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The David McWilliams Podcast

30 Sep 2025 · 37m · 10 chapters

Episode artwork

Culture Wars in the West, Alliances in the East

In short

The episode argues that “geo-economics” (using economic power to achieve geostrategic goals) is replacing the older idea that globalization is “colourblind.” It claims Western societies are distracted by culture wars, which Russia and China exploit, while an East-centered alliance (China-Russia-India, plus North Korea) strengthens.

Guest backgrounds

The transcript shows two hosts (John and “Mac”), but no guest bios are provided.

Key claims

Assassinations and political violence inflame U.S./UK/Ireland culture wars and discourage people from entering politics. Ukraine unifies the West, but Israel-Gaza fractures NATO and Europe from the U.S., potentially ending Europe-U.S. alignment. China’s maritime dependence (90% oil via ships through the Straits of Malacca) drives efforts to break U.S. alliances around Japan/Taiwan/Philippines. India is pivotal due to historic U.S.-Pakistan ties and India’s large Muslim population.

Notable examples

Charlie Kirk assassination; Minnesota politicians gunned down; UK MPs murdered; Ireland death threats to Simon Harris; Russia-Ukraine (2022 invasion); Israel-Gaza; Beijing parade with Xi-Putin-Kim Jong-un; Malacca choke point; Russia’s “Outer Manchuria” vs Chinese population; Trump tariffs/talk of stopping buying Russian oil via India.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

0:00

The Call of Nature

Explore how nature enriches our lives and why we often overlook it.

“Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives richer, calmer, and frankly, better.”
2:22

Understanding Geo-Economics

Learn about the concept of geo-economics and its historical context.

“Today, we are going to talk about this idea of geo-economics, which is the new word of 2025.”
4:10

Culture Wars and Assassinations

Discuss the current culture wars and their implications, highlighted by recent events.

“Well, Dylan sang about that throughout his career, but he had that great song called Neighbourhood Bully.”
6:39

Political Climate in the West

Examine the political dynamics in the West, particularly in relation to Charlie Kirk.

“No, because a lot of woke people don't have respect for people.”
9:29

Global Shifts: East vs. West

Explore the emerging political power in the East and its impact on the West.

“because we're not NATO, that we're in some sort of Irish exceptionalism, that we can be quite different.”
14:00

Conflict Dynamics in South Asia

Explore the historical and current tensions between India, Pakistan, and their geopolitical implications.

“Over a country which is tiny in the global scheme of things, you're talking 6 million Jews, 6 million Arabs, 12 million people in a world of over 7 billion.”
17:10

Emerging Alliances in Global Politics

Analyze the shifting alliances between China, Russia, and India and their impact on Western influence.

“So if one crowd has the nuclear weapon and the other crowd has, it will actually cancel each other out because nobody's going to fire first.”
22:20

Strategic Risks for China and Taiwan

Discuss the potential consequences of a military conflict over Taiwan and China's strategic calculations.

“In the last few weeks, Donald Trump has identified the Indians as their enemy.”
28:00

Strategic Risks in China-Taiwan Conflict

Explore the strategic implications of a potential conflict over Taiwan involving China and the U.S.

“So they realized to take Japan, they'd probably have to lose about 2 million American soldiers after Okinawa, after what happened in Okinawa.”
30:55

Cultural and Economic Shifts in Global Power

Discuss the ideological divides in the West and the rise of alliances in the East.

“But is this something that we should have seen coming under the guise of the BRICS?”
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Transcript

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0:01We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. It calls to us. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives richer, calmer, and frankly, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby or trails worth traveling to and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Whether you're looking for a laid-back walk with family or something more adventurous to get your heart pumping, AllTrails gives you the tools you need to get out there and find your outside.

0:53Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with AllTrails. Still waiting in line? Again? That's time you'll never get back. Save time and money with Stamps.com. Over 4 million businesses have skipped the line with Stamps.com. Join them to save up to 90 % off carrier rates from your computer or phone right now. Print postage for certified mail, registered mail, and packages in seconds. Then schedule a pickup right from your home or office. For a limited time, go to stamps.com and use code podcast for a free welcome gift. Taxes and fees apply.

1:33To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. This podcast is powered by Acast.

