486. Does Maduro’s Capture Put Greenland at Risk?

Is Venezuela the start of something bigger? If this isn’t regime change, what does Trump actually want? And, has Trump just handed Putin a win? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ ⚡ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  Trump is almost the first person since Genghis Khan to say, "I'm just going to help myself to territory."

• 0:05Alastair Campbell?

  It is incredibly serious, it is hugely consequential, but at the same time, I think there is something horribly theatrical and performative about the whole thing.

• 0:14Rory Stewart?

  Miller is the chief propagandist for the regime.

• 0:16Alastair Campbell?

  He said, "We are a superpower, we will behave like a superpower, we will assert American interests without apology."

• 0:22Rory Stewart?

  Can you rule out taking Greenland by force? And Stephen Miller absolutely refuses to rule it out.

• 0:26Alastair Campbell?

  "No one will take seriously a weak and divided Europe, neither enemy nor ally, otherwise we are finished."

• 0:34Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:43Rory Stewart?

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• 0:52Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:08Rory Stewart?

  Land that is 20 acres or whatever could be transformed into the renewable backbone of this nation, benefiting all of us for generations to come.

• 1:15Alastair Campbell?

  I'd love to know how many of our listeners have 20 acres of land, we shall maybe find out. You can watch the energy revolution from the sidelines or you can join it today.

• 1:23Rory Stewart?

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• 1:37Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:40Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed...

• 1:51Alastair Campbell?

  Managed to watch it. There you go.

• 1:52Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve. And of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 2:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think you're not already sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona Fiona managed to do this?

• 2:23Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day, every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/rustpolitics.

• 3:17Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics and me, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:19Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. We should explain the slightly formal setup, which slightly looks as though you've just pulled off a coup d'etat or about to address the nation. So maybe you should explain where we are.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  We are in Gishinow, the capital of Moldova. And behind me is a Moldovan flag and behind you, a flag of the European Union.

• 3:36Rory Stewart?

  In a building which was a Soviet building. So really, the architecture tells the whole story of why we're here in Moldova, which is that this is a country which was part of the Soviet Union, achieved its independence, hence that flag, and is now under Mya Sandu, the president, moving towards joining the European Union. A country stuck between Romania and Ukraine, right on the front line of the confrontation with Putin and Russia. And we've spent a lot of last night, a lot of today, trying to get a sense of that Russian strain. And we'll get on to that in the second half of the podcast.

• 4:08Alastair Campbell?

  And I think also just to tell people, the reason we're here was to interview President Sandu, and that will be out on leading on Monday. And in the second half, we will talk about Russia and Ukraine and indeed Moldova. But I think for the first half, We probably have to talk about Donald Trump and Venezuela again.

• 4:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so we did an emergency podcast shortly after it happened. And let's, let's begin with that. Rethinking that, do you think in the immediate aftermath, and I guess we went pretty soon after the abduction happened, are there things we missed, things we got wrong in retrospect, what's developed over the last two, three days? And I'd encourage people to listen to it.

• 4:43Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, because we're both Western and we consume a lot of British, European, American media, I wonder if we underplayed the extent to which China would be watching this and working out a very different way to react to the way that we've seen other leaders react to it, and we can maybe come on to that. As to what's happened, I mean, a large part of what I think happened on the day and is happening now, first of all, it is incredibly serious. It is hugely consequential, but at the same time, I think there is something horribly theatrical and performative about the whole thing. I thought that the portraying yesterday of Maduro, every single step of the way, being

• 5:28Alastair Campbell?

  filmed, taken out of his custody, onto a helicopter, flown into this van, doors open, cameras able to see him, shackled legs and hands.

• 5:38Rory Stewart?

  All of which, of course, I mean, it's completely mad. I mean, it's completely unnecessary to shackle his legs. This is purely for cameras.

• 5:43Alastair Campbell?

  Of course it is. I mean, where's he going to run to? He's surrounded by about 10 guys with machine guns, all with DEA, DEA written on them. So it's all performative. And it's all as well designed to send a message back to Venezuela, to those who have left, stayed behind, and we can get on to where Vice President, now interim President Rodriguez, Delcy Rodriguez is, and what her status within this is. But I think it was, it was performative to that extent. But I think the other thing, if you remember one, one thing we did say on Saturday night, I said, I can't help wondering and worrying about what Mark Carney and Mette Frederiksen are thinking about watching this. And I think from Mette Frederiksen's point of view, it's become horribly clear that when Trump goes on about.

• 6:29Alastair Campbell?

  Taking Greenland in whatever shape or form and whatever that means, he is as serious as he was about taking out Maduro.

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, we've kept coming back to this and of course, we interviewed Metaphyrx and the Prime Minister of Denmark on the show. And one of the interesting things there is that she was still trying to tread this very delicate balance because Denmark is a small country, very small country, very dependent on the United States, very keen not to alienate the US. But I think as we've been saying for a year, we've said repeatedly, it hasn't happened yet. I keep predicting that he's going to invade Greenland, hasn't done it yet.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  Do you literally mean invade?

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  I have said, I think on the podcast many times that if we're trying to think about what Trump could do next, your Michael Wolff story, that he's a reality TV star who wants to generate a big story, Greenland is an obvious story. It's an obvious spectacular. And if you think about him and his legacy, to add to the United States, the largest single bit of territory that the United States has acquired since it took Alaska from the Russians, the late 19th century.

