Beyond the war, we’re hacking into the coming implications of the major energy crisis that’s brewing - as the last tankers to leave the Gulf trundle into the ports of Europe.

From Volkswagen to venture capital, we’ll be charting what life looks like with oil at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel.

Energy lockdowns. Rationing. Bond crises.

All of these are being whispered in the press right now. As much as our leaders dare.

But this is still the Ardennes Forest in spring 1940. Eerily quiet.

Soon enough, the flamethrowers will burn through the Old Continent, and then begin to ricochet back onto America itself.

Will this break up the order we once took for granted?

Are we at the end of the US consumption model of economics?

Will resource rich Canada end up speared by its bigger brother?

We’ll be taking a grand view from the sidelines, as we start to figure out how to live through the latest version of the polycrisis - after 2008, after Covid, after Ukraine - this is the next major re-shaping of the world we live in.

Of course, this is a premium Multipolarity episode - so you’ll have to be on the Patreon list if you want to listen to the full episode. That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon and sign up. It’s 8 dollars, and you can cancel any time you like….

Now, is Iran actually winning this war, or is the US slowly pounding it to bits with its air power? Will there be a land invasion? Could a land invasion even succeed? How are the oil markets gonna react? What are the likely economic consequences of this war? How will it affect the US midterms? All these are questions that are being discussed to death on the super giant gossip chambers that are the mainstream and social media.

But what is less discussed is the big picture geopolitical change that is occurring before our eyes. We at Multipolarity already suggested that this war means that Taiwan is a lost cause to the United States. Is that true though? And what would it mean for the overall US strategic posture? Most importantly, what is going to happen in the Middle East, which itself is a theatre of great importance.

Nobody in the public sphere has shown a better understanding of the academic literature on these matters than Anusar Farooqui, better known as Policy Tensor (@policytensor).

He is a prolific tweeter and essayist on geopolitics and geoeconomics and grand strategy, and for that reason his X account has just exploded with followers in the last three weeks. We had to welcome him back on to the show...

China is cooling its heels on the war in Iran. As America’s entanglement deepens, it’s not Sun Tzu they’re turning to, but the wit and wisdom of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Meanwhile, even closer to Beijing, US weakness is showing up the true nature of the slow war in the South China Sea. If America can’t open the Strait of Hormuz, how can it maintain the Taiwan Strait?

Finally, is Bibi booboo? A new wave of rumours has him six feet under, backed by… videos of him looking basically fine. Welcome to the AI hall of mirrors. Where reality buckles under the weight of the slopoverse. The Propaganda War is now 4D, hologrammatic, and features the Kirkbot 3000.

Philip Pilkington on the economic consequences of the war. And Andrew Collingwood on the political mess we’re in.

Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, wheat futures are up almost nine percent since September. We’ll be asking whether transitory commodities inflation in the Stans is the big story we’ve all been missing.

Finally, the little known African country of Bapetikotsweti has signed a memorandum of understanding with Peru. It includes bilateral tariff reductions on soy beans and electric toothbrushes. What does this mean for the flatulence control and dentistry industries in these terriers of the global economy?

Only joking… just one story this week…

IRAN

That's right. We're at war. And The Lads are joined at the podcast frontline by the one and only Malcom Kyeyune. Strap in...

It’s all LOL, until you realise that this is just the start. By targeting the cartels, the US has poked a hornet’s nest; And the hornets are on cocaine.

Meanwhile - have you paid a US steel tariff in recent months? Was it over 30%? If so, you could be due a refund. Just dial 1-800-WHITE HOUSE to see if you may be eligible.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that sorting out the tariffs strike-down would be ‘a complete mess’.

But after the mess, the reckoning: deep down, this is a story about the US balance of payments.

Finally, Christine Lagarde is stepping down from the ECB. Emmanuel Macron' s Napoleonic pincer movement is that this frees the way for a Lagarde Presidential Run – and stops a National Rally government from appointing its own bank governor in 2028. But with these kinds of cynical machinations now effectively running the European elite, the entire Centrist establishment may be embarking on its Russia Campaign.

All of this. Coming up. For premium subscribers. That’s right - it’s premium week.

If you’re not a premium subscriber, you can sign up on our new Metternich Tier on Patreon, for eight dollars, pounds or Euros a month.

patreon.com/multipolarity

For clarity, we should point out that founder subscribers still on the old Palmerston tier will stay at $5 a month.

For anyone else, try it once, you won’t regret it. And you can cancel any time.

And if you like visual Multipolarity, you can always check us out on Substack, where we’re expanding our output with a weekly Multipolarity Briefing every Tuesday.

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The Americans sprayed on the charm. But looking between the fine words, it seems like Marco was on his way out the door.

Do Europe’s friends need to tell her this is a break up speech?

Meanwhile, rumours of the destruction of Iran remain premature.

We’ve run the numbers, and it turns out it would take ten per cent of all the Tomahawks in the world to flatten three mullahs and an oil derrick.

But with American strike fleets still camped in the Persian Gulf, how does this end?

Finally, Hungary was all anyone was talking about backstage at Munich.

The Brussels establishment have decided that defeating Orban in his upcoming fourth successive election will bring a massive W in a world drowning in Ls.

The polls haven’t just tightened - they’ve actually split.

With two sides both predicting victory for their candidate, across a spread of 15 points, what happens when one side wakes up in April to find themselves robbed?

After talking about Neo-Ottomanism last time, he is turning his attention to Iran, and its faltering regime.

With rumours of an imminent attack continuing to swirl, what future is there for a post-Khamenei world?

What part could be played by the exiled Shah? Is there perhaps a different faction that could take the reins if the mullahs fell?

Even then: do Iran’s neighbours even want the regime to fall - given that it could unleash an oil rich industrialised state of 80 million into the region’s balance of power?

Then, talk turns to Somaliland. Recently recognised by Israel, this northern splinter state of Somalia is relatively stable, and hangs on a hinge of the Gulf of Aden, making it a juicy prize for lovers of international shipping lanes. The Emiratis are for it – but Turkey says no.

Who will win in this coming tussle between the Gulf monarchies and the neo-sultan Erdogan?

First up Philip is looking at the recent attempt to short the precious metals market.

Perhaps the push to lower the interest rate is not to juice the economy but rather an attempt ultimately stop the Sell America trade?

Meanwhile Andrew’s shouting from the rooftops "it’s right there in the document!".

The Donroe Doctrine… Trump wants to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and the evidence has been there the whole time.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Mark Carney said the quiet bit aloud. But the real implications are beginning to be felt in the deep financial plumbing that undergirds the global economy.

Now, a Japanese bond market sell-off is unsettling larger forces. If Japanese interest rate then rocket, they may need to liquify their massive US Treasury bond holdings. Beyond the geopolitics, this is going to turn nasty – economic levels of nasty.

We’ll be exploring the full low road prospectus in this bumper-length members-only show.

This is our monthly paywalled episode.

To get it, simply go to Patreon, type in Multipolarity, and sign up - you can cancel any time.

Secondly, the new medium of cable news television meant that viewers in the United States were able to watch the war unfold in real time, albeit through a lens of carefully curated propaganda. Viewers were told that they were being given real-time insight into war, but in reality, they were being fed a simulation of war that was, in many ways, more fictional than they would receive from high quality war fiction.

Our guest today, Anon writer and Substack Amerikanets has written a new essay in this genre entitled Virtual War Simulated Conflict in the Trump era (https://www.amerikanets.com/)

In the essay, Amerikanets described the same experience on the morning after the capture of Venezuelan president; a feeling of unreality.

The initial images and news stories available that morning suggested something like a major American military strike on a capital city. But as the smoke cleared and time went on, it became increasingly evident that all was not what seemed.

The war simulation machine appears to have now reached its nadir, but it has not resulted in a unified propaganda net where everyone unquestioningly accepts the American narrative of global conflict.

Rather, it has created an extremely fragmented reality where no one is really sure what is going on. And as Amerikanet’s essay shows, the more you actually understand what happened, the greater the looming sense of unreality becomes.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

As we enter yet another cycle of Persian proto-revolution, we’re saying he shouldn’t count those air miles just yet.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump says that Greenland’s defences are two dogs and a sled. Handy, because America has three dogs and two sleds.

The Danes have been humiliated already – but can anything useful still come from the biggest gorilla in the room turning on his kin? We'll be watching, as Nato slides into the mid-Atlantic.

Finally, when Jerome Powell is putting out hostage-style video statements, you may have squeezed the Fed too hard. Or have you? Whatever the details of the present spat, is there still a place for independent central banking in the Western model?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

The annual dictator kidnapping season got underway in fine style this week as the US bagged a big one, 1.9 meter Nicolás Maduro.

But while the President and his exposer were taking a tour of the Gulf of America by Black Hawk, back on Planet Earth the geopolitical plates were shifting as never before.

In 2026, it looks like we're about to answer the greatest question of them all.

Can you just do things?

We might not like the answer.

Expanding on that thought, do you know the old joke about the economist, how he refused to pick up the $20 bill lying on the ground?

He assumed it was an illusion because if it had been real, in an efficient market, somebody would've already picked it up.

The young bucks at the State Department think they've found a way to hot wire the great game.

We're asking whether there is such a thing as an efficient market in geopolitics?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Need a last minute gift? Or want to treat yourself to something you actually want?

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Philip Pilkington has been watching the recent wire-tap scandal with Steve Witkoff and Russian official Yuri Ushakov with interest. There is only one country with the capabilities to pull off that kind of intelligence breach, he suggests. And as a result of this and much else, that country may soon find itself off the special list.

So what then? What is Britain’s destiny if it can’t eat at America’s table? And how will America re-make itself in a world where it treats its historic allies so lightly? And what will that mean in turn for the wider Western alliance?

This week, our duo go in search of the long story of the Special Relationship - but only for Patrons. Pay us $5 $5 or €5 a month by searching Patreon.com for Multipolarity, and you too can understand why the good ship Anglo is going down down down to Davey Jones’ Locker.

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity

The truth is there are at least six internally coherent economic eras within the country’s journey from basket case to superpower. Each with their own rules and obsessions.

That’s certainly the view of Philip Pilkington, who has been crunching the deep data on the Chinese economy, in a new paper for Eurasia Magazine.

This week, in an hour long special, Andrew Collingwood quizzes him on the particularities of these periods: from the black-and-white-cats of Deng, to the red-in-tooth-and-claw market mercantilism of Hu Jintao, up to Xi’s property sinking funds and robot army.

As Philip argues, most US Republicans still imagine that the central danger of China is that it trades unfairly - in truth, the country has moved on from that point on the global value chain.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

The facts are startling, with the crypto market shedding more than $1tn in six weeks amid fears that the bubble may just go pop. With bitcoin price at its lowest level since April and the FTSE 100 falling, the guys at the top still say they absolutely do NOT think there’ll be a burst. That normally goes well right?

In UK News, Philip has started somewhat of an X meltdown. He reported that British abortion rates as a % of pregnancies are exploding in spite of recent innovations in contraception. Warning that this a major signal that something is deeply wrong in the economy. Is Britain heading to an almighty demographic crash-out, leading to an immigration boom?

Meanwhile in Mexico, after thousands of demonstrators marched in the capital on Saturday to protest against violent crime President Sheinbaum has again dismissed Trump’s threat of sending in US troops. Sheinbaum said the marches, which also took place in other cities, had been funded by right-wing politicians who oppose her government. 

Could the US be trying to encourage a colour revolution? While Trump continues to keep eyes on his armada in the southern Caribbean, close to Venezuela, who’s to say? And would it even work?

Still hungry for more?

