00:00Are we opening the door here to to a very real risk of the U.S. once again trying to be the world police on its own doorstep?
00:10So, you know, Melinda, I have a personal sort of perspective on this because I lived in Central America and Costa Rica for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer,
00:21which I served my country abroad and I served it in a cause of trying to build partnerships and alliances on the ground with the people of the region.
00:32And why? Why was that important? Because we had learned for decades upon decades upon decades from those experiences how we have failed in Latin America through brute military force adventurism.
00:45There are other ways to work with Latin America to build up alliances. I completely agree with my colleague, with Brandon, that Russia and China pose serious threats,
00:55that the drug trade is definitively dangerous to the American people.
01:00But the approach and this is a big philosophical gap that we're now witnessing, which is fascinating in real time.
01:07Democratic foreign policy and longstanding bipartisan foreign policy for decades in the United States has been about creating alliances in Latin America
01:15with our allies, investing through trade and development, aid and the like in order to strengthen those countries,
01:23invest in their policing and invest in their local security infrastructure to do counter-narcotics work, for example.
01:30All of that has now been thrown out in the past year or so or nine months or so.
01:35And now we're pivoting quickly to regime change policy, which was sort of the neoconservative policy towards the Middle East
01:42that Brandon says is a disaster and wants to get away from. Why bring it back here?
01:46Why bring it back here to the Western Hemisphere when we have other tools at our disposal?
01:50Well, yeah, Joe, you make a great point because, I mean, I think it's no secret I'm a Trump.
01:55I was a Trump supporter, but I don't really understand.
01:58Your head must be spinning.
01:59On the one hand, yeah, on the one hand, though, on a geopolitical level, I completely agree that we need to reassert our primacy here.
02:09I just don't think that the way we're doing it is necessarily the best, especially because of the capabilities that Venezuela could bring to bear.
02:16I would just say that there is, you know, ultimately, Trump has made it clear he wants to reclaim the Panama Canal.
02:26I think there's a way he should be focusing on that.
02:29And the Panamanians, by the way, are open to it.
02:32I heard recently from a guy at the Army War College who does a lot of dealings with the Panamanians that they're willing now to talk about,
02:38you know, doing increased levels of U.S. holding in the Panama Canal.
02:42Now, there's apparently a push in Panama to get rid of Huawei technology that they really embraced many years ago.
02:50So, you know, at the same time, it's there is an argument that these these cartels should be dealt with.
02:58I just don't think that's why we're doing this.
03:00And I think this is about using Venezuela as a test case.
03:04And I think it could go very badly, as badly as Iraq did in 2003.
03:12So, let's talk about this.
03:14Let's go.
03:15So, let's go.
03:15So, let's go.
03:17So, let's go.
03:18Let's go.
03:19Let's go.
03:20Let's move on.
03:21Let's go.
03:21Let's go.
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