• 7:32Alastair Campbell?

  Brought.

• 7:32Rory Stewart?

  To be the president who has suddenly made America look like the risk board.

• 7:37Alastair Campbell?

  Make America bigger again.

• 7:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, is almost irresistible for him. And maybe we'll stick with this for a second just before we go back to Venezuela, because you encouraged me to watch a rather interesting interview done by Jake Tapper from CNN with Stephen Miller. Stephen Miller is Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff, his head of policy, the major man driving most of his ideas on immigration. And this was in a few ways.

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  And on national security.

• 8:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, a big interview, a lot of it about Venezuela, justifying what they did on Venezuela. But then he moves on to Greenland. So maybe tell us there's a bit about that. We'll put a link in.

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he spoke with complete contempt about a NATO ally. He actually said at one point, you know, what right does Denmark have to hold on to Greenland? Well, the right that was agreed in law between you and them sometime way back when. He talked about, and it's interesting, when Trump was talking about Venezuela, I've yet to hear him use the word democracy in terms of what he's trying to achieve. And likewise with Miller, he was not talking about democracy. He was basically saying, when Trump says he needs Greenland for American security in the Arctic, then that is what he means and they're going to do something about it.

• 8:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just the quote, because I watched it on your recommendation and Jake Tapper, this CNN interview, keeps saying, can you rule out taking Greenland by force? And Stephen Miller absolutely refuses to rule it out. You know, the answer a normal person would say is, oh yes, of course we can rule out taking Greenland by, but don't be absurd, you know, it's a.

• 8:59Alastair Campbell?

  Worse than that, he actually said, he said, I recognize that as well. He said, we are a superpower, we will behave like a superpower, we will assert American interests without apology. And he said, the US is the power of NATO. Obviously Greenland should be part of the US. Well, you could make that case for Scotland, you know, Scotland is part of the UK, part of NATO.

• 9:20Rory Stewart?

  And I think it's worth just interrogating that a little bit because Miller is the chief propagandist for the regime. He's the guy who, after the killing of Charlie Kirk, made that Goebbels-like speech. So if I'm right that Trump is moving towards taking Greenland, we will hear these lines again and again and again, and we need to start challenging them. And one fundamental line is Greenland is absolutely essential to the security of NATO. Because, you know, Russia can use the Arctic, China could come in, and therefore the United States obviously has to make Greenland part of the United States. Now, there's a number of claims there. Number one, this isn't an administration that actually behaves as though Russia is an existential threat. If they really believed Russia was a threat, such threat, they'd be doing different things in Ukraine. In fact, it's a

• 10:05Rory Stewart?

  administration that keeps assuring us that Putin has perfectly reasonable demands in Ukraine. If you just gave him these in Ukraine, he's not going to cause a trouble to anyone anyway. So how does that stack with, we need Greenland because Russia is an existential threat? Number two, there is no limit, basically, to the number of troops that the United States could keep in Greenland. They have actually radically reduced the number of their troops in Greenland. There's no reason for them to own Greenland if what they're saying is this is vital to NATO's security. The corollary is logical and obviously therefore it has to be part of the United States, not true. The only conclusion is if they think it's vital, they need US troops there, but they've decided not to put US troops there, despite the fact that Denmark is happy for them to keep troops there.

• 10:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there's three, there's three things. The first is Denmark is already one of the biggest spenders in Europe. I think it's three, they're at three percent of GDP on defence, so they can't really call them out on that. They already have an American base there and the Danes are very happy for them to grow that base and indeed to start other bases. And what's more, they're minerals and rare earths. The Danes are very happy for American investors to go in and check it all out. There doesn't appear to be that much demand. So I think what's happening with Denmark, and if you're Danish, I think this is kind of terrifying right now. With Venezuela, what happened was this slow, steady build-up of a narrative, and the narrative was drugs.

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  And this is what you call rolling the pitch?

• 11:23Alastair Campbell?

  Is it rolling the pitch? It's kind of rolling the pitch, but it's more than that. It's more putin-esque, is giving reasons for actions that you may already have decided to take, and we now know that they had decided to take that. We know that from the guy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, who was explaining how they've been planning this for months. So what it was doing was giving a narrative to the world, because he has the bully pulpit for the world, about why Venezuela was a threat to the United States. Even though I've yet to hear a single international lawyer, and I don't think Stephen Miller counts as an international lawyer, give a credible reason why this was legal under the UN Charter.

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  Just to remind people, so the story is that Maduro was formally running a cartel smuggling cocaine into the United States, whereas in fact, all the detailed evidence, including a very long 80-page report that we shared on Saturday, suggests that, yes, there are people in the Venezuelan government who have facilitated drug cartels and movement, or turned a blind eye or taken bribes, but not only is Maduro not running a cartel, but insofar as Venezuela is producing cocaine, most of that cocaine is going to Europe, and that the actual flow of drugs into the United States of Venezuela is a relatively small part of. This is the point that you keep making.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  And the one that he's been making, the drug that he's been talking about that has been posing this. Threat, the threat he talks about is actually fentanyl, which isn't coming from Venezuela. So the narrative that's being created about Greenland and Denmark is, as you say, as you say, the strategic importance of the Arctic, the fact that Russia is a great threat to America, even though Donald Trump keeps saying Putin's his best friend, could exploit it. So they have to have greater control of that space. And secondly, the narrative is that Denmark is not a reliable ally. And if you remember, that that is exactly what J D Vance said when he went there.

