Trump, Ukraine and the Myth of a Democratic EU | Jorge Tamames Interview

[Tiare] Hello and welcome to the channel of DiEM25.

Today we are joined by Jorge Tamames.

He has a PhD from University College

Dublin and currently teaches European

Political Economy at the

University Carlos III of Madrid.

Jorge, thank you so much for joining us today.

How are you doing?

[Jorge] My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

All is good here.

Rainy day in Madrid.

Rainy month, actually.

[Tiare] Yeah, we're both from Madrid, actually,

so we've had two madrileños in a row.

I want to start talking about the

joint press conference with President Volodymyr

and President Donald Trump

that we recently saw because what we want to

touch upon today mainly is the

geopolitical tensions that are currently happening

especially within Europe and in relation to Ukraine.

And obviously we need to talk about

this joint press conference.

This event saw the Ukrainian and American

leaders confront each other in a blow-up

that ushers in a new phase of the

war in Ukraine, one under a Trump presidency.

And I was wondering, what do you make

of the apparent antagonism between the two leaders?

[Jorge] Well, the first thing that I'll say is

that I had to watch the clip several

times and this is not something that I usually do.

My background is in foreign affairs.

I studied international relations.

I worked at a foreign policy journal

in a think tank for a while,

so this is sort of my bread and butter.

And I had never seen an exchange on that level.

Just the humiliation of a guest who is

also a head of state in the White House

in front of the press,

with the press participating in it.

I was shocked and I am not usually

one to be sort of shocked.

Trump has always generated this sort of

sometimes a bit prudish reaction

regarding: oh, he doesn't respect norms.

He doesn't respect due process.

He's like this vulgar guy.

And I usually don't have much patience for that,

but I was surprised.

I think on a formal level, it was

just something very different to watch.

And I think, I guess it goes to

the differences between his first

administration and the second one.

This is the kind of thing you would have not

seen in the first Trump White House

because at the end of the day, he had to rely on a lot of

people who were not Trump world

characters like he has around him now, right?

These were more standard Republican operators.

Rex Tillerson, the guy who first ran his

department of state, was a guy who came

from the big oil industry.

So the more standard profiles you

would see in a normal Republican administration.

So in a way, I had this feeling

that this was new ground.

This entire concern with Trump in the way

that he doesn't respect the way things are usually done

and so forth, I found myself

taking it a bit more seriously in

the last two months than I did in the past.

Now, the question, what do I think

it represented in terms of the substance?

I'm not sure to what extent this style is going to work

for this administration or not.

And what I mean by that is

I think it was very counterproductive

in terms of, Trump has been extraordinarily successful in

galvanising the EU to become

independent or become more autonomous

from the U.S. with events like this one

or like J.D. Vance's visit in

the Munich Security Conference, right.

And this is something that was not on

the menu two months ago.

So the future German Chancellor Merz,

when he was running for office,

his whole deal was: Oh no, we're going to get

along pretty well with Trump.

We'll be able to reach some deals.

He's not our favourite guy, but we can

actually live with this guy.

We'll be pragmatic.

And on election night, he said:

My first concern is to become independent from the US.

So I think this has been

the first effect of this change in forms

rather than substance, because in terms

of the substance, this is the stuff he ran on.

Well, the UK stuff, not other stuff that

he's actually pushing and we can talk about it.

But yeah, that's my reading of

the whole scene.

At first I was shocked.

And then looking at the reaction

I think, maybe they're not reading the room correctly.

I don't mean the room of the meeting in which it took place,

but the broader room of the way Europeans are

going to react, public opinion in Ukraine

might shift or not.

Ultimately whether Russia

will actually pick up on the deal

that is being offered to them at this point.

[Tiare] Right, just to check your thoughts on another

important point related to this newly

Trump administration era

the United States and Ukraine plan to sign a minerals deal,

which has seen much controversy.

According to the deal, Ukraine will

contribute 50% of future proceeds

from state owned mineral resources,

oil and gas to an investment fund,

which will then invest to promote the safety,

security and prosperity of Ukraine.

This deal appears to imply that private

companies will need to get involved in

the mining process within the vague

information that we have been receiving about this deal.

Do you believe, given what we know

do you believe it can be perceived as simply

laying bare the American interest in

exploiting Ukrainian natural resources

for the benefit of the American capitalist class?

Is there anything in this for working class Americans?

[Jorge] OK, so let's start with the last part.

Is there something in this for working class Americans?

I'd say no.

On the face of it, there doesn't seem to be much.

I can have some sympathy for the people

who voted for the first Trump term, right,

with a working class background,

expecting to get sort of a better deal

than what was being offered

by Hillary Clinton in 2017.

But at this point, I think with Trump,

you sort of know what you're getting to an extent.

