Something we discuss amongst ourselves, Peter is
the shifting, changing global order. What happens to small countries around the world like New Zealand
as the US strategic relationship with this post cold war, global order starts to change, and the global environment starts to change. I don’t think New Zealand is the country to look to. I think Japan is the country to look to, because Japan, so far, is the only country that’s figured it out. A few governments ago, the Japanese realized that the Americans were losing interest in everything, and in Japan, like a lot of countries, is dependent on international trade towards economic health, especially for its energy imports. And they realize that unless they can get into the American inner circle, give the Americans something that they want, that there wasn’t much of a future. And for smaller countries that are less capable than Japan, this is triply true. So what Japan did is it sought out a deal with the United States on America’s terms during the Cold War, when we needed everybody to be on our side, to face down the Soviets, it was the United States that provided the economic and strategic concessions in order to build the Alliance. That’s not the world we’re in anymore. Now, if you have a more disassociated America, you have to bring the case to them. You have to offer them something in order to keep them involved. And in Japan, it was trade concessions and a security partnership. For smaller countries, you’d have to be a lot more aggressive and a lot more giving in order to keep the Americans interested. Now, New Zealand, being off the edge of the earth basically doesn’t face the security concerns that a lot of other people do for them. Their interest is going to primarily be economic because they produce a lot of agricultural products that the rest of the world really needs. That is an easier carry before you even consider the cultural connections between America and New Zealand. But for most of the rest of the world, that’s that’s a much taller order the things that you have to offer the United States and keep in order to keep them engaged. Now, there’s not a lot of things that the US is really interested in, and you’re gonna have to get really creative and digger really
deep. So with the US reevaluating its position globally, and with the emergence of the largest land conflict in Europe since World War Two, with the Ukraine, Russia war under place, we’ve seen some regional powers shift how they behave within broader Europe. I’m thinking about France, Sweden, Turkey.
What do we see between these three regional
leaders powers, when it comes to their political, economic, military might, how they interact with each other, and what does that? What does that mean for the future of the EU, Europe, NATO overall, you’ve just put your finger on the three countries. They’re going to matter, not just now, but 10 years from now, and 20 years from now, and 30 years from now, but for the remainder of this century, demographic reasons, we’re going to lose at some point, Spain, Germany, Italy, and eventually Poland. But these countries have very healthy demographies And a geography that allows them a degree of freedom to act outside of the confines of just Europe. How they get along or don’t is going to determine what is possible for NATO, for the EU and for post unified Europe. At the moment, the French are increasingly taking their talking points from the Swedish government. The Swedes have always been very big on energy security and manufacturing self sufficiency and partnership with countries immediately around them in opposition to Russia, and now that they’re no longer neutral, the French are sounding a lot like the Swedes. So the room for partnership there is very, very, very robust, so long as ego doesn’t get into the way. And I won’t even mention that, if it wasn’t for the fact that France was one of the two powers we’re talking about here, it’s going to be very interesting, from my point of view to see how the two powers coordinate or step on each other’s toes in Ukraine, because that is going to set a really strong pattern for their bilateral relationship. Moving forward, at the moment, it looks pretty positive. They’re not talking past each other. At the moment, Turkey, of course, is from a radically different culture. Turkey has a very different economic structure, even if it’s still very healthy, from my point of view. And they’ve got a foot in the Middle East as well, which complicates things. But again, we’re seeing a degree of cooperation that didn’t exist 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So I’m pretty hopeful there, but I don’t think that’s going to last for the long term, Turkey is too big of a power, too dominating in its own neighborhood. And if Russia loses the Ukraine war, Turkey is one of the powers that has the opportunity to do a massive geopolitical expansion, and that is something that is undoubtedly going to make other powers in the neighborhood a little uneasy, even if the Turks aren’t taking any.
Hostile actions to them. So we’ve got here a Swedish, German, French axis, with the Germans being the junior partner and the fading partner and Turkey trying to figure out just how much it can
grab. And this, to me, is starting to sound a lot like the 1500s
you’ve written about, and you speak quite a bit about the changing global order and the US, sort of stepping back from its
near century of
keeping the world safe, managing global shipping, maintaining this, this global order. When we look at the Red Sea and US Navy action against the Houthis. Is there a risk of the US being pulled back in the Middle East, permanent scoring actions? And is the US attempt to
help secure global shipping for the Red Sea, of which the US not a major participant, a sign of the US stepping back into the previous role. It’s trying to lead, or is this just sort of a no last stop out the door? It feels a lot like a placeholder to me. It’s become a testing ground, in an unfortunate manner for American missile introduction, we’re discovering that as easy it is to shoot down an individual Shaheed drone or a missile, preventing a hostile group from launching any number of weapons systems, and any number of times, is very difficult. We’re talking about patrolling an area roughly the size of half of Texas, and it’s stretching American naval interdiction capacities to the breaking point, because the Navy wasn’t designed for this was designed to interdict things shot at the Navy not going off through a wide swath of territory. And if a real country, not a Yemen, but a real country, were to do this on a broader scale, it’s pretty clear to us naval commanders now that there’s not a lot we could do about it. So you know, if someone else joined, we’d have a real problem in this,
this belief that the United States is still patrolling the global oceans, even if we wanted to, it would be pretty clear that we couldn’t against some of the technologies that have evolved over the last 75 years. In terms of the idea the United States getting sucked back into the Middle East, I really don’t think that’s on deck. In fact, if anything, I think the Gaza conflict has underlined the United States how little states how little we want to do with the region. And we’re having a fun little conversation with the Israelis that feels a lot like the conversations that we were having with the French and the Germans a few years ago. We tried to convince them, back in the 2010s that, you know, the Russians are going to keep pushing. Look, they just invaded Georgia. They just invaded the Don boss in Ukraine. They just took the Crimea. Of course, they’re going to do more. They’re going to push and push and push and push until they can’t. And the Germans and the French were like, Ah, it’s a brave new world. In fact, Germany has got to put into place a defense minister whose job is to wind down the entirety of the German military, because we don’t need it anymore, because we’ve entered a new era of peace. And
then the Ukraine war happened, and all of a sudden, the French and the Germans and a lot of other allies of Europe are seeing a very different tune in the case of the Middle East, we have been saying publicly to everyone who will listen, at home and abroad, we went out of the Middle East already, and the Israelis have assumed is what we meant is we want to double down on the alliance with Israel and turn against the Middle East. No, no, we want out. And so the Gaza war happens, and while we feel badly for what happened, it’s horrible what the Israelis have done in the months since we also don’t feel all that hot for and the idea that the United States suck into another long range conflict in the Middle East, so that Gaza can go exactly the way that the Israeli Government wants it to, that’s a dumb play.
So what Gaza has done is kind of underlined at the United States just how distasteful we find the whole thing. And the discussions we’re seeing recently between the Israeli government, American government Arms Transfers is really bringing home to Israel that they are not the golden child. They are not the special exception. That is going to keep the United States in a bold reaching and that is forcing some soul searching. Finally, Europe took a Russian invasion to change mines here, it’s taken a one day old arms in morgo.
But there’s a dawning revelation, one country at a time, one day at a country at a time, that the United States is not the same place it was 20 years ago, and that eventually is going to seep through many layers of incomprehension in many places. If you’re an American strategist looking at like this, you gotta
it’s kind of a little bit like the Nixon strategy of being unpredictable. But it’s not that there’s a.
Master Plan backing it all up, it’s just the United States is looking to get out and become a free agent. Again, it’s a different world. I.
