Justin Webb on The Trump World Order (Part 2)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Cirenti. Today's episode is part two of our recent live event in London's Smith Square Hall with Justin Webb. Webb was joined in conversation by journalist and broadcaster Richela Shah to discuss how Donald Trump is reshaping the world order.

But if we turn that on its head and look for chinks in the Trump armor,

There are presumably already people that are getting upset, annoyed. Somebody was telling me about how American farmers are really mad at the cancellation of the total wipeout of USAID. It means that they've lost contracts, things that they were growing, they were expecting to supply to the US government, suddenly those futures contracts are gone. I think it's fair to say that this could go wrong. And it could go wrong quite suddenly and quite soon.

There was a town hall meeting in a congressman, a Republican congressman in Georgia a day or two ago where people were shouting at him. And I think he was quite, I mean, he looked shocked and surprised. And they were shouting at him actually weirdly. You wouldn't expect this in Congress.

rural Georgia and a very Republican district. But it was about what Elon Musk is doing to federal workers and the cruelty of it and suddenly getting letters saying if you don't respond to this by the end of the week I'll assume you've resigned and all the rest of it.

There is a sort of fundamental fairness. I think a lot of Americans are really hacked off with the government. And this is another problem for the Democrats. They tend to defend causes that are quite difficult to defend. And there's a brilliant Democrat who writes for the New York Times, a guy called Ezra Klein, who was pointing out the other day that one of the things that Joe Biden did for the nation was spend $42 billion on rural broadband. And

and none of it, none of it is in place. None of it.

Which is staggering, really. And it's for a whole range of reasons to do with the impositions that they put on the firms. They had to meet certain standards in order to put it out. But basically, they did not manage to enforce it. And a lot of American government is genuinely broken. So a lot of the attacks on the federal government from Elon Musk and this weird group, Doge, that he's got, a lot of it actually does really genuinely impact

allied with where Americans think that they should be on these matters. But, and it's a really big but, as soon as you start doing it cruelly, as soon as you start, because there are two million or so federal workers around America, as soon as they're

telling their friends and family which has been fired for no reason or or they're doing something really important like all the people who look after the nuclear weapons were fired the other day and then they said oh goodness no sorry i mean literally call them up and say no you're unfired uh please go back to post so if that if that becomes a thing you could imagine absolutely that this administration very soon

has to do things. And the first of those things, of course, will be Trump to fire Elon Musk and say, never liked him anyway, and the man's an idiot. Which you can see happening, can't you? I particularly enjoyed Elon Musk's bring your child to work day. The little boy in the Oval Office. Okay, so the other thing to think about from a European perspective, there will be time for lots of questions, so do think about which questions you'd like to ask. But

Thinking about the administration from a European perspective and that speech by J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference where he said, the threat I worry the most about Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's the threat from within. I mean, this wasn't a speech about defending democracy, but doesn't it reveal that...

There is a real difference fundamental difference of values Which could be really difficult beyond whether or not NATO continues in its current form Yeah, I mean there are two things one of the things on the American right at the moment, which is really fascinating actually I'm not really talking just about the Trump White House now, but more widely on the American right there is a sense of who we should be as people and

What we should stand for when we are on the earth and and they like to ask these really fundamental questions always been an aspect as people here will know an aspect of American Politics has been this kind of really seriousness kind of why they like all the the Roman stuff and the Greek stuff and they can they see themselves as

and their republic as being a really important contribution to thought about how human beings should be. And there is a real debate on the American right and interest in the American right about those fundamental things. And one of the things, and you hear this a lot from J.D. Vance, one of the things that they think is that we have become too...

easily persuaded that we should do things that are not in our nature, that we should hold ourselves back from doing what we really should do as people for reasons that are legalistic and reasons that are fundamentally

at odds with our humanity. And this is why the masculinity thing, I think, is really important for modern Republicans. And the idea that men should be men. Vance was saying the other day, I think it was just yesterday, was saying that at a conference, was saying men, you know, young men have been emasculated in America. They should be allowed to. The three things he said was tell a joke,

