The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 20, 2026


PREVIEW： Realpolitik #30 ｜ Greenland Is American Now

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Richard Nixon Bosphorus Trump Dardanelles Straits Henry Kissinger Firas Maudad George Kennan Puição Mojana
Breakfast With Beau ｜ Monday 19th January 2026 The Death of the Tory Longhouse

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

129.09

Word count

2,942

Sentence count

133

Harmful content

Hate speech

25

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of RealPolitik, Firas Mamedad tries to understand why the United States is worried about China's growing influence in the oceans, and why it needs to prepare for the possibility of war with them. To do so, he looks at the U.S. maritime strategy, the geography of the American empire, and the reasons why they need to be prepared for conflict with China.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mouadad,
00:00:08.600 and today we're going to be talking about Greenland, and we're going to try to understand
00:00:12.980 why Trump wants it and what is actually going on. To do that, we have to think a little bit
00:00:19.840 about maritime strategy and the possibility of a war with China. And then when you start to get
00:00:27.200 these things, you'll sort of see how different bits and pieces of the Trump strategy are falling
00:00:31.640 into place, from the pressure on South Africa to the bailout of Argentina, the capture of Venezuela,
00:00:38.640 and obviously Greenland. If you want to think about the United States today, what's going on now is,
00:00:47.340 as you all know, a massive competition with China. And the United States is on one side of the Pacific
00:00:55.460 Ocean, and China is on the opposite side of the world, and yet they are in the middle of a deadly 0.97
00:01:03.920 competition for world dominance. Previously, the most industrialized power would be the one that
00:01:10.940 is most likely to win. And right now, that's China. But if you add the United States and her allies,
00:01:18.260 Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, they can balance against China industrially. And so the United
00:01:28.460 States has to fight the Chinese as part of a coalition. The problem is that this coalition 0.98
00:01:34.500 is deeply divided, chaotic. And so the Americans are in this position where they have to assert their
00:01:42.080 own dominance over their empire, while also working to check the Chinese threat. So in a way, they're 0.97
00:01:50.340 engaged in a two-front conflict. One side of it is against China directly. The other side is against
00:01:57.620 the United States' reticent allies that don't necessarily want to commit in the same way, but which
00:02:04.780 the United States needs for it to have the right level of industrial capacity to be able to compete with
00:02:11.880 the Chinese. So that's the framing of it. Then you have to look at American geopolitics and the
00:02:19.980 geopolitics of the United States. Now, the regions of the United States are the Pacific Coast, the Rocky
00:02:29.280 Mountains, the Great Plains, and the East Coast, broken down simply. And it's really this Great Plains area
00:02:39.180 concentrated around the Mississippi River Basin, which goes all the way from New Orleans, Louisiana,
00:02:46.040 in the south, and then extends all the way to the Dakotas, all the way to Colorado, throughout pretty
00:02:54.240 much most of the U.S. This is the United States' breadbasket. This is where the grain is grown.
00:03:02.080 This is where the cattle is grown. This is where a lot of the fighting men come from. This is the
00:03:08.220 heartland. And this must be kept secure at all costs. And in order to do that, the region that must be
00:03:21.000 dominated is the Gulf of Mexico, or the Gulf of America now, and the sister sea, so to speak, the
00:03:29.240 Caribbean. This is where the United States' main ports are located, along the coasts of Texas and
00:03:37.480 Louisiana. And it's a straight line to Venezuela. And if you think of Venezuela as a natural resource
00:03:45.580 powerhouse, well, what's happening here? What's happening is that you've got the vast expanse of
00:03:51.560 the Atlantic, which is difficult to police, but which the United States is trying to police.
00:03:56.660 And then you've got these strings of islands, which are going to fall under U.S. influence,
00:04:03.120 one way or another, step by step. And you've got this connection to Latin America by sea,
00:04:09.640 which allows for the import of oil and other resources from places like Venezuela, from places
00:04:16.360 like Colombia, from Guyana, in order to feed the American industrial machine. So that's one layer
00:04:24.700 of defense. And it's intended to keep the empire, the heartlands of the empire, supplied with natural 0.98
00:04:32.940 resources, energy, etc. And in order to allow this empire to provide industry and manufacturing that
