December 24, 2025 • 17 mins
We’re bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid-January.
It was another big year for the human headline that was U.S President Donald Trump, and political and international editor Peter Hartcher was an essential listen each week on our podcast as we tried to make sense of it all.
This episode was recorded in May, just as Trump was poised to introduce what he called his ‘big beautiful bill’, which was predicted to tip government debt over the one trillion mark.
What did it matter? Because, Hartcher argues, these figures point to an empire in decline.
Hartcher explores what it would mean if the United States ceased to be a great power, and what it would take to bring America back from the brink.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here. And I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We're bringing you the best episodes
of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January. Well,
it was another big year for the human headline. That
was US President Donald Trump, and political and international editor
Peter Hartcher was an essential listen each week on our
(00:21):
podcast as we tried to make sense of it all.
This episode was recorded in May, just as Trump was
poised to introduce what he called his big beautiful bill,
which was predicted to tip government debt over the 1
trillion mark. What did it matter? Because these figures point
to an empire in decline. Hartcher explores what it would
(00:43):
mean if the United States ceased to be a great power,
and what it would take to bring America back from
the brink. Okay, so, Peter, let's start off with a bang.
Why does it matter if America's status as a global
superpower is waning? Like, what's the risk here?
S2 (00:59):
Well, the first step would be to make the point
that almost everything we think is normal in the world
is not normal. The stability and the prosperity that has
dominated in the world for most of the post-war era
post-World War II era is unusual, historically unusual. So the
risk is that without a dominant hegemon that has both
(01:23):
the power and the will to enforce stability and the
systems that create that stability, you end up with an
unstable world. Now, you might say, but we already have
an unstable world. Uh, which is true, but the stability
had always been contained. So, for example, and Trump is
not the first American president to start wrecking the system
(01:47):
that America itself created. American strategic credibility started to slide
under Barack Obama. That was when he told the Syrian
president not to use chemical weapons against his people, and
if he did, he'd come after him. Obama did nothing.
All the other dictators in the world took note, and
(02:09):
that's why. Shortly thereafter, Vladimir Putin invaded for the first time,
Crimea and other parts of Ukraine. And then that's escalated
because they could see the US had lost its will
and its ability to do anything about it. Now that's accelerated.
And you've seen the full scale war now that Putin
(02:30):
is waging against Ukraine and threatens to wage against all
of Europe. So without a dominant and able and willing
American hegemon, that sort of thing, you could expect to
break out more often, more and more widely across the world.
S1 (02:49):
That sounds bad, Peter.
S2 (02:50):
It is bad. I hate to break it to you, Samantha,
but it's also the systems of prosperity. So here's a
great example. Um, the World Trade Organization was set up
by the US after World War II to create a
uniform system of rules. Um, communist countries were shut out
during the Cold War when 2000 hit. Bill Clinton said, look,
that Cold War stuff is nonsense, I like China. Let's
(03:14):
bring the Chinese into the system. And they did. The Americans,
together with the other members of the WTO, admitted China.
That was the take off point for the Chinese economy
access to essentially free trade. Throughout that system, by admitting
China allowed China to trade its way. The Chinese did
(03:35):
the hard work, but it got access to a system
it had been shut out of. And that turbocharged the
Chinese economy. So there's another example of a system that
that only the US was able to create and maintain.
And now Trump of course, is vandalising it.
S1 (03:50):
Okay. Well, let's turn to recent events then, which, as
you've written, show that Donald Trump is vandalising this, that
America's superpower status is on the wane because a main
part of it is based in economics. So explain this
to us.
S2 (04:02):
Well, the essence of it is that quite apart from
the trade madness and eroticism, which has unnerved markets and
governments all around the world. We now come up to
a different problem, which is that the Americans are borrowing
so much money to finance their government deficits that world
markets have come to the point where they're wondering if
(04:24):
that debt will ever be repaid. And that's a big problem.
It's a big problem, not just for the Americans, of course.