What was the other thing? Oh, yeah. So tell a joke and be competitive, which I thought was a really interesting one, and drink a beer with their friends. So there's this sort of sense of masculinity not being...

broadly being denigrated, looked down on, and they see, and this is now getting to the answer to your question, Richard, they see Europe as the epitome of

internationalism, what they call globalism, this kind of sense that we should pretend that we care as much about someone who lives a million miles away as we do about our own kith and kin, our own family. And in fact, Vance had this weird spat with Rory Stewart

I don't know if anyone saw this on Twitter the other day or whatever it's called now where Rory Stewart kind of goes for Vance a bit about whether Vance's view of Christianity and Vance comes back at him and whatever you think of the spat and they're talking about each other's IQs and all the rest of it, I won't get into that. But the interesting thing to me was that Vance genuinely and Rory Stewart, Rory Stewart now for the representing the

but also in a sense the progressive left, has this view of us where we should be

curbing our natures in order to be more civilized. Vance says we should not be curbing our inner natures at all because that is what makes us civilized. And in a sense, if you're looking for a kind of intellectual view of why it is that they regard Europe with such contempt, and they do, that it seems to me to be it. Never mind defense spending and all the rest of it. They just don't see us as being on the same page where it comes to actually what

how we should live our lives. There is so much to unpack, and you could apply lots of political theory to it, but let's leave that for another day. So...

So let's think about Keir Starmer then, who's off to the White House later this week. He said today, I think Trump's changed the global conversation on Ukraine for the better, and then went on to kind of caveat all the things that were going on, which I thought was interesting. And if you compare that with Frederick Merz, the incoming German chancellor, after Donald Trump's remarks last week, it's clear that this new U.S. government doesn't care much about the fate of Europe.

There's big differences of approach there. And actually, if you're Keir Starmer, how on earth can you ride both horses, the EU and the US? You can't be a bridge if the other side isn't particularly stable. No, and it's really difficult. And it's why we all want to be a fly on the wall there.

And for Starmer and for his people, for Peter Mandelson, who's then just arrived, but will be trying his best to work out with people he knows there. Peter Mandelson knows Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, I think quite well. He will unquestionably have tapped him to work out what the best way is to

to deal with Trump. There'll be others who have various inputs. And the fundamental, it was interesting when David Lammy came on the Today program two or three weeks ago, and Nick Robinson was saying, how do you deal with this guy? And what do you now like about him that you used to say was sociopathic or whatever the word was? And David Lammy said, well, he's got a sense of humor and it can be funny. And in a way,

Could sort of see I think in the one-to-ones there will be an attempt to have a kind of relationship with him and humor does does matter and and Trump does actually have you know much to the annoyance of of his political opponents and sometimes it's a very vicious sense of humor, but he has he can he has he's a broader person than just kind of crazed bombast and

Narcissist that he often seems to be in his speeches And there are ways to get to him. You know as the were with with with W Bush I I was there when he was president as I say and I there was a moment where we were There's a thing called the White House grip and grin at Christmas where you go and you shake hands with the president in front of a camera and

and you then get the photograph in your inbox a week or two later, and they do it every Christmas, and all the foreign correspondents are welcome. And my friend from The Times was in front of me, and you get introduced by the Secret Service who just say to the President and the First Lady, "This is so-and-so," and say, "This is so-and-so from The London Times." And Bush says to my friend,

"Oh, London Times, I think we just met." And he says that because he has just done an interview with the London Times, and unfortunately it was with someone they'd sent out from London. But my friend, who's a very sort of pucker English public school boy, felt he was unable to say to the president, "No, no, you got that wrong, it wasn't me," and found himself saying to Bush, "Yes, yes, we might have met, we might all have," to which Bush turned to his wife and said, "We'd think you'd have remembered."

