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Dec. 4, 2025 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:28
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1310
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Welcome to podcast of the Lotus Eaters, episode 1310, I believe it is, on must be Thursday by now, the 4th of December.
Why have we got Nate on the screen?
Mr. Editor.
It's very off-putton sounds.
We just got Nate on both screens.
Bear with us.
Oh, here we go.
There we go.
There's a map.
Right, and the reason there's a map is because, well, Nate, as you know, obviously, because presumably you just had full Nate for last few years.
And Fraz, our top geopolitics guy.
Oh, dear.
Yes.
And we thought we might do a little bit of geopolitics today around, well, collapsing American order.
And the logic of that is it gets a tad kinetic.
And perhaps they were not fully prepared for that.
Yes.
Perhaps a bit ballistic, one might say.
A bit ballistic.
Slightly ballistic, I say.
Yes.
Oh, and also, thank you.
Thank you to the Americans in the comments.
I did a podcast yesterday and I admitted I didn't really understand what was going on with Thanksgiving.
But you have all now explained it to me.
A chat from Boston pointed out is basically Christmas foreplay.
But I might be getting a bit confused because you have turkey on Thanksgiving and you have ham on Christmas Day.
So now I understand.
And apparently it's based on the Harvest Festival, which we used to do.
Right.
We just forgot about it.
Okay.
But they still do it.
I don't like turkey.
And they also add on Thanksgiving.
Turkey leg.
Get some turkey leg.
Delicious.
That's a good option.
Goose is a much better option.
That's a good option.
Turkey leg is delicious.
So thank you, Americans, for explaining all the old English traditions which you revive.
Well done for that.
So the global system is falling apart and the Americans' role in the world is very quickly changing.
The first thing that I want to mention is a couple of phone calls that happened after the Japanese came out and said that any Chinese attack on Taiwan would be considered an existential threat to them.
And you can see Japan's perspective because everything that they trade has to go through the Taiwan Straits.
And if these are controlled by China, the Japanese are in a bit of a difficult position.
So when they said that this was an existential threat, what that means is that it allows them to intervene militarily.
And one of the consequences of that was that the Chinese pretty much lost their minds.
And for the first time since September 11, 2001, the Chinese initiated a phone call with the Americans.
This would be the second time in history that they do it, where they initiate a phone call.
And if you were to go through the readout and try to understand the subtext of it, they go on a long rant about how they had previously met and it was very friendly and they resolved some issues in the trade war, which the Americans have shown that they're incapable of fighting and winning.
And this was all wonderful and good.
And they had fought side by side in the Second World War.
And it would be a shame if all this progress went to waste, essentially.
Pali, Pally, please reign in Japan.
Well, if you read it cynically, as I tend to do, the Chinese were saying to the Americans, we've fixed some of the trade problems now, and we've accepted your tariffs, and we've stopped restricting some of the exports of rare earth minerals.
And unless you want these to come back and collapse your industry, as almost happened when we did it the first time, and as almost happened when the Dutch took away the Chinese chip maker briefly and then had to give it back.
We need you to go and longhouse Japan.
You need to explain to Japan what's what and you need to make them calm down.
Well, it's an interesting situation, isn't it?
Because is it them almost fearing Japan to a degree?
Possibly.
Is it them also fearing, I guess, their potential interference overall?
It's I can't help but wonder if fear through threats.
I mean, if you're looking at Japan, I mean, they've got very old demographics.
I think they've got an average age of something like 49.
So they are and their fertility rate, I think, is 1.3.
So they are well past the point of fielding battalions of young men.
That's not what it looks like.
In fact, what that kind of pushes them towards is a porcupine strategy of missiles, submarines, air power, that kind of thing.
And Japan have been ramping up their defense spending.
I think they're adding something like a thousand new sort of missile sites.
And the interesting thing about these is because they're long-range cruise missiles, they're basically based on the Tomahawk platform, they reach into southern China.
Yes.
So the Japanese are doing their best to make themselves inaccessible to China because their big fear is that after Taiwan, it's their turn and that the Chinese would be able to restrict trade to Japan and make it extremely more complicated and more difficult.
But they don't have the means to fully take on China unless they're fully backed by the United States.
Where does South Korea stand in this?
Because, I mean, just going back to your map, the South Koreans, they're just as screwed if Taiwan goes.
Because, I mean, again, they're also an export-based economy that needs the South China Sea.
Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
And they are divided internally over those who want to reconcile with China and over those who don't.
And they're considerably less reliable as a partner for the Americans than the Japanese.
And China is their biggest trading partner and so on and so forth.
So a lot of their own exports end up going to China.
Ah, okay.
So they're not exactly in a great position.
Well, and actually also the other thing is a lot of their early supply chain starts in China.
Yes.
They do high-end electronics but low-end components.
So the Chinese strategy has been to pretty much capture all of the smelting industries and a lot of the high-energy intensity industries in order to make sure that they are the primary supplier of refined products, which are the start of every single supply chain.
Yes.
Well, I think China produces only like 70% of the global rare earth metals.
Closer to 90%, closer to 80%.
Well, I think with the high-performing rare earth magnets, it's 90%.
Right.
And actually, if you look at things like graphene, so graphite, which goes in, which is actually most of the value, most of the weight of the mass that goes into lithium batteries, for example, they're about 99% of that.
So they've cornered these markets deliberately.
And they've cornered them as part of an industrial strategy.
And when the Americans decided that they were going to counter this strategy with a trade war, they very quickly failed.
And the evidence of the failure is that now the Chinese can call the Americans and tell them what to say to the Japanese.
And so after the Japanese said, you know, implicitly we're going to fight for Taiwan because it's existential, the Chinese then call the Americans and then the Americans call the Japanese.
And you can see from this chain of events that the Americans are being placed in a position where they can't say to the Japanese that we will fully guarantee your national interests and your strategic priorities.
Okay, and what do the Japanese turnaround take from that?
Well, they take from that that they need to rely on themselves, but they are, you know, 180 million versus China's 1.5 billion, 1.4 billion.
And they are equally dependent on China because although the Japanese are the only ones who developed a strategy to reduce their dependence on Chinese rare earths, that only brought them down from 90% reliance to 58% reliance.
Wait, it's still a long way there.
Which is still a Jock Mech thing?
Yes.
I forget what it stands for, the Japanese Metal Agency, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, so they merged the metals agency with the oil agency.
And as a result of that, they were able to reduce their dependence from 90% to 58%.
That's a pretty good thing.
But that all has to go through the Strait of Taiwan.
Yes.
So it's good up to a point.
It's good so long as the Chinese decide not to try to blockade Japan.
So the ability of the Americans to guarantee security in East Asia has been tested in the trade war and it's been found wanting.
But I'm also wondering, because, you know, as I mentioned, Japan has to go for a porcupine strategy.
You can't be fielding.
I mean, you're not going to win by against China masses of young men.
They're not going to be able to do a 1933 on China.
So it has to be a porcupine strategy.
But if the Americans are signaling, look, every time we get a phone call from the Chinese, we're going to attempt to longhouse you.
If I was Japan, I'd be thinking, okay, well, I need to be taking my porcupine strategy up to almost forcing their hand.
Yeah, to strategic weapons.
Where you are almost there.
And they could build their weapons whenever they want to.
But the Japanese are also saying that we're not going to stop buying oil from Russia and gas from Russia because the energy infrastructure in Saharin Island is strategic for us.
And if the Americans can reconcile with Russia and remove the sanctions on Russia, that would allow the Japanese a lot more space to cooperate with the Russians.
So one of the things that I spoke about from the outset of the Trump presidency was that to deal with a China threat, there has to be some kind of strategy that follows along the lines of George Kenan's containment of the Soviet Union.
Containment, if you remember, was the Americans trying to build a string of alliances all around the borders of the Soviet Union in order to make sure that they couldn't expand any further.
And if they were held in place for long enough, they would collapse, which proved to be successful in the end.
You know, it was a long-term strategy.
It took two generations, but it worked.
Well, it's a very different situation when China is at the start of the production chain with mines and minerals and so on.
That's a big part of it.
That's a huge part of the problem.
And the second part of the problem is that the Americans are still stuck in Europe, which is the next thing that we need to talk about.
And so we're seeing the Americans trying to get out of Europe and trying to say to the Europeans.
Just before we pivot onto Europe, how do you rate the assessment of the Japanese sort of holding up as their own military force?
Because, I mean, it's easy to think, okay, for the last 50 odd years, they've been a protectorate of the US.
But they do have the world's third largest navy by tonnage.
Yes.
They have the world's third largest navy.
They have the, I believe, the third largest industrial power in the world.
