The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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

00:00:08.120 As has become customary, this is a live episode, so please drop your comments or questions

00:00:13.540 in the chat or on the comments page on the website, and I will do my best to address them.

00:00:20.540 Today, we're going to be talking about the Munich Security Conference, which took place

00:00:25.820 over most of last week, with really the final days being Friday and Saturday, or Thursday,

00:00:32.360 Friday and Saturday, where the big hitters, the country leaders, Secretary Rubio, etc., came

00:00:39.360 and spoke. Now, first, I want to tell you what is the Munich Security Conference and why is

00:00:45.400 it important. The way that the global calendar works is that first you have Davos, sometime

00:00:52.340 usually in January, where the corporations meet with the governments, and it's really

00:00:59.180 corporate-focused for the most part, and they go around and they discuss their priorities

00:01:04.460 and what they expect and what they want and things of that nature. And then afterwards,

00:01:09.900 the governments themselves, particularly at the defense and security level, ship off to

00:01:16.720 Munich and have their own big conference that kind of sets the global security agenda. And this is an

00:01:25.580 old event. It's been happening for 60 years, but it's really been gaining prominence as the government's

00:01:31.500 version of Davos, where they set out, as I said, their security priorities. And now you have

00:01:38.520 participation of the Chinese and of the Indians and of a bunch of other countries. And it gives you a great

00:01:44.720 great deal of insights into the nature of foreign relations. If you will remember from previous

00:01:50.660 episodes, we discussed how in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin

00:01:58.280 pretty much set out his opposition to further NATO expansion and warned that there were going to be

00:02:05.900 consequences. And then the result of that was the 2008 invasion of a big part of Georgia, which sort of

00:02:15.220 ended the possibility of Georgia joining NATO and pretty much put a halt on further NATO expansion.

00:02:24.760 In the 2022 conference, Kamala Harris, formerly the vice president of the United States,

00:02:31.320 went to the Munich Security Conference and more or less said that Ukraine would be joining NATO at some

00:02:38.700 point in the future. And that was really the straw that broke the camel's back and that drove the

00:02:46.480 Russians to decide that, OK, we're going to actually go ahead and reinvade Ukraine, following up on their 0.98

00:02:54.300 intervention in 2014. So it's actually a big deal. And the theme of this conference was really that

00:03:02.560 the global order was collapsing, that the United States cannot be trusted, and that essentially

00:03:09.600 American-European relations were breaking down. And I thought I'd sort of show you a little clip

00:03:17.440 of how things were going. This was from a session between the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

00:03:27.440 and Kayakalas, the essentially foreign minister of the EU, was participating. And this was how she was

00:03:35.000 reacting.

00:03:37.600 Escalation. So what I'm hearing outside of forums like this privately is thank you for America.

00:03:43.640 So she's rolling her eyes at the American ambassador for saying that the Americans should be thanked for

00:03:51.580 their role in ending a bunch of conflicts under President Trump. And she really wasn't having any

00:03:57.780 of it. And it was really like that all through. What you saw was essentially that Britain, Canada,

00:04:05.220 the EU, Australia, all were ganging up against the Americans and against evil Hitlerite dictator, 0.71

00:04:14.160 Donald Trump. Some of it was comical. Some of it was genuinely comical. Here you have Kayakalas.

00:04:21.380 I think it's worth listening to again. Let's do this.

00:04:25.160 We hear the call to action. Europeans assemble. And let me take more inspiration from the Marvel

00:04:31.860 universe. Heroes are made by paths, are made by the paths they choose, not the powers that they are

00:04:40.680 graced with. Europe's path is clear. Defend Europe, secure our neighborhood and build partnerships

00:04:48.480 across the globe.

00:04:49.600 I think what somebody who's the foreign minister of the EU is taking her cues and her ideas from

00:05:00.100 Marvel, we really have a big problem. Just saying, it seems like a pretty serious problem

00:05:07.760 that this is the level of intellectual discourse. And it was really like that throughout the conference.

00:05:15.880 Keir Starmer obviously spoke at the event. Macron spoke at the event. Mertz of Germany spoke.

00:05:26.280 And they were broadly in agreement that the world was back in the 1930s. And to the extent that there

00:05:33.600 was disagreement, it was over who was the new Hitler. Was it Putin or was it Donald Trump?

