Podcast: Venezuela, Grönland – die neue Zeit der Raubtiere? | Lanz und Precht, Folge 227

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Land und Precht

Good morning, Richard.

Good morning, Richard. Good morning, Markus. I have to admire you. In the old-fashioned place and moderately snowed in. I guess it will be a little snowed in in Hamburg. You're probably sitting in the igloo.

It feels like that at least. I've never seen Hamburg like this before, but it's beautiful and it wasn't without coming to the studio. You have the feeling you're fighting I've never seen Hamburg like this before, but it's beautiful and it wasn't without coming to the studio. You have the feeling you're fighting a snowstorm, a blizzard somewhere in Canada or Alaska.

It's really spectacular. In any case, there is definitely more snow in Hamburg than in the Alps. You have to keep that in mind. Unfortunately, the whole rest is missing. Happy New Year! I would say our first goodbye after the change of year. We had our year-end talks, but now we are really feeling sad for the first time this week. I hope you had a good start to the new year.

Everything was very, very messy. A real showdown in Caracas. Have you been to Venezuela? No. Me neither. My brother was there, he told me a lot and in detail about it.

It was interesting what he told me, but I wasn't there myself. Beautiful country, I always hear. Poor country on the other side, 86% of the Venezuelans or even the households are below the poverty line. It was once one of the richest countries in South America, but that was not so long ago. So Venezuela, with its oil supply and so on, was doing pretty well. Sitting on the largest oil supply in the world and a lot has already been talked about in these days, but

the background, Richard, the story behind it, the question of American interventionism, the question of what consequences that has. So both the look back and the look forward will actually interest me a lot and I think we can also contribute a little bit because it is interesting to make ourselves clear which world we are actually going into. And I think I have rarely, often thought of you. You remember our conversation after the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska,

the famous red carpet for a war criminal, a wanted one. You were the first to bring this Venezuelan theory into play. He had heard of it from a distance. I know that it was always quoted in American media. I really thought when you came up with it, that it was a conspiracy theory. That can't be. Where did you get that from back then? Well, I mean, I was of course intensively involved with Donald Trump. And this claim that the entire American continent should not only be an the influence of the USA.

That's an old doctrine, but that you basically have to do everything on this continent in the future that the fantasies, the good and the bad, tell you. That was a mark. And then you have to look at what the fillet pieces are. And that's Greenland up there and that's Venezuela. And it's also completely clear that before you plan to do a putsch or kidnap a head of state or something,

that you don't hang it on the big bell, that you then cover it up with the use of drugs and much more. That all came gradually, piece by piece. But I mean, it was somehow two and two to count. But the interesting thing is, when it really happened, I thought, okay, oops, they did it again.

Because I can still remember very well, in December 1989, the USA in Panama dropped and arrested the acting head of government, General Noriega, was overthrown and arrested. This was during the time of George Bush. George Bush. The father of George W. Bush, who later marched into Iraq.

Family tradition.

All under the pretext of drug trafficking. Exactly the same. That's why it was interesting. Noriega had been a man of the USA for a long time. CIA man, who basically always did exactly what the Americans wanted. Then he fell into disgrace. And then they did the biggest air landing operation since the Second World War. Killed civilians and arrested Nuri Yeager, brought him to Miami and then put him to court for drug terrorism.

So for all those who are now saying a whole new age is beginning here, yes, the USA all of a sudden, what is Trump's catchphrase? Yes, he is completely unpredictable, he is completely crazy. I would say it has continuity. And if I look at the USA's civil rights violations, yes, so I think they don't fit on a DIN-A4 page. All of this that came afterwards, Operation Enduring Freedom,

the USA had the right to intervene anywhere in the world, to stage coups, to violate human rights. That was done in the Philippines, in Afghanistan, in a Horn of Africa, that was done in Libya Libya, that was done in Iraq and so on. So basically what Trump is doing here is not a complete break with the

current US-American policy, but it is direct continuity and continuation of what has always been done. And that is what I am missing at the moment in public discussions. There is above all one difference that is new. In the past, people always talked about freedom. That was the classic trick, to say, when dictators fall and bring democracy and freedom to the people.

That was always the case with every push that was made there. In South America, when P Pinochet to power or Videla in Argentina and yes, what all the terrible dictators are called, it was always about the liberation of communism or of any despots and Donald Trump says, we want to have the oil. So the difference is simply the degree of honesty. It has really

changed. It has become more direct, more direct, more modest and more honest. But it is not a new form of politics. When we talk about it, Richard, it concerns us in the sense that a lot is being said that the reaction of the German government is too too eggy, too meandering, not clear enough, not decisive enough, not determined enough. And it is said that this is the end of the popular right, or the popular right is weakening so that you have to say that it basically doesn't work anymore.