I'll qualify that a bit further on.

But in terms of what is the

American working class getting out of this deal

I don't know if this deal is viable at all.

So sometimes it's hard to take these

announcements on their face.

And usually they create outrage

of course, because it looks like a shakeup

and it seems to be a shakeup in

exchange for some very dubious security guarantees.

Now, I'm not an expert in rare earth

or their processing or critical minerals.

So take this with a grain of salt,

pun unintended.

But from what I've read, it seems like

a lot of these rare earths

come from old maps from back in the

Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s.

It's not sure whether they can be mined

or they're economically viable as of today.

A lot of the places that have to

be mined are where the fighting

is taking place.

So none of that was a problem because

you even managed to get a peace deal.

So then presumably you'd get American

companies that go there and invest in the mining process, right?

Mining is an economic sector that

requires a lot of capital investment,

long time horizons before you can get

credit on your investment

and a very stable, judicial and regulatory framework.

These are not things you're going to

be getting right now in the Donbass region

of Ukraine or even in Ukraine

or the full Russian occupied areas.

So I don't see how this deal amounts

to much other than something that

Trump can announce and feel happy about.

I think here the experience of his

first term in office is instructive.

We saw a lot of this during the first Trump term.

So that's my general read on the deal.

So then it seems like it doesn't make much sense.

But one of the interpretations I've heard

was that rather than coming

from the White House, it was something

that the Ukrainians and Zelensky pitched to Donald Trump.

Again, if that is the case,

that seems to me a sort of genius move

to present him with a deal that he likes

and that is going to create some shock and some support,

but there's very little workable substance behind it.

But ultimately, we'll have to wait and see.

But I don't think this deal as of now leading anywhere.

[Tiare] Yeah, I don't know.

I just personally felt like this was

just something, it's like:

Well, we should have known

if the U.S. is after anything or the EU.

Now we're going to get to that.

But if after anything would end up

be exploiting natural resources.

I think if we look at the history of

the wars, especially that the U.S

has enjoyed joining and pushing for.

I mean, I don't know.

I just I was quite shocked that anyone

would be shocked at the U.S.

pursuing that kind of interest.

[Jorge] I was also shocked because this

was nowhere on the cards during the campaign. right?

[Tiare] Yeah.

[Jorge] Unless I'm much mistaken.

I don't remember hearing about this at all

throughout the past year.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm getting the sense and this is something

I think is worth keeping in mind

because the pace of announcements from

this administration in the first month and a half

has been so overwhelming.

Sometimes it's just almost unavoidable

that you feel sort of demoralised

and overwhelmed and you don't even have a grip on what is happening.

I think at points like that, it's worth keeping in mind

these guys won an election for a variety of reasons

But an important one was that there was

a critical mass of Americans who thought

that prices were too high and eggs were too expensive.

So, you can say these were like 'economic anxiety' voters.

who voted because they

thought they were getting a lousy deal with Biden.

And the Trump campaign did make a lot

of emphasis on prices being too high throughout the campaign.

So those people voted with that in their mind.

And what they got is a minerals deal

invading the Panama Canal.

Canada should be the 51st state

and we should also own Greenland.

I don't see how that is working very

well for your working class

economic anxiety Trump voter in the long term.

I don't think it's working for the stock market either.

Your traditional Republican

who's just hoping to get a good return

on his investments from the Trump presidency

like happened last time

when the stock market was booming.

So I don't want to be too mechanistic and say:

Oh, the economy doesn't work so he'll run into trouble.

But it's worth keeping in mind that we're getting

announcements of different deals every day,

but he's not delivering on the

basic deal that won the election for him.

Honestly, like I don't think a Trump

presidency works for anyone, obviously

not the working class, but also the vast

parts of the capitalist class.

I don't think or especially the

professional managerial class.

I don't think they're excited to have him.

Hence Trump derangement syndrome.

Like I believe that is absolutely a thing.

I wanted to ask you at the beginning

of this month of March, Trump halted

military aid to Ukraine, a cut that then

expanded to include all military intelligence

while acknowledging Russia's

guilt in illegally invading a sovereign country..

We will probably agree that finding

a diplomatic solution that seeks to

de-escalate the military conflict should be prioritised.

Do you believe these steps taken by

President Trump bear any positive aspects at all

or are they counterproductive to the sense?

Well, I'm going to give you my easy

answer, sort of a cop out.

But I do think it's too soon to tell

because we don't know if this deal

at this stage, this compromise has buy in from the Russians.

What we know is that the Ukrainian side

has sort of been strong armed to the negotiating table.

Now, I think if you look at this war

none of the sides were going to

get what they wanted originally.

