Trump's New Strategy for Latin America: Venezuela, Cuba, & the 'Donroe Doctrine' | Brian Winter

Episode 456 https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/venezuela-cuba-donroe-doctrine-brian-winter is the eleventh installment in the Hundred Year Pivot podcast series. In it, Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams speak with the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, Brian Winter. He's an expert on Latin America, having lived and worked in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, and possesses a deep understanding of the region's politics, economics, and security dynamics. The three of them begin their conversation discussing the Trump administration's almost cinematic removal of Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela. They speculate about who is currently in charge of the country, the implications of Maduro's exit for Venezuela's economy and the region's geopolitics, the rising tide of right-wing political movements across Latin America, and how this operation fits into the Trump administration's broader initiatives as they have been conveyed in the new National Security Strategy. They also explore the rising tide of right-wing political movements across Latin America, the role of organized crime in driving political change, how demographic shifts and artificial intelligence might reshape the region's future, and the unique role that Trump's National security adviser and secretary of state Marco Rubio has played in shaping US foreign policy in Latin America and whether Cuba and its communist government is next on the administration's list of seemingly every-expanding targets. Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe https://hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by: Subscribing on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces, SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces, CastBox https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539, or via our RSS Feed http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334 & Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io https://hiddenforces.io/. Join the conversation on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/, and Twitter https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas https://twitter.com/kofinas Episode Recorded on 01/07/2025

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Demetri Kofinas?

  What's up everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. What you're about to hear is the 11th episode in a podcast series hosted by me and my co-host, Grant Williams, titled "The Hundred Year Pivot." In it, we speak with some of the smartest, most plugged-in people we know to help position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the once-in-a-century economic, political, and geopolitical reordering that we believe is currently underway.

• 0:42Demetri Kofinas?

  In today's conversation, Grant and I speak with editor-in-chief of America's Quarterly, Brian Winter. He's an expert on Latin America who has lived and worked in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, and has a deep understanding of the region's politics, economics, and security dynamics. The three of us begin our conversation today discussing the Trump administration's almost cinematic removal of Nicolas Maduro from power in Venezuela. We speculate about who is currently in charge of the country, the implications of Maduro's exit for Venezuela's economy and the region's geopolitics, the rising tide of right-wing political movements across Latin America, and how this operation fits into the Trump administration's broader initiatives as they have been conveyed in the new national security strategy.

• 1:27Demetri Kofinas?

  We also explore the rising tide of right-wing political movements across Latin America, the role of organized crime in driving political change, how demographic shifts and artificial intelligence might reshape the region's future, and the unique role that Trump's national security advisor and secretary of state Marco Rubio has played in shaping U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, and whether Cuba and its communist government is next on the administration's list of seemingly ever-expanding targets.

• 1:55Demetri Kofinas?

  Premium subscribers to the Hidden Forces and Grant Williams podcast gain early access to all our podcast episodes in this series. If you want access to the transcripts and intelligence reports for this and other episodes, which includes summary sections with key takeaways, you can access those by subscribing to our Super Nerd tier at hiddenforces.io/subscribe. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free

• 2:35Demetri Kofinas?

  to send an email to [email protected] and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this incredibly informative and uniquely timely conversation with our guest, Brian Winter.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Welcome, everybody, to the first episode of the New Year for the Hundred Year Pivot. Joining me, my good friend and co-host and the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote, or in fact, the other way around, Demetri Kofinas. Hey, my friend. How are you? How was your holidays? Have a good time?

• 3:13Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, actually, it was. It was a good time. It was like the, one of the only times that I've had even a few days where I don't do anything that's related to work or anything productive.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  It's hard, isn't it?

• 3:24Demetri Kofinas?

  It's hard, but we were just discussing how I'm at a stage now where that is a discipline that I need to instill in myself. You know, when you're younger, you learn to say yes to every opportunity, and then you have to unlearn that as you get older, and it's surprisingly difficult.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I'm reminded of the old joke about the father bull and the son bull at top of the hill looking all the cows, but I won't do it here. This is a family show. But it's very true. As you get older, as you get older, you have to learn to prioritize and be a lot more patient with things.

• 3:55Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  So I mean, we have a fantastic guest join us today that you have brilliantly lined up for us, Brian Winter. Now, I was unaware of Brian until you suggested him for this conversation, and then I started digging in to his body of work. And what a tremendous conversation this is going to be. So why don't you tell people a little bit about Brian?

• 4:14Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, he's the editor in chief of America's Quarterly and the vice president of policy for America Society and the Council of the Americas. He's an expert on Latin America. He's lived in Brazil, Argentina, and I think Mexico as a journalist for Reuters. And he just has fantastic takes on the region. He's been on my list of guests that I wanted to bring on the show for some time, and I had been intending to bring him on after he published a recent article for Foreign Affairs talking about Latin America's revolution of the right. Because I felt that this was not only interesting in the context of Latin America, but also in the context of the national security strategy, and not just the concept of, you know, Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, but also because of the section on Europe. And those

• 4:55Demetri Kofinas?

  who have read the National Security Strategy will know that the Trump administration spent as much time or more, if I remember correctly, maybe the entire part of it was, the European part of it was like, culture war stuff. And, you know, I feel like there's something going on, separate from the traditional paradigm of thinking about national security, that involves international right wing movement and a coalition of right wing parties. And Trump is sort of the de facto leader of these movements in Europe and in Latin America with Bukele and Millet. And so I wanted to bring Brian on to talk about this. And then, of course, Trump, and, you know, we were already, we're obviously seeing what was going on

• 5:39Demetri Kofinas?

  in Venezuela. But then, in recent days, Trump extracted Maduro and his wife. And now we have this relevant news peg. And so I felt like it would be an amazing opportunity to bring him on and cover all of that, as well as the broader ideological movement in Latin America, and how Trump's actions in South America fit into the broader national security strategy. And what I think is A transformation in American grand strategy. I think that Trump will be remembered as one of the most consequential presidents in American history. And it isn't a normative statement, it's a statement of fact. I mean, I think that, you know, 50 years from now, when schoolchildren are studying American history, they certainly won't remember Joe Biden.

• 6:23Demetri Kofinas?

  They won't even know that there was a president that existed between Trump's two terms. And I think they might even struggle to remember that there was, uh, who Barack Obama was. But Trump will be remembered because he first broke the bipartisan consensus on China that existed until he came into office in 2016, collapsed the Republican Party in so doing. And in his second term, he has essentially jettisoned the entire liberal rules-based order that existed post-World War II and that was sustained by the international institutions that the United States built. I mean, even Bush, who invaded Iraq, had to do it within the language of the UN.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:04Demetri Kofinas?

