The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Geopolitics with Firas Modad

00:00:00.160 Hello and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, we have touched on geopolitics a number of times,

00:00:04.740 but we have never had the benefit of a proper geopolitics analyst like Faras here, Faras Moudad.

00:00:12.060 Thank you.

00:00:12.460 Thank you very much for coming on.

00:00:13.160 Thank you very much for having me.

00:00:14.220 So you are a geopolitics analyst.

00:00:17.980 Yes.

00:00:19.320 How does that work? Because I've not met too many of those.

00:00:21.780 So the idea is to help clients understand the commercial impact of risk.

00:00:26.400 We want not just to opine on Putin good, Putin bad.

00:00:32.300 We want to tell them what is actually happening in the competition between global empires,

00:00:38.300 how the competition is playing out, what are the intentions of the different sides,

00:00:42.940 what are their capabilities, and matching those together in order to come up with a forecast.

00:00:48.040 And from that forecast, we tie it to a commercial impact,

00:00:51.660 such as there are more risks to aircraft in the air, or there is going to be attacks on shipping,

00:00:58.380 or there is going to be explosions, etc., etc., or contracts are getting cancelled, or what have you.

00:01:05.920 The key part here is truly understanding intent.

00:01:10.560 And you do that by trying to get into the heads of the people that you are analyzing.

00:01:15.380 So for me, I feel that I've matured in this industry by working very hard on understanding

00:01:22.460 a group like Islamic State, taking their ideology seriously, taking what they believe seriously,

00:01:28.600 accepting that they genuinely believe it, and having adopted their mindset,

00:01:35.820 trying to understand what they're trying to achieve,

00:01:38.860 and then analyzing the means at their disposal for achieving that.

00:01:42.700 And I do that for Russia, the United States, China, any country really that is an interesting player

00:01:52.500 that clients have an interest in.

00:01:54.200 But essentially, you're paid by commercial firms to do this,

00:01:57.360 and they are wanting to understand not what the headlines are telling them,

00:02:03.420 but what the real risk is, so that they can make the right investment decisions,

00:02:07.940 or know if they should pull out a certain market to invest more in certain markets,

00:02:12.000 or whatever, they want to understand the genuine risk rate.

00:02:15.200 Yes.

00:02:15.460 So that then begs the question of how often and how egregiously does it vary,

00:02:21.380 does the reality of a set of risks vary with the narrative that we are being told in the press?

00:02:29.160 The two are completely divorced from each other.

00:02:31.180 There is no connection between the two.

00:02:34.960 Take Iraq as an example.

00:02:38.960 There are areas of Iraq that are actually quite safe for doing business from a physical perspective.

00:02:46.760 From a political perspective, getting enmeshed with the Iraqi government is its own set of nightmares.

00:02:52.040 But from a physical perspective, there are areas in Iraq where the security risks are really not that high.

00:02:57.580 There are other regions of Iraq where really you don't want to touch it with a 12-foot barge pole.

00:03:03.320 So it's about being able to speak to people at the right level of Zoom.

00:03:08.660 The narrower it gets, the more you can give them details on specifically this location and this asset.

00:03:15.980 What are the risks?

00:03:16.880 What are the problems that they're facing?

00:03:18.080 And how does it affect them?

00:03:19.060 And then you can speak to them at a country level, and then you can speak to them at a regional level.

00:03:25.140 What are the different factors in Iraq?

00:03:27.780 Which part of Iraq are the Turks trying to take? 0.96

00:03:30.780 Which parts of Iraq will the Iranians never compromise about? 0.99

00:03:34.320 Where do the Americans fit into that picture?

00:03:36.680 And what about the Chinese and Russian assets?

00:03:39.980 What are the risks to them?

00:03:40.940 So it's about being able to get specific on the locations that the client is interested in.

00:03:48.220 And it's about being able to understand the big picture and tell them how this is likely to change.

00:03:55.460 I see.

00:03:55.760 So this makes a lot of sense.

00:03:56.600 So if I'm an oil company and I'm thinking about investing in a relatively safe bit of Iraq, 0.85

00:04:02.040 my return profile on the investment needs to be more or less normal.

00:04:06.180 Whereas if it's in a disputed bit, the return needs to be significantly higher to justify the risk.

00:04:12.100 That's kind of the way they think about it.

00:04:13.460 That's part of it.

