Multipolarity

In the next six weeks, anything can happen between Israel and Gaza. But in the next six months or two years, the consequences become in some ways more predictable. It is to this medium-range gaze that the lads now turn: looking at the US Presidential election, the EU's turn against Atlanticism, and the next energy shock, in a chock-full third premium edition of Multipolarity. To access, sign up on...

As Israel moves its artillery in to level Hamas, a new migrant crisis is brewing. Their Arab neighbours won’t take them - so with 2.1 million Gazans falling under every ECHR definition of refugee, is Europe’s always fractious migration politics about to fully fall off its perch?  And while we’re on the subject, how is the war hotting up? After some humming and hawing about whether the IDF gro...

There's only one geopolitics story this week. This is our take.

Gold has lost its tiny mind. Traditionally, it rises in line with inflation surges. And falls with interest rate rises. Until now. Like a classic heist film, there’s a plot underway. Central banks, including China, are buying it up in bulk, preparing for a future of de-dollarization.   The fallout between India and Canada rumbles on, with India expelling 41 Canadian diplomats. The world’...

Praise the Lord, it's Premium Week. In a gut buster 90 minute sesh, the lads are taking apart the most likely scenarios for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan. The military strategies. The economic implications. From the whistle blowing on a troop carrier as the gate falls, to the itchy nuclear trigger fingers in Beijing and Washington, this is our full kino take on how the war would be won, and wher...

It hasn’t happened since 1914, but invading Mexico is suddenly back in fashion. Dan Crenshaw and Tom Cotton want to send US Security Forces across the Rio Grande. Vivek Ramaswamy wants a shock and awe campaign in the drug war. For all the obvious aesthetic value, this week, we consider: Is it actually a good idea to invade a neighbouring state?  Ursula von der Leyen has launched an EU probe i...

The Three Seas. For much of eastern European history that’s meant chaos, conflict and conquest.  These days, it’s a new initiative to link the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Seas. And it’s just added Greece as its 13th member.  So is it a genetic freak of good intentions that will die naturally? Or is it the start of something altogether more toothy – a new kind of US dominance in Ea...

It’s often been accused of being a talking shop. But now, the G20 is looking increasingly like yesterday’s talking shop. With the Brics having stolen their thunder two weeks back, is this week’s G20 meeting about as relevant as an Eagles reunion tour?  The Chinese are being modest again. It took a teardown of the new Huawei phone to reveal the most alarming tech news of the year. The company...

This week, we launch our first premium episode. It's a deep - and lengthy - consideration of two of populism's big challengers. Javier Milei - who now looks set to win the Argentinian presidential election. And Vivek Ramaswamy - who may even come second to Trump. *** To listen beyond this teaser, just jump over to Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86737989 Sign up for the 5 bucks tier. And s...

This week, the lads are kicking back against the recent pervasive narrative in the financial press: that China is on the verge of a big wobble or recession. As they show, most of the China hawks are high on their own supply in an oriental Copium den. The biggest news of the week is the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. With plans to expand way beyond the famous five, are we witnessing the birth of The...

This week, the lads have latched onto a report in the Financial Times which claims to show that outside of London, Britain is often poorer than the poorest US state - and equally, that it has fallen way behind its European peers like Germany. Our duo argue the toss: is this just bad accounting? Or is there something more fundamental here, to do with how a different kind of bad accounting has allow...

This week, the lads are looking at ESG - Environment, Social & Governance. For years now, companies have been pushing the idea that an 'ESG Score' could be a profitable guide to investing. Yet this latest mind virus for the finance community has produced scrappy results. Now, with Blacrock and Standard & Poor dropping it in the face of tightening markets, Philip Pilkington looks back on th...

As summer tightens its grip, the lads are getting back to basics, hosting a Spaces on "What Is Multipolarity"? Featuring Friend Of The Pod Malcom Kyeyune, aka @Tinkzorg. Enjoy. But don't inhale too deeply.