1:44David McWilliams: How you doing there? It is time for the podcast. Now, if you are a first-time listener and you're new to the podcast, what we're trying to do is we're trying to make economics, politics, a new science really called geo-economics, which is what we're going to talk about today, a little bit more comprehensible, a little bit more relatable, and hopefully a little bit more meaningful for you. So if you are a first-time listener, why don't you just go back, have a listen to a couple of the shows, and you'll get a sense of what we're all about. If you are a serial recidivist, or somebody who just can't get to sleep at night, insomnia, but John, how are you doing there?

2:24David McWilliams: You know the drill. Today, we are going to talk about this idea of geo-economics, which is the new word of 2025. This is the first time I've heard that word, by the way. This is how new it is. This is how new it is. So geo-economics, so there was always a thing called geopolitical. And that was where politics met, in effect, geography. And there were spheres of influence and there were military powers and there was what they call geo-strategy. Yeah. Just how do you play the great game? Like the world's a large chessboard and every country has not just alliances but interests. But that was essentially the Cold War, wasn't it?

3:06David McWilliams: Exactly. But everything, you're going back to Metternich of Austria, John. We're going back all the way there. that basically countries have interests, they have strategies, they have spheres of influence, they have relationships that are much, much deeper and have been usually cultivated by wars, by defeats, all that sort of stuff. Geoeconomics is the deployment of economics in order to achieve geostrategic objectives. So in the past, the last 20 years, let's say globalization, The canard, as the French would say, the conceit was that, you know, economics was colourblind and the world was flat and we were all in this together and globalisation was going to bring down barriers and basically economics was going to make the world a better and safer place.

4:00David McWilliams: And it wouldn't be used as the bullying tactic of big countries bullying small countries. Now we know it is. Oh, absolutely. But that's new. So, I mean, the whole idea... Well, Dylan sang about that throughout his career, but he had that great song called Neighbourhood Bully. It was all about America, bullying, particularly at that time it was Central America. Well, that's true, but they did it mainly with the CIA there. Also, Dylan didn't sing about it because Dylan doesn't sing. Now that's another podcast. Move on. Move on. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Anyway, so what I'm saying is if you look at the world today, economics, capital flows, influence, influence, are now being deployed in a much more aggressive way by big countries, by small countries, by players.

5:00David McWilliams: There is a culture war going on in our societies, a culture war that has split people left and right, conservative and liberal and of course young and old yeah and probably the most meaningful event in the last couple of weeks has been the assassination of that guy charlie kirk charlie kirk yeah yeah and what that has done is that it's inflamed the culture war in the united states it's also i mean maybe we're going into an era in the united states where assassinations just become commonplace again well can i just say one quick thing i know that we don't want to be on Charlie Kirk and all the rest.

5:39Personally, I thought his views were abhorrent, but he was a very articulate, polite man, for the most part. And he went around, you know, debating in colleges and stuff, but he took great pleasure out of, you know, putting people down. But he had horrible views about, you know, transgender and LGBTQ and all that.

6:01David McWilliams: You might think they're horrible, John. He also had horrible views about... Play the devil's advocate, you see. I mean, what he was just saying was the woke agenda, in parentheses, is out of control, and it's infected American campuses. And I presume what he was just saying is, you know, the idea of having, you know, bathrooms being the issue when you've got global poverty is a bit silly. Okay, okay, and I accept that. You can have your own views on that or whatever. I just hate when people go on about the woke agenda and stuff. Wokeism is just about having basic respect for people. No, it's not.

6:42No, because a lot of woke people don't have respect for people.

6:44David McWilliams: Well, that's... Because you don't have respect for Charlie Kirk. No, I just said... You just said his views were abhorrent. His views were abhorrent, but that's his views. I didn't disrespect the man at all. But what he is, but what he was, but what he was, was a white Christian nationalist, an evangelical. So am I. No, you're not. I'm an Irish nationalist. I was born Christian and I'm white. I know, but he's back to the old traditional kind of women should stay at home and men rule the roost. He was very racist in his views in general. But here's the thing about it. You know, this has been covered on lots of other media and stuff.

