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Navigating the Vortex

Navigating the Vortex

Written by: Lucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff
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 We live in a complex and ever-changing world. To navigate the vortex we must adapt to change quickly, think critically, and make sound decisions. Lucy Marcus & Stefan Wolff talk about business, politics, society, culture, and what it all means.

www.navigatingthevortex.comLucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff Economics Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now outlasts the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany

    Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now outlasts the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany
    Jan 15 2026
    Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine passed a significant milestone on January 13. It has now outlasted the 1,418 days it took Vladimir Putin’s notorious predecessor, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, to bring his war against Nazi Germany to a successful conclusion.The two wars are hard to compare in any reasonable way. But there are nonetheless some important parallels worth pointing out. The most wishful parallel is that aggression never pays.After some initial setbacks, Stalin’s Soviet Union turned things around on the battlefield and drove the German aggressors and their allies out of the country. This was possible because of the heroism of many ordinary Soviet citizens and because of the massive support the US gave to the Soviet war effort.Ukrainian heroism is unquestionably key to understanding why Russia has not prevailed in its aggression against Ukraine. Support from western allies is, of course, also part of this explanation. But the inconsistent, often hesitant and at times lacklustre nature of this support also explains why Kyiv is increasingly on the back foot.It would be easy to put most of the blame for recent Ukrainian setbacks on the US president, Donald Trump, and his approach to ending the war. Back in the second world war, there were several German attempts to cut a deal with the western allies in order to be able to focus the entire war effort against the Soviet Union. Such efforts were consistently rebuffed and the anti-Nazi coalition remained intact until Germany’s surrender.Now, by contrast, a deal is more likely than not to be made between Trump and Putin. Emboldening rather than weakening Russia, such a deal would come at the steep price of Ukrainian territorial concessions and the continuing threat of further Russian adventurism in Europe.But it is also important to remember that Trump has only been back in the White House for a year, and that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started almost four years ago. During the first three of these years, the western coalition supporting Ukraine firmly stood its ground against any concessions to Russia in the same way as the allies of the second world war rejected a deal with Germany.What they did not do, however, is offer the unconditional and unlimited support that would have put Ukraine in a position to defeat the aggressor. Endless debates over what weapons systems should be delivered, in which quantities, how fast and with what conditions attached have rightly frustrated Ukrainians and their war effort. This may have become worse under Trump, but it did not start with him.Nor can all the blame for the dire situation in which Ukraine now finds itself be attributed only to the imperfections of the support it received. Lest we forget, Russia committed the unprovoked crime of aggression against its neighbour and is violating key norms of international humanitarian law on a daily basis with its relentless campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.Yet several major corruption scandals in Ukraine, including one that left key energy installations insufficiently protected against Russian air raids, have hampered Kyiv’s overall war effort as well. They have undermined the country’s resilience, weakened public and military morale and have made it easier for Ukraine’s detractors in the west to question whether defending the country is worth taxpayers’ money.The parallel to the second world war is again interesting here. There is now much hand wringing in the west over corruption in Ukraine – a problem as old as the country has been independent – and the democratic legitimacy of its president, government and parliament.Volodymyr Zelensky, the democratically elected, and still widely supported, leader of a country defending itself against an existential threat, has to justify constantly why he will not violate his country’s constitution and sign over territory to its aggressive neighbour.Back in the 1940s, western allies had few qualms to back Stalin in the fight against Hitler. They supported Stalin despite him being a murderous dictator who had used starvation as a tactic to commit acts of genocide against Ukrainian farmers, killed almost the entire officer corps of the Polish army in a series of mass executions and was about to carry out brutal mass deportations of tens of millions of people.The choices the western allies made in the 1940s when they threw their support behind Stalin may have been morally questionable. But they were driven by a keen sense of priorities and a singular focus on defeating what was at the time the gravest threat.That too is missing today, especially in Trump’s White House. Not only does Trump seem to find it hard to make up his mind whether it is Putin or Zelensky who is to blame for the war and the lack of a peace deal, he also lacks the sense of urgency to give this war his undivided attention.Worse than that, some of the distractions Trump ...
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    7 mins
  • Trump's Venezuela raid foreshadows more turbulence in a new 'great power' carve-up of the world