00:05:40.320 Trump. They were attacking the far left and the far right and insisting that the only solution

00:05:48.600 is really for the globalist governments in Canada, the EU, Britain, Australia to fully align with one

00:05:58.740 another and to coordinate their actions completely to cut off the threat from any kind of populism.

00:06:07.320 And you always see this language and this attack on populism, by which they mean popularity.

00:06:13.480 So they're defending our democracy. But what they mean by that is more or less their democracy,

00:06:21.640 them remaining in power, them remaining in charge. And so to enable them to do this,

00:06:27.640 the big focus was on attacking Trump and attacking any kind of nativist politics that would try

00:06:37.180 to put the peoples of the countries that these individuals govern ahead of the special interests

00:06:45.420 that actually control the people in charge. And so one of the big themes of the conference was the

00:06:52.320 importance of Europe being able to go it alone and being able to defend itself without backing from

00:07:00.520 the United States. This is clearly deeply unrealistic, and I'm going to explain why.

00:07:09.400 The first reason that this is highly unrealistic is that essentially the countries of the EU have

00:07:15.800 fundamentally diverging interests. It's the leaders of the EU who believe that their interests are fully

00:07:22.600 aligned. But if you think just in terms of a map, if you look at a map of Spain and Poland,

00:07:29.960 the threats that are facing Spain are fundamentally coming from North Africa. Obviously, that's what the 1.00

00:07:35.080 geography of Spain dictates. The threat facing Poland fundamentally comes from Russia. 0.91

00:07:41.080 And the idea that Russia and Spain should be working together to face this common threat 0.53

00:07:45.880 is just laughable at the face of it. It doesn't really make any kind of sense. Plus, even when you look at

00:07:57.160 internal EU relations, you pretty much see that the relationship between the Germans and the French,

00:08:05.480 for example, is really completely breaking down. And you saw that with the photoshoot that happened

00:08:15.560 between Macron, Starmer and Mertz, where essentially, Starmer and Mertz were on one side,

00:08:22.440 and Macron was the odd one out looking deeply embarrassed and very much out of place.

00:08:28.920 They childishly refused to shake hands with Macron and tried to put him on the side. And every time he

00:08:35.240 tried to say something, they'd sort of try to ignore him. Why is that? Because although the Munich

00:08:43.640 Security Conference was full of talk about how European countries should centralize their military

00:08:49.400 procurement, how they shouldn't have 10 different models of tanks and 20 different models of destroyers

00:08:56.840 and whatever models of armoured fighting vehicles and so on and so forth, the actual way that it works

00:09:06.840 is that when push comes to shove, none of these countries is willing to give up its own position.

00:09:11.880 So the problem with the French is that they insist on having full autonomy in their own military supply

00:09:20.040 chain. The French are the only European country that build their own aircraft, they build their own 0.61

00:09:25.400 destroyers, their own one aircraft carrier, their own fighting vehicles, their own missiles and missile

00:09:32.600 interceptors, and everything of that sort, because they believe that they should remain autonomous no matter

00:09:38.520 what. And so when they talk about centralizing military procurement, as they did repeatedly

00:09:47.320 in the Munich Security Conference, I mean, Starmer was repeating this, Mertz was repeating this,

00:09:52.760 and even Macron was repeating this. When they keep on repeating this message, it just completely rings hollow.

00:10:00.200 Because when push comes to shove, two things happen. First, the French insist that they will have full 1.00

00:10:06.200 autonomy over their own supply chains, and they won't concede anything to anyone. And the second thing

00:10:12.120 that happens is that at the military level, these countries refuse to place their militaries

00:10:20.360 under anybody else's command, which is what would be required. And then there's another reason here,

00:10:26.200 which is that when you're thinking about military technology, it has to be specific to where you're

00:10:35.480 fighting. So that's why Russians always built lighter tanks, where the Americans built heavy tanks. 0.66

00:10:43.400 The Russians built lighter tanks not because they couldn't amass enough steel. The Russians built lighter

00:10:49.000 tanks because they know that the tanks are going to have to go over snow, and that there has to be some

00:10:55.800 proportionality or some relationship between the weight of the tank and the terrain that is going over.

00:11:03.080 And so Russian tanks tend to be 10-12 tons lighter than American tanks, meaning that they are fit for the

00:11:11.480 climate that they're fighting in. And if you wanted to build tanks for Spain or tanks for Britain, they will have to

00:11:18.280 adapt to the local environment that they're in. So it just simply never actually works.

