Multipolarity

As they say in the Economist: "Serbia is at a crossroads..." Anti-corruption protests after the collapse of the station roof in Novi Sad have not gone away, now many months after the event. The country's leader, President Vučić, is under pressure as never before, after 13 years in power. He has offered 'televised dialogues': his opponents have declined. The standoff continues. Meanwhile, in the ti...

With EU leaders summoned to the White House to take dictation, it seems as though the Ukraine War is entering its final phase. Can the Europeans take their medicine? Or will they stay doolally on the happy pills?  India has made it easier for Russian banks to operate. Turns out, Trump’s capricious decision to threaten them with swingeing sanctions has had second order consequences. These days...

The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity is now open. Only problem? It goes through a geopolitical electromagnet pulling all the badboys of the region into its tractor beam. The US has taken out a 99 year lease on a corridor that connects Armenia and Azerbaijan. It’s a breakthrough peace deal, certainly. But is it a silk road through a minefield? Meanwhile, in Alaska, Vlad is about t...

Lawds malarkey guv’nor, Blighty’s popped its clogs.  Americans have been hoovering up ‘UK doom’ content ever since Elon Musk decided to push the grooming gangs scandal on X at the start of the year.  On the inside, everyone understands the Notting Hill days are long gone. Only some have clocked that the Children of Men era is upon us. Now, with the banning of a viral ad for a crypto exch...

Get on the bus. Or get on the Trump train.  At this week’s Chinese trade talks, Europe has found itself piggy in the middle in the great global realignment.  After Team Ursula were shunted off an airport bus by their Chinese hosts, – and given no official welcome, it’s clear which side is now entering their Hundred Years of Humiliation.   We’ll be clipping the tickets of both d...

Steve Hsu is a physicist, a tech founder, the hub of a network of cutting edge thinkers, and the host of the excellent Manifold Podcast.  After a record-breaking first appearance, this week, he returns to Multipolarity for his second turn.  This time, we want to ask him about the big picture on China’s tech frontiers. Six months on from the Deep Seek shock, it’s clear that China is makin...

Philip Pilkington is away in Belgrade on a foreign assignment, which means we’re serving up a Sleepless In Seattle-style double header, on tariffs.  First off: what is the end game for trade and the dollar? With Liberation Day now a distant memory and the passing of The Big Beautiful Bill, Philip has crunched the numbers, and figured out that all is not what it seems.  Meanwhile, Andrew,...

In a viral video clip, tantric sex expert Javier Milei once said that he only makes love once every three months. Let’s see if he goes to the IMF any more regularly. In the wake of an enormous bailout, we’ll be busting some myths on the grand schemes of Captain Ancap.  Meanwhile, in Britain, the finance minister is crying in Parliament, and the Prime Minister is too socially awkward to comfor...

Nothing Ever Happens. Or does it? A week on from a one act play of a war, we pick through the charred remains of the Fordow Nuclear Site. We’re looking for clues. A smouldering nothingburger here; or a flambéd Middle Eastern order there?   Meanwhile, Daddy got his five percent — NATO members have signed up to splash the cash on the next generation of weaponry. But is this wise defensive...

Was it real? As we record this on the morning of the 23 June, we are a little over 24 hours removed from Operation Midnight Hammer, in which USAF assets, including B2 Spirit stealth heavy bombers, attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.  US President Donald Trump says that Iran's nuclear programme has been destroyed for good. Open Source satellite pictures of t...

Malcom Kyeyune is one of the oldest friends of Multipolarity. In his first 2025 appearance, he catches up with Andrew about the state of the world. Trump’s ‘military parade’. The breakup of the MAGA coalition. Violence on America’s streets. The advent of hypersonic missiles above the skies of Tel Aviv. This is a wide-ranging, theory-of-everything overview of the geopolitical moment. You can get sp...

The Big Divorce has finally hit. Like a country rock record written by the WWE, the Trump Musk split has been its own kind of kino. But beyond two hotheaded men who secretly still love each other very much, could it be that this marks the schism between tech and MAGA? Meanwhile… that escalated quickly. As LA smouldered over the weekend, Trump punched the nuclear button, demanding to send in squadr...

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...