SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Make America great again. That phrase has been in our political ecosystem for 10 years now. But it's never been entirely clear what time period in American history President Trump is referencing. Is it the 1980s, maybe the 1950s? What about further back, say, the 1890s? As we enter the second year of Trump's second term, his major policy decisions and tactics increasingly rival the imperial Gilded Age presidencies of the late 1800s.
There's Trump's tariff policies, which echo the Tariff act of 1890. In the late 19th century, many government personnel decisions were made, with no apologies, with two goals in mind - boosting the backers of the party in power and rewarding people and companies who made financial contributions to that ruling party. Back then, it was the railroad industry. Now AI is the billion-dollar industry. And its leaders are courting favors with the Trump White House.
Then there's foreign policy. From 1867 to 1899, the United States acquired several territories including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Now, in 2026, President Trump has declared the U.S. will, quote, "run" Venezuela after the seizure and ouster of President Nicolás Maduro. And he and top aides like Stephen Miller are talking about other international moves, too, using blunt language about U.S. military force and U.S. raw strategic interests that, by and large, went away in the 20th century. Here's Miller on CNN.
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STEPHEN MILLER: We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world - in the real world, Jake - that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.
DETROW: So how is the second Trump administration changing the world order? That's something we are going to discuss with Michael Froman. He is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as President Obama's trade representative. Thanks for talking to us.
MICHAEL FROMAN: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: I want to start with the U.S. military going into Venezuela and seizing its president. What was your response? What did you think about?
FROMAN: Well, first, I don't think that there's any great tears to be shed over Maduro, who was a ruthless leader and alleged to be quite corrupt and criminal in his activity. You know, however, going in and decapitating a government certainly seemed at odds with the president's initial views on regime change and getting involved in the internal affairs of other countries. We now have a situation where we've sort of done regime change without, at least so far, changing the regime, in that we've got the rest of the Maduro government - including the defense minister, the interior minister, the vice president, who's now acting president - very much maintaining control.
You know, I think from an international perspective, as you said, this hearkens back to a period of time when the U.S. would just declare that it was going to use force or other means to expand or to secure access to resources. I think one of the big questions is, how do other countries interpret this?
DETROW: You've talked about a phrase we've heard a lot, the rules-based international order. This is something the Biden administration was very focused on. This is something American allies in Europe talk a lot about, the idea that there is a set rules and standards and countries have to follow them. And the argument you hear from Stephen Miller and others in the Trump White House is that's bogus, that that's a veneer. That's never been true. And foreign policy is about strength and it's about power and it's about the U.S. seizing what it wants. What happens to the world if that's U.S. foreign policy going forward?
FROMAN: So, I mean, certainly, power has always been an element of international relations. But post-Second World War, the U.S. decided that it could exert global leadership and it could exert its power most effectively by getting other countries to buy into a set of rules that, more or less, we designed and that served our interests very well for a long period of time. Now, sometimes that involved us constraining our own capacity to act unilaterally, but it certainly prevented other countries from doing that. Or it tried to prevent that. And no rules-based system is perfect. You know, in the international legal system, I think if most countries follow most of the rules most of the time, it has been deemed a success.
DETROW: But does Miller have a point, though, that might've been right all along? Like, the U.S. and its allies have not seen it in their interest to go to war with Russia in Ukraine directly. No one stopped the United States from seizing Maduro. And now Miller is saying, who's going to stop America if it seizes Greenland?
FROMAN: So I think Stephen Miller is right that power matters and how you exercise power matters. I think the question is, we have been successful for 80 years in using our power and U.S. leadership to shape a system that all of the other countries bought into, more or less, and that one kept the peace broadly in the world. What this administration has done is said, look, we're going to put that to the side. And we're going to go back in many respects to, as you suggested, an earlier period where what mattered was your hard power and how you exercised it, and whether any other country could stand up to you in doing so.
And we do have the largest military in the world. And we do spend more on our military than the next several countries combined. We have real challenges out there, including China, that is engaged in a major military modernization plan and a major military modernization buildout. But we are still the dominant military power in the world. And the question is, how do we use that military power?
DETROW: I mean, you're speaking about this very rationally and strategically. But don't we have a lot of evidence at this point that a lot of the decision-making is just, I would like to add to the United States, I would like to leave my mark in one way or another, with the Trump White House and President Trump specifically? Like, it seems like he's talked out loud about that being kind of what - part of the reasons he's taking these actions.
FROMAN: Well, look, a little bit like the comment about running Venezuela but basically doing it - or leaving the current government in place and really focusing on a few issues that the U.S. cares a lot about, like oil, and not so much on democracy or on economic reform in Venezuela, etc. I think one could take that same approach to Greenland. I think there are really serious issues of Arctic security. And we ought to be more engaged in the Arctic Circle, particularly with climate change. As the polar ice caps are melting, that becomes a much more viable trade route.
And so, you know, we should be more engaged up there for our own national security, and the Danes and the Greenlanders are very happy to cooperate with us. And there's even a framework. There's even agreement between us as to how we would - how we could further build out our cooperation in that area. But I think the president is right. We probably do need to engage much more actively with Greenland and Denmark and ensure that we've got the capacity on Greenland to address our Arctic security needs.
DETROW: Has any of this surprised you, based on what President Trump and his top advisers talked about heading into their second term?
FROMAN: Yes. I'd say there was a lot of expectation coming into the second term that the president was going to be an isolationist. And he is clearly not an isolationist. He has been deeply engaged internationally from Day 1. And what we've seen is - whether it's regime change in Venezuela or the state building that is slated to go on in Gaza around the ceasefire plan that the president negotiated - that this very much involves active U.S. participation and active personal participation by the president.
DETROW: That's Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you so much for talking to us.
FROMAN: Thanks for having me.
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