  When he decided to go on his own, he still had to say, well, you know, there, there were some UN resolutions that gave us the authority and we're going to go ahead and do it. He, in other words, felt that he needed to explain himself within the framework of international law. And if you'll notice what Trump and his administration have done in the interviews that they've conducted since the invasion and previously since the extraction of Maduro, is that they have essentially not been willing to engage in the argument at all. And I think that's a fundamental shift in American foreign policy for which he will be remembered.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, I agree with just about everything you said. I think it's actually a very sad point. I think Barack Obama will be remembered, obviously not least for being the first black president. But I think that's the truly sad part because, you know, that when he came to power in 2008, he had a real chance to do something consequential. And he will point to the Affordable Care Act, obviously. But obviously after the financial crisis, he didn't do what was necessary. And I think you're right, in terms of consequential presidents, I think it's a great shame that a man with that kind of potential will be remembered as the first black president and not a president who did things, who managed to achieve great outcomes.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  But Trump, whether you love him or hate him, and it's funny, you know, when I hear you say things like, he will be a consequential president, I feel in the force, the disruption of people going, how can you say that about this man? But your point is absolutely right, whether you like him or hate him. Is irrelevant to what he's doing and he is shaking so many things up. And you know, since I heard the news about Maduro the other day. By the way, I wish I could pronounce these names the way you do in Caracas and Maduro. You just slip into that pronunciation effortlessly and it just sounds ridiculous if I try and do it. So I'm going to stick with my English twang instead. But you know, I woke up to the news like everybody in this part of the world did. And my first thought was, wow, that is unbelievable.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  They've managed to do that for a start so cleanly, so clinically, so precisely. It's extraordinary, especially when you think back to the Bin Laden raid and the Black Hawk that crashed and the whole, the chaos that surrounded that. And then since then, you know, I've just sat here and I'm desperately trying to say, okay, let's just take a beat and see what happens next. And it's been impossible to do because every single person is jamming me, trying to tell me, here's what will happen next. This is what's going to happen to oil. This is what's going to happen to Venezuela. This is what's going to happen here.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  And the amount of certainty I'm surrounded by in a world that has never been more uncertain. I mean, talk about uncertainty. Maduro went to bed on January the 2nd, probably thinking, ah, life's good. I'm a dictator. I've got the country in the palm of my hand. If anything happens, I've got my panic room. And the next thing he knows, he's in handcuffs and a really bad Nike tracksuit and he's on his way to New York. So the world is a confusing and uncertain place. And so I'm really excited to have this chance to talk to Brian about possibilities. Not what's going to happen, but the way he sees the region, his expertise, what could happen? Because I'm still absolutely in that phase of what could happen? Because I know the spectrum here is.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  So wide as to be unfathomable, you know, and the oil price, depending on who you talk to, it's either guaranteed to go down a lot, or it's guaranteed to go up a lot. And obviously, the middle ground is where all the interesting stuff is. So I'm really, really excited to get a chance to talk to Brian and speak to someone who's spent time on the ground. And based on all the articles of his I've read, thanks to you, I've immersed myself in them, has a really, really solid grasp of what's going on on the ground. Not least because, and I want to ask him this first before you get any questions in, he's met Pele, and I really want to ask him about that.

• 10:55Demetri Kofinas?

  That's right. He's co-written the book, our mutual, well, your friend Roger, who we did an episode with, will be very jealous to hear about this. So why don't we let him in? It looks like he's ready to come in.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Let's do it. If he's here, I can't wait.

• 11:05Demetri Kofinas?

  Brian Winter, welcome to the Hundred Year Pivot.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

• 11:10Demetri Kofinas?

  It's our pleasure to have you on. So I know Grant is excited to ask you a question. Before we get to that, a very important question about your background in soccer and your relationship with a famous soccer player. What is, just give us your quick background. What is your relevant background? How did you become such an expert in Latin America?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I am a kid from Dallas, Texas, who always wanted to be a reporter, and somehow found his way to Buenos Aires, Argentina, right after I graduated from the University of Texas. And I went there in the year 2000, thinking I was going to cover, you know, an emerging market, a country that was going to join the quote unquote first world. And instead, what I got was one of the great economic and political crises anywhere in the world over the last half century. There were five presidents in two weeks. There was a 70% currency devaluation. Unemployment went up near 30%. They defaulted on their

• 12:11Speaker 02

  debt. And I was hooked, not just as a journalist, but as someone who believes deeply in the importance of policy and how it can change people's lives. And over the last 25 years, you know, I spent 10 years total living in Latin America. I lived for four years in Argentina, one year in Mexico, and then five years in Brazil. I've seen the good and the bad, so to speak. You know, I've seen countries like Argentina that have struggled to find their way for most of that time, but also places like Brazil, Peru and Colombia that have made progress that nobody ever found, you know, that was unthinkable in many eyes. And so I'm very interested in

• 12:55Speaker 02

  the rise and fall of nations. And of course, I love that part of the world. My wife is Brazilian. My kids are Brazilian and that has become both my professional and personal life over the last 25 years.

• 13:08Demetri Kofinas?

  My wife is Argentinian and I'm quite familiar with that period, not having lived through it. But I read Paul Blustein's book about the financial crisis in Argentina. And I know he was a journalist at the time and I had interviewed Desmond Lackman years ago on my old radio program. So it's a fascinating history, but Grant, there is a question you wanted to ask Brian before we get into it.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Brian, I have to do this. As a kid who grew up in the, in the late 60s and 70s, Pele was my idol and you had the, the joy of writing a book with Pele in conjunction with the Brazil World Cup, I think back in 2014, was it? I kind of lose track of the dates, but I have to ask you before we get this because you're the only person I know who's met Pele. Just talk to me a little bit about Pele because as I say, when I was a kid, I had his picture on my wall. He was a god to me.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  I've done a couple of these books, these ghostwriting things where you help somebody write their story. I did this with two presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was president of Brazil in the 90s, and then with Alvaro Ribeiro, who was president of Colombia in the 2000s. The book with Pele, which we wrote together in 2013, was by far the most challenging of these books. Because, you know, he had this story of glory and fame, which everyone knows, but he was also burned so many times by people who he trusted. You know, the story that we know today of the athlete

• 14:35Speaker 02

  who, who is on top of the world and makes all this money and then loses it. It's almost a cliche. Well, part of the reason it's a cliche is because Pele was one of the first who went through it. You know, all he ever really cared about was playing soccer. And so he even signed away his power of attorney during the peak of his playing years in the 1960s. So he could just focus on football, on soccer. And as a result, he lost everything twice. And so here comes along this, you know, American journalist, that's me, saying, hey, you know, you can trust me, tell me your best stories and let's write your life story. And it was really, really hard to earn his trust.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  But I can tell you that he was one of the most emotionally intelligent people I've ever met. He had this amazing ability and generosity to sit across from somebody and understand exactly what they wanted and then give it to them. And you can imagine, you know, how many times he was asked to do that over the years. But, you know, he was also a very religious man and he believed that he was put here by God to make people happy. And, you know, it's funny, even listening to you, Grant, talk just now, it's clear that you grew up watching him and he made you happy. And there were billions of people who felt the same way.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  And, you know, in today's era, I hear myself saying that and it almost sounds so corny, but that doesn't stop it from being the truth. And so even though I never felt like I got that close to him, I still, you know, took so much away from the experience and had nothing but admiration for him.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Incredible. I, we, Dimitri, we need to get off this because I could sit and talk about this for hours and we don't have all that time. So get me off this, Dimitri. Where you go.

• 16:28Demetri Kofinas?

  I get it. I get it.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Thank you, Brian.

• 16:30Demetri Kofinas?

  So let's, let's start, thank you, Brian. So let's start just with a very pointed question to get people up to speed. We're recording this on Wednesday, January 7th. We're going to try to release the episode as soon as we can afterwards because of the timely nature of the discussion. But what happened in Venezuela? How would you summarize the events that occurred over the recent days?

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Well, I think that President Trump made the most dramatic decision toward Latin America of any US president in maybe 50 years by deciding to make this very daring operation. And I say daring because we now know that it was successful and that it succeeded in extracting a dictator, Nicolas Maduro, from his presidential palace so that he could face trial here in the United States. But it could have gone so wrong. And I have to confess that I was very surprised that he made this decision.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  I did not believe that President Trump would put US troops in harm's way for the Venezuelan cause because of everything that he has said over the years about the need to avoid unnecessary foreign wars, which is of great importance to so much of his base, the MAGA base. But, you know, it went exceptionally well. It was an amazing operation. Not a single US soldier died. And so, you know, here we are. That said, and like I, it very dramatic what happened and it has the, it now opens

• 18:12Speaker 02

  the door for an opportunity for change in Venezuela. But that change has not happened yet because the same regime is still in charge minus Nicolas Maduro. There is reason to be optimistic that their behavior may change, but it is not something any of us should take for granted.

• 18:32Demetri Kofinas?

  So just one more question before Grant jumps in here for clarity. There was speculation early on that there must have been some kind of negotiations between the Trump administration and members of Maduro's government to help facilitate some kind of handover, that this couldn't have happened with such little resistance if it were not already pre-orchestrated. What do we know concretely or what can we sort of reasonably assume based on the optics of this operation about what actually happened in the days, weeks and months leading up to it that made this so easy?

