TRIGGERnometry - Pinchas Landau： Why the Middle East is in Chaos

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissin.

00:00:08.860 And this is a show for you if you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects

00:00:13.380 they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:19.660 Our absolutely fantastic guest this week is an independent economic and political consultant.

00:00:25.300 Pinkas Landau, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:26.920 Thank you very much. Great to be here.

00:00:28.640 It is great to have you here. Thanks so much for coming. We've seen you talking about many different things over the years, and we were so glad you could make it. For anyone who, unlike us, does not know who you are, just tell everybody, who are you? How have you come to be sitting in this chair? What's been your journey through life?

00:00:44.140 Okay, very briefly. I was born in London some years ago, emigrated to Israel in 1976 after

00:00:53.720 getting a degree from LSE. I've been living in Israel for all that time. I have been working as

00:01:00.840 an independent consultant for over 20 years, 22 years, something like that, in macroeconomics,

00:01:07.880 an increasingly political risk analysis of Israel and the Middle East, have always been very

00:01:15.280 interested in current affairs in history, in British and European history, have been on and

00:01:22.900 off at Kilconomics in Ireland since it started in 2009, which is where we met. And I visit London

00:01:30.600 frequently, usually three or four times a year, so I'm fairly plugged into what's going on here.

00:01:36.140 Well, you mentioned being based in Jerusalem and the Middle East. As you said just before we started the interview, it seems to be kicking off. And you said wherever you stick a pin on the map, something's happening. So give us a broad overview for people who are, I mean, it's going to take about half an hour just to give us a superficial view of it. But give us a broad overview of the things that are happening now in the Middle East.

00:01:58.840 okay um this is you know really complicated and difficult and broad overview you start with the

00:02:07.060 fact that the dominant theme in the middle east today is that there is a an intensifying struggle

00:02:14.260 between the two key forms of islam which are sunni islam and shiite islam and without going

00:02:21.540 into the religion and theology what matters is that the sunnis are the vast majority um the key

00:02:29.720 sunni states are egypt turkey and saudi arabia saudi arabia is important because uh it is the

00:02:37.380 site or in saudi arabia the sites of the key muslim or islamic uh cities of mecca medina and

00:02:45.340 the, that's where the, that's where Muhammad lived and so on. Shiite Islam is centered on Iran.

00:02:52.620 Iran underwent a revolution in 1979 and became a Shiite theocracy, which it means that it's run

00:03:01.320 by religious leaders who have a very extreme version of Shiite Islam, which never existed

00:03:08.260 in the past, and they are engaged in seeking to export their religious revolution throughout the

00:03:14.800 Middle East, and that is causing a great deal of trouble pretty much everywhere.

00:03:20.040 That is a broad overview.

00:03:21.580 The second thing you need to know about the Middle East today is that the mega event of

00:03:26.400 the last decade is the strategic decision by the United States to not entirely withdraw,

00:03:33.760 but to considerably downgrade the Middle East in the context of American foreign policy.

00:03:38.980 This began under Obama.

00:03:40.600 It's been continued by Trump.

00:03:41.920 It will, virtually everybody thinks that it will continue, irrespective of who the next president is.

00:03:49.600 So we're seeing a change, a fundamental change in American policy.

00:03:53.140 And what that means in very simple terms is that the sheriff has left town.

00:03:58.080 And that means that all the other players who were previously constrained by the existence and activity of the sheriff are now much less constrained.

00:04:08.980 And where does Israel come into all of this?

00:04:11.920 Israel is, interestingly, is much more sidelined by these developments, whereas if you go back to the 70s, 80s, now you go back to the 20th century, second half of the 20th century, the struggle between Israel and its neighbors and Israel and the Palestinians was very much at the center of Middle Eastern events.

00:04:35.100 This has changed very dramatically in the 21st century.

00:04:39.180 So, Israel is much more on the sidelines.

00:04:43.100 Israel-Palestine is far, far less important than it was in the view of pretty much everybody

00:04:49.760 in the Middle East.

00:04:51.600 And what we have seen in recent years is that Israel has strengthened considerably its relationship

00:04:58.620 with many of the Sunni states, notably Egypt.

00:05:02.960 now increasingly Saudi Arabia, albeit still clandestinely, and other Persian Gulf states

00:05:11.080 such as Oman and the UAE. So all of the countries which feel threatened by Iran, of which Israel is

00:05:19.440 along with Saudi Arabia at the top of the list because the Iranian revolution has set as its

00:05:25.380 goal to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. So Israel has been engaged in a struggle with Iran

00:05:31.640 for some decades, which has become much more intense in recent years. And consequently,

00:05:38.260 Israel is finding common ground with many of the Sunni states who are also threatened by Iran.

00:05:46.440 So Israel's position has changed dramatically and in some senses become stronger because it is

00:05:53.920 part of a regional quasi-alliance. And why do you think that America supports this withdrawal

00:06:03.280 in the Middle East? Because normally, you know, America had a very strong presence,

00:06:08.180 like you said, but why is it now they're going, right, no more, we want out?

00:06:13.280 This is a reaction to, first and foremost, the invasion of Iraq, which proved to be a

00:06:20.220 Very, very costly, costly in both the financial and human sense and in the political sense.

00:06:28.160 So after 9-11, the Americans invaded Afghanistan, which seemed to go very well,

00:06:34.760 but the object was to destroy the Taliban movement there, which they failed to do.

00:06:39.660 And then Bush, for whatever reasons, decided to invade Iraq and remove the Saddam Hussein regime,

00:06:48.580 which militarily was easily accomplished, but what then turned out was that they had no follow-up plan.

00:06:54.760 So the Americans made very serious blunders in the first decade of this century.