This week in the show we often talked about popular rights. There are smart people who have explained this in detail. And you always have the feeling that this is something academic, something slightly abandoned, something out of the Elfenbeinturm. Popular rights, now it is like this, don't act like this. If you start to think about it, you quickly realize that

national rights are of course something that is incredibly important to us. Especially for smaller countries, for smaller states. We are dependent on the very large countries, who do not need this, because they have the military power to do exactly that and to enforce what they want to enforce. We are dependent on the fact that there are people sitting there who believe in it together with us. That you don't overdo each other, that you are friendly with each other,

that you don't threaten each other militarily and do things we all don't want. And that the world is falling into chaos. That means we are essentially dependent on people in Moscow, Washington and Beijing who are convinced that it is better to live peacefully with each other than not to. And now we are in the trap because we don't have that right now.

We have someone in Washington who says, well, I don't care about national rights or not, we just put our interests first, you just described that, and we have someone in Moscow who does the same in Europe, so to speak. And the great fear behind it, which we as Europeans have to have, and that's why I explain to myself this very reserved German reaction is that there is a big deal in the background, the big agreement, yes, let me go with you to Venezuela and for that I leave you

free hand in Ukraine. That is actually the big worry. Yes, so I think that there is this deal, I think the russians are being insulted for it, also the fact And the fact that a Russian tanker or freighter or whatever was captured or arrested is not a big deal. I think it's more or less a show. That doesn't mean that there is a big alienation between Putin and Trump. I actually believe that there are such agreements and that the interests and oneself into the spheres of interest and influence.

As far as the great powers are concerned, who no longer take the rule of law seriously, you have to be more careful with the Chinese. You can't impose them as much as you can impose the Russians or the Americans on the rule of law. Not that they have never done it in their history, but compare it to the power they have now, relatively little.

The Chinese have other means to get to their place, at least so far. We don't know if that will be the case in the future. But we can actually put the theory into the room. Of the three great players, it will undoubtedly be the Chinese, who often break the rule often the world order based on the rule. That is something that is not so easy to understand in our heads, because it is

a quasi or pseudo communist dictatorship, but at the moment, in the chaos of the world situation, nothing is excluded. And the other is of course completely right. So why is the reaction of the Europeans, who have a vital, really vital interest in the unification of human rights, just because they are from smaller countries, why is the reaction so dull? So why does Merz actually say nothing

other than the topic is complex and you have to deal with it a little more thoroughly. That basically has something to do with the joke, yes, but whenever I have eaten something and have some kind of argument or something, I say every time now yes, the topic is complex, so that is of course really such a lazy excuse and such a cowardice that you ask yourself what drives the German Chancellor in such a situation where you feel like a value vest, where you have always

appeared in the last decade as a true defender of popular law, in the moment when such a blatant break is taking place, to keep yourself so small and covered and not to dare to open your mouth. I think there are two reasons. One reason is also discussed a lot, it is also quite obvious. Merz is afraid that he, annoys Trump, and the other European states are obviously afraid of the same thing, the USA will eventually leave Ukraine in the lurch and leave it to the Europeans alone for support. That means that you want to keep the good uncle, whom you can't really suffer from, from the USA, keep in good spirits. Of course, that's a tough calculation, what you do there,

because on the other hand it's clear that you let this civil rights violation go through. You could add relatively that when Nuremberg was overthrown, the Federal Republic didn't notice that it was in the first row and bluffed the USA. We never did that. With all the international law breaks of the USA, we never complained loudly.

Never. A German chancellor, neither Willy Brandt at the time in Vietnam, nor all the later things, Iraq war, Schröder said we're not going there. But he didn't stand in the front row and said what you're doing there, that's such a massive breach of popular rights. You produce hundreds of thousands of deaths. You are a barbaric regime and so on.

He didn't say anything about it. It has a long tradition that the German Chancellor and the leading German politicians with criticism of the USA in the case of breaches of popular rights, carefully expressed, hold back. The question is just whether that is still the right Union. The question is whether this is still the right time. In the past, we felt with the USA,

no lens, wo lens, as a community, as the West. Now we know that this West no longer exists. We have to be independent Europe, a European self-confidence. We're talking about it all the time. It would be a good opportunity to show this

European self-confidence. And now comes the second point. The second point is, I believe, that there is a certain secret joy among many German politicians about this successful operation and about the elimination of Maduro, whom no one can suffer for very understandable reasons. So, when Ursula von der Leyen says, there is a violation of the people's rights, yes, yes, bad, bad,

but now we have to make sure that the democratic transition in Venezuela succeeds, then that means that the fruits of this violation of the people's rights, I think, are great, yes, and now we have to see that we are making a regime change possible through free elections,

by dissolving the existing system, and so on. change quasi möglich machen durch freie wahlen dadurch dass die bestehende systeme abgelöst wird und so weiter also ich glaube da gibt es durchaus viel zustimmung ich glaube jürgen hart von der cdu hat das ja auch ganz ganz deutlich gemacht und das kann man nur und da sind wir bei unserem thema marcus wenn man gleichzeitig sagt naja das völkerrecht ist ja auch heute eigentlich nur noch theorie na herfried münkler said that, Jürgen Hart said that. They relativize and say, well, the big ones do whatever they want anyway.

That means that from the European side, the belief in this own basic conviction of the connectivity of popular rights and so on begins to fade.

I actually see it differently, Richard. the binding of the people's rights and so on.