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Look, it was easy in the sense that no US troops died. And, you know, military experts who I listened to say that it is suggestive that these US helicopters, when they flew into Caracas, did not face more opposition. But let's also be clear. Some 70 people died as part of this operation. It's just that none of them were Americans, which is to say there was resistance. The idea that somehow a deal was cut and that therefore there was no, you know, crossfire or no resistance once US troops got on the ground is just not true.

• 19:54Speaker 02

  And, you know, that doesn't preclude the idea that there were conversations between Delcy Rodriguez, who's now the de facto ruler of Venezuela, and the Trump administration beforehand. There were some other episodes that happened in 2025, including the escape slash rescue of some Venezuelan hostages, Venezuelan members of the Venezuelan opposition who were trapped in an embassy for a very long time, that suggest that, you know, there were elements of the Venezuelan military that were operating independently, that were talking to the Americans.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  But, you know, I don't know, I don't want to underestimate the skill and tactical success of what the US military and law enforcement did in Caracas on Saturday.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brian, I'm so glad you said that because that's very much been my view. It's just an extraordinary thing to pull off the way they did. And as I said to Dimitri when we were recording our introduction, you know, love Trump or hate Trump, put that aside, this is an astonishing success for American special forces. But before we get into the whats and the whys and the personalities involved, I'd love to ask you a bit of a broader question because since we woke up three days, four days ago with this news, I'm curious for someone like you who has contacts on the ground in South America, who is a seasoned journalist trying to understand a story that's unfolding in real time, it's clearly an important story and it clearly has so many knock-on effects.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  How do you go about separating the signal from the noise? Because I've been bombarded with so much certainty about what's going to happen next and what this means for that person, when the reality is to me, we know absolutely nothing right now. So how do you go about trying to construct potential narrative, potential pathways, and weigh them up in a void of complete uncertainty?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Well, I think through two main things. The first one is humility and recognizing precisely what we don't know. And I have to tell you, Grant, for me, with this crisis, humility was easy. Because like I already told you, I got it wrong. I did not think that President Trump would order this decision. I did not think that he would express interest in something akin to nation building on the ground in Venezuela. And I did not think that if he did all these things, that he would leave the Chavista regime in charge.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  And, you know, at least temporarily exclude the Nobel Prize winner from the opposition, Maria Corina Machado, from being part of the government. So, you know, and I say this as someone who's basically, I mean, I was a journalist for a long time. These days, I'm more of an analyst. The center, the core of my job for the last year has been to try to understand what President Trump is doing in Latin America and explain and analyze it in good faith. And so even with all the time and energy that I've put into that, look, I've gotten a few things right, okay? But this one, this was a big one. And I think he surprised not just me, but a lot of us. The second thing that I think is important is to have people who you can talk to on the ground.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  And you know, when it comes to the internal dynamics within Venezuela, it's very difficult to understand. Journalists have not been allowed in in a consistent way for a very long time. People who are there in Caracas are often limited in terms of what they can say, not just because they may be censored, but because they may fear consequences for themselves or for their families if they speak openly about conditions on the ground. So you know, my point there is, I'm not sure, very few people know what's actually happening in terms of the dynamics within the Chavista regime, which is as close as you'll get in

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Latin America to a Game of Thrones environment with different fiefdoms responding to different people, very volatile, violence can break out at any moment. But those are the two things. That said, it's easier said than done. I feel like I've been drinking from the fire hose since 6:00 AM on Saturday morning, when I woke up and saw that I had, you know, 300 messages on WhatsApp. And since then, all of us have been digging through this, trying to, you know, again, trying to make sense of what's happening.

• 24:32Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm glad you brought up the question of who's in charge in Venezuela, because yes, we've heard that essentially the regime remains in place. The vice president is the de facto head of that regime, though it's not clear how much power she has versus the interior minister, the defense minister, who are also important players, from what I understand. And Trump, of course, has said that America, that the United States is effectively in charge of that country until a proper transition can be effectuated. So how, like, what is important for listeners to try to understand about the dynamics of Venezuelan politics and the security dynamics of the country as well, in order to get a sense of really what this means in practice? Like, what are we looking at here? Like, we understood when the United States, and I think it's a poor comparison that people have attempted to

• 25:17Demetri Kofinas?

  make between Iraq and Venezuela. I think these are totally different examples and also

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're very different.

• 25:23Demetri Kofinas?

  And completely different time periods, too, right? Because Bush... Tried to work within the liberal rules-based order and he, even though he went ahead without a UN resolution, attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq in the language of international law, whereas Trump has even been willing to engage in that kind of language. But what does this really look like in terms of what the US is attempting to achieve here? It hasn't invaded the country, it hasn't set up a coalitional provisional authority equivalent. So what does he mean, as best as you can understand, by the US is going to run the country? And who is effectively in charge of it as well?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  The way that I try to think about it is Nicolas Maduro and now the people who are left, what they have most feared over the years is not losing power or even losing their lives. What they most fear is spending the rest of their lives in a supermax federal prison in the United States. And that's what Nicolas Maduro now faces. And, you know, you said, and I agree with you, Iraq is not a good comparison. In the years since, we've

• 26:38Speaker 02

  repeatedly seen what happens to tyrants, what happened to Saddam Hussein, what happened to Gaddafi. There's very rarely, even when some guarantees are made, there's very rarely a golden exile waiting for these people at the end of the day. I mean, I suppose Assad is an exception. But usually what... Yeah, so far, exactly. I mean, if you look even further into Latin American history, there were dictators like Pinochet and Videla who got amnesties and eventually ended up spending at least some time behind bars. And these guys know that. And so, everything they do is motivated by that fear.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  And it's why one concern that I have now is that the Chavista regime that remains in place, led by Delcy Rodriguez, they are sort of saying the right things with this statement that they issued about collaborating with the Trump administration. But the Chavistas are, and have been over the years, absolute masters at pretending to negotiate, at pretending to be reasonable, when their real game is to draw things out, hope that their counterpart loses focus or loses power, so that they can remain in power. Because again, their biggest fear is ending up in a federal prison,

• 28:06Speaker 02

  which is exactly what has happened now to Nicolas Maduro.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Can you give us a sense of, there's obviously a power vacuum there now of some sorts. We don't really know who's in charge. We saw what happened when that situation occurred in Iraq, where the US did have boots on the ground. They could be in control. And as Dimitri, I think, intimated, it's difficult to see how they're running things without anybody being there, except probably a few thousand CIA operatives. But can you give us a sense of the vacuum, the various players here that might want to step into that vacuum? And how that kind of Game of Thrones-type power struggle might play out?

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Well, I would respectfully disagree with the idea that it's a vacuum. Yeah, I mean, this is the same power structure that was there before, minus Nicolas Maduro.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Led by Delcy Rodriguez. And this is where it becomes not exactly a vacuum, but it's not also a, you know, a neat org chart, right? Like where everybody neatly respects whoever is directly above them. I mean, the chaotic aspect of this, which I think you're sensing, is Delcy Rodriguez herself now has to manage all these different power centers. And that's the Game of Thrones analogy. You know, she has people in her orbit, sitting at her table, who might want to kill her. And who might want the throne for themselves and will probably make a move for it if

• 29:37Speaker 02

  things go the wrong way. People like Diostado Cabeo, the interior minister who commands these colectivos, which are these kind of almost paramilitary forces, thugs really, with guns, who enforce the regimes and his will throughout Caracas and other parts of the country. But look, I mean, I think it's important to note that there is still a functioning authority here. And, you know, this is sort of the case in favor, at least so far, of the way that the Trump administration has decided to play this. Instead of trying to fly in

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Marina Corina Maschado and have her, you know, be on the ground in Caracas and try to organize her own government from scratch, the Trump administration is in some ways, perhaps, learning the lessons from what happened in Iraq more than 20 years ago and leaving almost all of the prior regime in place. And I don't know if that's the right decision or not, but the argument, time will tell. But the argument in favor of it was, basic services are still being provided. There is no armed conflict in the streets of Caracas, at least at the moment. You don't have different factions battling each other for control.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  The dark side of this is that, according to many media reports, oppression is being now stepped up even higher than it was before. So there are obvious and very negative tradeoffs as part of this decision. But that's where we stand as we record this, is a chavista regime that is still very much in charge, has its own internal complications, but it ain't civil war, at least not yet.