• 13:21Rory Stewart?

  Just remind people of that for a second again, because that was one of the most astonishing things. Denmark had made it very, very clear that the American vice president was not welcome in Denmark. And he flew, despite Denmark saying he wasn't welcome, to Denmark, turned up in Greenland, in this Danish territory.

• 13:40Alastair Campbell?

  See, that was rolling the pitch.

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  Gave a big speech. And then there has been the capture of two American citizens who appear to be American intelligence agents trying to stir up a separatist movement in Greenland against the Danes. A classic hybrid warfare disruption. Get the independence movement going so that you then say, we're intervening for the rights of the indigenous people. But the more dramatic thing, which we've been saying, I think, for a year now, is that Trump doesn't even really bother that much with legal arguments. That there's not even the hypocritical stuff that gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century did. You know, when Britain was going around doing terrible things and taking other people's territory, they were always pretending they were doing it for a good reason.

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  You know, they were dealing with the slave trade, or they, some consul of theirs had been outraged, or they were protecting a missionary, or they were dealing with some some human rights abuse. Trump is almost the first person since Genghis Khan to say, I'm just going to help myself to territory. I'm not even going to pretend actually this ever belonged to the United States. I'm not going to pretend the indigenous people need to do it. But instead, to quote Stephen Miller, the US should have Greenland.

• 14:52Alastair Campbell?

  The word he and others have been using, I've noticed, I think Vance used this word as well, when they were questioning about, is this legal? And they talked about, well, we can sit here and talk about international niceties. Okay. And so the nicety is the idea that there's such a thing as a sovereign nation. I mean, I read a statement from the, so the Prime Minister of, I suspect that most of our listeners would not be able to name the Prime Minister of Greenland. As Stephen Miller said, it's a very small, it's a very large country with a very small population, but it's a country. It's a people, it's a culture, it's a history. And they talk about them and he, he actually said, you know, we're, we're not just some sort of tool in great power politics. And yet that is how they are treated.

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  It's heartbreaking. Sorry, I'm, I'm interrupting you a bit, but it, it is heartbreaking because in fact, in many ways, Greenland has been through a very, very difficult evolution since the Second World War. They were basically treated as a colony of Denmark. The local people who are related to the Inuit felt as though they were second-class citizens. As though the Danish Crown had acquired this in quite a complicated period as Greenland was pushed back and forth through Scandinavian monarchies. During the Middle Ages, even England had an attempt.

• 16:04Alastair Campbell?

  This is one of the American lines to take, by the way.

• 16:06Rory Stewart?

  Right, absolutely. But since the Second World War, there has been a lot of change. There's been a movement for much more autonomy. The Danish constitution has been changed. Much more development investment has gone in. And certainly if I was a Greenlander, I would be much more comfortable with a Danish government than I would be being a Native American in a reservation, the Lakota Reservation of South Dakota. I don't think, you look at the United States and think this is a country that really treats Native American populations well, really treats Inuit populations well, right? This idea that Trump is presenting himself as the champion of indigenous rights, what he's actually doing.

• 16:46Rory Stewart?

  And this is exactly the, the line, presenting it as a blank space on a map. He's basically pretending nobody lives there. And the United States can just take minerals.

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  Couple of things, of course, that it means that we're not talking about. One is Epstein and the other is the state of the American economy. Now, we were, I think, both moderately gobsmacked on Saturday that Trump was so brazen and so open about this is about oil. And the American companies are gonna come in and they're the biggest companies, the best companies, they're going to get lots of money. We're going to get compensated for the stolen oil, which was when the industry was was nationalised. But I was just looking at some some polling for Trump. Affordability, the Zoran Mamdani word. Trump is doing very, very badly on cost of living. Fifty seven percent bad on prices, thirty six good. Forty eight percent of Americans saying they find housing, medical, groceries and transportation

• 17:38Alastair Campbell?

  is putting them under massive financial pressure. Twenty seven percent of Americans, since Trump was elected, have skipped a medical appointment because of cost. Twenty three percent have not taken a prescription. And here's an interesting one. Thirty six percent of Trump voters from twenty twenty four saying tariffs aren't working and that they're hurting the economy, compared to twenty two percent who are saying the opposite. That's Trump voters. So I think there is, because this is his genius, there is an element of this is just a gigantic distraction, but it is serious. The I don't want to get away from the fact, he is serious about what he's doing, but it is also having that political effect.

• 18:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, remember Putin went into Ukraine in twenty fourteen and again in twenty twenty two at a time when the Russian economy was weak. It's a classic thing to do. If you're beginning to lose domestic support, if your domestic economy is weak, a great foreign adventure is a wonderful, wonderful way of getting people back on side. So I would have thought another reason to be even more worried about them acquiring Greenland is exactly those economic statistics. That if Trump's thinking, well, what do I do in the midterms or coming up for next election to deal with the fact people are feeding it in their pocket and things aren't going wrong? Let me deliver the greatest victory ever. Let me land on Greenland. Let's put the troops out. Let's have these maps showing something like a risk board with this huge territory added to the United States.

• 18:56Alastair Campbell?

  But do you think there was this affordability issue? So the American oil companies are going to think long and hard about the cost that it will be demanded of them to go in and sort out what is what is a pretty wrecked oil industry in Venezuela. It will be some time before real money starts to come from that that is felt by American people could actually create an even bigger divide. The oil companies get richer, the rich get richer, the corporates do well out of his have his little play with Maduro. And the other thing is, you know, we've talked.