00:07:01.020 And in the current decade, what we've seen is a tremendous reaction to that

00:07:04.340 on the part of the general public and most of the leadership.

00:07:09.540 They don't see, they regret some of the things they've done.

00:07:13.620 They think they were counterproductive.

00:07:16.120 That's one way of putting it.

00:07:18.580 From a foreign policy perspective, they're very counterproductive.

00:07:23.040 They did not achieve their goals in a strategic sense.

00:07:28.440 And they – look, it goes much deeper than that.

00:07:34.480 In American culture, American culture is very black and white, as you've seen in many contexts.

00:07:42.120 and Americans tend to say,

00:07:48.320 okay, we're going to go in and do this

00:07:50.260 or do something somewhere

00:07:52.420 and if it doesn't work, they leave.

00:07:54.020 I'll give you a very different example

00:07:58.620 but it's very indicative, right?

00:08:00.920 In the 1990s, in the decade of the 1990s,

00:08:04.200 Merrill Lynch, which was then the biggest brokerage company

00:08:07.060 in the United States,

00:08:08.880 twice decided to go into Canada,

00:08:11.860 right not talk about somewhere far away they decided to establish themselves in canada

00:08:15.640 they did it they said no that somebody else came in that's a mistake we're losing money we're

00:08:20.600 leaving a few years later now we really want to be in canada went back into canada no it's not

00:08:26.140 working to leave it's a mindset which um to europeans is very strange uh very short term

00:08:34.280 very kind of bottom line oriented but that's how they work and pincus do you think it's also as

00:08:41.800 well, that the Americans swallowed this idea that you can import democracy everywhere. All you need

00:08:47.860 to do, overthrow the regime, put in democracy. Hey, presto, you've got a democratic state. And

00:08:52.940 what Iraq showed them is that this was a load of nonsense. Absolutely. Yes.

00:08:59.720 See, I do get some things right. Except looking at the wrong camera. It's that one over there.

00:09:04.880 looking for a camera to look into i'm definitely always over there um well because one of the

00:09:15.160 things i find interesting you're talking about how israel is essentially building relationships

00:09:19.260 with the sunni states it's almost like you've got perfect multiculturalism in the middle east

00:09:24.420 you've got the jews and the muslims working together uh you haven't got any anything perfect

00:09:29.520 in the Middle East, let alone multiculturalism.

00:09:33.640 The only place, arguably, in the Middle East

00:09:36.300 where you have any kind of functional multiculturalism

00:09:39.060 is in Israel, where there's a large Muslim majority

00:09:41.880 who are increasingly integrated into the economy, finally.

00:09:46.500 Muslim minority, right?

00:09:47.940 As a minority, right, and in Parliament

00:09:49.660 and in the general, in the system, and so on.

00:09:52.780 Israel is the only country in the Middle East

00:09:54.420 where the Christian minority is not only hanging in there,

00:09:58.380 but actually thriving to some degree and not being driven out as it is in virtually every other country in the Middle East.

00:10:07.700 So in many respects, multiculturalism insofar as it exists in the Middle East is very much an Israeli phenomenon.

00:10:17.460 And that's just in the kind of cultural religious thing.

00:10:20.340 And, of course, you have the fact that gays in Israel are a clear movement who are working for their rights and are accepted and so on, which is, again, stands in somewhat sharp contradistinction to the situation in many other countries.

00:10:34.800 I love the way, the delicate way in which you put that.

00:10:37.440 Well, let's do it.

00:10:38.660 To put it more crudely, they're not being thrown off buildings in Israel and like pretty much everywhere else in the Middle East.

00:10:43.100 Yes, that is correct.

00:10:43.700 Yeah.

00:10:45.060 Yes, we could go much further.

00:10:47.380 That is correct.

00:10:48.360 Yeah.

00:10:48.620 And so, Pincus, why is it, right, I go on my Facebook timeline, many of whom are populated by left-wing liberals, and they portray to me that Israel is a great evil of the world, and the reason why the Middle East is so unstable.

00:11:04.400 Why does Israel have this reputation, and is it in any way justified?

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00:11:38.480 this is now you're kind of digging deep okay um the sources of the left liberal

00:11:49.040 deliberate misperception and miss uh um the way it's present mispresentation of

00:11:57.660 israel israeli culture and so on is um a fascinating phenomenon um because uh if you

00:12:06.440 go back 40 or 50 years, right, in the 60s and 70s of previous century, Israel was one

00:12:14.200 of the left's darlings for numerous reasons, but this has changed.

00:12:21.460 Now, you know, we could spend, if you had six, seven hours, we could spend a lot of

00:12:27.480 time drilling down.

00:12:28.800 The number of viewers who would still be with us after the second hour would be in the

00:12:33.140 single digits.

00:12:33.680 From the Israeli point of view and increasingly from the point of view of Jews across Europe and indeed now in the United States is that the left liberal demonization of Israel is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism and that it should be seen in that light.

00:12:52.260 This is just a kind of modern version of, or an updated version of, very ancient anti-Semitic tropes, and this is a major issue, and arguably the major issue facing Jewish communities throughout the Western world, and nowhere more so than the United Kingdom,

00:13:13.880 where we have a formerly mainstream social democratic party which was for many many years

00:13:22.900 very had very strong and positive relations with the labor movement in israel

00:13:28.340 has been taken over by the hard left and is now in the view of most people not just most jews

00:13:37.060 Most people in the UK is overtly anti-Semitic, and they cover it up with this sheen of, no, it's only about Israel, but no one accepts that anymore.

00:13:52.980 So this is a major, major issue.

00:13:57.540 It is not anymore subject to rational analysis.