• 31:33Demetri Kofinas?

  So Brian, I got a couple of questions. I'm gonna try to stagger them, but they're all related to trying to assess how this is going to work out and if it will work out according to US plans. Understanding, of course, that we don't really know exactly what those plans are. My first question is, given how unpopular Maduro actually has been, what explains Rubio's comments that they thought it was too risky to try and topple the regime and bring in the opposition?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Well, there's a long history there. And the opposition, it was divided for many years. In the last five, six years or so, it has found unity by rallying around Maria Carina Machado, who was previously a divisive figure within Venezuela and maybe even within the opposition itself, seen by some as kind of too hard line, too right wing, essentially. But over the years, she has consolidated support with the opposition. But what the Trump administration is telling us is that she did not have the support essentially

• 32:44Speaker 02

  of the military in Venezuela. And, you know, again, I don't want to insist on clumsy comparisons with Iraq, but we've seen what happens when you have a change like this and then the military is either dissolved or is not on board with the new leader. And that was something that the Trump administration clearly wanted to avoid. We've also learned in the last couple of days that CIA assessments essentially agreed that if they tried to install Maria Carina right away, that it would not, it was not likely to work, that it could immediately

• 33:26Speaker 02

  result in, you know, an insurgency, breakdown of civil order, perhaps a great breakdown of civil services, because the Venezuelan military controls not just security, but big parts of the economy as well. Again,

• 33:41Speaker 02

  In retrospect, perhaps some of this is obvious. The danger, though, the other side of this is if the Trump administration waits too long to call elections and try to have a legitimate democratically elected government, they risk not accomplishing any of their objectives. And let's just cite one example here. The Trump administration is counting on private companies, US companies, going in and reactivating this long-suffering oil sector, energy sector in Venezuela. Venezuela has the world's biggest oil reserves. It used to be a powerhouse.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  But based on the conversations I'm having, I think a lot of companies are going to be hesitant to do that until the chavistas are gone and you've got a legitimate democratic government in place. It might all turn out well if you have this transition for six months to a year. I don't know what the right timeline is, but there's so much risk and it's clear that we're closer to the beginning than we are to the end of this crisis.

• 34:48Demetri Kofinas?

  One more question in terms of assessing how this is going to go. When we invaded Iraq, the national security advisor was a Sovietologist, Russian-speaking PhD. The secretary of state was a kid that was raised in the South Bronx to Jamaican immigrant parents. In this case, both of those officers are held by one person, who is the son of Cuban immigrants, who speaks Spanish and has been invested and interested in the region going back to his earliest days. How significant is that in terms of both shaping the fact that Rubio is in this position in terms of shaping US policy toward the region?

• 35:31Demetri Kofinas?

  And what do we know about how much Donald Trump is relying on and leaning on him in order to devise and effectuate that policy?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  This White House is more focused on Latin America than any US government in at least 40 years. It's not just Venezuela, of course. There's been so much focus on Mexico, Argentina, where we saw the $20 billion rescue package, Brazil in the middle of last year, where the Trump administration, at least for a while, passed some of the world's highest tariffs, Cuba, Canada, it's not Latin America, but it's part of the Western Hemisphere, right? And the personnel that President Trump chose for his second term reflects that. I mean, if you believe in the old expression that personnel is policy, that is a bet that

• 36:26Speaker 02

  President Trump has made with his appointees as well. It's true. Marco Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants, steeped as much as anyone as I've ever known in the politics of South Florida, knows Latin America or much of Latin America very well, has the contacts, has made the travel, or has made trips over the years. But it's not just him. Christopher Landau, who is the Deputy Secretary of State, the number two, went to high school in Asuncion, Paraguay, and speaks astonishingly good native Spanish. He's the son of an ambassador.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  That's why he grew up there. And you have other people throughout the administration like Susie Wiles, who doesn't have Latin America experience per se, but was forged in the politics of Florida. And that is a state that lives and breathes the politics of Latin America. So these are people who know the region well. Now, you asked another question, though, which is how much of what we're seeing reflects Marco Rubio's influence?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  We may have to wait for the memoirs to know for sure. My sense is that a lot of what we're seeing right now is Secretary Rubio, but there's also clear influence from people like Stephen Miller and from the president himself. And to cite just one example of how these disagreements sometimes play out, there has been reporting by The Washington Post and others that suggests that this whole idea of striking Venezuela and bringing Nicolas Maduro to face justice in the United States actually started with Stephen Miller's desire to strike drug cartel targets in Mexico. And that other people in the administration, presumably including Secretary Rubio,

• 38:24Speaker 02

  talked the president out of it, saying, hey, God, I mean, if we go strike the Mexicans, we're going to lose their cooperation, which we really need on drug interdiction and managing of migration at the border. We shouldn't do that right now. And that that instinct essentially evolved into looking at Venezuela as the right way to essentially show our teeth to the cartels and show that we were serious about drugs. And of course, there were other factors, including oil. But, you know, no administration is a monolith. And I think we're going to continue to see various power centers competing for control.

• 39:03Demetri Kofinas?

  So, I mean, Rubio is, again, Cuban. If Trump is in fact also interested, I mean, are we going to see what's next here? Are we going to see? And Rubio made the point in a press conference that if he was in Havana, he'd be concerned, he'd be worried, whatever word he used. Are we going to see a Trump logo slapped on the Hotel Nacional? Is this going to be a place where, you know, US corporations are going to be rushing in to create the new sort of waterfront casino empire? I say that's sort of like tongue in cheek, but are there deep commercial interests chomping at the bit to get into Cuba? And is that going to, let's say, lead US foreign policy toward focusing there next?

• 39:45Demetri Kofinas?

  In other words, is the logic that operated in Venezuela going to lead us next to Cuba?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  A few things to think about. There are three countries that all of us are focused on right now in terms of what might be next. Two of them are Colombia and Mexico. Colombia is the world's biggest producer of cocaine by far. It has seen production triple over the last 10 years. They've really lost control of that. And they have a leftist president in Gustavo Petro, who has been very combative with President Trump. And there are many observers who believe that when President Trump has threatened the

• 40:31Speaker 02

  possibility of hitting Colombia next, that that's a real possibility. Now, in this case, hitting would not mean spiriting President Petro away in the middle of the night to face US courts, because if for no other reason, there's no case open against him that we know about anyway. But also, I just don't, I think they're, it's very different, and this needs to be said, very different situation from Venezuela. Colombia is a democracy. President Petro is an elected leader. But that does not preclude the US military from making some sort of unilateral strike against cartel targets on Colombian territory. I think it's very much a possibility.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  And the same scenario could happen in Mexico, which is the source of fentanyl coming into the United States, or at least the main source. The Chinese chemicals that come into Mexico and then are shipped as fentanyl to the United States. And President Trump explicitly said in the hours after the operation against Maduro on Saturday, that Mexico was not doing its part, and that, you know, the cartels were running amok, essentially. And everyone understood, including people in Mexico City and the government of President Claudia Scheinbaum, everyone understood that that was a warning, even though the Scheinbaum