00:04:43.620 are going to be needed in any future confrontation. And since this is the easiest bit to defend for the
00:04:52.540 United States, this is the priority, Venezuela. Then you go and take a wider look at things, and you've got
00:05:00.880 the North and South Atlantic. Now, on the South Atlantic, you've got one entry point through the coast
00:05:09.900 of Argentina and Chile that lets you go through the Drake Passage that goes between Antarctica and the
00:05:20.640 very tip of South America. So here, you need the Argentinians, the Chileans, and the Falkland Islands on 0.98
00:05:27.660 board, so that you can police this maritime passage and stop the Chinese from sending their navy through 1.00
00:05:35.100 this route. And the real threat here isn't so much the full Chinese navy. The real threat is the threat 0.96
00:05:41.900 of submarines. Because the Chinese navy, although it has a lot of ships, it's underdeveloped, and it's not
00:05:48.880 yet a full blue water navy, and its main role is defensive. But with attack submarines, you can go all
00:05:56.320 the way up to the East Coast and start lobbying nuclear missiles at American cities, and then that's a
00:06:02.360 disaster. So if you want to understand why they gave a bailout to Argentina, $20 billion, which the
00:06:10.060 Argentinians have repaid, why they're trying to turn Chile right-wing, why they're interested in this piece of
00:06:16.240 real estate? Well, it's all about the Drake Passage. And this is the short way for the Chinese to get 1.00
00:06:22.560 into the Atlantic. And the idea is to keep these nations on side and to make sure that they don't
00:06:29.520 rebel against the United States and act in China's interests, even though China is their main commercial
00:06:36.000 partner for a lot of the natural resources that they export. So the Americans have a complex job here.
00:06:44.240 Not only do they need right-wing governments that are aligned with them, they also need to develop
00:06:51.760 basing rights in this area in order to police the Drake Passage. They need to have their own
00:06:59.440 submarines, aircraft, etc., to be deployed in that region. And they need to slowly replace China 0.99
00:07:07.840 China as the main commercial partner of these countries in order to secure lasting influence,
00:07:14.560 because, briefly, money talks. Now the other entrance to the Atlantic Ocean is here, off the coast of Africa,
00:07:27.600 between the Cape of Good Hope and Antarctica. And this is a huge piece of territory, five,
00:07:35.120 six thousand kilometers. Difficult to navigate. But most ships try to stay away from this side
00:07:43.440 because of the weather, because of the nature of the waters, etc., and have to stick closer to here.
00:07:49.920 And so you see the United States putting pressure on South Africa, which is de facto a failed state
00:07:55.920 at this stage. And maybe, I would guess, their hope is to achieve Cape independence. Because if there is
00:08:03.360 a white-dominated state that separates itself from South Africa and becomes independent, its natural ally is 0.98
00:08:12.480 obviously going to be the United States. And then the Americans will be able to deploy forces in this
00:08:19.440 region and secure the other big gaping entryway into the Atlantic Ocean. So these are the two southern
00:08:29.760 entrances. And you see the United States pursuing a strategy there aimed at gaining influence over those
00:08:36.480 countries. And with that kind of political influence and economic influence, the Americans always follow
00:08:44.000 it up with military influence. And if you get these countries on side, you've begun to secure the southern
00:08:51.840 entrance of the Atlantic Ocean, difficult as that is to achieve.
00:08:56.320 Then you've got Gibraltar and the entrance into the Mediterranean. Now, the thing is that to get
00:09:07.280 into the Mediterranean, if you're Russia, you need to go through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits. 0.59
00:09:14.640 And these are policed by Turkey, which Trump is adopting a very favorable attitude to,
00:09:20.640 but that will come with a clash with the Israelis. The thing is that for submarines to go through that
00:09:28.320 these straits, they immediately get detected. They can't do so secretly. And it's the same with the Suez Canal.
00:09:37.280 The waters are too shallow for a submarine to go through without it being detected. Everybody's going
00:09:44.240 to know that a submarine is going to be sent. And the Strait of Gibraltar form a perfect choke point from
00:09:51.520 which you can hinder either the Chinese or the Russians, the Chinese sending ships through the Suez,
00:09:58.720 the Russians through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. And you can therefore police the Mediterranean effectively. 0.81
00:10:05.520 Then there's the entrance via the Danish Straits, which is precisely where Copenhagen sits.
00:10:16.160 If the Russians were to send 0.94
00:10:19.120 any kind of naval assets into the North Sea and then the Atlantic,