00:04:15.180 Although that then goes into the way the Iraqis do oil contracts, which is different from most.

00:04:21.180 Right.

00:04:21.460 So the political aspect of it and the security aspect of it are two different conversations completely.

00:04:30.980 And both affect the commercial outcome.

00:04:33.840 OK, and the thing that I'm intrigued about here now is, so you provide this real analysis to corporations.

00:04:43.940 Mm-hmm.

00:04:45.560 The thing is, right, the political narrative that goes around, which you say is completely divorced from reality,

00:04:52.980 it appears that the politicians actually believe it.

00:04:57.480 But they actually smoke their own gander.

00:04:59.280 So when you're presenting this stuff to the C-suite of various corporations,

00:05:06.800 are they sufficiently able to detach themselves from the narrative that they're getting every time they go home and turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper

00:05:14.440 to the reports that you're giving them?

00:05:17.820 Are they able to distinguish in their mind quite clearly the two?

00:05:20.460 Most of them are.

00:05:23.780 I mean, it's something that you acquire over time.

00:05:29.660 I think in many instances the politicians really stopped believing that they could make Iraq into a democracy.

00:05:36.200 And there was acceptance that this is a competition with the Iranians over who gets what within Iraq.

00:05:41.940 Is it possible I'm being unfair to the politicians? 0.97

00:05:45.820 Is it possible that they know that everything coming out of their mouth is rubbish, that they're just putting on a show?

00:05:52.660 There is an element of that.

00:05:54.960 I mean, we don't know how much Tony Blair and co. knew about the Iraq war and about the weapons of mass destruction.

00:06:03.600 We don't know how much they genuinely believed and how much they genuinely lied.

00:06:09.020 There is an element of them believing their own shtick.

00:06:12.220 I find that the local level personnel tend to have a good detailed knowledge of the ground.

00:06:19.200 But even with them, you find the degree of idealism that is quite divorced from reality.

00:06:26.640 So you will find embassy staff who are genuinely committed to democratizing Iraq or Syria or Lebanon or what have you.

00:06:36.880 With that having no relevance to what actually goes on on the ground and how the country works.

00:06:43.080 You also find them having very intimate knowledge of the various players and their loyalties.

00:06:48.300 And one wonders at how much is there of cognitive dissonance and how much are they just deceiving themselves and lying outright to their audiences.

00:07:00.460 Okay, so I can understand that the public needs to be sold a narrative.

00:07:06.860 I get that.

00:07:08.180 And it's probably, if you're sending troops over there, it's probably quite helpful if they fully believe it as well.

00:07:12.480 Because it's much more convincing to send a young man out to fight for democracy than it is for, you know, we want oil contracts or whatever it is.

00:07:21.640 Or we're in a geopolitical game with Iran or whatever the actual reality on the ground is.

00:07:26.280 And I suppose you can excuse it in embassy staff and so on as long as they can do the dual trick in your mind that they're talking about the cognitive dissonance and actually get the point job done.

00:07:36.020 But it starts to get extremely dangerous the higher up the chain you go if people actually believe the propaganda version of why something is being done as opposed to the real version.

00:07:47.180 Is that something you see a lot?

00:07:48.300 It's most dangerous in the context of Russia and China where you have senior politicians saying that the borders of Ukraine are inviolable, whereas they leave their own borders open.

00:08:01.300 So it's not a question of the viability of borders.

00:08:06.200 There it is clearly a question of imperial competition, which is fair. 1.00

00:08:11.320 I don't object to empires.

00:08:12.980 They're just part of nature.

00:08:14.440 They're part of how we organize them ourselves.

00:08:17.920 However, sometimes you need to be a little bit humble and accept that certain geopolitical problems like France or Russia are not going away.

00:08:28.040 And that this is something that you have to live with and manage as opposed to solve.

00:08:33.800 The problem is that in a democracy, telling people that the Russians are a problem that we have to manage doesn't really appeal to people. 0.98

00:08:43.420 Whereas telling them either that the Russians are wonderful and we get along extremely well with them or that the Russians are all evil and they must be destroyed and stopped. 0.85

00:08:52.660 That actually appeals to people emotionally. 0.71

00:08:56.200 A big part of the problem that you're trying to put your finger on is that democracy is a highly emotional game.

00:09:05.020 You really want to be extremely cold when you're thinking about strategy and politics.

00:09:12.620 And getting emotion involved is inherently destructive.