If they're forced into a default, that would be nothing
new in the world because dozens of countries have. But
if you are the center of the global financial system
and you default, then we all have a problem. The
(04:45):
US Treasury bond is the risk free asset that the
whole global financial system depends on and trades on. If
that's under assault. Then you have a global market chaos
with with unpredictable outcomes, but probably none of them very good.
And that's the point where approaching right now with the
(05:07):
combination of reckless borrowing by successive presidents, now fomented and
accelerated by Trump. If he gets his new bill through
the US Senate, as he's hoping to do.
S1 (05:21):
Okay, well, we're going to get into his so-called big,
beautiful bill. I mean, only Trump could call it that, right?
But anyway, we'll get into that in just a.
S2 (05:29):
Especially one that's so ugly.
S1 (05:30):
Yeah. That's right, that's right. But first you've written that
Trump is also on the cusp of surrendering a really
unique source of U.S. power, perhaps the single most. And
that's America's full faith in credit. That is the ability
to borrow cheaply, to spend lavishly, and to enjoy the
exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency. Now, for
those of us, like myself, who don't really know what
(05:51):
the global reserve currency means, like, what is the significance
of America losing that status as the default global reserve currency?
S2 (05:59):
Yeah, well, it's been really vital to the Americans because
they can do any transaction they want in their own currency.
So at the moment they've got a huge deficit, 7
or 8% of GDP, which is just wildly out of
kilter for its annual budget. And that's under threat of
going up even further. And they can finance that readily
(06:22):
because they can do it in their own currency. Um,
you don't have the risk that they won't be able
to raise the funds, that their currency will collapse, and
they can't attract enough foreign investment to bulk it up.
It's all done in their own currency. So it reduces
a lot of the risk to them, but it also
gives them the benefit that the whole world is transacting
(06:43):
in their currencies, the entire commodities trade in the world,
all of our iron ore and coal exports and all
the rest of it goes in US dollars. It lubricates
the whole system. So if that's gone, the world will
suffer but can adjust. Okay. America would be the big victim.
S1 (06:59):
But why? What would happen to America if the, you know,
the default currency was no longer the American dollar?
S2 (07:05):
They would have trouble funding their deficit. In fact, um,
it would probably provoke. If they can't finance their existing
levels of consumption, it would provoke, um, at the very least,
a recession, but quite possibly a more disorderly and deeper
economic disruption to that whole country. And the risk is
(07:27):
that that would suck much of the world's economic and
financial activity down with it. If we take a step
back from all of this, Samantha, the really big significance
of what we're talking about here is we are witnessing
in the Daily News the implosion of an empire. We
are witnessing the end of the American empire that has, uh, like, uh,
(07:53):
like a colossus across the globe since since World War two.
It's coming to an end. Donald Trump is accelerating it.
And day by day by day, these developments we're talking
about are all details in that larger pattern of decline.
Like Mark Twain's death. It's often been the death of
the American empire has been exaggerated. It's often been pronounced
(08:14):
in the last 30 years, and it's never, never come about.
But it's pretty hard to find anybody who will argue
that now.
S1 (08:26):
We'll be right back.
S3 (08:29):
Hello to crime nuts and nuts. Just generally, we're back
with series seven of Naked City. I'd like to say
the delay was technical, but it's basically I'm bone lazy
forced now to do it. It's pretty good. We talk
about cold cases, hot cases and cases that were never solved.
Notorious crooks. Brilliant detectives and baghouse reporters. Naked city out
(08:55):
after the summer break. Enjoy your plum pudding.
S1 (09:02):
Okay, so you did mention the bill that might pass
through Senate. It hasn't yet. So tell us about Trump's
so-called big beautiful bill and why, if it does get
passed by the Senate, this would be a case of
fiscal vandalism that is either contributing to what we're talking about,
or maybe even worsens it. I don't know, you tell me.