That does sound right.
Yes, the third largest.
But you have to put it in perspective.
China has 30% of global manufacturing capacity.
Japan has 5%.
Also, Japan has, with the new prime minister, stipulated quite boldly, yeah, no, we're more than happy to begin ramping up our own militaries.
We've been pretty.
Which they are in a position to do.
the dapan self-defense force on the naval side or on the aviation side is quite significant i mean like if you're building it up so well yeah so i guess the the point i'm making is is that they they've they've built the third largest navy or whatever um from a defensive uh outlook yes What if they pivot to an offensive outlook?
Things could drastically change.
Yes, but they can't conduct an offense against China anymore.
I mean, that's just not realistic.
Well, not ground.
They could punish the Chinese and hurt them.
But if this becomes a long slog and a war of attrition, the Japanese are in no position to win it.
Yeah, yeah, no, it makes sense.
So there is this reality of China as a power, and there is this reality that the Americans waged a trade war on China and went as maximalist as they could get.
And then they had to satisfy themselves with just high tariffs and less restrictions.
I mean, the thing is that the U.S. is coming to this late.
So Japan was evidently waking up to the China threat 20 years ago, thus the introduction of Jot-Mech.
In 2010, they had their own Chinese-imposed restrictions on rare earths in 2010.
And this is what drove them to reduce their dependence on China.
Whereas the U.S. has been sleeping on this whole issue for 20 years.
Yes.
And that's even if you don't come to the view, which I'm sure we will do as we get into the US side of things, that the Biden regime was basically bought and sold by China.
Yes, pretty much.
Pretty much.
So they are in this difficult position where they are having to admit that they need to manage their security commitments towards Taiwan.
And even as they keep on announcing these massive weapons sales to Taiwan, the reality is that the Taiwanese have paid for things that they have never received and that they don't look like they will receiving, that they will be receiving in some cases.
So the Americans are slow walking the deliveries of weapons shipments to Taiwan.
Right.
Big problems.
Because they're sending them to Israel and Ukraine.
Well, partly because of that, and partly because they have to be careful around China.
Because the Chinese actually now have hard economic power, as the Americans have learned in these restrictions that the Chinese imposed on rare earth mineral exports.
And now they are having to take a nicer tone and to tell the Japanese to back off and not say things that are overtly antagonistic to China, like saying that the Taiwan issue is existential for them.
And so they made the Americans reaffirm the one China policy and all of that stuff.
Because we have to remember, the official position of pretty much everybody is that Taiwan is part of China.
And that's why they don't have diplomatic official relations with Taiwan.
They have unofficial relations, but they don't have a Taiwanese embassy, for example.
Well, I mean, the other concern is that it does look like the US is preparing to withdraw from a reliance on Taiwan.
I mean, you can't do it at the moment because they produce whatever it is, 90-plus percent of chips.
They support the modern world, basically.
Yes, pretty much.
With their semiconductors.
Again, one of the things that Biden did, I mean, again, it looks like he was bought and sold by China, but it's probably the right thing for the US to do in that is he started setting up fabs in the US or providing incentives for fabs to be set up.
Well, but he completely crippled them with all kinds of regulations around DEI that meant that the investments never actually properly broke ground and functioned.
So he made that noise, but because of his base, he couldn't actually follow through with it.
Right.
So one sensible thing he tried to do, he ended up crippling the DI.
Okay, exactly.
Exactly.
Yes.
So there are these realities that are sort of coming to the fore.
And the big one is the Americans can't actually fight a war for Taiwan.
And you can see that if you look at the manufacturing figures, but you can also see that from the fact that China's shipbuilding capacity is 232 times that of the United States.
Now, sorry, a lot of that shipbuilding capacity, world shipbuilding capacity is almost half China, or more than half China, and the rest is South Korea and Japan.
And both South Korea and Japan's infrastructure is obviously very vulnerable due to their proximity to China.
So that leaves the Americans in a very tough position.
I mean, this is remarkable.
230 two times greater shipbuilding capacity.
But the state I always remember is they've got a single shipyard which is outputting more tonnage every single year than the Americans have since the end of the Second World War.
One interesting comment somebody has stuck in, which I'll sort of bring up now, is I don't think China is as tough as he looks.
You know, basically saying that you don't need to be that afraid of China.
But, I mean, do you want to address that?
Do we need to be that afraid of China?
Because, of course, what we're actually talking about here is them operating within their local sphere.
So let's just look at a map here.
Let's just look at a map here.
Okay.
And then everything becomes clearer.
South Korea and Japan are immensely vulnerable to China.
Extremely so.
And China is at almost 30% of global industrial capacity, whereas the Americans are at 17%.
And I would argue that the American figure is inflated because of the way they calculate some things.
Well, for a start, this is probably done in...
And this is 2023.
Well, but it's probably dollar-based this, which will inflate it straight away.
Yes.
Yes.
And then you've got Germany on there at 5.1%.
But I mean, they are collapsing fast.
They won't hug up.
And then your next set of allies are down Italy and France, and they take long lunches.
Quite.
And then you have, you know, India and Brazil that are part of the BRICS arrangement and so on and so forth.
I guess mine.
So there is a real issue there when it comes to the capacity of the United States to fight a long industrial war.
And somebody here is asking in the comments, Ochigdor, what about U.S. shipbuilding capacity before World War II versus during World War II?
That was at a time when the United States was able to repurpose all of its manufacturing base into military production.
And so with this industrial capacity being heavily degraded and reduced, it's not that the United States is not particularly impressive.
It is.
It's that it is starting from a much weaker base than it did at the start of World War II.
Whereas the Chinese are starting from a much higher base.
And because of the fact that the Americans are fighting Russia and Ukraine, which is the next thing we need to jump to, the Chinese have a guaranteed natural resource supplier that can provide them with an enormous amount of food and energy and other things that are required that would keep them in the fight for longer.
It's not that they're not vulnerable because they do import a lot of the stuff by sea, but...
But I mean, also the Biden helpfully arranged to have all that Russian energy redirected to the East rather than the West.
So that was also another massive boom for China.
That was a wonderful boom for China.
I guess I've got to wade in just briefly and just say that although China's manufacturing is massive, the quality isn't that good.
That does matter.
It's all well and good saying, well, some of it still is pretty is some of it is still pretty shared.
Well, look, think about it.
I would think about it in two ways.
The first way that I would think about it is that in some areas the quality has become exceptional, including cars and phones and all kinds of sophisticated things.
Only from theft, though.
Fine, but if it gets you there, it gets you there.
And they are now developing some of their own technologies.
And the second point that I would make is that, as Talin put it, quantity has a quality all of its own.
Well, yeah, I guess you can inside the market.
If you are incredibly reliant on very high-quality weapons that are very vulnerable to certain technical glitches or exploits, it's one problem.
If you have the industrial capacity to manufacture en masse and from that you experiment and iterate and figure out what works, you are in a decent position.
Sorry, the big Chinese vulnerability is a naval blockade, which is why they're expanding in the South China Sea in the way that they're expanding.
But that's something which I always doubt about China, is their ingenuity, their creativity, because effectively a lot of what they create is all stolen.
does matter so they can't their ability to um build out problems they're not innovators no they're not in they they aren't they aren't innovators i mean I mean, all of their cars are stolen.
It's all an amalgamation of like the Land Rover, for instance, just stolen.
Right.
A lot of their stuff is not innovative.
And that does matter.
So although they manufacture a lot, they're not innovative with it.
And therefore, the true innovators long term would be more stable.
Well, that means you've got to hang in the war long enough for the innovation to kick in.
Yeah, sure.
If you lose early, because you're just overwhelmed.
Yeah, no, I agree with that.
Think about it this way.
Throughout the Cold War, you had both sides stealing technology from each other.
You had the American side working on stealing Soviet jets and getting people who had Soviet equipment to defect so that they could bring that equipment with them and they could try it out.
And obviously the Russians, well, among other things, they stole the nuclear bomb.
So this is normal.
And you can see this in a slightly different light.
The Russians in the beginning of the Ukraine war bought Iranian drones.
And then as they used these Shahad drones, they figured out how to build them and how to improve them and how to add all kinds of bells and whistles to them and really mastered them quite significantly.
Yeah, but that's what I would never be afraid of China doing that.
Literally, they don't innovate.
Even their watches are stolen.
Even right down to stuff like that, I mean, there is no level of creativity amongst the momentum.
But they do, though, with the watches.
They steal, yes.
But come on.
They're innovating in some areas.
I think the Australians did a pretty good study on this and found that the Chinese have become now dominant, including having a technological monopoly in 57 out of 64 industries that are critical for national security.
