Foreign Policy Workshop

On today’s episode of Walt Right Perspectives I sit down with my longtime friend

sunshine moonlight

, a Zoomer scholar of Asia policy currently residing in Korea.

Some of you may recall Sunshine from last year’s Overton Window podcast and from the two episodes I recorded with him on being half-Asian and Asian geopolitics.

I wanted to bring him back because I haven’t been paying attention to the news since the inauguration, and wanted to catch up on the Trump Administration’s latest foreign policy maneuvers so I can form a somewhat coherent opinion on things.

---

Topics include:

• A lot of people in the Dissident Right will call you a neocon if you have literally any foreign policy other than maximalist isolationism

• The controversy over Chinese access to the Panama Control

• Being imperialist in the Western Hemisphere is sort of obvious

• Is an invasion of Mexico to destroy the cartels viable?

• We could use the Army Corps of Engineers to build The Wall

• Could the cartels cause domestic chaos in America?

• An invasion of Mexico wouldn’t be comparable to Afghanistan or Vietnam

• Sunshine endorse military action against the cartels

• Potential industrial / supply problems from a Mexican war

• The “rules-based international order” as a de facto American Empire

• The DR naively thinks America hasn’t benefited from its empire

• It’s crucial for America to maintain world reserve currency status

• Trump is now using US power for rightist purposes (i.e. South Africa)

• Will DOGE meaningfully cut the defense budget?

• American defense spending is a major driver of class mobility

• The prospect of America annexing Greenland

• Recent improvements in Nordic immigration policy

• It feels surreal how good things seem to be going

• Walt and Sunshine are both worried the Right is going to overreach and precipitate a thermostatic backlash from mainstream society

• The salient issue set changes incredibly fast these days and coalitions are recalibrating very quickly

• Sunshine predicts Age Gaps will become the leftist social cause de jure

• What’s actually happening with the Russian peace talks? Is Trump starting negotiations from a weak position? Is he going to give Putin everything?

• Is there even a deal both sides will agree to?

• Would Putin go after Estonia after Ukraine?

• Do people care more when it’s White people being conquered?

• Would it actually compromise NATO if we abandoned the Balts?

• Is Trump trying to pull a Reverse Nixon to split Russia from China?

• Would the Russians rather be under Trump or Xi?

• Is Noah Smith right about Trump selling out America to China?

• The Chinese-Japanese rapprochement

• Is Trump abandoning Taiwan?

• Are Trump’s China tariffs just theater?

• The prospect of a bilateral free trade deal with China

• Free trade ideologues are being dishonest when they frame Trump’s tariffs as aggressive instead of retaliatory

• Trump’s trade threats against Canada have significantly damaged the electoral prospects of the Canadian Conservatives

• Appeasement vs. Compromise vs. Deescalation

• Sunshine and Walt debate the similarity of Putin and Hitler