    Trump's Venezuela raid foreshadows more turbulence in a new 'great power' carve-up of the world
    Jan 5 2026
    The US military operation in Venezuela in the early hours of January 3, rang the new year in with a bang — even by the current standards of American foreign policy. After months of military build-up and planning, US president Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for the apprehension of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.Operation Absolute Resolve — the codename for this successful effort to capture and abduct a sitting head of state — has no recent precedent other than the US under President George H. W. Bush snatching Panama’s strongman Manuel Noriega some 36 years ago. This latest blatant and unashamed violation of international law confirms even for the last doubter that Trump cares little about rules and norms. As such, it also signals the continuing erosion of what is left of the rules-based international order.For all of the US president’s triumphalism at his post-operation press conference, he cannot be certain that the undoubted tactical success of capturing Maduro will equate to an enduring success of moulding the western hemisphere in his own image. As his predecessors have found in Afghanistan and Iraq, regime change is a fraught and costly business. It is also one that is deeply unpopular among Trump’s Maga base.The temptation for the White House, therefore, is to declare victory after the weekend’s operation against Maduro and quickly move on to other targets while the world is still stunned by the audacity of kidnapping a sitting foreign leader.But any expectations that other countries in the western hemisphere will fall like the proverbial dominoes that Trump’s neo-con predecessors envisioned in the Middle East after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 are deeply misplaced. And yet the people and leaders of Cuba (long an obsession for Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio), Colombia (the largest supplier of cocaine to the US) and Mexico (the key route through which fentanyl gets into the US) will be deeply worried about their future prospects in a Trumpian world after they got name-checked at Trump’s press conference.The same goes for Greenlanders. Trump has, since his first term in office, repeatedly claimed that the US needs Greenland, which is legally part of EU and Nato member Denmark. And he did so again in the aftermath of the operation against Venezuela, stating over the weekend that the US “need[s] Greenland from the standpoint of national security”. Equally unsettling was the ominous tweet by Maga influencer Katie Miller — the wife of Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller — showing a map of Greenland in the colours of the US flag, with the caption “SOON”.Much to the dismay of Greenlanders, the US president certainly won’t be discouraged by the meek response from many European officials to the intervention in Venezuela. This, too, is deeply disconcerting, signalling that many of the erstwhile most ardent defenders of international law have given up pretending it matters any more. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, was first out of the block, with a post that started by pointing out Maduro’s lack of legitimacy as president and ended with an expression of concern for European citizens in Venezuela. She just about managed to squeeze in that “the principles of international law and the UN charter must be respected”. But this sounded like — and almost certainly was — an afterthought. A subsequent joint statement by the EU26 (that is, all member states except Hungary) was similarly equivocal and did not explicitly condemn Washington’s breach of international law. The British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, focused his statement on the fact that “the UK has long supported a transition of power in Venezuela”, that he “regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President” and would “shed no tears about the end of his regime”. Before closing with his desire for a “safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people”, the former human rights lawyer briefly reiterated his “support for international law”.The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, however, wins the prize for prevarication. Not only did he make almost identical comments about Maduro’s lack of legitimacy and the importance of a transition in Venezuela, he also noted that a legal assessment of the US operation is complicated and that Germany will “take its time” to do so.While there was a mixture of enthusiasm and worry across Latin America, the strongest condemnations came from Moscow and Beijing.Russian President Vladimir Putin had signalled his support for Maduro early on in the escalating crisis at the beginning of December. A statement by the Russian foreign ministry initially merely offered support for efforts to resolve the crisis “through dialogue”. In subsequent press releases, Russia took a stronger line, demanding that Washington “release the legitimately ...
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    11 mins
  • The US attack on Venezuela erodes further what is left of the old world order

    The US attack on Venezuela erodes further what is left of the old world order
    Jan 4 2026
    United States President Donald Trump has never been particularly discreet about wanting regime change in Venezuela. After months of sabre-rattling, the direct “large scale strike” on the South American country came in the early hours of January 3 — and involved a special forces operation apprehending Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.This demonstration of unconstrained force is the first time that the US has effectively kidnapped a head of state since 1989 when some 20,000 US soldiers descended on Panama and took its de facto leader, General Manuel Noriega, to the US to face charges of drug trafficking.But the US operation is more than simply a shocking violation of international law. It is yet another major departure from Trump’s re-election platform of limiting US overseas entanglements. For, at his subsequent press conference, the president announced that the US “are going to run the country” until a proper transition can take place. He stopped short of committing troops to an actual occupation force, but neither did he explicitly rule out any American boots on Venezuelan ground.The Trump administration is without doubt the key player deciding whether the situation in Venezuela now escalates further or not. But much will also depend on how Venezuelans will react. Maduro was not vastly popular, to say the least, but he and his inner circle exercised full control over the armed forces and security apparatus. His government, for now, remains in power but the capture of Mr Maduro could set off infighting among the remaining elite and trigger a new wave of mass protests against the regime.In the immediate aftermath of the operation, Venezuela’s defence minister said that the country will resist the presence of foreign troops and that all of the country’s armed forces will be deployed. Whether these forces will ultimately put up a fight during a second wave of US strikes, which Mr Trump threatened during his press conference, however, is not clear. Nor is it obvious how pro- and anti-Maduro forces will position themselves in the coming days, or what exact plans the White House has in place to deal with widespread unrest in Venezuela should that happen.Venezuela is at a critical juncture now, but the repercussions of this US operation will be felt well beyond the country. Mr Trump said the US and the western hemisphere are a much safer place to be after the US operation. But no matter the lengths to which he and his supporters go in justifying their action, this operation will further erode what is left of a rules-based international order.The US operation confirmed the trend to a return to thinking of the world as spheres of influence — as articulated in the Monroe doctrine some two-hundred years ago and in the new national security strategy of the US, released just a few weeks back. The “president of peace”, as Trump likes to portray himself, and his war secretary, Pete Hegseth, were unequivocal that this operation was a clear indication of Washington’s determination to re-assert absolute dominance in the western hemisphere — in word and deed.Unsurprisingly, several countries in the Western Hemisphere, which the US sees as the core of its sphere of influence, denounced the US operation, as did Russia and China.Russian President Vladimir Putin had signalled his support for Maduro early on in the escalating crisis at the beginning of December. A statement by the Russian foreign ministry initially merely offered support for efforts to resolve the crisis “through dialogue”. In subsequent press releases, Russia took a stronger line, condemning the US operation as “unacceptable violation of the sovereignty of an independent state” and then demanding that Washington “release the legitimately elected president of a sovereign country and his spouse.”China similarly condemned the US operation as a “clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter” and urged Washington to “ensure the personal safety of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation.”But it is unlikely that the US will face any immediate major repercussions beyond some handwringing about the need to respect international law, including from other democratic countries. The US operation to capture Maduro sets a dangerous precedent, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it. That it will likely further encourage other states with similar pretensions to their own spheres of influence goes almost without saying.The US president has made no secret about his desire to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland for national security reasons, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long taken a hard line on Cuba’s government. If the operation in Venezuela indicates how the White House envisages the implementation of...
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    6 mins
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