And so I would humbly disagree with you on that statement.
They are making innovations.
They are coming up with things.
A lot of it is BS, but it's not all BS.
Just one further question from Taiwan.
Do Taiwan actually want to fight?
Because, I mean, okay, yes, fighting.
They might want to fight, but population 24 million.
They've got a lower fertility rate than Japan.
It's 1.1.
And they've got an old population.
So, if they lose a lot of young men, you can one-shot that country by taking out a generation.
And it's not actually that difficult to do.
Yeah, they're saying that they want to fight.
Of course, they say it.
And they're making all of the right noises, but in reality, they are riddled with spies working for China.
And this is the homeland at the end of the day, because most of these people came from China to Taiwan.
They're the true Chinese exactly.
And in some areas, they are more right-wing on nationalist questions than the Chinese in terms of the expansive maritime claims and things of that nature.
So, you know, it's not clear-cut that the Taiwanese definitely want to fight, and the Americans are hoping that they wouldn't.
But every indicator is that the Chinese are getting ready for a war and that the Chinese are building the right bits and pieces of infrastructure and weapons that they would need to build a war.
The ferries, the ferries for transportation, and they are taking these from 30 ferries to 70 by the end of 2026, which is why the Americans keep harping on about this 2027 deadline, where the Chinese are expected to make a move.
Okay, so what I mean, my understanding of what that comes down to, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that the Americans park a sub in the Taiwanese channel, and ultimately the decision comes down to on the day that the invasion begins, does the president give the order to start sinking Chinese shipping?
Yeah.
And if that order doesn't come, Taiwanese are screwed.
Yeah, yeah.
So one of the things that is being done to prepare for this is to beef up Taiwan's ability to resupply itself.
Because while most of their ports are on this coast, on the western coast facing China, they have these two ports here, Hualian and Taitung.
And one of them is being linked to Japan so that it can be supplied from Japan.
And the other one is being linked to the Philippines.
Can the Chinese not hit all of their ports with that?
That's what they are training to do.
So if you look at Chinese military exercises, all of them focus on deploying against all of the six or seven major ports in Taiwan and surrounding them.
And then they could declare some kind of emergency or say, you know, we are implementing a new law, and that means that you have to go through Chinese customs and therefore trade stops.
But the big problem for Taiwan ultimately is energy because they import a million barrels per day of oil.
That's going to run out fast.
They have a three to six month stockpile, strategic stockpile that is built in.
But the real problem is natural gas because there the stockpile is maybe around three weeks.
And if you lose that, then you are shutting down industries or cutting power to domestic consumers or doing some kind of rationing, essentially.
And over time, the rationing has to get worse.
And therefore, you collapse them.
And sorry.
And in the meantime, the global economy goes into a crisis of them not having enough chips coming from Taiwan.
Challenge.
Yes, quite.
And a very difficult one.
The one problem that the Chinese have is that their ports, in theory, can be besieged.
And that would require submarines sort of deploying up and down from the Yellow Sea all the way down to the South China Sea and making sure that nothing goes into Chinese ports.
Difficult strategy.
Very difficult strategy.
Though American submarines are much better than Chinese submarines, at least as far as we know.
That innovation.
Say again?
That innovation.
Well, the Americans are clearly more innovative in the field of submarines.
Yes.
Yes.
So there is that going on.
How would demographics play a role in this?
Look, everybody has bad demographics.
And going by demographics alone, Russia and Ukraine should have never gone to war.
And here they are.
So.
The modern era is demographics aren't that they're still a concern.
They're still an issue.
They're still something which you would have to consider.
But in the modern era, it is less of a concern.
It is less of a consideration.
And as for India deciding to attack, no, if you look at the Himalayan mountains, this is such a huge natural barrier there from Tibet and so on.
You can't really move on the ground from there.
And if anything, it's the Chinese who are building up the capacity to do so because they're building a dam right about here, which is supposed to be bigger than the Three Gorges Dam.
But the infrastructure that you need to build a dam is indistinguishable from the infrastructure you need to build a military base.
And therefore, they could sort of cut off the so-called seven sisters states on this part of India and create a massive problem for the Indians.
That's a pretty powerful disincentive.
Plus, they have Pakistan, which has humiliated India in the last few years twice.
In both cases, the Indians ended up with a bloody nose and the Pakistanis really came out on top.
So it doesn't really look good for anyone there.
The next thing to move on to is the fact that the Americans are slowly ditching Europe.
This is from September 2025, where the Treasury Secretary of the United States said that the Americans won't get involved if Russia makes incursions into NATO territory.
So essentially, he's walked away from Article 5.
He's essentially walked away from NATO.
And he's walked away from NATO.
I mean, at that point, the only thing that NATO is left as is a buyer's club.
Exactly.
Because if you join NATO, you've got to buy American kit.
Exactly.
And so you end up with this problem that Trump has been saying and apparently told the Germans in 2020 that the U.S. would never help Europe under an attack.
So what does, can we just clarify what that means?
Because if it means it won't put American boots on the ground, fine, that's one thing.
That's a blow, but recoverable from.
But American help goes a lot further than that.
It's satellites, it's strategic airlifting, it's aerial refueling, it's submarine support, its missile networks.
If all of that is what exactly that means, we don't know what exactly the extent of it is.
But that does mean that in a hot war scenario between parts of Europe and Russia, the Americans would be at arm's length, sort of treating Europe in the way that they're treating Ukraine.
So some provision of weapons, and Besant was saying, yeah, we'll sell them weapons, as in we will profit from a war, but we won't fight in it, which is, you know, a bit cynical, mate.
But Trump said, no, we won't do anything to help you.
And there is evident growing hostility between the US and NATO.
I mean, it's not.
Yeah.
It's not a surprise, though, is it?
I mean, Europe, you know, Europe as a whole have made America and Donald Trump their enemy constantly made them their enemy.
It's so stupid to do that.
So incredibly stupid.
They're strategic allies, but you're also our enemy.
No, it's dumb.
Absolutely.
I agree.
Especially when you know Trump's opinion on NATO and the fact that the other members aren't paying in nearly as much as what they should be, what they need to be, spending on defense, which they need to, which they're supposed to.
So, yeah.
Yeah, it makes his position, their position, makes a lot of sense.
And it's historically accurate.
you know the states doesn't like coming into wars to save you know it hasn't bothered with us that and also if you talk about world war etc i mean they just don't If you're talking about European stupidity, what about if Europe does actually escalate into a war with Russia?
So, I mean, first of all, can you imagine trying to get young men from this country to want to go off and fight a global system?
No one is going to do it.
Yeah, a lot of them are just going to say, fine, put me in prison then.
But let's say, right, let's say you actually managed to activate five million young men from this country and you sent them off to war, and four million of them come back.
What do you think four million young men who become completely inured to extreme violence are going to do under this regime?
Are going to do, yeah, are going to do when they get back and the globalist elites are sitting there having sent them away.
Oh, and plus, by the way, they're now expected to resume their jobs so that they can pay for Abdullah to have his six children.
And Abdullah's probably been having his way with their wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers while they've been away on the front line.
What do you think those boys are going to do when they come back?
There is a degree of recklessness in European thinking that is beyond comprehension.
And it only makes sense if you assume that they are all somehow on China's payroll and they're actively trying to sabotage Europe or on somebody else's payroll.
Insert your favorite conspiracy theory here.
But it only makes sense if they're actively trying to destroy Europeans, European culture, European nations.
That's the only proper heuristic to use when trying to understand what these elites are doing in Europe.
And not only have Trump and Besant been saying that, look, we won't be defending Europe anymore, now they're working on ditching Ukraine.
And this has been happening for some time.
Rubios.
They did this straight away.
They were like, no, we're going to stop aid.
That was pretty much one of the first things that they did.
Obviously, went back on it.
I wonder how much of this is negotiating tactics, though.
Well, some of it is, but some of it really isn't.
And the thing to remember is that the latest Trump peace proposal for Ukraine is intended to save the Ukrainian military.
So if you just take a look at the map, this is Ukraine.
Okay.
This is the central front line of Ukraine.
And it extends from Liman here in the north through Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostyantinivka.
This is the main defensive line that the Ukrainians have.
When you look at this map, you immediately see a problem.
And the problem is that it's being outflanked from the north, from this area here.
Hints are movement, if I ever did see it.
Exactly.
And it's being outflacked from the south.
And it's being attacked from the front in order to pin the forces down and prevent them retreating.
And it's being attacked again from here in order to start dismantling this line.
So the Russians are, if the Russians continue down this route, in a year or so, you will see that this line has collapsed.