S2 (09:17):
No it does. It would worsen it. So the domestic
politics of it are ugly enough, this big, ugly bill
and that is that the poor, the poorest, would have
about $1 trillion cut from their government entitlements over the
next ten years. They are principally food stamps. Food stamps
are for people who can't afford to buy food, obviously.
(09:40):
And the other is Medicaid, which is a program of
free health insurance to the poorest. About 80, 85 million
Americans and about 9 million of those would lose their
eligibility under this bill. And now, combined all of the
cuts to these very basic assistance programs to the poorest
(10:00):
of the poor would save the budget a trillion. And
then Trump is saying, and the House of reps that's
put this bill together has said, but we want to
spend 3 trillion on stuff for things that we actually
care about. So don't worry about the poor. Don't worry
about our fellow citizens. We want to spend this money
principally on extending the tax cuts that Trump put in
(10:22):
place in 2017 because they were about to expire, and
they are for people with high incomes and corporations. So
that's pretty ugly, that redistribution away from the poor and
in favor of the rich. And it might come as
a surprise to some of the people who voted for Trump,
the MAGA crowd who thought he was going to look
after the the little guy.
S1 (10:41):
So it's like an anti Robin Hood scenario. It's exactly
what it sounds. Yeah.
S2 (10:44):
It's the Sheriff of Nottingham.
S1 (10:45):
Yeah it's the Sheriff of Nottingham okay.
S2 (10:47):
And and uh that's so that's their country their problem.
It's it's bad. But you know, your problem where it
affects the rest of us is that it would add
somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion, depending on the shape
of the final bill dollars to the federal debt over
(11:08):
the next ten years. And investors have started saying, well,
we think you've already got too much debt 122% of GDP.
And you're going to do all this and look at
all these crazy erratic policies you're announcing all the time. Yeah.
You know, the American dollar. And there's been a sell
off of the US dollar and US bonds going on
(11:28):
at a, at a fair clip ever since, uh, so-called
Liberation Day, April 2nd.
S1 (11:33):
Okay. What does that mean, a sell off of US bonds.
S2 (11:36):
It means that investors. And it happens. You know, you
get bonds bought, uh, heavily one day and sold heavily
the next. The unusual factor is that you're getting bonds
sold off and the US dollar sold off at the
same time. This is this is a walking away from
America as an investment prospect that is unusual and usually
(11:56):
presages a crisis.
S1 (11:58):
So tell us what historian Niall Ferguson has said about this,
because he has sort of rung the bell of alarm,
I guess.
S2 (12:05):
Yeah. He published a paper in February proposing what he
calls Ferguson's law. And Ferguson's law states that if you
look back through history, an empire begins to decline when
it is spending more money servicing its debts than it
is spending on its military. And that last year, 2024,
(12:27):
the US crossed that line for the first time in
um century, almost a century. So, according to his logic,
and he goes back to the Habsburg Empire through to
the British Empire. Uh, he traces this pattern. You can't
an empire can cross that line and recover. But if
it stays beyond that line, spending more, just paying for
(12:50):
its debts than it does for its military. His thesis
is that an empire is finished.
S1 (12:56):
And I believe he also said that it essentially leaves
the power increasingly vulnerable to military challenge.
S2 (13:02):
So, yes, and to internal fragility as well.
S1 (13:04):
So essentially what we could see is America become a
target for enemies, really, for the first time in a
very long time. Like, is that the sort of pointy
end of what we're discussing?
S2 (13:13):
Uh, yes. And you see it already in cyber attack.
You see it in the sort of gray zone warfare
of cyber attack, but also the cutting of undersea cables
that connect the internet around the world. And 95% of
communications around the world, Chinese and Russian proxies are doing
this week in and week out. You see it in
(13:34):
the attempts to not only conquer Ukraine, but to dismember NATO,
which is a US led, US based alliance. And you'll
see you see it in the Pacific, where Chinese friends
are busy trying to claim, well, are actually successfully claiming
maritime territories from the Philippines, which is a US treaty ally,
(13:57):
while the US does nothing. So you would see that
move from the fringes increasingly to the center because the
US has its has it still has a very powerful military.