It's kind of those moments where you can capture and be part of behind the scenes. And I think, you know, I don't know whether Starmer is able to do this or equipped to do it or whatever, but I think that, you know, there are visceral things where if they can capture

I mean it sounds almost pathetically to say, but if they can laugh with him about things, if they can tell him stories that capture his attention, it can still be a relationship that works. But what they cannot expect is consistency. And if they are, I don't think they are expecting consistency because I think they work these things out, but if they are, they will be bitterly disappointed.

I spoke to a diplomat who said that Lammy had done exactly the right thing by sort of going and kissing the ring and that actually perhaps Dahmer's aim in the talks this week should be to try and get Trump simply to slow down. And if the whole thing slows down, then you've got a chance of getting a better deal. But you often have that impression that Trump reacts to the last person he's spoken to. Yeah. And also is...

As foreign affairs so often is I mean there are domestic aspects to this which will trump almost everything else And and he cares the thing is about Trump He sees America is such an important point about him someone saying to me the other day It's so true. We always tend to describe America as kind of shining city on the hill ideals have Imperfectly achieved these are friends of America tend to sort of you know that kind of Reaganite we can I

show the world, even if we don't go out and biff the world and tell them they've got to be a democracy, at least we show them how wonderful it can be to live in this way. He doesn't give a stuff about that. He's not the remotest bit interested. He sees the United States as a territory, a territory, a geographical entity, and there has not been an American leader, really in the post-war era,

if indeed there ever was, I suppose, who sees America merely in those terms. It is not an idea that is meant to make us all go weak at the knees and think we'd love to go there or whatever. He doesn't give a stuff whether we want to go there or not. It is not interested. It's a territory and it happens to have nuclear weapons and a lot of soldiers and a lot of power and a lot of natural resources and all the rest of it.

And that, you know, I think for Starmer et al, it's getting that kind of stuff straight about what Trump thinks the United States is that is a sort of fundamental building block of where you go with him after that. What kind of a president do you think Trump is? Is he someone who wants to be a king?

- Yeah, I think he does actually. I don't think he'd resile from that. I think he does. I think he wants to. I mean, he believes in the power of the presidency in a way that presidents certainly until

Obama did not although Obama when he had trouble with Congress also talked about the power of the veto and the power of the pen in other words the ability to sign executive orders and he did sign quite a few they're not nearly as many as Donald Trump did on day one and his executive orders you know you think

He wants to bring real change and to bring it fast and he is not in that powerful a position. And this is the other interesting thing about it. If he really wanted to do things at a level that were unstoppable,

he'd do it through Congress. He'd pass laws that could not be countermanded. Instead, he can't do that because he hasn't got enough support in Congress. Instead, what he does is pass these executive orders, some of which, as I was talking about the trans issue, some of which will have real impact

and also be relatively popular. Some of them like the birthright citizenship. My youngest daughter, Clara, is a birthright citizen. She was born in the US. So I feel I should in all BBC manner say that I have an interest in this. But I don't think that the birthright citizenship

thing can fly. I can't see how it can be constitutional and yet he's just signed it anyway and they're gonna go to court and all the rest of it's already going to court. Those sorts of things suggest that he wants to be, that is kingly you see, because that is a clash with the Constitution, it's a clash with a lot of fundamental stuff and it feels as if he wants to bring fundamental change that he does not have

necessarily the right to bring and that previous presidents right up to Biden would not have brought. So it's a mixture actually of wanting to be a king and just wanting to get stuff done which a lot of presidents have either wanted to do and not managed to do and been frustrated about or have given up on.

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Trump's dominated the conversation on the right in the United States since 2016. Where does the Republican Party go after Trump? J.D. Vance is a young man. I mean, you know.

Yeah, does anyone, there are a few senators, Josh Hawley, a couple of others who might well challenge, but if it's been a relatively successful presidency, J.D. Vance will certainly be the candidate next time round, and of course you're talking then about a further eight years.