• 41:56Speaker 02

  government has been very cooperative with the Trump administration, has established a stable relationship, even though it's another leftist government and they disagree on many things. You know, the issue with Trump is that you, it's never over. You know, it's never over with Trump. You never arrive at a safe port and sort of stretch your arms out and say, ah, now we've got his trust and everything's cool. It's always, what have you done for me lately? And his mind appears to be changing again, based on his rhetoric that he's been using about Mexico. But Dimitri, the third country, I mentioned there were three, the third one is clearly Cuba. And, you know, that could almost merit a podcast in itself.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  I'll be brief. Cuba has been in its worst economic crisis for several years now. And I know that we're accustomed to hearing that Cuba's in crisis. And I know also would recognize that people in the United States, in Miami and in Washington especially, have been waiting for the Cuban communist regime to fall for 65 years and counting, and it never happens, or hasn't happened yet. But it's also true that they've never been through a crisis quite like this one, where the economy is not only shrinking, but by many estimates, as much as 20% of the Cuban population has fled the island in the last five years. So it's already in a very precarious position.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  And there is no doubt that many people in this administration, especially Marco Rubio, would be delighted if that government fell. And if there's something that they can do to hasten that day, they'll do it. US power is limited. I don't think it's just a question of them deciding that it's something that they want to do. If that was true, you know, maybe Bay of Pigs or the exploding cigars of the 1960s would have taken Fidel Castro out then. But I suspect that there are people in Washington especially saying, hey, guys, like, this is as close as it's ever been. And taking out Maduro was an important step toward achieving that prize.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  So Brian, let me move things in a slightly different direction if I can. When Dimitri and I started to do this particular series, it stemmed from conversations we'd had, things we'd both written about this feeling of change in the world. Kind of ephemeral, can't really put your finger on it, but the world just feeling different around us. And we wanted to explore that because it kind of ties in with an awful lot of cycle theories, particularly the Strauss Howe generational theory, fourth turning, et cetera. And when I woke up to this news at the weekend, and Dimitri's written something beautifully eloquent about this, I think today, actually.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  It feels as though the norms that we've come to expect as part of the last 60, 70, 80 years, post-World War II, in terms of how policy is conducted, how statecraft is executed, and this framework of legal norms and do's and don'ts and red lines that have held since the end of World War II, pretty much, apart from, you know, regional stuff. That all feels to me as though it's been trampled over this past week. And it feels as though the response to it, particularly from Europe, which I guess, being a European, one has come to expect a lot of kind of sound and fury,

• 45:32Speaker 01

  signifying nothing, but a lot of, you know, harumph, harumph, we're outraged. Nothing really concrete, because it doesn't feel like Europe has any real leaders, with the exception of Giorgia Maloney, which is interesting in and of itself. But how do you frame this in terms of the much bigger picture? In terms of a change in the way our world functions? Because I don't know that people are ready and have adjusted to this idea that the way Trump is handling situations like Venezuela...

• 46:05Speaker 01

  May not just be, oh, that's Trump being Trump. That may be how the world is going to operate going forward. How do you think about that very big picture potential shift?

• 46:18Speaker 02

  That's an amazing question. I think there are a variety of ways that I could try to answer that. Let me do, try to do it as, you know, as a Latin Americanist, right? As somebody who, who follows this part of the world. It is striking to reread some of the classics. The classic works about the United States in Latin America over the last 200 years. And see echoes of what President Trump has done. In some of the other cases I've cited, but also in the case of Venezuela. People talk about the Monroe Doctrine. That's what everybody knows best.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  That's what the president himself has talked about over the last week. He's even called it the Don Ro doctrine, which was the,

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Of course he has.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Originally coined by the New York Post, the, you know, the tabloid newspaper here. And the Monroe Doctrine was rolled out by the fifth US president, James Monroe, in his State of the Union address in 1823. And it was essentially a warning that foreign powers in the hemisphere, I mean, extra hemispheric powers at the time, Europe should not interfere in quote unquote, "our hemisphere." But it was amended over the years. And perhaps the most famous corollary was the so-called Roosevelt Corollary, which came from Teddy Roosevelt in the 1900s, which said that the United States essentially granted itself the right to be a police power in the Western Hemisphere, and specifically in the Caribbean.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  And that is explicitly what President Trump is doing here. And that's something that has been very common in US history. But it's not really something that we had seen over the last 35 years or so. You know, since the end of the Cold War, the United States policy tended more to treat Latin American nations as equals, as democracies who also, you know, had a seat at the table and ultimately had sovereign power over their own affairs and their own alliances. It's very clear, based on the president's own rhetoric, as well as that of people like

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Stephen Miller, that that era is now over, or at least the Trump administration wants it to be over, and will act in a way to ensure that it's no longer the case. To now zoom out a bit and talk about this global phenomenon that you're discussing, I think it's clear, and the president has spoken about this as well, that the Trump administration wants to return, or perhaps believes we have already returned to a world of spheres of influence, where the Western Hemisphere, which is to say Latin America, Canada, Greenland, in their view, is part of the US sphere of influence, and that essentially

• 49:17Speaker 02

  the other great powers, Russia and China, will also have their own spheres. Well, this is absolutely, you know, contradicts the world order as it has existed since the end of World War II. And I think people in the administration would tell you, hey, you know what, like, we're not the ones who ended it, but that is how they see it. And then I just finally, kind of my own opinion here, which I often leave out, but I don't personally understand the nostalgia that has been expressed by some members of the administration for life as it existed prior to 1945.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  The Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, when he renamed the Pentagon as not the Secretary of Defense, but the Secretary of War, he said, "Well, you know, prior to 1945, we were the Secretary of War, and that was back when America won wars." And I think anybody who understands history, I don't understand nostalgia for the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• 50:24Demetri Kofinas?

  Not to mention that the defense establishment became powerful after we moved from having a Department of War to a Department of Defense, which created the permanent defense establishment.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, again, to be fair, I think the administration, if you had somebody from the administration here, they would say, "Look, look at the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failures that those wars constituted. Look at what has happened in Ukraine. We're not the ones who ended the quote-unquote 'rules-based order.' We are just, in some ways, acknowledging reality as it exists, where the strongest powers will do as they want and do as they must."

• 51:12Demetri Kofinas?

  So Brian, I have a question. I'm skeptical of this framing that the Trump administration supports a world of multiple spheres of influence, that the United States gets the Western Hemisphere, that China gets Asia, and that Russia gets something in between. When you read the national security strategy, they spent more time discussing China and Asia than they did Latin America, and they doubled down on the Taiwan Relations Act. And it seems to me that actually what they're saying, at least, again, in their formal communication, is that we're going to lock down the Western Hemisphere, we're going to essentially be more extractive, we're going to support right-wing political movements

• 51:51Demetri Kofinas?

  internationally, be they in Latin America or Europe, and we are going to work to prevent China from dominating Asia.

• 52:03Demetri Kofinas?

  So I'd love to understand, because it sounds to me like you're saying actually, they're actually pursuing this spheres of influence strategy. What makes you feel that way, based on what the official communications for the administration have been?

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Well, look, I would say two things. I had a different reading of the national security strategy. Western Hemisphere was explicitly first. And they said, the Trump administration said, that essentially the hemisphere had been neglected over the course of 30 years, and that they were going to reposition military forces in permanent fashion from spheres that were no longer as relevant to the United States. Now presumably, they mean the Middle East. But they made clear what they saw as the neglect of the hemisphere over time, and also portrayed it as, you know, I guess in a way, a zero-sum game, where they said that they would reallocate military resources.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Which leads me to believe that this buildup that we've seen in the Caribbean since August, which some people still seem to think is temporary, I think some version of that is very clearly here to stay. The second thing I would cite is, if you were an alien who had come from outer space and knew nothing about the world, and learned about it only through that document, you would say that the biggest enemy of the United States is Europe. I mean, there's criticism in that document of Europe that is much stronger than it is of China or Russia. But look, I would also acknowledge that those of us who are analysts in this space, we