And this one is one of the most important fortified cities here, Kosyantidivka, and already the Russians are in it.
And this map, because it favors the Ukrainian, doesn't show that this eastern part here has been taken.
So the reality is that what the Americans are doing is saying, we're offering a plan to save you, and in return, we will make this a demilitarized zone.
So withdraw and it won't be handed over to the Russians, if you can trust the Russians, which you can't, obviously.
The priority of this plan is to save the Ukrainian military.
And Trump has already gotten sick enough of them to say...
And by Ukrainian military, you mean Ukrainians' young men generation.
Yes, absolutely.
Because I mean, the demographic, I mean, I know I keep banging on about the demographics because I feel it's so important, but for the sake of holding on for a few extra kilometers of land, territory, they're screwing over their own demographics.
Yes.
And ultimately, demographics are going to hurt you more in the long run.
It makes sense when you accept that Zelensky doesn't care about Ukrainians.
There's already talk of flooding the country with immigrants to help rebuild it.
Exactly.
Already.
I mean, it's crazy.
Exactly.
Those Ukrainian women are not going to go with them.
So then you're left with a generation of immigrants that haven't been laid and getting all violent and nasty and brilliant.
Very.
Well done.
And so Trump is getting really sick of this.
And he's saying that Zelensky should have accepted the first peace offer back in March.
And now the situation has gotten much worse.
And that he told them that they have no cards and that they should settle.
And they refuse to listen.
So Trump is getting properly pissed off.
But there is a wider context to this, which is that all of the sanctions that the Americans have been imposing on the Russians have got it getting nowhere.
So they recently sanctioned the two biggest oil firms, Lokoil and Rostneft, and 1.1 million barrels per day reduction in exports.
But two other companies or three other companies are now exporting another million barrels per day.
Ah, right.
Well, they're just being laundered via India, are they?
They're being laundered in a million and one different ways.
And the whole campaign to say we're going to make the Indians stop buying Russian oil didn't get anywhere.
They're still buying.
The Indians.
Why would they not?
Like, they've got a massive, massive, you know, population disservice.
They're not going to be like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll do whatever you say.
Also, they can buy it cheap and then sell it on to the Europeans at a markup.
Exactly.
And in response, the Ukrainians are saying we don't want any compromises.
And they had a meeting with NATO ministers, which for the first time since 1999, the American Secretary of State did not attend.
Instead, the Deputy Secretary of Defense attended and berated the Europeans for wanting to buy weapons without involving American companies.
That was the purpose of his participation.
And then he left to go to another meeting.
So imagine I come into this room, I yell at you for a few minutes, and then I leave.
Like, that's what happened.
That's what happened.
Right.
And the Ukrainian reaction is, no, we're going to keep fighting.
And we don't care that we're being outflanked on both sides.
We don't care that we're feeding an entire generation of our young men into the meat grinder.
The deal that we can realistically get is going down all the time.
Yeah, man.
The only way that I can stay sane as an analyst is not to look at the human side of things.
Because if you look at the human side of things, it is so genuinely heartbreaking.
It eventually breaks you if you look at it for long enough.
But this is exactly what they're doing.
They're just feeding men into a meat grinder.
Well, yeah, they're driving.
Reuters had a story.
It's awful.
You've seen all the videos of them just jumping out of vans and stealing men from the streets.
Exactly.
Get in there.
Like, I get it.
No, I agree.
Like, I don't get it.
I don't get it.
I don't want to say that I get it.
You had Reuters do a story about 11 Ukrainian men that they were tracking.
Not a single one of them is still in combat.
Between those who were killed, those who were injured, and those who ran away, not a single one of them is still in combat.
And they did that in one camp, just choosing a random sample of 11 mates, you know, and seeing what they've been up to.
Not one of them, in a period of a few months, not one of them is still in combat.
So there is this breakdown here in Ukraine's ability to fight, which isn't recognized either by the European leadership or by the Ukrainian leadership.
Somebody's asking about talking about Boris Johnson convinced them not to have the peace deal.
Yes.
Yes, pretty much.
Boris Johnson intervened in the Istanbul talks that were happening in April 2022, so two months after the invasion.
And the Russians were saying, you know, we will return a big bunch of land to you.
You will sign on permanent neutrality, never being in NATO, etc.
And Boris Johnson goes in and says to the Ukrainians, don't you dare agree to this.
And he sabotages the agreement.
And I believe, it is my opinion, I can't prove it, that he's still getting paid to warmonger.
Because every single time he writes about Ukraine, it is in support of more funding for Ukraine.
Keep the war going.
Don't accept any peaceful outcome.
I think Johnson has replaced Blair as my most hated prime minister of all time.
Yeah, I can understand why.
I can understand why.
With Blair, you knew he hated you.
With Johnson, he betrayed you.
So, yeah, they're a substantial difference.
Absolutely.
So this is what it looks like in terms of the Americans in Europe.
And this is why the theme of this is that the American order is collapsing.
They can't properly defend Japan or Taiwan.
Or maybe they can, but they're very hesitant about it.
They're finding their way out of Europe.
And you can imagine, I mean, think about the second order consequences if Ukraine gets defeated.
You have hundreds of thousands of young men who were sent into this horrible meat grinder where they were killed or maimed or their friends were killed and maimed.
They, throughout this, were infused with a pretty nasty ideology.
And if they lose, they're not going to be able, or a big chunk of them are not going to be able to stay in Ukraine.
And then they will cross the border into Western Europe because Russia is committed to denazification.
Because Russia is committed to denazification, whatever that means in precise terms.
And then you end up in this position where these men who have connections to intelligence, who have combat experience, and a massive chip on their shoulder.
And deep networks.
And on top of that, all those weapons that went missing.
All those weapons that went continually go missing.
All of that money.
Just at the point now where they're comfortable with violence.
Extreme violence.
Deeply so.
What do you think happens to these young men?
Because they can't, as you say, they can't stay in Ukraine.
Do they just all end up in Western Europe?
They probably end up forming all kinds of criminal networks in Western Europe, and then they're in competition with the Muslim gangs that actually do control crime in Western Europe.
Oh, good.
Yes, why not?
And then you end up seeing them working on radicalizing young people in Europe to get rid of the invaders and to participate in criminal activities on the side, which is how all militias and insurgencies fund themselves.
And you end up with this powder keg of a Europe that's collapsed economically because of insane policies, including immigration and including backing Ukraine and cutting off the supply of cheap Russian energy into Europe.
I mean, the second order consequences of the Ukrainian defeat for Europe are pretty catastrophic.
They're catastrophic, not just for European elites, they're also catastrophic for European people.
And you know that the elites will get on a yacht somewhere and piss off.
And you know that the regular people will end up paying the price for this lunacy.
So when we say that the theme of this is that the global order is collapsing, yes, we mean it.
The global order is collapsing, including law and order in Europe, which has already collapsed.
And that collapse will be accelerated as Europe figures out what to do with a bunch of recently demobilized, very radicalized, very resentful, rightly so, Ukrainian men who are going to show up.
And that's even assuming we don't create our own class of them by taking on Russia.
Yes.
Which is so insane.
I can't believe they're serious about it, but then they are so insane that.
I mean, I think it was the American secretary for the army, Driscoll, who pretty much admitted that the Russians are out-producing pretty much everybody in terms of missiles.
Five million shells a year or something?
In terms of missiles and artillery shells and all kinds of projectile weapons and drones and so on.
So as things stand, the Russian military industry is massive and they haven't fully mobilized.
Like they haven't turned the civilian economy into a war economy yet.
They haven't gone into a war economy in Russia.
But you can imagine that if they're in a war in Europe, then yes, or in the rest of Europe, that is, then yes.
And we had the cheap of the Bundeswehr, the German army, saying when the Ukraine war started that I could not imagine that there would be another war in Europe in my lifetime.
Mate, why are you in command of an army if you can't imagine a war happening?
You're in the wrong business.
You're in the wrong line of work.
What are you prepping them for?
Exactly.
You're in the wrong line of work.
DEI quotas, presumably.
I can't help but keep an eye on chat during all of this.
And you're getting the usual sort of NAFO shills coming out and saying that if any time you put a realistic assessment of what's going on, they just call you a Putin fanboy.
It's very, very boring.
But then, counter-posed with that, I'm also seeing a whole bunch of Americans just saying, yeah, we don't want to be anywhere near this.
No, I understand.
And those two views are not compatible.
The one is the one you get by watching European media, which says, oh, yeah, we will fight Putin and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, well, yeah, but can you actually do that?
Yes.
Versus the Americans saying, no, not interested.