00:11:24.760 Looking at some of the other themes that they were talking about here, and I'm just having to glance a

00:11:31.960 little bit at the notes, it really seemed like the objective of all of this was to throw as many

00:11:39.240 spanners in the wheels when it comes to what Trump was trying to do in order to paralyze him and in order to

00:11:46.600 make sure that he doesn't succeed, especially when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine war.

00:11:52.360 So you heard a huge amount of discussion about a couple of themes.

00:11:57.880 One of the themes was the importance of Europe maintaining its digital autonomy.

00:12:03.880 And what they mean by that is a rebuttal to the pressure that has been coming from the Americans,

00:12:09.400 insisting that the EU stop regulating free speech to the suffocating extent that it has been doing over

00:12:17.000 the last few years. And I think we just saw Starmer a couple of hours ago, tweeting about how protecting

00:12:24.200 the kids is a red line, and he won't allow social media companies to do anything that threatens the

00:12:30.280 welfare of children. This is the same Starmer that's been happy to look the other way when it comes to the

00:12:37.400 grooming gangs in Britain. So you can see how seriously you can take him. Macron repeated the

00:12:43.400 same message on digital autonomy. He and Mertz had an event a few months ago, emphasizing the same idea.

00:12:51.560 And what they mean by that is that they want to maintain the ability to regulate AI and control it,

00:12:58.840 and to regulate social media and control it. Because one of the themes that they kept on repeating was

00:13:05.160 how important it is that they be able to police speech in the way that they find fitting.

00:13:11.720 And in parenthesis, that kind of reminds you of the Romanian elections last year, which they pretty much

00:13:17.800 stole by alleging that the Russians had instigated some kind of campaign on Instagram to influence the

00:13:25.320 election. And it turns out the campaign was instigated by the losing candidate in the

00:13:30.600 Romanian elections, just so he could accuse his rival of receiving Russian backing. And that's the same

00:13:39.720 playbook that they used against Donald Trump in his first term, with a Russia collusion hoax.

00:13:45.160 So you see this emphasis coming out constantly out of the Munich Security Conference, that the

00:13:50.760 Europeans need to control the digital space more effectively. Meaning that they need to be able to

00:13:56.520 define American companies whenever they want to, when they don't comply. Meaning that they need to be

00:14:01.960 able to go after X and 4chan, and what's that other thing called Kiwi Farms, and so on and so forth,

00:14:12.200 to make sure that they have full control over the discourse. So that really came out. And they just

00:14:22.600 don't have any other choice. And the way that these guys see it is that Trump is an existential threat to

00:14:31.880 the EU regime in total. Because as I've argued in previous episodes, what Trump really wants to do at this

00:14:38.120 stage is to break the EU, even though the EU initially was very much an American-sponsored project,

00:14:46.200 because the Americans thought that they could control Europe a lot more effectively if they had the EU.

00:14:51.960 It's just that now the EU has turned into a golem, essentially, which has way too much power,

00:14:59.800 way too much control over regulation, and therefore can't do very much.

00:15:04.440 Another theme that we saw coming out of the Munich Security Conference was that they need to be able

00:15:14.360 to have less protectionism. Now this is genuinely hilarious. The premise of the EU was that it would

00:15:23.160 be a protectionist block for certain industries. And if the EU was to try to be less protectionist over

00:15:30.360 things like farming, it would pretty much face a full-on revolt from people like the French farmers, 0.96

00:15:37.240 and as we're already seeing from the Dutch farmers. So they're talking about being less protectionist,

00:15:45.080 but this is by far the most regulated piece of real estate in the world. Nobody is more regulated than the

00:15:53.560 EU. Nobody is more protectionist than the EU. It's just that they're using that as a vector of attack

00:15:59.880 against Donald Trump, because he's trying to use tariffs in order to extract concessions from the

00:16:06.600 Europeans. And you constantly see this, where these guys pretty much say anything, regardless of whether or

00:16:15.080 not it's true, in order to defend their interests. That's all that they do. You saw Europe complaining

00:16:25.000 an enormous amount over Greenland, and over Trump wanting to take Greenland. I'd have to argue that this

00:16:33.560 is valid to some extent, because you can't just grab the territory of another Christian country.

00:16:41.080 You have to buy it, you have to acquire it in a legitimate way. So Trump kind of threatening to

00:16:47.480 use force on Greenland wasn't really a good idea, and he backtracked from that. But they will never

00:16:53.640 forgive him for it. And it's not that they will never forgive him for it because he wanted to take

00:16:58.120 Greenland. It's that they won't forgive him for it because he's a threat to the status quo.

