Multipolarity

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. *** Get us on Twitter. Or on Patreon.

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?  ***You can further enjoy Multipolarity on Twitter.Or on Patreon.

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. *** You know you really should follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/multipolaritypodAnd maybe even join us on Patreon: patreon.com/user?u=86737989

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. To sign up and hear the full version, simply head across to Patreon, and spend $5, €5 or £5 a month. Cancel any time. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86737989

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.***For the full expanded edition, 90 minutes with Carlos, get us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/94647483

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. *** Get us on Patreon, yo: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86737989

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.