Multipolarity

Oil might be about to fall out of bed, because of an almighty concatenation of the US elections, the Houthis in the Red Sea, the Israelis  striking Iran, and the Iranians striking The Strait of Hormuz. If it pushes toward $300 a barrel, they’ll be laying it down like Chateau Lafite. 

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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Something a little bit different. 

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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Hezbollah has been decapitated. As the turban falls off Hassan Nasrallah for the final time, we’ll be assessing whether anyone will pick up the crown of Jihad they find lying in the gutter. 

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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For decades now, Germany has stood as the doughty centurion at the gates of European civilisation. A nation of recyclers, engineers, and a super-sensible, hyper-dull political class. 

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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There’s a changing of the guard at NATO. Down comes the regimental banner of Jens Stoltenberg. Eyes right, salute, the former Dutch PM Mark Rutte. Some say the Treaty Organisation has never been more relevant. But is that a bit like the man who jumps from the 23rd floor still looking very well as he passes the 3rd floor? 

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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Touted in Eurocrat circles as a document that can square the circles and circle the wagons. Praised to the hilt by the Commission, hotly anticipated by industry, to some this is Europe's last best attempt to recant and repent before it is zapped by Asian competition and the ongoing energy drought.

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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As Pavel Durov remains in French hands, we’re wondering whether Europe can finally develop its own Silicon Valley simply by mass detention of top entrepreneurial talent.

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. 

Simply go to https://www.Patreon.com/multipolarity.

Thomas Fazi has been watching the EU implode for over a decade.

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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As Ukraine punches into Kursk, and the world asks whether this is this more Kaiserschlacht, or more Ardennes Offensive, cooler heads are focused on the bigger picture. 

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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Kamala Harris is ahead in six key swing states - according to several major polls. All of which are categorically wrong. 

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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The bears are coming. As Japan posts the biggest one day stock market losses since Black Monday, we’re asking whether this dip is a passing blip – or the big ka-blam? 

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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Last weekend, Viktor Orbán travelled to the town of Băile Tușnad, deep in the Transylvanian mountains of Romania, to attend a 'music and ideas' festival.

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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At 4.32pm on the 18th of August the so-called State Committee on the State of Emergency cut the lines of communication to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbacev's dacha - these included telephone communications and the nuclear command and control system.

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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You were only supposed to blow his bloody head off...

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? 

Viktor Orban has been taking secret flights. Dodging the CIA’s aviation monitoring to jet into Moscow.   

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 halls of modern government the info-wizard is king. Media consultants, political strategists, whatever title they assume they always promise the same thing: magic worked through information control; spells cast by incantation.

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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This week, it’s a double header of audio essays on Europe’s elite power-plays. 

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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As Vladimir Putin meets Kim Jong Un, big trade plans are afoot. Much to the chagrin of Western leaders. 

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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Military-industrial blogger Malcom Kyeyune spends his life talking and thinking about US war preparations.

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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Mexico has a new President. 

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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This week: in light of the upcoming UK General Election, we're digging into what Britain will look like in five years time.

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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The assassination attempt on Robert Fico has left Europe bemused. 

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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This week, a special edition.

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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Belgrade. Budapest. It’s not the classic tourist itinerary – but by his very footprints, Xi Jinping’s historic state visit is redrawing the power map of Europe. What does the continent look like once he’s done stomping about? 

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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This week, as advertised on Twitter dot com, the lads are answering your questions.

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. 

Sign up is easy. 

Go to https://www.Patreon.com/multipolarity. 

It’s five Dollars, Pounds, or Euros a month.

You can cancel any time.  

Like Germany hiding in the Euro, China have long played the game of keeping their currency soft, to juice their exports.  

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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A diplomatic incident in Latin America has somehow become the focal point for an ever-expanding range of stories - from the Venezuelan elections, to US energy policy to Ecuadorian banana exports to Russia. 

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? 

Little Rocket Man has a new toy.

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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The Atlanticists versus the Autonomists -  the European civil war coming soon to a bureaucracy near you. 