I actually see it differently, Richard. I see it really quite differently.

Now I'm curious.

I think that we... Well, A, it's too hard for me to judge, when you say we are no longer clean, so to speak, when it comes to the question of what is good and what is bad and what is people's rights and what is not. I would always say that the people I meet in my daily work are German politicians who are currently in charge.

These are people who are very aware of their responsibility and who know very well where to stand, to put it in the subjunctive. But they have a completely different, big problem. They have little to gain and an incredible amount to lose. If Friedrich Merz stands up and says, this is a clear and blatant breach of popular law, and Matthias Miersch, for example, the head of the SPD party,

did this to us this week in a great, great clarity. The SPD is much clearer than the CDU. Which is good and right. But the CDU is the chancellor. That's the man Trump is talking to. Well...

He's the only one he takes seriously. And there is a relationship, if you listen to it, that is so... there is a certain appreciation. Trump is someone who is insanely erratic. And if you have someone like Friedrich Merz,

who is at least able, even if it takes 10 hours like the last time, to get him on the phone, then it is at least a conversation channel. That's the new reality, the reality we live in. Okay, so I see a difference between taking seriously and at least a conversation channel. I would understand the second one. Yes, so what is in the year

2026 or 25 is taking seriously in these circles. That's the brutal, the werewolf that is suddenly the doctrine in this new world. That's the ideology. You said it once about Ukraine. It fell under the robbers. The whole world is now falling under the robbers. And we have to somehow deal with this situation. And I find it, to be honest, very responsible and also smart of a German chancellor

if he doesn't stand up and then makes a very clear, placard-like statement, which no one in Washington cares about anyway. They don't care. Yes, he can do that, if he has no negative consequences. No. Well, at some point it is this cramped Nazism that plays a role. It's all on a very personal level. Oh, you're not nice to me.

That means, Friedrich Merz has very little to gain, but has an incredible amount to lose. We're sitting together in Paris right now and somehow trying to get a peace process going in Ukraine. And if I were German Chancellor, I would do nothing, because you know that you need the Americans for this peace process. We are not able to get the EU to accept this. I still believe that the Americans are interested in the European interests.

And they are doing something about it. And that's why they don't dare, I know that, that's why they don't dare to criticize clearly and openly. I have already understood that. But they still give themselves the illusion that the Americans, when it comes down to it, in the question of how to continue with Ukraine, represent European interests. And I don't believe that at all.

So I can only tell you, without getting more clear now, because it's a bit about source protection, we sometimes have a somewhat too simple view of the question of what is actually going on with the Americans in Ukraine. This week I had a very interesting conversation with someone in the background who is very, very close to this in the background this week. He told me from these negotiators circles, the American negotiators circles,

yes, not many people are asked there now, that they have the clear order from Trump to somehow ensure peace there now. It seems to be a matter of concern to them. And maybe we'll just take it seriously. Maybe we'll take this idea of Trump to say, look, I want to provide some peace,

and maybe also connected with personal interests. That can be anything. And to be honest, to assume that, because the family, especially the children, in-laws and everything else, they have their fingers everywhere in the game, when it comes to big deals, especially mobile deals, everything is given away.

But nevertheless there is apparently a reason behind it to say, look, let's try to finally end this killing and this murder.

And I actually take that from them.

I may take that from them, I can't judge it, but in the case of law, that's the way it is, there is a contradiction between creating peace and taking into account European interests, yes, that's basically the crux of the matter , creating peace would have been the original 28 29 points points plan would have been to create peace. The Russians have determined and dictated that these are the conditions under which Russia could possibly make peace. The Europeans have ensured that this paper, which is a peace of dictatorship for Ukraine, is now off the table.

Do you think that's good or bad? I'll describe it very neutrally first. I am interested in your opinion on this. Well, the point is the continuation of the war. That's the result. The result is, if we want to prevent a dictatorship peace and if we want to prevent the European

security interests as we have defined them so far, militarily defined, if we want all of this to be taken into account, there will be no peace in Ukraine. That's the result. And then the war will continue. At some point it will look even worse for Ukraine. And then there will be an even more brutal dictatorship peace. This is probably the realistic description of the current situation. And what do we do then, Richard? Then we go there and say...

No, there is a solution. But Merz is not ready for it. I criticized this recently with Maybrit Ilner, and I can't say that often enough. The solution we actually have would be to talk about the prehistory of the Ukrainian war with the Russians and to say that the NATO expansion, as we did it, as a further expansion of the US power sphere, which was primarily, that we Europeans made a mistake there and that we want to build a new

European security architecture in relation to Russia. If we say that, then there is peace in Ukraine.

You don't seriously believe that?

I believe that immediately. Putin says that in every speech since the beginning of the war. And we Europeans say, we're not talking about the one who attacked the people's rights in the Ukraine was attacked, what is true, he is a brutal dictator, what is true, yes we have a lot of moral arguments that we could not let ourselves into the level that could lead to peace everywhere and

that is why the result of the two summits in Berlin and in Paris is the continuation of the war. But that yes, I'll just say that very briefly. You are saying, quite rightly, that this is an aggressor, that this is someone who not only broke the fence of the Ukrainian war, but also, in Syria, with incredible precision and brutality, slaughtered the Syrian population, because the poor Assad, as he expressed himself cynically,

only has these nasty barrel bombs, and that's why you have to be a little helpful. And we have been so often on the line. Even if you look at it. Now you're doing the same thing I just criticized. You bring up moral issues. Why Putin is a war criminal?