Philip sat down to converse with Jacques Sapir, a leading expert on the Russian economy, and part of the Institute of Economic War in Paris, to chat all things Russia, for the Danube Institute. Thoroughly recommended, you can watch here: https://youtu.be/5raqAVEOWXU

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

The Middle East is as violent and fractious as ever. Now the questions that arise from that violence appear more important than ever. Israel seems to want to end the chaos in a way that provides it with military dominance over the region and some semblance of peace. 

But can it achieve this or even survive for much longer? Given the scale of enmity it faces in the region and the recent shifts in US domestic politics. 

What of Egypt, which has been since the Second World War, the dominant military power within the region? 

And are we seeing the reemergence of Turkey to its traditional place as regional hegemon?

Well, to answer these questions we have Firas Modad joining us.

Firas is a Druze Lebanese convert to Catholicism, who now lives and works in the UK. As founder and principle of Modad Geopolitics, a consultancy which provides commercially relevant analysis of the effect of geopolitical change on specific regions and industry sectors. 

Firas for some years now, has been a mainstay geopolitical commentator on the podcast circuit and indeed hosts his own podcast, Realpolitik, within the burgeoning Lotus Eaters ecosystem.

The South Korean talks were heralded by both sides as a breakthrough. 

They reached agreements on US soybean exports, the supply of rare earth minerals, and the materials used in production of the drug fentanyl. They managed to resolve the Nexperia crisis by means of a simple volte face. 

But in an era where trade deals tend to come and go, Andrew and Philip are picking this one out as significant. A moment where the Trumpists have had to bend the knee to the rising power, and thereby, set out the trajectory of the next decade. 

Is this The Sorpaso? 

To listen in full to this hour long special, you’ll need to go to Patreon, and pay Andrew and Philip 5 £ $ €. Just google Patreon + Multipolarity.

We’re taking various geopolitical doomsday scenarios, and running through how they would play out, in full ghoulish detail. 

From Britain disintegrating, to America crashing the global economy, to Forever War on the Eastern Front. 

And stay tuned for an extra special guest… The Headless Norseman himself, Malcom Kyeyune.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

Peace is coming to Budapest… whether you believe it or not. So says Philip Pilkington, our man on the ground. 

The show may be paused, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals: Trump and Putin need a meeting; they need a venue; the Russian President can’t be arrested on sight. And Hungary’s nous in positioning itself as a true neutral makes it the ideal venue. He talks through the implications of the next phase of bargaining. 

Meanwhile, from the front pages to the middle of the paper: Andrew Collingwood says that we’re missing a really big story on Nexperia. The Dutch chip maker is now owned by the Chinese, and has become a resource allocation geopolitical football of late. 

Volkswagen has warned of temporary production outages citing China’s export restrictions on semiconductors made by Nexperia.

In response, the Dutch government has intervened to take control of Nexperia’s governance under national security laws.  

He warns that Europe could be sawing off the branch it sits on.  If they steal Russian sovereign reserves – and at the same time go around stealing Chinese businesses is Europe even investible anymore, is using the Euro and sterling even possible anymore for third countries?

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).

But was it real, or just a Potemkin arsenal driving past the Forbidden City? And if they were real, what do these things actually do? What do they mean for the balance of power in the western pacific? And, finally, as China climbs at breakneck speed up the military tech ladder, what does it mean for Washington's efforts to hold its defensive perimeter at the first Island Chain?

Anybody interested in China's military tech, and especially its military aviation, will know TP Huang, an invaluable provider of detailed analysis on Beijing's ever greater military arsenal, and China's Beijing's technological progress more generally. He joins us for a special interview with Andrew. 

Multipolarity dialogues is a series of interview that scan the geopolitical horizon. We talk to some of the sharpest analysts, thinkers and experts about how they see the world beyond the visible edge of the geopolitical now.

Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel.

Between 2021 and 2027 the EU budget for NGOs was around €1.5bn. The new EU budget proposal is advocating increasing that 600%. While America now thinks that USAID is outdated political technology, the EU is trying to buy the dip.   

Finally, we’ll have an update on three countries teetering on the brink: France, The Philippines and Georgia. Could the third world quasi-dictatorial basket case on that list actually topple over? And what about the Philippines? 

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

On this episode: Anusar Farooqui. Like the public intellectual equivalent of a DC comics superhero, Anusar lives a double life. By day he’s a man who wrote his PhD research on the geometric noise arising from black hole rotation, and went on to found Systematic Portfolios, the New York hedge fund he currently leads as CEO. 

By night, he is Policy Tensor the writer of a highly regarded Substack that focuses on international relations, grand strategy and economics. Policy Tensor was one of the few analysts to argue in 2022 that the Russian economy was far stronger than commonly believed – in other words, that sanctions would fail.

He joins Multipolarity with another warning – about an even greater danger, arguing that the United States might be preparing for the wrong war against China.

We will be looking at the big picture strategic position between the US and China – the Thucydides Trap – and why Xi Jinping might take an entirely different route to win back Taiwan. 

Whichever name you know it by, everywhere, these days, the intellectual salons hum with people trying to say that they’ve invented that most terrifying of things: a new paradigm. That they have the economic equivalent of Einsteinian Relativity. 

These people profess that debt is no issue. That a country that prints its own currency can’t go broke. And rather, that by a canny toe-heel on the brakes, countries can juice their economies without slamming into a wall.  

This week, after talking around the topic on any number of previous episodes, we’re tackling MMT head-on, in an hour long special edition.  

Andy Collingwood is grilling Philip Pilkington, who claims to have been there at the birth of modern monetary theory in 2013 — and asking him whether there is much more here than a placenta, some hair and three teeth.    

The answer, it transpires, is yes and no. MMT does indeed represent a new vein of insight. But that insight is only partial. Misapplied, it is as catastrophic to a monetary system as liquid Robert Mugabe.  

So join us, on a journey, to a magical money tree not so far away…

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Our two men talking to themselves on their mobile phones in separate locations.

With Philip Pilkington presently locked in a hotel room in China, it seems Andrew is penning him Sleepless in Seattle-style voice notes from Northumberland. Dynamic. Digital. Dangerous. Disestablishmentarian.

How much of this you can handle is up to you? Two audio essays, half a world away.

Later, Phillip Pilkington talks about how much he hates Javier Milei and how hard you should short your pesos.

But first Andy Collingwood talking about a nuclear umbrella and how it could be flopped out right in the middle of a Persian Gulf.

This is geopolitics, as you've never heard it before.

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This week: Carlos Roa is the Director of Research at the Washington DC Danube Institute. He was formerly the executive editor of National Interest magazine. 

Last time on the show – an episode well worth seeking out – he offered us a DC Rake’s Progress, sketching the shape of the technocrat class who run Washington, from first infant mewling as a Pentagon intern, to final wrinkled Cruise strike on a Middle Eastern country. 

This time, he’s got his eyes on something more global. The New Golden Road – and its rivals. 

There is the Silk Road, there is the Belt-and Road, but there is also a third way to move goods from East to West overland.  

It is this that Roa has been studying in his recent paper, also titled The New Golden Road. 

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, quietly unveiled at a G20 summit in 2023, is designed to link India with Europe via the Arabian Peninsula, stitching together ports, railways, energy pipelines, and digital cables. 

In this episode Andrew Collingwood talks to Carlos about the deep mechanics, the economics, and the distortions of geopolitical gravity that this grand new interconnector will bring.

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

Lloyd Dusenbury is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida, author of three well-regarded books of religious history, and a frequent writer and thinker on the history of ideas.

Last month, our duo sat down to comb over what they'd learned in the project for the Danube Culture podcast.

We're bringing you their exchange as a bonus this week.

In the same week, Elbridge Colby released a new strategic document effectively telling Washington it needs to be far more selective in military affairs. 

After they spent a quarter of their entire interceptor missile stocks shoring up Israel, and with the Abrams tanks proving ineffectively heavy in Ukraine, US procurement is looking shoddy in a way it never has before. No wonder Colby increasingly senses the Taiwan question must be gently settled. 

As  Malcom puts it: “Times were when the US could just pick up a small country and smack it against a wall in order to show who’s boss.” Are recent manoeuvres off the Venezuelan coast a last gasp of smack-it-against-the-wall hegemonic diplomacy?

In this typically ranging hour long special, The Lads look into the abyss called Kyeyune – and he stares back.

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The tweets the Indians sent out at the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation were the equivalent of a taken for granted girlfriend openly flirting with the jocks at the big keg party. The key question: is this obvious piece of signalling going to be stronger than the thick skulls of the lugs in Washington? 

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, US destroyers are patrolling the coastline. Ostensibly to stop cartel shipments. Are they about to make a Noriega of Maduro? 

Finally, in Britain, the bond yield has hit a thirty year high. At the same time, France can’t pass a budget, and has 114% debt to GDP. What’s going to happen when two of Europe’s big three economies both try to squeeze through the door of the IMF at the same time? 

All this and more in an hour of super soaraway subscriber special. That’s right – it’s that time of the month. Time to put down five Dollars, Pounds, Euros to get to eavesdrop with your fellow subscribers in the secret Multipolarity green room. 

Go to patreon.com/multipolarity. Slap down your cash. And get backstage, where the real action is.

Anti-corruption protests after the collapse of the station roof in Novi Sad have not gone away, now many months after the event. The country's leader, President Vučić, is under pressure as never before, after 13 years in power. He has offered 'televised dialogues': his opponents have declined. The standoff continues.

Meanwhile, in the tiny breakaway relic of the Bosnian War, Republika Srpska, the crossroads has come to a fork.

In February 2025, the President of the RS region of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, was stripped of his office, for planning to hold an independence referendum to break away from Bosnia. He was handed a one-year prison sentence plus a six-year political ban. Christian Schmidt, Bosnia’s High Representative, froze budgetary support for RS ruling parties after attempts to arrest Dodik were thwarted by Republika Srpska police.

Two concurrent crises, oddly twinned: as we all know, when Serbia goes off, the world needs to stand well back.

Miša Đurković is head of the MCC-MKI Center for Geopolitics at the School of International Relations at MCC. . This week, he joins us to unpack the dense politics of this geopolitical pocket rocket.

India has made it easier for Russian banks to operate. Turns out, Trump’s capricious decision to threaten them with swingeing sanctions has had second order consequences. These days, the monkey’s paw is twitching so hard it’s tapping out morse code. 

Finally, Goldman Sachs has estimated the winners and losers of the tariff wars. And the loser is – US consumers, who can expect to bear 64 per cent of costs before Xmas.

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

The US has taken out a 99 year lease on a corridor that connects Armenia and Azerbaijan. It’s a breakthrough peace deal, certainly. But is it a silk road through a minefield?

Meanwhile, in Alaska, Vlad is about to jet in for talks. Is there some historical echo in doing it in a territory Russia once signed away? Or merely a historical echo of a big empty nothing?

Finally, Trump’s new 401k rules mean that Americans will soon be able to invest their money in crypto. And to create their own retirement tontines — that’s to say, when one pension saver dies early, the rest inherit their forfeited funds. Is this more genius from the great negotiator? Or just a fantastic chance to turn America into a series of Agatha Christie-style bump-off clubs?

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Americans have been hoovering up ‘UK doom’ content ever since Elon Musk decided to push the grooming gangs scandal on X at the start of the year. 

On the inside, everyone understands the Notting Hill days are long gone. Only some have clocked that the Children of Men era is upon us.

Now, with the banning of a viral ad for a crypto exchange describing the dismal state of the country, we’re checking in on the dismal state of the country. 

Meanwhile, America is pushing India to cut its oil trade with Russia. Obviously, this will never have any bad second order consequences. 

Finally, having exposed their air defence nakedness in one wild weekend, the Iranians are in the market for a new system. And the news is they’re going Ali Express. Can China succeed where their own engineers failed? Watch this underground bunker.

