In this episode of RealPolitik, I discuss how we are rapidly moving from the perma-crisis to the great emergency, and share some lessons I have learned over my years as an analyst. As usual, as usual, I invite you to comment on what you think I should cover next.
00:00:00.000Hello and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Maudad.
00:00:05.580In this episode, we are trying a little bit of a new format. We're going to break it up into two different segments.
00:00:11.340The first segment is about the acceleration that we are living in and how we are quickly shifting from the perma crisis to the great emergency.
00:00:21.880And I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.
00:00:23.980And the second one is I wanted to share a few of the lessons that I've learned over my years as an analyst.
00:00:30.800And I wanted to discuss those with you and get some of your feedback and your inputs.
00:00:36.000As usual, I invite you to comment. I invite you to tell me what you think I should cover.
00:00:41.420Ask any questions. And I will be looking at those and coming back to you with things that you actually enjoy.
00:00:47.980The state of the world for the last few years has been really something of a bit of a perma crisis.
00:00:54.420Wars in the Middle East, a war in Europe between Russia and Ukraine, the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, instability in Libya,
00:01:04.180the expansion of jihadi movements in the rest of Africa, and then the attempt by Russia and Turkey to kick out France and to stabilize the situation in Africa.
00:01:15.200And this has become a bit of a normal setting for us in the world where we expect that there is some kind of crisis going on somewhere.
00:01:27.800But really, it doesn't end up impacting in Europe and in America.
00:01:33.220It doesn't end up impacting people's day-to-day lives.
00:01:37.360You can go to the grocery store. Prices are more expensive. Your wages are worth less.
00:01:43.140Things aren't doing particularly very well for you, but life continues to hum along with no actual major disruptions,
00:01:53.060not at the scale that you would be experiencing if you were living in Lebanon, if you were living in Libya, if you were living in Iran.
00:02:01.840Your life kind of continues at a normal pace.
00:02:05.600I think we're beginning to see this change, and we're moving from this distant perma-crisis that is affecting the world to something that is more impactful on people's daily lives in the West.
00:02:21.560And I'll want to take a step back and explain a little bit how we got here and what it means going forward.
00:02:33.100Well, the West was living in an amazing level of comfort after the end of the Cold War.
00:02:40.060There were no serious military threats.
00:02:42.660There was nothing to worry about except GDP, economic growth, tinkering a little bit with tax policies, adjusting welfare here and there.
00:02:52.820There were some terrorist attacks, very substantial terrorist attacks, but these get quickly brushed under the carpet in the spirit of don't look back in anger.
00:03:08.660How does this affect you personally, mate?
00:03:10.580That kind of attitude of disregard towards the changes that are happening based on the idea that it isn't affecting you on a daily basis.
00:03:22.980During that period, the West went to war against Russia in the Balkans and in Chechnya and now in Ukraine.
00:03:32.840In the Balkans, the country of Yugoslavia was destroyed partly due to the errors of its own leaders, but partly because NATO saw an opportunity to destroy the bastion of Russian influence in the Balkans with the aim being to weaken Russia and integrate the Balkans fully into the Western sphere of influence.
00:03:59.220So we saw that crisis that ticked over in Bosnia, and during that time, you have to remember, Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah were all working together against the Russians.
00:04:13.040We had the war in Chechnya, which was supported to some extent by the West and by Saudi Arabia, where jihadis based in Russia's Caucasus region went on a campaign aimed at carving,
00:04:29.220carving out some kind of ethnic Muslim republics on the border between the Turkish sphere of influence and the Russian sphere of influence.
00:04:42.220And the idea being that this makes Russia a lot weaker, it threatens it with repeated invasions from the Caucasus, more instability, and could lead to its breakup.
00:04:54.220And in Ukraine, obviously, in 2014, I'm going to explore that in future episodes of RealPolitik, the West supported the overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Kiev through street protests.
00:05:10.440This triggered unrest in the Russian-majority regions of Ukraine.
00:05:14.900This led to a mini-civil war that was then frozen and was reactivated with a full-scale Russian invasion.
00:05:21.420The effect of this series of crises on Russia was really to harden its position to awaken a much stronger form of Russian nationalism,
00:05:33.700to get Putin to focus on more competent government.
00:05:39.060And the result of that was that Russia could challenge the entirety of the West as they armed Ukraine to the teeth.
00:05:47.320And Russia is now in a position where it's fighting the war in Ukraine, and it's slowly winning.
00:06:13.640But the result has been the awakening of Russia.
00:06:16.740In the Muslim world, what we are seeing is something similar.
00:06:21.620We spoke about the creation of the State of Israel.
00:06:24.640We spoke about how this fundamentally destabilized the Muslim world.
00:06:29.760We spoke about how these states in the Middle East were carved out.
00:06:35.040Countries like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, that hadn't really existed in any form as nation-states prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
00:06:46.380The brief 20-year period in which Europe was dominant in the Middle East really led to fundamentally different borders in the region.
00:06:54.040This sense of humiliation, especially at the hands of Israel, given the repeated Arab defeats against Israel,
00:07:04.080ended up leading to what I'm beginning to refer to as the Great Islamic Awakening,
00:07:09.380where now you see that the Muslim world is no longer this broken shell that is looking to Europe to see how it advances.
00:07:19.140Rather, you're seeing countries like Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan asserting an independent line against the West
00:07:30.240and saying that they are geopolitical players in their own right
00:07:34.340and that they are no longer concerned with what the West wants or with what the West thinks.
00:07:40.020Some of them, like Turkey and Pakistan, are working very hard to reduce their dependence on the West.
00:07:51.400In Pakistan's case, this is coming with more dependence on China.
00:07:55.020In Turkey's case, this is coming with a lot more autonomy.
00:07:58.900And we're seeing Turkey and Pakistan cooperating with each other militarily.
00:08:03.660We see them working together to support Azerbaijan against Armenia.
00:08:10.860We see the Turks sending some of their ships to Pakistan to help Pakistan with any potential naval warfare against India.
00:08:24.260And we see a deepening level of technological cooperation that's intended to contain Iran.
00:08:30.400Iran has become an example for other Muslim countries in that it was the first one to have a level of autonomy in its military manufacturing.
00:08:40.240And it was the first one that showed that it could challenge the West.
00:08:45.020In the end, it wasn't successful in its attempt to export the revolution,
00:08:49.520but it did succeed in setting an example that said to the Muslim world,