The limitations of Trump’s “strategy” to save the empire – ft. Radikha Desai

Hello everyone and welcome on 99 Media. In this interview we had the opportunity to speak to Radhika Desai, professor of political study at the University of Manitoba and prolific author of many books, among which I personally rate Geopolitical economy. After the US Hegemony, globalisation and Empire, written in 2013 and particularly important as it offers a stand point through which the concepts of class and nation are both utilised as crucial in understanding the world. In this interview, I asked a few questions to professor Desai, asking whether she sees a grand strategy behind the US intervention in Venezuela, the attempt of regime change in Iran, Trump’s attempt to use tariffs to achieve the contradictory goals of the Iran plan and to achieve a substantial expansion in the military budget.  Professor Desai answered the questions highlighting a nuanced epistemological limit of my line of questioning: the idea that in such a phase of decline and instability of the US empire, thinking of a grand strategy, let alone whether it has been successful, is in itself a mistake. At the same time, this reasoning does not imply that history is in the hands of the irrationality of individuals, implying that changing the captain of the boat might be enough to reverse its trajectory. Rather, Trump’s actions should rather be understood as “reactive and not necessarily well thought out”, dictated by the structural decline that the US empire is experiencing but lacking an internal systematic coherence that could make them successful. The tariffs’ episode is key in explaining this dialectical tension between structural determinants and individual agency: whereas it is undeniably true that the tariffs have been thought out as part of a strategy summarised in the so called Miran plan, the lack of a coherent strategy is exposed by the complete lack of industrial policy that should be at the centre of a reindustrialisation program, which cannot be successful by simply bullying foreign countries with the threat of tariffs. Enjoy our interview with professor Desai, like, comment and share and help us grow our channel.