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At this week’s Chinese trade talks, Europe has found itself piggy in the middle in the great global realignment. 

After Team Ursula were shunted off an airport bus by their Chinese hosts, – and given no official welcome, it’s clear which side is now entering their Hundred Years of Humiliation.  

We’ll be clipping the tickets of both delegations, and trying to piece together where the Great Tariff Wars of 2025 are up to.  

But as this is a pay week, we’re also going to have to impose a 75% tariff of our own, until you come to heel. 

For those inside the customs union - Multipolarity’s Patreons - this episode is entirely free throughout. For the rest of you – you’ll get the first quarter and no more. 

But all is not lost. Join us, in an ever-closer union, by going to patreon.com/multipolarity, and paying five Euros, Pounds, or Dollars a month. 

This time, we want to ask him about the big picture on China’s tech frontiers. Six months on from the Deep Seek shock, it’s clear that China is making leaps not just in AI, but a range of high-end technologies, from materials science to robotics, semiconductors and telecoms. 

Far from the old paradigm of ‘China doesn’t innovate; it copies’, we’re seeing genuinely novel applications: from beetle-inspired heat censors, to synthetic biology, to silicon wafer replacement.

Beyond the immediate economic implications, how does their coming prowess relate to the strategic balance of power? 

We talk military hardware: the debate about tech missiles versus jets, China’s 6th generation fighters, drones, and the battlefield of the future.

And given all this – what can the US do to claw back the high ground? Can Washington accept their diminished status? Or will they end up both more insular and more aggressive on the world stage? 

You can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity

First off: what is the end game for trade and the dollar? With Liberation Day now a distant memory and the passing of The Big Beautiful Bill, Philip has crunched the numbers, and figured out that all is not what it seems. 

Meanwhile, Andrew, casts his eyes eastwards. How are tariffs affecting the geopolitical balance of power in south-east Asia? Are the Japanese slicing up some lessons in Cakeism for Trump?

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Meanwhile, in Britain, the finance minister is crying in Parliament, and the Prime Minister is too socially awkward to comfort her. At least Milei made the cuts first; and then went to the lender of last resort after. What happens when a dying G7 economy is too proud to cut anything, and too paralysed to do anything? Looks like they’re also ready for a visit from a certain monetary fund. 

Finally, the Stablecoin revolution is here. That’s right: you can now buy one dollar you don’t physically hold, for the price of one dollar you do hold. Sounds a bit silly? Welcome to crypto, bro. We’re asking: Is the GENIUS Act actually the DURR BRAIN Bill?

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Meanwhile, Daddy got his five percent — NATO members have signed up to splash the cash on the next generation of weaponry. But is this wise defensive spending, or just a fully-armoured hypersonic pork barrel? 

Finally, the S&P has rallied this week - just as the dollar has dipped enough to offset the wins. Now, with bond yields also on the up, we’re into an era of two snakes for every ladder. Is this a weird blip - or the first horseman of dedollarisation? 

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As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. 

US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of the Fordow site show six ominous black holes in two, tightly clustered groups of three, into which deep-penetration bunker buster bombs were dropped. The entire strike package got in and out entirely unmolested.

But was Iran's nuclear programme really destroyed? There are suggestions that Iran moved its highly enriched uranium from the Fordow site some days before the US attack. If it was such a devastating blow, why has Iran not responded? US Bases and Gulf energy infrastructure is far closer, and far easier to strike than Israel, which Iran is still pounding.

And was Iran a paper tiger? So beset by corruption and ill discipline that Israel could establish air supremacy in a single night, and US air assets can roam the skies with impunity? So that it could have its entire nuclear programme destroyed in a week? That it would be too afraid to strike back, lest the US escalate further. 

What was real at all? And what's next… 

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In his first 2025 appearance, he catches up with Andrew about the state of the world. Trump’s ‘military parade’. The breakup of the MAGA coalition. Violence on America’s streets. The advent of hypersonic missiles above the skies of Tel Aviv.

This is a wide-ranging, theory-of-everything overview of the geopolitical moment.

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Meanwhile… that escalated quickly. As LA smouldered over the weekend, Trump punched the nuclear button, demanding to send in squadrons of marines. Whether they storm the beaches of the I-110 is perhaps secondary to the constitutional question: who holds the keys to law and order in a divided America?

Finally, right now China is squeezing its rare earth metals. Always wear gloves if you do that at home, but if you do it at a geopolitical level, just get ready for some serious blowback.

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1. That it is bad.

2. That it is ending. 

That’s the nub of his new book, released this week.

He argues that the modern world order is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies that can barely even reproduce their population or meet their energy needs. 

Only by abandoning our liberal delusions and adopting hard-headed post-liberalism can the West survive.

In this special edition, Andrew Collingwood interviewed him in front of an online audience on a live Twitter Spaces. 

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Meanwhile, the new US ambassador to Ankara has declared that he's against carving up Syria in a modern Sykes-Picot, the treaty that drew up the Middle East modern borders. Is this an important anti-colonial action or just a license for Erdogan to gobble up his own Ottoman empire?

Finally, Harvard continues to come under shelling by the US government. Not content with disbarring international students, Trump said on Monday that he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money and giving it to trade schools. Is this a case of frightening them to with an inch of their lives or is Trump genuinely guillotining the credentialed aristocracy that runs the United States? 

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Nixon went to China first. Now, Philip Pilkington is there; to see what fifty years of openness to the West has done for the place. Turns out, quite a bit. He’ll be sharing his impressions: North Korea-style police state, or Singapore-style authoritarian wonderland?  

While Philip is playing tourist, our very own Andrew Collingwood is crossing the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, taking the temperature on America’s deteriorating relations with both Canada and Mexico. After all, collectively, they have it surrounded. 

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Meanwhile, Pakistan has apparently shot down as many as three Indian Rafale fighter jets in recent clashes over Kashmir. The culprit? A chinese-made BVR system. To some, this unexpected win apparently means that in the future, BVR-equipped jets will shoot each other down from tens or even hundreds of miles away. But past a certain point… why do we even need the jets? 

Finally, the eye-watering hundred percent tariffs on China are about to be peeled back down to a manageable thirty percent. A victory for someone. But in the longer term, isn’t this Liberation Day turning into De-dollarisation Year?

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The question smart observers are asking is: why can the powers that be live with one, not the other? The smartest are keeping the answer to themselves.

Meanwhile, if you’re passing through Ben Gurion International Airport, hang onto your drink. You wouldn’t want a slice of Houthi rocket in your arak.

But bad news for the duty free counter is even worse news for the next twenty years in the global air defence industry.

Finally, the AfD has been officially designated as 'right-wing extremist' by Germany’s spy agency. It’s eyes down for a full ban. Who knows, one day, Germany could even aspire to the democratic standards of Romania?

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What happened in Canada? 

Did it warp beneath the enormous trade gravity of the Trump Presidency? 

And why did Canadians think that turning to a milquetoast former central banker would turn off the US electromagnet dismantling their country one bolt at a time? 

India and Pakistan are at it again. 

Early in the week, reports were of World War 3. Vishnu and Allah duking it out with nukes at the gates of hell. 

So far, it’s all sparks and no light, but this week’s rift shows how the region is both increasingly important and ever more a pawn of bigger powers. 

Finally, on Saturday Foreign Ministers from five central Asian countries met with China’s Wang Yi to talk over deepening trade ties.

It may seem like just a bunch of bros jawing over the agree-to-agree communiquê, but this is the dawning of the Middle Corridor. 

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After all, if gold remains on the moon, they’ll have to figure out whether they still need financial services consultants in space. 

Meanwhile - it’s a day ending in Y so someone in the Pentagon must be plotting an attack on Iran. 

It seems incredibly illogical and stupid. Which makes it all the more probable, by Pentagon standards. 

Finally, China has raised tariffs on American goods to 125 %, restricted the supply of rare earth metals, stopped investment in US private equity, and cut off its natural gas terminals. 

Tit has given way to tat - we’ll be weighing up who has cut off more of their nose to spite their face.

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As Trump's tariffs bite, and the current account deficit zooms to the front of modern political economy, we're revisiting the idea of a new Bancor, a complete resetting of the global monetary system.

Donald Trump had only gone and done it. Tariffs. Thousands of them.

What could the greatest regression from the norms of globalisation since 1945 mean for a show called Multipolarity?

Even better: what would it mean for the world?

With the MAGA base both boisterous and uneasy in the face of this dawning reality, we wargamed out the answers.

Until, at 20:10 local time, news came of a stunning reversal...

Philip and Andrew, going head to head, a half hour each, on two big stories that have a more medium-term feel than the usual weekly news pegs. 

In the red corner, Mr Pilkington takes on the bear market. Is an icy wind coming for global stocks? How it could play out? From the bottoming out of NVIDA to the coming age of tariffs, what are the key triggers? 

Then, Andrew Collingwood will be taking on medium-term Europe. As the US shrinks from its hegemonic duties, will the EU seize the moment, to attempt to federalise through the stalking horse of re-armament? And given recent trends, could this laager mentality also come with a doubling-down on its own unique brand of autocracy?

Are you stupid? Have you recently had an aneurysm?

Leaving aside this obvious straw dog, what is Washington actually signalling here? 

Meanwhile, the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans are getting together to sign declarations of mutual support: pledging increased economic co-operation – and gently letting the whole Taiwan thing slide. 

When nations with rape slaves level of historical beef are making nice, you know something is shifting.

Finally, is Martin Bormann alive and well and living in Argentina? No. But as Milei’s government releases the papers on the Third Reich, the historical mythology of World War 2 is under attack as never before. 

What happens when the post-1945 world order has to deal with the messy reality of the pre-1945 world?   

All coming up this week, only for the people who pay. 

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Meanwhile, further evidence is in that US firms are quietly reorienting their capital expenditure away from data centres and chips, and towards efficiency gains. Some say this is down to the DeepSeek effect. So will the hardware lite business model this implies end up driving a slow puncture into Silicon Valley?

Finally, have you heard of the Trump Put? A backstop against the crazy risks the Trump regime might be running. One that relies entirely on assuming that at some point the government intervenes to arrest a Wall Street bloodbath. It worked in the Greenspan era. But is this a bungee cord without a tether? 

Meanwhile, in Europe, the dream of rearmament is still alive and well. Two weeks in, we’ll have a report, direct from the frontlines of an unreachable fantasia.   

Finally, do Jihadis make good pets? For a few Washington and Brussels liberals, they have become the accessory du jour. But after the appalling scenes from Syria this week, well it turns out that befriending beheaders in flatbed trucks might not be such a good idea. More as we get it.

***

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Gavin Haynes fills in as best he can, with a soft Newcastle brogue.

We cover everything - from the rumble in the White House to the cultural amnesia coming up the pike.

***

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And The Reichstag is on fire - with a new cohort of AfD members . 

Will Keiser Merz see this as his opportunity to seize total control? 

After all, on Saturday, the incoming Chancellor decided that Germany can quote go it alone. Whatever that means. Is the real threat to European democracy about to come from besieged Christian Democrats? 

Meanwhile, what exactly is Donald Trump up to? In the past few weeks, America’s Sun King has sprayed the geopolitical flak a mile high. From Gaza-a-lago to dropping his piledriver on Zelensky. 

In four years everyone went from assuming him merely mad to assuming method in all his madness. Still, no one has yet discerned exactly what that method is.

Of course, this is a PayWall edition. So if you’re not feeding us coins, not only will you be left with a vague miasma of guilt, you’ll also be leaving us in 15 minutes time. 

That means leaving without 45 minutes of primo audio in which we reveal, plain as day, the TRUTH of Trump’s grand strategy. 

