Stephen Miller, a top aide to Donald Trump, signaled a stance in US foreign policy on Monday, saying: "We live in a world … that is governed by strength." Researcher Mike Cowburn told DW how such rhetoric fits into US thinking on the Western Hemisphere.
00:00And I'm joined now by Mike Coburn, a research fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Zeppelin University.
00:08Thank you so much for your time.
00:09What do you think Trump's actions in Venezuela will likely mean for Russian and Chinese interests in the country?
00:15Is this now America's turf?
00:19So it's very clear that the Trump administration wants to get back to us thinking about things in terms of spheres of influence,
00:26with the U.S. having its influence over the Western Hemisphere.
00:30We saw just last night the State Department on Twitter was posting, this is our hemisphere.
00:36And so what we'll see, what we'll expect to see there is kind of pushing out of influence of Russia and China.
00:43Yet I do still think we'll see kind of economic engagement.
00:48And at some level, do the Chinese and the Russians care that much about who they buy their oil from,
00:53whether they buy it directly from Venezuela or if they buy it directly through the U.S.?
00:58I'm not so sure that would be such a concern.
01:01What we might also think about is whether the U.S. is going to therefore be less engaged in other parts of the world,
01:07which might happen.
01:09But again, it's worth noting that we're just less than two weeks out from a U.S. attack in Nigeria.
01:14So it's not as if it's the case that the U.S. is going to focus solely on Latin America at the expense of these other places.
01:23And my hunch is for Russia and China in Venezuela, they will look to continue with their kind of economic relations as much as they can moving forward.
01:32OK, but, you know, Trump ultimately, he does appear to be positioning himself as a man of action.
01:39What do you think his main goals are and what balance will he likely have to strike now,
01:43especially considering the pushback that he's getting, including from the U.N.?
01:47Yeah. So, I mean, we've just had overnight this this kind of quite strong quote from from Stephen Miller,
01:55who's quoted saying we live in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force,
02:01that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of our time.
02:05And I think if you want to really kind of succinct and snappy encapsulation of what this administration's foreign policy is going to look like in 2026 moving forward,
02:16you've kind of got it there in two sentences. Trump thinks about the world in terms of absolute power.
02:22We've really seen this with some of his frustrations with Ukraine.
02:25He can't really understand why Ukraine just doesn't come to the table with Russia and do a deal because he sees Ukraine as kind of this kind of weaker, smaller nation.
02:33And really, that's the way that he thinks about about the world.
02:37He kind of sees that the U.S. has this kind of economic and military power that it's been unwilling to use, in his view.
02:45And he's seen and criticized previous presidents for being, in his view, kind of weak.
02:50And he instead wants to project strength. But of course, if he uses all of these tools,
02:56not using these tools all at once has been a way for the U.S. to kind of maintain its hegemonic position.
03:02And burning through all these resources will, over time, lessen the power of the U.S.
03:07because you'll see allies turning away from the country if it kind of continues to behave in such a way.
03:13And what's it likely to do also to his support base?
03:16Because, you know, he has formally pledged to his MAGA supporters that he would not involve the U.S. in further foreign conflict.
03:24Do you expect a political backlash from his base?
03:26So, as you say, especially in 2016, he ran on this idea of kind of no more forever wars.
03:35The line they're taking at the moment is that this is not a war because there's not kind of deep engagement.
03:41And that this was just kind of an extraction of of Maduro.
03:46At the moment, there hasn't been much pushback from from Republicans in Congress beyond Marjorie Taylor Greene,
03:51who's leaving Congress anyway. And so this might even be a way that he can kind of avoid the appearance of being a lame duck president after the midterms,
04:01which are coming up in November. And what it also does is it kind of stops people talking about, you know,
04:06other things like affordability or Epstein.
04:10And so my hunch is that this probably won't hurt Trump much with his base,
04:14because what tends to happen is if there's a difference between supporting Trump or supporting any policy positions,
04:22generally what happens is his base fall in line and fall behind Trump and say, no, no, Trump knows what's best and what he's doing.
04:29OK. And Mike, just, you know, one question before we go as well.
04:33And perhaps you can put this into the historic context for us and the big picture when it comes to U.S. foreign policy,
04:39because, you know, forceful U.S. intervention in Latin American politics is not something new.
04:45What can we learn from past examples like Guatemala or Panama?
04:51Yeah, so I would say the Panama example with Noriega, who was removed by George Bush in 1989, is probably the most kind of analogous.
05:01And what I would say in terms of the difference here is the kind of brazenness and the goals of the administration.
05:08So already we're seeing the administration straight away coming out and saying, no, this is about oil.
05:14This is about U.S. economic interests in the country.
05:18Now, we can take a more cynical view and say, you know, that's long been the case.
05:22But at least there's been some kind of pretenses, whether it's been in Latin America or even in Iraq, for example,
05:29that there was some kind of grander idealism around this.
05:33And we're not hearing that we're not hearing lines from this administration about, you know, restoring democracy.
05:39We're much more focused on these kind of specific, tangible, hard power U.S. outcomes.
05:48And I think, again, going back to that Stephen Miller quote, that really gives you the kind of direction
05:53and the kind of feeling about how this administration wants to approach this situation.
06:01Mike Coburn, political analyst at Zeppelin University.
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