So Russia wanted to topple the entirety

of the Ukrainian government,

to march to Kiev, to install a puppet regime,

and to annex the four regions

that it proclaimed are part of new Russia.

This is a term they used to refer to them.

And then on the Ukrainian side, at one point

there was even talk of launching

an offensive and being able to retake Crimea.

This was really always, always a far-fetched idea.

So neither side got what it originally wanted from this war.

And so sooner or later,

you're going to have a negotiation, right?

Now, the question is, what does that

negotiation actually look like?

If you had a peace settlement now,

where Ukraine was forced to make a lot of concessions

and really, the underlying

issue was never resolved

and there's hostility between Ukraine and Russia,

you'd basically have a rerun of the

Minsk 1 and 2 accords after 2014, right?

So I think you could envision a scenario

in which you say: Oh, well, you know,

you reach some sort of deal that at this point,

t,it seems like will please the

Russian side much more so than the Ukrainian one.

Although it is worth keeping in mind two things

one that a couple months ago

if you looked at polling,

public opinion polling in Ukraine,

there was a plurality or a slim majority

of people who said: yeah, we want a deal,

we hope we can get on with Trump.

That has changed slightly, I think,

because of the systematic humiliations

that Trump has visited upon

Ukraine's leadership and Ukrainians in general.

And I think now that their resolve is hardening.

So again, that's another example of this

administration being very counterproductive.

But if you assume that there's

the space for making a deal, fine.

The question is, what happens the day after that?

If we have the precedent of 2014 leading to 2022,

then how do you avoid having

a deal reached today leading to another conflict

five years down the line or seven years down the line, right?

So I think that's the big question that

we really should be thinking about

what's going to happen after that deal.

I do want to ask you about

what you think would be

the best case scenario, the best solution, if you will.

But first, I want to discuss the European side of this.

This month has also seen Ursula von der Leyen

unveil a plan to rearm Europe,

announcing we are in an era of rearmament.

This includes defence investment loans

to member states, use of the EU budget

to direct more funds towards defence related

investments and deploying private capital.

.

How do you regard this initiative?

I'll say a couple of things about it that

I think are good, because then

I have several misgivings

that I want to explore it at night.

I think to some extent, it is better than

the alternative of what Trump was

proposing, right, which was that each

European state raise defence spending to 5% of GDP.

And it's good in that it takes the

EU as the political subject that needs

to make these decisions.

So it's not NATO, which at this point iz

becoming more and more

dysfunctional with each passing day, right?

So it's the EU that needs to take

its own defence seriously and become

autonomous at a time when it's being

threatened by both Trump and Putin, right?

So that's what I think is good about the deal.

And the fact that is

the approach is sort of ambition when you

look at, well, not exactly the scale of

billions that is mobilised, because here

there's always a bit of creative accounting

that we're used to see from Brussels, right?

So I think if you compare it to next generation EU,

it's lacking in that respect.

But when you take into

consideration the fact that it's

happening at the same time as Germany,

for example, reforms its debt rate,

right, the constitutional amendment,

and makes it more flexible,

that just happened today, then you get a sense

that there's an ambition to match

what otherwise would be just like lofty declarations.

So what I think is more problematic about

it is that it basically thinks about European defence.

And what they do is like you start

with what you have, and you work towards the number, right?

This is the way that all these discussions unfold.

So what do you have is, European

defence, when you look at overall

spending numbers, it's not actually a small number.

we're used to thinking that Europe doesn't spend, that

the EU doesn't spend enough on defence.

And when you look at the aggregate numbers

depending on the metrics you use

but we do spend several times more

than Russia does.

And if you also take the UK into

consideration, right, sort of these

like minded allies, then you have almost

twice the defence budget of China.

So that's not an insignificant number by any means.

The problem is, and you know, this is

sort of well known by now that it's

extraordinarily inefficient,

because it's fragmented and 27 different armies.

And so you don't generate economies of scale.

You don't generate the investment

you would need to have a

competitive defence industry that spans

the entire union and so forth.

So the problem that I see is what

this programme does is mainly it focusses on

national defence budgets and says:

yeah, you can raise them, we expect to get 650

I think it's 600, 650 billion euros out of that.

And we will loosen the fiscal rules so

that this doesn't immediately fall into

the excessive deficit procedure, right,

for countries like Spain, for example, or

for most European countries who have to

undergo this investment.

Now, how long would that last for?

Is that the way to like build a

European defence capability?

I'm very sceptical of it, right?

The way I would go about it is slightly different.

I would think: okay, so we're in

one of those rare moments of crisis in

the EU right now, similar to the COVID crisis

where the more ambitious

solutions are also the more pragmatic, right?

Usually it's the opposite, right?

It's like, oh, you know, we're asking for a pie in the sky.