00:14:02.340 In other words, we can go through all the facts and figures about the things I was talking about, multiculturalism and many, many economic and social and religious and on and on and on.

00:14:15.860 And it doesn't make any difference because it's become a dogma.

00:14:20.840 And that is a major problem.

00:14:23.700 So you're of the view that the labor movement has become anti-Semitic in this country?

00:14:28.440 The Labour Party in the UK has become anti-Semitic.

00:14:32.680 I mean, I'm just an observer, but you have seen the writers and other groups

00:14:39.220 make these proclamations, and I think that is now the mainstream view, as far as I can judge.

00:14:47.980 Well, 87% of the Jewish Chronicle put out a poll recently saying that 87% of British Jews

00:14:53.160 think that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-Semitic.

00:14:54.820 Oh, well, yes. In other words, the Jews are convinced of it, right, to the point that

00:15:01.100 many friends of mine are taking the line that, yes, I remain, and I want Britain to remain in

00:15:08.600 the EU, but that is no longer the issue. The issue is the need to vote against Corbyn and

00:15:16.440 prevent Labour getting more of their candidates in, because the Labour Party has eliminated all

00:15:23.580 its Jewish MPs, and in many cases put in problematic candidates, and therefore you

00:15:31.260 will find that the entire Jewish community in this country is engaged to an extent that I've

00:15:37.980 never seen before, right, with the rabbinic and lay leadership saying, you've got to get out,

00:15:42.860 you've got to vote, vote for whomever in your constituency has got the best chance of defeating

00:15:47.780 the Labour candidate because Labour is anti-Semitic, and this is accepted by everybody.

00:15:52.680 So we're in an unprecedented situation here.

00:15:57.200 And when you think there is a strong tradition in the Jewish community of being Labour, left-leaning...

00:16:03.220 Absolutely, absolutely. The majority of British Jews voted Labour.

00:16:08.120 The older ones for reasons to do with a generation or two ago, the younger ones for reasons to do with today's...

00:16:14.160 But they're absolutely right.

00:16:16.360 By the way, let me ask you this. Why do you think it is that Jews tended to vote for left-leaning parties?

00:16:22.440 Because normally you expect a community that's thriving, that's economically quite successful.

00:16:28.040 As people get wealthier, they tend to move towards the conservative end of the spectrum.

00:16:32.340 Jews seem to be the exception to that trend.

00:16:34.600 Is that fair to say?

00:16:36.060 Well, first of all, I don't claim to have real in-depth knowledge.

00:16:41.100 But what I would say is that there has certainly been a very significant shift in others.

00:16:46.300 I got about 50 years when I was a kid.

00:16:48.020 So the percentage resulting in Labour was much higher than it would be today if Tony Blair was a candidate.

00:16:55.780 So there has been a shift to do with moving up on the socioeconomic rankings and so on.

00:17:02.320 Nevertheless, having said that, there is still a very strong affinity and historic relationship with Labour,

00:17:12.620 which has only been ruptured these last few years since Corbyn became leader.

00:17:16.600 And coming back to the Middle East, one of the things that's happened recently, of course, is the change in Saudi Arabia with Mohammed bin Salman taking over.

00:17:26.580 He seems to be a whole new creature, if I can put it that way.

00:17:31.340 And part of maybe a broader thing that we'll talk about, which is the emergence of these very strong men, generally men, leaders around the world.

00:17:38.640 What do you make of him and the impact that he might have on the Middle East?

00:17:41.800 he um well he is having a major impact in many respects many different ways so within saudi

00:17:51.580 arabia he is leading a push towards greater social uh liberalization but at the same time

00:17:59.440 he has and is behaved and behaving like a um a medieval monarch and saudi arabia is a medieval

00:18:11.500 country it's important to understand that and you can't judge it by any western standards because

00:18:18.200 they're just not relevant so if you know your history in britain france and so your medieval

00:18:25.120 british history with king henry's and john and richard and all the stuff so you had a king

00:18:33.320 who was uh sometimes stronger sometimes weak and you had barons and lords and so on around the

00:18:40.160 country and each of these guys really ran their own thief in the medieval system and the king

00:18:45.520 would try to get taxes in terms of money in terms of produce and if he needed to go to war then he

00:18:55.600 would say you know you've got to supply so many men and you right so it wasn't the king ran the

00:19:01.200 whole country it was very much decentralized and if you apply that model to Saudi Arabia you have

00:19:09.800 some understanding of what's going on right he even though he is the king uh he has difficulty

00:19:16.760 imposing his ideas on the entire royal family which is a very large and complex um group of

00:19:25.060 people uh and beyond that there are many there are tribes and these tribal units together comprise

00:19:33.920 I saw the army and the armed forces, and there are business entities, business groups.

00:19:41.600 One of the most famous is the Bin Laden family.

00:19:44.760 Yeah, they're pretty famous.

00:19:45.880 Came to prominence because one of them decided not to pursue a business career that went

00:19:54.220 in a different direction, but they are a very big commercially-oriented family, nothing

00:20:00.320 to do with terrorism aspect.

00:20:02.460 So, Saudi Arabia is a very complex place, and he is trying to wrench it out of where it was, socially and particularly economically, reliance on oil and so on, and force it in a different direction.

00:20:13.260 And that is very difficult to do in a very conservative country.

00:20:18.500 And he's doing this whilst being engaged in what is a very deep-seated struggle against Iran and Shiite Islam.

00:20:35.740 And he's doing it with the American defense umbrella and fading away.