Would be a hard one to miss out on. You’d really feel kinda bummed. 

Meanwhile, Britain has agreed to the deal of the century. The Mauritians get: £18 billion. We get: to give them a strategically important series of islands. The Chagos saga must already rank as the most tawdry fiasco since Suez. What no one can understand is: why? 

Finally, while it’s retreating from aid, the US imperium is once again reasserting itself over the periphery when it comes to tech. With the Silicon Valley set signed up behind Trumpism, Europe is being asked to bend the knee, not just on market access, but on their much eroded rights to online free speech. What can you say? 

R.I.P, U.S.A.I.D. 

We’ll be sharing the surprising implications for independent anti-government bloggers in Moldova. 

Meanwhile, DeepSeek has beggared the US stock market and set NVIDIA on fire. Have the Chinese pulled off their Sputnik moment? Or just the ordinary shooting of a fox? 

Finally, the frenzied abandon of Donald Trump’s tariff blitz often feels like a version of Oprah’s You Get A Car. Except: You Don’t Get A Car. But is this more than a phoney war of sound and fury? 

It pictured three dragons. One, ferocious, on its chest the logos of OpenAI, MetaAI, Gemini AI, and the US flag. 

The other, just as ferocious: featured the Chinese flag, and the logo of DeepSeek. 

The third, looking like the kid in primary school who eats the crayons, featured the EU logo, and the emblematic grafted-on plastic water bottle lid that has become totemic of the EU’s failure to do anything but regulate itself out of existence. 

The message was clear. Europe is increasingly at a crossroads. Between the coming eastern powers, and the declining western powers. And if it isn’t at the table, it will be on the menu. 

Which way, European man? 

Glen Diesen is professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway. 

He has a very popular Substack, and is a regular guest on a range of podcasts, including The Duran. We’re very glad to have him here today, to talk about Europe, Trumpism, the end of the Ukraine War, and beyond. 

***

Joe Biden spent his final week minting pardons like Mugabe minted bank notes. In fact, his last act in office was to pardon his entire family. What does this unprecedented use of the seal of office portend for America’s future – and what has it got to do with the Russian word for roof? 

Meanwhile, it’s been a rollercoaster week for zombie-eyed American Zoomers. TikTok was shut down. Then it was reprieved by Trump. In between, Red Note gave them a glimpse into the parallel universe of zombie eyed Chinese Zoomers. Many of whom seemed to have better standards of living in their communist hellhole. What are the geopolitical implications of this collision of worlds? 

Finally, after looking at the quality of Chinese youth, we’re discussing the quantity. New demographics numbers are in. And they paint an extraordinary picture.  Those Zoomers are humping. Join us as we find out more. 

***

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Meanwhile, just as the world is thirsting for AI, the Biden regime has decided it will titrate the market for the specialised NVIDIA graphic chips that are vital to building AI systems. 

It’s like sanctions - but for everyone else in the world. So will this make America more friends?

Finally, we’re revisiting a Multipolarity tin foil hat classic: Trussification – the process of targeted financially dynamiting of a political regime. As Biden squeezes the oil market, is he looking to leave a tightly coiled inflation turd on the desk of his successor? 

***

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A career diplomat of 24 years, he got to look in directly upon the withering relationship between the United Kingdom and Russia, in the crucial period from 2014 until 2019.

In fact, he rebuilt embassy staffing structures following the mass expulsion after the March 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack.

Since then, Proud has been outspokenly critical on questions of UK-Russia relations.

This week, Philip and Andrew are trying to get into the British diplomat mindset as relations approach a crucial juncture.

***

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Trumpism 1.0 was built around being tough with China. 

And while that is no longer a rhetorical priority for the big man, much of what was started in 2016 has since become the accepted wisdom in DC. 

Today, Trumpism 2.0 is as much about American competitiveness – in an international market that has slipped further away from its hegemon across the last eight years. 

It’s about deregulation, DOGE, and developing strategic dominance in the emerging fields of AI, weapons tech, and genetics.  

We’re in for four years of great power competition with China - against a background of a new focus on US competitiveness. 

Almost no one spans these subjects as elegantly as Steve Hsu. 

A professor of theoretical physics, startup founder and one of the most prominent members of the new counter-elite that has recently emerged from the high tech world of America's west coast to challenge the status quo in Washington DC 

Steve's research has included black holes and quantum information, dark energy, quantum gravity, and quark matter. He has also contributed to the field of genetics, especially on the construction of genomic predictors of complex human traits.

Steve has founded several startups, including Othram, a company that uses DNA sequencing to help solve hot and cold criminal and missing persons cases, Genomic Prediction, which pioneered polygenic screening for embryos in IVF, and most recently Superfocus, an enterprise GPT that uses Large Language Models for language capability. 

Somehow, he finds time to host Manifold, one of the world's most interesting podcasts and a must-listen for all those who wish to keep abreast of the ideas and knowledge of the Silicon Valley and VC world.

***

Meanwhile… The fireworks guns have been a great special effects innovation. Madam President is certainly giving a hammy turn of character acting. But the script is stale. The dialogue is dreary. Frankly, the franchise is dying. Is this the last of the colour revolutions? 

Finally, The French can’t pass a budget. The Prime Minister is about to resign. The President himself is running around the middle east gladhanding potential bond buyers. Two and a half months on from his bold gambit, things are looking positively pre-revolutionary in the Elysee Palace. Macron has kicked the can down the road – now the can is kicking back. 

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How do we style this one out? 

Right now, our leaders are a gorilla holding a ming vase. 

Given their overall skill levels, will we make it through the present crisis without losing our eyebrows in the white heat of a nuclear blast? 

In part one of this week’s special edition we’ll be considering the US-Ukrainian Missile attacks that kicked off the present round of tit for tat. 

In part two, we’ll be considering the retaliatory threat of the Russian Oreshniks. 

And in part three, we’ll be considering the overall playbook for World War Three.

***

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Two yesteryears in particular - 2023 and 2024. 

That’s right: we’re old enough to remember the Multipolar world back when it was a glint in Xi Jingping’s extreme-UV lithography factories. 

Back when American decline was just a gobbet of drool on Joe Biden’s chin.  

Back when the Middle East wasn’t entirely on fire, and Germany hadn’t yet totally fallen off a cliff. 

Before the Houthi rockets, the BRICS bank notes, and Tucker Carlson’s Moscow hamburger.  

Back then, on January 10, 2023, there was a brand new podcast, but one sophisticated enough to have registered its own web domain. 

Now, after 100 episodes, we’re taking some time, letting our belts out, pouring a glass of Macallan Lalique, putting some of our own classic grooves on the record player, and getting a bit wisftul. 

We’ll be going on an audio tour of Multipolarity world. 

You’ll hear a clip from an original show - then you’ll hear us, reviewing it. 

What it meant then, what it means now. Where our predictions were off base - and where we were bang on target. 

We’ve charted the rise of a new multipolar world order. Now, we’re charting the charting…

***

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Meanwhile, back on the Europe thing, Multipolarity’s pet punching bag Ursula von der Leyen is about to be put through four years of BDSM, as the Trumpists resile from the European frontier even while picking fights with its leadership. Is Ursula’s post-election pledge to buy more US natural gas just the first of many times she will be called upon to kiss the Don’s rings?

Finally, we’ll be raising a glass to the death of the polling industry, long predicted on Multipolarity. Far from dining out on their prowess, the Nate Silvers and Anne Seltzers of this world will have to figure out whether they can eat excuses. Is there a grift still to be had in a world where the alleged experts can’t just +4 for the Shy Trump Effect?

***

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Can anyone steer a path through the rocks? 

We’ll be looking at chaos in the German auto industry - as Volkswagen overruns its cost budget by 20 per cent.  

At chaos in the European Union - as a heavily dug-in Von der Leyen regime goes full bunker mentality. 

And chaos in merrie ol’ England, as the wet wobbler Keir Starmer brings down the final curtain on the Special Relationship. 

Between one world and the next, between a rock and a hard place, it is America that decides, but it is Europe that is going to have to choose a new future. 

The intent was mocking. But while the end goal of the kind of paper that rappers shove into g-strings is still a long way off - in the background, the bureaucratic elves of BRICS were chipping away at the dense, dull, paperwork of a new payments system. 

This was never going to be a big bang. More like popping the world’s biggest roll of bubble wrap. 

After all, like the nuclear secrets themselves, the mechanism for making a new international method for the settlement of accounts is an obscure and technical thing. And it is eighty years since anyone tried to do it from scratch. 

Few people are better placed to be the Robert Oppenheimer to this kind of project than Warwick Powell. 

Powell is Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology and the author of "China, Trust and Digital Supply Chains”, and "Dynamics of a Zero Trust World".

At his Substack, he blogs about China, trade, and the dense subterranean plumbing network that underlies the global payments system. 

This week, he joins us…  to explain how to make a new global currency. 

***

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Meanwhile, China and India have quietly settled their long-running border dispute in the Himalayas. Far from the recent era where rival troops would run at each other with sticks - or even the notorious 2020 microwaving incident - this bizarre superpower friction seems to have been cleared up inside a few paragraphs. Is this proof positive that the BRICS are turning their attentions outwards?

Finally, the story that the Trump campaign has launched a complaint against the British Labour party has spooked the Starmer regime. Staffers campaigning for their Democratic Party cognates seemed like a cute idea and a nice holiday. But if these naive limeys wanted to know how strictly Americans take their electoral laws, they should have dropped a dime to Steve Bannon’s prison cell. Is this the greatest example yet of how the disinformation NGO blob is rapidly destroying its handlers?

***

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Meanwhile, Serbia says it might be joining the BRICS rather than entering the EU. Is it really that important to get away from Croatians? Or is it more to do with the increasingly centripetal force of its Russia relationship? Luckily, Great Power competition in the Balkans has very few bad historical connotations. 

Finally, 153 Chinese military aircraft, plus drones and warships encircled Taiwan on Monday, as the Chinese python gave its rebel province a friendly squeeze. But this is more than just another shot across the bows. It’s a clue that far from the Private Ryan D-Day fantasy, the Chinese would choose to take the island by siege.

***

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In a crowded news week, we’re bringing you only two stories - but three hosts.

Katrina, Sandy, Helene. In the annals of hurricane disasters, the latest storm is looking like it might post a new high score on the leaderboard. But the response has been little short of a new low score from the creaking US federal bureaucracy. 

Malcom Kyeyune has been tracking the fallout. He thinks it’s the perfect example of an end of empire US elite prioritising foreign aid over domestic help. 

Finally, not long after the bombs fell over Lebanon, the Iranian bombs began to fall over Tel Aviv. And no information blackout could hide the multiple online clips of strikes. 

It was fine for Hamas bottle rockets, but now that big regional players are showing their technological hand, the Iron Dome seems more like a porcelain potty. 

But beyond the he-said she-said of the Israeli wars. Is there something seismic happening here? 

Are we in fact witnessing a massive real-time evolution in the eternal balance between missile defence and missile attack?  

*** 

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Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is reportedly spending a third of his daily time planning an operation as big as D-Day to resettle displaced Lebanese in Europe. 

After the bombs fall, the refugee deluge dawns. After Ukraine, after Syria, can Europe even cope with the latest wave? And what does it say about Lammy that he can plan D-Day with only a third of his time? 

Finally, in Austria, the party that spurred Europe’s original Nazi panic, Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party, has come top of a national election, fifteen years after his death. 

This should be a moment of high moral drama. But in the year of Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, it just feels like today’s deja vu. Are we inured? And should we be? 

Of course, what with it being premium week and all, most listeners will be more like a European social democratic party - excluded. 

So get it while you can. Or get on Patreon and sign up. 