7:28David McWilliams: We are not going to move the needle, as the Americans say on this one. No, we're not. But the only thing I wanted to say about it was the fact that his killing, his assassination, actually shows the hypocrisy and the depth of the culture wars in America. Because back in June, you had two Minnesota politicians gunned down. Four of them were gunned down. I didn't know that. Back in June 14th or whatever it was, Melissa Hortman. Okay. And there was very little said about that. In actual fact, Trump was really dismissive of the whole thing. But then again, I'll just broaden it out from America and the culture war that's happening in America.

8:12Look at over the last few years, we've had two MPs in the UK murdered in their constituency offices. Here in Ireland, we have Simon Harris, whether you like him or you don't, but he's getting horrible death threats to him and his family and as kids. It's completely unacceptable, completely on every single level. And what it does is it deepens the culture war, but it also stops good people from going into politics.

8:42David McWilliams: Well, that's definitely the case. I mean, you look at the Irish presidential election, you think, a line-up of nobodies. Well, there you go. Because why would you bother doing that? Yeah. Why would you bother? If you're going to get abused, if you're going to get attacked. Good paycheck. sitting up there in a foggy Tuesday afternoon. Yeah, well, that's true. Meeting county councillors. Yeah. Talking about bathrooms. Right, is that what he does? Eventually, that's what you have to do. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, anyway, that's a different issue. But the reason we're talking about Charlie Kirk is to reinstate the idea that large parts of the West, of which Ireland is very much a paid-up member, even though many people on the left think we're not, because we're not NATO, that we're in some sort of Irish exceptionalism, that we can be quite different.

9:34David McWilliams: But we are part of the American world. We are part of the American corporate world. Our people emigrate to Australia, which is part of the American world. People emigrate to... I mean, we don't emigrate as a rule to China, to Russia, right? Despite some of the lefties going on. But I mean, my point is that Europe, particularly the United States and Europe, is caught in a culture war. It's economic, it's demographic, it's social, it's religious, it's moral, all that sort of idea. All the while, China and Russia and India are gradually but explicitly forming a union. a new political power is emerging in the east and it is stronger than anything we've ever seen before it is far more populous than anything we've ever seen before economically from a manufacturing perspective it's miles ahead of us and with russia in the mix it has all the resources it will ever need yeah right now think about that this is the way the world is changing meanwhile we are distracted by our various culture wars.

10:50Which, by the way, are being exploited by the Russians and the Chinese.

10:56David McWilliams: Of course they are. I mean, you know, that's what you do to your enemy. Yeah. And then, of course, you have on top of that, the issue of Israel, Palestine. So when the Russians invaded Ukraine, it was really, really easy for Europeans to take sides and Americans because Russia was the big, for most people, Russia was the historical aggressive country. Plucky little Ukraine was attacked on the 24th of February, 2022. And it fought back and the narrative almost played into the David Goliath, you know, small guy hitting back. and of course there was the deep-seated European fear of Russian aggression across the steppe.

11:48David McWilliams: So it unified the West. Momentarily. Yeah I mean there are there are there's the Orbans of this world who are not on the same side it still is a rallying call for Europeans and increasingly you see the State Department in America they're thinking well you know what actually Ukraine is on our side. And it also galvanized Europeans to think about defense in a different way, galvanized Germany to actually feel that A, it has to lead at this stage. We saw what happened to defense budgets, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah. So morally, that's been a very easy one for most Europeans and Americans. And you find yourselves broadly in alignment on that.

12:29David McWilliams: Israel-Gaza is completely different. Because Israel-Gaza has driven a massive, massive cleavage right at the centre of NATO because the European street is completely pro-Palestinian. Yeah. You might as well say pro-Palestinian, it's anti-killing kids. Well, that's more accurate. You know what I mean? You're right. And I think the Americans are dragging their heels on this. I think the European political class will gradually but definitively come towards their own populations on this. it's a bloody well after and i think that what that does is it drives a wedge between europe and america like never before so as long as the war in gaza it's not even a war in gaza i mean to describe it as a war would be too fish in a barrel yeah so it's so as long as that's going on as long as the netanyahu government is explicitly killing people only because they are muslim and Palestinian, right, and killing people of all ages, right, Europeans and Americans will fall out over this.