00:20:41.840 and so he has enormous problems

00:20:44.520 apart from those

00:20:46.780 stemming from the fact

00:20:48.600 that he's young and immature and so on

00:20:50.480 he has objective problems

00:20:51.740 and going to Israel at the moment

00:20:53.960 back there, by the way you might not

00:20:56.560 know this, one of the most offensive things about

00:20:58.320 Simon Bin Laden, do you know this?

00:21:00.120 He used to be an Arsenal fan

00:21:01.300 massive Arsenal fan

00:21:03.320 one of the main reasons I disliked him

00:21:05.400 anyway, but

00:21:06.380 you didn't have any other problems with him?

00:21:08.400 yeah, yeah

00:21:09.520 Yeah, he's one of the Arsenal season ticket holders.

00:21:13.520 He used to live just around the corner from there.

00:21:15.260 Anyway, but there is a major figure in Israeli politics at the moment

00:21:19.640 who's in a little bit of bother.

00:21:21.320 Could you explain what the charges are against him

00:21:23.680 and what the impact that's going to be

00:21:25.700 if he's found guilty on the Israeli state?

00:21:30.320 Okay.

00:21:31.740 I love the way you sigh before answering every question

00:21:34.520 because we're asking you these big questions about a region

00:21:37.580 that you would probably need a three-month

00:21:39.740 lecture series to address, and

00:21:41.660 we're giving you about five seconds to do it.

00:21:43.880 Yeah, but it makes life much easier

00:21:45.560 because you have to kind of

00:21:47.680 compress it into soundbites,

00:21:50.120 and you'll have to take

00:21:51.720 your leave, as it were, right? Because each one of these...

00:21:54.760 So,

00:21:55.660 Netanyahu

00:21:56.760 has a long political career

00:21:59.920 and long career as prime minister, and he's been

00:22:01.860 prime minister for over ten and a half years

00:22:04.000 non-stop,

00:22:06.040 and before that he was prime minister

00:22:08.800 for two or three years

00:22:09.780 said we've now reached the end of the road

00:22:12.580 now you want me

00:22:14.800 to relate to the legal stuff and the

00:22:16.680 charges and this and that and the other

00:22:18.460 but I regard all that as very secondary

00:22:20.480 he has

00:22:22.980 been indicted finally

00:22:24.440 on a bunch of charges

00:22:26.340 which any or all of which

00:22:28.860 could be found guilty or not guilty etc

00:22:30.980 and nobody's

00:22:32.880 going to wait for that

00:22:33.920 legal process to play out.

00:22:37.900 Netanyahu

00:22:38.500 in political terms has

00:22:40.640 passed

00:22:42.760 his sell-by date.

00:22:46.180 For

00:22:46.820 many reasons,

00:22:49.460 the most obvious

00:22:50.700 of which is that he's been in power over

00:22:52.440 10 years,

00:22:54.500 most of the Israeli

00:22:56.700 public is tired of him.

00:22:59.040 They're extremely tired of his

00:23:00.680 wife. That's a

00:23:01.680 It's a separate story, but it's very, very important.

00:23:07.160 She's an eminence creed.

00:23:08.580 She has enormous power over him, and she is involved in many, many political decisions.

00:23:19.360 So he is now, as I said, at the end of the road.

00:23:24.780 What is important is that this year, right, let's just not go through the whole thing.

00:23:31.160 This year there have been two elections, neither of which he won.

00:23:34.780 He did fairly well, but he didn't win, and he wasn't able to put together,

00:23:38.520 to reestablish a coalition which he would lead.

00:23:41.600 Sounds a bit like British politics over the last nine years, doesn't it?

00:23:44.440 Okay, but British politics are neophytes in this coalition stuff, right?

00:23:49.560 In Israel, it's the norm.

00:23:51.180 Yeah.

00:23:52.700 So his political power has considerably been constrained,

00:23:58.000 and it is waning and he is going downhill.

00:24:01.160 What is important now, now means today, this week, because of the technicalities and complications of the constitutional and political situation, is that in order to get rid of him and save themselves, the senior Likud people need to find somebody else, basically make a putsch, depose him and bring in somebody else.

00:24:28.480 And they're trying to muster the guts to do that.

00:24:32.340 But it's very difficult.

00:24:33.580 He's very entrenched.

00:24:34.460 He's got a lot of loyalists and so on.

00:24:37.180 If that doesn't happen this week or next week,

00:24:39.940 then Israel will be doomed to have a third election within 12 months.

00:24:45.300 But Likud will very likely do pretty badly or worse even than they did last.

00:24:50.760 They'll lose more seats.

00:24:52.100 So Netanyahu is on the way out.

00:24:54.140 That's the bottom line, however you slice and dice it.

00:24:56.680 And the legal stuff is of relevance, but, you know, whether he's found guilty and whether he goes to jail, that's way down the road.

00:25:06.420 That's not important.

00:25:07.240 Let's not dive too deep into that.

00:25:08.980 And plus, by the time this video goes out, we will know what has actually happened.

00:25:12.960 So we'll see if those forecasts are accurate.

00:25:16.320 But if we take a broader step back and talk about the strong men leaders, there seems to, am I right in saying that around the world,

00:25:24.740 we have seen a trend of consolidation of power in China.

00:25:28.740 You know, Donald Trump is a very, I mean, in this country, we've got a competition of beta males.

00:25:33.040 But apart from that, apart from that, we do seem to have this around the world.

00:25:38.960 Obviously, Putin is very strong right now and all around the world.

00:25:42.460 Do you see a trend there?

00:25:43.820 And if you do, what is it caused by?

00:25:48.000 Yes, there's clearly a trend.

00:25:49.740 And it's a trend only in certain areas and not in others.