It just doesn't seem any longer to have the willpower
or the judgment to use it well or wisely.
S1 (14:14):
So are we seeing this play out with what happened
yesterday when Donald Trump threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin over
social media, writing that Putin was playing with fire by
refusing to engage in cease fire talks with Kyiv. And
then the Kremlin hit back. Maybe you can just tell
us about that and whether this is sort of, I guess,
a manifestation of what we're talking about, which is this
is not a strong empire anymore, which is going to
(14:34):
keep us safe.
S2 (14:35):
Exactly. This is an exact manifestation of a country that
has no strategic credibility. Vladimir Putin's laughing up his sleeve. Likewise,
Trump announced 145% tariffs on China just a couple of
weeks ago. And China said, well, here's our counter-tariffs on you.
And five days later, Trump says, okay, okay, I you know,
(14:58):
you be nice. I'll be nice. And retreats takes it
back again. Temporarily at least. Chinese haven't budged. The Chinese
have called his bluff and he's back down. So wherever
you look, uh, nobody is taking the US as seriously
as it used to. As I said, Trump's not uniquely
(15:19):
responsible for this. Barack Obama started this. I should also
add that the Americans haven't always used their great power
very wisely. Some of the most atrocious, unjustifiable, and unjustified
wars have been American projects Vietnam, Iraq, terrible misjudgments with
terrible consequences. The difference was then that Samantha, there were
(15:47):
predators in the world. There was Russia. There is increasingly China.
There is also America. America has always been a predator,
but it's been our predator. And it's because we're its ally. Yes.
And that has helped protect our interests. What's happened now
is that there are these predators stalking the globe, and
(16:08):
we don't seem to be able to trust any of them.
S1 (16:11):
But beyond that, we're looking at possibly the end of
the American empire.
S2 (16:14):
Well, no great empire dies without death throes. And, uh,
that's what you would see.
S1 (16:23):
It really it sort of leaves you jaw dropping. So
thank you so much, Peter.
S2 (16:27):
Always a pleasure, Samantha.
S1 (16:34):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Josh towers, with technical assistance by Tom Compagnoni. Our
executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head
of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as
they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify or
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(16:56):
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And to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's
most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here. And I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We're bringing you the best episodes
of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January. Well,
it was another big year for the human headline. That
was US President Donald Trump, and political and international editor
Peter Hartcher was an essential listen each week on our
(00:21):
podcast as we tried to make sense of it all.
This episode was recorded in May, just as Trump was
poised to introduce what he called his big beautiful bill,
which was predicted to tip government debt over the 1
trillion mark. What did it matter? Because these figures point
to an empire in decline. Hartcher explores what it would
(00:43):
mean if the United States ceased to be a great power,
and what it would take to bring America back from
the brink. Okay, so, Peter, let's start off with a bang.
Why does it matter if America's status as a global
superpower is waning? Like, what's the risk here?
S2 (00:59):
Well, the first step would be to make the point
that almost everything we think is normal in the world
is not normal. The stability and the prosperity that has
dominated in the world for most of the post-war era
post-World War II era is unusual, historically unusual. So the
risk is that without a dominant hegemon that has both
(01:23):
the power and the will to enforce stability and the
systems that create that stability, you end up with an
unstable world. Now, you might say, but we already have
an unstable world. Uh, which is true, but the stability
had always been contained. So, for example, and Trump is
not the first American president to start wrecking the system
(01:47):
that America itself created. American strategic credibility started to slide
under Barack Obama. That was when he told the Syrian
president not to use chemical weapons against his people, and
if he did, he'd come after him. Obama did nothing.
All the other dictators in the world took note, and
(02:09):
that's why. Shortly thereafter, Vladimir Putin invaded for the first time,
Crimea and other parts of Ukraine. And then that's escalated
because they could see the US had lost its will
and its ability to do anything about it. Now that's accelerated.