13:41David McWilliams: Now, what that means is that the geoeconomics that we assumed was the case since 1945, which is that Europe and America are in alignment on most big issues, and therefore can thrive by sharing capital, labor, ideas, markets, money, all that stuff, that may well be coming to an end. That's the first thing. Over a country which is tiny in the global scheme of things, you're talking 6 million Jews, 6 million Arabs, 12 million people in a world of over 7 billion. Now, all the while, while we are getting focused on this conflict, all the while you have what we saw the last couple of weeks. It's China, Russia, India, beginning to form the embryo of an alliance.

14:39David McWilliams: And of course, India has been, well, America has been flirting with India for the last two decades. Because if you go back in history, America sided with Pakistan in the Afghanistan war of 1978-79. Afghan against Russia. Yeah, the Mushar al-Din, which are the American-supported fathers of the Taliban, when you think about it, they were operated out of Pakistan with American military hardware. Pakistan and India have hated each other since 1948. Yeah. Since the extraordinary events of the British pulling out of the Raj, Mountbatten. Yeah, Mountbatten. And we draw a line and we'll see how these guys get on.

15:36Nine, I think five million people were killed in massacres of Muslim against Hindu.

15:44David McWilliams: And I think 17 million people became refugees. Pakistan and India fought various wars at all sorts of scarves as Hindu versus Muslim. The largest Muslim population outside of Indonesia is not only an Arab country, it's in India. We forget that India has the largest Muslim population outside Indonesia. And of course, Pakistan also split between East and West Pakistan. And Bangladesh is the country that was East Pakistan. So the Americans have been, since George Bush, trying to rebuild their relationship with India. Because once they sided with Pakistan, India sided against them. We also forget that the government of Nehru and the Indian National Congress was a state-supported, almost quasi-socialist government for 40 years, all the way up to Indira Gandhi.

16:47Yeah, yeah.

16:47David McWilliams: And of course, they were friends with Russia. So was it Russia who armed India with nuclear weapons and America armed Pakistan? Exactly. Yeah. So it was Russian scientists. Yeah. What a bad idea that was. Well, I mean, again, you know, maybe there is that typical Cold War idea of mutually assured destruction. So if one crowd has the nuclear weapon and the other crowd has, it will actually cancel each other out because nobody's going to fire first. are they going to fire in the worst possible case. The problem now, John, on nuclear is the proliferation of nuclear states. There will be at least 25 nuclear armed states in the next 10 or 15 years because that's the way it's going to be.

17:36David McWilliams: Because the lesson from Ukraine, the lesson from Gaza, the lesson from everyone is unless you can obliterate your enemy, they're going to come at you. That is the lesson now. And it was very interesting looking at the parade in Beijing with Xi and Putin and Kim Jong-un. And Modi wasn't there on that particular day. I'm not really sure what was going on there. But the parade was just phenomenal. You know, it was planned right down to a T. Even the microphones in front of them were just perfect. But everything was perfect. but they showed off all their weapons. All their new shit, yeah, yeah. Exactly, all their new weapons that America didn't even know they had.

18:26And then you compare, what made me laugh was, then you compare that to Trump's military parade that looked like a village fate.

18:33David McWilliams: It did, it did. But don't underestimate the military power. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm just saying that. They're not as good as parades. democracies don't do parades as good as totalitarian. Apart from the St. Patrick's Day parade. Which is, I'd love to get, I'd love to see you up on a milk cart, right? In the freezing cold with a baton that you have to catch, throw in the air and catch. Big green hat in the way. Exactly, a big leopard hat. But anyway, come back. So the embryonic alliance between China, India and Russia is something that the West should be extremely cautious about. Now, there are people like me who think, you know what, we can actually live in the one world.

19:20David McWilliams: We can do it. We don't necessarily have to be enemies. But it is that idea that the biggest superpower, the United States, is in a form of decline, maybe not as quick as we think it is, but it's in a form of decline. And the emerging superpower, China, is calling the shots. The fellow who was happiest at that photo call wasn't our friend in Korea, although he was quite delighted to be there. Yeah, he was, yeah. It was Putin. Of course. Putin is brought out of isolation. He's just had a meeting with Trump in Alaska, where he in effect laughed at Trump. Yeah, he did. He didn't even stay for dinner.

19:56Yeah.

