EP # 6: Multipolarity with Nikolas Vacano

Nikolas Vacano joined our cohosts, Rilie and Rashaad to discuss his piece on the Trump Foreign Policy and how it addresses Multipolarity. Please note that this Podcast was recorded in mid December, and the current political dynamics domestically and internationally have shifted significantly since. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey everyone, welcome to this WeekEasy podcast, The Voice of the Harbinger, run by Corbell students at the University of Denver. This podcast focuses on domestic and international politics in a lighthearted, comprehensive way. Our goal for this podcast is to showcase student and faculty voices at DU through vital campus commentary on today's multifaceted, ever-changing world. But we hope our conversations extend beyond campus and create dialogue among all students. This week we're interviewing Nick Picano about his Harbinger piece released November 1st, entitled Trump's Foreign Policy and Its Fragile Potential to Address Multipolarity. Now, consider this discussion merely as a starting point. Without further ado, your hosts for today are me, Riley Atkinson, the Assistant Managing Editor for Audiovisual Media. My pronouns are she, her. I'm a first-year graduate student studying international human rights with a specialization in restorative justice and a certificate in public diplomacy. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, and lived in Central and Eastern Europe.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

And I'm Rashad Khan, managing editor of audiovisual media. My pronouns are he, him. I am a second-year graduate student in international human rights with a focus on labor rights and movements. And I am originally from Sacramento, California.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, just go for it whenever you're ready.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Uh hello, my name is Nick Vicano, E him. I am a second-year student uh studying international security at the Joseph Corbell School of Global and Public Affairs. I am from Denver, Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Uh, have lived here all my life, um, but have uh So just to start things off, can you tell us the title of your piece and maybe a quick summary of what it's about?

SPEAKER_01 2:01

So the title of my piece is Trump's Foreign Policy and Its Fragile Potential to Address Multipolarity, and uh summarized in the briefest way possible, uh given that the uh title is already a little wordy. Essentially, I make the argument that in um the sort of modern international context where you have a lot of different states demanding a greater amount of say in the operation of international institutions, the conduct of international events, things like that, there is a thread in Trump's foreign policy which tries to essentially respect that increasing demand for state sovereignty and sort of state demands for greater prominence and whatnot, by essentially trying to bring subordinate powers more closely into sort of frameworks for their own uh regional stability and things like that, and maintaining that above all else.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

So Yeah. Can you define specifically what is multipolarity, unipolarity, and as well, like you mentioned G0, G7, and G20. Those um terms were used consistently.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Oh yeah. So unipolarity, multipolarity, and uh bipolarity, they're all terms that are used to describe various different kinds of international systems, right? So you have one dynamic unipolarity where there is a single preponderantly powerful superpower, just in command of most military, trade, economic affairs, whatever, and leading almost all political institutions, between countries specifically. Then bipolarity, that's defined by two different sets of powers going against each other, each led by one respective hegemon hegemonon. Hegemon, excuse me. Uh yeah, that's uh going back to uh Charlie XEX or something, hegemonan or whatever. Whatever. Anyway, that's a stupid joke.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Uh I liked it. It was like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

But uh bipolar hegemony, you have, say, the uh United States and the USSR during the Cold War. That's the classical example of that. Actually, even going back further, you can go to ancient Greek history and uh Sparta and Athens, as recorded in the history of the Peloponnesian War, whatever. Multipolarity, defined by a huge number of different sort of centers of gravity for the international system, regional hegemons as opposed to global hegemons fighting against each other and vying for influence. And just, you know, with each of these increasingly different kinds of diffusions of power, hard military and economic power, soft cultural power, all of that kind of thing. So yeah. And the G7, G20, those are existing sort of economic frameworks for uh talking between various prominent economies globally. So the G7 specifically is like the United States, Germany, Japan, uh, the UK, formerly Russia, when it was the G8. And the G20 is a more expansive group, including what are called emerging market economies, right? So perfect.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

