Multipolarity

In a very special episode, we’re celebrating our hundred with a walk back along the yesteryears of Multipolarity. 

Two yesteryears in particular - 2023 and 2024. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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From Marco Polo to Marco Rubio – the West keeps rediscovering that China is a big Asian landmass with a mind of its own. So is Trump’s hawkish new Secretary of State about to get himself tangled in a Chinese finger trap of tariffs? 

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

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

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Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

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On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

At the centre of the Global American empire, a storm is coming. But it’s in the European periphery that the effects will be the most acute. 

Can anyone steer a path through the rocks? 

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

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

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

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

After the BRICS meeting in Kazan, a picture of a bundle of fake BRICS banknotes began to circulate online. Right up to a picture of Putin holding one, like a mobster holds a cigar. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

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On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

Moldova has voted to join the EU – A referendum won by less than a single percentage point. It’s less clear when the EU’s citizens get their vote on whether they want to house a very poor, seriously divided, minority-Russian post-Soviet state. Surely this is the moment the eastwards expansion runs aground in the geopolitical reality?

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

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

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

https://www.x.com/multipolarpod

On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

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.

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

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On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

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?  

*** 

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

https://www.x.com/multipolarpod

On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity

Or on our own Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

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. 

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

https://www.x.com/multipolarpod

On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity

Or on our own Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

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? 

*** 

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

https://www.x.com/multipolarpod

On Patreon. 

https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity

Or on our own Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

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?

***

Be excellent to each other, and -

Get us on Twitter. 

https://www.x.com/multipolarpod

On Patreon. 

www.patreon.com/multipolarity  

Or on our own Substack. 

https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod