 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Vijay Prasad, director of the Tri-Continental Institute of Social Research. And we're going to talk about or delve deep into Trump's world and the kind of changes that have happened since Trump took power. Hello Vijay. Hi, nice to be with you. Vijay, the most basic question which I think people across the world share is, is there any underlying logic to Trump's policies, Trump's worldview at all? Because there is so much contradiction, so much back and forth, so much steps that are withdrawn. So is there any logic at all? Do you see anything there? Well, you know, it's easy to take somebody like Trump and assume that he's incoherent, he's a foolish man. You know, he says things on Twitter that are rather odd and off-color. It's easy to assume that somehow this is about Trump. You know that the missteps say in Korea or in Iran, the inability to move an American project has something to do with Trump. And I think this is a big mistake because it's not about Trump, you know, even the incoherence of his tariff policy against... I mean, who does a tariff policy on the same day going after Europe, Mexico, and Canada? I mean, and China. You know, I mean, what kind of policy is that? Shouldn't you be strategic? You want to subordinate that country, then try another. So it's not that this is about Trump as a person or Trump's particular ideology, you know, whether you call it populism or neo-fascism, it's got nothing to do with that. The position of the United States and its ability to move an agenda on the world stage has changed and it has changed, I think, over the last 15 years. So what you see now as this, I think, quite remarkable incoherence was available even when Obama was in office and certainly when Bush was in office. The difference, of course, was that Obama and Bush were slightly more intelligent in the way they were trying to engage those contradictions. You know, Obama, rather than, you know, going for a full-scale assault on Iran, attempted to box Iran in in a nuclear deal, which itself, you know, is a problematic deal. It's not that the nuclear deal was paradise. So this is a long-term attrition of American power and a certain incoherence in U.S. policy, which I think is very dramatically demonstrated in Trump. But this is not about Trump. So, for instance, if you look at, say, the tariff policy to go a bit more into that, China is supposed to be the actual target, although it's not clear why exactly the European Union or Canada was this thing. So how would you see the relationship with the United States with China right now, considering especially that it's, like you said, it's been increasingly unable to push its policies and even, for instance, in the South China Sea or you have the Pacific area, China has increasingly been able to increase its influence or the Belt Road project for that matter, which is now becoming a... So how do you see China actually proceeding or its strategic moves in the coming couple of years? China is in an interesting position. In 91-92, when the Chinese decided to move in this direction of increasing their factory, their production through manufacturing, when they produced these interesting combination of free trade areas and new capital to state-owned enterprises and so on and so on. So when they began this initially for the first 10 to 15 years, the Chinese went to the default buyer of last resort, which was the United States and to some extent Europe. So Chinese goods were going largely to the West and the West then of course was finding that because of, you know, things like wage arbitrage of big firms, big firms were deciding it's cheaper to build things in China than to build things in the United States or in, you know, France and so on. Because of that, Western capital itself was relocating its production facilities in China, in Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. And so what you saw was the Chinese then selling the goods here and Raghuram Rajan, who, you know, was at the time the chief economist at the IMF, said that this is a satanic cycle. You know, the Chinese are producing goods, the Americans are buying it on credit and then the Americans are relying on the Chinese to supply credit to their consumers. Meanwhile, the Chinese consumers were not buying these goods. I think during the credit crisis, the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, you know, in other words, in 91-92 they did these reforms in China. There was the satanic cycle up to about 2007-2008. Then after the collapse of the American credit market, that's why it's actually more accurate to talk about what happened in 2007-2008 as a credit crisis than a financial crisis. It's a credit crisis. People are not able to get credit for individual consumption to buy Chinese goods and so on. The Chinese began to very, I think, deliberately pivot to create new markets. You know, whether the markets were in Africa, in South America, or indeed across Eurasia. So this Belt and Road project that the Chinese have, which is something they've been slowly developing, you know, bringing, integrating as it was Central Asia, much more firmly into the Chinese economic agenda, integrating Southeast Asia, going all the way out to Iran and Turkey and therefore into Southern Europe. I mean, this is the Chinese attempt to diversify from relying upon the American market. And they've essentially been doing this for a decade. It's not a new thing. And as they've been doing this, China's reliance on the American market has decreased. And I think this is what rattled the Obama administration. And the Obama administration, then with its closest allies, pushed for the Trans-Pacific partnership. And Trump, again, riding the horns of a dilemma between protecting American industry and boxing in China, instead of going in the direction of writing new rules for world trade, said we will use a tariff policy to get China. Both Obama and Trump have been trying to constrain China's growth. So they're actually part of the same policy. They've just used different