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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New research from Bloomberg says that Beijing is steering the Chinese economy away from the recent real estate boom, and into high tech manufacturing. 

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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This is a special edition of Multipolarity on  The Economic Consequences Of The War. 

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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NVIDIA has become a stock market behemoth on the back of their AI-friendly graphics chips. Last week saw them hit a $2.19 trillion market capitalisation. So are they the future of the globe’s most info-critical resource - or a sign that we’re entering the Pets.com era of the AI age?

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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Does the housing market obey the laws of supply and demand? 

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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"Hamburgers will decide America's future". So says Malcolm Kyeyune in a recent essay ruminating on the American journalist Tucker Carlson's recent visit to Moscow where he famously - or, perhaps, infamously - purchased a burger at Russia's new McDonald's clone, 'Tasty, that's it'. 

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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The numbers are finally in. Israel’s economy has contracted 20 per cent year on year.

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? 

Bloomberg says “Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End”. Which poses at least one serious question - has Bloomberg been listening to Multipolarity? 

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? 

The US is now bombing Iranian targets, via B1 bombers that have to be flown direct from Texas to perform the task.

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.

***

This week is a Premium Week - every month, we offer our Patrons an exclusive special edition. Our chat with Malcom went on for 1h40, so we've decided to offer the free listeners the first 40 minutes.

If you'd like to hear the full whack, including Malcom's thoughts on the potential for Iranian sleeper cells to perform sabotage operations in Europe and America, please do sign up.

It's $5/£5/€5 a month, and you can cancel any time.

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All the greatest romances are love/hate. 

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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As the 8th round of Tomahawk missiles hit the Houthis in ten days, a senior White House official caused guffaws when he proclaimed the attacks aren’t working - but that we should keep on doing them anyway.

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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With the world's biggest container ships presently rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama-style, the Lads are calling it: inflation is coming back.

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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The Global American Empire has had its honour impugned by the Houthi Rebels, sometimes called a 'ragtag army'.

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.

This is a premium episode sampler.

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Remember the Ever Given? The boat that got stuck in the Suez Canal? 

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. 

This week, we're pulling the scheduled predictions for 2024 episode, to do some century-wide predicting. The Houthi incursion into the Red Sea, that we've been reporting for a couple of months, has reached a new peak. It now seems as though it is more than simply a new front in a regional war. It may even threaten the Pax Americana.

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.

This week on Multipolarity, something a bit different.

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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Most people have never heard of Guyana. Many think it’s in Africa.

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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The Bank of England is at risk of going broke — and it wants both a bailout from the taxpayer and the ability to raise taxes all of its own.

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?

Ireland erupts in 'the biggest riots since 1916'. 

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.  

Goalkeeper, rock singer, sex guru, anarcho-syndicalist libertarian strongman El Presidente: Javier Milei has lived the life twelve year old boys dream of. So what happens when a true force of nature meets the iron law of Argentinian decline? Can Captain Ancap defeat the spectre of El Peronismo? 

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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The U.S. and coalition troops have been attacked at least 40 times in Iraq and Syria since early October. 

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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Halloween is when the freaks come out. So, this year, we're establishing our own fright night with Malcom Kyeyune, formerly Twitter's terrible infant. Tinkzorg, until his account was nixed. Now easily findable under another, NK-enjoying, moniker.

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.

Recep Erodogan gave an inflammatory speech last week, in which he effectively backed the Hamas position, proclaiming them mujahideen - freedom fighters. Turkey, the lads suggest, is now openly trying to become a multipolar rallying-point for the muslim world.

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? 

In the next six weeks, anything can happen between Israel and Gaza.

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.

To access, sign up on Patreon.

As Israel moves its artillery in to level Hamas, a new migrant crisis is brewing. Their Arab neighbours won’t take them - so with 2.1 million Gazans falling under every ECHR definition of refugee, is Europe’s always fractious migration politics about to fully fall off its perch? 

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?

There's only one geopolitics story this week.

This is our take.