So there's an interesting comment from Testing here saying that U.S. weapons to Taiwan are at record highs.
Yes, they are.
But the deliveries aren't always being followed through.
When you look at weapon sales, you've got to look at the contract.
That's an important part.
Then you've got to look at the weapon being delivered.
And a lot of what Trump sold them in his first term hasn't been delivered yet.
So this is what I'm pointing out.
I'm not saying that the Americans aren't saying that they're going to back Taiwan.
I'm not saying that they're not saying that they're selling them weapons.
I'm saying that the deliveries aren't actually happening.
Yeah, they're charging them.
Yes.
They're racking up the debt on their ledger.
They just don't actually get the weapons.
That's what I'm saying.
So there is this reality here that the Americans are ditching Europe and to a lesser extent East Asia.
And for all of the talk about containing China and all of that, it hasn't happened yet.
Now, if they do reconcile with Russia and lift the sanctions on Russia, it allows the Russians to sort of step in and partner with Japan because China is too big and too strong.
So if America's edging back from Taiwan and outright pulling out of Europe, it's still got quite a large military.
Where's that going to be used?
Ah, let's talk about Latin America.
So now we are seeing the Americans are seriously expanding their presence in the Caribbean.
And all kinds of old bases that they had in Puerto Rico and elsewhere are being refurbished and built up.
And they've deployed an armada off the coast of Venezuela and then declared that the airspace over Venezuela is closed.
And the Federal Aviation Authority issued something called a notice to airmen, NOTAM, which says that the airspace over Venezuela is going to be very dangerous, shall we say, until I believe it expires on the 26th of February, 2026.
Because at the moment...
Obviously, this can be extended.
Because at the moment, we've got this posture going on where, you know, boats supposedly carrying drugs going into the US, they're making a big thing about we're taking them out.
Yes.
But the scale of the build-up is well beyond taking out a few drug runners.
This clearly isn't...
You're not ramping up military bases.
The scale of the buildup is really interesting in a couple of ways.
Firstly, in terms of the military bases, these are necessary for power projection over the area.
At some point, they're going to get to Cuba, and we'll talk about that.
But right now, the focus is Venezuela and on building capabilities across the Caribbean.
And the main driver of all of this is the fact that the Chinese are now the dominant economic player in Latin America because they're buying all of the natural resource exports of Latin America.
And they're making big investments in infrastructure in order to facilitate these imports.
So right under America's nose, China were just coming in and sweeping out rare earth minerals.
I mean, this is...
Like copper from Chile, soybeans from Brazil, oil from Venezuela.
But it's ridiculous the Americans have been sleeping on this for 20 years.
Because they've been busy fighting insane wars in the Middle East that should have never been fought in the forest.
Well, I mean, presumably because their whole leadership class at the Pentagon are a bunch of boomers who can only think Russia and Middle East.
Yes.
Just doesn't occur to them.
No.
It doesn't occur to them that they've lost their grip on the most important part of the world for them, which is the Western Hemisphere.
Yes.
And that their own Anglo-allies are falling under all kinds of leftist tyrannies from New Zealand to Britain to Canada, etc.
So they're not paying attention to what actually matters or haven't been.
Now they are.
And this naturally must come at the expense of their commitments to Asia and Europe.
And then there's the Middle East.
It's like the liberal parents who are trying to help people around the other side of the world are not noticing that their daughter's become a prostitute and their son a drug addict.
They completely lost track.
I know you're highlighting Venezuela there.
It's worth noting that Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves of anywhere in the world.
Yes.
I mean, more than Saudis.
I think it's 300 billion barrels.
So the Saudis, they might be lying about their oil reserves, but that's a different conversation for another time.
They somehow never seem to go down.
I don't know why.
But anyway, their oil reserves never seem to decline, supposedly because of new discoveries or because of new technologies, but they don't seem to ever go down.
Venezuela has not just the biggest oil reserves.
Venezuela is a minerals powerhouse.
And you can pretty much extract any mineral that you want from Venezuela, including some rare earth minerals, which are sort of co-located with other kinds of richest countries in the world, but they discovered socialism first.
Well, they discovered corruption, and then they got socialism, and now here we are.
Because they were pumping out oil, weren't they?
They still export something.
They say they're exporting 900,000 barrels a day, which is a substantial amount.
Which is a substantial amount.
However, however.
It would be more.
It could be so much more.
And their people could actually be prosperous and not literally starving and immigrating all over.
And Trump is saying that we're going to start with ground attacks and we will put an end to those SOBs.
Love the way he talks.
I find it refreshing.
I find the honesty quite refreshing to tell you the truth.
I mean, the population of Venezuela is only 30 million.
And actually, what passes for their military is basically a bunch of ragtag militants.
So it should be fun for the U.S. troops.
But there is the other reality here, which is that Maduro pretty much offered to give the Americans everything that they wanted.
Right.
Well, because he knows he cannot last five minutes.
Well, the problem is this with Venezuela.
Maduro and Travis before him worked very hard on arming all kinds of insane local militias, especially in Caracas itself, which is geographically a bit of a difficult city to take on.
And these local militias can drag you into the kind of urban warfare that is nasty.
They don't have to win.
They just have to maintain an insurgency for long enough.
And that seems to be what they're preparing to do.
So they have some anti-aircraft capabilities.
They have S-300 VMs and they have Suhoys that can fire anti-aircraft missiles.
They have some anti-ship capabilities, including decent Chinese missiles.
So they have some potential there, but obviously they're not going to beat the American military.
Well, and to be fair, I was going to say the Americans know how to deal with that.
You just drop bombs out of planes.
But the whole thing showed that the dropping bombs out of planes isn't a guaranteed solution.
No, but the other thing is it's very different when you've been doing that to Middle Easterners as doing it to Latin Americans when you've got the demographics of the U.S.
So around there are supposedly 38 million Mexicans in the United States.
The position of the Mexican government is fully supportive of Venezuela, as are the Brazilians and the Colombians.
And the reason for that is that they are all more or less narco-states to varying degrees.
As in, the real problem in Latin America is not Venezuela.
Venezuela is a natural resource powerhouse that helps prop up Cuba because it supplies the Cubans with money and the Cuban intelligence more or less runs big parts of Venezuela.
And this sort of attempt by the Americans is to sort of secure the northern tip of South America, meaning that Colombia will have to be next and Mexico will have to be next.
And Brazil, because it has an insane socialist president, Lula, alongside Colombia, will be backing any insurgency that breaks out in Venezuela.
And the geography of the place is So extensive and so large with this jungle along the borders with Brazil and Colombia that really you can't supply the population, but you can definitely supply an insurgency.
And you can provide enough weapons in these ridiculously porous borders to make sure that insurgency can keep going.
And part of the problem is that the mineral wealth is in these jungle areas.
So you do think Venezuela was first because, I mean, let's go with the official narrative.
The official narrative is all about drugs.
But the real drug problem is Mexico.
Exactly.
So the fentanyl is going into the U.S. via Mexican land routes.
It's not coming over on the occasional boat.
Yes.
Yes.
So you think that the official narrative is bunk?
It is Venezuela first.
It is about Venezuela first.
And if you remember, you have to sort of go back to the Middle East and think about it this way.
When the Americans invaded Iraq, it was supposed to be the first step in a plan to invade seven Middle Eastern countries.
So on the list were Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, and Iran, as well as Iraq.
Now, over the last 20 years, they managed to regime change all of those except for Iran.
And some of these were through civil wars, and some of these were through the partition, and some of these were through all kinds of things.
But they did in the end achieve regime change in all of them except Iran.
And you see them now acting against Venezuela, and you must assume that A, they're planning to do more because they've lost control of Latin America, which is core to their own Monroe doctrine and their own sphere of influence.
And you must assume that that plan will be delayed as it hits reality.
And you therefore must also assume that part of that delay is going to be from neighboring countries trying to destabilize anything that the Americans win.
Because again, if you're Brazil and you're asked, well, nice Mr. Lula, why don't you just bukele all of the gangs in Rio and kill them all or put them all in big jails?
Part of the answer is because I'm taking money from them and I give them welfare.
I mean, this brings us back to a brief conversation we had when you were sort of outlining the segments before we came on, which is how crazy it was that they let the Lula coup happen in Brazil because they went from having a friend of the U.S. to having an enemy of the U.S.
And you said, well, actually, you can't prove it, but you think that the State Department was behind the matter.
Because Biden wanted an insane leftist in Brazil.
Because Blinken and Jake Sullivan wanted leftists to succeed everywhere.
I'd argue probably because they're either because of their ideology or because they're paid by the Chinese, but it always could be both.