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But since 2022, German exceptionalism has taken a helluva beating. The country has been haemorrhaging its manufacturing base, and with it, the social consensus that lasted more than thirty years is beginning to unwind. What are the long roots of this crisis?

This week, The Lads are joined by Philipp Mattheis to discuss Germany's downward spiral. And its future.

Today, the trains literally do not run on time. So with the rise of the AfD, will the country soon hire a leader who can make those trains run on time? 

*** 

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Meanwhile, a new OBR forecast accuses pensioners of placing too much burden on the British treasury - tripling the national debt by mid-century. At the same time, The Labour government is fast-tracking euthanasia through parliament. Is Killer Keir’s latest economic strategy just The Day of the Pillow? 

Finally, there hasn’t been a Trump assassination attempt in at least forty eight hours. Unless there has by now - in which case please ignore this message. What does the never-ending conga line of would-be nation-destabilisers say about the health of the US polity?

***

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This week, we've cleared the decks to rake over the Mario Draghi report into European competitiveness.

Can this arch-insider come up with the special sauce that sets the VW plants humming? Can he weave a "European Google" out of thin air? Or how about just a European Temu?

400 pages and 170 proposals later, The Lads have their answer...

***

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Or whether perhaps this is the desperate last whelp of a society increasingly bypassed by the global tech economy. 

Meanwhile, in Germany, the story of the day is that the AfD have taken a great swath of Thuringia and Saxony, while Sara Wagenknecht has gobbled the rest. This is democracy in action –  so can it be stopped? 

At the same time, the EU is redefining its central budget. For member states, that 1.2 trillion annual pocket money is no longer free - it will be conditional on economic reforms. We’re about to find out what exactly Slovenia is prepared to do for its slice. Better yet, what will Hungary do?

Finally, as Turkey applies to be the latest BRIC, we’re wondering: is this the point when it’s quicker to build a new acronym from states who aren’t in the club?

As you may have noticed, this week is an extended, four-story gutbuster of an episode. 

That’s because it’s Premium Week –  and we believe in giving our Patreons a little extra on the side. And round the back.

If you want to join the club, you too can sign up on Patreon to listen to the full version - it's 5 Pounds, Euros or Dollars a month. Cancel any time. 

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He's widely known as a contributor to UnHerd and Compact, and for his 2014 book: Battle For Europe: How An Elite Hijacked A Continent.

His work on the corruption of European institutions stretches back to the 2011 Sovereign Debt Crisis.

Multipolarity has been consistently arguing that the jesses of central bank policy are being used as political levers to keep the EU's wayward member states together - in contravention of both the letter and the spirit of its treaties.

Fazi has been another voice, consistently been making a similar critique, but from a Marxist perspective.

This week, the lads invite him on, to compare notes.

You can find Thomas' popular Substack here:

https://substack.com/@tfazi

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Word is Kamala Harris is going to sack Jake Sullivan. Given that Trump would have sacked him anyway, we’re now into a world where the pro-Ukraine top team is, fait accompli, gone. Which means the US pivot to Asia is increasingly nailed on. 

Meanwhile, two years after Joe Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, it turns out the thick end of four trillion dollars buys you  a huge boom in the construction of factories – but not much by way of a green economy. As new research shows many of the pop-up LLCs the IRA spawned are popping into Chapter 12, we’re sifting through the debris, looking for recycling. 

Finally, Azerbaijan is the latest BRIC in the BRICS. After their short and decisive war with Armenia, this rising former western ally is now binding itself to Russia. In the global carve-up bigger picture, should we really keep on getting Armenia in the divorce? 

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Could the ghost of the Shy Trumper be about to smite the Dems for the third election running? And why are the usual media suspects pretending it isn’t a thing, never has been, never could be? 

Meanwhile, in Malaysia and Indonesia, a new domino theory is starting to stack up.  In the world of friendshoring and belt-and-road, the Pacific rim was always going to be the key prize - and China is gaining the upper hand. 

Finally, Twitter-X is being pitched into a classic royale — between the mobile forces of capital and the fixed forces of national politics. 

Not content with fighting a flame war against Keir Starmer, Elon Musk now being set upon by Thierry Breton - Europe’s information commissioner. Which is like being savaged by not one dead sheep, but two. 

In the most mobile industry in the world, thirty years of globalisation theory suggests there can be only one winner.  One look at Musk’s meme game says he could still flub it. 

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Meanwhile, Argentina’s reserves include almost two million ounces of gold, valued at $4.5 billion. But lately, there’s a question that’s on everybody’s lips: where is it? 

The gold seems to have been transferred out of the country. But why, no one can say. 

Is this some sublime economic master-stroke from the wacky professor Milei? Or just the equivalent of a desperate gambler taking his wife’s gold rings up to the pawn shop? 

Finally, in a subscriber-only super-section, we’ll be covering the British race riots. 

The events of the past few days have shaken the British establishment to its core. With no clear narrative, and an increasingly balkanised society, the country’s leaders now seem clueless and visibly scared, as they face down the fruits of eighty years of immigration policy failure.

For our Patrons, we’ll be taking the long view - tracing the history of British immigration; then extending into the far future - looking at the demographic realities of the UK from here on out. And, of course, we’ll be hashing through the story of the day. 

What can an already wobbling Starmer regime do in the face of the tectonic forces being unleashed? 

Be warned, this one’s a black pill so big it might be a black suppository. 

But to listen, you’ll need to be signed up to our Patreon. 

Just go to Patreon.com, search Multipolarity, and pay 5 dollars, pounds or euros a month. You can cancel any time. 

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He was on the bill.

Amongst the ethnically-Hungarian diaspora who live in the region, Orbán is a regular visitor. In fact, the Tusványos festival was started by Fidesz back when the party was effectively four people. That was in the early-90s. Today, it has swelled to accommodate over 10 000 people.

The place is billed as an 'open university', with talks by a range of academics, thinkers and politicians.

Traditionally, Orbán gives his own 'series of lectures' , just like many of others speakers. The difference is that Orbán speaks from the main stage, in front of a crowd of a few thousand.

In recent years, these speeches have become philosophical key notes to understanding the Hungarian perspective. In previous years, his talks have made world headlines, including the one where he said he regarded Hungary as an 'illiberal democracy' (though this was partly mis-translation).

Rarely does a world leader get as philosophical as Orbán does in these talks. He lays out a deep vision of the future as he sees it for the upcoming year, one that connects history, economics, and metaphysics.

This year's speech was among the deepest - and the spiciest -ever. Not only did it catch the headlines, with its barbs against Poland, and naming US intelligence as the saboteurs of the Nordstream pipeline, it could even justifiably be called 'historic'. Orbán talked openly of Hungary's coming pivot to China, of the decay of the Western soul, and of the shape of the peace that must come beyond the Russo-Ukraine War.

Gladden Pappin is the President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. A prominent academic and leading light in the post-liberal movement, Pappin is perhaps one of the hidden architects of Hungary's dynamic foreign policy.

This week, The Lads ask him about the deeper meaning of Orbán's Big Talk.

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Eight minutes later Lieutenant General Yuri Plekhanov, Head of the 9th Chief Directorate of the KGB, let the group into the dacha where they demanded that Gorbachev either declare a state of emergency in the Soviet Union or resign.

The previous month twelve Soviet public figures, mostly artists but also some politicians and military officials, signed a letter entitled 'A Word to the People' in the anti-perestroika newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya. The letter was drafted by the writer Alexander Prokhanov.

"An enormous, unforeseen calamity has taken place," it told readers, "Motherland, our land, a great power, given to us to ward with the nature, glorious ancestors, it is perishing, breaking apart, falling into darkness and nonbeing."

On July 10th 2024, the actor, director and film producer George Clooney published an essay in The New York Times entitled 'I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee'.

"The one battle [Biden] cannot win is the fight against time," Clooney wrote, "None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."

Where Prokhanov's letter was infused with Soviet patriotism, Clooney's was shot through with party loyalty. Prokhanov pleaded with Soviet leaders to save the Soviet Union; Clooney pleaded with Biden to save the Democratic Party. Yet the functional outcome was the same: a coup - of sorts.

Less than two weeks later, on the 21st of July, President Biden issued a letter stating that he would not run for president again in 2024. Everyone knew that Biden had written this against his own will. Some accepted that he had simply caved under pressure, others whispered of a backroom deal or even threats.

Gorbachev survived his coup attempt, although afterwards he faded into the background as the new President of Russia Boris Yeltsin came to the fore. The coup attempt definitively sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, precisely the opposite of what the plotters had intended.

Likewise, the coup against Biden will likely speed up the collapse of the Democratic Party in the United States. The leaders of this party told the American people that Biden was capable of doing his job but now, after the coup, they have tacitly admitted that he is not. This is an obvious breach of trust - and one that voters will be unlikely to forgive.

But what does it matter? The collapse of a political party is nothing compared to the collapse of a great power like the Soviet Union. Another political party, perhaps. But just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was until 1991 the party of the state, so too is the Democratic Party of today.

The Democratic Party in 2024 is the skeleton of the American ruling elite. Without it, this elite collapses into a gelatinous heap. Can the American state function without its party? Can the current world system survive if the American state starts to falter? These are questions that will be answered in the following 18 months - they are questions that are now being asked across America and the world in response to this very American coup.

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As Donald Trump is saved by God Almighty, we’re indisputably living in the lucky timeline. But while the country might have dodged civil war, American politics has been changed utterly by the events of Saturday. And still not for the better. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s VP pick is lukewarm on Britain, and positively tepid on Project Ukraine. He’s being sold as a successor. Someone who can  bring real intellectual heft to the MAGA project. But isn’t the intellectual wing of a populist party rather like the library in a whorehouse?

Finally, Private Equity was once sold as the honest, hard work, real-projects end of the financial services sector. Take a company. Make it better. So why are they suddenly robbing Peter to pay Paul? And what happens when Peter’s cash runs out? 

The Hungarian honcho is now fashioning himself as a shuttle diplomat in the Russo-Ukranian War, just as his country takes the rotating Presidency of the EU Council. 

What was the goal of this clandestine trip? And did he still get the air miles?  

Meanwhile, in the French parliamentary elections, Emmanuel Macron’s calculation was effectively like the old puzzle about a man who has to get a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain from one side of a river to another. Today, he’s like a man stood on the far bank of a river watching a fox murder a chicken as it swallows all the grain. Whoops. 

Finally, in Britain the maths was easy. An epochal nuking for the Tories has brought Labour to power on a one-word slogan of Change. But with the coffers bare, is the change Starmer’s looking for spare? 

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In the first week of March 2022, only a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a slew of articles came out in Western publications announcing the advent of the anti-Russian infowar.

To say that this infowar was launched with much fanfare would be an understatement - within days of the Russo-Ukraine war beginning various Western publications were already suggesting that victory was on the horizon.

The effect was eerie, with multiple outlets running the exact same headline. "Ukraine is winning the information war against Russia", proclaimed different writers at CNBC, Slate, and The Financial Times.

No doubt this proclamation of victory was itself part of the infowar that the various authors purported to analyse - a self-licking ice cream cone if there ever was one.

Yet as time went on it became clear that the anti-Russian infowar was not targeted at the Russian people, much less the Russian military - rather it was targeted at a Western domestic audience.

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once declared that The Gulf War Did Not Take Place - it was merely broadcast as a sort of simulation on television screens across the world. If only Baudrillard had lived to see the anti-Russian infowar launched in early-2022.

Partisan politics in the United States had long been drowned in a bathtub of propaganda by the time the anti-Russian infowar came along.

As the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal raged in 1998, the American public asked themselves whether the President did or did not have sexual relations with that woman. The question was a factual one: did he or didn't he. Today such a reference to reality seems quaint.