Gold has lost its tiny mind. Traditionally, it rises in line with inflation surges. And falls with interest rate rises. Until now. Like a classic heist film, there’s a plot underway. Central banks, including China, are buying it up in bulk, preparing for a future of de-dollarization.  

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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Praise the Lord, it's Premium Week.

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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It hasn’t happened since 1914, but invading Mexico is suddenly back in fashion. Dan Crenshaw and Tom Cotton want to send US Security Forces across the Rio Grande. Vivek Ramaswamy wants a shock and awe campaign in the drug war. For all the obvious aesthetic value, this week, we consider: Is it actually a good idea to invade a neighbouring state? 

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. 

The Three Seas. For much of eastern European history that’s meant chaos, conflict and conquest. 

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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It’s often been accused of being a talking shop. But now, the G20 is looking increasingly like yesterday’s talking shop. With the Brics having stolen their thunder two weeks back, is this week’s G20 meeting about as relevant as an Eagles reunion tour? 

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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This week, we launch our first premium episode.

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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This week, the lads are kicking back against the recent pervasive narrative in the financial press: that China is on the verge of a big wobble or recession. As they show, most of the China hawks are high on their own supply in an oriental Copium den.

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?

***

Next week we launch our first PREMIUM PATREON EPISODE. And it promises to be the best thing since someone put fairy lights on the wheel. You can sign up on Patreon to hear the lads chew over the new wave of mega-ultra-populism embodied by Vivek Ramaswamy and Javier Milei. Don't be an Uncool Virgin Basic Subscriber. Become a Swinging Chad of Premium Multipolarity. Act now!

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This week, the lads have latched onto a report in the Financial Times which claims to show that outside of London, Britain is often poorer than the poorest US state - and equally, that it has fallen way behind its European peers like Germany. Our duo argue the toss: is this just bad accounting? Or is there something more fundamental here, to do with how a different kind of bad accounting has allowed the UK to obscure its long-term decline for far too long?

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.

This week, the lads are looking at ESG - Environment, Social & Governance. For years now, companies have been pushing the idea that an 'ESG Score' could be a profitable guide to investing. Yet this latest mind virus for the finance community has produced scrappy results. Now, with Blacrock and Standard & Poor dropping it in the face of tightening markets, Philip Pilkington looks back on the evolution of a fad. 

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. 

As summer tightens its grip, the lads are getting back to basics, hosting a Spaces on "What Is Multipolarity"?

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

Enjoy. But don't inhale too deeply.

Ukraine has lost its grain deal. Russian fertiliser is struggling to get to market. Now India wants to ban exports of non-Basmati rice. The ratchet on food prices is by no means over. Now, the ratchet on politics really begins. Where are the next big food riots going to come from? 

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? 

****

Follow us on Twitter: @multipolarpod

Or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@multipolaritythepodcast

De-dollarisation. We've been warning about it since the start of the show.

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?

Malcom Kyeyune (@Tinkzorg on Twitter) is one of the smartest, most far-seeing commentators out there. Someone the lads have really chimed with.

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.

Can you still get your Germanium on AliExpress? After the US restricted Chinese access to high-end chips, China is looking to ban this vital chip ingredient. 

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?

This week, we hosted a special Twitter Spaces debate, now re-published as a podcast.

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.

As France mops up the ashes of the burnt-out banlieues, data shows national food spending is down thirty per cent year on year. It’s not quite Les Miserables, but right across Europe, it seems that hangry might turn out to be the dominant political mode of 2023.

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?

The Chinese are backing the Argentinian claims to the Falklands, with hot anti-colonialist rhetoric. With America still neutral, is Britain heading towards a Suez two-point oh moment? And perhaps more importantly: have we reached a sinister new milestone in the multipolar era – where old colonial grievances become brand new proxy wars?

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? 

This week leads on an extraordinary story. A new metric, from the world-leading science journal Nature has put Chinese universities above some of the most famous names in higher ed. MIT, Caltech, Cambridge and Imperial are all ranking lower than the likes of Nanjing and Tsinghua.

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?

This week, the lads are down the shopping mall...

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? 