I mean, this is not an either-or here.
And they'd rather not have somebody who is going to be tough on crime, tough on corruption, a nationalist, and who says, no, there is law and order, and I believe in God.
Because people forget that Bukele began his campaign, as somebody wrote me a letter and reminded me, actually, a very nice lady.
Bukele began his campaign against the gangs with prayers in cabinet on a regular basis.
This was the first step.
First, we ask God for help, then we go and do what we're supposed to do.
And so seeing somebody like Bolsonaro, who is traditional in that sense, is scary.
Or, you know, regardless of his personal life, et cetera, et cetera.
That is scary for them.
Somebody who's openly anti-degeneracy, somebody who's openly against their agenda on the basics of it.
Just while we're talking about Biden's treachery and the extent to which he sold out, maybe I can sidetrack slightly and sort of bring up another point that I sort of like to on this stuff.
Because, I mean, effectively, what you're describing here is that the Americans would like to see, instead of this circle being the energy powerhouse, the circle moves to basically over here.
Because Canada, US, and Venezuela, I mean, that is an absolute energy powerhouse if you start to bring that together.
And if the Canadians get rid of some of their insane laws that sort of stop the proper exploitation of Canadian energy, and if you go to the Arctic Circle and exploit the resources there, which was one of the things that Trump talked about in the outset when he was talking about building the 40 icebreakers that would be required to go to the Arctic.
But what you're kind of outlining here is how the US likes to do encirclements.
What you're kind of describing here is they are being encircled down here.
Yes.
And they kind of let it happen.
But the other thing is the degree to which they've allowed internally.
So the Chinese have bought up whatever it is, 300,000 or is it 3 million kilometers of farmland in the US?
And it's not just the sheer volume of the farmland that they're buying.
Yes.
It's extraordinary.
Huge amounts of farmland.
Right, but it's not just the amount of farmland they bought out.
It's where it is.
So in North Dakota, they let the Chinese buy up a site adjacent to an Air Force base.
Yes.
Right, and they tried to... Keir Starmer helping them with these deals.
Well, uh...
That's insane.
No, I mean, the Democrats are just willing to do it themselves.
And they try to buy up another load of farmland adjacent to an Air Force base in Texas, but the Texans at least stop that.
But the point is, all of this US-based Chinese-owned farmland could be turned into basically a drone hub.
And for whatever reason, I don't ever see American commentators talk about this.
And I really think they should be.
Because, okay, fine.
You've got these potential drone bases and they've got heavy farm equipment.
They've got storage barns.
That one next to the Air Force base in North Dakota, it's got a lot of wind turbines, which are perfect for surveillance on it as well.
And the ability to ship in drones is not going to be difficult.
They might have some problem getting high-grade explosives in there, but it's a bloody farm.
No, the American ports are open.
American ports are open.
I don't think a big chunk of the cargo actually gets inspected in the United States.
Even the explosives can get in.
Yeah, so even if they can't get the high-grade explosive in, it's a bloody farm.
So you've got all the nitrate-based explosives you could possibly ask for.
And the point is, even if they can't get the high-grade explosives, they can definitely get the drone stuff in.
You don't actually need high-grade explosives to damage sensitive equipment like pipelines, oil tanks, aircrafts, radar equipment.
Let me tell you how right you are.
The Americans use the exact same playbook to support the Ukrainians conducting attacks on Russia's strategic bombers that were struck 2,000, 3,000 kilometers deep in Russian territory by smuggling drones on containers and then unleashing them into Russia to hit Russian strategic bombs.
Okay, so if they can do them 3,000 kilometers away, it's pretty safe to say the Chinese can do it from next door to the Air Force base then.
Precisely.
Precisely.
So having this kind of facility where nobody's going to bother if you're sort of digging in farmland or running heavy equipment or running heavy equipment or what or having large shipments, large crates in all the time.
So this can be used against the United States, obviously.
And internally.
And some of these are next to missile bases, not just Air Force bases.
And then you add to that.
So, one more thing to add to that is because you've had the southern border open for long, again, it wasn't picked up by American commentators that much, but a hell of a lot of the people coming in were Chinese.
Yes.
And they were maintaining their own routes.
So, basically, the South Americans were going in one batch, and the Chinese were coming in for a different route.
So, not only have they got the farmland next to American military bases, they've lost count of how many Chinese have come in.
There could be half a bloody Chinese army in America right now, and they wouldn't know because they didn't count them, they didn't check.
Because Biden allowed millions and millions and millions of people to come in.
So, these are real security risks.
But at the end of the day, the real American power is in their aircraft carriers, which, while this is a problem domestically, especially for industrial sabotage and this kind of thing, and for attacks on some of these bases to keep them off balance, it's not as big as an existential threat as knocking out aircraft carriers.
So, there is a balance.
I don't want to over-exaggerate this.
That's a real problem.
There can't be, as if it's common sense.
I was going to say, there can't be legitimate intelligence which would indicate the Chinese are planning anything like that, that the Americans hold.
If Trump has sat there and gone, we're going to let 600,000 Chinese students come, unless they don't care.
I don't, do you know what I mean?
I don't get it.
Logic would dictate you just wouldn't do that.
No, it's an insane step to allow Chinese students.
It's mad.
It's a mad step to allow Chinese students.
Wealth of history of them being a sense if you accept that the Chinese have the whip hand when it comes to the trade war, it makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, no, true, true.
But then, in making sure that the Western Hemisphere is under control in order to supply you with the natural resources to rebuild your manufacturing base, also then makes sense.
So, the fact that the Americans were that they just failed in the trade war against China kind of explains why they have to consolidate on a natural resource powerhouse like Latin America, specifically Venezuela, in order to build up their capabilities in order to not have 600,000 Chinese students coming in every year, which is a crazy thing to do to begin with.
The other thing I've got to ask is: the U.S. cannot have a national border if it doesn't deal with Mexico.
No.
And the Mexican government has quite conclusively lost the monopoly of power.
At the moment, there's an oligopoly of power, and the Mexican government is simply one of them, and the cartels are the other members of the oligopoly.
No, because let me draw your attention to this story.
Mexico City, supposedly, under Gloria Scheinbaum, who is now the president, there was a big fall in the number of murders in Mexico City under her leadership.
Excellent news.
Wonderful news.
I don't believe that.
The reality is that while the murder rate fell, they stopped recording a lot of deaths as murders.
I love it when they were.
And there was a spike in the disappearances rate.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I see.
So the cartels are disappearing people rather than leaving a trail of bodies.
They're murdered elsewhere.
They don't count.
And you can only interpret this one way.
The cartels were trying to help her with the statistics.
So not only was her administration massaging the numbers by not recording a lot of violent deaths as homicides, the cartels were also trying to be helpful by making people disappear instead of killing them.
Right, okay.
And so you sort of see that what's happened here is that the cartels decided, because they were overflowing with the milk of human kindness, to help nice Gloria Scheinbaum, or because she's on their side.
It got so bad that when the Americans captured, so this was under her predecessor, Amlo, Lopez Obrador, whatever his name is, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The Americans somehow captured one of the top drug dealers in Mexico.
And they did so apparently through the help of the son of one of the other top drug dealers.
They'd captured his father and him.
And so he helped them capture another guy as a way to get a deal.
And in exchange, the Americans brought 17 members of his family into the U.S. rather than let the cartels murder them all, which is what would have happened.
But Amlo got so angry that the Americans had captured this guy out of Mexico that he threatened to prosecute the other drug dealer who helped the Americans for treason.
Wow, that's a self-confident.
So you can't be more openly on the side of the cartels than that.
And the cartels.
So the drugs might be 3% of Mexico's GDP.
It's treason to arrest this cartel.
Exactly.
It's treason to help the Americans take out the money.
You can make this out.
No, it's insane.
Exactly.
The last election that brought Scheinbaum into power was the bloodiest in Mexico's history.
And they keep on killing candidates that they don't like.
175,000 people in Mexico work for the cartels, according to the LA.
He was the fifth largest employer.
Fifth largest employer in the country.
Fifth largest employer in the country, yes.
Wow.
And they're in everything from chickens to avocados.
Like when you buy your environmentally avocado because you're too much of a wuss to eat meat, you're financing the Mexican cartels.
So if you had a reason to abandon avocados and just eat British beef, it's because you're financing the cartels.
You might as well just go straight to the cocaine, just be done with it.
Just say, yeah, I'm just going to finance the Mexican cartels.
Exactly.
So they've expanded into everything in Mexico.
And this is helped by the government because they need the money.
And then the cartels extort everyone.
They extort pretty much every single business that they can extort, including a bunch of the big manufacturing players whose wares end up going into the United States.