The factuality of various political attacks barely matters anymore as everything is treated as being part of some partisan "narrative" or "talking point".

And so, when some people raised the possibility that President Joe Biden might be completely incapable of doing his job due to severe cognitive impairment, the factuality of this claim was never really addressed - it was simply dismissed as an obvious partisan attack, a "right-wing talking point".

Last week we saw reality climb back in through the window: the President tried to debate his opponent on television and the world saw that America is being led by a man who is clearly not in command of his faculties.

In this week's episode of Multipolarity, we are joined by Malcolm Kyeyune to discuss the saturation of the information space with propaganda of various forms.

Are these really the savvy tricks that consultants and strategists claim them to be? Or are they a symptom of a political system experiencing deep decline - a system that can no longer deal with reality and finds itself instead retreating into fantasy?

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One From Andrew Collingwood - on the Atlanticists and the Autonomists taking their battle for supremacy into the new EU administration.  

And another from Philip Pilkington setting out how a new kind of Trussification may be coming for the states within the ECB… 

Is Le Pen mightier than La Banque? 

***

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Seems like we’re about to answer an important question: what happens when the collective set of people you’ve sanctioned gets so large that they can all successfully trade with each other? Which invites yet another question - did no one think of this? 

Javier Milei decided he would rip the band aid off Argentine inflation. 

Now, finally, beneath that band aid, we can see… a gaping wound. 

Inflation is coming down - but in this case, what comes down must go up. 

We’ll be explaining why The Crazy One’s apparent success in containing the money supply is about to lead to another run on the peso.

Finally, last week, the EU was assailed by a wave of populists. It all felt suitably dramatic. A blow against the blob. 

But have you ever punched a blob before? 

As the permanent Brussels mandarin class regroups, it's time for the Empire Strikes Back. 

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So what was it like when he finally left his Swedish fortress and visited the capital of the Global American Empire, Washington DC?

Malcom is just back from his first international conference. The Lads pick up on his time talking to the generals and the bureaucrats, and wonder whether the numbers match the vibes.

Kyeyune is famously pessimistic. What did the DC Blob make of this Jonah commanding them to repent?

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She’s the first woman President.

She’s the first Jewish president. 

But most importantly, she’s the second Andrés Manuel López Obrador President. 

As the outgoing leader’s hand picked successor takes over, what does the continuity version of his wiley non-orthodox socialism look like when it comes to Mexico’s global standing? 

Meanwhile, for once America’s not going for a Mexican. It’s going for a British. The world’s least fashionable takeaway destination is also presently the world’s most underpriced stock market. As American money swoops in, it’s not clear whether they’ll leave the bones. 

Finally, news is that Turkey is drifting closer to BRICS membership. 

Nato’s most fragile member seems to be ever-further out of alignment with the West. It’s certainly the dawning of a golden age of Multipolarity. 

But will it improve on the acronym? 

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Caught in a low growth high-debt trap, with currency and trade issues cutting off any room to manoeuvre, what's the softest landing for the G7's most vulnerable economy? 

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Shouldn’t it have left Europe stunned?    

In an age where condemnation of violent rhetoric has never been fiercer, it seems condemnation of actual violence has seldom been milder.  

As we move into a more fractious and populist age, what are the implications of the media’s seemingly divergent views on who it is and is not acceptable to assassinate?          

The G7 are meeting in Italy - just after Joe Biden dropped his massive package of trade tariffs onto China. 

So in the spirit of “never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”, are the Europeans going to clap as he blows America’s head off?  

Nope — turns out they’re going to join him. We’ll be reporting from the G7 suicide pact. 

New figures say that China has dialled down its US government bond holdings by $53 billion in the first quarter of this year. Last week, we gave you the full doomsday 2025 scenario for when the Yuan stops backstopping America. Today we’re giving you the real world here and now version. The long slow slide goes on.

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Two relatively short term scenarios, with very long term implications. Presented in audio essay form, by our two hosts.

In Part One, Philip Pilkington outlines his take on what could happen after the US election. An extended sketch on the possibilty of violent Trussification. He thinks that bond market bullying of the incoming Trump administration could in turn set off a chain of events, that demand a new wave of de-dollarisation.

In Part Two, Andrew Collingwood flips the perspective from West to East, and from currency wars, to trade wars.

He’ll be looking at the world from China’s point of view, in the light of this week’s US trade tariffs on Chinese goods - including a one hundred percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.

The Chinese have studied how nations rise, and they’ve come up with a plan to leapfrog US in the technological pecking order. As the low tariff liberal Washington order slips away, what becomes of a world where China is no longer content with low and medium-value manufacturing, but is instead actively targetting the crowning heights that America has long claimed as its unique domain?

***

For more on the Chinese plan, be sure to subscribe to Multipolarity’s new Substack, where Andrew will be putting down some extended thoughts.

This week, we also have an introductory essay - called What Is Multipolarity?

And from next week, every Thursday we’ll have the Multipolarity Briefing - a series of links and brief thoughts to keep you up to date on the latest multipolar developments.

Simply search for Multipolarity on Substack.com

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Meanwhile, the Pound is in deep trouble - the Egyptian Pound, that is. 

As the land of the pharaohs takes a 45 % haircut on its currency, Egypt is spreading its multipolar tentacles. They’ve announced that they’re going to be settling their trade debts in currencies other than the US dollar. 

Egypt is the world’s biggest importer of grain. Russia is the world’s biggest exporter of grain. You do the math. 

Per capita GDP should be the default way to understand whether we’re all getting richer. 

But for years, Europe’s treasuries have been juicing their growth numbers simply by adding more people.

Now, with 13 countries in per capita recession, the migration-driven growth model is coming under the microscope as never before. 

Is Human Quantitative Easing about to unwind? 

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Among other topics, they cover:

• Rent-seeking behaviour in the West. 
• Airbus. 
• The German elite. 
• The Mexican-American standoff
• Book recommendations. 
• The life-changing magic of JM Keynes
• And memes.

Of course, this is also a premium week. 

So  to get the full two hour show, you’ll have to be signed up on Patreon. 

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But now, with the accelerator still jammed to the floor on US inflation, it seems that the powers in Beijing might be looking to devalue the Rimimbi even further.  

Everyone plays currency games - the trick is not to get caught. And the problem for China might be that they’re on the brink of embarrassing their adversaries. 

Meanwhile, what happens when a miracle becomes a conjuring trick? 

After forty years of weaving economic magic, the South Koreans now have the world’s lowest birth rate — and GDP slumping back towards developed economy norms. Are they about to become an early Eastern front runner of  the social problems of the west? And can they afford that - given their tough geopolitical neighbourhood?  

Exorbitant privilege is what they call the US ability to print the global reserve currency. 

So what if the privilege was revoked? 

Plenty of apocalyptic fiction has been written about that moment. But this week we’ve done the modelling to put a number on the dent in US living standards. 

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Leading even coolheaded observers to ponder the question: are we approaching the Latin American embassy incident singularity? 

Meanwhile, there are always good tariffs and bad tariffs - and in announcing his new shipbuilding policies, this week Joe Biden’s giving us both a plate of cheese and a plate of chalk.

Finally, Arch-Eurocrat Mario Draghi has made a big speech about European competitiveness. Its 20 years of failure - and its hope for the future. 

Is this the first sign of a continent about to flex its soon to be enviable muscles? Or is it the first twitchings of an arthritic bodybuilder about to pop a hernia? 

This month, Kim Jong Un unveiled a Bond-villain-like missile with an extending tip.

On that tip was what looks to be a hypersonic glide vehicle. 

A hypersonic glide vehicle is the real deal. They're extremely fast. They can manoeuvre at those high speeds. And we don’t yet know if it’s possible to shoot them down. 

On paper, this means that North Korea has more advanced potentially-nuclear missiles than the West. 

On paper, this is bad news. 

But the story gets worse.

It was almost certainly given to them by the Chinese or the Russians. 

Why?

Could North Korea be the vehicle to do for the East China Sea what the Houthis have done for the Red Sea? Undermining US power, and leaving America’s regional allies - in this case Japan and South Korea - scrambling for new, more multipolar patterns of allegiances. 

Malcom Kyeyune is a columnist for Compact Magazine, a regular writer UnHerd, an expert on modern warfare, and a friend of the show. 

In this week’s Special Episode, he’ll be laying out a broad range of potential futures for the region.

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It’s long been a theme of this show that the continent is being slowly capsized by its long term problems, related to energy and productivity. 

We’ll be picking through three news items that tell the short term story of the continent’s woes.  

Terrible producer confidence numbers out of Germany, oil prices back to a fresh spike even in the teeth of an incipient recession, and Poland’s Donald Tusk softening the rhetorical ground for continental conscription. 

Then, we’ll be panning back.

To look at the dilemma Europe now faces. That between the Atlantacists - who want to shelter under America’s aegis, but thereby have to toe the party line on geopolitics; 

and the autonomists - who want to break for something genuinely multipolar, gaining their energy independence, but at sea in an increasingly dangerous world. 

The war now spans the continent. And it cuts both ways. 

In Germany, the AfD and Sahra Wagenknecht are rising from either side of the political aisle, but both promising to overturn the Atlantacist geopolitical settlement. 

Meanwhile,  as she gets closer to the French Presidency, Marine Le Pen is kowtowing to the NATO line. 

And Georgia Meloni’s promised populist rule has been set back onto the Atlantacists straight and narrow by the Italian presidency. 

With constant talk of remilitarising while the continent is broke, are we doomed to spend the next decade stuck in a world where all European citizens are compelled to pretend that our dear leaders are building an army that doesn’t actually exist? 

Of course, this is the Premium Week, so we’ll be prancing through this dog and pony show for free for fifteen of those 65 minutes. After that, you’re welcome to sign up on our patreon. Five dollars, pounds or Euros, cancel any time. 

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It’s a drive estimated to be worth 19% of GDP by 2026. 

Running the numbers, not only is China Collapse Theory once again proved false, the market may even have under-priced how much gas there still is in the tank. 

Meanwhile, the Francis Scott Key Bridge has collapsed, effectively blockading Baltimore Port for a long time to come. 

The 80 billion dollars in cargo and 140 000 jobs tied to it is bad enough. 

But the blow to US pride might turn out to be worse. Across the country, infrastructure is crumbling; while replacing it is becoming ever-more expensive.

Finally, as the US Fed debt pile moves towards 100 per cent of GDP, warnings are being sounded about an American Liz Truss Moment. 

Trussification has become a byword for politicians being strung up by the bond markets.  The only questions outstanding are: who exactly is the Truss who is about to be strung up? And who is organising the stringing?

***

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In 1919, JM Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Predicting the death of the old world order after Europe’s first unsuccessful attempt at suicide. 

We aren’t yet at peace, but the economic consequences of the present war in the middle of Europe are starting to come into view. 

Consequences for NATO as a new study shows that in order to meet their target of 2% of GDP, European Nato members will need to increase spending by €56 billion every year. 

For sanctions policy as Azerbaijan records a 2000 % spike in car sales from Britain. 

And for industry in The Coming Multipolar Age, as Chinese production leaves Western Production for dust. 

This week: we’re going to be moving through each in turn, to build up a composite picture of what tomorrow will look like, whatever the exact outcome of the Ukraine War. 

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Meanwhile, after months of delays and diplomatic blocking operations, Sweden and Finland are officially in NATO. 

But with past and future president Trump signalling that he will be less than interested in European defence, are they arriving at a party just as the lights go up? 

Finally, British equities used to be 9 per cent of the global equity market. New data confirms they’re now 3 per cent. And the trend line is south. As the City’s long term future gently slides out of view, Britain is going to need a new basket for all of its eggs...

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We say no. 