19:56David McWilliams: He didn't. He pocketed the PR opportunity. He went back to Russia. Yeah. He said, done. Now, let's keep hitting the Ukrainians with drones. Yeah. Xi, on the other hand, is sitting there realizing that what China really needs is economic security. And in order to have economic security, it has to be a maritime power. And in order to be a maritime power, it needs to break the American alliances, which go from Japan to Taiwan to Philippines. Now imagine, so that's a ring around China. And the reason the Chinese are freaked out is because China gets 90 % of its oil in the Middle East. And it all comes in ships.

20:47David McWilliams: And there is one choke point, which is the Straits of Malacca, where all of the oil comes through. And at its narrowest point, it is two miles wide. Yeah. Right? It's a couple of hundred miles long. It's like the Straits of Gibraltar, isn't it? It's exactly the same thing. It's this choke point. So you've got these choke points. You've got where the Houthis are around Yemen. And we know what's happened then. They've closed off the canal, in effect. You have another choke point in Malacca. And as you said, you've got Gibraltar. These are the bounties of geography. Now, years and years ago, I remember going to Malacca, years ago in Malaysia, and it is quite extraordinary.

21:35David McWilliams: Now, of course, you have Indonesia and you have Malaysia, who are all in the American camp. So for the Chinese, they're in enemy territory. Every time their boats are going through there, they're in enemy territory. And what they've always wanted was an ally in the Indian Ocean, but they've always had an enemy in the Indian Ocean, which is India. Yeah. Because the Indians and the Chinese don't like each other. In fact, their soldiers are going at each other with cudgels up in the Himalayas. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a deep, deeply cultural, religious, historic antipathy between the two oldest civilizations in the world, right?

22:13David McWilliams: So America has been trying to coax the Indians for ages onto their side, knowing full well that that would create a barrier to the Chinese with their maritime expansion. In the last few weeks, Donald Trump has identified the Indians as their enemy. He is urging, he's putting 50 % tariffs on the Indians. Yeah. I think he's urging us to do the same, isn't he? Yeah, he is, yeah. And he's using the line that, you know, if you want to end the Ukraine war, you've got to stop buying... Russian oil. Russian oil that is coming through India, and you've got to put tariffs on India and all that kind of malarkey.

22:55David McWilliams: Right. So, like, he may well have a point, which is that if you really want to bolster the Western alliance, you need to pay for it by punishing those people who are sanctioned busting against Russia. That is a fairly logical position to take. But if you look at the world from Beijing, things couldn't be going better. You have Russia now in your back pocket. And the reason you have Russia in your back pocket isn't just the great geo-economic game. You know, when we think of Russia, I remember when I very first went to Red Square, right? Mid-80s. Yeah. And you arrive in Red Square, and when I think of Russia, I think of people who look like us.

23:36David McWilliams: I think European Russia. Yeah. I think Tolstoy. I think Gorbachev. I think, you know, Dostoevsky. These are people who look like us. But when you go to Red Square, it is full of people who look Asian. Yeah. because we forget that only a small part of Russia is European Russia. Now, all Russian culture and all Russian science and art and literature is from the European end. But Russia is a vast, vast country. Yes. A vast, vast country that has always wanted to protect its borders because Moscow has always known that the country is too big to protect. Like, one of the reasons the Russians were so expansionist the Muscovy Russians and Ivan the Terrible and all those guys, is because they worked on the basis that the best place to fight a war is miles away from home.

24:30David McWilliams: Because if you lose, you can fuck off back home, right? You don't want to be fighting close to home. And that's why Peter the Great and all those, they fought wars down in Ukraine, they fought wars in the Caucasus, fought wars in Afghanistan. All the Afghanistan war where we started was was just a replay of the Crimean War. And it was a replay of the Great Game, which was between, at the time, Britain and Russia for the passage to India. So all this stuff has happened over and over again. But I'll just give you one idea of the Chinese-Russian relationship, right? Yeah. The Russian-Chinese border is the sixth longest in the world.

25:08David McWilliams: The eastern section runs up to 2 ,500 miles, 3 ,000 kilometers. Yeah. Phenomenally big, right? And this includes Russia's region called Manchuria. And it's in Manchuria that up until 1858 belonged to China. So it's an Asian part of Russia. The Chinese know this, that this was once Chinese. And that's where all the resources are. All the copper, all the oil are a huge amount of it. A significant amount of Russian resources are in that corridor. If you've imagined the global map, it's the kind of, it's Iran-Mongolia and it kind of snakes down to Vladivostok, into basically towards Japan. Yeah. To that part of Russia, right?

