iran. Yeah. I wonder if there were a big military commitment, like boots on the ground, Americans being killed from missile strikes, you know. Terrorist attacks inside the United States because of Hezbollah sleeper cells. All of this is within the realm of possibility. Does that then open up a lane in 2028 where JD Vance, Marco Rubio, they seem to be the heirs and yet they would be tied to some of these foreign adventures? Someone else could come in and kind of take that isolationist brand.

Dan Drezner: It's possible. I mean, let me put it this way. I think if this happens this year, it's gonna be an issue for 2026 as well. You're gonna have Democrats saying, look, people are concerned about affordability. People are concerned the state of the U.S. Economy, about inflation, and you're focused on Iran right now. You're focused on Venezuela on this board of peace. Why don't you actually try to focus on the U S economy, of which there is profound dissatisfaction in the polls at least. In terms of foreign policy... Yeah, I mean, there's no denying that if the Trump administration goes into Iran and it gets messy, you're talking about Rubio and Vance. Yeah, they're going to get tarred and feathered with this. Maybe it's a moment then for someone like Rand Paul, who has a more, isolation is not the fair word, but certainly a more restraint model when it comes to foreign policy. I think the other question is how Democrats respond to all of this. And you're seeing. One of the things that happened in Munich, to go back to that conference, was how many Democratic Party hopefuls were there. I, you know, walked in the halls. I saw Gavin Newsom numerous times. I saw Mark Kelly, Fairmott. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was there. And Gretchen Whitmer was also there, yeah. And so you're seeing one of the other messages, it wasn't just the Trump administration that was there, you're also seeing Democrats say, hey, you, know, this is not going to last. And you might want to think about what we think about with respect to

Jon Bateman: foreign policy. And what do they think about? I mean, many of these people, they are not foreign policy specialists, right? They're governors. In AOC's case, she is a member of Congress and so she's touching foreign policy, but as we've seen, many of the major foreign policy challenges of our time, like a relationship with China, Taiwan, and so forth, it's not core to her public identity, her political project. So, you know, where is... Where is the Democratic Party heading on these issues? Maybe there's a moment right now where it's sufficient to just be against whatever Trump is for, but that seems like that's not gonna be a satisfactory answer for very long.

Dan Drezner: It's also tricky because the dirty secret about Democrats is that there are areas where they have agreed with Trump. Think about trade policy, for example. I don't think anyone would... I don't think Democrats were thrilled with the Liberation Day terrorist, but if you take a look at the Biden administration's trade policy you can argue it was actually a continuation of Trump's first term trade policy in which they were interested in industrial policy. They enacted subsidies that were actually harmful to European allies. They tried to come up with these sort of economic security agreements and I don't really succeeded. For a variety of reasons. I think there's gonna be an interesting debate in Democratic party circles, you know, not just among the candidates, but also sort of among the Democratic foreign policy advisors of what is the proper post-Trump foreign policy? I mean, I know what I would say as a former Republican, but you could see different strands. I mean AOC, I think, is trying to articulate a more class-based working class foreign policy. I am deeply skeptical of whether that is actually going to work because, again, the American working class doesn't care that much about foreign policy. And I think the effort to try to tie it within a domestic argument doesn't really work. I would say what you want to articulate is a foreign policy that recognizes the new realities in terms of the distribution of power in the world, recognizing that China is now a peer competitor, that there are shifts in power away from states towards private actors, and that we're going to have to navigate that. But also a world where recognizing that sort of rhetorical flights of fancy, which Trump is God knows prone to, are counterproductive. And that, you know, just as you want to have proper relations with China and other countries, you also want to have even better relations with our allies. Yeah, it's interesting.

Jon Bateman: You know, Trump often seems to act like he'd rather be feared than loved on the world stage, right? And this is, it's kind of shocking to Democrats. Democrats seem to have a more of an internationalist strain. They like friends. They like allies. They like being the nice guy. If a Democrat succeeds Trump, that person will inherit the leadership of a world that has come to fear the United States and fear the U.S. President more than they once dead. Do you just give that up and say, nothing to fear here? Or do you actually say, well, I've got some leverage that I didn't have before. How could I?

