Multipolarity

This week, we’re going as big picture as imaginable. Philip Pilkington has a thesis about liberalism itself: 1. That it is bad. 2. That it is ending.  That’s the nub of his new book, released this week . He argues that the modern world order is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies...

China is planning a new version of its Made In China 2025 industrial strategy. Just as America is punching holes in its own science funding budget, we'll be reporting from the output gap.  Meanwhile, the new US ambassador to Ankara has declared that he's against carving up Syria in a modern Sykes-Picot, the treaty that drew up the Middle East modern borders. Is this an important anti-colonial...

Two audio essays, half a world apart.  Nixon went to China first. Now, Philip Pilkington is there; to see what fifty years of openness to the West has done for the place. Turns out, quite a bit. He’ll be sharing his impressions: North Korea-style police state, or Singapore-style authoritarian wonderland?   While Philip is playing tourist, our very own Andrew Collingwood is crossing...

More ordnance in the Middle East. Rumours are that Trump is agreeing to a two state solution; Israel is out in the cold; Netanyahu is not having his calls returned, and a trillion dollar deal is incoming with the Saudis. We’ve had shuttle diplomacy… but this is Challenger Space Shuttle diplomacy? Meanwhile, Pakistan has apparently shot down as many as three Indian Rafale fighter jets in recent cla...

No one imagined that Romanian elections would become a big spectator sport, but they’ve really proved us wrong. Remember the TikTok Secret Police Election? Well now Romania is back with a sequel: Ethno-Nationalist Hooligan for President. The question smart observers are asking is: why can the powers that be live with one, not the other? The smartest are keeping the answer to themselves. Meanwhile,...

Three months ago, Pierre Poilievre was going to take 50 per cent of the total vote, a historic generational landslide. Now, he’s a pub trivia question.  What happened in Canada?  Did it warp beneath the enormous trade gravity of the Trump Presidency?  And why did Canadians think that turning to a milquetoast former central banker would turn off the US electromagnet dismantling their...

Gold is going to the moooooooon. Fantastic news for gold bugs. Until someone works out that this is a short against America, and the Wall Street types celebrating are effectively blowing the kazoo for the end of their own industry.  After all, if gold remains on the moon, they’ll have to figure out whether they still need financial services consultants in space.  Meanwhile - it’s a day e...

 This week, in a special experiment, we've gone live on Twitter Spaces. As Trump's tariffs bite, and the current account deficit zooms to the front of modern political economy, we're revisiting the idea of a new Bancor, a complete resetting of the global monetary system.

This week we scrubbed the decks and sounded the five bell alarm. Donald Trump had only gone and done it. Tariffs. Thousands of them. What could the greatest regression from the norms of globalisation since 1945 mean for a show called Multipolarity? Even better: what would it mean for the world? With the MAGA base both boisterous and uneasy in the face of this dawning reality, we wargamed out the a...

Coming up this week: an audio essays special edition.  Philip and Andrew, going head to head, a half hour each, on two big stories that have a more medium-term feel than the usual weekly news pegs.  In the red corner, Mr Pilkington takes on the bear market. Is an icy wind coming for global stocks? How it could play out? From the bottoming out of NVIDA to the coming age of tariffs, what a...

Was the editor of the Atlantic actually accidentally included in some rangy groupchat among bros that included a denunciation of European defence policy?  Are you stupid? Have you recently had an aneurysm? Leaving aside this obvious straw dog, what is Washington actually signalling here?  Meanwhile, the Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans are getting together to sign declarations of mutu...

The British right is starting to fracture on the Ukraine issue. Where once they would reliably be called upon to paint themselves blue and yellow and raise a whip-round down the dog & duck    for more MANPADS – now, as the endgame approaches, a group of the plugged-in are leaving the big tent. The civil war that follows may be its own Donbas.  Meanwhile, further evidence is in t...

Tesla is tanking. On the NASDAQ, the Magnificent 7 have become merely the 7. The talk is all of quarterly earnings in Musk towers. But is this just a smokescreen for the fact that DeepSeek has DeepFound Silicon Valley in DeepDooDoo?    Meanwhile, in Europe, the dream of rearmament is still alive and well. Two weeks in, we’ll have a report, direct from the frontlines of an unreachable fan...