At this point I disagree. No, but what I find so crazy about it is you say it yourself, that it is so, and I know your conviction to it, and you believe it at the same time when he says, you just have to say that the NATO-East expansion was a mistake, but if we are willing to think about it, like, for example, what the Russians are demanding is a neutral Ukraine. A neutral Ukraine where there is no NATO military.

And everything we are thinking about at the moment is how we can properly... I know, but we imagine that NATO military is in Ukraine after a ceasefire or after a ceasefire and that's exactly what Putin wants to prevent in the world. And the longer we think about it and make ourselves a well-won idea, there would be French, English or even German troops at some point. As long as we spin into this cloud of cuckoo's homes, this war will not end.

That's the way it is. I understand that Ukraine wants to have security guarantees. I can understand that best. But it can never be in NATO troops. It consists of a new security architecture in which there are a thousand reasons not to attack. Not least the one that Donald Trump clearly formulated against Zelensky. If you sign the contract that we get half of the land values ​​in Ukraine and we promote them there, then Putin will never

attack Ukraine again. That's how it will end. So the way we are going in this argument, especially about the Ukrainians themselves, makes me a little speechless. I don't think so. If we're just talking about it, Richard, and you were just at the point of saying,

that would be the moment for a German chancellor to finally uphold principles. In this case, the principles of popular rights. That is, to clearly align our compass and to clearly say where left and right and up and down and where good and evil is. If that's the moment, then this moment

applies at least as much to Ukraine. Of course, we have been doing that for four years. In Ukraine, people have been fighting a desperate struggle for four years, not so much for territory. Of course, they are also fighting for their homes, their home, their homeland and in the end maybe also for territory. They fight for their homes, their homes, their homeland. And in the end, maybe also for their territory. It could be anything. But above all, they fight for one thing. They fight for their way of life. They fight for their life in freedom.

They don't want...

I don't know. Most of them fight because they have to fight. Because they are recruited and because they have to go to war. No. I think there is no single survey from understandable reasons in which the people who are actually on the front can cross out what their motivation is, why they are there. I think we should not always decide from our point of view about the heads of the Ukrainians

and determine exactly, because we know so well what their motivation is. How do you want to know that? I think everyone has a different motivation. One or the other likes to see it the way you do. One or the other wants the war to stop and is there because he has to. No, Richard, no. One or the other is certainly there because he has to be. That's definitely the case.

I just want to say, I've had these conversations with a lot of Ukrainians. I've told you you that you are surprised how much they are enthusiastic about our western way of life. How attached they are to us. And I often think, why do we just walk away from it? These are allies, these are people who are helping us to keep this imperialistic Russian leadership alive. Why do we just ignore it? I don't understand it.

Why do we ignore it? And we constantly have an understanding for this imperialist behavior. I have no understanding of imperialist behavior at all. I'll say it again very clearly what my coordinates are. There is the peace of the dictatorship from now, this 28-point plan, and it will be the peace of the dictatorship of the next two or three years, which is probably worse for Ukraine. Life is a question of alternatives.

I mean, we're doing well. We're sitting here in the warm and we're happy that the heroic Ukrainians are still defending their homeland and our freedom for a very long time. But we don't have to lie in the trenches either. We're not in the situation. We have nothing to judge at all.

Neither you nor I, in your opinion, can try to analyze everything I can do rationally. What do the possibilities and conditions for peace in Ukraine look like? And what are the criteria for ensuring that this peace is stable and not to lead to the next war? The Ukrainians have a historical experience. Budapest memorandum. They have the experience, they had security guarantees. It was the Americans, the Russians and the English who said, we take care of you.

And they have the experience that two of them are now just leaving you in the lurch and one of them is even attacking you. Yes, I know. That is their historical experience. Yes, I know. And I also know that Ukraine needs security guarantees. But in the end it will not be a NATO military because under those conditions there is no peace. It's that simple. So I actually believe, and that's actually the turning point we're at right now. And you are again in truth with Venezuela, Richard.

It is then about the question of how much we actually stick to a few things that we have agreed on after the horror of the Second World War. And this ... I mean, that's my topic. The universal humanism, which in the UNO, in the Declaration of Human Rights, which found its downfall in the right to the people and so on. And of course I want all of this to be stopped.

I want it just the way you want it. And I don't want to live in a world where great imperialists are dividing the world. And of course it is a very, very miserable situation that such a great achievement like the right to the people has actually only become a reason for a sport in a world

in which the violent do whatever they want. Monika, colleague from the editorial office, has described it very nicely this week and says it would be like stealing a gas station while the robbery is happening from the criminal law book. But still, I would fight for the right to vote again the people. And that's why I want to hear the clear

statement of Friedrich Merz, because if we give it away, and that was the starting point of our whole discussion that led us to Ukraine, if we give it away, we can give away everything. And that's why I think, and that's the difference to what you think, that the Chancellor should have shown clear edges in this point. And that's why I don't think it's good that he didn't do it. That's the difference we both have.