00:25:52.580 so that

00:25:54.300 Netanyahu is an interesting example

00:25:56.880 just in the Middle East

00:25:59.120 in the immediate area

00:26:00.280 and the Middle East is a region

00:26:02.980 where you always had strong men

00:26:04.860 the late unlamented

00:26:07.140 Saddam Hussein and the late

00:26:08.720 unlamented Mr. Gaddafi

00:26:11.020 and so on and so on

00:26:12.600 but currently you

00:26:15.080 have in Egypt

00:26:17.000 President al-Sisi who

00:26:18.480 is a military leader who deposed

00:26:21.220 the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013, you have Mr. Erdogan in Turkey who has won power going

00:26:30.300 back a long time but has basically eliminated, pushed out all his rivals and has become terribly

00:26:37.260 authoritarian and made himself president and so on. Netanyahu is also a good example if only for

00:26:44.340 the fact that he's been in power for 10 years. He's longer than any other Israeli prime minister

00:26:48.460 and he has won a series of elections and so on.

00:26:52.620 You have Mr. Modi in India, which is a democratic country,

00:26:56.400 and he has not only just won elections,

00:27:01.040 but he's presented a very different approach to national leadership.

00:27:05.600 And Mr. Abe in Japan, who is also an elected leader,

00:27:11.600 very similar to Netanyahu in interesting ways.

00:27:14.840 I put it to the Japanese people that I met, right?

00:27:18.800 Imagine a prime minister who was prime minister for a short time,

00:27:22.060 and he wasn't a success, and he lost power.

00:27:26.720 And then a decade later, he managed to return to power,

00:27:30.800 and he's been in power for a very long time.

00:27:32.700 Does that sound familiar to you?

00:27:34.980 And they, the Japanese, are forced to crack a smile and say,

00:27:39.740 yeah, yeah, that's right, because they immediately identify with Abe.

00:27:42.740 when I'm talking about Netanyahu,

00:27:44.800 but it's very remarkably similar.

00:27:47.720 Well, it's very remarkable in itself.

00:27:49.160 It's like John Major coming out of retirement now

00:27:51.640 and leading the Tories to...

00:27:53.200 No, they're not that old.

00:27:54.520 I mean, it's...

00:27:57.520 Gordon Brown, then.

00:27:59.100 Tony Blair, Gordon Brown.

00:28:00.440 Well, Gordon, Tony Blair was very successful, of course,

00:28:02.220 but Gordon Brown, maybe.

00:28:03.260 Yeah, right.

00:28:03.960 It's like Gordon Brown being re-established as the...

00:28:07.760 British jobs for Scottish workers.

00:28:09.700 He comes back with that.

00:28:10.880 Fantastic.

00:28:11.160 That's a good job.

00:28:11.760 But Scots don't like work.

00:28:13.920 That's a great Rory Bremner line.

00:28:17.240 So this is happening.

00:28:18.380 So you have this phenomenon, right?

00:28:19.500 So why is it happening?

00:28:20.580 If you like, if you like, Mrs. Merkel was also of that ilk.

00:28:25.240 Strong man, yeah.

00:28:28.120 Seemingly.

00:28:29.340 So why is it happening?

00:28:31.760 The simple answer, and simple answers are usually very helpful and largely right,

00:28:36.900 is because in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008,

00:28:40.860 people came to the conclusion that what they had been told and sold was a load of crap

00:28:46.620 and they wanted people who were giving them some kind of message of um that made sense to them

00:28:55.920 and in many countries and this is the theme that links put in modi abe erdogan netanyahu

00:29:05.500 at least all of those

00:29:08.060 and Orban in Hungary

00:29:10.340 and others and Trump

00:29:11.900 the theme of

00:29:14.300 make it

00:29:16.080 whatever it is great again

00:29:17.660 restore Russia

00:29:18.920 and make Japan a serious

00:29:22.280 country again. The same theme

00:29:24.220 runs in country after

00:29:26.260 country and the people

00:29:28.200 who promoted

00:29:30.400 this theme, this

00:29:32.200 idea have done phenomenally

00:29:34.460 well. So that shows that that's what people wanted and why they want that. Because as you said, I

00:29:39.860 think, they came to the conclusion that what had been accepted as the right and proper thing to do

00:29:49.060 was at least not working and maybe wasn't of any use anyway. And do you think part of it as well

00:29:55.240 is the fact that you listen to Americans talk and a lot of Europeans, they seem to be this general

00:30:00.240 consensus of, you know, the best days of America are over, the best days of Europe are over. And

00:30:04.960 all of a sudden, you've got this person coming and going, no, that's not true. That's a load

00:30:09.520 of nonsense. I'm going to make America great again. Sod what these liberals think. Let's go

00:30:14.200 forth. What Steve Bannon calls the managed decline. Yeah. Okay. So then, yeah, managed

00:30:20.860 decline is a very, very fascinating concept. But it's complicated, right? There are countries

00:30:31.820 that are in inexorable decline, like Japan, which they're trying to turn it around. There

00:30:38.540 are countries that are not in decline, like India, the opposite of decline. But they perceive

00:30:45.640 themselves as um you know needing strong leadership and and the congress party or whatever whoever it

00:30:53.020 is has failed and so on and then of course you have the extreme example of russia where putin

00:30:58.500 has succeeded in not just arresting but reversing some of the most dramatic uh um um trends of

00:31:08.020 decline and and weakness and so on um and people respond to that absolutely uh and trump is

00:31:15.280 giving the same rhetoric, but

00:31:18.760 well, of course, to what extent, if at all that's true, is a different matter.

00:31:24.180 Do you think it's true that he is restoring America's

00:31:27.620 greatness? There's very little evidence, shall we say.

00:31:31.840 Very little evidence. And a man who judges his

00:31:35.060 domestic economic success by the level of the Dow Jones

00:31:39.920 industrial averages, skating on very thin ice.