As the world blows up, again, Andrew Collingwood has a dread cold. Gavin Haynes fills in as best he can, with a soft Newcastle brogue. We cover everything - from the rumble in the White House to the cultural amnesia coming up the pike. *** You can get paywalled episodes of Multipolarity on Patreon. https://www. Patreon.com/multipolarity It's cheap and you can cancel any time.

In Germany, there’s been an election. And The Reichstag is on fire - with a new cohort of AfD members .  Will Keiser Merz see this as his opportunity to seize total control?  After all, on Saturday, the incoming Chancellor decided that Germany can quote go it alone. Whatever that means. Is the real threat to European democracy about to come from besieged Christian Democrats?  Meanwh...

A piece of our time: a special edition covering the Vance speech, the Ukraine peace plan, and the EU response.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. But what if you’re a germ? As the USA.I.D demolition continues, we’re beginning to see the outlines of what might be a network of real corruption - and it's not just the tinfoil hats saying it. How will the US public deal with having the wool pulled from their eyes? And will the Beltway liberals ever recover?  Meanwhile, Britain has agreed to the de...

USAID is being dismantled brick by brick, the bricks are being pulped, the pulp is going in the blower, the dust is being scattered to the four winds.  R.I.P, U.S.A.I.D.  We’ll be sharing the surprising implications for independent anti-government bloggers in Moldova.  Meanwhile, DeepSeek has beggared the US stock market and set NVIDIA on fire. Have the Chinese pulled off their Sput...

No European who saw it would have avoided a pang of dread, when a meme appeared online this week, in the wake of the DeepSeek AI phenomenon.   It pictured three dragons. One, ferocious, on its chest the logos of OpenAI, MetaAI, Gemini AI, and the US flag.  The other, just as ferocious: featured the Chinese flag, and the logo of DeepSeek.  The third, looking like the kid in prim...

This week is a paywalled premium episode. *** Joe Biden spent his final week minting pardons like Mugabe minted bank notes. In fact, his last act in office was to pardon his entire family. What does this unprecedented use of the seal of office portend for America’s future – and what has it got to do with the Russian word for roof?  Meanwhile, it’s been a rollercoaster week for zombie-eyed Ame...

Britain is under attack by the world’s two worst entities - rape gangs and bond market speculators. As Starmer mounts a last stand, we’re reporting from the tattered remnants of old blighty. Is Musk just messing with Starmer’s tiny mind - or are the Americans serious about sinking HMS Britannia.  Meanwhile, just as the world is thirsting for AI, the Biden regime has decided it will titrate th...

Ian Proud was once Britain's man in Moscow. A career diplomat of 24 years, he got to look in directly upon the withering relationship between the United Kingdom and Russia, in the crucial period from 2014 until 2019. In fact, he rebuilt embassy staffing structures following the mass expulsion after the March 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack. Since then, Proud has been outspokenly critical on ques...

Trumpism 2.0 offers both danger and opportunity.  Trumpism 1.0 was built around being tough with China.  And while that is no longer a rhetorical priority for the big man, much of what was started in 2016 has since become the accepted wisdom in DC.  Today, Trumpism 2.0 is as much about American competitiveness – in an international market that has slipped further away from its hegem...

Don’t call it a comeback! Four years after the last embers appeared to have been snuffed out, this week, the Syrian Civil War shocked fans by announcing it’s getting the band back together. Is the world’s most confusing conflict about to get explicable? Not entirely. We’ll be explaining why the situation in Aleppo is not something you’ll brush up on soon. Meanwhile… The fireworks guns have been a...

As the first every intermediate range ballistic missile to be fired in anger lands on Ukraine, it is more than just a world historic event in the evolution of arms. It’s a shot across the bows for the broader West.  How do we style this one out?  Right now, our leaders are a gorilla holding a ming vase.  Given their overall skill levels, will we make it through the present crisis wi...