00:10:25.920 they would have to do so either from Kaliningrad or from St. Petersburg,
00:10:31.440 at least assuming that they don't take the Baltic states, which are on the menu,
00:10:38.240 as I will explain in a little while. But that means that Denmark, Sweden, Norway
00:10:46.720 are going to be very important here in terms of keeping the Russians trapped in the Baltic Sea
00:10:55.200 and preventing them from reaching the North Sea and then the wider Atlantic Ocean. So you see that this
00:11:03.280 sort of strategy, you know, is beginning to make sense. And that's really where Greenland comes in.
00:11:11.280 Greenland is one of the more challenging areas because from the Arctic, the Russians can send any 1.00
00:11:19.440 number of their submarines. And as we see here, they actually managed to have their submarines pop out
00:11:31.040 through the ice that is in the Arctic. Three submarines popping out within a thousand feet of each other.
00:11:39.840 And these are submarines that can carry intercontinental ballistic missiles. So they can fire nukes at the
00:11:47.200 United States from the very far north from the Arctic Ocean if they wanted to. And that distance basically
00:11:57.440 is half the distance that it would be from mainland Russia to get into the United States.
00:12:04.320 So you see that there is this threat from the Arctic. And the way to keep them away from American cities is
00:12:11.760 to have this string of islands, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the British Isles, and preferably Norway,
00:12:22.720 all on side, cooperating together to check what kind of maritime traffic is going through and to detect
00:12:31.280 submarines before they can sneak through. And with Greenland, you can also base a huge amount of
00:12:38.000 defensive missiles, interceptor missiles that would try to shoot down Russian or Chinese missiles as they
00:12:47.520 are going above the earth in order to hit the United States. So if you're going to fire a missile,
00:12:55.200 with some of the new missiles that the Russians have developed, particularly the nuclear-powered one that
00:12:59.840 could just go around the earth, this isn't feasible. But with the more conventional ballistic missiles,
00:13:07.600 you can position stuff in Greenland, in Alaska, in Canada, that is intended to intercept any missile
00:13:15.600 that actually tries to penetrate into the United States. And you would use these assets as deployment
00:13:24.400 points in a bid to hit these missiles in the middle of their trajectory before they become a threat to
00:13:34.320 the United States. So the idea here for the Americans is that what they're trying to do
00:13:40.560 is to make sure that they can deploy as many of their naval assets as possible to the Pacific theater
00:13:48.480 while the Atlantic theater is properly policed. That's what's driving American military thinking.
00:13:55.440 And it's not just them being crazy or Trump wanting natural resources or things of that nature.
00:14:01.680 This is a transformation that's happening within the United States. The American Republic,
00:14:07.920 by any objective assessment, is dying. You look at the extent of corruption in Congress.
00:14:13.680 You look at the capture of Congress by lobbyists, including your favorite Brazilian lobbyists and 0.95
00:14:23.280 assorted others. You look at the influence that foreign countries can acquire over the United States
00:14:29.600 by buying senators. You had the Egyptians buying an American senator a couple of years ago, and I think
00:14:36.480 he went to jail for it. You look at this corruption, and what you see is an internal conflict within the
00:14:42.960 United States that tells you that the Republic is dying because virtue among the American people
00:14:49.120 is dying. And as you see this collapse in virtue and this extension of corruption, you see the kind
00:14:56.400 of infighting that you're seeing in the United States, and you see more and more pressure on Trump,
00:15:01.520 including from us, to essentially become a lot more authoritarian in matters of domestic policy.
00:15:09.440 And this will come with him being more authoritarian in foreign policy.
00:15:16.000 So the idea here is to be able to have enough control over the Arctic so that the Americans are in a 0.91
00:15:23.680 dominant position there to police any traffic that can go from the Arctic Ocean into the Northern Atlantic,
00:15:32.800 and to be able to position adequate defensive systems against the threat of missiles from Russia and China.
00:15:42.880 But then when you think of the world this way, when you look at the map in this direction,
00:15:47.840 you see that actually Russia is a close neighbor of the United States. And you see that Russian territories
00:15:56.000 and Canadian territories are kind of a buffer between the US and China. And this is going to be more and
00:16:05.680 more of the case as the Arctic becomes more navigable. And this gives you an insight into what's going on in Ukraine.
