Paul Beckett

And so now we're seeing the tensions.

There's a flotilla, as Trump uses it, moving to the Middle East in order to get Iran to behave.

And then also the United States wants to maintain its leverage in Asia.

It has allies there, of course, Japan and Taiwan and South Korea.

So on the one hand, it's really pressing its case in the Western Hemisphere.

But then it's also insisting that it should have some leverage in these other regions.

And the one that's probably the most problematic is Asia.

Because, of course, if the United States can have pointy elbows in its own sphere, why China could make the argument, then why can't we?

So, you know, there's the top two are probably the Russian Federation, of course, which invaded Ukraine in 2014 and then again in 2022.

And Putin's made it very clear that he wants to determine sort of Ukrainian's foreign policy so much so that it doesn't want it joining the EU or NATO and it doesn't want NATO expanded.

So the Russian Federation is one.

And of course, the other one is China, whose economy is booming as a huge population and, of course, a large landmass.

The big three are the United States, the Russian Federation, and then, of course, the People's Republic of China.

Noelle, that is a great way to put it.

Thank you.

But what I would say is, it really is, it's a lovely way to put it, but what I would say is we were already there.

So the United States superpower has always been trade and free trade.

And so what's paradoxical here is that we did not need to use force to do that.

And now we're using force, but at a time in history when we're finding that it's not as effective in securing our national strategic goals.

So what's kind of a shame here is that the United States is, yes, it seems to, under President Trump, he seems to like this muscular foreign policy.