So I think you should start with

the most ambitious proposal you can

consider and then work with that towards,

landing that on the framework that you can work with.

And so what would that look like?

I think it would entail acknowledging

that yes, there is a security threat,

even if the Ukraine situation is solved

immediately, right?

You need to have the deterrence

capability to avoid a scenario like 2014

to 2022, like what we were talking about before.

But then it should be the EU that

provides that, not NATO.

You should not rely on the United States.

The United States is not an ally in

any sense of the word anymore.

So you need to do this on your own.

And you also need to define security very broadly

I think, for this to work.

So yes, a part of it has to

do with like defence, right?

And what we were just talking about.

And this is what usually all the

conversation focusses on.

And that's part of the deal.

But there's other stuff that the EU needs

to do to actually establish a security worthy of that name.

So at least three other areas besides defence.

One would be climate security.

You know, you need to become energy independent

not just from Russia and oil and gas

but from the United States or the Gulf states.

And that involves being very ambitious

with the ongoing green transition.

So you need to double down on that,

not cut your resources to focus

exclusively on defence.

If you adopt a broad conception of security

that is also something that you

need to take into consideration.

You can't just leave it in the back

burner and expect things to get better in the future.

You also need to think of economic

security, right?

In terms of having a financial

architecture that does not depend on the

dollar system or US payment platforms, right?

That involves anything from having a more

internationalised euro to having

a digital euro as a tool for payments, right?

You can get really down to the

weeds of like the policies that you need for this.

But there's a big plank that has to

do with your economic model, the fiscal rules

that are extremely outdated,

even after this programme, right?

They should be completely overhauled if

you really want to meet the challenge

that you face right now.

Fourth area, and final one, would be

security from a social standpoint.

If you do all these things and at

the same time, you have to do austerity

because you have to balance a budget,

then that defeats the purpose of any of this.

Especially keeping in mind that we

know by now and there's considerable

evidence that doing austerity,

doing budgetary cuts, trimming down the welfare state

actually empowers the very friends

of Trump and Putin that are already

reasonably strong in a lot of European states.

So if you want to stop the far Right

and if there's anything in the EU

that is worth fighting for, it's probably

a socioeconomic model that

provides social security in the form of

the welfare state, public health care,

public education, pensions, you name it.

So that has to be a big part of it.

And so you get these four things and

then you think, okay, how are we going

to pay for them?

And then I think, a mixture

of having more mutualised European debt,

like next generation, and having its own,

fiscal capacity in terms of,

I don't know, I would consider not just

punishing Russian oligarchs, but taxing

the activity of American tech oligarchs

for the EU to generate its own resources.

And there are ways to do that, right?

And you can talk about Russian stranded

assets and a number of other sources of

revenue that you can tax.

So you'd have to be much more broad

in your conception of security and not

just focus on the defence industry

and defence spending from a national perspective.

Because ultimately, I mean, I hope this doesn't happen.

And there's still ongoing discussion.

But if this ends up being an excuse

for member states to spend more money

without clear strategic goals, and that

ends up being, well, I don't know, buying

American equipment, and increasing a

security dependence that is already

there, then you've doubled down on a problem, right?

So, you know, I think there's some good elements to it.

But I think it could be much improved

and still needs a broader definition

of security and much more fiscal ambition.

So basically, are you saying you think it

would be preferable for member states to

make less of a decision here and for

the EU to have a more coordinated plan?

And I'm just wondering, do you think the

European Union, and I'm not talking

Europe, I'm talking the European Union,

would ever take that non-aligned perspective?

Do you think that's plausible?

Don't you feel like maybe European

nations themselves would be more likely

to, if they were democratic enough to not

be that constrained by the

European Union.

Don't you feel like they would try to be non-aligned?

Obviously, I'm kind of generalising here.

But I don't know, I'm just wondering, do

you have hopes in the EU?

Or do you have hopes in Europe?

And yeah, what do you think is more

likely like for the EU to actually take

a non-aligned stance or for European countries?

Because I don't know, I just struggle to

believe that the EU would ever do that.

So I kind of have the opposite reaction

in that I would have more hope in

European nations individually

taking that sort of stance and

making the right investments, or Europe

as a sort of region rather than the

EU specifically.

But let me know your thoughts about this.

So I think there's one thing that is:

okay, should the EU pull its capacities together?

That's one thing, right?

And have like a more federated approach

to these threats that it faces now, and

these challenges in the form of Russia,

of the United States,

of having to develop its own autonomy.

And then the other question is about

Europe's alignment, right?

I'm going to try and parse them out

because I think they're slightly distinct.

So the question, the way this is always

posed is this question:

oh, should you have a European army, right?

And usually this is something

that doesn't get discussed a lot

beyond the theoretical level, right?

