The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Realpolitik #31 ｜ The Age of Empires

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Modad.

00:00:07.520 Today we're going to be talking about the new age of empires, which is now upon us.

00:00:15.040 As you probably have assumed, this has been our view consistently, the world order as we know it

00:00:22.100 is completely dead. It's buried, doesn't exist anymore. As Mike Carney ended up admitting in

00:00:27.420 Davos, it was always a fiction, but now the death of it is official. And we're seeing the United 0.71

00:00:35.460 States behaving in a much more openly imperialistic way. And I thought we should discuss this new age

00:00:42.680 of empires and what it actually means, not vampires, empires, and what it actually means and how the

00:00:50.500 different empires are positioned to be able to compete with one another. To be able to be

00:00:57.160 sovereign, which is the first step towards being an empire, you need four things. You need an

00:01:04.120 independent currency, and therefore the ability to trade with the world freely on your own terms

00:01:10.220 when you want to. Indeed, this is the whole point of BRICS. BRICS is there mainly to make sure that

00:01:18.080 countries like Brazil or India or South Africa can trade with Russia or China or Iran on their own

00:01:27.440 terms without the intervention of the Americans or the Europeans. So it's mainly a sovereignty play.

00:01:35.360 And that sovereignty play is absolutely necessary for you to be in any way recognized as a real power,

00:01:42.720 because that defines whether or not you can trade, and that's a fundamentally sovereign decision.

00:01:51.520 The second thing that you need is energy independence. If you're going to play at being an imperial power,

00:01:58.800 you need to have sufficient reserves of energy that you can access when you want to. Otherwise,

00:02:05.920 you can't really be independent because any military rival can cut off your energy supplies and that

00:02:14.160 becomes a problem. Now, the Japanese famously did not have independent energy supplies and they went 1.00

00:02:21.520 around conquering Asia with the objective of developing these supplies. So it's not a totally

00:02:29.760 deterministic thing. An empire or an aspiring empire can acquire territory in order to provide itself with

00:02:40.000 energy security. But when push comes to shove and the fighting starts, if you don't have an

00:02:46.960 independent supply of energy that you can control securely, then all of your military efforts can fall

00:02:53.120 apart, especially in the modern era. The third thing that you need is food security. And again, we've seen

00:03:03.440 places like Japan, which can be low on food security, going around acquiring assets overseas in order to

00:03:10.160 provide themselves with that food security. The whole plan for the Germans in that notorious period was to go 0.99

00:03:18.720 into Russia and acquire energy and food resources, energy from the Caucasus and Azerbaijan and food resources

00:03:27.680 from Ukraine so that they would be independent in both and be able to pursue their imperial ambitions.

00:03:35.120 But this is a prerequisite for you to be able to fight. And the fourth thing that you need is a competent

00:03:42.800 military. And that comes with technological innovation and that comes with your people's will to fight.

00:03:49.120 And that comes with having a large enough population that could sustain casualties.

00:03:54.320 All of these things factor into your ability to be a genuinely sovereign state that can pursue its national

00:04:03.520 interests independently of other players. The fifth factor that plays a role is having imperial provinces,

00:04:14.800 having peoples that you lead, having boundary areas around you that you consolidate under your leadership,

00:04:22.400 and that then fuel your imperial expansion. And we saw the Romans do that perfectly. Rome was a city

00:04:31.520 state. It expanded to capture Italy. From Italy it went on to Spain and to Eastern Mediterranean. Julius

00:04:38.640 Caesar famously went to Gaul. And afterwards, Rome transitioned from being a republic to being

00:04:44.720 officially an empire. So these are the factors that go into play in being an empire. And four of them

00:04:52.800 are have sovereignty as a main requirement. And to recap, these four are an ability to trade freely,

00:05:00.240 meaning an independent currency, energy, food, and a competent military. You need all of these things.

00:05:06.880 Right now, today, there are four entities that are worthy of being called empires or aspiring empires,

00:05:18.640 because I'm going to include Turkey in those, and that's clearly an aspiring imperial power.

00:05:22.960 And maybe we can start with Turkey. In terms of an independent currency, they've been busting sanctions

00:05:31.200 forever. They trade with Russia in violation of American sanctions. They trade with Iran, with Venezuela,

00:05:38.240 with pretty much anyone that they want to. And part of their ability to do that comes from the fact that

00:05:44.400 their debt to GDP is quite low for a country of that size. They have a 25 to 35 percent debt to GDP.