If he hasn't been, in other words, if various things happen, the Elon Musk thing goes south, I think the bond markets as well. I mean, Donald Trump doesn't care at all about the national debt, but America's national debt to a lot of conservative Republicans is a really big issue and they want to address entitlement spending. So they wanna reduce the amount that America spends on pensions

and they want to reduce the amount that America spends on Medicaid, the medical insurance for people who are poorer and for people who are disabled, and they want to really eat into that, and that is a very big battle. It's not a kind of top-line political battle, but fundamentally it's another of these fissures within the party, and if Trump just spends and spends and spends, you can see a moment in which the bond markets

Intervene and say on a second this isn't going to work and interest rates go up and everything goes very very south in which case JD Vance has the same problem that Kamala Harris had that you're your shackle to a fundamentally unpopular presidency and Wriggle as you might you can't get away from it. So you so in those circumstances you can absolutely see some of the brighter younger

Republican senators and possibly governors as well coming up and saying, okay, this is gonna be ours for the taking. But I mean, we're a few years off knowing what on earth is gonna happen. - And yes, what the economy does with tariffs and so on. When we think then about some of the things that you've described that Trump sees America as a territory, people talk about the transactional nature of his politics,

Is this really pretty much the end of the rules-based world order? Is it a return to 19th century might is right or is that a vast oversimplification? I think it's a bit of an oversimplification because I think the pressures on America are extraordinary and...

The idea that they could completely withdraw into a place where they took no notice of what was going on, I don't think is realistic. I also think there is this real sense among some in the administration that actually they should be gearing up for a war with China. Not necessarily a war that they have to fight, but a war that they need to be prepared to fight

in order to deter the Chinese. And that does not mean withdrawing, obviously, from the Pacific. There is a, you know, you were talking about Ukraine and the kind of wellsprings of, is there any kind of intellectual coherence to what the Trump administration is doing in Ukraine? One of the things they will tell you behind the scenes is,

is we do not believe that there is linkage between pulling out of Ukraine and persuading the Chinese that you can do what you like in the modern world. So that's the kind of, that's what anyone here at the Royal United Services Institute or whatever would tell you, the kind of foreign policy blob would say,

There is an obvious link. If you allow the Russians to get away with it in Ukraine, you will encourage the Chinese to get away with it in Taiwan. They do not believe that that link exists.

They think that Taiwan's a completely separate issue and they are very, very keen to spend all their time and all their effort and all their material and all their money on doing down the Chinese and making sure that China is not in a position

both in Taiwan to attack, but also more widely to challenge America around the world. But that, of course, then does mean, exactly as you point out, Rita, you can't be completely isolationist if you're also involved in opposing China. And I think ultimately that will be the thing that keeps them involved in the outside world.

one last question before we open out to the floor i mean i was listening to a couple of podcasts last week the economist well let's do it the other way around um the um yes the economist came back from the munich security conference and the editor and the defense editor you know were a bit miserable but sanguine we kind of knew this was coming the ft on the other hand was much more apocalyptic that the us is no longer an ally it's an adversary if you live in europe

Which one would you side with? Yeah, I mean, the problem is, and again, if you talk to Trump people, what they say is, hang on a second, where do you think, where do you, the Europeans, think this was ending? What do you think was going to happen? Do you have a plan that ends with all the territory being returned? And if so, what is that plan?

Given that you haven't even used the Russian money that you've got in Europe, 300 billion or so dollars which Bill Browder

campaigner against Russian influence around the world has pointed out is there and could be used but the governments are sort of saying well we might use a bit of the interest but it's a difficult precedent it's a really difficult precedent and we don't want to do this but you know if you really think it's existential maybe set the precedent anyway and you do it and I think there's a one of the

criticisms of Europe from within the US, and you can sort of understand where they're coming from, is that actually we're not that. We keep saying these things are existential and the whole of the world is at stake, or the rules-based community, or this, that, and that. And then when it comes to it, we just go off on holiday like the Spaniards again. I mean, you know, this is a caricature, but you sort of see where they're coming from. I mean, it's actually the same thing with Trump.