Because there are like many operational

and political hurdles along the way

but, mostly it's a question of political will, right?

That European states are reticent to

share that degree of sovereignty.

Now, I just think if you really are

serious about having deterrence

capability against Russia, which I think

is very different from sort of getting

involved in warmongering, right?

After all, like Russia is the country

that has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world.

So I think anyone who was actively

engaging in pushing them towards a war

would be an idiot to do so.

But I do think you need to develop

deterrent capability.

It makes much more sense to do that

on an EU level than for each European

state on its own.

Unless you're willing to sustain, I don't

know, five, six percent of the GDP of

every European state spent, or in my

view, wasted on defence, right?

So it's an idea, I mean, whose time

has come in the sense that it's the

easiest way out of this problem.

Now, then the question, of course, is

like, what does a more united EU in

the realms of foreign policy and defence

policy stand for in the world, right?

That question: Oh, can Europe be non-aligned?

I would say Europe today is disaligned, right?

Because correct me if I'm wrong, but the

way you would have posed this question

two months ago is that the EU is

overly aligned with the United States and

just following the United States' initiative.

Overnight, that has changed very dramatically.

And so the EU already de facto finds

itself in a place where it's having to

come up with its own autonomous posture

in regards, for example, to what happened

in Ukraine, right?

Now, that position is the one it was

holding before the United States changed gears.

But I think it's an interesting process.

Now, I will say about that, that hasn't

come to fruition because European leaders

suddenly took that decision.

It's because Trump snubbed them and then

humiliated a few of them and has done

everything within his power to make that

outcome possible.

So I would think the challenge is not

for the EU to strike its own path

away from Trump now.

The question is maintaining this after

Trump is gone.

And I'm sort of looking too far into the future.

But if you think of, you know, what

happened during the Biden presidency,

or even if you want to go further back

in time after the Iraq war, when there

was also talk of the need of becoming

more detached in foreign policy positions

from the United States, what do you see

is that when the good times come back,

and that usually means when there's a

Democrat in the White House, Europeans

become complacent.

So this is an effort that you really

need to sustain in time.

Now, finally, and this is the hardest

question to which I don't have an answer

other than to say that the EU is,

in spite of like making progress on all

these areas, and I think a lot of

this is actually interesting and

worthwhile, but it has some huge flaws in

regards to how it aligns in the world, right?

Just consider the now ongoing genocide in Gaza, right?

We learned today that Israel resumed

operations and killed between three and

400 Palestinians in one night.

And the EU has been shamefully muted on

this issue, except for a few voices, right?

And for the most part, has acquiesced to

what is basically a genocide on its doorstep.

So I think striking a sort of, you

know, assertive position in defence of

Ukraine's right to defend itself from

annihilation, in the face of an

imperialist neighbour, it's all very well and good.

Like, I'm all for that position.

I just think there should be coherence.

It should also be held in Gaza, right?

Like, you know, the EU should be much

firmer in its condemnation of Israel.

So that's one thing where its present

disposition, its present alignment is

very much lacking and very disappointing.

The same is true of migration policy, right?

I mean, we like to act scandalised at

the policies that the Trump

administration applies, but they're not

that different.

And in fact, many of them are directly

inspired in what we do in our own borders.

I do think the EU

is taking several steps to become more

autonomous from the US.

I am sceptical that the way it is

doing so is the best, the most useful,

and that it's not, that it doesn't have

several aspects of it that can be

counterproductive.

But I realise that there are some areas

where the state of affairs right now is pretty awful.

It certainly is.

And I want to dive a little deeper

into this topic of non-alignment.

I think the EU, yes, it's not complacent

to the Trump presidency.

But I mean, I think it still is

to the sort of what they understand as

the default US, right, which is Democrats

or, you know, never Trump Republicans

and a politics of the sort.

And meanwhile, at DiEM25, we aim for a

non-aligned, which doesn't mean neutral Europe.

.

Do you believe this is currently a possibility?

And how do you believe it would impact

the potential for more democratic

European nations if we move in this direction?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's tied to

what I was saying before.

But so let me reframe it in a

more accurate way.

I think the EU, again, not by its

own merits, but because of the effects of

what Trump has done in two months,

has become sort of disaligned from the US, right?

And I am a bit, yeah, I will

say I am hopeful that this is not

just a passing sort of fleeting sentiment

of like, oh, you know, Trump is horrible.

Then we'll go back to business.

I want to think that there is a

learning process going on, especially in

the way that we had, you know, Biden

between these two Trump terms.

I mean, the way that events have unfolded

would mean that Europeans would be, you

know, profoundly obtuse not to continue

investing in becoming independent from

the United States after Trump is gone.

And who knows what will happen in four years.