Join us for a controversial, possibly mind-blowing journey into the heart of darkness, into an upside-down-world that set Twitter on fire this week. 

Victoria Nuland has fallen on her sword. Or someone else’s sword. Whatever happened to America’s third-ranking diplomat, suddenly retiring at 62 while her President hobbles on at 80, it does seem there are suddenly a lot of swords about. 

Does the fall of notoriously Russia-averse Nuland clear the way for a Biden 180 on Ukraine? 

Finally, when Rishi Sunak put the crested podium out front of Downing Street last Friday night, for an emergency announcement, it felt more like a hostage situation - like the British political class begging for its life. 

The Gaza War has ripped up the story Britain once told itself about its multiculture. But still no one can quite say it. 

How will the country survive its political class being rendered altogether speechless? 

***

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Kyeyune sees Carlson's culinary adventure as reminiscent of Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to do an advert in which Russians would debate whether the fall of the Evil Empire was worth the introduction of fast food chains. Now the shoe is on the other foot, with Carlson highlighting how cheap food is in Russia in comparison to the United States, plagued, as is the rest of the West, with a cost of living crisis.

But this latest fast food fight is really only the tip of the iceberg lettuce. Since the pandemic of 2020, a feeling of malaise has crept into the West. The feeling is palpable and encompasses everything from rising costs of basic necessities to a feeling that the culture is spiralling out of control to a questioning of our basic modus operandi - what happened, some ask, to our freedoms?

In this week's episode we want to discuss whether the West is spiralling into chaos? It feels like a lot of narratives are breaking down right now, and one crisis seems to open onto another like a Matryoshka doll. With a highly controversial election on the horizon in November and the Biden Administration having failed to deliver on its promise of normality, is our ideological Berlin Wall starting to crumble?

***

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It seems the only consolation is that it’s still doing better than the economy of Gaza.  

How long can this level of decline go on? 

With no end to the war in sight, and a new front in Lebanon cracking open, are we witnessing Israel’s fall from the first rank of the OECD? 

Meanwhile, remember the war no one cared about? 

You know – the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War?

Of September 2020?

Between Armenia and Azerbaijan?  

Well, what would you say if we told you the world stands on the brink of Armenia-Azerbaijan War Three? Nothing much? 

Finally, a new Treasury Committee Report says that the Bank of England will have lost £80 billion by the end of the year. That’s cash, not just a paper loss. In fact, the full paper loss is around 250 billion. 

That means the new Bank debt shovelled on the government’s books this year is close to the entire Defence budget. 

Given the present intellectual state of the bank, only one question remains. 

Does anyone have a bridge to sell them? 

As the industrial decline narrative goes mainstream, it seems like the copium has finally run out in the Chancellories of Europe.  

Meanwhile, reports in the West of a Chinese bust have reached the kind of fevered tone normally associated with the final days of a boom. Yet somehow retail spending is growing at 7.4 per cent a year, and prices of consumer items like cars are still coming down. So is this the world’s first projection-recession? 

Finally, Egypt is threatening to withdraw from the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. How much of that is sabre rattling designed to please the Egyptian in the street? And will it be enough to stop the Egyptian in the street becoming the Egyptians in Tahrir Square? 

This is an interesting new form of madness.

As the West is pulled ever-deeper into the quagmire, we're taking a low road/high road approach to prediction: attempting to model the potential for serious conflict right up to an Iraq-style land war invasion.

Then, we're devoting the second half of the show to thinking more strategically, about the future of the region, the prospects for shutting the Strait of Hormuz, and the potential strategic cards the West has left.

***

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As The Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of geopolitics, Iran and America have always danced a dance of angry fascination with each other. 

Now, as the Middle East burns, their kismet is truly aflame.  

With an overstretched Joe Biden about to call in the airstrikes, we’re in the foxhole, figuring out if they’re actually gonna go all the way this time. 

Or if this is just one more round of heavy petting.  

Ever since a British general let slip the prospect of reintroducing conscription, the British media has been convulsed by a debate over the most trivial aspects of the question. Whether we still have Blitz Spirit. Whether Gen Z are too fat. Which ethnicities would be prepared to fight for the multiculti regime. 

There is, however, a bigger picture — something to do with war in Europe? 

Finally, this is the week that the FT handed their old enemy Viktor Orban a lifetime’s supply of PR gotchas. In fact, The Plot to Blow Up The Hungarian Economy might be the funniest special ops disaster since the Bay of Pigs. 

Hatched in Brussels, this bomb had no trigger, no fuse, no gunpowder — in short, it conformed strictly to EU regulations.

***

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That senior official’s name? Joseph P Biden. So if the President himself can’t come to a logical line on what’s going on, what hope is there for his underlings? We’ll have the latest from the Red Sea carcrash. 

In Britain, the new Defence Secretary Grant Shapps is ramping up the rhetoric, saying that the country is "moving from a post-war to pre-war world”. It poses an important question: what exact will Britain’s 72 000 soldiers be doing in a global war against, say,  Russia’s 800 000? Selling hotdogs?

Is it wise that NATO’s key figures all follow the old maxim: walk loudly and carry a small stick? 

Finally, Javier Milei’s running into issues with reality. He inherited 160% inflation - but thanks to months of painful austerity, inflation is now at a more manageable 200%. Like Salvador Allende before him, another radical South American government seems like it’s about to be broken apart on the wheel of hyper-inflation. Is this the teething troubles of a newborn economic tiger, or has the doom loop begun on libertarianism’s last stand?  

***

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This could prove to be a sticky situation for the West's leaders. After all, we were supposed to have seen out the worst by now. Everything was wagered on turning the page in anticipation of election season in the autumn. So what happens to all those carefully laid plans?  

Meanwhile, Lloyd Austin didn’t tell his boss he was ducking out of work. Work From Home culture has made that a reality for many. Unfortunately for Lloyd, he is the Secretary of Defence while America’s gunboats bombard Yemen. Lloyd told sources that he barely missed a beat. But Philip thinks this approach speaks to a deeper dysfunction in DC. Who’s steering the Pentagon’s ship of fools? 

Finally, news is just in that The Solomon Islands no longer recognise Taiwan. Neither does Nicaragua.

What can that mean? Yup, Beijing’s been on another spending spree, buying up influence in a brace of minor nations.

With 17 countries recently having their Chinese diplomatic status upgraded,  we analyse the placement of the latest pieces in the global Go game.

***

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But as The Lads point out, that characterisation just doesn't work. High-end weapons, Iranian training, and a capacity to melt into the landscape will make 'winning' the war for control of the Red Sea an operational nightmare. With no clear goals, no obvious win criteria, and ever-more provocation to come, they think the transatlantic alliance is stepping into quicksand.

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Well, thanks to the Houthis, traffic in the canal is down by almost as much as when it was plugged. It seems the red sea crisis is about to inject an inflation spike much like the one the Ever Given gave us.

Only, this time, the memes will be much less jolly. 

North of Israel, the war on two fronts is coming on nicely.

With the assassination of Hamas’ deputy and a Hezbollah commander on Lebanese soil, we analyse the chances that they could throw their keffiyehs into the ring. 

Finally, a new report  shows that financialised US office space in the major metropoles is now regularly underwater. We’re returning to the question of whether it’s about to have its own 2008 moment. 

US attempts to form a counter-force coalition of the willing have foundered, and more and more it feels as though the forces of the BRICS would like the Red Sea as their own lake. As much as the Russians have the same design on the Black Sea.

What's the future of US dominance in the face of its failure to match this open provocation?

A columnist for Compact, UnHerd and many others, Malcom Kyeyune has spent years auditing US armaments and strategic strength. Here, the long-time friend of the show joins The Lads, to hash out whether the Red Sea is effectively a dead sea.

We want to map the DC brain, from the inside.

Somewhere, inside the Washington Beltway, are a bunch of very smart people who often think alike. Be they at the State Department, the Pentagon, CIA, other parts of the Federal government, or think tanks, they have been tasked with projecting the global power of the world’s greatest empire.

They make the decisions. Someone has to.

And just as France has its Enarques. Or China has its unique mandarin examinations, the Foreign Policy bureaucracy of America have a common culture, a particular education, and a singular mindset. Yet it is so common, so super-dominant in our Western world, we seldom think to question its priors.

This week, we’re lucky to be joined by the very model of the modern wonk-general. Carlos Roa.  A Contributing Editor at The National Interest, he was formerly the Executive Editor of the publication. He was Associate Editor of Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development and an analyst at the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development.

He knows DC from many different vantage points.

We wanted to use his experience of being an insider to chart the anthropology of the Washington Deep State. To talk about what it is to be part of the Washington power elite - how you get started. What schools you go to. What parties you go to. Who you meet and the fundaments of the shared world view they regurgitate to each other.

This episode is a Rake’s Progress, if you will. How To Get Ahead In DC, who you ned to step on, who you step round, to get to the top of the totem pole.

***

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But Venezuelans know their CIA World Factbook inside and out. They’ve long claimed that its Western regions are rightfully theirs. And now that the Guyanese have struck oil, the Maduro regime want to take those areas by conquest.

The question isn’t can Venezuela - population 30m - knock over Guyana - population 790 000. With the West presently preoccupied on two other continents, it’s: who is going to stop them?  

This week the world’s biggest oil producers announced they’d be sharply cutting back on production – and the oil price fell. 

There’s something screwy going on in the market. But who exactly has the power to manipulate the world’s biggest most internationalised market?

Finally, this week in Middle East Corner, we’ve got yet another round of damaged ships.

***

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Exsqueeze me, baking powder?

We’ll be digging into the modern model of Central Bank Independence the B of E represents. And asking whether the big brains of monetary policy have actually invented much more than a self-licking ice cream cone. 

Yankee Go Home - that’s the subtext of Victor Orban’s latest speech. Orban is often ahead of the curve when it comes to European affairs. So has Big Vic said the quiet part out loud? As the Ukraine war runs out of gas is there a new mood stalking the continent? 

Finally, we’ll be presenting our new weekly roundup of Middle Eastern regional politics. As the Israel-Gaza conflict staggers on into a tentative truce, how long can they keep it in the deep freeze?

The United Kingdom government dishes out its final budget before oblivion beckons, confirming what we've known for a while. With interest repayments now nearly 10 per cent of spending, there is an Argentinian world of pain just over the horizon.

There's something irredeemably broken about the British Isles this week. 

So in this Premium Episode, the lads are going hard and deep on Europe's North-Western Archipelago.  

The Chinese may be dumping US Treasuries. We’ve heard the theory so often it’s begun to sound like a conspiracy. But now a famous economist has graphs to back it up. Are they right? Or is this just another punnet of gay frogs? 

Until recently, the Houthi used to be just a typical Middle Eastern rebel terror group: kalashnikovs, pipe mortars, colourful flowing robes. But hold it there stereotype-ers: the Houthi have had a fabulous makeover. As of this week, they’re capturing Israeli cargo ships with helicopters, abseiling and Go Pros. As the Gaza conflict stain continues to spread, is the new aerodynamic Houthi a sign of things to come in the region? 

***

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Initially, we were told there were only a handful of injuries. Now we hear there are scores. Why did they lie? 

As the US fumbles the bag on its response to the Gaza Crisis, regional actors are scenting blood. 

This week, in a special edition, we’re going to be talking about America’s power vacuum in the gulf. 

The war is expanding horizontally – and vertically. Many are wondering whether the US can still save its allies – and even if it can save itself. 

Malcom Kyeyune has been wondering aloud too. In a three-part essay series for the New Statesman, he has been surveying America’s strategic bind. 

This week, he joins us once again, to war game the war games. 

We’ll be talking about the base attacks that kicked it off. About The Strange Case of a Declaration of War that signalled America no longer even wants to acknowledge how deep the sinkhole goes. And about the region’s overall future as its hegemon wilts. 