00:05:51.760 It fluctuates by year and by crisis. Most of it is domestic. They are in a pretty strong position

00:06:00.960 that they are not that heavily dependent on international financial markets. But that has

00:06:06.240 come at a price, and the price has been very high levels of inflation. They are close to acquiring

00:06:14.800 energy independence. As we've discussed previously on this show, with the collapse of Syria and the

00:06:20.960 possibility of Iraq falling apart, the Turks are going to gain the energy resources of both Iraq and Syria, 0.91

00:06:31.680 northern Iraq at least, and northern Syria. Most of Syria hasn't been explored for oil,

00:06:37.680 so they could find a hell of a lot there. In Iraq, in Kirkuk, that's one of the richest oil regions in the world,

00:06:46.320 very much untapped. They stand to make a lot of gains by controlling northern Iraq.

00:06:52.080 And what we're seeing in Iraq is that the Americans have moved or are in the process of moving

00:06:58.320 Islamic State prisoners from Syria into Iraq. These guys have a habit of breaking out of Iraqi prisons.

00:07:06.000 The political condition of Iraq is terrible. The economic condition of Iraq is terrible.

00:07:10.880 With oil prices being as low as they are, you can easily foresee a crisis there. And then the Turks 1.00

00:07:16.800 would be in a position to step in as the protectors of the Sunni Arabs, but also, ironically enough,

00:07:24.320 the Kurds, or at least part of the Kurds. And that would give them a huge amount of energy wealth,

00:07:30.800 and that would solve the fundamental problem of the Turkish economy, which is that it has to import a

00:07:36.480 lot of energy, and that leads to a current account deficit, that leads to inflation, etc., etc. You know

00:07:42.000 the story. Plus, they have an incredible agricultural capability throughout Turkey. And with the areas

00:07:54.000 around the Tigris and the Euphrates in the north of Syria and the north of Iraq,

00:08:01.040 that can expand even further. And they can develop their food supply even more effectively. And with

00:08:10.160 those populations that are highly fertile and that produce a lot of children, they have additional

00:08:16.720 forces that they can add to the Turkish military, which is already the second biggest military in NATO.

00:08:23.440 So Turkey has all of the constituents there. And they are in the process of working with the Saudis in

00:08:30.240 order to contain Israel, because Israel did something incredibly stupid and recognized Somaliland. 0.93

00:08:36.240 That led the Saudis to panic because they were afraid that the Israelis are trying to control both 0.99

00:08:41.760 entrances of the Red Sea and so threatened Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have a pact with Pakistan now,

00:08:50.560 following the airstrikes on Qatar. And that pact places the Saudis under the Pakistani nuclear umbrella.

00:08:59.840 And you can easily envision a scenario in which the Pakistanis extend the same courtesy to the Turks,

00:09:06.480 with whom they are already very strong strategic military partners, to the extent that Turkey sent an

00:09:13.120 anti-submarine ship to Pakistan in April of last year when the Pakistanis and Indians were having a bit of a tiff.

00:09:20.480 And so you can see that the Turks have a clear pathway towards acquiring nuclear weapons. 0.96

00:09:25.520 And ideologies on their side. The Muslim world is more militant than ever, except in the Arab states of the Gulf. 0.99

00:09:38.720 They have an army in Europe through the migrants. That gives them enormous capability. 1.00

00:09:44.800 And we've seen Turkey building up its capital base very significantly over the last few decades,

00:09:55.040 with the amount of capital formation as a percentage of GDP growing quite rapidly,

00:10:02.720 from around 20% in 2000 to 30% now. And that is obviously cumulative. So every year the Turks are 1.00

00:10:11.680 adding more and more capital. And that has led to Turkey turning from a country that exports

00:10:20.080 20-something percent of GDP. In 2011 it was a lot lower than that. It was around 10-15, yeah,

00:10:27.440 20-15% in 2011, up to 28% in 2024. And so they've become a country with significant amounts of capital,

00:10:40.400 with a lot more military technology. The Bayraktar drone was really a game changer in cheap drone

00:10:47.520 manufacturing. They are quite capable militarily. They have the right ideology and they have enough

00:10:57.520 resources to feed, clothe and equip an army when they choose to do so. And with the Middle East falling

00:11:05.040 apart, with the Turks becoming much more influential in energy-rich countries like Libya, they are very

00:11:12.720 much on their way towards becoming a major player. China is obviously the main rival empire to the West.