Dan Drezner: I use it? So I teach a course called Classics of International Relations Theory at Fletcher, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because you're talking about feared as opposed to loved, and this comes straight from Machiavelli's The Prince. What not as many people remember if they read The Prince is that Machiavellis said it was always better to be feared than loved, but he said the worst thing was to be hated. And I would argue that's the problem with what Trump is doing right now. My concern is not whether the rest of the world fears the United States. It's whether it hates the United States. And, you know, you're seeing polling come out showing Canadians, you know, look at the United States is now the greatest threat in the world. And so if I'm a Democrat, what I say is, look, the United States should be respected around the world, both for the greatness of what we do and also for, you know, some other things that we're not going to clear our throat too loudly about, namely the large US military. But we also want to articulate values that we think are more universal in nature because we don't want to be hated. Because if we do that, all we are doing is guaranteeing you know, a balancing coalition that will make our lives that much harder. And so even if you agree with the ends that Trump is necessarily advocating in terms of a world that, you know better suits the U.S. National interest, the way he's going about it is the most self-sabotaging way.

Jon Bateman: I wonder how you'd respond to the following counter to that. Let's say the world now hates us. What can they do about it? So you've mentioned Davos. Prime Minister Carney of Canada gave a blockbuster speech there in which he said, the mask is off of America. We now know that America can't be relied on. They're not necessarily our leader. We, the small and middle powers, need to go our own way and take our own fate in our own hands. What can they really do, though? What options can they have? If you think about Canada, even the UK, France, Germany, they are very weak militarily. They're very dependent on trade with the United States. They rely on us for intelligence, for our financial networks. What can the really do?

Dan Drezner: Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, it's a valid point because if there's something we should have learned over the last year, it turns out the collective action on a global scale is really hard if the U.S. Isn't in the lead. You know, you could have thought that after the Liberation Day tariffs, there would have been a whole variety of countries that might have wanted to work collectively, and that's not how it worked out, with the exception of the European Union, obviously, and they've already got the institutions. I do think there are a couple things that they're doing, and already seeing this. So, for example, on trade, you're seeing... The European Union launched. You know, what's interesting is how the Trump administration by raising tariffs could have triggered an all-out trade war of all against all. And that's not what's happened. Instead, other countries have been negotiating with the U.S. They're also negotiating trade liberalizing agreements with everyone else. The EU has inked agreements with Canada, with India, with Merckiser. And so one thing is you say, fine, we will slowly lessen our reliance on the United States. It's not gonna be something it's done overnight, but it's something that's going to take some time. On the defense side of things, I think that's the strongest sort of pro-Trump, I think, talking point, which is to say, is there anything they're really gonna be able to do, you know, in response? And you could argue that, you know, even now I think Europeans are just desperately hoping that the Trump administration and the Trump administration's successor doesn't fundamentally alter the security bargain. Because for Europeans, you're talking, you, know, trying to build up their military-industrial complex. You're talking about a decade or generation-long project. And choosing between that or hoping that America comes to its senses, there's a reason why you're going to hope that America comes to it senses. That's the cheaper option in some ways. So it's a valid point. From the US perspective, though, what I would caution about all of this is in terms of what they can do, not much in the short term, but in the long term, I think, and again, this administration profoundly misunderstands the sort of some of the core pillars. Of U.S. National power and U. S. National strength. One of those is we attract the best of the best from the rest of the world. You know, I admit that this is I'm a professor at a pretty prestigious university. I can tell you that one of the sources of American strength is the fact that our knowledge base, you know, is unrivaled. But if we can't let students come into this country, if we start not having tourists wanting to through if people start thinking why should I rely on the dollar? When it just makes us vulnerable. Maybe I should start buying euro bonds instead, or I should like looking, you know, maybe buying gold, and this is one of the reasons gold is going through the roof. People are desperately looking for ways to diversify their reliance on the United States. And while it's not going to happen in the short term, come back to me in a decade and tell me what U.S. Influence is. That's in some ways the most frustrating thing about this administration. A lot of the negative outcomes of what this is, what they are doing are not going to be manifestly obvious over the next three years. It'll be clearer in 2036 than it is now.

