I can’t believe we’re here again. Most believe the United States is within hours of launching our own attack on Iran, if we haven’t already. It’s a catastrophic return to the evils of the Bush administration. It’s pretty clear we’ve learned nothing. Today’s video is an attempt to help people learn something. Though on a day like today, it’s hard to see why I bother.
I could see a lot of people not liking what I did with this video. It’s pretty likely that I’ll have more to say about Israel and the horrors it’s inflicting on its neighbors in the coming months. But before I dive into that, it’s important to understand why Israel is allowed, or even encouraged to be the worst version of itself possible. There are a lot of weird conspiratorial, antisemitic theories out there, that serve to exonerate Washington, DC. It’s not a Jewish plot though. It’s a very clear, very obvious strategy executed by our government. Israel may be uglier, but it’s not that different from what we’re doing in Ukraine and Taiwan. Hell, even Biden makes the connection, as I’ve pointed out in earlier videos. I think most serious geopolitics people, which is how I see my audience, acknowledge that Israel is up to something horrible. What I suspect some in the audience may resent, is my suggestion that the cause of Taiwan and Ukraine may be tainted in similar ways.
The channel has been doing rather well over the past couple weeks! Better than it has been doing for the past five years in fact, thanks to the success of a Peter Zeihan take-down video I did seven months ago. In an attempt to capitalize on this success, and keep it from slipping away. I’ve rushed out a produced video, with a completely new workflow. Rather than laboriously script out the video, I’ve simply taken a decent snippet from a recent conversation, and spent a couple work days whipping it into something produced looking. Let me know what you think!
This one was a bit of an ordeal, honestly. A full 30 minutes of produced video, which is only part three of four, got a bit daunting. Every step of the way was a bit of a struggle. I hope it’s worth watching. Heading back to do more YouTube Drama before I attempt “Yemen vs. Empire” Part 4.
I feel like I’m weirdly a lot more optimistic about American power today than most of the US media is. Today I lay out why I think that may be. The US is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some inexplicable horror, another step back towards history’s chaos, and another sign that the American world order is falling to pieces. As more of a cynic, and a student of foreign relations, my sense is that the US world order has been falling apart since at least 2003. What Russia has done in Ukraine, is give us a second chance. By conclusively setting himself up as a more destructive and dangerous actor than the US government, Putin has given the US world order a new lease on life.
What’s vital in this moment is that we seize that opportunity. Europe is now back on our side in ways it hasn’t been for two decades. What we should do now, is try to win over the rest of the world by improving our relations with old enemies that no longer matter. To it’s credit, the Biden administration is already trying to do this with Iran and Venezuela. Unfortunately, they are being blocked by their efforts to do so, and not just by Republicans. I think it’s a failure of understanding. US government and media don’t understand just how bad the situation was, and how valuable a window Russia has given us. Today’s video is my attempt to explain the situation.
US media seems allergic to deep dives on how this “New Cold War” got started. So I went ahead and wrote one. Today’s video mostly serves as a trailer for this medium post that lays out the whole story. Give it a read!
I have been meaning to get today’s video out for quite a while now. I didn’t plan on it, but it’s coming out at a pretty useful time as well. After months of dithering, and posing for the benefit of hawks in the United States, the Biden administration has finally sat down to talks with the Iranian government. It’s not clear why they need to talk, the Iranian position is pretty clear… Iran will comply fully with the JCPOA if the US complies fully. But nonetheless, it is a heartening step that the negotiations have finally started. I am happy to be making this argument for the Iran Nuclear Deal at this time. This video is meant to persuade. I tried to make it less angry and more shareable than some of my other videos on the topic. If you think I succeeded, please share it widely.
It’s amazing how little investment the US has in the priorities of our allies. It’s well established that our foreign policy establishment is utterly incapable of seeing anything from the perspective of any of our “adversaries”. This would be a tremendous problem if the United States were actually in anything like a real competition with anybody. The dumbest actor in a contest rarely wins. But it’s not a contest. At this point, we’re so much more powerful than any of our opponents that it just doesn’t matter (leaving aside moral questions). What we should be doing, in this waning, but still present historical moment, is building up our position with allies, and working to stretch this sweet spot out as long as possible. We’re doing the exact opposite of that, of course.
A system that wants to stand the test of time needs to be aware of, and at least not obstruct, the wishes of smaller members of that system. As today’s video illustrates, we’re not doing that. Our oldest and strongest allies in Europe have opted to kick off the “New Cold War” by committing to an investment agreement… with China. This should be a wake up call. I doubt it will be.
Four years in, and after the absurdly good opportunity the pandemic provided, I think it’s pretty clear that Donald Trump is not the authoritarian I was so worried about back in 2016. He may have wanted to be, but he doesn’t have the capacity. That doesn’t mean my country is safe though. We’ve got a pretty good model of where a the flounderings of a clownish can lead a country. Boris Yeltsin is that model. And if the US produces a Putin, he or she will be a lot scarier than anything Russia can muster in the 21st century.
Today’s video hints at something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. We all know China’s great internet firewall as a source of great repression. But China’s maintenance of a separate national internet has also left it weirdly independent of the US tech giants that rule the internet everywhere else.
China has worked hard to co-opt the newest of the Tech behemoths, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX. General Motors and other foreign car companies battled for decades to build up their competitive position in China. Musk was building a massive factory in China under favorable terms before he sold his millionth (100,000th?) car. China was wise to try to get this guy on their side, but as today’s video explains, it’s unlikely to work out well for them in the long term…
I’d like to make more videos in this vein, thinking through the outside power of tech companies and what it means for geopolitics, but that depends on how this video does. If you like it, share it around…