• 53:40Speaker 02

  love to pour over documents like this, and I think that this one in particular was important. But you can also kind of overstate its import. This document was an important hint as to how this administration will behave, but let's be honest, I mean, Donald Trump did not write this. I think it's fair to ask whether he read it in its entirety. I think you could say, by the way, I'm not.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I think it's a valid question.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  I'm not denigrating anyone here. I think Donald Trump's a very smart man. But presidents in particular are known for, you know, not having the time to pour over long policy documents. And so I think what this document reflects is, and there's been a lot of, you know, kind of speculation over who really wrote it. And some people see, you know, the influence of Rubio, and many people have said that they think they see J D Vance. But even if we knew exactly who had written which parts, these things can often break down when it comes to their implementation. So I think it's more important that we judge this administration by its actions more than, you know, what some of its officials may have written over the course of last year.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  It wasn't that long ago that Nancy Pelosi told us all that we had to pass the bill so we could find out what was in it, I seem to remember. So I think your comments are well founded. But, you know, Dimitri talked there a little bit about this move to the right. And you published a remarkable piece, I guess, tail end of last year, Latin America's Revolution of the Right, which Dimitri sent me, and I found absolutely fascinating because it's, as you pointed out, it's, it's unusual for there to be so, so many right leaning political movements in Latin America gaining upper hand at the, at the same time. And this is another, you know, big change from what we've been really used to over the last, certainly the last several decades. So perhaps you could talk a little bit about that piece and the broader context of what's happening in, in Latin America politically, because

• 55:39Speaker 01

  it does, again, come back to this idea that Dimitri talked about, where the Trump administration said they were going to support right leaning. I hate using the word right wing, because it just conjures up so many images in people's minds, but certainly right leaning political parties across the world, and they've got a lot of them making headway in their own backyard.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  What's happening in right, in Latin America right now? Challenges so many of the conceptions that the world has about the region. You know, for so many decades, if you asked people, who's the first Latin American president who you think of? The answer was Fidel Castro with his, you know, his camouflaged uniform and his Cohiba cigars and his eight-hour rants against Uncle Sam. Today, you know, nobody has quite the global fame that Fidel Castro attained at his peak. But the two leaders who come closest are Javier Millay of Argentina.

• 56:37Demetri Kofinas?

  Yep.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  And Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. These are the celebrity leaders of today's Latin America, and they're both on the right. They're both Trump-allied conservatives. And they're not alone. In several elections in the last year, we have seen right-wing leaders have been elected in Chile. We saw one re-elected in Ecuador. We saw a sort of a center-right reformist take power in Bolivia after 20 years of socialist rule there. And the possibility of even more to come with elections happening in 2026 in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  So, you know, it's very possible that 12 months from now, you could see a Latin America that is even more aligned with Donald Trump and more willing to help out with his efforts on security, resource management, talking about not just oil, but rare earths and critical minerals as well. I mean, it could be a real paradigm shift.

• 57:45Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah. So what explains the transformational energy on the political right in Latin America, Brian? And what are the similarities and differences, would you say, between the movements in Latin America and what we've seen in Europe?

• 58:01Speaker 02

  So you've asked why this is happening? Why is this shift to the right underway? And I would cite two main reasons. The first one is frustration over organized crime. And, look, this is not a new issue in Latin America, okay? This has been part of the firmament of the region for as long as I've been living and working there for 30, 40 years now. But it has gotten much worse over the last 10 years. And the main reason for that is cocaine. The amount of cocaine that is being produced in Latin America, keeping in mind that almost

• 58:41Speaker 02

  all the world's cocaine comes from three countries: Colombia, Peru, Bolivia. The amount of cocaine has tripled, almost quadrupled, over the last 10 years, according to the United Nations. And that has made these organized crime groups flush with cash, and it has allowed them to diversify into areas like human trafficking, illegal mining, everyday crimes like extortion and cargo theft, in ways that have affected virtually every country in the region. Virtually every country is an important transit point for cocaine that is bound for the United

• 59:25Speaker 02

  States or Europe, but Latin America is also itself increasingly a consumer market for the drug. Brazil is now the world's number two consumer of cocaine. That's a change compared to 15, 20 years ago. So this is all reverberated. And, you know, I've lived in the region, and I, of course, always did so in a position of privilege. I lived in Sao Paulo in an apartment building that had double security gates that you had to go in and out of every time I walked outside. Most people in places like Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, elsewhere, have it far worse than I ever did.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  But there's been kind of this collective realization over the last couple of years that they don't have to live that way. And I think part of that is because of what has happened in El Salvador with Naeed Bukele. And, look, the Bukele story, it's a very complex story. You know, homicides there have fallen 90% over the last seven or eight years. By some measures, it's now even safer, at least from a murder rate perspective, than Canada. And that has involved, you know, the sacrifice of due process and human rights. And there's a dark side to that story. But the bottom line is, people in Latin America know about that.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  And it has captured their imaginations. This idea that maybe they don't want to do exactly what Bukele did, but they understand that a different, better life is possible. And they believe that if they can get the right politicians in charge, that they won't have to live with extortion and kidnapping and murder in their neighborhoods in the way that they have for so long and that they've seen get worse. So, you know, violence and organized crime, that's, I think, the first factor in the rise of the right. And the other one has been the collapse of Venezuela, which, you know, really discredited the left and socialist policies

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  in a way that nothing else in recent Latin American history had. And, you know, this was something that people in most of South America especially have been able to see with their own eyes because the collapse of Venezuela caused an exodus over the last 10 years of 8 million people from Venezuela. And, you know, we talk about that here in the United States because some of them came here. But the vast majority, talking about probably seven of those 8 million, ended up elsewhere in Latin America, mainly in places like Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina. Which is all to say, in those countries, people have seen with their own eyes

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  the disastrous effects of the chavista 21st century socialism.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And you know, they see, they know Venezuelans, who in many cases used to be doctors and lawyers back in their home countries, who've now gone to places like Lima and Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo, and have become Uber drivers or food delivery people, and in some cases are living on the street. I had the experience of walking through a city in Colombia and having someone, a beggar, on the street, who was just saying, soy venezolano, soy venezolano, soy venezolano. And so I think that that has had the effect

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  of discrediting even some moderate capitalist politicians on the Latin American left, and it's provided more energy behind this conservative shift as well.

• 1:03:21Demetri Kofinas?

  I hosted one of our genius dinners this time last year in Buenos Aires, focused on this question of whether or not Millet's administration heralded a move toward more right-wing economic policies and whether we might see a kind of domino effect in Latin America. Besides the appeal of right-wing policies on issues like immigration and organized crime, do you think that we're going to see a durable shift towards the right in Latin America on economic policies as a result of the examples of socialism's abject failure to produce better economic outcomes and improve the quality of life for people in Venezuela and Cuba?

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  That's less clear to me, Dimitri. I do think that Javier Millet has his admirers as well as his imitators. I would cite the recent case of Jose Antonio Cast, who was just elected the new conservative president of Chile in elections back in December. And one of the first things he did was meet with Millet to show that there's going to be an alliance there. He's also promised deep cuts in government spending, similar to what Millet has done.

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  And look, I think that what Millet has accomplished in Argentina so far has been notable and is another case that has, I think, surpassed almost everyone's expectations. To take inflation from, you know, 200-plus percent like it was when he took office and now have it somewhere, I believe it's in the high 20s more or less on an annual basis, is an amazing achievement. That said, you know, I'm not sure that economic issues are really top of mind in Colombia. It's also true, frankly, that not every country in Latin America needs that kind of, you know, the chainsaw that Javier Millet famously wielded.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  In Argentina, it made sense because Argentina was spending about, if I'm not wrong, about 35% of GDP on its public sector. That's one of the highest levels in all of Latin America. Only Brazil is comparable. A place like Chile or Mexico is in the mid 20s. And then you've got some countries like Guatemala and some of the Central American countries that only spend somewhere in the high teens. Those are countries that need to build out their state rather than slash it. This is testimony to the differences that you find within Latin America itself. So in summary, I think it's a bit early to say that we're going to see a wave of, you

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  know, economic reform like the one that Argentina has led under Millet. And it's not, you know, with crime, it is very clearly showing up in polls in country after country as the number one issue.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Brian, if I may, just something you said there that, again, comes back to this broader sweep of what really was the impetus behind this podcast, and that's this kind of change that we're going through. And you talked there about... A really Machiavellian political climate whereby people are perfectly happy to suspend due process and do this. The end really does justify the means here. If you can bring crime down, we're going to turn a blind eye and you can do whatever it is you need to do. And that, I completely understand why that resonates with people. You know, it's a very different extreme, you know, in somewhere like the UK where people are just fed up with not being allowed to speak freely and they're the hashtag first world problems

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  and all that kind of thing. But the attitude in the UK is very much, look, I'll put up with all kinds of things if I can have my country back again. And while the reclaiming the country in the UK is a very different nature from getting rid of organized crime gangs that are terrorizing the entire population, this shift towards, well, I'm not so worried about due process anymore. I want the outcome and the means how you get there, you know what, that's up to you. I'm going to elect you because you tell me you're going to get there. And that's a big shift. And the fact that we're seeing this across Latin America, the fact that we're starting to see it, as Dimitri pointed out, in places like Hungary and in Europe and to a lesser extent, but perhaps a more important one in Italy with

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Maloney, this is part of what I feel to be this big change, that we're not so worried about how we get there anymore as much as we are the destination. Is that fair? And if so, what do you think that portends if that, what we're seeing in Latin America along those lines, starts to branch out and move further afield?