• 19:26Rory Stewart?

  It's just British geeks, though. I I think I'm right in saying that in the early nineteen hundreds, a whole election was run on the Boer War in Britain. Nothing to do with cost of living in Britain. In fact, the economy had been suffering quite badly through an agricultural recession. Conservative and Liberal Party went into a khaki election, which was all about jingoism, international suffragists.

• 19:47Alastair Campbell?

  But jingoism with thirty thousand Greenlanders, where you're going to put the entire US-Europe relationship at risk.

• 19:54Rory Stewart?

  Does a MAGA voter care about that? If the MAGA voter says this guy has just increased the landmass of the United States by the largest amount in a hundred and twenty years, handed all this extraordinary minerals to us, made America great again, secure again, big again, who except for a few Democrats on the North East are going to be worrying about European relations?

• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  I think it depends on the consequences. I think that it will take time for the money to come through. The the the kind of really weird thing going on in the oil industry is that their sort of absolute dominance of fracking and shale gas oil is actually has not been helping them because it's been driving the price down, not up. So their exports are going to cock. I don't know. I I I look, I guess I'm just being optimistic from the sort of humanity perspective, that there are enough people out there who actually won't necessarily watch Stephen Miller today as we did and think, God, this is disgusting, but will at least think, no, hold on a minute. No, hold on a minute, this is just going too far.

• 20:52Rory Stewart?

  Let me push you on another thing. What should Europe do about this? So I don't think anybody currently in the German Defence Ministry or the UK Ministry of Defence thinks it would be a sensible idea to put British or German troops in Greenland. Because if you do that, they say, the Americans could just land boats on another part of Greenland, claim the territory, and you've got a bunch of troops isolated and surrounded.

• 21:17Alastair Campbell?

  So. But, oh, McRae, it's a NATO country.

• 21:19Rory Stewart?

  So

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  So NATO is dead at that point.

• 21:21Rory Stewart?

  So then, and NATO would be dead. So then the question is, what do you do to deter the United States? How do you think UK, Europe about an economic package that hurts the United States so much that Trump backs off? In the way that China spent years preparing for the moment when Trump was going to put tariffs against China, and they knew exactly where to hit him to get back.

• 21:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, just, I mean, I mentioned earlier about, I don't think maybe we thought enough about China last time. We'll come back to Europe, but I think on China, it's really interesting. I think they're going to take a very legalistic approach to this. They're going to basically be saying, oh, excuse me, we've done lots of deals in Venezuela. We're, you know, we've got all these countries that you and I are saying you're going to pick off here and there. We've got legally binding deals with them. So it'd be a very sort of clever way of saying, you know, we're the rule, we're the rules people, and this is a cowboy, and we've got to, we've got to deal with it. On Europe, listen, you occasionally refer to my family WhatsApp group and the, the sometimes more, more colorful views that get expressed than, than I might say. I know there is a big part of people who will have heard Keir Starmer on Sunday morning and thought, oh, for God's sake, man, just

• 22:28Alastair Campbell?

  say the, say this is illegal, say this, say that, say what, whatever. And Keir Starmer was very, very deliberate not to do so. And most of them, I think Sanchez is the only ones, Spanish Prime Minister, who's really come out pretty hard on this. And the, and the statement that, that Kaiakalas put together for Europe as a whole, yes, it talked about the importance of international law, rules-based order, whatever, but they're all very, very conscious of the fact that, not least in relation to Ukraine, we're not sitting here, not far from Ukraine. In relation to Ukraine, they all face the same challenge as before this. That is, how do you keep America engaged in Ukraine? Because without American support right now, both military and above all, intelligence, it will be very, very difficult for the Ukrainians.

• 23:11Alastair Campbell?

  So I think Keir Starmer, Mayitz Macron, I think they're all prepared to endure a bit of sort of loathing and hatred from people who hate Trump. They can't say the things that we say.

• 23:20Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. But I, and I think, you know, the former head of, of MI6 has come out and said, look, let's be realistic. Latin America is not within our sphere of influence. We can't control it very much. But Greenland is. So to come back to the question, okay, I understand Europe has decided it can't do much about Latin America.

• 23:38Alastair Campbell?

  They've all just about said the right thing on Greenland.

• 23:39Rory Stewart?

  And what are they going to do, though, to make Trump see the consequences if he went into Greenland?

• 23:45Alastair Campbell?

  I think they're probably going to have to do a version of what they've been doing on Ukraine ever since the damn thing started, which is to not to call him out too heavily publicly, but privately constantly be trying to pull him back to a more sensible position. So actually, they will have to have really difficult conversations where they say, look, you know, are you seriously saying you're going to tear up this alliance between America, the United States and Europe, which has kept Europe safe? Are you really going to do that? And if they get to the point where the answer to that might be yes, then I think there have to be some very, very, very serious thoughts about whether we have to be more open about the sense that America is leaving us behind.

• 24:26Rory Stewart?

  But we need a deterrent package. We need to be able to say to him, if you do this, this is the consequence of the United States.

• 24:32Alastair Campbell?