Tim Cook. Elon Musk. Warren Buffet. Jeff Bezos. Jamie Dimon. 

Lately, a who’s who of American business power has been sent over to meet their Chinese counterparts. With embassy-level diplomacy increasingly in the deep freeze, are they using their corporate rockstars to do what the State Department can’t? 

Meanwhile, inside China, as the post-Covid recovery slows, we may be about to see the economy of Keynes’ dreams swing into action, as the Chinese get busy building. Will it be a clunking fist, or a jumpstart to the heart?

Finally, Germany’s recession dials are blinking red. Will the airbags inflate on their auto industry? Or is this the moment their national chest cavity is speared on the steering column? 

What is Britain's industrial policy?

What should it be?

In this Anglo-centric Twitter Spaces debate, we're joined by 'rising star of the Tory right', Miriam Cates MP.

Talking alongside her is SDP leader William Clouston, and Michael Taylor, who runs Coldwater Economics, and publishes an excellent Substack called The Long March.

After several off-beat editions, we'll be back to the normal format on Thursday.

This episode is brought to you by Twitter Spaces.

With an elephantine 2.5 hour running time, we've gone gonzo, and turned one of our regular Twitter Spaces into a hybrid episode of Multipolarity, recorded live.

In addition to all the usual Pilkington-Collingwood goodness, we were joined by a range of listener-guests, including the Ireland commentator Peter Ryan, and the Swedish gadfly Malcom Kyeyune (@Tinkzorg).

Peter Zeihan is a big noise these days.

He put in a stellar appearance on Joe Rogan.

He's got a new book out: The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization.

Zeihan is making big-picture geopolitics cool, creating a mass audience for the kinds of things we do at Multipolarity.

But the lads also have some issues with PZ. His takes can seem awfully deterministic. And he's obsessed with demography, in a way that seems to miss more subtle factors at play.

In this special Q&A episode, we're layered in on one question, sent by a listener, and answered it for over one hour and twenty minutes, as a way of getting to grips with Zeihanism, and what it can teach us.

Is America the only true geopolitical fortress state?

Is China already in the maw of inevitable population collapse and decline?

Is US Naval retreat from the high seas really going to sever the cords of globalisation?

Is Europe screwed?

The lads take each area in turn, for a full world-view world tour. An odyssey of contra-Zeihan.

In the week after the Bank of England once again raised rates, our geopolitics lads are entertaining the theory that this is about more than just crushing inflation.

Britain is being forced to shadow the Fed, as 'carry' becomes ever-more important in an unsettled global forex market.

Andrew Collingwood sees Zungzwang in Britain's future: the unpleasant consequences of stagnation and debt overhang are all coming home to roost. In the UK today, when it rains it pours.

Meanwhile, California's budget deficit has hit ten percent, and Philip Pilkington sees this as emblematic of a bigger problem in the US: the collapse of the Friends and Seinfeld era. As the city becomes less and less palatable, and as blue state city mismanagement seemingly becomes the norm, how will our economies terraform to a more suburban 21st century?

Finally, the lads are giving Giorgia Meloni a bit of rate or slate action. Italy is pulling out of Belt & Road. What does this seismic event tell us about her, and the country's future? Is it possible to be both a populist and an Atlanticist?

Interest rates policy has bedevilled the West ever since Alan Greenspan first put the Fed on the floor in the wake of 9/11. With rates finally returning to realistic levels, we're seeing the impact of what you might call a two decade bubble: banks being squeezed to breaking point.

Philip Pilkington is angry at what he sees as central banks using their rates policy as a thermostat 'to turn consumer demand up or down'.

Meanwhile, Germany has just recorded a ten per cent dip in industrial output - the largest fall on record. After WWII, Roosevelt's Secretary of State Hans Morgenthau once wanted to return the Ruhr industrial lands to pasture, and make Germany eternally toothless. Will the country's energy policy succeed where he failed? More broadly, is this the moment at which Europe joins Britain in the club of so-called 'service economies': its industrial base outsourced and rotted away?

