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What Trump team's war plans leak revealed
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take on this extraordinary story in The Atlantic. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of this magazine, invited into a Signal chat, the Signal app, by the national security advisor, Michael Waltz, with all of the major national security related principles in the Trump administration, to discuss imminent attacks by the United States on the Houthis in Yemen, the single biggest war fighting that the Trump administration has been involved in the first two months of their term. A lot to think about here, a few points I think worth mentioning.
The first point, it's pretty clear this should not have happened. A discussion of this sort, classified, involving direct war preparation, should not have been happening on Signal, but clearly everyone in the conversation was aware and okay with that. So, I don't think you blame singularly Mike Waltz for the fact that he was the guy that happened to bring the outsider inadvertently in. This collective responsibility, everyone, this is the way the Trump administration is handling these sensitive national security conversations, that is what needs to be looked into and rectified going forward. Mike definitely made a mistake here, and what seems almost certainly to be the case is that he thought he was including the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, JG, same initials as Jeffrey Goldberg - and The Atlantic editor-in-chief, and he's the only obvious person, Greer, that otherwise wasn't on this broader conversation. So, I would bet my bottom dollar that is the way this happened. And I think all the people that are calling for Mike Waltz to be fired, I certainly wouldn't let him go for that. The issue is the broader lack of operational security around war decisions and fighting.
Now, as to the actual content of the conversations, frankly, I found all of the people involved to be pretty reasonable, especially in the context of how generally unprepared President Trump himself is on matters of national security. So, the fact that Vice President JD Vance was worried about the inconsistency of going to war for something that he doesn't think is a clear and direct US interest, that the US economy would be limited in terms of the impact of it, and this isn't really an American issue in the way that Trump defines American issues and war, that strikes me as not disloyal, but indeed the reality that Vance is aware of the fact that Trump doesn't know a lot of these details. But he doesn't want to bring it to Trump individually. Why not? Because he's going to get his head handed to him if he brings bad news to Trump unless everybody is on board, and of course, everybody isn't on board. There's some reasonable discussion around that, including with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and then finally Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff and head of policy in the White House, is the one that cuts it off because, why? He's the guy that is saying, "Trump says he wants it, we're going to do it." In other words, you've got to be completely loyal to Trump, that's it. And that's exactly what we've seen from this second administration, what Trump wants, Trump gets.
Now, another interesting point here is that the Europeans are not considered allies by this group across the board. Should be clear from anybody that has seen Vance in Munich, anyone that has seen the recent interview between the US Special Envoy Witkoff and Tucker Carlson, a number of other places where that's happened. But the point is that the entire Trump cabinet is basically saying, "We shouldn't be helping the Europeans, and if we have to help the Europeans, and Lord knows we shouldn't, we have to ensure that they directly pay for American help, American assistance." This is not collective security. This is completely transactional. Also, you got a lot of that about el-Sisi in Egypt, someone that Trump has been very supportive of, and indeed the US provides more support to Egypt than any other country militarily in the world except Israel. So the last few months you would've thought that Egypt would've been an exception there. From what we've seen from the cabinet, apparently not. Certainly a concern in terms of what Egypt is and is not willing to do on the ground in Gaza for Trump. That relationship seems pretty dicey.
Final point here, Jeffrey Goldberg deserves credit. I know that Elon in particular likes to say a lot that the public is now the media, but it turns out that well-trained journalists have standards and those standards are important. I have had my disagreements with what Goldberg has had to say. Some of his positions over the years, support for the Iraq War, for example, lots of other things, but in terms of his professionalism, as soon as he realized that he had been invited into something that was an authentic conversation about actual war plans and fighting, he got out and he told Waltz that he had been mistakenly invited. He made the public aware of what was going on without divulging any of the direct war plans or outing intelligence, active intelligence member that was part of it, all of those things, it was absolutely the right thing to do. He's now getting smeared by Hegseth, the secretary of defense, who was clearly embarrassed by his own mistake and his participation and culpability in all of this. He personally won't take responsibility as we so frequently see with our political leaders and never should have gotten confirmed, in my view and in the view of many Republican senators who weren't willing to go out publicly because of course they were fearful for their own careers. But Jeff Goldberg has done the right thing in terms of his career and I commend him for it.