So Mexico is a much bigger problem than Venezuela.
I mean, if the U.S. wants to fit its recruitment crisis in the military, take on the cartels.
Yes.
Young men would love to sign up for that.
And I'm sure a lot of Mexicans would love to sign up.
I'm sure that a big chunk of Mexicans will say, yeah, he has promised to kill them and execute them all.
Because there's a lot of Mexicans in the United States.
Because Bukhoe is too nice.
He's not killing them.
If there's a lot of Mexicans in the U.S., if the U.S. goes to war with Mexico but frames it as an anti-cartel war, what happens to the population?
The Mexican population in America.
There's a lot of problems here.
Because in these three border states that are on, like, between the U.S. and Mexico, the dominance of the cartels is so enormous that they've replaced the government.
They provide health care.
They provide education.
They also extort your business.
But they also provide a bunch of services.
So they sort of replaced the government in these territories.
And when we say the cartels are the fifth largest employer, we're not counting all of those guys as well, the health workers.
Probably not.
Right.
Probably.
So they could actually be the largest employer in Mexico.
Yeah, And Scheinbaum has been working on expanding the military's Influence in businesses like tourism and transportation and so on.
And as a cynical Middle Easterner, I would say that she's trying to rope them into the corruption network so that they don't fight the cartels.
That's what she's doing.
And then you get people on X, I'm going to say people instead of what I actually want to say, claiming that, no, no, Scheinbaum is a big enemy of the cartels.
In reality, she's helping fight some cartels in favor of others.
Yeah.
Because they probably believe that if they could just consolidate it under one or two cartels, the level of violence would fall.
That would be their thinking.
It's a theory.
It's a theory.
But it's insane as well.
So the problem for the Americans that are on their own back door are so huge that they require them to abandon Asia and Europe.
Because the fact that countries like Colombia and Mexico and Brazil and Venezuela and Cuba, Cuba less of a narco-state, but that these four are sort of leftist narco-states is also tied to their relations with China, is also tied to the immigration crisis, is also tied to the drug crisis.
So these problems that they face because of the fact that they've neglected their own backyard for so long are all in a very real way interlinked domestically and geopolitically.
They let this region go to hell under leftists and they exported a bunch of their manufacturing to Mexico, creating the market for drugs as a result of the despair of the workers who have lost their jobs.
Now that they have to fix it, they have to fix all of it.
Which means, yes, of course they're going to be ditching Europe and Asia, which means yes, of course the American-based order is collapsing because America itself has fallen apart under the idiotic policies of open-door immigration and free trade and the export of industry and the financialization of everything.
And the original reason why.
So sorry, while all of the resources got wasted fighting in frickin Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and Iran, which are all completely not critical to the American security, but obviously Mexico is critical to American security.
Obviously all of Latin America is critical to American security.
They were asleep at the wheel and let China become the dominant player in their own backyard, including even in Canada in some cases.
Oh, yeah, yeah, well, yeah.
Canada loves China, don't they?
I was just going to say, I mean, the original reason why everybody in the world is using the dollar goes back to the Bretton Woods system.
The whole deal was post-war.
America was going to be the global policeman, and specifically they were going to keep open global shipping lanes.
And everybody said, okay, well, if you're going to do that, we use a dollar for all international transactions.
But I mean, as you described here, I mean, this is unwinding.
Yes.
Pretty much.
And we're going to do an episode to explain the financial unwinding as a result.
Well, that's the long and short of it, really.
Should we have a look at the comments then?
please Yuki Walter says as an American can you blame us for what bit Well, for wanting to abandon Russia and consolidating to the States, basically.
I can't blame him.
The only issue is why did it become such a thing in the first place under Biden?
Actually, there's a lot of them, isn't there?
Yep.
Paladin, 141 Paladin, says, I would love to see a video analysing the UN.
It appears to be perfidious and evil, but weak and indecisive at the same time.
Yeah, that sounds about right to me.
Yes.
I think you've analysed it quite well yourself.
Yes, yes.
That's most bureaucracies, though, as well, isn't it?
The UN is a special place in hell.
Yeah, no.
What else have we got?
We got.
We got one from.
We've got the Morgue 7.
Right, sorry.
The Morgue 77.
America wasn't asleep at the wheel.
The boomers sold the entire car, literally.
Yeah, I mean, we didn't get into it that much, but the degree of the treason from the Biden regime is off the charts when you start looking at it like this.
Yes, absolutely.
Chris says, aren't all the governments just criminal gangs that won out in the end?
No.
I'm sympathetic to that one myself.
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sympathetic.
We're going to let the cartows provide a long conversation about this, but there's more to it than that.
Luke says these long segments are nice and all, but could we do the super chats from time to time?
Well, we always do them at the end.
You were right now.
Well, you were dipping into them during the segment.
Yeah, but we don't normally do that.
So you should count yourself lucky that you got included early.
Testing says hitting, disabling US nuclear carriers a big task.
Each have four nuclear reactors serving as fail saves, just separate and secure bulkheads.
Oh, yeah.
No, I don't think I ever said that hitting the reactors is the carriers is easy.
I said that the real bulk of American power comes from these carriers.
These carriers are still going to need resupplies.
And the resupplies, a lot of them come from factories in the US that are next to Chinese own farmland.
And that would be my pushback on that.
Quite.
No peace until Russia leaves Ukraine.
Good luck with that.
Yeah, okay.
I mean, if you're not going to learn, you're not going to learn.
I can't help you.
Yeah, send a letter to Putin.
As soon as he receives it, he will immediately pull out of Ukraine.
Have it your Christmas wish.
Yes.
Dear Santa, please ask Putin to pull out of Ukraine.
Oh, fine.
Yeah.
What are China's big problems?
There's a lot of non-contaminated food comes from other countries, which is risky if they do something and we cut it off.
Their food imports, their maritime imports are a big vulnerability.
Yes.
The problem here is modular drones allow even middling powers to drag big powers into a World War I level of attrition.
Imagine Mexican cartels, funding military-grade equipment.
And they have anti-tank weapons, they have obviously RPGs, they have all kinds of things.
And they use drones on the smuggling as well.
So if you assume that, you know, China decides that it's going to just send them a thousand drones a month, which is nothing, that's a thousand American deaths a month.
So it becomes quickly a huge political problem.
Venezuela has dirt oil that needs to be refined in Texas.
Guyana has clean oil in offshore fields.
So I think what he's alluding to there is that both Russian and Venezuelan oil is considered heavy crude.
Heavy and sour, yes.
Yeah, whereas Saudi oil is quite light.
Sweet and light.
Yes.
Yes.
And actually the refineries that you use for one.
So I'll look into the Guyana thing.
I know that there is massive offshore oil off the coast of Guyana and that the Venezuelans were threatening Guyana with an invasion just as of last year.
So, you know, don't forget that detail.
But I'll look into the full dynamics of oil.
But yes, that's a very interesting point.
Thank you.
Moussi Fate.
Thank you, Mussi.
Don't forget Mexican hazards own problems.
Too, with the Gen Z protest causing issues in other South American countries, that would probably help as well.
Yeah, well, Mexico has a lot of problems, I'd imagine.
Arcadia, I can't see the US taking on China in any significant way.
They're too closely connected now.
China held almost a trillion of US Treasury securities, and foreign investment is $126 billion a year.
I think German-British trade peaked in 1913.
And then we know what happened in 1914.
Yes.
So I accept this point, but not entirely.
I'm quite skeptical of looking at geopolitics from an only economic lens, just as I am skeptical of dismissing economics.
Luke says, do you think Russia would be able to keep producing oil if we did to them what the Middle East did to us?
Why do we fight honorably?
What do you mean?
What would you do to them?
I mean, Russian refineries and energy infrastructure is getting attacked all the time, but it's just not working.
The Ukrainians are hitting Russian refineries every other week, but it's just not working.
They probably put some thought into defending them.
Yeah.
Luke also says Trump is making America, how I play in my games, take over the entire continents and form the United Continent of America.
Hillary Colton would love that.
I mean, I've been long in favor of reuniting the Anglosphere because for everything we talked about, if you take the economies of Russia, China, and the entire EU, just chuck them in there as well.
It's still smaller than the Anglosphere.
Yes.
I mean, the US is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but the Anglosphere, with China and America, that gets you all the energy and resources you ever need.
The UK, okay, fine, it's you know, it's strategically located, we can call it that.
That's Australia's got a load of resources as well.
Yeah, yeah.
And New Zealand is the bolt hold if the plan goes wrong.
So you've got everything you need there.
Yeah.