00:11:22.320 This is an empire that is largely built on a commercial basis. So unlike the Americans who are constantly 1.00

00:11:31.040 trying to change your values and are trying to tell you about the importance of tolerating homosexuality 0.99

00:11:37.840 and all of that kind of stuff, the Chinese don't give a damn. This is mainly a commercial empire. Its focus 0.99

00:11:46.160 is very strategic. They don't extract tribute from you in the normal way where they just tax you into

00:11:55.520 giving them money. What they do is that they manufacture a lot of things that you need. They sell you these

00:12:03.360 goods. You end up transferring profits and resources to China. And in exchange for these goods, they might

00:12:11.040 take your natural resources, if you're an African country that can't produce very much. And you get this 0.99

00:12:16.880 deal where China gets economic influence, which can translate into political and military influence. You

00:12:25.200 get the Chinese building infrastructure for you. You get cultural exchanges with China where they show you

00:12:33.360 the superiority of their civilization compared to your primitive ways. And China gets to feed its 1.00

00:12:41.600 manufacturing sector with an endless amount of natural resources coming from third world countries that act

00:12:52.800 essentially as markets. They give the Chinese resources, timber, minerals, energy, you name it. And the Chinese

00:13:04.960 get wealth and they export their goods and benefit from these markets. Now China has obviously become the

00:13:14.880 world's only manufacturing superpower. They control around 35% of gross manufacturing production and 29% of value

00:13:28.320 add when it comes to manufacturing. The rest of the world can't really compete. The U.S.

00:13:34.800 is around about half their size in some areas, less in gross production, a third of their size in gross

00:13:42.800 production. Japan shows up, Germany shows up as an important player, but really China is by far the most

00:13:53.280 dominant manufacturer of the world. And this model of non-intervention politically paired with gaining

00:14:03.280 political influence, economic leverage, perhaps in the future access to military bases, and so on and so

00:14:10.480 forth works very well for them. But China has massive vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities of China come from the 0.99

00:14:19.440 sheer size of the Chinese population. And China's resources cannot supply the requisite amounts of food and energy

00:14:29.040 to keep this technology to keep this thing going. And so what do the Chinese do? They invest in places

00:14:35.760 throughout ASEAN, in Myanmar, in Thailand, in Laos. So they're working on linking up Laos and Thailand

00:14:44.480 into Yunnan province in China so that they have a new alternative route through Thailand. They are investing heavily

00:14:55.040 in Myanmar in Myanmar in Burma in order again to get another route that can feed their manufacturing sector

00:15:03.680 while bypassing their vulnerability here in the Strait of Malacca. But the reality is that so long as

00:15:11.040 Taiwan is out of their hands, their ports can be besieged. And they don't really have alternatives to their ports

00:15:19.360 for the import of natural resources and for the export of manufactured goods. This can't be done

00:15:27.360 by land. They're investing a huge amount in land bridges, trying to connect themselves through the

00:15:34.080 Belt and Road Initiative all the way to Hungary, going through Russia, going through Belarus and Poland, and ending up

00:15:43.760 in Hungary and in Poland and in Germany. So they're making that investment. But transport by rail is not yet

00:15:55.600 as efficient as transport by ship. And so this massive naval vulnerability remains.

00:16:01.600 This is one of the many reasons that makes Western policy towards Russia so stupid. Because if there is a 0.99

00:16:13.840 country that can supply China with all of its energy needs and all of its food needs, it's really Russia. 0.99

00:16:23.040 Especially Russia in control of Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the world's largest exporters of wheat.

00:16:31.680 As is Russia. It has enormous agricultural potential. It has some energy potential, but nowhere near as

00:16:40.480 much as Russia. And so what the West has been doing is pushing the Chinese empire and the Russian empire

00:16:49.280 into one another's arms. And they've been doing that by constantly expanding NATO, as we've discussed in

00:16:56.800 previous episodes, NATO expansion took mainly two big phases. In the first phase, NATO expanded to

00:17:05.040 Central Europe and took over Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. And so that was Central Europe in the 0.89

00:17:13.680 hands of NATO. And the second round of expansion was Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states, meaning that

00:17:22.000 Russia was threatened on the Black Sea and Russia was threatened on the Baltic Sea.