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  That's a great question, Grant. And I would say that, you know, look, I think it's proof that governments must provide security first.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  If you can't guarantee people's safety, then a lot of these other priorities will go out the window. And to be fair, I think a lot of governments in Europe recognize that. It's also, I mean, the statistics for crime in Europe compared to those in Latin America are like night and day. And I think the average homicide rate in Western European countries is somewhere around two per 100,000. In Latin America, it tends to be about 20. So literally 10 times.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  But I think it's the rate of change that's upsetting people. It's not so much the absolute numbers. It's just the rate of change that's really got people agitated.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  You're totally right. And I would cite Chile as an example. Chile is a country that is much safer than the rest of Latin America, than places like Colombia and Mexico. But they just voted for this, you know, right wing figure in Jose Antonio Cast, who was promising a crackdown on crime, who was embracing, at least in rhetoric, some of what Bukele has accomplished, who was promising to build a border barrier to keep out illegal immigration in, you know, a manner very similar to Donald Trump. And some people said, oh, why is he doing that? Because Chile is, it's not as bad as Peru, or it's not as bad as Colombia. But that's not how people think. People are not comparing their fate to that of another

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  country. They're comparing it to their own memory and the way it used to be. And I think quite rightly, in some cases, saying, we're not going to go down that road. And if a government fails to get this under control, we're going to elect another government who will at least try to do so. But, you know, look, I think that as ever, these instincts are tempered by certain things. In Latin America, it's interesting to see how the strongest democracies today, and I'm talking about Chile, Argentina, Brazil especially, those three, Uruguay, I think, smaller, but part of that group. Those are all countries that lost their democracies

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  in the last 40 years, that have recent experience with dictatorship and don't want to go back there. And so there's more defense of these democratic principles in some of those countries than I see frankly, sometimes here in the United States. Chile has this marvelous tradition that was just continued in the election that we saw last month, in which the winner of the election Speaks on the phone with the president-elect on live television, and they congratulate each other for the work they've done. What a wonderful tradition. Can you imagine that having happened in the United States over the last 12 years?

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  And there's other examples, too. So people are complicated, societies are complicated. This desire for change and for security can reside alongside principles. But, you know, to now, having lifted you up a bit, let me now sort of, you know, crush our hopes a little bit and say that it's clear to me that when governments fail to deliver on that promise of basic security, that even in some of those countries, these principles can go out the window. And that's why, you know, that's why you have governments that are working so hard to deliver right now.

• 1:11:45Demetri Kofinas?

  I know, Brian, that we're running up towards the end of our time limit. I'm curious, you know, looking, let's say, 10 years down the road. What are the sorts of things that we know to be true today about Latin America that will no longer hold, in your view, or are less likely to hold? And what is your optimistic view for the region and for its economies?

• 1:12:09Speaker 02

  There are two questions that I'm really focused on right now. And the first has to do, it's related to this matter of civil liberties and democratic rights. It's clear that artificial intelligence is going to provide governments with a very powerful tool to stop or reduce crime. The monitoring capability of AI in coming years and its ability to maybe not prevent, but certainly track down and, you know, the guilty is mind-boggling.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  And I wonder if, in this, you know, trade-off between privacy and civil liberties versus security, if some of the countries that are going to be most willing to make that trade-off are in Latin America, which, you know, is, it's the most dangerous part of the world. It's 8% of the world's population and about 30% of the world's homicides. So that's one thing that I'm very focused on. And then the second thing is demographics. I'm old enough to remember an era, barely, when people were worried about overpopulation in Latin America, and the globe generally.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  But in many countries, there were birth rates of six or higher as recently as the 1970s. Today, Chile has a lower birth rate than Japan. These are countries that are falling off a demographic cliff. And it's another phenomenon that we're seeing all over the world, but is especially accelerated, and I have to say particularly unexpected in Latin America. And the consequences for pensions, economic growth, social stability, and so on, they just boggle the mind. And, you know, yet another challenge

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  for a region that I have seen so much progress over the last 25 years. You know, we've been focused on problems in the course of this conversation, which always happens, right? That's the nature of these conversations. But I've also seen the spread of democracy, the growth of the middle class. These are all 21st century stories in Latin America that I think will come under increasing strain if we see populations that are aging and where economic growth may become much more difficult to produce.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Brian, before we close, and again, thanks so much for giving us the extra time. It's been such a fascinating conversation. Can you give us a sense of, because the next days and weeks, there's going to be all kinds of stories and headlines, and pensions are going to swing in all sorts of directions. Can you give us, and by extension, the people listening to this, a sense of some of the things that you'll be focused on in Venezuela particularly, in terms of things that you'll be looking to see happen or not happen, depending on which way you think they might go? Particular personalities that either concern you or you'd like to see, you hope will get involved in a meaningful way? Just so people can have a sense, almost a cheat sheet, because there's so much information flying around.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  As I said at the beginning, there's so much certainty around it. And I'd much rather speak to someone with your kind of background and expertise to get a sense of what we should be looking for.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Look, I think the biggest question of all is whether Delsi Rodriguez, the former vice president, now the acting president of Venezuela, will do President Trump's bidding when it comes to oil, reducing drug smuggling, starting to kick the Cubans, Iranians, and Russians out of Venezuela, or whether it will start to seem like one big Kabuki theater where she is pretending to cooperate. And if the Trump administration becomes displeased, which I think is almost inevitable, even if, by the way, she's moving in the right direction,

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  then what? And, you know, that's not just up to President Trump. I think it's going to be really important to see here in the United States how domestic public opinion evolves and how favorable the American people will be toward continued attention toward Venezuela. You know, there's been some polling already that suggests that especially in the MAGA base, people are very happy with what happened in Venezuela. And I get it, because if you look at the result and some of the video, it was kind of awesome. You know, not to banalize war,

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  but for, you know, everyday Americans, they were like, "Yeah, wow, that was pretty cool." The second that it starts to resemble an occupation, the second that it starts to feel like Iraq and Afghanistan, that's not inevitable. But if it does, I think you could see public opinion start to shift very quickly. And I wonder, and I really, you know, I asked this question not knowing the answer. I wonder if ultimately there is an impasse there. You know, can the Trump administration force Delcy Rodriguez to do its bidding without

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  a US troop presence on the ground in Venezuela? And the second part of that question is, and I feel like this one I know the answer to, would the American people tolerate a significant presence of American troops on the ground in Venezuela? And I, my gut tells me that the answer to that second question is no. And the problem would not be, you know, Democrats, who of course, President Trump doesn't really care what they think. I think the real obstacle for the administration would be what the MAGA base thinks. And, you know, they're pretty united right now. Talk of divisions in the MAGA base over Venezuela in particular has been way overstated.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  I mean, the polling shows us that the MAGA is behind the president on this one so far. And I get it. But if it gets more complicated, this could fall apart. That said, I really can see how this story could evolve in a way that is to the president's liking. It is possible to me that, you know, we'll see a transition government of six to 12 months that makes at least some progress on these priorities that President Trump has highlighted, and that we could see elections and a return to democracy and stability in Venezuela. I think that option is also on the table. We just have to see how it goes.