And apart from that, I wish for Ukraine that it will reach a stable peace that will enable the Ukrainians to live the way they want to live. Because in terms of the goal, we have no difference at all. But you believe, with all your moral arguments, that it can and may be possible to delay this war for years. And I believe that will significantly worsen the situation for Ukraine in the end. That is my fear. So I know how you mean it, Richard.

And I don't get it wrong now, but when you say that, you and your morals, that's something you can't accept. Since when do we start to make something like morals fundamentally despicable? I'm the last one who was morally despicable. But I differentiate with Bertolt Brecht whether I speak in the name of morals or whether I speak in the name of the damaged.

And if I have the choice, as here in Ukraine, to speak in the name of morality or in the name of the damaged, I am always for the damaged. And then I see the hundreds of thousands of people in front of me who may still die in a war that cannot be won. I am on their side. And you take into account that there are hundreds of thousands and millions of damaged people who then suffer under this

Russian knot? Why? It's about all the peace plans, also in all that comes from Russia, not about Putin wanting Ukraine as a whole. That it doesn't even say in any single draft contract or

anything. Who tells you that? Also not in the 28-point plan and so on. If he makes a deal with the Americans, which is secured by the Americans, I don't think Putin has a great interest in going to war with Donald Trump. What makes you believe that you can explain to anyone in Ukraine that you can rely on Putin's words from now on. Well, then you don't need a peace treaty and can wait until the whole of Ukraine is defeated.

You have no choice. You always say moral things, you can't, you can't, you shouldn't, but you have no alternative. Yes, we do. The other position is to say at the same time, but let's leave it to this whole armament madness. Then we have to say, if that's the case, if we can't rely on all of this anymore and if we have to empower ourselves, then we have to be ready to say on the other hand, okay, then please, so much armament and deterrence, that is clear for these people in Moscow, he doesn't even try. That's clear.

Maybe the other goal is to come back to common interests with Russia at some point, to common economic interests and much more, that a certain stabilization of the situation takes place. This is a process that does not go from today to tomorrow, but the task for the next five to ten years, to get back to a peaceful relationship. And then to create an architecture that simply makes every break in national law and every border movement impossible.

That is the task that we have to work on together. And all this in conversations with the Russians, all these beautiful conversations that the Europeans have with each other. So what? As long as you don't talk to the Russians, it's not seriously about diplomacy. I know how Merz was praised by his party friends for this, even with Helmut Kohl comparisons by Laschet. For Berlin and for Paris, nothing has happened so far. We haven't come any closer to peace

by doing that. But that's exactly the great diplomatic offensive that people like you have been rightfully calling for for a long time. No, the diplomatic offensive is to talk to Moscow and not just to London and

to Paris. That can be the second step. But what's there in Berlin... But it's completely missing so far. So far there has was even a basic outrage about the idea that one talks to Putin at all.

In contrast to Macron, who said that he intends to do so. But in Germany it is still very unpopular to say that. I mean, on one point, Richard, you are probably right. We have to say goodbye

to old certainties. I think we all understand that by now. We have to say goodbye to old certainties. I think we all understand that by now. We have to accept that there are new players in the world. We have to accept that the old world order no longer applies. I recently heard Peter Neumann, the security expert, political scientist, say that it is no longer enough. He also said in our show, just always defensively, we want to go back to the old.

That's basically your position. We have to look into the reality. And he continues to do that, it's very interesting. He says, many things that Europe has benefited from in the past are probably no longer to be saved. And takes the UN Security Council as an example, which depicts the world of 1945. And no longer the world of 2026. That means a country, and then it becomes clear what is meant by that,

a country like India with 1.5 billion inhabitants has no veto right, while a country like Great Britain with significantly fewer inhabitants, or even France, has a veto right. And that leads to the fact that that leads to a great loss of credibility in the so-called global south. And that leads to the constant accusation of double morality. And even now you can basically count down from 10 to 0.

In part, they are already there. The accusations that say, okay, if Putin does what he does in Ukraine, then it can't be clear enough to you with the condemnation of what is happening there. If Netanyahu does what he does in Gaza, then you are much more conservative, then you are maximally concerned or extremely concerned, but more is not noticeable to you.

And if Trump does what he did in Venezuela did, then it's complex. Then it's complex, right, exactly. That means we have suffered a great loss of credibility. The question is what can you do instead? So if you look ahead and say, how can we shape this? How do we get out of this? Then the question would be, what is the answer to this? And then the answer can only be that we have to be aware of being as strong as possible militarily.