25:53David McWilliams: Now, in Russia, it is known as Outer Manchuria. And there are only four and a half million Russians there. Okay. That's significant enough. Chinese Manchuria, which borders it. Yeah. Right, just right beside it, where the border is, has a population of 107 million. Oh, okay. Right. There are half a million ethnic Chinese living on the Russian side of the border trading. The Russians know Chinese could take that in the morning. There's just not enough Russians to defend that area. But a deal with Beijing now means that that border is safe for the Russians. So, again, by pushing the Russians and the Chinese together, what we have done is facilitated the peaceful coexistence of two cultures that were up until recently implacable enemies.

26:48David McWilliams: Even under communism, they weren't good mates. Well, I suppose this is what both a lack of education and arrogance does. You know, I'm talking about Trump. You're always talking about poor old Donnie. Give him a break as a white Christian nationalist. Jesus Christ. So he doesn't actually see the bigger picture or the long-term view as far as I can work out. And then again, on the other side of things, you know, Taiwan is just a matter of time before the Chinese move in and take it over. Or maybe they don't. Maybe they just leave it hanging there as a kind of a festering sore that, I mean, the...

27:29David McWilliams: Do you think? Well, I mean, the big risk for China is that they don't win that war. That what happens to Russia and Ukraine happens to China and Taiwan. That the overwhelming odds that they're going to win get shattered when they realize that the Taiwanese are armed to the teeth. It's an island that's very, very hard to take. Yeah. They have to get people on the island. And, you know, that's what happened. That's why the Americans dropped the bomb in Japan. So they realized to take Japan, they'd probably have to lose about 2 million American soldiers after Okinawa, after what happened in Okinawa.

28:10So they said, screw this, right?

28:13David McWilliams: So I think that strategically it's much greater risk for China because if they lost that war, well, then Xi's presidency is over. Yeah. The Chinese Communist Party could be over, you know? I can't see them losing that though, especially if they've got Russian help. They've got Russian help. But my point is that, again, I come back to this idea, is that there is a world now beginning to build against the West. And that world is centered in Beijing. And Beijing is playing a very, very long game. But Mac, let me just ask you though, I mean, should the West have seen this coming? You know, I mean, there's been lots of talk and meetings and stuff with the so-called BRICS.

29:04You know, is that the economic system that this new world order is going to be living under?

29:11David McWilliams: Well, let's have a look at that after a bit of this.

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30:40Save up to 90 % with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. so Mac the West in a culture war and being split ideologically and morally because of Ukraine and Israel Gaza and all the rest and on the other side then we have as we've just talking about the new strengthening alliance between Russia China and India and of course that fellow up in North Korea as well. But is this something that we should have seen coming under the guise of the BRICS?

31:27David McWilliams: Yeah, it's interesting to see it coming. I mean, I think this is just the way the world works. I think that we are, we've said it before in the podcast, living through a period where the baton is moving from one global regime to another. And the global regime that you and I have been brought up on has been largely Pax Americana. Yes. The Americans were top dogs. They were broadly our culture. They spoke our language. Yeah. We watched their movies. We listened to their rock and roll. We drank their Diet Coke and their Pepsi and this, that, and the other. And they were like a pretty, for a lot of Europeans, West Europeans, a dependable big brother that largely did the right thing.

32:16David McWilliams: Then I think the European left in the 1970s and 1960s became infected with an anti-American post-colonial. The irony is that the Americans started as the most interesting post-colonial country. Yeah. They had no colonies, but then they started after the Second World War to position their military bases all over the world. And as you can see, I identified that ring around China. Yeah. They have an American ring, NATO ring around Russia, which is why the Russians claim to be the reason that they invaded Ukraine. They are deeply involved in any choke point, military choke point, maritime choke point.

33:01The US Navy was preeminent.

33:04David McWilliams: It's not anymore. The Chinese Navy now are building ships at a rate that the Americans can't match. and of course there is the great american threat which is real that the america just leaves the stage they just leave they disappear they say we've got these two big oceans we are impenetrable nobody can ever invade us our countries to the north the canadians are still pretty friendly with us countries to the south mexico are quite friendly so any attack in america has to come from north or south, it's highly unlikely. So they're impregnable. Whereas that's not the case for China. That's not the case for Russia.