00:09:16.440 This is why the game of politics was always an elite game.

00:09:22.760 With democracy, it's been transformed into a spectator sport.

00:09:26.980 The two don't go well together.

00:09:29.060 That is a good point.

00:09:31.300 That is a good point.

00:09:32.120 Yeah, I mean, it's quite funny.

00:09:32.900 I mean, on Russia, if you look back to, say, the Second World War, we needed Russia and therefore Stalin was good old Uncle Joe. 0.56

00:09:39.900 And he was built up as this sort of friendly, sort of uncle-like character.

00:09:46.560 And then the moment we decided we wanted to turn against him, it flips the other way.

00:09:50.800 And the public seemed to have no problem with this.

00:09:52.400 The public could be moved around quite significantly.

00:09:55.500 And we're obviously in a period at the moment where Russians are villainous. 1.00

00:09:58.720 I mean, I remember when this Ukraine war started, you had people who were like,

00:10:02.480 I think there was one Russian cellist or something that got thrown out of her apartment and a university simply on the grounds that she was Russian.

00:10:11.560 Yes.

00:10:12.260 And I had this as well.

00:10:14.880 I mean, I remember when the war started, a mate of mine, you know, we got this group chat and he was genuinely angry.

00:10:22.000 He's like, what the hell are you angry about a border dispute?

00:10:24.420 But he had been whipped up into that by the media.

00:10:27.700 Yes.

00:10:27.940 So I'm just a bit confused with the whole Russian thing because it doesn't appear to concern, well, it doesn't concern me, the British.

00:10:37.200 I don't get what the British concern is here.

00:10:41.180 Look, a lot of the British leadership is still in the mindset where they think that they're still playing the great game.

00:10:48.580 And they're under the illusion that one day the Russians are going to get to the Gulf and get to India.

00:10:54.400 And this is going to mean that the British Empire is defeated.

00:10:59.420 Yes.

00:10:59.680 Absent from their minds is the reality that the British Empire has been utterly destroyed, that Britain herself is being ravaged, that they have no geopolitical relevance.

00:11:09.440 They tried to send one of the two aircraft carriers that they had to do something about the Houthi in Yemen, and they were unable to send the ship.

00:11:18.980 They were unable to do anything.

00:11:20.320 It didn't work.

00:11:20.860 The carriers that they paid for didn't actually work.

00:11:25.500 So they're under the illusion that they're still in this competition, and they don't notice that now India is a completely autonomous player that's more focused on its own role containing China in partnership with Russia than it is on what the British want.

00:11:39.260 So they suffer from this delusion of grandeur, and they believe that their role in the world is global and important, when in reality, to the extent that their role is global, it is as a cautionary tale.

00:11:54.740 Yes.

00:11:55.740 Yes, I had wondered that, because obviously the great game of the 1800s, where the British Empire tried to contain the various powers to the east, particularly Russia, keep Germany apart from Russia.

00:12:10.020 Before agreeing to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which, if implemented in full, would have given the Russians Constantinople and the Straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles Straits, giving it access to the Mediterranean Sea and solving the perennial Russian problem of frozen ports.

00:12:29.620 Oh, so we must come back to that, the Russian long game. 0.92

00:12:33.960 But yes, so the great game played out for a long time, and Britain was good at it.

00:12:38.120 Yes.

00:12:38.940 And, I mean, it had a lot of resources and empire and so on.

00:12:41.360 As you say, this has been gradually, and this for me has been, I'm glad you're saying it, the best explanation I can come up with for the severe Russia phobia that this country seems to have.

00:12:52.040 It's that it made sense 150, 200 years ago, and that has passed down like a genetic memory through the organisations, despite the fact that everything else has changed.

00:13:08.840 100% true.

00:13:10.780 I would add to that a couple of things.

00:13:12.500 If these people were forced to acknowledge geopolitical reality, they'd have to look at Britain and her current state.

00:13:23.380 If they did that, the only honourable option for them to take would be to go behind the shed with a revolver.

00:13:30.980 Yes.

00:13:31.480 An ambulance.

00:13:31.860 That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

00:13:32.480 So, what this belligerence towards Russia allows them to do is to create a highly emotional narrative, which is always necessary in a democratic context, and use it as a distraction.

00:13:49.100 The problem that they're facing is that things have gotten so bad that this kind of petty distraction is an irrelevance.