And you've seen the full scale war now that Putin
(02:30):
is waging against Ukraine and threatens to wage against all
of Europe. So without a dominant and able and willing
American hegemon, that sort of thing, you could expect to
break out more often, more and more widely across the world.
S1 (02:49):
That sounds bad, Peter.
S2 (02:50):
It is bad. I hate to break it to you, Samantha,
but it's also the systems of prosperity. So here's a
great example. Um, the World Trade Organization was set up
by the US after World War II to create a
uniform system of rules. Um, communist countries were shut out
during the Cold War when 2000 hit. Bill Clinton said, look,
that Cold War stuff is nonsense, I like China. Let's
(03:14):
bring the Chinese into the system. And they did. The Americans,
together with the other members of the WTO, admitted China.
That was the take off point for the Chinese economy
access to essentially free trade. Throughout that system, by admitting
China allowed China to trade its way. The Chinese did
(03:35):
the hard work, but it got access to a system
it had been shut out of. And that turbocharged the
Chinese economy. So there's another example of a system that
that only the US was able to create and maintain.
And now Trump of course, is vandalising it.
S1 (03:50):
Okay. Well, let's turn to recent events then, which, as
you've written, show that Donald Trump is vandalising this, that
America's superpower status is on the wane because a main
part of it is based in economics. So explain this
to us.
S2 (04:02):
Well, the essence of it is that quite apart from
the trade madness and eroticism, which has unnerved markets and
governments all around the world. We now come up to
a different problem, which is that the Americans are borrowing
so much money to finance their government deficits that world
markets have come to the point where they're wondering if
(04:24):
that debt will ever be repaid. And that's a big problem.
It's a big problem, not just for the Americans, of course.
If they're forced into a default, that would be nothing
new in the world because dozens of countries have. But
if you are the center of the global financial system
and you default, then we all have a problem. The
(04:45):
US Treasury bond is the risk free asset that the
whole global financial system depends on and trades on. If
that's under assault. Then you have a global market chaos
with with unpredictable outcomes, but probably none of them very good.
And that's the point where approaching right now with the
(05:07):
combination of reckless borrowing by successive presidents, now fomented and
accelerated by Trump. If he gets his new bill through
the US Senate, as he's hoping to do.
S1 (05:21):
Okay, well, we're going to get into his so-called big,
beautiful bill. I mean, only Trump could call it that, right?
But anyway, we'll get into that in just a.
S2 (05:29):
Especially one that's so ugly.
S1 (05:30):
Yeah. That's right, that's right. But first you've written that
Trump is also on the cusp of surrendering a really
unique source of U.S. power, perhaps the single most. And
that's America's full faith in credit. That is the ability
to borrow cheaply, to spend lavishly, and to enjoy the
exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency. Now, for
those of us, like myself, who don't really know what
(05:51):
the global reserve currency means, like, what is the significance
of America losing that status as the default global reserve currency?
S2 (05:59):
Yeah, well, it's been really vital to the Americans because
they can do any transaction they want in their own currency.
So at the moment they've got a huge deficit, 7
or 8% of GDP, which is just wildly out of
kilter for its annual budget. And that's under threat of
going up even further. And they can finance that readily
(06:22):
because they can do it in their own currency. Um,
you don't have the risk that they won't be able
to raise the funds, that their currency will collapse, and
they can't attract enough foreign investment to bulk it up.
It's all done in their own currency. So it reduces
a lot of the risk to them, but it also
gives them the benefit that the whole world is transacting
(06:43):
in their currencies, the entire commodities trade in the world,
all of our iron ore and coal exports and all
the rest of it goes in US dollars. It lubricates
the whole system. So if that's gone, the world will
suffer but can adjust. Okay. America would be the big victim.
S1 (06:59):
But why? What would happen to America if the, you know,
the default currency was no longer the American dollar?