Yes, but we are only talking about military in this context. What is the other answer? Well, it's also about European solidarity. It's also about the future of the European economic space. The problem is that in the military matter, certain countries are now pressing ahead. And not only in the military, but actually at all. There are a few thoughts, the English, who actually do not belong to the EU,

the British are suddenly somehow back in it, and the French and this coalition of the willing, and the Germans, they should now pull the European ship in the right direction. And although there are many countries in Europe, of which all think it's good, but are too small to get involved. There are some who are a little involved,

there are some who see it very differently. And in the end we pull the ship, but then only a third of the crew is on board. And then the ship is no longer what it was before. And that's the big problem. At the moment there is such an interest to say, so that we also have a club, for example, we need

a militarily very strong europe now we basically need a europe as a successor of the old usa so the usa before donald trump so a kind of mini west or a kind of mini usa and we have to do that through military strength first build up and to build that up first through military strength, and then see that we can somehow fill the whole thing through economic strength and so on.

That's the idea at the moment. And I mean, I understand the theory, I understand what's behind it. If we are militarily strong, then we also have a say in the world, and so on. Then we will still not become the great guardian of popular rights, but at least we are no longer so easily attackable and we can speak with a strong voice. I understand this argument.

At the same time, the European economies, yes, also Germany, are in a very, very, very volatile economic situation, in which they have to pay such tremendous costs to achieve what they have planned here, they have to incur such enormous costs, at the expense of all that money, which then no money or far too little money is left. We have already talked about how much money Germany is now giving for the arms market

and how much else for AI and so on, that we are maneuvering into an insanely miserable situation in which our economic forces are fading. And then we come into a situation in which our economic forces are fading. And then we come to the situation that we are becoming more military-powered and economically weaker. This reminds me a bit, if I may express it in a more eloquent way, of the judgment of Helmut Schmidt at the time about the Soviet Union.

An Obervolter with rockets. So if we pay for our equipment by becoming economically weaker in the end, then this Europe will break apart and it will not be the strong Europe we dream of. If you talk about what that actually means, if the world is simply divided into influence spheres. Then we are talking about this Monroe Doctrine. I go back to a US president, James Monroe, 1823, who said back then, we as North Americans protect the south of the continent

against aggressive European empires, which they have been harassing for centuries. We are standing, so to speak, the Latin Americans as a well-intentioned superpower aside and keep the Europeans out. That was, so to speak, the reading. In fact, however, this Monroe Doctrine is something that has a catastrophic reputation. Do you have the feeling, we're going back there and can you explain what that is? So the Monroe Doctrine was born from the

change of political conditions in South America. Something had just happened a few years earlier, namely the Bolivarian Revolution. So under the freedom fighter Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan, that's why they call themselves Bolivarians, many people asked themselves when they heard the word in the news, many South American countries have become independent from the Spaniards. And the fear of the Americans was that the Spaniards would land there with huge troops and try to make it recede.

And thus, to build up a new Spanish empire in South America, which would then be direct competition with the Americans. In fact, there has always been this rivalry on the American continent between the USA and the Spaniards. And around 1900 there was a war against the Spaniards, where they were stolen a lot, among other, including the Philippines and Hawaii. So that they went there and finally defeated the last Spanish influences on the American continent.

All according to the Monroe Doctrine, which was very positive for the South American countries at the beginning. Namely, the protection of the USA from the re-conquest by Spain. That was the good news that was hidden there. But there was a little more to it, namely that the protection against Spain did not draw its interest from the fact that one was so interested in the Argentines or Bolivians, but that one did not want a

competition on the continent. So, America against the Americans, so to speak. But you mean America against the US-Americans. That's the real difference. Yes, exactly. That's how it is. That was the subtitle, so to speak, which was not officially discussed.

Exactly. That's our claim. That's ultimately ours. That's our influence. And that's how we've always behaved. If you look at the history of the usa just after what happened in the 20th century how many military pudschen yes state strikes and so on the cia or the american military we think of

pinocchio the alien 73 crashed we think of how de la of the 76 in argentina came to power yes you have every imaginable every conceivable asshole, deluxe supported. Back then, of course, out of fear of the domino theory. Communist countries could arise and that could be a flamethrower.

Then you had everything for the Spaniards, but for the communists.

Exactly, whenever left-wing governments came to power, the Americans often made sure that

that has changed. Exactly, because left-wing governments have tended to pollute the land values of the country, whether that was the copper mines in Chile or wherever land values ​​were or later in Venezuela, the oil, that is, to pollute it. So that means that the one who owned it before, that was almost without exception US-American companies, to take it away

and to permanently prevent that or to bring it back, this policy was made. What is so interesting today, I think we talk about it too little, is that in the past, until Trump II, the USA always claimed that the whole world is their sphere of interest. They have everywhere in all countries of the world, I mean up to Vietnam and so on and Cambodia and wherever they had their fingers in the game and so on, regimes supported and so on.

And what has changed for Trump is the US-American claim to this globally extended Monroe Doctrine, which he totally takes back. He says only the western hemisphere, from Fireland, Patagonia, down to Greenland. And the rest is not so important. North Asia and Eastern Europe can have Putin. And South Asia and parts of Africa gets Xi. Basically, it's like a risk game.

You know this board game, where you get troops. The bigger the continent you own, the more troops you get. At the beginning, you play like this, that you talk to each other a bit, so that everyone conquers their area for themselves in peace, before you pull each other.