00:16:16.720 For Trump to be able to maximize his influence against the Chinese, what he actually needs is to
00:16:24.080 separate the Russians from them, so that the Russians don't simply allow Chinese missiles to fly over their 0.97
00:16:30.640 airspace whenever the Chinese want that to happen, but rather so that the Russians can be a bit of a 0.99
00:16:38.240 partner in checking China. And if you look at Russian interests, well, Russia's neighbors include Japan
00:16:44.720 and South Korea, and it has a pretty strong relationship with Vietnam and with India.
00:16:49.760 China. So when you look at the world in this way, you see that there is a natural Indian-Iranian-Russian 0.98
00:17:00.960 coalition that can work on checking China and containing it. And you see that there is another 0.98
00:17:08.000 natural Vietnamese-Japanese-Russian coalition that is intended to check China from the other direction.
00:17:17.040 And if you look back at how the Americans managed to defeat the Soviet Union,
00:17:23.440 they didn't just do it on their own. They did that through NATO, and they did that through
00:17:31.280 the containment strategy that was advocated by George Keenan in the 1940s, which saw the Americans
00:17:39.040 building up an alliance with CENTO, the Central Asian Treaty Organization, which brought together,
00:17:51.920 I believe, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, in a bid to have a military alliance that would check 0.98
00:18:03.760 Russia's southern border. They did that with NATO, which kept Russia contained on its western border.
00:18:13.120 And they did that famously through the Nixon pivot to China, where under the auspices of Henry Kissinger
00:18:21.680 and Richard Nixon, the Americans reconciled with the Chinese in order to have China partnering with them
00:18:31.760 to contain Russia. And so the idea here is the following. If you have China and Russia working together, 0.72
00:18:42.640 they can develop the Arctic, they can develop all kinds of drilling for resources, they can develop energy,
00:18:53.360 they can navally cooperate with each other in order to deny the Arctic to the United States.
00:19:00.720 Alternatively, the Americans and the Russians can do that together.
00:19:05.680 And if they did, the main victim at the end of the day would be Europe, because they would be dominated 0.93
00:19:16.400 by these two behemoths, each of them having interests in Europe. And what would happen would be a new carve-up
00:19:25.280 of Europe between Russian and American influence, exactly as had happened after the Second World War.
00:19:32.960 After the Second World War, you had everything from East Germany through Czechoslovakia, which at the time was
00:19:41.840 the Czech Republic and Slovakia in one country, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and then Yugoslavia,
00:19:53.040 acting as a bit of a neutral buffer. You had these countries fully under the Russian influence.
00:20:00.160 And this was when the Russians felt safest and most powerful because they had a toehold on the, 0.98
00:20:08.560 or a very firm hold actually, on the Carpathian mountains here that go from Slovakia to Romania
00:20:14.960 all the way up to the Baltics, meaning that they could funnel any invasion force that went through Northern Europe
00:20:27.360 into the narrowest gap here between Poland and Slovakia and have a much shorter front line.
00:20:37.760 That was the thinking for the Russians.
00:20:41.840 And now you look at this possibility that the Americans would try to gain leverage over Russia
00:20:49.120 by controlling Greenland and by threatening to heavily militarize Greenland, both offensively and defensively,
00:20:57.760 and they would use that as a card in order to pressure the Russians into making concessions,
00:21:04.400 and in order to force the Russians into a partnership that is partly commercial with American industry
00:21:12.000 developing Russian natural resources, partly military, with the possibility of the two countries
00:21:19.520 working together to contain China in partnership with countries that the Russians have 0.52
00:21:25.920 either kind of partnerships with, like India and Iran, or long-standing relations like Vietnam,
00:21:35.120 or former enemies like Japan, who are equally terrified of the rise of China.
00:21:41.680 So you can see this massive reconfiguration of the geopolitical map
00:21:46.160 that happens with the Americans asserting their dominance over the North Atlantic,
00:21:52.000 giving Russia territories in Europe an exchange,
00:21:55.200 and therefore being able to use Russia as a partner against the Chinese.
00:22:02.560 So this is the big change in geopolitics that the Americans are trying to achieve.
00:22:07.680 And it's nakedly imperialistic.
00:22:09.440 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters,
00:22:12.800 head to our website where you can find more.
00:22:23.040 Puição Mojana,iec pcese Well,
00:22:40.640 okay.
00:22:43.360 .
00:22:46.480 .