Jon Bateman: By which point, nobody will agree whose fault it was and why it happened. Fatal flaw in democratic politics, unfortunately. You mentioned your university job. So you teach at Tufts. You're an academic dean, a distinguished professor of international politics. You are at the Fletcher School, which is a premier school of diplomacy, statecraft, national security. Keep saying the nice things. I really like this. I just want to kind of credential you here, because I think that a lot of people aren't familiar with these institutions. Yep. Institutions like the Fletcher School. Train future practitioners in the realms that we're talking about here, people who will work in the National Security Council staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the State Department, the Foreign Service, and in foreign equivalents often. What are you telling those people about how to operate in the world in which the forms, the law, the balance of power, who's hated, who is loved. Is topsy-turvy and changing every day.

Dan Drezner: So there's a couple of things we're doing on this. The first is, one of the things we are going to be developing starting in the fall semester is we're going to developing an ethics course. We have ethics courses on syllabus, but in the course catalog, we're going to making a mandatory ethics course for our students. And one of reasons is precisely, we are in a new world. So one of things, we want our students to be schooled in is not just the tools of power, but how to use them in such a way that you can also look in the mirror in the morning. And the other thing we're trying to work on more at Fletcher is encourage experiential education. In other words, we don't just want to teach our students inside the classroom. We want them to have experiences outside the classroom such that when they go to either the Pentagon or to, you know, the UN or to the IMF or to their home government, they are going to do things and recognize, oh. Now I understand why that tabletop exercise was useful.

Jon Bateman: Classically, somebody in these kinds of staff roles, right, as part of when you're in the belly of the beast and you're writing a memo for the Secretary of Defense or something like that, that's your genre. It's like the two-page policy memo with a bottom line up front. Pages is long if you go to one page. Yeah, nowadays, right? Yeah, one page, and yet, in this rapidly changing information environment, there are people who are writing substacks or Twitter threads that are being circulated within the Pentagon and the White House and their foreign equivalents faster and more effectively and reaching senior leaders better than a kind of point to point policy memo. You have a substack. I do. Dresdner's World. What does the world look like from Dresden's World? I mean, you have a traditional academic perch, you've written books, but you've and to use this digital tool. What do you find it adds? What do you find that it changes in terms of your ability to influence the foreign policy conversation?

Dan Drezner: I will say that, you know, like I was in Munich, for example, and occasionally people brought up the Substack to me, which was, I think, a little bit surprising. But also, you, know, we had an event at Carnegie last night about civil-military relations, and some of the attendees also brought it up there. It's flattering and also humbling, occasionally, to realize that people read it.

Jon Bateman: And maybe more people read that than your latest piece in the Journal of International Security, right?

Dan Drezner: I guess I don't think of it as either or. I've always thought of it as compliments rather than substitutes. So for example, if I publish a piece in foreign affairs or I publish piece in international security, I'm also gonna talk about it on the sub stack and talk about the process that goes into it. And as much as we might talk about short attention spans and whether that affects foreign policy, whether you have to do something in a tweet length, I don't know about you, occasionally the threads that I see getting circulated you know, multiple thousands of words, or a podcast that is 90 minutes long. Yes, or six hours. Yes, exactly. So, there clearly is an appetite for this. Yeah.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, digital does not mean insubstantial, right? There actually is some kind of audience for long-form, deep, rigorous thinking, and on some issues like AI policy, you will actually find some of the most sophisticated thinking on these online platforms with no gatekeepers.