00:13:57.900 So, they will yell at Farage or at whoever that, no, you're a Putin shill, you're a Russian agent, whatever it is.

00:14:06.520 Mainly to distract from the fact that they have categorically failed in doing anything that would allow Britain to have genuine geopolitical influence.

00:14:16.720 So, it's not just the memory, it's also the smokescreen.

00:14:24.700 Who cares if the Russians of Odessa or Kharkiv or even Kiev are under Russian rule or under Ukrainian rule?

00:14:35.940 How does this matter?

00:14:37.160 Whereas the price of your house, the degraded services, the problem with migration, the problem with multiculturalism, the safety of your family, these are of immediate concern.

00:14:50.580 But if you were to speak to them, if you were to speak about these issues in the same emotional language that they use about Putin, the reaction from the public would be severe because they would understand the extent of the betrayal.

00:15:06.960 So, it's important for British leaders to stay stuck on this narrative because the alternative narratives are horrific.

00:15:18.280 Now, for the Europeans, it varies a little bit.

00:15:24.160 For the Poles, there is an immediate threat. 1.00

00:15:27.520 If Ukraine collapses, then there is a real risk that the Baltic states would be next and then the Poles would be on the border with Russia. 0.66

00:15:36.800 And that would mean that they have to spend massive amounts on their military and that would mean that they're vulnerable to the same problem that the Poles have always had, which is simultaneous pressure from the Germans and from the Russians.

00:15:53.060 So, I understand Poland's position.

00:15:55.560 I understand Germany's position a lot less.

00:15:59.120 Germany prospers when there's cheap Russian energy and cheap Russian natural resources.

00:16:03.160 Yes.

00:16:03.440 Except that the current German leadership is fully bought into the cult of wokeness with everything that that entails, from green energy to collective guilt of the Germans replacing original sin to the whole mess around sexuality and transgenderism, basically making gender identity into a substitute for having a soul. 0.51

00:16:29.920 You have something within you that is eternal, that is not seen, that is different from your physical being, except that it's not a soul from God.

00:16:37.140 It's just gender identity.

00:16:38.840 You know?

00:16:40.040 They have their eschatology around climate change and they're fully bought into that cult.

00:16:46.980 Putin is, in a sense, the antithesis of that.

00:16:50.700 He loves Russia and he says so.

00:16:53.020 He prays in a church, whether or not he believes is a different matter, but he prays in a church.

00:16:57.720 Yeah, he makes sure that he's seen doing so.

00:16:59.460 He's made, he makes sure that he's seen doing so.

00:17:02.180 He's proud of Russian history.

00:17:05.140 He's genuinely attached to Russian symbols and wants the public to be attached to them.

00:17:10.740 He's not on board with the gender insanity. 0.63

00:17:15.280 And he's obviously not on board with green energy, given a Russia's location.

00:17:20.400 You can't really build solar farms in Russia. 1.00

00:17:22.280 That would be stupid. 0.98

00:17:22.860 And you can't build wind farms because they'd freeze. 1.00

00:17:27.140 And given Russian exports.

00:17:29.740 So, in a sense, he is the perfect demon for them because he is the...

00:17:34.440 Well, he's everything they're not.

00:17:35.600 Exactly.

00:17:36.180 He's the antithesis of the woke religion that they've adopted.

00:17:38.960 Now, perhaps a more sane perspective would say, these are ethnically similar fellow Christian nations.

00:17:48.320 Maybe we can cooperate with them because there's a much bigger economic threat and political threat that's coming from China. 0.99

00:17:56.880 But sanity doesn't prevail here.

00:18:01.400 Extreme emotion does.

00:18:02.940 So, there's a whole bunch of things I want to pick up on.

00:18:05.200 But I'll just pull the thread a bit more on the World War III thing.

00:18:09.220 So, I mean, obviously, Starmer had an extremely rough start to his premiership.

00:18:15.700 The Southport riots because people were not happy that children were being brutally stabbed and hacked apart.

00:18:22.420 But I don't think a prime minister could have had a worse start than the start he had.

00:18:29.740 So, you're suggesting that this...

00:18:32.540 Because he really is selling the idea that we actually could be going into World War III soon.

00:18:37.500 He's pushing the idea that young men in this country could be getting conscripted and sent off to the Ukrainian front.

00:18:47.540 In your mind, what is the likelihood of any of that actually happening?