That's it for me. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Is Europe in trouble as the US pulls away?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: I want to talk about the transatlantic relationship. The US relationship with Europe. Because of all of the geopolitics in the world, this is the one that I think has been impacted in a permanent and structural way in the first two months of the Trump administration. I wouldn't say that, for example, look at the Middle East and US relations with Israel, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the rest of the Gulf States, frankly, all very comfortable with Trump. If there's a significant change, I would say it's incrementally more engaged, and in terms of worldview than under the Biden administration. Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, you look at Asia relations and certainly Trump and the US on trade worrying them, making them sort of react in a more defensive posture. Seeing how much, how more quickly, they can get something to the US that will lead to trying to diffuse potential conflict there. But not radically different from the way they thought about the United States in 2017 in the first Trump term.
Mexico, Canada, Panama, here you've got countries that are facing very significant challenges from the United States, but also ultimately understand that they have no other options. Now, in Canada, that's a bigger fight because there are elections coming up at the end of April. But after those elections are over, I certainly expect that they will move quickly to try to ensure that ongoing relations are functional and stable. That's already true for the Mexican government with a president who has 85% approval, can do pretty much everything necessary to ensure that US-Mexico relations aren't dramatically impacted by everything Trump is demanding. So that's everywhere else.
But in Europe, that's just not the case. Three different reasons why the Europeans are facing a much more permanent impact. The first is on the trade side, like everybody else, and trade is well within the European Union's competency. They understand that they have leverage. If the Americans are going to hit them with significant tariffs, they're going to hit back with the same numbers. But that doesn't mean it's going to be relatively difficult and take a long time to resolve it, as opposed to places that are much weaker where they just fold quickly to the United States. Okay, fair enough. But still, that's not all that dramatically different from first term. Second point is there's a war going on in Ukraine, and the United States has made it very clear that they want to engage, to re-engage with Putin, who is Europe's principal enemy. And they're going to do that irrespective of how much the Europeans oppose it, and they're not going to take any European input in those conversations.
Trump would like a rapprochement with Russia to include a Ukrainian ceasefire. But if that doesn't happen, he is oriented towards blaming the Ukrainians for it, towards taking Kremlin talking points on Ukraine not really being a country, and then on moving to ensure that US-Russia relations are functional again. All of that is deeply concerning, is existentially concerning, particularly for a bunch of European countries that are on the front lines spending a lot more in defense, not because the Americans are telling them to, but because they're worried about Russia themselves, feel like they have to be more independent. Then finally, because Europe is the supranational political experiment that relies most on common values and rule of law, and the United States under Trump is undoing that component of the US-led order specifically.
I wouldn't necessarily say that about collective security or existing alliances and willingness to provide some sort of defense umbrella, but I would certainly say that in terms of rule of law and territorial integrity. And here, the fact that the United States no longer really cares about territorial integrity, is prepared to tell Denmark, "Hey, you're not a good ally. You're not defending Greenland. We're interested in moving forward ourselves, and we don't care how you've treated us historically. We're going to send our leaders and we're going to cut our own deal inside your territory." That's exactly the way the Germans felt when JD Vance said that he wanted to engage directly with the Alternatives für Deutschland, who the Germans consider to be a neo-Nazi party.
Everything that's core to the Europeans in their statehood and in the EU, the United States under Trump is on the other side of that, and it's increasingly conflictual. It's directly adversarial. And so I would say number one, the Europeans are aware of these problems. Number two, they're taking them late, but nonetheless finally very seriously. And so they understand that the Europeans are going to have to create an independent strategy for their own self-defense, for their national security, for their political stability, for their democracies, and they have to do that outside of the United States. In fact, they have to do that and defend themselves against the United States.
Now that reality doesn't mean they're going to be successful. And indeed, the more summits I see on Ukraine, frankly the less I have been convinced that the Europeans will be able to do enough, quick enough to really help Ukraine dramatically cut a better deal with the Russian Federation that is very uninterested in doing anything that is sustainable for the Ukrainians long term. It makes me worry that the EU longer term is not fit for purpose in an environment where the principle, the most powerful actors don't care about rule of law. The United States, China, and for Europe, Russia right on their borders. So for all of those reasons, I mean, the European markets have gone up recently. European growth expectations have gone up because the Germans and others are planning on spending a lot more, that's short-term. Long-term here. I worry that the Europeans are in an awful lot of trouble. So something we'll be focusing on very closely going forward over the coming weeks and months. I hope you all are well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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EU rolls back Syria sanctions for economic rebound
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Is the European Union opening up to cooperation with the new government or regime in Damascus?