Dan Drezner: That said, I really, like, this might be old school of me, I think editors are awesome. You know, I do the sub-stack and it is, there's a joke I write about it. I say the hard working staff at Dresden's World. The hard working stuff is me, there's no one else. You know so I exploit myself like just brutally. And there's part of my brain that wants to go on strike every once in a while, demand better working conditions. But I also recognize that there are things that. You know, are appropriate for the substack. And then there are things where I think, no, I want to take some more time and compose this and craft this more carefully. And I also need editorial guidance on it. You know, so my colleague, my podcast partner, Annamarie Cox once said that the thing about blogging is that it makes bad writing look pretty. And I do think that's true of substacks and others. But the ones that I think rise to the top. Ideally, combine two things. The first is an authenticity in terms of what the voice is, that they're not just trying to blow with the political winds. And the second is that they are decent writers, that even if the pros might be, on occasion, worthy of some pruning, there's enough there that holds your attention, and that the ideas are clearly thought out, such that you're actually learning something. You know.

Jon Bateman: Yeah, and there can be an over-correction here, too. I mean, like, yes, you have your substack, but you have not abandoned your academic career. No. These institutional vehicles, other pathways, they still exist. They still have power. I said, somebody said to me the other day, they just published an article in Foreign Affairs, which is a very elite journal. Yeah, I've heard about it. It's a little obscure journal. I know, right. But some people watching us might not have heard of it. It's hardly the New York Times, but there is some circulation of some thousands of people, almost all of whom are pretty influential and informed. And publishing an article in Foreign Affairs still gets you right in the halls of power today.

Dan Drezner: Sure. And also, by the way, like, as I said, it's not mutually exclusive. For example, I think one of the most interesting international relations articles published in the last year is by my colleagues Abraham Newman and Stacey Goddard. They published a piece in International Organization, which is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. It is a, you know, not designed for the mass public, but they wrote an article about the concept of neo-royalism as sort of a theory of why, you now, of global order right now. The argument that the Trump administration, in particular, is not actually... Pursuing a realist foreign policy, they're pursuing a royalist one where what they care about are ties between elites. And you know, we haven't mentioned the Epstein scandal yet, but that's certainly like if you...

Jon Bateman: To bring up Epstein that will juice us in the algorithm.

Dan Drezner: Let's just say the neo-royalist argument really does kind of explain in part what's going on there. And what is interesting is that they published that article and a lot of IR scholars read it, including myself, and thought it was really good. I put it on my top 10 list. Every year I publish something called the Albies, named in honor of Albert Hirschman, of the top 10 articles that I think really provoke thinking. And I don't want to say I played a role in this, but I think they wound up publishing an op-ed in the Times because people start... Everyone.

Jon Bateman: Others started talking about it. I had members of my family send that to me. So it's in the air now. And that is just such a fascinating chain of digital links. Exactly. Like the most, you know, the slowest, most deeply institutionalized academic journal to the times.

Dan Drezner: Through you, the idea stands on its own. Like, I don't wanna claim credit for this, but if I played a small role in popularizing that idea and getting others to discuss it, then that's frankly one of the best things I've ever done.

Jon Bateman: Ideas, I guess, still matter. A good idea, an insightful idea, something that seems to crystallize, something happening in the world that we cannot quite put our fingers on in a fresh and new and powerful way still seems to land despite all the changes in the information environment and the deep changes in our world in politics.

Dan Drezner: Well, again, in some ways, the fact remains, as much as we talk about digital, the sort of diffusion of ways that you can publish, as I said before, when it comes to particularly foreign policy or international relations, frankly, it still remains an elite conversation, not because it's exclusive, but it is because, as they said before fundamentally, most Americans don't care about foreign policy. And so you have to be interested in this to participate in the conversation. And because of that... This is an arena where ideas really do matter. And the idea that sort of captures what is actually going on at the moment is one that can really attract a lot of attention and really provoke a conversation. One that causes people to see things in a different light. And again, as someone who occasionally pervades, traffics in these ideas, if I can write something where it suddenly causes people to sort of alter their view and suddenly something comes into focus, that's the dream.

Jon Bateman: Okay, so here's where I look directly at the camera and say, folks in the audience, you are part of the elite for listening into this conversation. And if you've made it all the way through the end of the episode, despite all of the tremendous demands on your attention, you're actually part of a super intellectual elite. So I wanna thank you out there for joining us in welcome to the elite. And Dan, thanks for being here for it was a very fascinating conversation.

Dan Drezner: Thanks for having me. This was a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it.