tactics. And if you look at the other key player in this emerging multipolar situation, it's obviously Russia. And Russia in recent times has also expanded its strategic footprint. Now it's, what do you call it, it's playing a stabilizing role to a large extent in Syria. It's also been engaging in West Asia quite a bit. Whereas if you look at what's happening in the United States towards Russia, it's a return to the old bogies of the red menace or that kind of influence. So does the United States have even some sort of a coherent policy towards Russia or is it just stabbing in the dark? See, for example, the important thing with Russia is to understand that unlike China, China has a project which is, let's call it, a different kind of a Chinese-led globalization. If the project from the early 90s that the Americans pushed after the collapse of the Soviet Union was an American-led globalization through the World Trade Organization, you know, through various international institutions, that's one, that was the American approach, centralized the dollar, you know, make all production in this global commodity chain circulate around American and Western European and Japanese firms. That was American-led globalization. The Chinese have a Chinese-led globalization, belt and road, string of pearls, link to South America, et cetera. The Russians don't have an alternative globalization, a Russian-led. Russia is a totally defensive power. It is not an offensive power. Let's take the two examples of Ukraine and Syria. You know, Russia has no warm water ports in territorial Russia. The only two warm water ports are in Sevastopol on the Crimea, which used to be part of Ukraine, and in Tartus, Latakia, in Syria. So the two places where the Russians have been very aggressive in the last five, six years are Ukraine and in Syria. But these have to do with their defensiveness as they feel encircled by NATO, the United States, Japan and so on. I mean, they are struggling to maintain some military footprint. I actually don't see Russia and China as two countries in the same league. China is very much pushing a different or an alternative kind of globalization. The Russians are merely acting to protect their, say, territorial integrity and their military footprint. The Americans are totally misreading the situation because they see Russia as an aggressive power and they see China as this economic power. In other words, one is a military power, one is an economic power. That's a completely erroneous understanding. Russia is a defensive power and China is seeking an alternative. So to come to, say, certain areas where many of these interests are overlapping, for instance, if you look at a place like Iran, and Trump's policy has been really, it's been provocative, obviously, and it's also been completely not in consonance with many of their key allies. So what exactly is the logic here? I mean, is there any logic at all? Again, going back to the old question, because what do you call it? The deal had established some amount of, as you said, it was actually, it was no paradise, but it had established some amount of, say, stability, so to speak. And now, despite the fact that the European Union is going to be massively affected, even American companies are going to be hit. So it just seems like an act of random belligerence, so to speak. Well, it's so, I mean, the Iran policy is so fascinating because in a sense, until 2003, the West had a way to deal with Iran. You know, they tried this military maneuver via Iraq. After the Iranian Revolution in 79, they funded the Iraqis and go and attack the Iranians. That war went on from 80 to 88. God knows how many people died. The Iraqis, you know, given chemical weapons by the Federal Republic of Germany, they attacked with chemical weapons. It was a terrible war. See, it's interesting that Iran, which had been deeply weakened after the Iranian Revolution, it was very weak. You know, the institutional framework, all the elites had left. So much of the technological people had gone. Their internal nuclear energy program collapsed and so on. So it's so interesting if you look at when Iran becomes a problem. Iran was not a problem from, say, 1988 to 2003. It was quite a weak power. When the Americans went and overthrew Saddam Hussein. And on the other side, overthrew the Taliban. On the two borders of Iran, you basically, the Americans got rid of Iran's enemies. And then Iran could now exert itself all the way out to Syria, to Lebanon, to Hezbollah, etc. So this period suddenly opens a new political project, which is send Iran back to its borders. The Americans, Israelis, Saudis tried all kinds of things. They built to basically put pressure on Assad, who was first passed in the U.S. Congress in 2003. Syria Accountability Act. Then the Israelis go to war against Hezbollah, against the Lebanese in 2006. And then comes out of nowhere this threat of Iranian nuclear weapons. So this is, again, another long-term incoherent problem that the Americans were losing the plot to subordinate this part of the world. You know, it's that longer-term thing. So Obama, of course, comes up with this little mechanism, you know, with the Europeans. Now, that mechanism came almost out of nowhere. I mean, the fact of the matter is, the Americans and the Europeans shot themselves in the foot. You've got Europe sitting right there, this part of Eurasia. It gets its energy from three places. Libya, Iran and Russia. Now you've got a sanctions policy on Russia. You have a sanctions policy on Iran. And you've destroyed Libya. So Europe has no access to energy. So the Europeans were eager. You can't stabilize Libya. That's a long-term crisis. The Russians, some of the Americans have this paranoid thing. You're not going to really stabilize with the Russians. Although the Germans have allowed a pipeline to go through, you know, Scandinavia into Germany. They're going to buck the sanctions. And you can only deal with the Iranians in a way. So the Iran deal was pushed out of basically desperation by Europe. And the Iranians know this. You know, so