00:31:43.740 And you're not one of these people who've got what we were talking about is Trump derangement syndrome.

00:31:48.700 You're quite open-minded, I think, about some of the stuff.

00:31:51.800 But you don't buy his economic boasts about how the economy is doing?

00:31:57.980 Well, I certainly don't buy his boasts.

00:32:01.900 I mean, in other words, if you did a massive tax-cutting exercise and you gave lots of money to certain areas,

00:32:10.660 then you would expect the economy to do most of the things that it did in 2018

00:32:14.820 and that are fading away in 2019.

00:32:18.200 So most of the serious people, my read,

00:32:21.660 who are not victims of Trump derangement syndrome,

00:32:28.240 think that the American economy is doing badly and it's going downhill

00:32:31.300 and there will be a recession and so on and so forth.

00:32:35.420 The problem, of course, with Trump, as you correctly point out,

00:32:39.400 is that it's very difficult to find people

00:32:42.640 who are capable of having a rational discussion.

00:32:45.640 In other words, and the flip side is with Putin as well.

00:32:50.640 So, and that goes to Netanyahu,

00:32:53.560 the kind of people you were talking about earlier, right?

00:32:55.600 So my job, as it were, as an analyst and a consultant

00:33:00.860 is to bring an objective assessment of what is going on

00:33:08.060 And in every one of these cases, whether it's Trump or Putin or Netanyahu or Modi or whomever you like,

00:33:14.680 so you can say, you know, these are his achievements and these are the areas where he failed.

00:33:20.780 And each one of those opens a discussion.

00:33:22.620 So do that for us, Pinkus, with Trump. Do that for us.

00:33:25.340 What's your objective rational assessment of his achievements and his downfalls?

00:33:29.300 And by the way, that sound you can hear is YouTube having a meltdown.

00:33:33.500 He's fucking he!

00:33:37.400 So, first, okay, Trump's main achievement globally is that, I mean, it's very difficult

00:33:52.240 because he screwed up a lot of things, but he has, I think, okay, without going to the

00:34:00.740 whole global thing right he has kicked the europeans so hard that they are now thinking

00:34:07.920 and acting differently right that's a wonderful example right so many people over the years have

00:34:12.900 said the europeans are slackers and they don't pull their weight and they just live under our

00:34:17.840 defense umbrella and they don't want to spend any money and so on and so on have too many naps

00:34:21.640 and trump came and uh screamed at them and kicked them in the balls and now they're actually doing

00:34:29.440 things. Now, it's certainly possible to argue that his style and all the rest of it are

00:34:36.200 counterproductive. But here is an example where they've been very productive at fairly

00:34:43.560 great cost. Trump is asphyxiating Iran. This is a very, very important thing, which is

00:34:52.940 not well understood at all. Even whilst he is withdrawing from the Middle East, everything

00:34:59.400 is complicated right so people are talking about america's drawn from the middle east trump cut

00:35:03.680 and ran from syria to a couple of months ago american power in the middle east today is

00:35:11.780 orders of magnitude greater than that of russia which is deeply involved in the least with bases

00:35:20.500 and so on and so on they don't even begin to compare so the american withdrawal and retreat

00:35:27.100 in terms of actual power has got much more uh assets than than the russians do and so on

00:35:36.980 so the real issue of course is are you prepared to use them in what form and trump is very clearly

00:35:43.560 made right we're not having boots on the ground we're not going to have our guys killed and so

00:35:47.300 we'll just blow up other people and and that but in the case of iran where by the way trump's policy

00:35:55.900 is not one of tweets and not one of ideas that he thought of in the bath.

00:36:03.680 Trump's attitude and policy towards Iran is consistent,

00:36:08.920 going way back when he was president, before he was president,

00:36:12.120 before he was a candidate, before he even thought of being a candidate.

00:36:15.300 It goes back many, many years.

00:36:16.920 And his use of American economic power vis-à-vis Iran is phenomenal.

00:36:23.920 so that, for instance, not just the Europeans,

00:36:26.760 but the Chinese oil companies have cut and left

00:36:29.700 because no economic entity in the world,

00:36:34.040 given a choice between losing the American market

00:36:36.300 and losing the Iranian market,

00:36:38.900 there's no choice.

00:36:40.220 There's nothing to talk about.

00:36:42.360 So he is asphyxiating,

00:36:44.760 which means he's strangling the Iranian economy,

00:36:49.040 and that's why there are riots in Iran

00:36:51.340 and putting tremendous pressure on the regime.

00:36:55.880 So, you know, you can go down and list the holes.

00:36:58.540 What about China?

00:37:01.040 Chinese are scared.

00:37:02.400 They don't know what to do.

00:37:03.540 And one of Trump's great achievements is that he has exposed,

00:37:09.500 he has raised to the surface the existence of a very broad consensus

00:37:13.900 in the American business community that we've had enough of China.

00:37:18.300 We are fed up with their stealing our IP and cheating us and not letting us in and so on.

00:37:24.700 And we are really pissed off about this.

00:37:27.460 And until Trump, it was not possible to talk about that because it was impolite.

00:37:32.400 And now it is OK.

00:37:34.260 And every the whole not the whole but massive consensus within the American business and financial community supports Trump's approach towards China.

00:37:44.400 And it will roll over to the next president, almost irrespective of whom that is.

00:37:49.740 So those are some of the achievements that you can give him credit for.

00:37:53.380 In order that people don't assume you're a massive Trump fan and you want to make...

00:37:57.520 At this point, we unfurl the American banner behind you.

00:38:00.300 The cat comes down.

00:38:02.080 God bless America.