  In relation to Ukraine at the moment, I think that's impossible, and they're all aware of that and he's aware of that. But let me just read you what Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, said. No one will, this, this, and I don't know what stage this was of the, of putting together the statement of 26. And the reason it was 26 because our friend, Mr. Orban in Hungary, refused to put his name to it because that's what he does. Tusk said, no one will take seriously a weak and divided Europe, neither enemy nor ally. It is already clear now. We must finally believe in our own strength. We must continue to arm ourselves. We must stay united like never before, one for all, all for one, otherwise we are finished. Okay, it's a rhetorical flourish on one level. But I think both Russia and Trump and this sort of new America that's emerging,

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  they have to understand that Europe, for all its difficulties, if it could get its act together, is way more powerful than Russia, and it could at least have the power to stand up to Trump on some of these issues.

• 25:25Rory Stewart?

  But of course it doesn't because both of them.

• 25:27Alastair Campbell?

  Because they're trying to keep him on board for Ukraine.

• 25:28Rory Stewart?

  Both them brilliantly know how to do divide and rule. It's not just Ukraine. It's also, you know, Britain thinks it's got a better trade deal than Europe, so we don't want to annoy Trump or he might hit us there. And, you know, maybe the Swiss are worried about this and, you know, the other thing. Finally, before we move on to the break and on to where we are today. Running Venezuela. So when we did this Saturday piece, we talked about Trump's astonishing statement in the press conference that these guys behind me are going to be running Venezuela, which made no sense. I mean, you know, this is a guy who is absolutely allergic to the idea, really, of American boots on the ground and running other people's countries. It now seems that what he meant by that is

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  They're going to be pulling strings.

• 26:12Rory Stewart?

  Is yeah, is that Maduro's regime basically would remain in place without Maduro. So all the same evil corrupt, human rights abusing generals would remain. In fact, as soon as he did his abduction, there have been detentions of journalists, phones being taken, things being locked down. The regime is gone. And all the people in Latin America who were like, well, we don't like the way it was done or the legal justification, but thank goodness, we finally got rid of the Maduro regime.

• 26:35Alastair Campbell?

  They get Maduro Lite.

• 26:36Rory Stewart?

  They get Maduro Lite. And the idea is the United States running it, according to Miller, just means the US keeps a lot of troops off the border and runs it by threatening to abduct any future leader of Venezuela that doesn't do what the United States says. Now, I can see that the one view, which would be that the Venezuelan generals are purely self-interested and corrupt, and that that will be enough to make them compliant. But there's another view, which would say, in the end, for better or worse, these are nationalist generals who've come from a left-wing populist tradition, who are very closely tied in with Cuba. It doesn't seem to me credible that they're all going to start jumping to America's tune just because Trump says, if you don't do what I say, I'll start abducting a few more

• 27:21Rory Stewart?

  people.

• 27:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one of the, one of the people we mentioned on Saturday is the sort of little group that was just below Maduro, who now seem to be still in charge. And one of them was this guy, the interior minister, who's seen as like the real, the real hard man. And he's all over the media in Venezuela and also our social media today, posing with these guys with machine guns, just sort of posing like you do. And essentially, the message is, we're still in charge. Any expression of support for what's happened to Maduro is a crackdown. Now, if that goes on for, okay, Trump could get bored, move on to something else. But if that goes on for too long, then the question will start to emerge, well, who really is running this place? And you talk about MAGA and what they think. If they're

• 28:04Alastair Campbell?

  meant to be really sort of excited and pleased and thrilled that they've finally taken out Maduro.

• 28:10Alastair Campbell?

  What do they then think if think, well, actually, they've just been left in place to carry on, do the same thing. And meanwhile, Trump's out trying to do all this, this stuff for his rich mates in the, in the oil industry. So I think that, that is where I don't think we were wrong on Saturday. For all Stephen Miller's boasting that, you know, this was the most meticulous operation. It was an amazing military operation. Have to give them that. But what the planning was thereafter, I think they're still making it up as they, as they go along. And I even wonder whether the whole Denmark thing right now is them creating another distraction. Don't forget, it was started by Stephen Miller's wife. And this is how ridiculous this old damn thing is, the reality TV show. She got a map of green London, she covered it with the stars and stripes and posted a tweet saying, soon. And Miller was asked about it in that interview with Jake Tapper, and

• 28:55Alastair Campbell?

  he just sort of laughed, you know. It's like a big game. And because they're so powerful, they think they can do what the hell they want. And when, I don't know if you saw Trump on Air Force One. So they've just done Venezuela, and he's in a kind of, you know, he's in one of his sort of real macho bravado moods. So those kind of sycophant reporters are throwing questions at him. So what about Cuba, sir? Well, Cuba's gonna fall. We don't have to worry too much. Cuba's gonna fall. Iran. Well, if they carry on with, you know, if they kill any of these protesters, we're gonna, you know, I'm gonna get interested, I'm gonna take charge there. Mexico, Colombia.

• 29:26Rory Stewart?

  Colombia, very sick too. He's very sick man. Likes selling cocaine. You know, his end is coming.

• 29:33Alastair Campbell?

  So anyway, I think it's all bloody depressing, that's for sure. But anyway.

• 29:37Rory Stewart?

  And maybe the transition, we'll, we'll go into the break now. But the transition then, I think we, as we move to Putin and Moldova, is the question of if you are Vladimir Putin, what's to stop you abducting the president of Armenia or a Georgian opposition leader in exactly the same way that has just happened with Maduro?

• 29:54Alastair Campbell?