And then how does this relate to G0, which you say is the greatest issue that we're facing today?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yes. So G0, as an idea, was originally sort of established by the political scientist Ian Bremer, kind of notable as a major independent geopolitical consultant, and somebody who, you know, just maintains a very strong kind of look and consistent look at international events, publishes information related to that on that basis, runs the Eurasian group, things like that. He basically suggests that we are reaching this point where you have no single state or coalition of major states which can actually control events in any kind of predictable or sustainable way. And instead, you know, we're reaching this point where, as Ian Bremer puts it, we now have the uh law of the jungle, which is just characterized by states predating against each other, attacking each other, a lot of coercive economic relationships, military dynamics, et cetera. And that is something that's being created by kind of a drift towards non-state actors as well as the breakdown of existing international institutions. So further on, you mentioned retrenchment. How do you define that and like how is that different than isolationism? I would define retrenchment as essentially a country trying to withdraw its capabilities and its sort of attention as a world power from sort of like external affairs as much as possible while at the same time retaining certain selective advantages, right? So for instance, you have say the United States being engaged in some sort of peacekeeping effort in a different part of the world. But just hypothetically, let's say, I don't know, West Africa, right? Unfortunately, they're not doing enough there at the moment. We'll get to that potentially. And, you know, there's dispute over how effective that strategy is going to be. A retrenchment kind of outlook would basically say, okay, draw back that capability and then try and influence events in a different way, maybe empowering a certain local actor to engage in various activities or working to sponsor various economic relationships. Isolationism, on the other hand, is just cut everything off, that doesn't matter. What matters is the home country, basically, above all else.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

So perfect. So in your essay, you talk about the US and how it should be situated as a king maker in relation to the ideas of retrenchment. Can you talk a little bit more about that and how the US, as a kingmaster, its role fits into the coalition such as G7?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Oh, well, in essence, what I mean by that is we as a country have a lot of just fundamental basic economic advantages over others, right? We have gigantic amounts of arable land, we have gigantic amounts of mineral deposits, huge human capital, relatively highly educated populace, and whatnot. Being a kingmaker in this kind of context means leveraging those resources in a select way to empower specific, powerful countries that we view as either aligned with us or that we can create a convergence of interests with. You know, I specifically talk about how in a multipolar world this makes sense as something which can empower somebody more intimately engaged with the goings-on in a particular corner of the world. Returning to, say, the West Africa example, retrenchment there with a kind of kingmaker outlook, might implicate, say, taking Nigeria and saying, okay, we want to give you these particular weapon systems, this kind of help with uh community development and uh offering alternative economic opportunities to people who might otherwise become, say, radical militant fighters or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

In in the beginning of the piece, you mentioned that the US, if it is to remain a credible hegemonic force. Going into that, what would you say to people who argue that the U.S. is not a credible?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

I would argue that, you know, viewing this in relativistic terms, you understand the United States as a sort of imperial country relative to, for instance, the United Kingdom during the Pax Britannica, quote unquote, after the Napoleonic Wars. On some level, while without a doubt, there have been egregious abuses of power by the United States, and you know, it works to perpetuate an economic model which is faulty across the planet. In relative terms, we have promoted a system that is built off of a kind of transparency in government, trying to increase the reach of human rights and democratization efforts, things like that, while also creating standards for trade and kind of the allotment of countries in such a way that they can capitalize off of comparative advantage and basically produce things that only they indigently can produce best, which ultimately leads to a lot of growth and things like that. So, you know, it's not exactly as predatory a dynamic as I think. Previous international systems governed by other powers were, and it's frankly better than what I think a lot of the revisionist powers today offer. So on that basis, with its faults, I would embrace it. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Just underline that a couple times.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Just copious.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

So you argue that Israel and the US conflict in Iran is the type of sponsorial hegemonic approach that you believe the US should take rather than its traditional interventionist one that we've been discussing. So how would you say that this is different than a proxy war? Is that not predatory? And does that concept even coexist with US retrenchment?

