This is a lightly edited transcript of the January 16 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic show Right Now. I’m joined this morning by Matt Duss. He’s a fellow at the Center for International Policy, and he was also Bernie Sanders’s top foreign policy adviser during his presidential runs. Matt, thanks for joining me.
Matt Duss: Good to see you.
Bacon: So I want to talk broadly—we have a lot of foreign-policy news. Let me ask you two questions, and I want you to think about them broadly, because I’m not a foreign-policy expert, and I assume a lot of our viewers and listeners aren’t, either.
Why did the U.S. decide to go into Venezuela and remove its leader? And why are we talking about invading or taking over Greenland? These are not things Joe Biden was talking about doing. They’re not things Mitt Romney would have done, I don’t think. So talk, just generally, about what is motivating these two actions.
Duss: They’re also not things that Donald Trump talked about doing. And he ran for president—he ran for president proclaiming himself as a pro-peace president. Ran in many ways to the Democrats’ left on issues of national security. Going back to 2016, he opposed endless wars.
Now, his first term certainly didn’t reflect that, but I think what we’ve seen since June—since the Israeli war, which Trump joined in June against Iran—we’ve seen a number of interventions, so he’s certainly not an anti-war president. What he has been is an anti-long war president.
But to answer your question, I think there’s a number of different constituencies in the administration and in Washington who have different goals. Here, we’re just focusing on Venezuela.
First, is it about drugs? Is Maduro a narco-terrorist? Is it about terrorism? Is it about immigration? Is it about corruption? Is it about boxing China and Russia out of the Western Hemisphere? Or is it about the oil?
Now, for Trump, he’s been pretty clear, right? It is about the oil. Which is, in many ways, refreshing. I don’t want to treat it too kindly, but one of the things about Donald Trump in general is the way he just makes subtext into text. So it’s just straightforwardly about the oil.
Bacon: I think Marco Rubio has his own views about Cuba and dictators and so on. But do we think this is a multifaceted issue? Or do we think Donald Trump—because Donald Trump is the one person whose view matters the most—but that we don’t really think he’s driving policy in that exact way?
Duss: He’s the one who has to call the shot when it’s to send troops in or… and also, support the preparations. And there were extensive preparations for the operation to, essentially, abduct Maduro.
Yeah, I think it’s about the oil, but also with Trump, it could be any number of things. This is what he said. It’s clear that he was just annoyed by Maduro essentially trolling him, constantly—like making these defiant statements. It’s hard to say how much that stuff mattered, but we know with Donald Trump in the moment, he can become obsessed with something very quickly.
But no, this is not something he just decided overnight that he was going to do this. It took a lot of preparation. So this was clearly administration-wide. There was support for this, as you noted, Marco Rubio.
For Marco Rubio, it’s basically about cutting Cuba off from an important ally’s support—the Cuban government—because Marco Rubio, as a Cuban American who came up from this community… This has been his obsession for a long time.
It’s the obsession of the South Florida community that enabled his own political rise. And then you’ve got just, again, other parts of the administration and the kind of Washington foreign policy establishment for whom this serves different purposes.
Bacon: Talking about Greenland. What is going on? That one is even more bizarre on some level.
Duss: Yeah. Again, multiple arguments. I mean there are folks like Tom Cotton and others who have been arguing for a long time we need Greenland, [that] it’s in our national security interest to control this—this massive piece of real estate, control of the Arctic, which is becoming increasingly important.
Or jus, for someone like Trump, I think he just likes doing big things. So the idea that he could just expand the geographic footprint of the American empire and be remembered for Greenland but clearly if not end the NATO alliance, it would do really mortal damage to it.
So there are lots of things being floated. We’d like to buy it. Denmark has made clear that no one is selling. People who actually live in Greenland are like, We have no interest in becoming part of the United States. I think that for any reasonable person, that should pretty much end the debate. But we’re talking about Donald Trump and Washington hawks here. So these are not reasonable people.
Bacon: Is one of the goals, though—we’ve talked about Trump and Russia for a long time now, and some things have been proven and some have not.