00:18:52.100 Was it just this smokescreen?

00:18:53.840 Because if we're talking about that, we're not talking about his other failings.

00:18:58.620 Let's talk about a couple of things here.

00:19:01.320 First problem is conscription.

00:19:04.640 Britain's always had a volunteer army pretty much until World War I.

00:19:12.140 Why do you need to conscript people?

00:19:14.020 Because the numbers in the military aren't enough.

00:19:15.920 Because people have been cutting military spending and reducing the number of soldiers for a very long time.

00:19:23.400 And yet, recruitment is low.

00:19:25.480 Why is recruitment low?

00:19:27.480 Recruitment is low because people fight for God and country.

00:19:30.620 That's what they fight for.

00:19:32.340 Yes.

00:19:32.700 You're telling them there is no God and that the country is an economic zone.

00:19:36.860 Not a people. 0.98

00:19:39.600 Real flesh and blood with a heritage.

00:19:41.200 I'm trying to think that the king of this country might believe in a God, but it's not the Christian God. 0.98

00:19:45.320 I don't want to get into that.

00:19:46.660 Yeah.

00:19:46.980 Because it's not my job to get into what he believes about his personal relationship with God.

00:19:52.740 That's not my place.

00:19:54.900 You know?

00:19:55.060 But I can see why you say that.

00:19:58.760 And I'm very sympathetic to that point of view.

00:20:01.900 However, this is a government that's been saying we don't do God.

00:20:07.360 And that's been attached to this idea that, no, even though the king is the head of the Church of England,

00:20:14.900 everything about this country must be secular.

00:20:17.060 And not just secular, anti-Christian.

00:20:19.480 Yes.

00:20:21.060 Because they're very pro-Muslim when it suits them. 0.79

00:20:23.400 You know?

00:20:23.540 I mean, at this point, secular would be an upgrade.

00:20:25.760 Secular would be an upgrade at this stage.

00:20:27.200 Yes, quite.

00:20:29.240 And they don't have any national feeling.

00:20:32.000 They don't have any sense that a nation is a family of families.

00:20:36.480 That a nation is tied together by blood.

00:20:39.420 Which has always been in the human mind, which is the most natural way of understanding your own community.

00:20:46.320 You're somehow related to them by blood.

00:20:49.420 They reject both of these ideas.

00:20:51.440 Therefore, they must have conscription.

00:20:54.320 They can't build a volunteer army because the kind of people who would volunteer to fight for Britain

00:21:02.120 are the kinds of people that they would call far right.

00:21:05.600 So they have a fundamental ideological problem.

00:21:07.460 Except I think they've pushed them away as well.

00:21:09.720 Because they have been so clear that anybody who they call far right, which would be basically somebody like me,

00:21:19.160 they've been so clear that we are not part of the club.

00:21:24.320 And that we know that if we're gone, all that happened is tens of thousands more boat people will turn up and be praying around our families while we're gone.

00:21:34.580 At this point, I would just say, no, put me in prison if you must, but I'm not going.

00:21:40.920 This is the problem that they have.

00:21:43.560 This is the problem that they have.

00:21:44.840 You need to develop some level of nationalist feeling, if only because you need it in war.

00:21:50.980 And you never know when war comes. 0.93

00:21:53.080 Well, you need a ready supply of white boys to die in your wars. 1.00

00:21:56.620 Well, not just white boys. 0.97

00:21:57.620 In any country, the Indians need some patriotic feeling to fight for India. 0.99

00:22:01.300 The Chinese need patriotic feeling to fight for China. 0.98

00:22:03.700 Well, the British government needs them.

00:22:04.620 For the British government, they're obviously not going to be conscripting the people who are in hotels.

00:22:09.360 They're obviously not going to be doing that, because odds are they'd switch sides.

00:22:16.340 So, for them to be able to fight a war, they need to develop a sense of loyalty towards God and country.

00:22:27.140 Much more importantly, you need industry.

00:22:29.140 You need manufacturing.

00:22:30.920 This country's manufacturing is collapsing.

00:22:33.340 Steel mills are closing.

00:22:34.980 Everything to do with heavy industry is falling apart.

00:22:37.300 Why?

00:22:37.840 Because they're committed to net zero.

00:22:40.220 The key to prosperity, first and foremost, is cheap energy.

00:22:46.320 If you have cheap energy, you can handle expensive labour, you can handle expensive other resources, you can handle the rest of it.