Yes, they are gradually. The foreign minister of the European Union took the decision early this week to start to ease sanctions on Syria that have been in place for years. And that is very important in order to start to get the economy going in the country. And that, of course, is very important in terms to start addressing all of the humanitarian needs. And also, eventually getting the economy going so that at some point in time perhaps people can start to move back to the country that they were forced to flee from during the years of civil war and repression.
Why was the prime minister of Serbia sacked?
That was part of a bigger move, defensive move, you can say by the president, by President Vučić. He has been under intense pressure due the last few months. There was an accident in Novi Sad, the second-biggest city that was blamed on the roof fell in, and that was blamed on bad construction and corruption. That has crystallized massive opposition to his regime, which has been there for a long time and is seen as increasingly authoritarian. So, pressure has been building up and he was now forced to concede sacking the prime minister and announcing new elections in April. So new elections in April in Serbia. There will be elections in Kosovo before that. There will be elections also in Albania. So, a lot of things are in flux in the Southern Balkans.
Ian Bremmer: Trump is a symptom of a dysfunctional "G-Zero world"
In a political environment plagued by instability and polarization, who is poised to benefit? 2025 has kicked the G-Zero world into high gear: a world characterized by a growing vacuum in global governance. The anti-establishment wave and anti-incumbency trend that swept major democracies this past year underscore the dramatic shift. President-elect Donald Trump is the leading symptom, in many ways, the most powerful beneficiary of the G-Zero, argues Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer during a GZERO livestream to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report. He says that America’s embrace of a more “transactional worldview,” indifference to rule of law, and focus on rule of jungle will play to Trump’s hand and agenda. Bremmer adds that a G-Zero world and “a consolidated America First are the same thing, but jut from different perspectives. G-Zero is what happens with everybody else, and America First is what happens with the Americans.” With a tipsy-turvy year ahead, the world will be watching how Trump will navigate this moment in time.
Take a deep dive with the panel in our full discussion, livestreamed on Jan. 6 here.
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The rise of a leaderless world: Why 2025 marks a turning point, with Francis Fukuyama
Listen: On the GZERO World Podcast, we’re taking a look at some of the top geopolitical risks of 2025. This looks to be the year that the G-Zero wins. As longtime listeners will know, a G-Zero world is an era when no one power or group of powers is both willing and able to drive a global agenda and maintain international order. We’ve been living with this lack of international leadership for nearly a decade now. But in 2025, the problem will get a lot worse. We are heading back to the law of the jungle. A world where the strongest do what they can while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must. And the former—whether states, companies, or individuals—can't be trusted to act in the interest of those they have power over. It's not a sustainable trajectory. But it’s the one we’re on. Joining Ian Bremmer to peer into this cloudy crystal ball is renowned Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Assad's fall in Syria creates both opportunities & risks, says US national security advisor Jake Sullivan
When Assad fled Syria, shocking the world, President-Elect Trump made his thoughts clear on the region. In short, he said "stay out, America." But can the world's most powerful nation afford to ignore Syria's uncertain future? This is a good news story, says US national security advisor Jake Sullivan, that could turn bad very quickly.
"The minute Damascus fell, ISIS began to look for any opportunity it could take to reconstitute, grow, spread, and ultimately recreate a platform from which to threaten the United States and Americans around the world."
Speaking on stage with Ian Bremmer at a live 92nd Street Y taping of GZERO World in New York City, Sullivan discussed what comes next for the war-ravaged nation. "Assad was a butcher, a brutally murderous dictator of his own people. Him being gone is not a bad thing—it presents an opportunity for the Syrian people to actually build a better and more inclusive future." And while that's a reason for hope, the dangers are real that bad actors could rush to fill the vacuum.
"Syria has a real and extent risk of becoming a primary hotbed of radical Islamic terrorism, but it also has a chance for stability. We must push toward opportunity while minimizing the risks."
Watch the full interview with Jake Sullivan on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television beginning Friday, December 20. Check local listings.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
A view is being seen of the northeast of Tehran at sunrise on August 17, 2012.
Iran’s energy crisis pushes economy to the breaking point
After weeks of increasingly severe blackouts caused by massive natural gas shortages in Iran, the state power company warned manufacturers on Friday that they need to brace for power cuts that could last weeks and cost billions of dollars. The government is facing a difficult choice between cutting fuel for power plants or for residential heating — and are taking the first option in a bid to keep a lid on public discontent.
Markets took small comfort, however, with the Iranian rial plummeting to 770,000 to the dollar, its lowest value ever. Ordinary Iranians spent most of last week not knowing whether they would be able to send their children to school or go to work themselves the next day, a situation which seems likely to continue.