But one of Putin’s goals is to destroy NATO. Is that—what does that drive? And I agree with you that if the U.S. were to take over Greenland for no reason, and no one did anything about it, that would weaken NATO, maybe fundamentally.
So is the goal here NATO? Or are we not sure?
Duss: Yeah, the U.S. violating the sovereignty, essentially invading another NATO member… that it’s tough to call that a functioning security alliance when that happens. Now, yes, of course, I think Vladimir Putin has made clear that he sees NATO as a threat.
Rightly or wrongly, he—and not just he, I think elements of the Russian political and security establishment have for many years, going back to the nineties—seen the expansion of NATO closer and closer to Russia’s borders as a source of real concern.
Now, I don’t think that is the overriding driver of what we’ve seen Putin doing, especially in Ukraine. But it’s clearly a part of that. Now, I don’t think Trump is doing this because he thinks it helps Putin. I think he clearly would like to have a better relationship with Putin. But I also think there are people who get out there who say, Oh, he’s just acting as Putin’s lackey. I don’t think that’s productive. I don’t think that’s right.
I think that’s actually a distraction for what Trump is doing. I think Trump just sees multilateralism in general as a problem. He doesn’t believe in it. He has a very zero-sum approach, whether in business, in real estate, or in politics and in foreign affairs.
So I think this is the kind of consistent through-line. Multilateralism is based on the basic concept that:
Listen, we can all benefit from a set of rules, a set of agreements. Even if we give up a little bit, in the longer term we’re going to benefit just by coming to these agreements and finding ways to work on shared challenges according to [an] agreed-upon set of principles.
And Donald Trump just has discarded that entirely. His whole approach is:
I win, you lose, and if you’re benefiting, clearly I’m getting screwed. And that’s how he sees NATO. That’s how he sees the European Union. That’s how he sees international agreements in general.
He sees these long invasions, these occupations—Afghanistan, Iraq—as wasteful. They didn’t produce much. And again, we found out in 2016 [that] a lot of Americans agreed. I think back to that primary debate—I think it was one of the first primary debates back in 2015 when he’s on stage with like 20 other candidates. He said Iraq was huge. George Bush [lied to] us. That stunned the people.
But it speaks [to the fact that] he’s not anti-war. And we look at what he’s actually done during this term, during the first term. In this term he’s staged interventions in at least seven countries that we know about.
So again, he’s not anti-war, but he did recognize that there is a strong constituency of voters [who are] anti-war. And I think that’s what’s important because you do need to give Trump his due. He does have a kind of political intelligence. He does really have a sense of what voters are angry at and what how he can mobilize that anger.
And that grievance and opposition to Washington’s expansive military interventions is one of them. And that’s something I think Democrats should take a big clue from.
Bacon: So good—you brought up Democrats. So how have you felt Democrats should respond to Venezuela? And in your view, what has that response been so far?
Duss: I think we’ve seen some good responses from people like Chris Murphy—Senator Chris Murphy, Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—who have come out and opposed the invasion, called it out as illegal, and also noted that what Trump is doing here is basically seizing the resources of another country to benefit his rich buddies and himself, right?
That is always going to be a part of anything Trump does. The question is: How is Trump using this move to benefit him and his organization? And his wealthy friends. That’s always a part of anything that Donald Trump does.
You’ve seen a number of other Democrats who are like: Yes, this is bad. And it’s bad because it’s taking the eye off the ball in terms of affordability and other things. And I think that’s true. I think that’s important. It’s important to focus on the fact that this is not helping Americans.
Like, Donald Trump promised to deal with questions of inflation and the cost of living. This does nothing for that. This is actually going to turn out to be a very expensive intervention when you consider how much it’ll cost American taxpayers to bring Venezuela’s oil infrastructure back online.
We just saw a report today that Trump will not be using U.S. troops. He will be using U.S. security contractors. Essentially to secure these facilities and secure the country, which is to say the U.S. will in fact have boots on the ground. We’ll just be paying a lot more for troops than if they were U.S. military. And of course, that money will be going right into the pockets, once again, of Donald Trump’s oligarch buddies.