  Better lay off Mya Sandu. And I should say, Rory, as well, in case you didn't know, the rest is classified. I've done, Gordon and David have done a very, very good deep dive on the operation itself, which, as I said on Saturday, will be the stuff of movies into the future.

• 30:10Rory Stewart?

  Into the break and then back after.

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• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Restless Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 31:51Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. So should we talk a bit about here, Moldova, why we're here, why it matters? We're here, obviously, technically, to interview the president for leading on Monday, as I said earlier, but I think we're here because for a country of 2.4 million, it matters an awful lot.

• 32:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I think the first thing is that the president gave us as a joke at the end, an old British board game. And the title of the board game was Where is Moldova? Right? And the joke that she was making is that until recently, obviously, people in Britain didn't really know anything about Moldova, otherwise the game wouldn't have been called Where is Moldova? It's a general knowledge game. Moldova is an extraordinary history. I'm going to try to do a sort of 60-second explainer on it. Basically, this is a territory right on the very edge of empires.

• 32:38Rory Stewart?

  It was on the edge of the Hungarian kingdom, the Polish Lithuanian kingdom, then the Ottomans, and then the Russians. I actually have Moldovan relatives, my great-grandparents, two great-grandparents. And if you look at their passport entries from the 19th century onwards, you can see how complicated this country is. So they are-

• 32:57Alastair Campbell?

  So on three generations back, you are Moldovan?

• 33:00Rory Stewart?

  In Moldovan, correct.

• 33:01Alastair Campbell?

  On your mother's side?

• 33:01Rory Stewart?

  On my mother's side.

• 33:02Alastair Campbell?

  We're not diluting your Scottishness on the other side?

• 33:04Rory Stewart?

  Not diluting my Scottishness on the other side. If you look at their passport entries, they are described at one point as being Ottoman. Another point, one of them who's in Suchyeva, in what was then Northern Moldova, is then described as Austro-Hungarian. Then there's a moment where my great-grandfather's passport entry, he calls himself a Romanian. Then there's a moment where he calls himself a Russian, and then a Romanian again. And if he'd lived long enough, he would have described himself eventually as a citizen of the Soviet Union. Now, the only reason why I'm telling this, I don't need to explain all the complicated movement back and forth of territories, but this is a country with a very, very contested national story.

• 33:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, sure.

• 33:44Rory Stewart?

  Achieved its independence from the Soviet Union and had this huge debate about whether it was going to rejoin Romania, whether it was going to be an independent country, whether the oligarchs who's been running in the recent elections have been suggesting it sort of should rejoin Russia, and yet somehow has emerged as critical because it has stuck between Ukraine and Romania. And if you're looking around the world at what are the countries that Putin might go after next, after Ukraine, Moldova would be one, and then we can talk a little bit about the Caucasus. But we're right at the frontline here.

• 34:22Alastair Campbell?

  And I think the other thing we've learnt is that they are absolutely dependent, defence-wise, on Ukraine and Romania. I really do urge people on Monday to listen to the interview. She's a very, very, she's a very strong woman, very interesting. And as you say, I mean, look, we've got some Moldovans in the room, I'd be a little bit scared if I was here right now.

• 34:46Rory Stewart?

  So you know, when we talk about the way in which Putin and Trump are disintegrating the global order, and Moldova is a really good way of bringing this to people's attention because basically Moldova-

• 35:00Rory Stewart?

  It's a pretty peaceful country. The cliche under the Soviet Union was the sunny part of the Soviet Union. People would often come here on holiday, famous for its wine. It's not like a sort of warlike Balkan, Chechen mountain.

• 35:13Alastair Campbell?

  Even when the oligarchs were in charge, it wasn't sort of as violent as some of the other parts of the region.

• 35:18Rory Stewart?

  And so this relatively peaceful, relatively neutral country is now finding itself facing these incredibly brutal choices. One of those choices is going to be about joining the European Union, which is what this flag is about. And as we've pointed out to listeners, the presidential election, the parliamentary election referendum, all pushing towards this move to join the European Union. But it joins a very large number of countries trying to join the European Union. There was a big accession in 2004. The last accession was Croatia in 2014. So we've had now 12 years where nobody's managed to join the European Union.

• 35:53Alastair Campbell?

  As you know, I now worked on however many election campaigns it is with Eddie Rahm, and four. And every one of them has been partly fought on the idea of, you know, stick with us and we'll get into the European Union.

• 36:04Rory Stewart?

  Albania.

• 36:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:05Rory Stewart?

  Montenegro, where I was based as a British diplomat for a year again. Then they think, you know, we're a tiny country. Why on earth would anyone prevent us joining? We're not going to be a great thing. Serbia will be another example. Bosnia is another example. So let's sort of maybe begin with that because for President Mysl Sander, this is existential. If Europe fumbles this and doesn't take Moldova into the European Union, Moldova will naturally go back into a sphere of Russian influence.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  Will it?

• 36:32Rory Stewart?

  Or I think it will be very difficult for them to resist.

• 36:35Alastair Campbell?

  It surely depends what happens in Ukraine. Because the military threat that you talk about, that presumably, I'm hesitant to look at, we actually have got the national security adviser in the room. Not because they're censoring at all, not at all. This is not Russia. But surely that only happens if Ukraine falls.