Finally, Andrew Collingwood returns to a long-forgotten conflict: the Syrian Civil War. Unremarked upon, the war is at an effective end, and the country is to be readmitted to the Arab League, more than a decade since it was expelled.

Bashar al-Assad will return to a changed Middle East. New alliances. New faces. What does his victory against the odds - and with Russian help - tell us about the failures of Western foreign policy, and what can still be redeemed?

This week, our lads find themselves in the presence of Professor Stephen Walt.

A professor of politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, Walt is the arch neo-realist, often bracketed alongside John Mearsheimer.

Walt made his name opposing the Iraq War. He has long taken a cautious approach to US and Western foreign policy. He recently wrote that he sees a role for a Sino-American peace plan in Ukraine.

Historically, Walt has advocated for looser relations with Iran; he was sympathetic to maintaining Gaddafi's Libya, and is skeptical of the power of the Israel lobby in driving America's Middle Eastern policy.

Walt speaks to Europe's role in an increasingly multipolar world - as America looks to pivot to Asia, will the continent be capable of stepping up? Or will that step require more political co-ordination than the present EU can cope with? And how will America actually deal with having to relinquish the reins?

Finally, the lads want to know: will the multipolar age more stable, because power is diffused? Or will it be it less so - because two distinct great powers are much more predictable?

This week, ordinary geopolitics lads Andrew Collingwood and Philip Pilkington are back on the case of Janet Yellen.

A week ago, she made incoherent comments about American foreign policy. Now, she's giving a big speech about China, and the results are only marginally better. Is Yellen being given contradictory objectives by her boss? Or is it simply the case that, with US hegemony haemorrhaging away, all the options are now bad?

As China retaliates over the US chip ban, the global microprocessor chess game has become its own form of geopolitics chess. With both the US and its rivals seeking to build self-contained chip processing infrastructure, smaller countries are being asked to pick winners. At the same time, with Ukraine also bisecting the developing world, being a minnow nation has never been trickier. Does America have enough diplomatic gas in the tank to both support Ukraine and sew up the high-end chip market? Philip Pilkington is skeptical.

Finally, with Chile nationalising its lithium, Indonesia imposing an export ban on nickel, and the 'OPEC for lithium' idea still floating around, Andrew Collingwood updates us on the race to define how the market for key 21st century metals will operate.

After all, if green technology simply results in different cartels and political misadventures in different parts of the world to oil - is it really a win at all?

This week, the lads have been heartened and dismayed by public statements from the two most eminent female economists of our time. Christine Lagarde and Janet Yellen. But while Yellen fell back onto tired old State Department talking points, Lagarde gave a pitch-perfect introduction to the multipolar age. Does the global elite finally get it? And if so, how will they trim their sheets from here on out?

While he was dealing with the Irish Republican Army on his foreign trip last week, Joseph Biden was hanging ever more of his domestic credibility on another IRA -the Inflation Reduction Act. Philip Pilkington sees two big takeaways from this $500 billion barrel of pork. First: the return of real dirigiste industrial policy to America. Secondly: the advent of Big Green as a powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood has been watching Lula enter through the Beijing door that Macron just exited - bearing a similar amount of fresh deals and good cheer from President Xi. As they watch China build out Brazil's 5G network, will there, he wonders, be a sniff of buyers' regret from the 'Manhattan charity auction set' for having backed a Chomskyite old-Marxist over the more unpalatable, yet much more US-friendly, Jair Bolsonaro?

This week, the lads are trying not to speculate on the exact nature of the Pentagon 'leak' that came out over the Easter weekend. Is it disinfo or just someone with an axe to grind? It's unclear, which is why we're casting out to what may happen beyond the summer - what if catastrophic collapse does indeed come to Ukraine's teetering defences? Who wins what, and how do we keep the fragile world order together?

Before he'd touched down in Paris from his China trip, Emmanuel Macron was back on manoeuvres. He gave an airborne interview to Politico in which he laid out a much more Sino-centric view of the coming order. One that had little time for the US line on Taiwan. What is he playing at? Philip Pilkington reckons this one may end up being 'the story of the year'.