The Democrats endlessly said, you know, this is it. If Trump is elected, democracy in America will go. And then when it happened, they just said, oh, yeah, whatever, we will. I mean, they literally went on holiday. And Kamala Harris is wandering around, don't know what she does now. I mean, you know, there's this kind of sense of either you really do think this is a...

Three engine far or whatever the phrase is or you don't and if you do you have to? Demonstrate that you're going to put your money where your mouth is and I think what they would say at a really fundamental Level when it comes to what is the plan? What do you think the outcome is going to be and how do you get to it? They say we haven't been serious

Interesting. I mean, I know those conversations about off ramps were happening two years ago. But anyway, that's another big story to discuss. Let me open it up to all of you. There are so many questions I'm sure you want to ask. There are so many more I want to ask. There are, I think, roving mics. Yes, I can see one over there and one over there. I'll take two. Is that all right, Justin? Can you hold two? Provided you can remember them. Yeah, OK, I'll try and remember them. There's a gentleman there at the front here.

Sadness about what Trump is doing is that it's very short-sighted because the vacuum that he's going to leave globally is going to be taken over by other people and I give examples.

The African Union building in Africa, in Addis Ababa, is built by the Chinese. The best railway in East Africa, in Africa, is in East Africa, built by the Chinese. The Chinese run corner shops in Nigeria. So they're going to take over. And America will lose the leadership that it had for

for ages, which is very sad. Do you have any view on that? Yeah, I mean, I do. I think it's such a good point. So what the gentleman's pointing out is that a lot of the space that is vacated by the Americans is taken over by the Chinese. And the Chinese, of course, are already hugely in the belt and rail or whatever it's called. They have all these initiatives around the world. The view in the administration for what it's worth is that

The terms that the Chinese impose in a lot of these countries are so odious that ultimately it won't do them any good The reality is is that they're already there as you point out and I think you're fundamentally right and also It really hits home you mentioned Africa really hits home in South America where the Chinese are really and and Trump actually himself mentioned didn't he when he was saying they were going to

attack Panama and one of these kind of you know remember when they were going to take over Canada and I think they're still taking over Canada he now refers to Greenland but he refers to Justin Trudeau as the governor of Canada which is

But with Panama, which I felt actually was the most serious threat, he said it's unacceptable that you have Chinese companies now on both ends of the canal and all the rest of it. But exactly as you suggest, well, what's the alternative? The alternative is you make sure that America is represented in these places around the world. You can see that that's going to be a lively debate within the administration. And I suspect that you're right to suggest that

at some stage someone says to him and convinces him that just pulling out of these places and then threatening them from afar doesn't work. - That's a question here. - Yeah, so it seems as though NATO is beginning to teeter somewhat. But when you look at the membership of 30 or so states, around 22 are European plus the UK. The only major ones outside are the US and Canada.

So my question was twofold. One is, do you think Europe plus UK, the EC, what have you, should create an equivalent to Article 5 and essentially put NATO to one side almost? And the second part of that question is, how do you think Trump would respond to basically being shut out of the room and having these conversations take place within Europe?

I mean predicting how Trump will respond to anything is so far above my pay grade because I mean I just I don't think it's possible to do is the honest answer and I think it's in a way I mean you can you could you could try but who knows how he would feel if he felt personally slighted he would react badly if it was done in a positive way as in

look, Donald, we're going to take all these responsibilities off you. Don't you worry. We'll help you out. We still love you. Then you could see that it could work perfectly fine. On the Article 5 thing, so do you still defend every territory? If there's a Russian attack on Estonia or somewhere, or destabilization of Poland?