Wait, doesn’t Iran have tons of natural gas? Yes, and generous subsidies for consumers to boot, which means the overwhelming majority of Iranians depend on — and arguably overconsume — natural gas for home heating and cooking. But even though the Islamic Republic sits on the world’s second-largest reserves, sanctions and international isolation have left its infrastructure and technology woefully inadequate to supply its own needs.
Iranian producers already burn off huge quantities of natural gas released in oil extraction because they lack the technology to collect it instead. And much of the natural gas Iran does extract is then exported to Turkey and Iraq, where it brings in much-needed hard currency.
The New York Times also reported on Saturday that Israeli strikes against two pipelines back in February forced Tehran to eat into reserves that it was unable to replenish over the summer.
Will the crisis reach a boiling point? With temperatures plunging as low as -20 C in many parts of the country, cuts to gas for domestic heating could put lives at risk. We’re watching for unrest, but keep in mind that hundreds of Iranians lost their lives and thousands more were arrested and abused by regime forces in 2022 and 2023 during the protests over the killing of Mahsa Amini. As long as the regime is willing to kill its own people in the streets, protest may be futile.
A look back at the Top Risks of 2024
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: As 2024 comes to a close, we always look back on our Top Risks. How we did at the beginning of the year. I back in January, referred to this as the "Voldemort of years," at least geopolitically. The year that must not be named because of three major conflicts that we expected were going to only get worse over the course of the year. The Russia-Ukraine war, the war in the Middle East, and the war between the United States and itself. Those absolutely played out.
First, the risk on Russia-Ukraine, where we said that Ukraine would effectively be partitioned. Not a popular thing to say back in January, and not something that we were hoping for. Just something that we believed was going to happen, even irrespective of how the US elections turned out. The fact that Ukrainians were going to be much more overstretched in the ability to fight. The fact that the Russians would be able to maintain the war machine, and the fact that the Europeans and the Americans were increasingly tiring of a war with lots of attention in other places.
All of that meant that Ukrainians would increasingly be desperate. And we really saw that in particular with this spectacular Ukrainian attack into Kursk taking Russian territory, but needing 40,000 of their troops to accomplish it away from their front lines. As the year comes to a close, Ukraine is losing territory faster than at any point since the beginning of the war. And they increasingly recognize not only that they need to start negotiations, but they're going to have to end up trading some land for peace and for security guarantees from the West. So indeed Ukraine today, de facto partitioned.
Number two, the war in the Middle East, which we believed was going to expand significantly. At the beginning of the year, we were talking about Gaza. Now of course, we're talking about the 'Axis of Resistance,' a year when in Yemen the Houthis were popping off rockets and missiles against civilian tanker traffic going through the Red Sea and also against the United States and other military assets in the region, and the Americans and others hitting them back. We saw the war open to include Hezbollah and Lebanon. We saw the war also threaten to bring Israel and Iran together directly as they exchanged fire against each other and as the Israelis were able to decimate Iran's proxies.
Some good news on this front. First of all, the fact that ultimately the United States, Israel, and most importantly, Iran, showed restraint and risk aversion in what would've been a much more devastating fight. And what would've led oil prices to go well over a hundred if that war broken out. That did not occur. And also the fact that the Israelis have been able to show military dominance, which meant that there is no more effective 'Axis of Resistance' at the end of this year. In fact, the big surprise that not only did the war expand, but Assad is gone. Not because of Obama who said that over 10 years ago, but rather because they were unable to respond to HTS supported by Turkey, a rebellion against Assad, and the Russians, and the Iranians. Assad's support base were inadequate to keep him in power. He now sits in Moscow.
And now finally, the US versus itself. A year of only more significant division and polarization inside my own country, the United States. And we've seen that play out. First of all with a Biden that was running for the presidency and had no capacity to serve for another four years, refused to step down, was finally essentially forced out, forced to step down by everyone around him, including former President Obama, former speaker Pelosi, and all of the rest. On the Trump side, two, not one, attempted assassinations, one by this much. And if that had occurred, we'd be in a hell of a lot more difficult position now as a country. The election did go off without a hitch, and was accepted as free and fair, thankfully. And now the United States looks forward to a new president. But the divisions inside the US, the weakening of America's political institutions only growing over the course of 2024.
So those were our top three risks. You can look at all 10, and see how we did go back and check it out on the link that we have here. And also take a look in early January. Watch out for our Top Risks of 2025. It will be something you do not want to miss.
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