So on that regard, I'm, let's say, mildly

hopeful, or at least I've been surprised

by the degree of result I've seen from

key European figures.

So I would not have expected to see

a centre-right German politician say, my

first concern is becoming independent

from the United States, right?

I have to acknowledge that if I would

have been told, will you see this in

the next year, a couple months ago,

I'd have said: no, absolutely not.

I think Europeans will try and

paper over their differences with Trump,

but fundamentally not change or, within

So in that regard, yeah, but another,

but as I was saying before,

if you look at other issues,

so if you look at the Palestinian question, right,

if you look at migration policy, these are areas

that where there's no change and where

the current alignment or the current,

posture to the extent that you has

a coherent posture, or the sum of the

different member states; postures is awful.

Now, there are a couple other instances,

which are a bit more, I guess,

we still need to wait and see what happens.

But so, for example, I would say,

I'm interested to see what happens within

relations with China.

I think if you want to become autonomous

from the US and, you know, secure from

Russia, and at the same time,

you take fighting climate change seriously,

you cannot afford to follow the US into a

confrontation with China into the Indo -Pacific.

You just can't.

You need to find a better way to

engage with China, right?

So the EU famously has this plan,

or this platform where it views China as a

sort of, let me see if I get

this correctly, as the ones, it is a

partner, it is a competitor, and it is a rival,

and different, and depending on

what policies you look at. 30 minutes

So I would say find more areas of partnership and less for rivalry

in the coming years

because you cannot afford more antagonism

and more broadly because I think that China

whatever the issues that we might have with different policies

that they apply and there are several.

But ultimately, it is not destabilizing force in international affairs

the way the US and Russia are, right?

So yeah, I think that's...

We'll see what happens right?

Really, that's another area where if we are going to take European autonomy

seriously, we need certain changes to take place or otherwise we'll get stuck

back where we were now.

Another region that is interesting in terms of partnerships

is Latin America right?

This EU-Mexico deal again, some of the aspects of it:

It's a free trade deal.

It was agreed by governments on both sides

but it is problematic, it has redistributionary effects

like most trade deals.

So here you can see how reaching out

to other regions of the world is interesting.

I think there are many governments In Latin America that will come

as natural partners for the EU right now, right.

I'm obviously thinking of Brazil not Argentina,

But again, there are also trade-offs to these deals,

But I think if the EU really wants to

take this question of becoming autonomous seriously,

that it needs to reach out to these partners.

You need to developing a more constructive relationship with China,

You need to develop a strong partnership with countries like Brazil.

I think in those cases, is where we're truly going to see if this is

something worth taking seriously or if it's back to the mean

once we get past this current crisis.

[Tiare] We are going to move on to a slightly different topic,

though not unrelated.

You have expertise in the concept of populism

We're going to leave links down in the description so people can

check out your work on the topic.

We've mentioned Trump derangement syndrome.

Basically, in all of this geopolitical scenario, what do you believe is the role

of populism and has its relationships with the States contributed to

taking us where we are now.

[Jorge] Most people say there are two kinds of populism, right,

populism of the Left and of the radical Right.

At this point, I think talking about Right-wing populism is sort of inaccurate.

It's just basically an extreme Right Movement.

I wrote a book a few years back and it focused on Left wing populism.

I was very hopeful for its prospects when I began writing the book.

Unfortunately, I finished writing it as the second Bernie Sanders campaign

came to a halt and was defeated,

which was really depressing for me because I lived in the States

in 2016 and participated in the the first one was very hopeful

that he would win the Democratic nomination.

That did not happen.

in Spain too, Podemos and then Sumar stagnated electorally.

They are junior partner to the traditional Center Left.

I think overall Left populists are just...

Or Left wing movements In general,

parties and movements to the Left of traditional social democracy

are uncomfortable with this juncture, right.

Because, well, defense is not traditionally the things that

we would like to talk about, right, and defense policy and so forth.

So it' a juncture that we are inherently uncomfortable with.

Now what I will say is that and I think this is testimony

to the progress that was made

by a lot of these movements in the past decade.

We should never let our guard down and think that austerity

is never coming back to the EU.

It could, the new fiscal rules are better than the old ones, but they're still

leaving much to be desired.

Right now as of today and especially for all this decade

austerity has not been on the menu in the EU in the way that it was

after the 2008 crisis, right?

I think that it's been assumed that this is a loosing proposal

the degree of social and political dislocation that will generate

makes it just unaffordable as an economic policy, right,

and absolutely counterproductive.

So I think that's something that was gained by a lot of the advances

that these movements made.

So I will say that and, you know, even if they don't have the presence

that they had 10 years ago, I think that is a lasting legacy

and, you know, we should be mindful of that.

