Multipolarity

At the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio offered Europe a peace in our time.
The Americans sprayed on the charm. But looking between the fine words, it seems like Marco was on his way out the door.
Do Europe’s friends need to tell her this is a break up speech?
Meanwhile, rumours of the destruction of Iran remain premature.
We’ve run the numbers, and it turns out it would take ten per cent of all the Tomahawks in the world to flatten three mullahs and an oil derrick.
But with American strike fleets still camped in the Persian Gulf, how does this end?

Finally, Hungary was all anyone was talking about backstage at Munich.
The Brussels establishment have decided that defeating Orban in his upcoming fourth successive election will bring a massive W in a world drowning in Ls.
The polls haven’t just tightened - they’ve actually split.
With two sides both predicting victory for their candidate, across a spread of 15 points, what happens when one side wakes up in April to find themselves robbed?

Firas Modad is back for his second turn on the pod.
After talking about Neo-Ottomanism last time, he is turning his attention to Iran, and its faltering regime.
With rumours of an imminent attack continuing to swirl, what future is there for a post-Khamenei world?
What part could be played by the exiled Shah? Is there perhaps a different faction that could take the reins if the mullahs fell?
Even then: do Iran’s neighbours even want the regime to fall - given that it could unleash an oil rich industrialised state of 80 million into the region’s balance of power?
Then, talk turns to Somaliland. Recently recognised by Israel, this northern splinter state of Somalia is relatively stable, and hangs on a hinge of the Gulf of Aden, making it a juicy prize for lovers of international shipping lanes. The Emiratis are for it – but Turkey says no.
Who will win in this coming tussle between the Gulf monarchies and the neo-sultan Erdogan?

Today we bring you two audio essays from your favourite geo-political podcasters.
First up Philip is looking at the recent attempt to short the precious metals market.
Perhaps the push to lower the interest rate is not to juice the economy but rather an attempt ultimately stop the Sell America trade?
Meanwhile Andrew’s shouting from the rooftops "it’s right there in the document!".
The Donroe Doctrine… Trump wants to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and the evidence has been there the whole time.
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After Greenland, the rupture in the Transatlantic Alliance was made visible at the WEF conference in Davos.
Mark Carney said the quiet bit aloud. But the real implications are beginning to be felt in the deep financial plumbing that undergirds the global economy.
Now, a Japanese bond market sell-off is unsettling larger forces. If Japanese interest rate then rocket, they may need to liquify their massive US Treasury bond holdings. Beyond the geopolitics, this is going to turn nasty – economic levels of nasty.
We’ll be exploring the full low road prospectus in this bumper-length members-only show.
This is our monthly paywalled episode.
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In 1991, the philosopher Jean Baudrillard published a series of essays in Libération and The Guardian entitled The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Baudrillard's argument was effectively twofold. Firstly, since the American military overwhelmed the Iraqi army so easily and barely sustained casualties, what took place for the West was not really a war per se.
Secondly, the new medium of cable news television meant that viewers in the United States were able to watch the war unfold in real time, albeit through a lens of carefully curated propaganda. Viewers were told that they were being given real-time insight into war, but in reality, they were being fed a simulation of war that was, in many ways, more fictional than they would receive from high quality war fiction.
Our guest today, Anon writer and Substack Amerikanets has written a new essay in this genre entitled Virtual War Simulated Conflict in the Trump era (https://www.amerikanets.com/)
In the essay, Amerikanets described the same experience on the morning after the capture of Venezuelan president; a feeling of unreality.
The initial images and news stories available that morning suggested something like a major American military strike on a capital city. But as the smoke cleared and time went on, it became increasingly evident that all was not what seemed.
The war simulation machine appears to have now reached its nadir, but it has not resulted in a unified propaganda net where everyone unquestioningly accepts the American narrative of global conflict.
Rather, it has created an extremely fragmented reality where no one is really sure what is going on. And as Amerikanet’s essay shows, the more you actually understand what happened, the greater the looming sense of unreality becomes.
Remember you can get special paywalled premium episodes of Multipolarity every month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/multipolarity or by becoming a member on our YouTube Channel (just click Join).