And then there's the rare earths. They're in everything now. And 85 per cent of them come from China. With a Chip Ban retaliation on rare earth metals in the offing, Andrew Collingwood recalls what happened when China gave Japan a brief taste of what life is like without these strange magnetic substances. Key finding: not good.

After years of carping from the Remain establishment, Britain has finally come to its senses and joined a big trading bloc. But no - not that one.

Will life in Asia’s CPTPP allow the UK to export their famous services economy? And what will Brits do with all the cheap leggings they get in return?

As China leans ever-further into an eventual Ukrainian peace, France is looking to broker the brokering. At least, that seems to be the key motive of President Macron’s trip to Beijing. The boys wonder whether he isn't channeling the wily spirit of Charles de Gaulle, in trying to make the country a great power amongst the middle-powers.

Meanwhile, in the past year, your local shadow bank has leant out $1.4 Trillion. 

With private equity loaning their way around the banking system, are we all sitting on a powder keg of off-balance sheet ordnance? 

Or are we just scared of our own shadow dollars?

Philip Pilkington has been doing some digging, and his uncomfortable answer is: we'll only know if and when it blows...

This week, our boys are on the trail of the continuing fallout from SVB.

With Credit Suisse the next domino in what is looking increasingly like a chain, Philip Pilkington has been doing some digging on system liquidity, and his findings are hair-raising. This, it would seem, is already the biggest run since 1980.

And with a new suite of consumer-facing digital banking products that make removing your money a few clicks, are we about to face runs of a speed and scale previous eras couldn't match?

In France, Jupiter Himself is heading to Hades. Macron's dictatorial pension reforms are being forged through a haze of teargas. But are these national riots a uniquely French event? Or are they just the harbinger of what's to come for Europe, as the cost of living crisis becomes maddening?

Finally, in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu's knack for political survival is being tested to the limits by huge protests over his judicial reforms. With the State Department seemingly coming down on the side of the protesters - Andrew Collingwood wonders whether the US's increasingly 'ethical' foreign policy in danger of alienating its greatest Middle East ally.

As part of our tenth episode celebrations, we've taken soundings from the loyal listeners, and come up with a list of questions to ask Andrew Collingwood and Philip Pilkington.

The boys cover all the ground in the world. The Mexican cartel wars. The potential for Polish supremacy in Eastern Europe. What to do about foreign aid. Declining Western living standards. And the prospects for Multipolarity's Souvenir Shipping Choke Point Tea Towels.

Hosted by Comedy Gavin, the show's producer, this is Multipolarity after hours: with its hair ruffled, its suit crumpled, a glass of gin in one hand, and a well-thumbed paperback of MacKinder in its back pocket.

This week, we're celebrating our recent tenth show with a double-header.

Breaking out of the usual format, we have an interview with a thought leader, plus a special listener Q&A with Ladsie & Boysie themselves, Andrew Collingwood and Philip Pilkington, featuring another very unusual guest.

Today is part one of that double-header.

We're delighted to welcome Samo Burja to the pod.

Samo is a sociologist who has risen to prominence on the analyst scene in the past few years, mainly via his popular and influential Substack.

A fellow at the The Long Now Foundation, and senior research fellow at Foresight Institute, his Bismarck Analysis consultancy deals in the geopolitics, technology, demographic and cultural trends that will define the 21st century. He analyses at the scale of 'mega-trends', and has contributed a range of useful coinages to the lexicon, from "Intellectual Dark Matter", to "Live And Dead Players".

Naturally, the lads have plenty to dig into - from China's deliberately backwards agricultural policy, to the diplomatic fulcrum that might be breaking Europe away from the US.

The Multipolarity group chat exploded over the weekend, as news of the Silicon Valley Bank implosion began to break.

Andrew Collingwood is angry at what amounts to a subsidy for rich depositors.

Philip Pilkington reminds us that simple deposit insurance could have solved this - and warns that this rule change is now effectively permanent. What does the world of banking look like, now that the rule: 'all deposits are covered at all sizes' has been instantiated into US orthodoxy?