00:17:29.120 And then the Ukraine war started. And the obvious conclusion of the Ukraine war was that a country

00:17:35.120 like Russia, which can trade independently with anyone that it wants, as we've seen them evading pretty much

00:17:43.040 all of the sanctions that the West has imposed, which has very significant military capability,

00:17:52.160 not enough to beat NATO arming Ukraine, but still substantial capability with the world's largest

00:18:00.320 nuclear arsenal, which has not just energy and food independence, but abundance and the ability to export

00:18:10.160 those. It's been pushed into a position where it can't sell its abundant natural resource exports anywhere

00:18:19.360 except to China, because it's the only client that's big enough to take these resources with the West having

00:18:26.480 imposed sanctions. And so what the Chinese get is massively discounted Russian energy, Russian food, Russian

00:18:35.200 natural resources that kind of really help solve the biggest problem that they have to become an empire,

00:18:44.160 which is food security and energy security. And you can easily imagine a situation where Central Asia,

00:18:52.480 which also has significant potential in agriculture and energy and significant resources in those,

00:18:59.680 can be taken over by the Chinese militarily if they have to. I think I looked into it and the total

00:19:06.400 population of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan was maybe 40 million, 80 million,

00:19:15.920 something like that. And the Chinese have one and a half billion people sitting around. So while these 0.97

00:19:23.200 are vast countries, the Chinese have the resources to throw at them and they have the industrial 1.00

00:19:30.480 capability to just go in there and develop these countries' resources a lot more and solve the problem

00:19:38.480 that they have with energy and with food. Not to mention that China is engaged in a historic, massive 0.91

00:19:46.720 military buildup enabled by their industrial supremacy. And so China becomes one of the most capable empires

00:19:56.880 that we're going to be dealing with in the future. There are arguments that have been made by people that are

00:20:02.880 smarter than I am that China tends to fall apart after a certain period due to internal dissent. And with Xi Jinping

00:20:11.920 constantly firing his top generals, which we saw again this week, the chief of the armed forces was fired,

00:20:19.600 although don't believe the stories in the Wall Street Journal about him having been a spy for the United States.

00:20:26.800 That's highly questionable in my view. But there is this view that China tends to fall apart after a certain

00:20:34.800 period. And you certainly see significant internal conflict in China, which we as outsiders don't have

00:20:43.200 a lot of visibility on. But somehow I'm not sure that this is real. I think what they're doing is trying

00:20:52.000 to develop all of the areas around them and to go deeper and deeper into Russia to take over the 0.67

00:20:59.200 natural resources that exist in the Russian Far East. And slowly they will become stronger. They have a

00:21:08.480 demographic time bomb, of course, and that affects their ability to field the military. But when your

00:21:15.040 starting point is one and a half billion people, that gives you a bit of runway.

00:21:19.360 That gives you a huge amount of runway. 0.60

00:21:25.760 The big disadvantage that the Chinese have is their neighbors and their neighborhood.

00:21:33.600 They have India with a huge interest in containing them. They have a kind of competition with Turkey 1.00

00:21:41.200 over Central Asia, but that hasn't started yet. They definitely have a competition with Russia over

00:21:47.200 Central Asia. And they have to worry about Japan, obviously, as we've discussed in the past.

00:21:55.040 But having said this, a China-Russia combine is really unstoppable because they get to dominate all of 0.98

00:22:03.920 Central Asia and all of the resources that come from that. And China's industrial machine becomes very

00:22:11.760 well supplied. They still have a vulnerability with shipping, but they have built the world's largest navy by ship count,

00:22:24.000 although it's still half the size of the American navy by tonnage.

00:22:28.800 And that could be a bit misleading because tonnage isn't everything.

00:22:34.960 If you have a lot of assets that you can disperse, you can lose a lot more assets and you can attack from a lot more places.

00:22:41.520 Now, I want to talk a little bit about the Thailand-Cambodia conflict because I haven't seen anybody talk about it too sensibly.

00:22:53.200 If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from The Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - January 27, 2026

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #31 ｜ The Age of Empires

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