Via Belarus, which seems to me to be a much more likely thing The extent to which the Americans are involved would be involved in defending I I think it's already in question, isn't it? I think I I mean, you know, I did I didn't know but if I were interviewing someone on the today program about that subject I think I would be asking are we really sure even now that they would would come in other words is the moment already arrived and

And do we need to have a kind of collective security outside NATO? And it's a live debate, isn't it? And the new German Chancellor has already, in a sense, joined it. And I think there is a real chance that NATO...

NATO in its current form is considerably altered by Donald Trump and crucially does not then go back. It's not a one-off thing where everyone says, sorry about that, when he's gone, we'll go back to how things were. Because if it's J.D. Vance, we won't be going back. Well, and even if it's a Democrat president, the world may have moved on. I mean, one of the things that I think we've all forgotten is in the last...

Trump presidency, he kept talking about pulling out of NATO. Well, in a sense, he hasn't needed to do that. He's kind of weakened it just by questioning how much American support there might be. I'm going to take an online question and I will come. There's a question back there. Let me just do an online one. And there's a hand back there. In nearly every administration, the midterms see a big swing in Congress. Is that likely in 2026? One of the Democratic Party's legitimate causes for optimism

that in the polls will tell you writ large in the last 20 or 30 years and probably longer than that the party that is not represented in the White House does blisteringly well in the first set of midterms two years after a new president's come to power because everyone's disappointed and hacked off and and

thinks that they can find something else. And there is an average seat change, which is something like 26, I think, or in the 20s. And the actual number of seats that would have to change hands is still slightly in the air because Trump has appointed a couple of people from Congress to positions. But I mean, the average, it looks as if even a change of three or four seats would be enough.

to swing the House of Representatives. So the House of Representatives almost certainly will be controlled by the Democrats to some extent

After the next midterms the Senate not and it looks much more difficult for them I think it's unlikely that they win back the Senate but the House of Representatives Where in theory? important organ of state where all the money Is is sorted out and voted for etc in the modern presidency with Trump

if we can assume that he is a king for a bit, or trying to rule as a king. As I was saying, he rules as a king because he's not as powerful as he thinks he is, because if he was really powerful, he would rule through Congress and pass these laws. Would it completely change the situation? No, because the Democrats would still have him to contend with, and

may not have enough of a majority themselves in order to pass things that he would have to veto. Does it change American politics though? Bring it back to a more

to an idea of coalitions being made between parties that lead to things happening, possibly it might do that. So I think it's an interesting idea that the Democrats are rescued through the natural warp and weft of American politics and then having some measure of power after the next midterm. - Brilliant, there's a question back there. - Do you think that the blanket January 6th pardon

Is already forgotten or will that come back and bite Trump? Yeah, it's a really interesting one this because the pardon is one thing and I think if they just left it there I think so many Americans want to get beyond it. Whatever they think of what happened that they would be willing Just to allow it to pass. I think if they go after the FBI agents who were involved in the various investigations

That is a more of a problem for him and another of these things where people will say he is politically Overreaching as with the federal government so lots of people thinking the federal government's full of waste Lots of federal government workers are useless Tick-tick, but we just fire them all willy-nilly No, and and similarly with January the 6th. I

There are questions about the extent to which those people were made an example of. There are arguments about whether the Black Lives Matter protesters and rioters got off more lightly. You can have that kind of discussion. It's a discussion that Americans have had.

You can certainly say that there was considerable surprise and he pushed his political capital to the very limit by letting off not just those who had been part of it, but those who had actually taken part in violence as well, as JD Vance seemed to suggest just before the election he wasn't gonna do. So he was pushing the envelope there. But does he go a step further than that now as they've sort of threatened to do and fire

every FBI agent who was given the job of arresting these people, in other words, the FBI agents are just doing what they're actually meant to do constitutionally. Does that become an issue? I mean, I think it's an open question, to be honest. I think it could be, if they're politically smart, something they've just done and is behind them. But I think it won't necessarily be that because they'll try to push it further.

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Connor Boyle, with production and editing by Mark Roberts.