And that's what the situation reminds us of at the moment. There is an interesting map on the Internet, that I found on the internet. Someone actually made it as Donald Trump himself, drew lines with a pencil and wrote on it me, Putin and she. A very nice map.

And I think it expresses a bit of thinking in the present time. And if you look at it, I recently read a video about Panama, it's just like that, to travel to Panama. I mean, Panama didn't exist as a country at all. Panama owes its existence to this Monroe Doctrine. So it belongs to Colombia and Roosevelt, the president at the time, the American,

simply cut out these two pieces of fillet and then the canal goes through the middle. Yes, and without war and war declaration, go there, build the canal and call the country around Panama. That's how it will work with Greenland. We all have now, when the Danes say, so threatening, that's the end of NATO and all that. No, the Americans, the USA, will get everything they want from Greenland, completely without war and without the end of NATO.

And the Danes basically took that, to be honest, they already rolled out the red carpet for them. They say, so we're not allowed to take that away from us. And military intervention could not be done either. But otherwise we are ready to talk about everything. Well, good. You would say that all the military bases that Donald Trump will build there without much question

are in the interest of NATO. They also protect Denmark. The Danes can sell that to their population wonderfully. When it comes to land tax reduction, we can involve the Green countries and the Danish government with one or two percent of the results. You do it like with the Panama Canal. You just go there and do it.

And the only thing the Danes insist on in the end is that there is no US-American flag is put up. But even there, our Chancellor and many others, no one will go there and say that's not possible, but say why? The USA is strengthening their military presence in Greenland. That is also important in today's times against Putin and so on. We will talk about all this nicely and it will happen. Yes, I don't quite understand that part. I don't understand at all

why we are doing this with the hammer. That's the part that I don't understand at all in the whole game. As you know, I was often in Greenland or on Greenland and the Americans have long been there and everywhere. I don't understand why you ... all the airports you know in Greenland, the essential ones, in Kangas-Lusuag, for example, it has the main airport, it has the one you fly to when you fly to West Greenland. Most Greenlanders live in West Greenland, only very few on the east side.

The east actually doesn't really matter. But all the airports you know there, they are all former American airports, which played a huge role in the Second World War for logistics. That means they already have everything there. Then there is the famous airbase, the famous Thule Airbase,

for which a whole village was relocated, which is now called Karnak, built in a much worse place, windy, busy, a really gloomy place. While Thule, the old Thule, where this Airbase is now, was a good place. It was a good place for hunting, it was weather-friendly, it was very well protected, etc. They just kind of settled the whole village,

without pulling any strings and without asking anyone. Basically, they're already doing all that there. And if Trump makes fun of the Greenlanders, who now somehow allegedly, and he says, but seriously, they bought nine dog sleds to defend themselves,

then he's probably playing on this Sirius patrol. I don't know if you know that. It's a patrol that the Danish king was on a lot in his young years, because he is fascinated by this greenlandic landscape, and this greenlandic vastness, and this ice, and this loneliness. He was often on the road with them.

It's a patrol that really drives with dog sledges in the national park in the east of the country, gigantic distances. And you can't get in there otherwise. They make sure that it really remains a large nature reserve. It's full of fascinating animals, would be something for you. And you can't get there otherwise, unless you have contacts. And the Danish king had them, of course, Frederick, for this Sirius patrol.

But I really don't understand the approach. And I have the feeling that if you dig into the story a little bit, we are so or the Americans are so often wrong about that. The highlight of this whole story is the famous Cuba crisis in the 60s. Castro, who came to power at the end of the 50s, a revolutionary, a Latin American nationalist, who of course wanted to do his thing there. And that's

similar to Ukraine. When you talk to Cubans, you always have the feeling that you spent a long time in Cuba a few years ago and also filmed there. And it has remained an incredibly beautiful memory for me. And I was impressed by this self-confidence of the Cubans at the time. And that reminded me very much of the self-confidence that I later experienced in Ukraine.

People who say, no, we know who we are, and also in the exclusion to the other, we know who we want to align ourselves to. And the Cubans always say, look, we are fascinated by this American way of living, but we are Cubans.

We still want to do our own thing. You really shouldn't underestimate that in this context. And that was probably one of the reasons why the Americans tried to take over Cuba in the 62 in the swine bay, when they had already tried to do so. They suffered such a fateful defeat. The USA made a huge mistake by pushing Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union. I was just about to say that.

And the interesting thing is, Fidel Castro was a US fan, he is a baseball fan. Yes. And he had a rehearsal training with the Washington Senators. That's crazy, right? Fidel Castro wanted to be a baseball player. Yes, it is often said that he would have been there shortly before to catch the New York Yankees. That's a very famous legend.

That's true.