So again, the way that this screws the average American is important, but I do wish we would see more Democrats just standing up and speaking up for the rule of law. Both that this invasion clearly violated the U.S. law—it was not authorized by Congress—and it clearly violated international law. Venezuela did not pose a threat. There was clearly no international legal basis for this invasion. And Donald… the administration has tried to get around both of these things by proclaiming Maduro was part of this massive narco-terrorist cartel that was essentially facilitating an invasion and killing Americans through the importation of drugs and all these things.
And they used this arrest warrant, this indictment in a U.S. court, as justification. That has no international legal validity. It’s not nothing. Okay? But this does not give a justification [to invade a] country like Venezuela. Maduro is a corrupt repressive dictator. But there are a lot of those around; many of them are allies of the United States. I think they’ve used this argument that, Oh, this is just a legal action, not an act of war, to avoid having to come to Congress and make their case as the Constitution requires them to do for making war on another country.
And unfortunately, we saw just last night the Senate War Powers Resolution fail because of huge pressure from the administration on a number of Republicans who had voted for it initially [but then] voted against it. It did require Vice President Vance to come in and make a tie-breaking vote to vote it down. And that’s depressing, because there’s just no question that this is a violation of the Constitution, in terms of taking the U.S. in a way that is not authorized. And again, in addition to being a violation of international law, which I also think is important.
Bacon: I think the Democrats on the Hill have pretty strongly opposed doing anything in Greenland, pretty consistently, right? I don’t think there’s much to discuss there. They’ve been pretty clear. I guess one thing I’ve been thinking about is the term imperialism. Trump is an imperialist, I think, in the most basic sense.
Duss: What else can you say? Again, I don’t want to quote myself, but, like, for a long time I and others have been pushing back on the idea that he’s an isolationist. This is one of those terms [that] he sees thrown at him by the Washington foreign policy set. And isolationism is… there’s no one in American politics—or at least very few—who even really merit that term. It’s just a slur.
It’s like a term of derision that is thrown at people who don’t believe America should be the global hyperpower always getting into people’s business. It’s essentially just a code word that’s used by the Washington establishment to say, This guy isn’t part of the Washington Foreign Policy Cool Kids Club. It’s not accurate. It’s never been accurate. And I think hopefully people will clearly see that, because what he’s doing is just as you said: it’s imperialism.
It’s almost more blatant than that. It’s essentially just a global mafia. He’s… he’s saying: Listen, we’re powerful. We run the neighborhood. If you want to be part of the protection racket, you need to pay tribute. We see this sort of reflected in the National Security Strategy, where they just straight-up say: Listen, the Western Hemisphere is our yard. We’ll control it. No other country, no other power has any business here.
That’s clearly thinking about Russia and China having created a lot of relationships over the past few years, in various ways: building infrastructure, providing processing for rare earth minerals, etc. And so that’s where that’s pointed, but it’s also an acknowledgement—essentially a tacit acknowledgement—that other great powers like Russia and China do have the right to determine outcomes in their own spheres of influence.
Even though Trump clearly sees the United States as still being the first among these great powers. So the United States will remain like the top mob boss amongst the various families.
Bacon: Let me jump back. I think I met you in 2019, when you were preparing for the Bernie Sanders campaign and working on that early on. I don’t think most people think of Bernie Sanders in terms of foreign policy, because he talks a lot about Medicare for All and domestic issues—but talk about the foreign-policy vision, in a broad sense, that you were developing with him.
Duss: And I can point to a few speeches he gave. There was one—the first, I think, big foreign policy speech that I worked with him on—[which] he gave in September of 2017. There were a few others that came after that.
But basically, it’s based on principles that he has been talking about for a long time: that we do have an interest. The goal of any government, whether it’s in foreign or domestic policy, is to take care of its people. But there’s an element of solidarity, an element of understanding that we shouldn’t export violence and insecurity and poverty onto others.