In terms of the right-wing, you know, right-wing populists or more like

the extreme right in general, I'm really interested to see

whether Trump is good for their electoral business or not.

I am getting the sensation that he can become

a huge albatross for extreme right parties and movements in Europe, right?

Meaning if you look at, well, Canada is sort of a more prescient example, right?

The sort of subtly Trumpified, right-wing party is down in the polls

and the Liberals are the ones who are benefiting most from that

but, I think you might start seeing similar movements in the UK

and other European countries, right?

I mean, I think it's worth keeping in mind that, overnight, these parties have gone

from, not that they ever were, but pretending to be

the voice of the downtrodden or being a sort of anti-system option,

to being the favorite choice of the president of the United States

and the world's richest man who was boosting them all the time,

so it's just very hard to maintain an anti-system appeal.

Not that they ever had a genuine one, right?

It was always a facade, but at this point,

I think it's very hard to keep that reputation up.

So I think in the long, or even in the medium term,

this is going to present a series of very hard trade-offs for them.

I mean, and I don't want to be overly optimistic,

because I know every now and then, people say:

Oh, this is the end of the far right.

I remember people said it with covid, right?

Because science is now very important and, of course, that never happened,

they backfired, so need to keep a cool head about this

and not make premature judgments, but I think Trump and the United States

is going to pose a series of problems for them.

And it'll be interesting to see if and whether they can solve them.

[Tiare] I wonder what you think of populism as an antipolitics form

of politics which can be embodied by both the sort of leftwing populists

that have ended up either being made by and for the professional managerial class

but also the, you know, sort of more Trump himself

or the Trump-aligned parties in Europe as well, which ... what I see is that

they are the ones who still seem to hold this position of the outsider,

that seems to be something that they have managed to keep.

I don't know, I'm wondering how you regard this difference

and does it have to do perhaps with ... I'm just going to give you an example,

I just want to know, yeah, your thoughts on these developments

of the last few years, basically, while Podemos got,

and then Sumar got in government with PSOE,

so populist-left with center-left.

Giorgia Meloni or Trump, you know, definitely never appeared to sort of

make concessions to the parties that within their nations were regarded

as default government parties that had been there

for a really long time, you know, the so-called swamp, maybe,

that had to be drained.

And therefore they kind of managed to be seen, still, as outsiders,

even though, obviously, Giorgia Meloni is great friends with the US,

great friends with the EU, apparently.

So, you know, not like there is that much there, in a way,

and then, obviously, things can change,

but to an extent, yeah, it seems like there is

more complacency, perhaps, on the side of the left-populists

to sort of join, even in France, the center

and prioritize being anti-far-right over perhaps saying:

You know what, let's just do a more universalist, long-term project

and prioritize that even if it means risking more far-right victories

because we refuse to work with centre-left parties

which working-class people are just so done with,

perhaps less so in Spain, I will say,

but how would you basically update, perhaps, your views on populism

that you had in the more sort of Bernie Sanders era

to nowadays that we have seen more developments in the story?

[Jorge] Yeah, we could have another entire session on this subject

because first of all you'd have to sort of come up with a good definition

of populism which is extraordinarily frustrating, right?

So what I would say is like, okay, populism, a general definition is that

you're going to be talking about the people versus elites,

and in doing so you have a discourse

that accepts that there is antagonism within society.

So democracy is not just about consensus,

and reaching deals like-minded legislators,

that is a part of it, but it's also about conflict.

And so you work with that.

And that already is very different from the style

of sort of more established centre-Left or centre-Right politicians,

So that's one thing.

Then there's the question of yeah,

you're posing a question on this idea of normalization right,

or losing your anti-system edge.

I don't think there is a strategic road map that just works well

in every single case.

So, for example, Polemos did try in Spain to overtake the centre Left,

even if that meant that the Right would govern

and what happened is that It just failed to overtake the center Left.

One of the things that I've learned is that it's good to have

a discourse that is antagonistic,

it's good like to mobilize people's righteous anger with a way

that the economy doesn't work for them or that they're giving a lousy deal

and that's not something to be criticized.

I just got really frustrated in the United States

when people compare Bernie Sanders

having a angry rhetoric with Trump scapegoating vulnerable communities

for the sort of things that were mostly made up, right.

I think there's a big distinction in how you use that antagonism.

But ultimately, I don't think there's one clear path to victory

and what I do think is that

older established parties have a institutional grounding

that helps them out compete populist insurgencies

in the long run. right?

My takeaway was a slightly boring

institutional story right, that building organizational strength

building lasting institutions,

all of that is really important

if you want to have a successful candidacy

against the more established parties, right?

Where that runs a bit against the populist logic,

is in this idea of the populist leader. right?