Not at all. But the rehearsal training with the Washington Senators exists and there are also photo documents and Fidel Castro also saw, he was in the USA there are beautiful pictures of Fidel Castro at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, he looks up to Lincoln, Lincoln so to speak, the abolition of slavery and so on, so he saw in the basic principles of the USA, also the right principles for Cuba, he just wanted to throw out the gambling, the mafia and all this foreign capital

that this country had under control. And that was massively contradicting the US-American interests, especially the mafia. And there they put our pressure on us, and so on, the motto, you do not take American capital and whoever does, just like in all other South American countries, if someone tries to give the copper mines back to the people

instead of them belonging to some US consortium, he was then immediately declared a radical enemy and a communist and at some point Castro had no choice but to bow down to Khrushchev, well or badly and with a grin. And that cost him a lot of strength. That was not how he originally thought it was.

The Americans should have made a deal with Castro back then. And they could have said, okay, we're losing some of our owners and a few rich people who were there and earned their money in an unserious way. They're out. But we won't create enemies or bastions for them in the Cold War of the enemies. That was done very, very wrong in the time of the Americans. And I'm curious what it is like in Venezuela. I mean, Trump is completely free of ideology.

He doesn't care who rules Venezuela. He is interested in the question of how you can promote oil. And that's a much more complicated question than you think. I mean, after many years or decades of embargo and sanction policy against Venezuela, the Venezuelan oil production is nothing more. Yes, that's all rusty, that's marauding, you would have to do it all over again from scratch, completely, completely new. A three-digit

billion amount that you would have to invest in, from which you only get a corresponding income in many years. But that is the topic that interests the Americans and not the question who is ultimately the president of Venezuela as a person and whether elections will be held or not, that does not interest Trump at all. I mean, that's interesting, maybe we can conclude again, when you listen to people who know their way around it.

Rüdiger Bachmann is one of those, we both know and appreciate. Greetings. Andreas Löschl is a professor of environmental and resource economics at the Ruhr University in Bochum, whom we also talked to in advance for our conversation. And they both basically say the same thing. They say this idea, yes, that you simply kidnap the dictator, the responsible one, and then we take care of the oil and do shiny business,

is an absolutely naive idea. And you can't help but think of Libya, you can't help but think of Iraq. We have almost the same story literally. You don't think about Libya, you don't think about Iraq. We have the exact same story, almost literally. Syria?

Yes, Syria. Almost literally told the same story. Then you say, watch out, and then it runs with the oil and then we earn a lot and everyone gets something out of it. And what is left of it, we give back to the poor Lib Libyans and Iraqis and so on. Look at the situation there, it's an absolute disaster to this day. And let's put it this way, there is a reason to believe that it could unfortunately run similarly in Venezuela.

Andreas Löschl says that. This infrastructure, you just described it, has been driven down badly over decades. A few years ago, at the time of Chavez, the predecessor of Maduro, they had three times as much oil as they do today. They can't make millions of barrels a day. Everything is marauding. He says it takes a three-digit billion-dollar area to rebuild this infrastructure.

That can take a whole decade. Someone like Trump doesn't have that time at all. That means, this big idea, and I don't know how often Trump has used the word oil in the last few days, whenever it came to the question, how do we go on now?

His answer was always just, yes, but the oil, that could turn out to be be an illusion in the end. Absolutely possible. So it's so easy to make a military coup or as easy as we see to kidnap someone through an intervention, but to actually create blessed and stable conditions, that in the very, very most cases where such interventions have taken place.

The question is, in the end, Richard, who is the big beneficiary?

If you say, we do this because...

Everyone who plans to do something similar in the future. That too. But if you say, okay, now we have taken out this one component from this construct, the most important bridgehead for China, for Russia, also for Iran,

on the Latin American continent and really right in front of the door of the Americans. That was Venezuela or was Venezuela. And we have now taken it out and then you give yourself the illusion that we have now hit the Russians very sensitively, possibly also with the oil price, yes, because the Russians are only able to wage their war because they still sell a lot of oil on the world market. We have pushed the Chinese, because they no longer have this influence in Venezuela.

I wonder if this could be a real pyrocyclic in the end. In the sense of, won't other Latin American countries, which are already very skeptical, many against America, against the gringos from the north, won't say, no, watch out, then it's better to get the Chinese, because they can now stage themselves as stable order guarantors in the world. According to the motto, we don't do that.

Exactly, and I think that will happen. In the next few years, they will take more and more of these words into their mouths, which we have taken into our mouths before. Yes, exactly. Regulation-based world order and all that. And we won not attack you. We will not attack you and we will not attack Taiwan either. We will get that anyway.

It's just a matter of time. Everything with peaceful means and so on. China is certainly a very big profiteer of the whole thing. But we have also gotten into a miserable situation. How should the Federal Republic

in the future condemn violations of national rights with sharp and clear words? Yes, you are right. That is of course, that is no longer possible. I understood your argument why Merz said it is complex and I still think it is, despite the fact that I believe to know the background,

for a big mistake. So Richard, exciting. I would say the same. Yes, I also. And we'll hear from you next week.

Go shovel snow.

See you then.

Yes, see you.

Thank you. All the best.

Ciao. Lukas Raspach. Editing Monica Fabricius and Simon Schuling. Post-production Dominik Völkel. Post-production Dominik Völkel. Editing ZDF, Henning Brekenkamp and Marc Lovritsch.