Back in Britain, a Defence Select Committee has heard that it will take ten years for the country to replenish the arms it has already sent to Ukraine. If our enemies won't wait, then surely now is the moment to do something no government has done in half a century - protect and develop British manufacturing?

Finally, is Xi Jinping in line for the Nobel Peace Prize? As miraculous bolts from the blue go, the Iran-Saudi deal might be more than Nelson Mandela ever managed. If the Middle East's two duelling regional powers are actually making peace, then how will those left out of step by this reorientation fare? Can Israel still trust America? Or will it too have to carve a new, multipolar path.

Tech-wise, lithium is in everything from electric vehicles to mobile phones. And for an element so high up the periodic table, it's surprisingly hard to find. So, much like oil in the 1970s, are we on the brink of the major lithium miners forming their own cartel? Who's holding the cards here? Which nation might be about to become the next Saudi Arabia? And how will this changing strategic resource picture affect the decade to come?

Recent war games, simulating a great power conflict with China, resulted in US simulators being blown out of the bathtub. As Andrew Collingwood explains, America has spent twenty years gearing up to fight insurgencies. Now that the spectre of great power warfare has returned, it's not clear they have the right tanks and the right guns to take on a China that is going hammer-and-tongs for more materiel.

Finally, Hungarians have kept warm this winter by engaging in strategic ambiguities over Ukraine. They've invited the ire of the EU, but is their foreign policy just a reflection of the sort of strategic pivots that will required more and more of small states as the multipolar world becomes a reality? Philip Pilkington seems to think so.

This week, Philip Pilkington is hammering a term he claims will soon be everywhere: "The Great Divergence".

What becomes of the global balance of power when, as seems likely in 2023, there is simultaneously a recession in the West, and a boom in the East? It's never happened before. So how will we learn to live on a two speed planet?

Meanwhile, the chip ban has failed. Touted only months ago as a major new plank in Biden foreign policy, the figures are now in: the only real impact has been to allow China to dominate the Russian semiconductor market. Trade, like life, finds a way. But didn't we already know this?

As the duo point out, it holds lessons for economists, who seem ever-more off their brief since the pandemic.

Finally, suave technocrat Tony Blair has decided that the West needs to combat rival poles like Russia and China, as they gobble up influence in Africa. The democratic powers seem to be on the back foot, but as Andrew Collingwood points out, given Africa's long-standing instability, the route to influence is anything but straightforward. On this continent at least, coups will continue to dominate the great game...

Turkey has the best performing stock market in the world this year. In part, this is to do with how it has under-performed in previous years. But, as our duo point out, it's also to do with a country taking advantage of the present multipolar fracture. The classic trade and politics hinge-nation, Erdogan's Turkey is finally in a position to exploit its rich advantages.

What makes an army powerful? Where's the Big Mac Index on military strength? Philip Pilkington has been digging deep into the data on who has what materiel, and what it's actually worth, and his findings will make for uncomfortable reading in the Pentagon.

Is the West hooked on expensive high-tech gadgetry that might have been impressive in a Desert Storm-style campaign, but, as Ukraine shows, doesn't deliver on a brutal WWI-style battlefield?

Finally, the Chinese have been on a charm offensive of both charm and offence - their top diplomat has been wooing Europe, and making special entreaties towards Britain - even as the Chinese foreign ministry has been publishing Mao-style denunciations of the Great American Satan on its website.

Is there method in the madness? Or is this just diplomacy by confusion? Andrew Collingwood tries to piece together the inscrutability.

In the week that Ireland is gripped by widespread anti-migrant protests, resident Celt Phil Pilkington explains why the present wave of populist sentiment might no longer be containable by the political elite.

As Andrew Collingwood points out, the 1950s migration treaties that still run our world were designed for a post-WW2 world long consigned to history. Yet to national bureaucracies, they're still a fundamental part of the 'rules-based international order'. So will that order finally absorb the change, or will it simply crack first?