00:22:52.520 But the bedrock is cheap energy.

00:22:54.460 I've always said the base layer of any economy is energy and agriculture, because if you've got those two, then you can do anything else.

00:23:02.340 If you've got cheap food and cheap energy, everything else is solved.

00:23:05.420 Which makes Germany, as you were saying, all the more baffling, because they went all in on cheap Russian energy.

00:23:12.080 They built an economy that was a four trillion euro economy based on $50 billion of cheap Russian gas.

00:23:19.340 They closed down their nuclear power stations, were totally committed to this, then switched that off, then watched the Americans bomb their energy infrastructure and said not a damn thing about it.

00:23:33.460 But no, I will just pull you back on the, so how likely is it that my audience is going to get conscripted and sent off to the Ukraine?

00:23:42.920 The government will be overthrown before that happens.

00:23:45.140 Right.

00:23:46.220 If they try to sort of force people to go and fight for Ukraine...

00:23:50.720 Do you think they're actually mad enough to try?

00:23:53.320 Look, the guys in the military think in a very different way from the politicians.

00:24:00.640 They will tell you, over the course of a campaign against the Russians, we're going to need this many artillery shells, this many tanks, this many planes.

00:24:10.600 The attrition rate will be such, and this is what you will need to supply us with if you want this thing to last more than a week.

00:24:19.960 Can you provide this?

00:24:22.380 And the answer is always going to be no, because of our ideological opposition to cheap energy and to patriotism.

00:24:32.200 So they can't, in fact, do it.

00:24:34.760 I wonder if they're coming to a point where they realize that there is a mismatch between what they think they can do and what they can do in reality.

00:24:45.880 Trump illustrated this perfectly.

00:24:48.020 If you remember in his press conference with Keir Starmer, he looked at him and asked him, well, you can take Russia on your own, can't you?

00:24:56.080 And everybody laughed.

00:24:57.160 And everybody laughed.

00:24:59.080 Yes.

00:24:59.620 And Keir almost passed out.

00:25:02.180 Because he knows that this is completely unrealistic.

00:25:06.260 Macron knows that this is unrealistic.

00:25:08.340 And this is before getting into things like communications, electronic warfare, being able to stand up to Russia in electronic warfare, which they probably cannot do.

00:25:18.940 Their dependence on American satellites for targeting.

00:25:22.000 Yes.

00:25:22.360 Their dependence on the Americans for everything to do with the F-35.

00:25:28.860 Without the Americans supplying them with software upgrades, spare parts, electronic warfare support, etc., etc., they can't do anything.

00:25:37.560 Yes.

00:25:37.860 And the Russians have spent the last two years getting a master class degree in electronic warfare, drone warfare. 0.53

00:25:46.200 Yes.

00:25:46.540 And we're seriously behind on that.

00:25:48.580 Extremely behind.

00:25:49.480 And the soldiers aren't trained for it.

00:25:51.920 And they aren't motivated for it. 0.84

00:25:53.800 And meanwhile, we have the Royal Air Force saying, we have too many white men.

00:25:57.840 Yes.

00:25:58.020 And we've only got 80, I think it's 80,000 troops.

00:26:00.720 And that includes the pastry chefs.

00:26:03.000 And God knows how many of those are actually fighting fit.

00:26:05.880 Look, British special forces are excellent.

00:26:08.440 Yes, but there's not enough of them.

00:26:09.280 But there is nowhere near enough of them.

00:26:11.260 And you can't fight a war with them.

00:26:14.180 So do you think that, because we've watched this pantomime over the last couple of weeks of European leaders getting together and explaining how they're going to spend a lot more money on defense.

00:26:23.260 Now, they do it in such a way as to imply that this money that they're spending on defense will then promptly be used against Russia.

00:26:32.520 It could just be that they're cycling money around the European defense stocks.

00:26:37.780 And that is as far as the game goes.

00:26:41.280 It's not just that.

00:26:42.540 It's that, firstly, where are they going to get the energy for this?

00:26:51.180 If they are going to go to the Gulf and try to get it from the Muslim world, these will be much harsher towards them than the Russians ever will be. 0.54

00:27:02.620 Remember, the Russians really didn't want a problem with Europe.

00:27:04.900 They lashed out in 2008 over Georgia and then in 2014 over Ukraine because there was a coup in Ukraine against the duly elected government.