***

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The lads put him through his paces in a two hour fifteen Twitter Spaces session, that covered everything from nukes in the Middle East to things that are much, much worse than that...

Please enjoy our gutbuster.

New polling suggests that Europeans think the Russian sanctions have been a disaster. Yet our present political class still have too much skin in the game to walk this one back. So how long must our emperors remain naked before the embarrasement becomes excruciating? 

In Britain, after two dire by-elections, the Conservative party is breaking records in all the wrong directions. With the party due to be reduced to a rump anyway, what will they do when Britain dips into a recession next year - and the rump becomes a morsel? 

But in the next six months or two years, the consequences become in some ways more predictable.

It is to this medium-range gaze that the lads now turn: looking at the US Presidential election, the EU's turn against Atlanticism, and the next energy shock, in a chock-full third premium edition of Multipolarity.

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And while we’re on the subject, how is the war hotting up? After some humming and hawing about whether the IDF ground forces are ready to send the hummers in, we ask whether the Israelis and their allies are getting cold feet. Or is this the calm before a violent dessert storm?

Off the naughty step. Donald Tusk has led a liberal anti-law & justice coalition to power in Poland, promising to put them back onto the path of being good European citizens. So what now for Europe’s internal axis of evil?

This is our take.

The fallout between India and Canada rumbles on, with India expelling 41 Canadian diplomats. The world’s most unlikely political rivalry might be terrible for international thriller writers, but as we’ll be pointing out, it’s also terrible for the West’s ability to project a united front against an increasingly voluble Developing World. 

Nearly twice the Irish GDP has been pumped into Biden’s big green bill, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. So as renewable stocks collapse by 20 per cent in recent months, are we about to see his Democrats hoist on a wave of renewable company defaults?

***

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In a gut buster 90 minute sesh, the lads are taking apart the most likely scenarios for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.

The military strategies. The economic implications. From the whistle blowing on a troop carrier as the gate falls, to the itchy nuclear trigger fingers in Beijing and Washington, this is our full kino take on how the war would be won, and where it would get us.

To listen, please go to Patreon and sign up for the $5 tier. You can cancel any time.

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Ursula von der Leyen has launched an EU probe into Chinese EVs. Coincidentally, it seems, at the exact moment that Chinese EVs are rapidly overwhelming their German and French competitors. Is this yet more evidence that the old WTO world is breaking down under the intensity of Far Eastern competition? Or is it just an entirely randomly-timed, totally-above-board probe? 

Remember stock buybacks? When the QE financial firehose was first turned on, CEOs with nothing better to do found they could boost shareholder value by simply buying up their own equity with free money. But as rates normalise – and the tide goes out on all those overvalued corporations – it’s time to see who was swimming naked. 

These days, it’s a new initiative to link the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Seas. And it’s just added Greece as its 13th member. 

So is it a genetic freak of good intentions that will die naturally? Or is it the start of something altogether more toothy – a new kind of US dominance in Eastern Europe? 

The IRA is pumping money into the US economy. Meanwhile, over at the Fed, Jerome Powell is tightening the screws. It seems like fiscal and monetary policy in America are operating at cross-purposes. So is this macro-economic black magic designed to cast a love spell over the US electorate in the runup to 2024? 

And now, the Saudis have announced that they want to take oil back up to hundred dollars a barrel. Is their proposed spike a counter-spell to blast Biden out of the Beltway? 

***

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The Chinese are being modest again. It took a teardown of the new Huawei phone to reveal the most alarming tech news of the year. The company has busted the chip sanctions, and successfully made ​​their own 5G model. Say hello to the Kirin 9000. 

Don’t you know there’s a war on? A shock report says that the US treasury is running a deficit as big as any in war time. Eight per cent of GDP. Two trillion dollars. But don’t worry - unemployment is the lowest since the 1960s. When none of the metrics make sense any more, is America entering its Brezhnev era? 

***

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It's a deep - and lengthy - consideration of two of populism's big challengers. Javier Milei - who now looks set to win the Argentinian presidential election. And Vivek Ramaswamy - who may even come second to Trump.

***

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The biggest news of the week is the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. With plans to expand way beyond the famous five, are we witnessing the birth of The Global South as a political force, akin to the EU? Is this the moment when a new kind of regionalism comes roaring back?

Finally, Andrew Collingwood has been looking into the US property market - and he doesn't like what he sees. With San Francisco visibly failing, now 160 financial companies have departed from high-tax high-crime New York. What becomes of big city America's decade-long property bubble now that the party appears to be over?

***

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On a related point, Philip Pilkington has been dodging brickbats all week, after he told UnHerd readers that the problem of housing expense may not be all a question of bad planning laws limiting supply. Why, he asks, is this also the case in territories with such different planning and demographics situations as New Zealand, Hungary and Japan? Patiently, he re-explains his argument to Andrew Collingwood.

Finally, one Chinese province has repealed its Houkoo Laws. These are the communist diktats that forbid citizens from moving beyond their home province. If this internal Berlin Wall crumbles, as Andrew Collingwood points out, it may well lead to a huge economic boon in the East.

In Hong Kong, a little-known investment vehicle allows foreign companies to raise funds in Chinese Currency. Recently we learned that the quantity of 'Dim Sum Bonds' has gone up fourfold in five years. Is this the gateway drug to foreigners finally being allowed to invest in China's capital markets? 

Then, a consistent theme comes around. Measured by PPP, Germany's economy is on some metrics now smaller than Russia's. Andrew Collingwood analyses why and how the West walked into the strategic blunder of sanctions - one that seems to increasingly have world-historical consequences. 

Featuring Friend Of The Pod Malcom Kyeyune, aka @Tinkzorg.

Enjoy. But don't inhale too deeply.

Call in the plumbers: there’s a big blockage in the UK gilt markets. Why is liquidity suddenly drying up in a two trillion Pound pool? And what happens next – now that the British government might be forced to double its deficit?

Remember the Huawei 5G Ban? For almost three years, sanctions on microchips knocked the Chinese out of the high end phone business. Now, it seems the company has managed to produce its own chips. Is there anything we can’t incentivise them to make better than us? 

****

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But it won't happen overnight. To arrive at a place where the dollar is just one of many global currencies is the work of years, maybe decades.

In this Special Edition, our duo are taking the long view. We're going right back to Bretton Woods, to Nixon & The Gold Window, to the Emerging Markets Crisis of 97 and 98, and to the long sag of post-2008, to trace the internal logic of the dollar system.

Then, we're peering into the near future: what could possibly replace it? How long would that take? Are there brakes on this train?

Earlier in this bonanza week, we paired him with Elbridge Colby, for a Twitter Spaces debating whether America could ever take a Realist turn.

Now, he's back for a solo show. The lads go deep into Chairman Kyeyune Thought: from the worthlessness of much US military hardware, to the unrecognised shrinkage of the US economy on a PPP basis, to the cosplaying of Swedes in NATO.

"So much of our politics today is just about managing narratives."

"Will we act before the bad things happen? The signs are not auspicious..."

"I'm optimistic... even if there is a nuclear war, five per cent of humanity will probably survive... and that's enough to repopulate the earth."

Cheery guy.

So where do we go from here? Can America ban the stuff that makes Germanium? Or is this the Chinese going one step up in the chip wars?  

For months, elements within NATO have been piling on the pressure to open a liaison office in Japan. 

The French think that’s a terrible idea. This week, they finally exercised their veto. So as the world becomes ever-more security-centred, what happens to Western powers that aren’t in the North Atlantic?  

Finally, the US is sending cluster bombs to Ukraine. Or controversial cluster bombs to give them their full name. Now that even Rishi Sunak has come out against the decision, it seems  a wedge is about to be driven through the Western alliance. 

More broadly – are we about to move beyond the Geneva convention consensus on what weapons are barbarous?

The topic was: "Is Realism realistic for America, or will liberal idealists and neocons always control US foreign policy?"

Can America's animal spirits shift strategy?

We were joined by two of the world's top thinkers on the question, each with a distinct angle.

@ElbridgeColby is the architect of the 2018 US National Defence Strategy, is the principal of the Marathon Initiative, which develops strategies to prepare the US for an era of sustained great power competition. His book, The Strategy of Denial, caused a sensation in International Relation circles.

Malcolm Kyeyune (@tinkzorg) is a Swedish journalist who writes for @compactmag_, @unherd and @AmericanAffrs

His brilliant essay, The Tragedy of Foreign Policy Realism, praised Elbridge Colby's book but suggested that America would struggle to ever accept a Realist foreign policy.

Here, they're joined by the lads - Collingwood as moderator, Pilkington as agent provocateur, in a spirited discussion that BLOWS THE LIVING BEJEESUS out of everything you EVER THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD about International Relations.

After 90 minutes, the stream was ended suddenly by a technical error, after a toaster blew up in the recording studio, setting fire to the reel-to-reels - apologies for the abruptness.

China is building a trade superweapon. They’ve just created a brand new foreign relations department that will have the scope to take charge of tariffs and imports. It feels like we’ve arrived at the mutually assured destruction phase of a potential trade war. The question is: will anyone be bold enough to punch in the launch codes?

A shock German poll suggests the AfD is within 3 points of the centre-right CDU. With the centre-left SPD of Olaf Scholz lagging behind both, it seems as though the next German election coalition could be between the right and the hard-right.

So will the country be able to hold onto its historic cordon sanitaire? Or is this the moment when even the eternally dull German politics finally gets spicy?

Back in Britain, the Bank of England are looking to re-bottle the inflation genie with another big rate hike. Are they being too aggressive? When it comes to destroying the British economy, do they just need to finish the job the government started? 

Finally, for decades Germans have lived by the schwarze null: the so-called Black Zero of a balanced budget. Meanwhile, the likes of Italy lived by the red billion. With interest rates spiking, and a new kind of Eurozone crisis brewing, are we about to see the continuation of what is effectively a culture war across the beer/wine line? 

Andrew Collingwood is interested in how far behind the times our cultural imagination is with regards to China. While Philip Pilkington senses that the gains to being world-best will soon start to turn exponential. Both are mildly baffled as to how we've come up with a ranking system that doesn't prioritise innovative research.

With China already producing more STEM PhDs than the US, is the Western university still fit for purpose?

In Germany, years of pacifism won't be shucked off as easily as Russian shelling of Kiev. The country's incoming coalition government had threatened to raise the national budget. Instead, its defence minister has had to content himself with 'not having the budget cut'. So is Germany's long-held pacifism turning pathological? Or will they wake up to a multipolar world before it's too late?

Meanwhile, it's Iran Nuclear Deal season again. After Trump tore up the Obama era plan, and Biden then won re-election promising to put it back, the going has not been slow. For now, the Iranians are continuing to enrich their party packs of uranium. And in a multipolar world, there is no longer so much that the Americans can offer them to stop.

The decisive turn, as Philip Pilkington notes, may come from Israel. As alliances swirl, will they continue their targeted assassinations of top scientists? Or is there even a world in which they come down on the side of the mullahs?

Commercial property is looking increasingly un-commercial. As businesses bail out of downtown post-Covid, it’s threatening to create a downward spiral that drags the banks with it. But will the banks then drag entire cities down with them? 

America has spent decades taking out Europe’s trash. But if there were a war in Taiwan, a new survey suggests there’s almost no European appetite to back them up. So why don’t young Belgians want to die to prevent two ethnically identical countries merging some 6000 miles away? 

Finally… Diplomatic ties with Iran; an accord with Israel. The Saudis have been busy making friends. Now, like any suddenly popular kid, they’re ditching their old mates. Is the Kingdom finally taking a step back from its pals in Washington?