S2 (07:05):
They would have trouble funding their deficit. In fact, um,
it would probably provoke. If they can't finance their existing
levels of consumption, it would provoke, um, at the very least,
a recession, but quite possibly a more disorderly and deeper
economic disruption to that whole country. And the risk is
(07:27):
that that would suck much of the world's economic and
financial activity down with it. If we take a step
back from all of this, Samantha, the really big significance
of what we're talking about here is we are witnessing
in the Daily News the implosion of an empire. We
are witnessing the end of the American empire that has, uh, like, uh,
(07:53):
like a colossus across the globe since since World War two.
It's coming to an end. Donald Trump is accelerating it.
And day by day by day, these developments we're talking
about are all details in that larger pattern of decline.
Like Mark Twain's death. It's often been the death of
the American empire has been exaggerated. It's often been pronounced
(08:14):
in the last 30 years, and it's never, never come about.
But it's pretty hard to find anybody who will argue
that now.
S1 (08:26):
We'll be right back.
S3 (08:29):
Hello to crime nuts and nuts. Just generally, we're back
with series seven of Naked City. I'd like to say
the delay was technical, but it's basically I'm bone lazy
forced now to do it. It's pretty good. We talk
about cold cases, hot cases and cases that were never solved.
Notorious crooks. Brilliant detectives and baghouse reporters. Naked city out
(08:55):
after the summer break. Enjoy your plum pudding.
S1 (09:02):
Okay, so you did mention the bill that might pass
through Senate. It hasn't yet. So tell us about Trump's
so-called big beautiful bill and why, if it does get
passed by the Senate, this would be a case of
fiscal vandalism that is either contributing to what we're talking about,
or maybe even worsens it. I don't know, you tell me.
S2 (09:17):
No it does. It would worsen it. So the domestic
politics of it are ugly enough, this big, ugly bill
and that is that the poor, the poorest, would have
about $1 trillion cut from their government entitlements over the
next ten years. They are principally food stamps. Food stamps
are for people who can't afford to buy food, obviously.
(09:40):
And the other is Medicaid, which is a program of
free health insurance to the poorest. About 80, 85 million
Americans and about 9 million of those would lose their
eligibility under this bill. And now, combined all of the
cuts to these very basic assistance programs to the poorest
(10:00):
of the poor would save the budget a trillion. And
then Trump is saying, and the House of reps that's
put this bill together has said, but we want to
spend 3 trillion on stuff for things that we actually
care about. So don't worry about the poor. Don't worry
about our fellow citizens. We want to spend this money
principally on extending the tax cuts that Trump put in
(10:22):
place in 2017 because they were about to expire, and
they are for people with high incomes and corporations. So
that's pretty ugly, that redistribution away from the poor and
in favor of the rich. And it might come as
a surprise to some of the people who voted for Trump,
the MAGA crowd who thought he was going to look
after the the little guy.
S1 (10:41):
So it's like an anti Robin Hood scenario. It's exactly
what it sounds. Yeah.
S2 (10:44):
It's the Sheriff of Nottingham.
S1 (10:45):
Yeah it's the Sheriff of Nottingham okay.
S2 (10:47):
And and uh that's so that's their country their problem.
It's it's bad. But you know, your problem where it
affects the rest of us is that it would add
somewhere between 3 and 4 trillion, depending on the shape
of the final bill dollars to the federal debt over
(11:08):
the next ten years. And investors have started saying, well,
we think you've already got too much debt 122% of GDP.
And you're going to do all this and look at
all these crazy erratic policies you're announcing all the time. Yeah.
You know, the American dollar. And there's been a sell
off of the US dollar and US bonds going on
(11:28):
at a, at a fair clip ever since, uh, so-called
Liberation Day, April 2nd.
S1 (11:33):
Okay. What does that mean, a sell off of US bonds.
S2 (11:36):
It means that investors. And it happens. You know, you
get bonds bought, uh, heavily one day and sold heavily
the next. The unusual factor is that you're getting bonds
sold off and the US dollar sold off at the
same time. This is this is a walking away from
America as an investment prospect that is unusual and usually
(11:56):
presages a crisis.