00:27:18.280 Well, I think that Putin has a cause of cause of ballet.

00:27:21.740 I think he has a good one as well.

00:27:23.280 There are very reasonable reasons for this.

00:27:26.520 Look, there's something that we should remember.

00:27:29.180 There is George Keenan, the architect of containment.

00:27:32.880 Henry Kissinger.

00:27:35.020 There is nothing nice to be said about Henry Kissinger, but he's brilliant.

00:27:38.180 Well, he was bloody clever.

00:27:39.360 Exactly.

00:27:40.120 He was brilliant.

00:27:42.320 Noam Tromsky, on the opposite extreme, completely divorced from all of this.

00:27:47.160 And then Samuel Huntington.

00:27:49.340 These men agreed that the West getting involved in Ukraine would trigger a Russian war in Ukraine.

00:27:56.440 This was known.

00:27:59.120 This was understood.

00:28:00.880 Nobody who was serious disputed it.

00:28:03.400 I believe the former U.S. ambassador to Russia wrote a paper several years ago saying,

00:28:08.580 if we carry on down the current path, it will force Russia into a war. 0.82

00:28:11.380 I think it was Burns who said that.

00:28:13.320 It was William Burns.

00:28:14.720 So this was very much understood by Western decision makers.

00:28:18.820 But an element of the Americans thought that they could do to Russia what they have done to Europe.

00:28:26.360 Europe is in the following situation.

00:28:29.040 Every time there is a military issue, the Americans need to get involved.

00:28:34.840 Even bombing Gaddafi in Libya, the French and the British needed the Americans to do the refueling

00:28:41.440 and to do the targeting and to do the logistics and to do all kinds of other things in support.

00:28:47.640 Obama called this leading from behind.

00:28:50.660 But in reality, they were leading.

00:28:52.740 If Europe can't bomb something in North Africa from Europe, I mean, what the hell can it do? 0.86

00:28:57.140 Exactly.

00:28:58.300 So in terms of defense, Europe's condition is hopeless.

00:29:02.400 In terms of economics, whenever there is a financial crisis,

00:29:05.800 the Federal Reserve has to bail out the European Central Bank, the Bank of England,

00:29:12.300 the Swedish Central Bank, the Swiss, etc., etc.

00:29:16.500 If you are not autonomous in the management of your own economic markets,

00:29:22.340 and you're not autonomous in your own defense,

00:29:25.420 what right have you got to claim sovereignty?

00:29:28.860 Well, yeah, I mean, this is something I was going to throw to you at the end,

00:29:31.420 but I'll bring it up now.

00:29:32.300 To my mind, certainly Britain and most of Europe are simply vassal states of the United States.

00:29:40.920 Would you disagree on that?

00:29:41.940 No.

00:29:43.620 I would add a couple of points.

00:29:47.700 They are uppity vassals prone to lecturing their imperial master. 0.97

00:29:55.880 And this is why the Americans are switching sides.

00:29:58.340 Because the Americans under Trump have figured out something that is going to be a very big problem for the Europeans.

00:30:06.920 They've figured out that they're better off with a full economic partnership with Russia.

00:30:11.440 So when Trump says, we want to have excellent relations with Russia,

00:30:16.460 we want to be able to invest in Russia, etc., etc.

00:30:19.640 What's he doing?

00:30:20.300 What does he mean by that?

00:30:20.760 Okay, so let's pause for a second and take a step back.

00:30:25.880 The recklessness of American leaders from Clinton through Biden,

00:30:31.660 including elements of Trump 1,

00:30:34.740 led to a situation where the Iranians, the Chinese, and the Russians are locked into an alliance.

00:30:41.660 Not because they like each other or trust each other.

00:30:43.940 Remember, the Russians one time sold the Iranians faulty centrifuges for their nuclear program.

00:30:52.080 The Chinese and the Russians really don't look very highly at Iran.

00:30:56.320 Whenever Iran is under sanctions, the Chinese do their best to milk Iran for every last penny they can get. 1.00

00:31:04.440 But it was American pressure that pushed them together.

00:31:06.900 The result, essentially, is a configuration that can dominate Eurasia.

00:31:14.440 Because you have Russian resources, but also Iranian, and therefore the rest of Central Asian resources, 0.59

00:31:20.860 going to China at a discount.

00:31:23.960 That's something I've talked about a fair bit, which is Russia has energy and commodities.