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  I'm afraid that even if Ukraine doesn't fall, her ability to keep winning elections is going to deteriorate very rapidly if if people get the impression that she was elected to get people into the European Union and the European Union doesn't want you. And we've seen this in many other countries. We've seen this in the way politics changed in Turkey, the way politics has changed in Serbia. And that will then give a huge boost to basically the socialist communist pro-Russian parties here. And that will create a much more permissive environment. If they get in and get elected, you'll then see. Russian civilians being able to get through to Transnistria, maybe the reinforcement of the Russian army in this little bit of Moldovan territory, just on the other side of the Dnipro River.

• 37:37Alastair Campbell?

  Well, just on that, I mean, Transnistria, again, is something which, you know, some of our listeners will be expert on, but others might not be. But I found, and people will be able to listen to this on Monday, but I found that part of the discussion quite difficult because, you know, there are 1,500 Russian troops there. The officers who are in charge of them are not being rotated in and out for fairly obvious reasons, because the Moldovans don't want them, they want them to stay there rather than constantly be changed. How does a skeptic European country, given the processes that they all have to go through for another country to join the European Union, how will they feel and how will the argument be used against them that you're welcoming in a small country which

• 38:20Alastair Campbell?

  actually has Russian troops in part of this disputed territory?

• 38:24Rory Stewart?

  So this is a big problem. I mean, the European Commission is very keen, and of course Macron and Maltz have visited, and the president is saying that this is really important for Europe, for European security against Russia. And the assumption here is that Europe will take them. The risk is that populist governments are elected in Europe who don't want any more EU expansion. And then, if you have to guess what would be the arguments that those governments would make, or parties would make against the accession, Transnistria would be one. And then there's also the question of this very complicated

• 39:03Rory Stewart?

  past. So although Moldova is now going in a much more positive pro-EU direction, the populist parties will remember that in the 90s, early 2000s, they will talk about crime from Transnistria, human trafficking, organ trafficking, weapon sales, all this kind of stuff, in order to give the impression to European populations, we don't really want this place, it's too difficult, it's too dangerous.

• 39:28Alastair Campbell?

  That's, again, people will be able to see this on Monday. She's not one of those leaders who loves to talk about herself. And she kept saying, when we asked her about herself, she said, it's not about me, it's about the things we're dealing with, it's about the future of the country, it's about this, which it is. But I do think we should not understate the scale of what she achieved in a tiny country where she is, everybody says, completely uncorruptible, where she built her own party up, starting with just herself and two other people in a room. And without business money, just sort of small donations and all that stuff. And to become the president and then to win second time around. In a campaign where at conservative estimates, the Russians put in about

• 40:12Alastair Campbell?

  hundred, two hundred million euros in terms of disinformation, vote buying and all the rest of it. It's incredible.

• 40:18Rory Stewart?

  It's unbelievable. And if we take the two elections, so there was the presidential election referendum. There was a parliamentary election. The Russians may have put in, as you say, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred million into another, maybe five hundred million euros into the other one. With her own party spending a few hundred thousand euros or a million at most. And you have the Russians with an entire unit based out of the Kremlin, working with the SVR, who are absolutely confidently saying to Vladimir Putin, don't worry. We've got this, we can buy it. There's cryptocurrency going in, we've got amazing political technologies using Telegram in order to put local news stories together.

• 40:59Rory Stewart?

  We're buying mares, we're taking priests to Moscow where we're putting them on junkets. We're literally paying money. We're giving televisions to some people, but other people, we're literally giving fifty, hundred, hundred and fifty euro. We're running carousel techniques, which means that people go into polling stations with a fake ballot paper and then take out the stamped ballot paper, pass it to the last in the queues that they can all get through. You have these incredible spikes in voting from pro Russians who didn't vote in the past. You've got this man Shaw, who's a pro Russian now, pro Russian oligarch, probably an opportunist, but have gone on the pro Russian camp at the moment. So if you were one of Putin's political technologies, you would look at this country and think, sure, I can do this. Of course I can do this.

• 41:43Rory Stewart?

  I mean, maybe it's worth telling listeners a bit about some of the extraordinary kind of salacious social media stuff.

• 41:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, again, she kept saying, look, it's not about me, but some of the stories were absolutely extraordinary. So there was a sort of production of this fake website that looks a little bit like, okay, Hello Magazine type thing. And it ran a story that she, this is a woman who's uncorruptible, everybody says, including her opponents, and who earns less than a thousand dollars a month. Okay. And the story was that she had spent three hundred thousand dollars to buy the sperm of Elton John and Ricky Martin so that she could produce a gay child. Okay. Now, you can see how clickbait wise that would fly. And it did fly and all that sort of stuff flew.

• 42:33Alastair Campbell?

  So the stuff that was about her personally, and she said in our interview, and it started when she was really shocked when she became education minister, that this was sort of happening. She's had that on a scale that probably, I think the only other person that we've spoken to who's got anything like it was Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand.

• 42:49Rory Stewart?

  And that wasn't hundreds of millions of dollars of Russian money.

• 42:51Alastair Campbell?

  No, not at all, not at all. So, but in terms of the, the sort of content and the sort of, sort of messaging around it, real misogyny and, and also they got the church involved and lots of stuff, really dark arts going on. And I guess the other thing that's maybe worth, you mentioned Armenia just before the break. We talked about Brexit in the interview because I am still of the view that we have not got to the bottom of the extent of the Russian involvement in the Brexit referendum and in the rise of reform. I still don't think we got to the bottom of it because those who allowed it to happen do not, or who benefited from it, do not want the questions to be asked. Okay. She's pretty clear in her own mind that there's no way the Russians wouldn't have got involved.