A new Cambridge study unveils a world where Anglo-Saxon 'soft power' is dimming. In the great global popularity contest, the rising powers are beginning to win the hearts and minds of potential allies in developing countries. But does being liked ever actually matter in geopolitics? As Pilkington points out, popularity tends to follow events - not the other way round.

As if to illustrate this, one of America's greatest allies in the Pacific has recently had a change of regime. With China fan President Duterte out, and the US-supporting Bongbong Marcos in, American bases are sprouting again in the Philippines.

Yet even as Uncle Sam wins one back, the long-term trade trend with the country still strongly favours China. Who will win this tug of love?

Like so many other social media addicts, our duo were in thrall to the rogue Chinese weather balloon over the weekend. But while the rest of the commentariat were fuming at the security implications, Philip Pilkington and Andrew Collingwood are far more mystified at all the performative screeching. As Collingwood points out: "A balloon is a hundred year old technology..."

In Nigeria, an attempt to vault over its range of monetary problems by using a so-called 'stable coin' digital currency has quickly descended into farce: riots and bank runs. With the Fed and the Bank of England both on the stable coin bandwagon, the Multipolarity team are curious as to why central bankers the world over are trying to foist these imperfect solutions onto us.

Meanwhile, one year on from the invasion of Ukraine, can we finally conclude that the much-heralded sanctions on Russia have not only failed, but given the West itself a bloody nose? And is the political establishment finally softening up the public to confront this unpleasant truth?

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Philip Pilkington came of age in the shadow of the great Irish property bust of 2008 - it was one of the key reasons he became a macro-economist.

Now, as he warns, history is about to repeat itself. The market indicators are flashing red on both sides of the Atlantic. As we hurtle down the real estate rollercoaster for a long-overdue correction, can the West deal with this reversal? Or are we now too over-leveraged to have any financial. weapons left in our arsenal?

Meanwhile, in China, as the rest of the world founders, the challenge to growth is growing more acute.

We dive deep into recent Chinese economic history, to locate a golden zone in the 1990s, to which the country may be about to return, and explain why the gamified approach of AliExpress may be finally reversing decades of sluggish domestic consumption.

Finally, Andrew Collingwood picks up news of a major new investment pact between Russia and Iran that aims to outflank traditional trade routes by building a series of roads, rails and ports connecting Russia to India, via Iran and Azerbajain.

As Philip Pilkington points out, longer-term, the economic implications may be dwarfed by the cultural ones.

Latin America's giants have come together.

The Brazilian Real and the Argentinian Peso are to be joined together in a prospective currency union - or at least a “regional unit of account".

The prospect of one of the world's most consistent debt defaulters coming together with the often chaotic Brazilian economy has been greeted by some European economists as 'a terrible idea'.

But as Philip Pilkington argues, the upsides of controlling inflation make this a very different prospect to the growth-crushing Euro.

Meanwhile, Andrew Collingwood is just as interested in what this means for US hegemony over the region. Is the so-called Monroe Doctrine dead? Or will America retaliate, if this tiny seedling eventually sprouts? Whichever way this goes, it seems that getting off the US Dollar is becoming more feasible for emerging economies.

We've ripped up the week's agenda to focus on currency unions: considered dead ten years ago, are they making an unlikely comeback?

Andrew Collingwood and Philip Pilkington soldier gamely on in the second episode of Multipolarity - charting the rise of the new multipolar world order.

This week:

A new report suggests the Chinese might be about to bankroll a naval base in Argentina. 

As the green revolution takes hold, can the West even build the supply lines for the huge quantities of metals and minerals we’ll need for all those EV batteries? 

And: is the World Trade Organisation crumbling? The Wall Street Journal seems to think so...  

Philip Pilkington and Andrew Collingwood christen the pod by hashing over some of the week's biggest geopolitics stories.

Just who is the enormous whale biting chunks out of the global gold market?

Is China about to find a way to leapfrog the US advantage in high-end silicon chips? 

And then: most pundit predictions for 2023 seem to involve a minor recession - but are those analyses even over the target?