00:17:01.880 And the Trump example is really a problem for them. So we also saw, as I said, a lot of focus on

00:17:15.080 developing defense industries. And they're looking to India and Brazil and the Gulf and maybe even China

00:17:22.600 to partner with them on building up their defense industrial base. The issue here is that China has

00:17:31.240 pretty much eaten Europe's lunch. I mean, what China has done with its industrial base was to grow it to

00:17:38.200 such an extent that it's become literally the world's manufacturing superpower, bigger than the next 10

00:17:44.440 countries combined. And that's why the Americans are pushing to consolidate over Europe and Japan,

00:17:50.040 and to some extent, South Korea, because they need that industrial base if they're going to compete with

00:17:55.240 the Chinese at any point in the short term. Europe, instead of reading this correctly and realizing that

00:18:01.240 their interests are naturally aligned with their cultural allies, who are, at the end of the day,

00:18:08.680 the Americans. These are the natural civilizational ally of Europe and the natural civilizational leader of

00:18:17.160 Christendom as a whole, just because of the size of the United States. Instead of doing that, they're 0.79

00:18:23.880 looking to partner with India. And they're looking to partner with one of the most corrupt countries 1.00

00:18:30.360 in Latin America, Brazil. And they're looking to partner with the Gulf, which is, at the end of the

00:18:35.640 day, your civilizational rival, no matter how you spin it. Plus, China has pretty much eaten Europe's 0.92

00:18:42.760 lunch. What China has done was start from very low-level manufacturing, low-skill manufacturing, 0.68

00:18:49.240 to become the technology leader in a whole range of industries with enormous defense applications.

00:18:55.880 They now have their own lithography machines to build microchips. They have their own microchip

00:19:02.200 manufacturing. They're leading in all kinds of genetics-based medicine, in all kinds of

00:19:09.720 medical manufacturing, etc. They're leading in all kinds of optics and fibers and things that are

00:19:16.120 absolutely necessary for you to build modern weapon systems and modern communications.

00:19:22.520 So the Europeans are looking at this from the completely wrong angle. And you see that throughout

00:19:28.920 in the Munich conference, and you see zero relationship with reality. Like, the extent to

00:19:36.280 which these guys are dissociated from reality is insane. And the Canadians and the Australians are 1.00

00:19:42.360 fully in on the EU strategy. And they're trying to find a way to back each other in what is essentially

00:19:51.000 a rebellion of the provinces against the imperial center. That's the way to think about it. As I think

00:19:59.240 it was the Danish Prime Minister who said it, or the Danish Foreign Minister who said it, it's one thing to be

00:20:05.800 happy vassals. It's another thing to be miserable slaves. And with Trump changing the paradigm when it comes to 0.59

00:20:15.720 the way that the West should be operating, they are just in rebellion. You also saw a lot of talk about

00:20:25.560 technological autonomy in the EU and technological independence. So not just digital, but everything

00:20:31.320 to do with supply chains and manufacturing. And here a couple of thoughts come to mind. First, energy.

00:20:39.000 You can't want to build a manufacturing base and have green energy. A strong manufacturing base requires cheap,

00:20:47.800 reliable, reliable, predictable energy. Renewables are not in that picture. You can't operate an industrial

00:20:54.440 base based on wind and solar, because wind and solar are both incredibly unreliable and unpredictable.

00:21:01.880 So this is by definition impossible. But you saw them constantly harping on about climate.

00:21:08.120 And you see them consistently committed to this agenda, which fundamentally serves China.

00:21:12.760 China. No sense of reality. Second, if you want innovation and technology, you have to deregulate. 1.00

00:21:21.160 And you have to lower taxes. And you have to make entrepreneurship rewarding.

00:21:26.280 And this is impossible for them to do. Because it means that most of the jobs of the EU are unwanted,

00:21:34.440 because the only jobs that you get within the EU are regulatory jobs. So these guys aren't going to do

00:21:40.840 what's required to cut off the branch that they're sitting on, in order to achieve the objectives

00:21:48.520 that they're saying they want to achieve. If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters,

00:21:54.200 head to our website where you can find more.

00:22:05.240 important,

00:22:07.080 of course,

00:22:09.640 I want to also say that 1940-2015

00:22:11.640 will help a novel changer.

PREVIEW： Realpolitik #34 ｜ The End of NATO

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