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah. So in essence, the primary kind of difference between like this dynamic, for instance, and the dynamic of a proxy war is, of course, you are, if you are the superpower in a proxy war, you're trying to invest a huge amount of resources to make sure that while this lesser state can achieve certain objectives related to yours, they also remain perpetually dependent on you, either for economic investment, military technology, or just your protection. And, you know, I mean, there's a pretty clear difference between that and the relationship that the US has with Israel, given that it's been kind of prized as this special partner in the Middle East, for better and for worse, to put it mildly. And this kind of dynamic is fundamentally something which you could view in a predatory light. But the problem is we are talking about a situation where Israel and the United States exist within the same security order, one that is premised on a certain degree of sort of understanding and standardization surrounding things. And on the contrary, you have Iran, which, as far as we can tell, and uh there's copious figures from published even in the Financial Times and whatnot, they were nearing the production of a nuclear weapon and things like that. So in the case of this, a select kind of predatory use of behavior restored an element of an of a regional stability. So unfortunately, as with any kind of situation in geopolitics, I think the most accurate lens to view it through is tragedy. And in this kind of context, that means accepting one form of predatory behavior briefly. Exactly, to cut off an element of uh a potentially more destabilizing thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

So you mentioned the rule of dawn, my belief brimmer. Yes. That was a funny thing to read. Um can you go further in detail about that? Oh your own definition of it and also how it could be, I believe you said it was more of a transactional relationship. How could that be? I guess.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah. So addressing that point, it's kind of important to emphasize that I got that term specifically from G0's risk assessment for the year 2025, where they emphasized essentially that the rule of Don is, as they say it, because uh Ian Bremer and the Eurasia group seem very fond of hokey phraseologies around these kinds of things, they sort of point out, like, okay, Trump as an international diplomatic leader, his fundamental concern is basically making the world safe for U.S. business interests on some level, and selectively, you know, engaging in isolation, uh, isolationistic behavior to try and, you know, rectify, in the words of Warren Cass, who wrote in the uh Journal of Foreign Affairs a number of times, rectify serial trade violators with the use of tariffs or whatnot. And in this vein, there is no like central ideological premise to a lot of the work he does. I mean, you can see this clearly in his uh dealings with the uh Arab states. There's no ideological affinity or anything like that, but there are business interests fundamentally. So it's a transactional worldview. It's not, say, a human rights-focused worldview that you would have, say, incorporated to one extent or another in previous American administrations. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Absolutely. So then you go on to talk about how Trump's regime could potentially thwart the descent of G zero politics. So could you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yes. So in a weird sense, I think that there is a segment of the Trump administration and a segment of his overall foreign policy perspective, which is premised on taking that kind of transactional spirit and things like that and using that to stymie the rise of major adversaries. For instance, China is the most obvious example. But uh also to some extent with Russia, where the messaging has been consistently, okay, we don't like the idea that uh European countries have been quote unquote free riding on American security and guarantees and economic empowerment and have dismantled their militaries as a result of that. And, you know, essentially, if you take maybe the position of somebody like uh Marco Rubio or a Robert C. O'Brien inside of the administration, there is kind of this point of wanting to emphasize, okay, they need to develop their own independent security frameworks surrounding these things. And that makes more sense in a multipolar world, right? Because if you have countries that have greater economic prominence, greater amounts of hard military power and things like that on their own, that's the way to uh sort of respect their demands for sovereignty and their desire to become something more independent while also maintaining some kind of convergence of interests and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

So how is giving more states equal powers, such as your examples that you give in the piece, um I believe Saudi Arabia and some others, uh uh not accelerating G-Zero?

SPEAKER_01 16:38

So, in essence, one major feature of a G zero dynamic is the sort of drift towards non-state actors having greater and greater prominence in various events, and powers that are willing to use military force as a first course of action, just at any opportunity, they are given greater license in the G-Zero world, hypothetically, right? If you empower a state like, say, uh Saudi Arabia in this kind of dynamic, they can maintain control of, for instance, major uh trade lanes. They can maintain control of uh various kinds of state military dynamics and intervene in conflicts in a way that is predictable and potentially can be subject to some regulation under international law or under the uh influence of major powers. Like I talk about in the piece, there's, I think, a very productive impulse in the administration right now to counterbalance Israel as the preponderant military power in the Middle East by investing into the Gulf states and specifically Saudi Arabia, seeing as that could easily create a dynamic where you're enforcing the new government in Syria, for instance, by proxy. If you lend greater legitimacy to the Gulf states in this dynamic and move against Israel and its sort of aggressive posture towards Al-Shaara's new regime in Damascus, you're going to have a more kind of coherent and predictable set of state behaviors emerging out of that, ideally in a way. Predictable, but that's not transporte. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. That's true. And I mean that is something to point out. It's a fragile opportunity for a reason. Yeah. Very fragile.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Use the word not lightly. Um you mentioned at the end as well Venezuela. I mean how this whole thing is could just be up to dispute because of this situation in Venezuela that you're seeing play out in real time. Can you elaborate more on that?