Which is usually highly charismatic and organizationally, sadly, it is never subject

to very strong counterweights within the party's movement, right?

In the long term, this poses a lot of problems,

Now, are they insurmountable?

No, I don't think so.

Of course, if you look at the trajectory of a lot of these movements

well, it seems like that, it seems a big problem right,

but I don't think that this approach is not very useful in many contexts,

I don't think the Right necessarily done a better job of this.

If you look at Meloni has been very successful electorally,

but what she has done since she got the ballot

at least from where I'm standing,

it seems like a process of normalization right?

she has tried to be or seem like a responsible European player

trying to make the hard Right fit in with the centere Right at the EU level.

It;s very different from for example,

Matteo Salvini who was a hooligan in his first term in office

and then now, he's sort of a marginal player in relation to Meloni.

I don't know, I say this because

I don't think there is a correct path that you must take.

I don't think necessarily toning down

your messaging at one point

and this could be a tactical choice

it doesn't really mean that you should sell your essence or so forth.

This is all to say, I don't have a specific answer on this

other than to say that I do think it is important

that Left wing parties and movements become able again like they were

during the last decade of mobilizing people's anger. Right.

People who are angry at the way things work,

people's legitimate outrage.

it should not be the case that

the far Right is the only option out there

that is mobilizing people who are angry at the way things work

because even if they make up scape goats and have a hateful rhetoric,

there are things to be legitimately angry about in our societies

and our economies.

These should not be left for demagogues to exploit.

[Tiare] Within those parties, why do you think we failed?

Basically, what you think is the the main reason

at the core, what would you think is the main thing we need to change.

What was the biggest failure of the populist Left in the last 10 years?

[Jorge] Man, if I could answer your question quickly

I would not have written a really long and boring book about it.

That's what I'll say,

A lot of it depends on the more structural

background conditions that I was telling you about, right?

As you move and successfully become a party

where you can do things like changing leadership

without having everyone fall into infighting

or have a scenario where your immediate goals are not attained

and you don't collapse because you're blaming each other

which is largely what happened with Podemos.

They did a very bad job of managing internal party tension right?

That had to do with institutional choices

that they made on how to manage the party.

Then on the more immediate level

on the more tactical level

there is this question:

should you be an outsider, even if it means the Right governs

or should you be joining forces with XXX?

Then again, this all depends on whether

you're the main actor in the coalition government

or if they're the secondary actor, right?

I think Sumar actually had a good electoral result

considering the junior partner in a

coalition government.

If you look at almost every single political scientist will tell you

that these parties should have a horrible electoral result

when they come back to the polls right, after a coalition government

and they held their own.

But that remains to be seen in the next elections.

It seems they'll have a much harder time replicating that success,

It takes time and then, at different junctures,

I don't think there is a correct way.

So what happens if you try and be an outsider all the time,

and you're Identifying the centre Left as your enemy,

a lot of the people who vote for the centre Left

whom you need arithmetically

to eventually vote for you,

if you want to get the majority, it will allow you to govern

without the the centre Left, will not vote for you

because it will perceive you as a threat

rather than as a potential partner, right?

So these are the electoral dilemmas

of Left populism, which are not very different from those

of other electoral families, but they're there.

For the far Right, I think it's slightly different.

Of course, it depends on the country.

If you look at Trump's success,

you need to keep in mind that the US

is a presidentialist. system.

So that makes it very different.

I think Bernie Sanders could have realistically won in 2016

against Donald Trump.

I don't think it's overly optimistic to say that.

I think he would have easily won, right?

Then we would have had a very distinct last eight years.

He would have been leading the presidency now.

Instead of having this doom and gloom

conversation about the far Right,

we'll be talking about how

populism and social democracy

go hand in hand and whatnot.

So it's worth keeping that in in mind,

the degree of contingency in modern politics.

We really don't have any sort of master key that will unlock us.

Anything can happen.

Even the most Informed analysts are surprised by all the time.

Myself, I've learned to live with this uncertainty

and be a bit more humble about my

priors about what might happen at a given point in time,.

[Tiare] Yeah,

the end of history is certainly over

and it's just a matter of

what we do with the wreckage basically that is left.

These were all our questions.

Clearly the conclusion is we are not very sure,

But it was still clarifying to hear about the geo-political tensions

and how to understand them right now.

[Jorge] Yeah, my pleasure.

[Tiare] Thank you so, Jorge, Gracias.

We're really happy to have you here.

Where people can find you, what do you suggest they read?

[Jorge] I'm not on Twitter anymore.

I'm on Blue Sky with my name and surname.

I write every now and then.

That's where I share most of my work,

so that's where people can find me.

Great, we will leave the link down below.

Thank you so much again

And thanks everyone for joining us today,

[Jorge] Of course, have a good one!