Trump comes in and there is that residue of this policy pushed by the Israelis. You've got to send them back to the borders. You know, Obama was able to dance around that a little bit. Trump faced it again. So now they say we're going to get out of the deal. But meanwhile, nobody wants to come with Americans. The Europeans can't afford to. India can't afford. I mean, India. India, in so many ways, totally subordinate to U.S. foreign policy, can't afford to go. So the coherence is in that sense the attrition of American power, some very stupid policy decisions. But apart from anything else, it's that the Americans will have to come to terms eventually with the fact that even though they have the world's largest military, they're losing political power. And so they can overthrow governments. They can't control the world. They can't manage the world. And that is why I see now the emergence of different poles of influence, multi-polarity becoming important for a long period from the 90s to the 2000s. The Americans were really able to shape and manage the world order. Now that's just not going to be possible. Right. And at the same time, another similar set of policies that have really backfired are Trump's policies on Israel also. I mean, the shifting of the embassy, whatever the attempt logic was behind that, it really did not carry water with anybody. The General Assembly took a very strong stance against it, popular mobilizations. So again, it seemed like something that was done purely under Israeli pressure or to please Israelis, but has no strategic value whatsoever. So again, American policy on Israel has had a consistency. I mean, the Americans have been underwriting the building of the settlements in the West Bank. I don't just mean the government of the United States. The government allows American citizens to give money for the building of settlements, and then that money given is a tax benefit in America. So you get it. American government gives a tax benefit for private donations to build illegal settlements. So this is a long-term policy of basically trying to undermine the Palestinians. What Trump has done, which is, I mean, quite interesting in a way, is I think he's made it impossible for a generation of Palestinian leaders to mouth the kind of Oslo, in other words, the peace process language saying that the Americans are an honest broker. I mean, Trump has basically destroyed that illusion. It's going to be hard for the more established Palestinian leaders, many of them on NGO kind of payrolls and so on, to talk of the Americans as nobody is going to believe them anymore. This has created clarity. But clarity is not a politics project. I mean, you can be clear about something, but what's the agenda? Now in Palestine, I think an alternative framework has got to be created. These farmers unions and so on have to develop new mass struggles. Let's see what's going to happen. But the fact of the matter is that, again, you're right. This is another very good example of the incoherence, the attempt to, I think, drive American policy through the walls of other countries. And you discover when you end up on the other side that you really haven't built paradise. I mean, you've just broken a door. And moving to maybe the most contemporary of issues right now, it's only about four more days for a session. What is happening in the Korea is exactly so. In some ways, it's definitely a landmark. It's a milestone, no doubts about that. And it's kind of ironic that it's under Trump that something of this sort is happening after so many years if some sort of a stalemate, so to speak. But again, if you look at the way he's kind of made certain proposals, gone back, shown his usual, what do you call it, irritability and unpredictability, is there a likelihood of the process going further or do you think that it might just stall because despite how much South Korea wants to take it forward? Nonetheless, the fact remains that the U.S. military presence there is so strong. Japan is also under, of course, a fairly right-wing government. So is there any possibility of, will he get a Nobel Peace Prize for this? I don't think Trump is getting, I don't think he'll get the prize. I mean, if anything, Kim and Moon will get a prize. Which, I mean, in a sense, if Obama can win a prize, Kim and Moon have won it, you know, 100 times more than Obama. But I think the Korean thing, I'll just make two quick points. You know, one of them is, it's without doubt that 70 million-odd people live on the Korean Peninsula. I mean, that's a fact, right? And I think they don't want to live under a situation of being hostages to somebody else's war. I think that's what Kim and that's what Moon, Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Kim Jong-un of North Korea, I think, the two of them have condensed, have brought together the simple sense that 70 million people don't want to live under hostage situation. That's what essentially this unfinished war from 1950 has been. People have been under hostage. So that, I think, is something that they have actually demonstrated quite well and it's powerful. But the second point, I think, is an important parallel that I want to bring up. You know, when conversations began in Germany, you know, after all, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Democratic Republic of Germany, DDR, East Germany, West Germany, were divided around the same time as the Koreans. You know, so you had an East Germany that was in the Soviet sort of orbit and a West Germany in the Western orbit. Now, their conversation for normalizing relationship happened when the Soviets were collapsing. And so the East German's hand in a negotiation was virtually zero. So what you saw there was the Federal Republic of Germany essentially colonizing the East. And that feeling is still there in East Germany. You know, that the East Germans feel that there is no remainder of their attempts to create, you know, whatever, social democracy. And, you know, you meet East Germans and they're quite fed up with the propaganda that all that East