• 43:32Alastair Campbell?

  If they're prepared to put this sort of resource into a presidential election in Moldova, where else are they putting in that sort of resource and where else might be next?

• 43:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, we certainly knew that they did it with the US election. She also said that reconstituting the Soviet Union is very, very important to Putin. Hence his interest in having Moldova as a Russian puppet. And if he looks around the map, you've just mentioned Armenia, where is he going to move next? Georgia, we covered, we interviewed the president of Georgia, the former president of Georgia. He's basically got Georgia. He's pretty happy with Georgia. Got a very, very pro-Russian administration now in Georgia, very sadly. And actually, the European Union really missed a trick. They weren't making the visits there, they weren't investing, they weren't getting behind the pro-EU presidents in Georgia, and they weren't behind the demonstrations in Georgia's. Next place to look is Armenia.

• 44:24Rory Stewart?

  So Armenia is not like Moldova. Moldova has put so much energy into anti-Russian exercises. Moldova has really put in place incredible coordination of intelligence, tax, border, in order to try to stop the Russians from stealing Moldova. Armenia, there's a lot of Russian presence on the ground. And I think it's perfectly possible to relate to the first half that Putin, this is quite a good time for him to abduct the president of Armenia, saying he's bringing him back for trial on drugs or corruption. In fact, the more he makes it look like Maduro, the better. Just put him on a plane next to him in the uniform, medicals back, and then move in to change the administration of Armenia.

• 45:09Rory Stewart?

  What possible grounds could the US have to complain if they did that in Armenia?

• 45:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that is, of course, the real reason why what happened at the weekend is so alarming. If we get to a world where basically the big countries can do what the hell they want, international law doesn't matter, old alliances don't matter, truth doesn't matter, facts don't matter, then we really are going back, not just years, but centuries in terms of how the world is run.

• 45:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think we're kind of coming to the end now, but I suppose we've linked Venezuela, Moldova, Armenia. Maybe let's just finish with where we are in Moldova. And in a way, what a wonderful story it is. It's managed to, against all the odds, get this very improbable president, who's quite sort of shy and introverted, who has led this extraordinary anti-corruption campaign in one of the most corrupt countries on earth and won it, has managed to stabilize the economy of a country that was basically the poorest part of the Soviet Union and the country that did worse after 1989 economically.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  Is really pushing hard to join the European Union. And then I think the thing to end on is, where is the energy and the idealism, the imagination on the other side?

• 46:22Alastair Campbell?

  For the European Union.

• 46:23Rory Stewart?

  Where is the European Union? Where's Starmer? Where's Metz? Where's Macron? Where are people coming with open arms saying, here is this sort of miracle? And it's a country we absolutely can absorb. It's not so big that it's going to bankrupt. It's not going to create some sort of Grexit issue, right? Why doesn't Europe really lean into this hard?

• 46:42Alastair Campbell?

  And you see, this is the other, I mean, look, Trump, as we know, incredibly difficult to handle, incredibly difficult to deal with. But this, this is the time to do it. Look, the only other potential power in the world, okay, India maybe. But the only other real potential power that ever gets anywhere close to the power that America and China have. It's not a single European country, it's Europe. And it's above all the European Union. But if the European Union gives the sense of the drift and division that it's been giving off late. If the populist right do make the sort of advances that they look like they might make. I would argue, one of the reasons why she's so popular and strong

• 47:24Alastair Campbell?

  is because she's out there all the time, giving people a sense of the enormous risk to the country if they don't take the decisions they're taking. And I think we need a bit of that across Europe. We need a bit of, you know, are we really up to speed with just how dangerous the world is right now?

• 47:39Rory Stewart?

  What she calls the big narrative. I mean, she, she was being polite towards the end of the interview. But basically what she was saying is that she's worried that the kind of centrist technocrats tend to bang on about, you know, tiny issues, mercosur, cultural war issues, identity issues. They're not making the big framing narrative, either in terms of people's everyday standard of living or the geopolitics.

• 48:00Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, should we just maybe close? We, we said, I think at the top, we were going to talk a little bit about, about Ukraine. Let me just say, I, I saw Zelensky again said something, he put out a post the other day. He said, the Russian army has defeated in quotes, yet another hospital in Kyiv with a functioning inpatient unit. Patients have had to be evacuated. There are casualties, condolences to the family, et cetera. And then he says, of course, we will restore this hospital. That's the kind of people we are. Ukrainians always rebuild what has been destroyed. Likewise, repair crews, energy specialists, all essential services are working in the regions where the Russians have caused new damage and new power outages. One hundred and sixty-five attack drones were launched overnight, and around a hundred of them were Shahads.

• 48:44Alastair Campbell?

  And it's crucial, he says, that our partners never forget air defence is needed every day, funding of intercepted drones is needed every day, equipment of the energy sector is needed every day. So I think we are still in that place, and we're now getting not far off the point where this war becomes as long as the First World War. We took a lot about narrative in the first part of the programme. I think a lot of the narrative that Putin has managed to get going over the holiday period has been that this is all going his way right now. Venezuela would have helped him on that, but there's all Vladimir, the other Vladimir saying, no, we're still fighting.

• 49:20Rory Stewart?

  Well, see you soon.

• 49:21Alastair Campbell?

  See you for question time.

• 49:22Rory Stewart?

  Bye.

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