Testing says we agree Venezuela is really about China.
To some extent, to a large extent.
Well, and the oil.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Shed ton of oil and resources.
Luke says, is this why Trump is trying to distance himself from Europe so he could form a Russian-American alliance?
I mean, actually, yeah, let Europe side.
They ended up partitioning Europe between them, essentially.
They ended up partitioning Europe between them.
Luke says, remember when Ukraine defaulted on its war bonds last year, the bondholders had to take a haircut and then Starmer promised to pay the bill.
Oh, that's nice.
I didn't know that.
I didn't remember that.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, Starma.
Let me check that properly.
Good times.
Luke, we did that one.
Oh, did we?
Okay.
Testing says, ditching Ukraine equals what Trump voters wanted and what he promised.
Yeah, a lot of people are up for that.
Reverend Norse, with 100 shekels or is that something else?
I'm not sure.
That's 100 Swedish kroners.
Ah, okay.
I'd say it depends on the kind of war.
If it is a modern humanitarian war, then China is a problem.
If it's a proper kill and subjugate war, total war, in other words, then China gets rolled.
The rules determine the outcome.
I mean, the Americans have massive advantages, but the Chinese are also serious, is what I'm saying.
And everybody is stronger next to their own homeland, obviously.
Yes.
Luke, Melbourne Ashley, we did that one.
I think we did it.
I think we did the ones above, yep.
Okay, excellent.
Right.
And do we have any video comments?
Mr. Sampson?
Yeah, looks like.
Yes or no?
That would be a no.
No!
Okay, fine.
We have a couple of more comments that we can go through if we want.
Well, let's look.
Something from Sigilstone.
The American Order is collapsing because we've taken stock of what the world offers us and realized it's nothing.
It's something, but yeah, I can understand why you might feel cynical about what a bunch of your allies are offering you.
Well, we've also got our own.
Some supposed allies than others, but okay.
We've also got our own subscriber comments.
Let me just call up the.
In fact, it might be at the bottom of the document.
Right.
There we are.
All right.
Heathen.
Sophie Liv.
I suggest Nate look up some Chinese animation trailers.
They actually looked at anime and said, we need to be even better than that.
And they did.
They innovated alright.
And once they start making English dubs to ship them over, these will become quite big.
They're beautiful to look at.
They're not better than anime.
All right.
Samson will agree, I'm sure.
I'm not an anime.
I have no idea what they're talking about.
Samson will get his weeb hat on.
I'm kidding.
They are quite good, in fairness.
They are quite good.
The animation is quite good.
But the innovation on an animation, I mean, it's not something massively transferable elsewhere.
But I take it on board.
They are actually quite good, yeah.
Ming something Zhao 2 or something like that was a massive movie this year.
It's all tentacles, though, isn't it?
Anime.
No.
Can we please not go down that rabbit hole?
No, right.
Okay.
I don't know what anime you've been looking at, mate.
Yeah, the Scotty of Swindon says, why not?
He says, why not start leaking blueprints with fatal design flaws that aren't immediately obvious and watching cripples?
They're smart enough to see them, man.
Like a bunch of things that they've stolen, they've also improved a lot.
And their fifth and sixth generation jets are actually very impressive.
The Chinese ones.
Yes.
You think out of a billion of them, they could find one or two innovators.
I mean, I do take your point, but I suppose they've got a billion of them.
So they just aren't massively innovative as a country.
No, that's true.
It tends to be a Slavic European thing, doesn't it?
What have they invented?
Gunpowder, the printing press, steel, the crossbow, paper.
So nothing modern.
Yes, but apart from that, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Yes.
You know?
Michael Dribbilis, I must be pronouncing that wrong.
Yeah, but five million.
What is it?
It's not Dribbalis.
Dribelbis?
Dribelbis.
Oh, we could be that.
One day he's going to send us a video comment saying, you bastards, you've been mispronouncing my name all of these years, and now I'm going to explain it all to you and tell you why you're all into Turkovsky.
Michael Dribelbis, possibly.
Yeah, but five million Brits have a proven track record of being able to fight at levels beyond their size.
Yes.
One British cavalry officer is worth 100 natives.
Hey, game.
I will stick to that.
All right.
Well, it worked.
We did India quite nicely.
I mean, a lot of it was getting the Indians to fight themselves, but.
But that's India.
That's innovative.
Well, yeah, we didn't just have India.
We had the Zulu bits.
Two of that went bad.
What else do we have?
Yes, fair enough.
Fair enough.
I think we had Indonesia at one point.
Luke says you skipped my comment about some of the internal flaws talked about from China, uncensored, and how the China shows a lot of internal problems.
They have a bunch of huge internal problems, I agree.
But think about it this way.
I think somebody who did a proper analysis on their debt to GDP said that it was maybe all things considered in the 20 to 60% range, depending on how you count it.
Look at Western debts.
And the difference with the Chinese debt situation, a lot of it's tied up in property.
They've kind of already taken the hit because they're sitting empty.
Yes.
The Western debt problem is all underpinning the banking system and boomer retirements.
Yes.
So are you willing to just say to the boomers, your pension's gone?
Which it is.
Yeah.
Which it is.
But admitting that is a slightly different problem.
Lord Inquisitor Hechturek says, Fras, do you think the EU is trying to sabotage peace between long story short, yes?
Okay.
Between Russia and China, I was going to say, but yes.
Henry Ashman, as we've seen with groups like the Yemenis attacking ships around Suez, high-quality but expensive to manufacture naval kit can be countered worryingly well by mass bans, presumably drones.
Yep.
That's what the Houthis did.
And then in the end, the Americans negotiated with them, which was a big humiliation.
Yeah, I didn't actually hear how that closed out.
Well, there were two things that happened.
First, the Americans negotiated a deal whereby the Houthis could still hit Israeli shipping, but not hit American shipping.
Everybody went ballistic.
Then the Israelis started bombing the crap out of Yemen, and the Houthis just kept on firing things at them until the ceasefire with Gaza.
And then the Houthis stopped because the fighting in Gaza had stopped.
So they did enormous damage to the Yemenis and to the Houthi.
Didn't stop the firing missiles.
And now they're rebuilding their missile capabilities because the Iranians are like, you were the only ones who were effective in this war.
Have some more.
Brilliant.
But that is also interesting.
The deal was basically, you can keep hitting the Israeli ships, but stop hitting our ships.
Yes.
That was literally the deal.
I guess the assumption was that Israel would bomb them to oblivion.
So it didn't really matter.
Yeah, but I'm saying the assumption.
You know?
I guess in that way.
But it is an interesting shift.
From an American administration that generally puts Israel first, well ahead of America first.
Well, they did put it first and went to Yemen in the first place, which was a horrible, horrible place to go to anyway.
And they didn't get anything out of it.
They pounded them for, what, 45 days, 50 days?
And then they negotiated.
So, yeah, these kinds of spam small projectiles and fire them endlessly do have some effectiveness.
Now, the Americans are building their own one-way drones and cheap counters and things like that, but these take time.
And we'll see how the Israeli laser air defense system works when it's actually tested.
But that could be a game changer.
Right.
There's a good comment from our in-house Roman in the chat, and I want to end on this.
The USA has arrived at a contradiction.
It can't be both liberal and imperial.
Correct.
Exactly.
Liberal imperialism got us this.
It created the worst mess in history.
So get rid of the liberal part and just be an honest empire.
And, you know, okay, fair enough.
Well, I mean, it worked out for the first 30-odd years after World War II, just doing the imperial bit.
And then they decided to add the liberal bit in the sort of mid-60s and it all sort of fell apart.
Well, yes, they escalated the liberal to its natural conclusions.
Right, which is collapse.
Which is collapse.
Right.
You can't.
It doesn't make sense.
So you think we're going to get the incoming American Empire?
We're going to get a bunch of different empires.
Right.
This is what multiplarity is.
What happens to the little old UK?
Do we join the American Empire?
stuck between the European failed empire and the American fixing itself empire.
And then you have to choose a side, essentially.
Okay.
Or the Americans consolidate over Western Europe and you're part of it too.
Okay.
These are the two realistic options, really.
And yes.
And who's the other big empire?
Is it a sort of Eurasian, Russian, Chinese?
Russian and Chinese are going to compete with each other at some point, depending how things go with Japan.
The Chinese are one.
The Russians are one.
The Indians are their own little island.
I mean, God put the Himalayas there for a reason.
And Idan and Turkey, they will be struggling as they always do against each other in their own neighborhood.
Right, well, on that cheery note, yes, as you can see, it's all working out well for the global liberal order.
And yes, I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you very much.
And see you tomorrow.
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