And I think this goes to his basic sense of just what it means to be a human being: that everyone, every human being, has value. And there are ways to promote our own security and prosperity that don’t come at the expense of others. But in getting into more specifics, he was one of the few Democrats who spoke out against the Iraq War at the time.
There should have been way more. I think everyone understands that he was right now, in part because it was just a blatant violation of international law. It was clearly based on false pretenses, just outright lies by the Bush administration. And because, as with many other military interventions over the past decades, it has produced lots of unintended consequences.
It was a failure on its own terms. It killed hundreds of thousands of people. It created millions of refugees, both inside and outside of Iraq. It killed thousands of American service members. It wounded tens of thousands, as he says, both in body and spirit.
And that’s had an enormous impact on our country, on those communities. And it’s also bad for our politics. When you promote this kind of hawkish mentality—this idea that America not only has the right, but the obligation to be out there intervening and policing the world—it creates a political environment in which authoritarianism and xenophobia and hatred thrive.
And we have absolutely seen that, not just in the United States, but in other countries around the world. I think the general approach that he supported and that we worked on—and I would love to see more Democrats adopt—is to say: Listen, America clearly is powerful. We have enormous influence. We have an amazing network of allies and partners. That’s important. These are huge assets in advancing our shared goals. But we also have an interest in a world of rules, in a world where it’s not just ‘might makes [right],’ because we can look to multiple examples in history where this kind of approach just inevitably led to conflict.
And unfortunately, that is where Trump is leading us. And it also really undermines, if not outright destroys, our ability to address real crises in the moment, whether it’s climate, whether it’s pandemics—which there will be more of—whether it’s just crises that follow on from those things, like [irregular] migration.
So we’re really, just by taking this go-it-alone approach, by the way Trump is doing is to say, Just by virtue of our power, we get to tell everyone else what to do. That is going to provoke backlash. It’s going to hurt our own security and our own prosperity in the future.
Bacon: You use the term rules. So, yeah—you didn’t say rules-based order, but is that, for you, a defining idea of foreign policy? That there are rules, and that people follow them, including us?
I’m going to come back to whether Joe Biden did that or not. But his administration used the phrase rules-based order. Do you think having some set of rules is important?
Duss: I would like a rules-based order, but for real. For real, by which I mean: that was not what we saw from Joe Biden. For Joe Biden—and this is… this is a place where Joe Biden was actually very representative of the way that I think the D.C. foreign policy establishment thinks about the quote rules-based order—which is that the U.S. gets to make the rules. There’s one set of rules for our partners and friends, and there’s a different set of rules that must be imposed and enforced against our adversaries and enemies.
And you couldn’t ask for a better example of that than comparing Ukraine to Gaza. I think it’s hard to think of a social science experiment one could devise that would show this hypocrisy and these double standards more clearly than opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine—which I agree with; it was a clear violation of international law—opposing the war crimes that Russia has clearly committed in Ukraine, while supporting those same war crimes day after week after month after in Gaza.
This was catastrophic, not just for the people of Gaza, but for the region. I think it’s catastrophic for the United States and for the idea of international cooperation.
So again, when I talk about rules I think about Gandhi’s quote when he was asked about Western civilization. He said: I think it would be a great idea. If asked me about the rules-based order, my response is the same. I think it is a good idea; we should endeavor to build something like that. But that requires the United States really agreeing to and upholding the rules for ourselves and for our friends when they violate them, and not just give them a pass.
Bacon: Last question. If you were advising somebody running for president in 2028, give me two or three—two or three ideas or principles—that should guide their foreign policy.
Duss: I think invest in the idea of multilateralism—just engaging within the international community, international organizations is not just something nice to do; this is how we advance America’s interest. This is how we’re safer and more prosperous.
I think the second thing I would say is: really start to build a better relationship with China. I think the Biden administration, in my view, unfortunately adopted the previous Trump administration’s approach to China as a threat and started to contain that threat. Interestingly, the second Trump administration has not been as hostile to China, but still seems invested in American primacy, including in the Asia-Pacific region.