00:31:30.440 Bad capital, bad demographics, bad technology.

00:31:33.380 China has technology, it has decent resources, poor energy, demographic profile looking bad. 1.00

00:31:42.160 Yes.

00:31:42.860 So those two are pretty strong.

00:31:44.600 But then you combine the monsoon region or Southeast Asia,

00:31:48.420 that solves your entire demographic issue.

00:31:51.860 If you move capital, energy, and resources around those three,

00:31:56.860 we're going to take Russian energy, and we're going to take Chinese know-how and capital,

00:32:01.440 and we're going to stick a massive factory doing something base level here in Cambodia or India or something,

00:32:09.320 ship the resources back up as they move up the value chain.

00:32:11.900 You've basically got a power block that easily beats, or at least will soon easily beat,

00:32:18.040 US and Europe.

00:32:20.860 Yes.

00:32:21.320 And if I was in charge, my whole game plan, if I was on this side,

00:32:26.800 would be making sure that that alliance never comes together.

00:32:29.680 Which is what Trump is working on.

00:32:31.520 But they've done the precise opposite.

00:32:33.200 They've pushed them together.

00:32:34.580 Their recklessness, their arrogance,

00:32:36.960 has made them believe that everybody naturally wants to follow them,

00:32:41.500 and that everybody should.

00:32:45.140 They don't understand this configuration.

00:32:48.640 Now, on the demographic side, I just add a note that the demographics are not interchangeable.

00:32:52.700 But aside from that, in terms of market size...

00:32:55.980 No, I don't think they would move people around.

00:32:56.540 I think they would move products around.

00:32:57.900 Exactly.

00:32:58.440 In terms of market size, this is a massive killer market.

00:33:02.600 And if you force these countries together,

00:33:04.800 you leave the Japanese and the South Koreans with no options.

00:33:08.120 Oh, yeah.

00:33:08.400 They're going to have to do it.

00:33:09.400 They're going to have to side with the Chinese and with the Russians. 0.60

00:33:12.840 So what Trump is trying to do is to break this configuration.

00:33:17.640 The only way to do it is a full partnership with Russia 0.95

00:33:20.260 and to give the Russians what the Chinese cannot offer them.

00:33:23.460 Oh, okay.

00:33:23.700 This is interesting.

00:33:24.380 I hadn't heard this before.

00:33:25.580 The only way to do it is to give the Russians what the Chinese couldn't offer them, 1.00

00:33:30.160 which is a fair deal and a bit of respect.

00:33:32.920 China doesn't have allies.

00:33:35.020 This is something that has to be understood.

00:33:36.720 The Chinese don't have allies because they look at everybody else 1.00

00:33:39.260 and they think, you're all a bunch of upstarts.

00:33:41.920 I mean, their entire worldview for the last, what, 3,000 years

00:33:44.800 has been that we're on top and everyone else is, yeah.

00:33:47.180 Exactly.

00:33:48.000 The middle kingdom means the center of the world kingdom.

00:33:51.140 Okay?

00:33:52.500 So if there is a full economic partnership with Russia,

00:33:55.440 if all of the sanctions are lifted,

00:33:57.800 and American industry can take as much of Russia's natural resources as it wants,

00:34:02.320 et cetera, et cetera,

00:34:03.260 on better terms than the Chinese are willing to offer, 0.98

00:34:06.280 with, in some cases, better technology and a better cultural fit,

00:34:11.020 then you have a behemoth that naturally dominates Central Asia

00:34:18.320 because of Russia's role and the economic power and Europe.

00:34:23.920 Hold on.

00:34:24.540 Equally importantly,

00:34:26.480 it means that the Russians are a partner of the South Koreans and the Japanese

00:34:31.400 in working with the Americans to contain China.

00:34:36.140 What?

00:34:36.660 So drawing closer to Russia, 0.76

00:34:39.980 aligning with Russia,

00:34:41.980 is a huge geopolitical prize,

00:34:46.420 especially if you accept realism,

00:34:49.040 if you accept that there's no way that Russia is going to be a liberal democracy

00:34:52.440 because a liberal democratic Russia survives for a grand total of one generation.

00:34:57.800 That's it.

00:34:58.520 And then it breaks apart.

00:35:01.080 Moscow must be an imperial capital.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - March 31, 2025

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Geopolitics with Firas Modad

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