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah. So essentially with Venezuela, we are seeing the administration using the uh pretext of cutting down on narco trafficking across the Atlantic as a premise for you know engaging in regime change against Maduro. I mean, that much is just obvious, I think. Yeah. To anybody paying attention. And politicians are even in on it.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Oh my God. It's what the memo's gotten to them.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

It's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

But essentially, in this kind of instance, you have Trump and the administration falling into the sort of gunboat style diplomacy that was typical of, you know, 19th century empires, the United States in the early 20th century. And it gets even worse because it seems like Trump has this irrational desire to emulate Teddy Roosevelt here. It's not a good part. No, absolutely not. Well, I mean, look at the uh national security strategy. Yeah. One major point there was he's adding the uh Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, sort of trying to reinforce a big stick. And, you know, the this idea that this is our portion of the world and we should control it as much as we possibly can and intervene wherever we please. And of course, he lifts the language of that directly from the well-known Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Yeah. And it's insane. And you know, in this case, if we go into Venezuela, you know, just given the specific armaments set up in the Caribbean, uh, what it would look like is a major sort of aerial campaign to disrupt Venezuelan army capabilities and whatnot, and then a snatch and grab operation to basically steal Maduro from Venezuela. What's going to happen is if we go in with that strategy, there's a gigantic amount of risk that we're just going to splinter the Venezuelan army into these various cells. Because I mean, they are intimately engaged in narco trafficking. That much is pretty clear. And, you know, they're going to start resisting in different pockets of the country. And that's going to draw us further and further in. Bam, you get a forever war potentially. I mean, I've seen some people try and defend this by saying the thing we need to do is succeed on the uh snatch and grab thing, disrupt the military infrastructure, but maintain the military institutionally to try and avoid like the debahification you had in Syria and how awful that was, but even that's insane.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

I think there's a statistic too that they mentioned, and it was talking about how if you were worried about the narcotics traffic, you would be more worried about Colombia, not Venezuela. Oh, absolutely. But I think that's the the bigger point, that it's more so a that you're trying to make it's more so like a proxy war. Like they're trying to have ulterior motives, but they're hiding it under the guise of narcotics trafficking, for example, which in Venezuela is not really the thing you would think of. I think they have, I believe, a very strong oil reserve, if anything.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Oh yeah. Big time. Well they have huge oil reserves, among other things. And this is of course one of the other subtle through lines in Trump's foreign policy, critical minerals and deposits of that. So we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

I mean, Venezuela hasn't been the only update since you released. This paper. So I'd love to hear some of your other thoughts on different current events and how they can be applied to this essay. You mentioned West Africa. Maybe you can include that or anything else that's on your mind.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Well, the situation in West Africa is one which I'm really heavily interested in. And, you know, I think right there you are seeing an example of G0 in action, unfortunately. Because you've had this dynamic where the various states making up the roughly defined like EcoWASP region, that sort of block, the coup belt sort of area, those countries have had very weakly consolidated democracies for a long time as a consequence of a lot of US coups, US-backed coups and whatnot. But essentially, you're seeing a lot of Islamic State elements rise up out of the ashes of that. There's one specific organization called JNIM. I forget the exact sort of acronym in Arabic. But in essence, what they're doing, and they're working alongside various ISIS and uh Al-Qaeda options, and capitalizing off of the uh relatively low state capacity that you have, for instance, in Mali, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, Niger, et cetera, to try and establish their versions of jihad estates. And unfortunately, because of the lack of institutionalization of these states, their lack of effectiveness, they basically just look like Western puppets to a lot of the people living in these countries. And not without reason. I mean, you have the uh Afro-Frank currency system, which France has established in the region, which is just hugely predatory and screwed up. And this has led to this trend of various sort of nationalistic and more left-wing elements in these countries supporting new military regimes, like uh, for instance, in Burkina Faso, you have uh Ibrahim Traoré, who has become kind of like a symbol of African liberation to a lot of people, even while he's collaborating with the Russians, which are a new kind of neocolonial presence there. So it's an odd dynamic. And uh, I think in this case, what would be important, just to get back to the actual paper, what would be important is for the United States to enter into this kind of situation and try and empower the various sorts of states that still exist within ECOWAS to have first their own independent sort of security structures for fighting against jihadist terrorism, and then ensure that there is some sort of investment on the ground or into major industries or developmentalist enterprises to just prevent people from getting attracted to these hugely destabilizing ideologies and currents there.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