00:38:03.840 We're going to get you a golden toilet just to celebrate.

00:38:07.760 What are some of the weaknesses of his presidency?

00:38:10.420 What are some of the dangers?

00:38:11.640 I mean, obviously, the tax cut doesn't sound like you're a big fan of that.

00:38:15.400 No, I mean, Trump has simply extended the policy of funneling more and more money to the top 1%, 0.1%, whatever you want to call it.

00:38:24.960 The great beneficiaries of the tax cut have been the rich, ultra-rich, and the corporations.

00:38:33.220 And he has done virtually nothing for the poor slobs who voted for him, right?

00:38:38.220 How many jobs have gone back to America?

00:38:39.840 now is against that. The employment figures are very good, right? America has very low

00:38:46.820 unemployment, et cetera, et cetera. But that is true of most European countries. Most of

00:38:53.900 the Western economy has record low unemployment. And clearly, that is not connected to Trump's

00:39:01.780 policies. It's a much broader phenomenon. So Trump has not done very much in terms of

00:39:08.620 make America great again. He has considerably intensified, maybe even caused or contributed

00:39:18.340 to the tensions within American society, ethnic, racial, etc. But, I mean, you can just go

00:39:27.580 on and on right the the the the if if you have a reached a point where the russians can say

00:39:36.320 with regard to trump's sms or tweet or perhaps even it was a diplomatic telegram of the good

00:39:45.320 old school right he sent a message to erdogan uh i president erdogan of turkey

00:39:50.700 telling him in so many words what he thought of him and so on right and the russians said that

00:39:56.980 this is not acceptable diplomat behavior.

00:40:02.260 So Ratsy's ripped up the rule book on how you conduct foreign relations.

00:40:08.020 And he has also gutted most parts of the American government,

00:40:12.140 notably the State Department, many others as well,

00:40:14.980 where there are literally hundreds and hundreds of important positions

00:40:19.040 which have not been filled.

00:40:21.080 So, you know, this is not how to run a country.

00:40:24.660 Well, if the Russians are setting the moral standards, you know, your country's pretty fucked, isn't it? But look, if I'm an ordinary Trump voter, I kind of look at the official slogans of what's happening, right? He seems to be addressing the border security issue, right? He's trying to build a fence, maybe not a wall, but a fence. The economy is booming, right?

00:40:47.060 A big, beautiful wall.

00:40:48.300 A big, beautiful fence, right?

00:40:49.800 The economy is booming.

00:40:51.540 He's killed al-Baghdadi, right?

00:40:53.960 He's destroyed ISIS.

00:40:55.820 I'm using all of this kind of slightly in inverted commas, but these are certainly the claims that he'd make.

00:41:00.200 I mean, you go, he's standing up to China.

00:41:03.500 You know, that sounds to me like him delivering on his promises, doesn't it?

00:41:07.760 No, this is all grandstanding.

00:41:09.140 This is all a show, right?

00:41:13.460 Like meeting with the rocket man, right?

00:41:16.600 rocket man who was upgraded to my dear friend, whatever his name is, and so I'm with North

00:41:22.800 Korea.

00:41:23.240 He also lets pretty quickly between calling someone like the worst person ever and his

00:41:27.000 best friend.

00:41:27.900 Right.

00:41:28.200 So this is not a serious person, and most of what he does is not serious, and in the

00:41:35.200 best case is unhelpful, and in many cases extremely harmful, particularly in the longer

00:41:40.900 term.

00:41:41.300 um and you know you compare that to some of the um i mean again you're talking about trump

00:41:48.200 supporters right the trump supporters means people in pennsylvania and ohio uh and wisconsin

00:41:55.760 who um who turned the election right and if trump has any claim to genius and all the rest of it

00:42:03.160 simply because he understood that there are these few states which are going to turn everything and

00:42:09.360 And if he can win them, Democrats will lose and he will win, although he didn't expect to win.

00:42:15.420 But that was how his strategy was built.

00:42:18.700 And Hillary Clinton, the most appalling candidate, did not visit Wisconsin from the Wisconsin primary through the election

00:42:26.240 and therefore cannot have any claim to unhappiness that she didn't win Wisconsin.

00:42:35.620 Well, she did say recently she's going to win again.

00:42:38.080 She's going to win again.

00:42:39.020 traditionally a democratic state

00:42:41.620 which he blew

00:42:42.360 so your Trump supporters in Youngstown, Ohio

00:42:45.480 so they want jobs, they want their lives

00:42:49.600 they want the opioid epidemic

00:42:51.880 have a long series of things

00:42:55.180 those issues have not been addressed

00:42:57.880 and their well-being is not significantly improved

00:43:02.860 there are among the Democratic candidates

00:43:07.860 people with ideas which would significantly improve the lives and well-being of people

00:43:15.020 like that who which candidates certainly um elizabeth warren um some of the others as well

00:43:23.420 right i mean in others the problem is that some of them are may are really far out

00:43:29.020 bernie suns is very far out and and some of warren's stuff is very far out but warren at least

00:43:35.160 is a very rational mainstream person right she's a senator she's been around and she was a professor

00:43:41.180 and she comes from a working class background and and she has actually thought through these

00:43:46.400 things so she doesn't spout slogans and she would do a lot which would benefit the people who vote

00:43:55.440 for trump because by voting for trump they are expressing their disgust at what the washington

00:44:03.100 elite has done to them for decades.

00:44:05.860 There are people on the

00:44:07.080 other side who do that, and Trump will do nothing

00:44:08.920 for them, has done and will do nothing

00:44:10.860 for them. Insofar as

00:44:12.940 they're benefiting, there are jobs available,

00:44:15.580 not good quality jobs,

00:44:17.120 right? There are jobs available

00:44:18.400 more than there were, but this

00:44:22.960 is a cyclical boom,

00:44:25.140 right? Use the economic terminology.