Ukraine has lost its grain deal. Russian fertiliser is struggling to get to market. Now India wants to ban exports of non-Basmati rice. The ratchet on food prices is by no means over. Now, the ratchet on politics really begins. Where are the next big food riots going to come from?  Call in the plumbers: there’s a big blockage in the UK gilt markets. Why is liquidity suddenly drying up in a tw...

De-dollarisation. We've been warning about it since the start of the show. But it won't happen overnight. To arrive at a place where the dollar is just one of many global currencies is the work of years, maybe decades. In this Special Edition, our duo are taking the long view. We're going right back to Bretton Woods, to Nixon & The Gold Window, to the Emerging Markets Crisis of 97 and 98, and...

Malcom Kyeyune (@Tinkzorg on Twitter) is one of the smartest, most far-seeing commentators out there. Someone the lads have really chimed with. Earlier in this bonanza week, we paired him with Elbridge Colby, for a Twitter Spaces debating whether America could ever take a Realist turn. Now, he's back for a solo show. The lads go deep into Chairman Kyeyune Thought: from the worthlessness of much US...

Can you still get your Germanium on AliExpress? After the US restricted Chinese access to high-end chips, China is looking to ban this vital chip ingredient.  So where do we go from here? Can America ban the stuff that makes Germanium? Or is this the Chinese going one step up in the chip wars?   For months, elements within NATO have been piling on the pressure to open a liaison offi...

This week, we hosted a special Twitter Spaces debate, now re-published as a podcast. The topic was: "Is Realism realistic for America, or will liberal idealists and neocons always control US foreign policy?" Can America's animal spirits shift strategy? We were joined by two of the world's top thinkers on the question, each with a distinct angle. @ElbridgeColby is the architect of the 2018 US Natio...

As France mops up the ashes of the burnt-out banlieues , data shows national food spending is down thirty per cent year on year. It’s not quite Les Miserables, but right across Europe, it seems that hangry might turn out to be the dominant political mode of 2023. China is building a trade superweapon. They’ve just created a brand new foreign relations department that will have the scope to take ch...

The Chinese are backing the Argentinian claims to the Falklands, with hot anti-colonialist rhetoric. With America still neutral, is Britain heading towards a Suez two-point oh moment? And perhaps more importantly: have we reached a sinister new milestone in the multipolar era – where old colonial grievances become brand new proxy wars? Back in Britain, the Bank of England are looking to re-bottle...

This week leads on an extraordinary story. A new metric, from the world-leading science journal Nature has put Chinese universities above some of the most famous names in higher ed. MIT, Caltech, Cambridge and Imperial are all ranking lower than the likes of Nanjing and Tsinghua. Andrew Collingwood is interested in how far behind the times our cultural imagination is with regards to China. While P...

This week, the lads are down the shopping mall... Commercial property is looking increasingly un-commercial. As businesses bail out of downtown post-Covid, it’s threatening to create a downward spiral that drags the banks with it. But will the banks then drag entire cities down with them?  America has spent decades taking out Europe’s trash. But if there were a war in Taiwan, a new survey sug...

Tim Cook. Elon Musk. Warren Buffet. Jeff Bezos. Jamie Dimon.  Lately, a who’s who of American business power has been sent over to meet their Chinese counterparts. With embassy-level diplomacy increasingly in the deep freeze, are they using their corporate rockstars to do what the State Department can’t?  Meanwhile, inside China, as the post-Covid recovery slows, we may be about to see t...

What is Britain's industrial policy? What should it be? In this Anglo-centric Twitter Spaces debate, we're joined by 'rising star of the Tory right', Miriam Cates MP. Talking alongside her is SDP leader William Clouston, and Michael Taylor, who runs Coldwater Economics, and publishes an excellent Substack called The Long March. After several off-beat editions, we'll be back to the normal format on...

This episode is brought to you by Twitter Spaces. With an elephantine 2.5 hour running time, we've gone gonzo, and turned one of our regular Twitter Spaces into a hybrid episode of Multipolarity, recorded live. In addition to all the usual Pilkington-Collingwood goodness, we were joined by a range of listener-guests, including the Ireland commentator Peter Ryan, and the Swedish gadfly Malcom Kyeyu...