S1 (11:58):
So tell us what historian Niall Ferguson has said about this,
because he has sort of rung the bell of alarm,
I guess.
S2 (12:05):
Yeah. He published a paper in February proposing what he
calls Ferguson's law. And Ferguson's law states that if you
look back through history, an empire begins to decline when
it is spending more money servicing its debts than it
is spending on its military. And that last year, 2024,
(12:27):
the US crossed that line for the first time in
um century, almost a century. So, according to his logic,
and he goes back to the Habsburg Empire through to
the British Empire. Uh, he traces this pattern. You can't
an empire can cross that line and recover. But if
it stays beyond that line, spending more, just paying for
(12:50):
its debts than it does for its military. His thesis
is that an empire is finished.
S1 (12:56):
And I believe he also said that it essentially leaves
the power increasingly vulnerable to military challenge.
S2 (13:02):
So, yes, and to internal fragility as well.
S1 (13:04):
So essentially what we could see is America become a
target for enemies, really, for the first time in a
very long time. Like, is that the sort of pointy
end of what we're discussing?
S2 (13:13):
Uh, yes. And you see it already in cyber attack.
You see it in the sort of gray zone warfare
of cyber attack, but also the cutting of undersea cables
that connect the internet around the world. And 95% of
communications around the world, Chinese and Russian proxies are doing
this week in and week out. You see it in
(13:34):
the attempts to not only conquer Ukraine, but to dismember NATO,
which is a US led, US based alliance. And you'll
see you see it in the Pacific, where Chinese friends
are busy trying to claim, well, are actually successfully claiming
maritime territories from the Philippines, which is a US treaty ally,
(13:57):
while the US does nothing. So you would see that
move from the fringes increasingly to the center because the
US has its has it still has a very powerful military.
It just doesn't seem any longer to have the willpower
or the judgment to use it well or wisely.
S1 (14:14):
So are we seeing this play out with what happened
yesterday when Donald Trump threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin over
social media, writing that Putin was playing with fire by
refusing to engage in cease fire talks with Kyiv. And
then the Kremlin hit back. Maybe you can just tell
us about that and whether this is sort of, I guess,
a manifestation of what we're talking about, which is this
is not a strong empire anymore, which is going to
(14:34):
keep us safe.
S2 (14:35):
Exactly. This is an exact manifestation of a country that
has no strategic credibility. Vladimir Putin's laughing up his sleeve. Likewise,
Trump announced 145% tariffs on China just a couple of
weeks ago. And China said, well, here's our counter-tariffs on you.
And five days later, Trump says, okay, okay, I you know,
(14:58):
you be nice. I'll be nice. And retreats takes it
back again. Temporarily at least. Chinese haven't budged. The Chinese
have called his bluff and he's back down. So wherever
you look, uh, nobody is taking the US as seriously
as it used to. As I said, Trump's not uniquely
(15:19):
responsible for this. Barack Obama started this. I should also
add that the Americans haven't always used their great power
very wisely. Some of the most atrocious, unjustifiable, and unjustified
wars have been American projects Vietnam, Iraq, terrible misjudgments with
terrible consequences. The difference was then that Samantha, there were
(15:47):
predators in the world. There was Russia. There is increasingly China.
There is also America. America has always been a predator,
but it's been our predator. And it's because we're its ally. Yes.
And that has helped protect our interests. What's happened now
is that there are these predators stalking the globe, and
(16:08):
we don't seem to be able to trust any of them.
S1 (16:11):
But beyond that, we're looking at possibly the end of
the American empire.
S2 (16:14):
Well, no great empire dies without death throes. And, uh,
that's what you would see.
S1 (16:23):
It really it sort of leaves you jaw dropping. So
thank you so much, Peter.
S2 (16:27):
Always a pleasure, Samantha.
S1 (16:34):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by myself
and Josh towers, with technical assistance by Tom Compagnoni. Our
executive producer is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head
of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as
they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify or
wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions,
(16:56):
so to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe.
And to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's
most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
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