Germany was was a police state. I mean, it was far more than a police state. It's a ridiculous reduction of East German history. Now, at this moment, and this is why I say it's an instructive parallel, China is not collapsing. China is one of the main external, not allies, but in a sense, they have a relationship with North Korea. So the North Koreans are actually coming to the table and they know it with a great deal more strength than the East Germans were in the late 1980s. And the North Koreans are not willing to surrender to the South. And I think even Moon Jae-in knows that, which is why he's very much respectful towards Kim Jong-un. I mean, they've said very respectful things. I think they have understood that there may not be a unification as such, but they're going to slowly build the confidence of people, of the 70 million people to establish relations with each other. And because the Chinese are sitting there, they're standing surety in a way because they don't want the American forces to be at the Yalu River, you know, on the border with China. They want the American forces to leave the peninsula. I mean, they're not keen on this. So they don't want the collapse of North Korea. And, you know, I'll tell you something interesting that, you know, in Japan, the government is led by Shinzo Abe, whose grandfather was a fascistic fellow who participated in the war in Korea. But Mr. Abe is leading a government in a country that has demonstrated that it is quite keen on this peace process because they don't want to be used as a lily pad for American ambitions. So I think, you know, that this game is just opening. It has really, in a sense, nothing to do with Trump as much as that the situation of incoherence of American power has allowed the Koreas to come out of this hostage situation. I'm a big, I mean, I'm very optimistic about what's happening. It may not be a deal now, tomorrow, in the three days or whatever. This meeting might not happen, you know. It doesn't matter. The fact is that both Kim and Moon have demonstrated that 70 million Koreans are not interested in the old way. They want a new way forward. And I think they're going to get it. And finally, to come back to, what do you call it, Europe, actually. So in Europe, the situation basically right now is the whole European Union consensus, so to speak, is collapsing at a very rapid pace. And to some extent, Trump's policies or the whole sense of politics he's built in the United States is actually in some senses getting reflected there. And some of his policies really don't help that EU consensus anymore. So what is the future of Europe, so to speak? We have seen Italy right now. We've seen changes happening in Spain. We've seen the right wing growing rapidly in most countries in Europe right now. And there's a lot of parallels between what's happened in the United States and what's happening there, too. As you know that in Europe, the kind of crisis of the Union has started before Trump. After all, the situation of Greece is the canary. But even before Greece, the Brussels project, the project of the EU was always a problematic project. How can you have a customs union but no political union? Or how can you have a political union but you have no economic? I mean, this is the constant debate since the 1940s. Some people say, let's have some milk toast, political agreement, but we'll keep on. Let's have a currency together. How can you have a currency together but you have different political jurisdictions? I mean, it's a very incoherent project. It's not a perfect project that's fallen apart. That's one issue. I think that's there. And I think the reflection of incoherence has come in both directions. And I'm not one of those who talks about left populism. I think it's a ridiculous idea. One is fascism. That is the governments that have come, urban government, the political party that did well in Slovenia and the election. These are fascistic governments. On the political forces. On the other side is you have new coalitions of the left that are struggling to produce an alternative vision for the future. So whether it's Malachrona's party in France or in Slovenia, the new party that's emerged, Levyka, won 9.3% of the vote in the Slovenian election. They won the city of Ljubljana, which is the capital of Slovenia. And they won the fifth largest city in Slovenia, which is the main industrial city. Now, that's interesting. You know, the question is, what will Levyka be able to do for the imagination of the Slovenian people? What has Syriza been able to do? What has Podemos been able to do? What has power to the people? What will they do in Italy? What will Corbyn do? You know, every country has a left that is trying desperately to respond to this crisis as well. And they are not taking, you know, the first exit, which is the exit of hate. They are struggling to find a way out. So I think in Europe, I would, I mean, I know that we are tempted to say Trump is reflected in, say, the victory of Mr. Ford in Ontario and Canada or the victory of Urban or whatever. But I really think the European story is quite different from the Trump story, because in Europe, unlike the United States, there are older left forces that are recomposing quite quickly. And they're recomposing as coalitions. Now, I don't know if the experience of coalitions is going to be enough, like, you know, whether this power to the people in Italy, this coalition of Podemos in Spain, I think they've been quite incoherent as of now. So let's see what happens. But it's a really quite an interesting set of experience. I think we need to study them carefully. You know, generally what happens is, we come at them from outside and say, oh, this is going to be a mess. Let's study them carefully. Let's see what they do. Because maybe in the European context, this is a good direction for the left to reform itself and then into something other later. Right. Thank you very much, Ujjay. Hope to have you soon for another discussion. Yeah, pleasure. Thanks a lot. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.