33:45David McWilliams: And the big fear is that the Americans just say, we couldn't be bothered. We're self-sufficient in energy. We're self-sufficient in food. We have the biggest internal market, the richest internal market. I mean, this is the fantasy world of many MAGA people. Yeah, it is. This is where they want to go. But I suppose that if they have such a deep, nasty culture war that divides the country, it could implode into some class of a civil war that weakens them anyway. Well, the MAGA guys want to win the culture war. And if you take the response of the Democratic Party as to be the front line of liberalism, I mean, it's appalling.

34:33David McWilliams: Yeah, it is. they've been outfoxed, outmaneuvered, outthought, outraged at every stage. So, you know, the MAGA movement, it's here to stay. It feels to me like the movement of the future. I don't really want to say that because I find... Well, you just did. Yeah, but that's only to annoy you. That's only to... Yeah, I'm twitching now. Long-time listeners know that this is just a dynamic, right? But if I get back and we can close on this idea that the economic nexus of the globe is shifting relentlessly to Asia. It's where all the dynamism is. It's where all the growth is. It's where all the resources are being consumed.

35:23David McWilliams: It's got by far and away the most populous two countries in the world. And it's their time. That's the thing. You've a sense that the Chinese have had their 100 years of humiliation. They've had 50 years of getting to the level of where they are now. The Indians see that. They say, we want a bit of that action, actually. That's good. That's what we like. Can we bury the hatchet with the Chinese? Yeah, maybe we can. But certainly if the Americans keep humiliating us and egregiously inflaming us, well, then we'll cut a deal with the Chinese all the while the Russians, who want to be taken seriously as a world power, but are not a world power, but they're a world power in the sense that they've got nuclear warheads and they've got petrol.

36:15David McWilliams: They will always be a great ally to somebody because they will be able to fuel the economic growth and the expectations of those people because of their fossil fuel. It's not a monopoly, but they're very significant. I mean, the Russians are the biggest producers of oil in the world. So what I think is we are seeing this alliance emerging before our very eyes. But if you say that, you know, there is the risk of perhaps America leave the stage, even if they don't leave the stage, it seems to me that the big loser here is Europe. Yeah. Well, in fairness, Europe has been the big winner for the last 400 years.

37:02David McWilliams: So if you look at it in the long context, the idea is that eventually Europeans get too lazy, too chilled out, too much camembert, too much red wine. Too old as well, demographically. Maybe. I mean, the Chinese could get older quicker than us. That's another interesting side. And that's why I think the Chinese are accelerating all this. Right. Because they know that their population is getting old, that this is their moment. Yeah. I mean, if I were Chinese strategist, I'd say this is our moment because this is when we're at our most powerful. And ironically, because they have never fought a war with a foreigner or haven't for a long, long time, the threat of the Chinese army is possibly greater than the reality.

37:54David McWilliams: because you don't know what they're like. The Americans have been fighting since 1945. Yeah. Very unsuccessfully, it must be said. But they have been fighting. So I think that the Europeans will conclude that Europe, because we are Europeans, is a gradual, slow decline from a fantastically wealthy position of power, of influence, of cultural heft, and of tolerance. I mean, there was probably no better place to be born ever in the history of humanity than in Western Europe in the last part of the 20th century. You won the lottery. Yeah. You lived longer, lived healthier, lived in nicer houses, you lived in nicer societies.

38:46you

38:46David McWilliams: it was a lottery win in terms of human history and I think it's probably fair to say that we've spent a lot of that money and now we are gradually declining reclining declining inclining John okay but I think that's what's happening I just think what we're seeing is the superpower in the east that everyone warned about, worried about, fretted about, was anxious about for years and years, since Marco Polo. Yeah, yeah. And now it's here.

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From the publisher
While the West burns itself out on culture wars, the East is quietly stitching together something bigger. This is the age of geo-economics, where oil, factories, and sheer population size matter more than headlines. On Russia’s border, the numbers tell the story: 4.5 million Russians facing 107 million Chinese. Add India into the mix and you see the outline of an alliance with the power to redraw the map. Meanwhile, Europe feels tired, America feels divided, and the old certainties of Pax Americana begin to fade. The question isn’t just who holds the power now, it’s whether we’ll even recognise the world that emerges next.

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