• 1:19:16Demetri Kofinas?

  Brian, thank you so much for doing this and for making yourself available last minute. This has been incredibly value-added for me, for Grant, and for our listeners, I'm sure. So we're really deeply grateful.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Guys, I enjoyed it. It's been a busy week. Yes, of course. You know, this has been the biggest story out of Latin America that I've seen in my career, and it's one that I know all of us are going to continue watching.

• 1:19:41Demetri Kofinas?

  What's the best way for people to follow you and read your work?

• 1:19:45Speaker 02

  Well, I can be found on the different social media platforms at Brazil Brian. And that's Brazil with a Z, by the way, the Brazilians spell it with an S. True to my gringo roots, I spell it there with a Z. And I'm the editor in chief of a publication about Latin American politics called America's Quarterly. And you can find our work at AmericasQuarterly.org.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Phenomenal. Brian, it's been a real pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you again for doing it and good luck. I hope you get the sleep you need to navigate this news cycle.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Who needs sleep, Grant? Thank you to you, to Dimitri as well. I enjoyed it too.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Take care. Bye bye.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Well, mate, I thought that was tremendous. I, as I said right at the beginning, we were talking off mic and when Brian joined us, it's so nice to find someone you can talk to that's been there, is unsure about things. You know, I just, it's such a breath of fresh air for me. I'm drowning in certainty and it's killing me.

• 1:20:43Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, no, it's always a good sign. I mean, there are certain heuristics you can rely on to assess the credibility of a source, even if you know nothing about the topic or the subject at hand. And humility is right at the very top.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Amen, amen. But it was fascinating. You know, there's so many parts to this that I have no idea how it's going to play out. But having that background is going to be so helpful to me. And as this kind of thing progresses and takes the inevitable twist and turns that it takes, it's going to be so useful to have this last 90 odd minutes as kind of background in my, in the back of my mind, so I can gauge things and put them through the filter that Brian's given us. I love that, every minute of it.

• 1:21:22Demetri Kofinas?

  Yeah, it was also interesting to hear Brian essentially express his doubt about the US commitment to Asia. I mean, he's one of many smart people who have said the same thing. And it's hard for me to reconcile that view with what was articulated at the National Security Strategy. And I suppose I'm skeptical because I think the US has made so many commitments to Asia and has so many important allies in the region. And Asia is by far the most important economic continent. It is essentially, to quote Elbridge Colby, the The equivalent of Europe after World War II. It's the area which is the most economically important.

• 1:22:02Demetri Kofinas?

  And so I question really how much the US is prepared to cede Asia to China. And I continue to view the actions in Latin America as part of a larger global strategy to deny China regional hegemony. But I think, you know, this is going to be a story you and I are going to be covering for a while. So we'll have a chance to see how events confirm or disconfirm that hypothesis.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I agree with that. The avenue we didn't go down, and it wasn't appropriate to, given Brian's background, is the financial component to all this. The oil component, the dollar component, the stablecoin component, you know, that because this is the piece that I'm interested in. Because it, to me, you can make a very cogent argument that this move is more a sign of weakness slash desperation than strength and purpose. I'm not saying that's the case, but I'm saying you can make a very cogent argument about that. And that's kind of, for me, that's the big picture. That's where we are. We're stuck between this strong America and weak America. And maybe it's Schrödinger's America. Maybe it's both strong and weak, right? And it's perfectly possible that it could be.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  So that the China aspect of it, if America is perhaps worried about it being weak, it makes sense to gently try and secure your backyard, realizing that you're not strong enough to fight on two fronts and you're not strong enough to fight an extended war out in the Pacific when Europe's going to be no help to you whatsoever. If you're a strong America, it's a very different argument, you know? And so, and I really don't know which is which. And I'm wrestling with that all the time. And I'm sure that question is going to come up many, many more times in many, many different scenarios.

• 1:23:46Demetri Kofinas?

  No, I agree with you. I think it's a sign of relative American decline and weakness. I mean, what was that line by Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones when he was speaking to his soon to be deceased grandson, that anyone who says that I, anyone who feels the need to say that I am the king is no true king? I think that 20 years ago, the United States wouldn't have felt the need. To engage in Latin America and to state the obvious that the Monroe Doctrine holds. And I think that the fact that we have is a sign of our relative military decline. But I do also, I am also skeptical at the same time of the extent to which the game is quote, "over." You know, I think that a lot of folks are quick to call the US out. I think that's a bad idea.

• 1:24:29Demetri Kofinas?

  I'm a little concerned, though, I have to say, about this sort of like doubling down on oil and gas and internal combustion engines as like the platform on which the United States is going to build its economy in the 21st century. I am no expert in this area, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut. But the little that I've read and covered on this podcast tells me that there's really something there in terms of battery technology and innovation of the electric grid. China is going down that road and how it facilitates a lot of the advanced manufacturing of the future, automation, AI, getting integrated into all of that. So I think that's also an important thing to think about as we view.

• 1:25:11Demetri Kofinas?

  And also a conversation I had with Wolfgang Munchau about a year ago or more. He's the FT journalist who wrote a book called Kaputt about the German economy. And I learned from him something I did not know, which is that essentially Germany was stuck in an analog era technologically. And so I've used that example also as a sort of analog to think about what could happen to the United States if we double down on our pre-existing energy platforms and don't sort of look to compete with China. I mean, I am not ideologically or in principle opposed to tariffs or protectionism. What I am opposed to is isolationism and isolating ourselves from foreign competition.

• 1:25:56Demetri Kofinas?

  The Chinese have done the exact opposite. They protected their industries, but they also exposed them to foreign competition in order to use that competitive pressure to evolve the quality of their domestic manufacturing ecosystem. So there's so much that we have to do in America to remain competitive and to come out on top, so to speak. And I'm not seeing as much of that as I'd like to, to feel as hopeful as I would like.

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that. And again, it comes back to something Brian said, right? I mean, there's this idea of going back and doubling down. It's an extension of this, I want my country back. I want my world that I'm familiar with, which is not being forced to buy an electric car. It's I like my big gas guzzling F-150. It's more doubling down. But I absolutely, because if you're going to quote Tyrion Lannister, I think Margaret Thatcher said it way better than he.

• 1:26:43Demetri Kofinas?

  Tywin Lannister, yeah.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  Tywin Lannister, yeah. Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell someone you are, you're not. And I just think.

• 1:26:51Demetri Kofinas?

  Wow. Talk about a quote that works on many, many levels.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Many levels.

• 1:26:57Demetri Kofinas?

  Today's cultural.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Many levels. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:59Demetri Kofinas?

  Wonderful.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  All right, my friend. Well, that was spectacular. I'm so glad. Thank you for arranging that. You did great work in getting Brian to come and join us. Our thanks to Brian. As he said, you'll find his work at Americanquarterly.org and also Brazil Brian with a Z, the correct way to spell it, if you're a gringo like the three of us. And thanks to you out there for listening. We, Dimitri and I thoroughly enjoy these conversations and we love all the feedback we get from them. Dimitri, tell them where they can follow all your amazing work in case they aren't already doing so.

• 1:27:27Demetri Kofinas?

  Well, they can follow me on Twitter, which I use sparingly, at Kofinas with a K. And they can find the podcast, to subscribe to the premium feed and learn more about our Genius Community at hiddenforces.io.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Dot IO, amazing.

• 1:27:43Demetri Kofinas?

  And that's with an S also, not a Z.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  There you go. All right, my friend. We'll do this again soon, I hope. I have no idea who our next conversation is going to be, but I'm already looking forward to it.

• 1:27:53Demetri Kofinas?

  Me too, man. Me too. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode and want to join in on the conversation by becoming a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events and dinners, you can do that at hiddenforces.io/subscribe. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to [email protected] and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at hiddenforces.io. You can follow me on

• 1:28:36Demetri Kofinas?

  Twitter at Kofinas and you can email me at [email protected]. As always, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.