But China is powerful. It has a huge population. It has a very powerful economy. It has built relationships all over the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. And China has a role to play in shaping the global agenda. And so I think building a better relationship with China… it’s going to be frustrating.
Certainly, China’s going to do things that we don’t like, and is already doing that. But that’s a hugely important relationship. And there need to be multiple channels of communication.
And the last thing I would say is: I would love a Democratic nominee to really focus on the idea of accountability. Real accountability. Not just in foreign policy, but in general.
We face a crisis of political legitimacy in this country. That is part of what we’re facing right now. Americans have lost faith in American government, in the political process, and in our leaders. Leaders in part because they haven’t delivered, but also because they see, time after time, powerful people pay no price.
This is something that Donald Trump has very successfully exploited. When Donald Trump says the system’s rigged, he gets traction with that because the system is rigged. The system is rigged on behalf of people like Donald Trump and his powerful friends.
But you can name Republicans and you can name Democrats who have committed egregious offenses, both of corruption and foreign policy, who have simply skated—faced no consequences whatsoever.
So I think bringing some real accountability to this process and back to American politics, dealing with the fact that our political system is essentially a form of legalized corruption. I think addressing all of these things is really essential for rebuilding—or building—a new, shared kind of political consensus about what the American Project really is.
Bacon: Let me drill down. What would accountability look like? Do you mean, for example, that the ICE officer who killed the person in Minneapolis should be in jail? What do you mean when you say accountability?
Duss: For example, I want to see—going back to Gaza—I want to see all the reports about what we knew, because I know that the Biden administration really did know Israel was violating international law, and yet continued to give them weapons in violation of U.S. law. I want to see those reports. State Department reports. Other reports declassified.
I want those officials to have to answer for what they did in Gaza in a real way—not just in softball interviews on CNN or elsewhere, or on podcasts sponsored by God knows who, or their own podcasts where they pretend to reflect on what they actually did.
That’s one of—for starters—yes.
Bacon: Let me ask you one last thing. What did you make of what happened in New York City, the election? What did you make of Mamdani’s victory—how it happened? Because you work on policy, and it seemed like Gaza played some role, but he also talked about affordability.
It seemed like the Bernie Sanders campaign, but almost a bit more advanced—that’s how I felt about it. He learned the right lessons, is how I saw it, but I’m curious how you saw it.
Duss: No, I think he was really focused on just the struggles of everyday people. Affordability is the new keyword. But that’s important. I think that was something that was a through-line we saw not just with Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, but also with Spanberger here in my state of Virginia. We saw that with Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and others.
And I think what Mamdani did was inspiring in so many ways because he’s just very talented. He’s a great communicator. He had a great media team, but it was also based on real policy that addressed the real lives and the real struggles of people in New York.
And I think the role that Gaza played was… even for people… this is clearly a very important issue for the progressive base—and I would say beyond the progressive base. It stands in for a broader debate about American foreign policy. About the role that America should play in the world. On what principles, on what basis, according to what laws.
But also for people, I think, who don’t really even pay that much attention to foreign policy, it was just an issue that gave him credibility because he took so much heat. Let’s remember: He is not the one who injected Gaza and Palestine and Israel into this campaign.
It was his opponents, Eric [Adams], yeah, pressing on him on this. And the fact that he stood strong on this issue of principle, I think, gave him credibility across a whole range of other issues. Because people see that and they’re like: This guy is pretty outstanding[ly] firm. He’s speaking clearly about this important issue. Maybe I can believe him on all these other things.
I would say I think it worked in the opposite direction for Kamala Harris, just for example. She had some pretty good policies, but then when she had to speak on Gaza, she just regurgitated the same old talking points about “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “too many people have died.”
I think when people saw that, they’re like: Oh, okay. She’s just saying the usual stuff. I’m not buying it. Maybe if she can be pushed on this, she can be pushed on other things. So I think that’s what the lesson I think Democrats should learn here.
Bacon: Matt, great conversation. Thanks for joining me.
Duss: Good to see you. Take care.
