The US State Department advised its citizens in Northern Mexico to ‘shelter in place’, as the cartels took their reprisals, following a major Mexican security forces operation against gang kingpin El Mencho - and then another called El Tuli.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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At the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio offered Europe a peace in our time.

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

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

Meanwhile, rumours of the destruction of Iran remain premature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firas Modad is back for his second turn on the pod.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today we bring you two audio essays from your favourite geo-political podcasters.

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

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

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

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

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

After Greenland, the rupture in the Transatlantic Alliance was made visible at the WEF conference in Davos.

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

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

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

This is our monthly paywalled episode.

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

In 1991, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a series of essays in Libération and The Guardian entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard's argument was effectively twofold. Firstly, since the American military overwhelmed the Iraqi army so easily and barely sustained casualties, what took place for the West was not really a war per se.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reza Pahlavi is packing his toothbrush again. As protests grow in Iran, the exiled Crown Prince has been popping up for media appearances, from his home in the Maryland suburbs near DC.

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

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

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

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

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

They got the Ace of Spades.

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

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

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

Can you just do things?

We might not like the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

And to all a good night.

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

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

Every day until Christmas, Philip and Andrew open a window, revealing an object that speaks to the geopolitical year that was.