My question to that though would be the US was to get more involved, right? Would there not be more of a backlash in that sense from the public because it is another Western power interfering, and as you said, the Western puppets, and that's what the public feels like. The US has pretty strongly always been that for a lot of countries. So if they are to get more involved and it's known that they're more involved, would that not cause more uproar than there already is?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Not necessarily. And I think in this kind of space, the different the specific conditions in each country really kind of predominate. So for instance, while you have in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger the memory of a really brutal form of extractive French colonialism back when it was still administered as French Sudan and things like that, and really low levels of sort of human development and economic opportunity as a consequence of that. Take another country that was prev that was affiliated with ECOWAS around the same time, Ghana, where you do have a major upside at the moment in terms of economic development and change, and on some level, a greater amount of trust in international democracy uh democratization movements and things like that. I think in that kind of space you could enter into, say, Ghana or Nigeria, for instance, or even places like Senegal, and essentially just say, okay, we're here to try and help out in a major way, and there is some kind of existing trend to maybe accept, be more receptive, at least comparatively. And then if you follow up on that with a non-predatory approach, one that's bent on stabilization more than anything, then I think you could easily see an upsurge and potentially a change in attitudes in a lot of these uh other countries which are disaffected with Western intervention. Especially because, you know, a lot of the time Western intervention can look very bad, but then a state will experience potentially the alternative of that. And in this case, jihadist terrorism, Russian neocolonialism, things like that. Not great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

So for our speakeasy listeners, what do you think their key takeaways from your paper should be? If they walk away from listening, what is what do you want them to hear?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah. I think the uh key takeaway of my paper is that in some kind of sense in international relations, when one door closes, another always opens. There's always some kind of opportunity embedded in a particular kind of negative policy line, I think, or a negative policy trend. Yeah. And the fundamental thing, which I think is important, especially for people at the Corvell School, where, at least on some level, the ethos is to try and train practitioners rather than just, you know, academics and theorists on these things. This offers the opportunity to really kind of appreciate things in a holistic light and see the opportunities embedded in perfect things. And in this context, I think, you know, on some level, a transition towards a form of, as I call it, sponsorial hegemony is ultimately inevitable for any superpower trying to preserve its status in a multipolar world. In fact, I think the best practitioner globally of sponsorial hegemony right now is the People's Republic of China. And uh, you know, sort of this situation where you're engaging in massive economic investment, credibility building on that basis. And at the same time, both rhetorically and in fact on some levels, uh, supporting various states sovereignty, um, that's the only durable way of maintaining peace, I think, in a multipolar future, which we are rapidly rising over. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

I think that's great outro right there.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Um do you have any final thoughts of things you want to say?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Any uh cuts.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

It's gonna get cut, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 29:06

It won't get cut, we'll keep it in. I like the chargers.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

I'm just gonna have the cheapster out.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

I think everyone has to do it. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, but we crazy now. It's like, damn, I'm a cheap space.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

Oh my god. Oh, it's not a cheap fire. Oh god, let's be so real.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Um do you mind if we asked like a couple sort of personal questions whether you go ahead? How much draw your time within early?

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Um, well, it was a bit of a bit of a minute.