00:44:27.120 This is a cyclical boom, and

00:44:28.760 we are heading for a massive

00:44:30.780 crash

00:44:32.520 and they are totally unprepared

00:44:36.440 and invulnerable.

00:44:38.240 And why are they vulnerable, Pincus?

00:44:40.440 Because their healthcare system

00:44:42.860 is a disaster.

00:44:45.320 Their pension system

00:44:46.420 is on the verge of collapse.

00:44:48.420 They as a population

00:44:50.700 do not have the skills

00:44:52.900 and they are uneducated,

00:44:55.460 et cetera, et cetera.

00:44:57.220 That'll be the clip we use.

00:44:58.560 Americans are uneducated.

00:44:59.820 Look, the data, you know, the juries in the data are there, right?

00:45:05.240 And there's nothing to, the reason, you know, the United States is a very big country.

00:45:08.560 It's got around a million people, and they still have the top hospitals and the top this, that, and the other.

00:45:13.520 And that's fine if you're at the top.

00:45:15.660 But for the bottom 50%, it's really bad news.

00:45:19.520 And there are great swathes in the United States that are third world countries.

00:45:23.400 And Jim Rickards made the point as well that there is this massive problem with student loans.

00:45:28.580 Yes, well, that is a very specific issue, which is, A, that people who have finished their degrees and so on are buried under these massive loans.

00:45:39.620 But more substantively, more and more people are getting a supposed education, which is of very little real value to them.

00:45:48.960 But on the other side of the balance sheet, they emerge from it with significant financial debt, which they are going to carry with them and be lucky to pay off at all.

00:46:03.920 So they've got little assets in terms of what they get out of their education and plenty of liabilities.

00:46:11.660 Yeah, they spend 100 grand to get a gender studies degree.

00:46:14.380 Well, quite.

00:46:15.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:16.540 Well, Pincus, unfortunately, our time is almost up.

00:46:19.140 You're a busy man.

00:46:19.760 We've got to let you go.

00:46:20.680 So before we do that, we've got one more question for you.

00:46:23.480 And the question always is, what's the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be talking about?

00:46:29.400 Demography and having children.

00:46:31.420 Okay.

00:46:32.000 Tell us more.

00:46:34.420 The, well, everybody in the West, the whole of Europe, Eastern Europe, more even than Western Europe, suffering from demographic decline, right?

00:46:44.000 We talked about Putin.

00:46:45.060 Putin managed to stop the rot, and he's brought it back somewhat, so people are beginning to have children, and they're not dying at the age of 48 from liver malfunction, from drinking too much vodka, right?

00:46:55.900 So Putin's got some very, very serious achievements within Russia.

00:46:59.400 Stop laughing at my heritage.

00:47:01.040 Yeah.

00:47:01.460 No, it really isn't funny.

00:47:02.920 I mean, Putin's got genuine.

00:47:04.500 See, it's not funny, mate.

00:47:05.920 Genuine achievements along with – so the big – now United States is incredibly.

00:47:14.000 believe. Ten years ago, it would not have been a possible thing. The United States is

00:47:17.160 now in serious demographic decline. The people we were talking about, the Trump voters, they

00:47:24.260 don't have children, they die young, American life expectancy is going down, and so on and

00:47:32.360 so on. So, the developed world is facing a demographic crisis. Now, you can argue the

00:47:40.180 same is true in China and so on, but Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, and so

00:47:46.240 on, these are countries in very serious demographic crisis, whatever you want to call it, which

00:47:56.000 by the way, is why the pension system is going bust, or one of the main reasons, and having

00:48:03.620 children has gone out of fashion.

00:48:05.300 and people have very good arguments

00:48:08.320 they can't afford it and so on

00:48:09.860 but that simply brings you back to government

00:48:12.540 you can have

00:48:14.360 policies that

00:48:16.320 remove

00:48:18.300 some of the obstacles to having

00:48:20.480 children that doesn't mean everybody will have

00:48:22.420 children most of these policies don't work because

00:48:24.520 of other factors but

00:48:26.340 people who want to have children say I can't have another

00:48:28.540 child because the cost

00:48:30.540 of childcare and so on

00:48:32.180 the woman won't go out to work

00:48:34.280 your stay at home, et cetera. That whole syndrome, two parents, both, or two income families,

00:48:41.360 right? So if you're only down to one, you're already on the borderline. These things can

00:48:46.760 be addressed. Now, you can argue that all the efforts so far, whether it's in Japan or

00:48:52.160 France or wherever, they haven't succeeded. But given that this is literally existential,

00:48:59.560 you would expect that it would

00:49:04.020 concentrate considerably more attention

00:49:06.680 on the part of policy makers and voters

00:49:10.100 and yet it doesn't.

00:49:12.340 Well, there you go.

00:49:13.200 So stop using contraception

00:49:14.680 and have as much sex as possible.

00:49:16.440 That is our message for this week at Trigonometry.

00:49:19.280 Pincus Landau, thank you so much for coming on.

00:49:21.300 Really appreciate your time.

00:49:22.260 Thank you very much.

00:49:22.900 As always, follow us at TriggerPod

00:49:24.660 and we'll see you again in a week's time

00:49:26.180 with another brilliant episode.

00:49:27.520 Take care. See you next week, guys.

00:49:29.560 We'll be right back.

00:49:59.560 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

00:50:03.960 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:50:06.700 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:50:10.920 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

TRIGGERnometry - January 19, 2020

Pinchas Landau： Why the Middle East is in Chaos

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