Here's Why The New World Order Is Doomed to Fail
It's up to us to make our own plans for a post-Globalised world.
SO here it is: confirmation — as much as we’re ever going to get — that the US did indeed blow up the Nord Stream pipelines back in September, courtesy of Mr Seymour Hersh:
But of course you already knew that. The idea that Russia did it was laughable; not just because ‘Russia did it!’ is the default setting of any American official being caught doing anything at all, like an adolescent blaming every naughty move on his younger brother, but because the maths didn’t add up. Why would Russia blow up a pipeline that they’d spent 15 years and $20 billion building, when they could just turn it off? ‘Russia did it’ was always a stupid answer.
It’s a measure of how unserious the West now is that Hersh’s report has largely been ignored by the establishment, both in America and Europe. After all, blowing up the pipeline was effectively an act of war by the States against both Russia and it’s NATO ally Germany. In countries run by adults, Hersh’s report would have sparked a bounty of analysis, filling hours of TV minutes and multiple feet of column inches, from experts paid to understand the ramifications of such an event on foreign policy, the economy, Europe’s ability to keep the lights on, and so much more. As it is, the report has sparked a little desultory reporting on it’s existence, but other than that… well, the proverbial crickets (the best I could find is the video above, which is a worth a watch).
The End of the World Is Nigh
Bouncing around YouTube earlier today in a largely futile search for meaningful analysis, I came across a short video by geopolitical-analyst-of-the-moment, Peter Zeihan. The video was recorded shortly after the pipelines were blown up last year. He predicted that the Swedes were on the cusp of confirming it was the Russians wot did it. Clearly, his analysis is rooted firmly in The Mainstream Narrative.
Zeihan has become a well-known face on YouTube in recent months, appearing on Joe Rogan’s and Jordan Peterson’s podcasts, among many, many, many others. It’s not because of his devastatingly insightful analysis, although he does offer good bang for buck in terms of shock value. No, the answer is much more mundane: he has a book to sell. His most recent hardback, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, made the New York Times bestseller list in the first week of its release, and was chosen as one of the Financial Times Readers’ Best Books of 2022.
The premise of the book is simple: The last 70 years or so have been the best humanity has ever seen and will ever see. 2019 was the Peak Year for our species, and it will all be downhill from here.
The reasons are essentially twofold: Firstly, demographic collapse will rob nations of young people, and, within a few decades, of people in general. This means fewer workers to man industries, fewer people paying the bills on social care and everything else, and also fewer consumers of products, resulting in shrinking global markets. Just as more begets more in the world of economics, so less begets less. The outcome will be a reversal of the Industrial Revolution; for some regions, taking them right the way back to pre-industrial times.
The second reason, he says, is that the Americans have lost interest in keeping everything running. Basically what Zeihan is proposing here (and he’s essentially right, I suppose) is that, in an effort to beat the Soviets in the Cold War, the Americans instituted a global Order based on free trade which made friends out of former enemies by tying them into a global economic system. One result was the end of European wars, which had a tendency to go global; another was a huge wealth boom as supply chains diversified across whole nations.
Before The Order, countries were wealthy if they were fortunate to have geographies that lent themselves to the creation and maintenance of wealth: the UK and Japan had plenty of access to the sea, which made transportation easier and cheaper, both for goods and armies; America was fortunate in having both internal and external water transportation routes and a literal wealth of natural resources, and so on and so forth. After the creation of The Order, geography ceased to play a role. Everyone could simply import what they needed (food, energy, materials), and export whatever it was they made.
But The Order depended on America being the World Police, keeping naval piracy at bay, ensuring trade networks remained free flowing, and damping down any conflicts that threatened to destabilize everything. And now, for reasons that are never really explained by Zeihan, they’ve lost interest. Consequently, Zeihan says, we are about to return to a localised world, much more akin to the Age of Imperialism than to the Globalization we currently enjoy. Trade will dial back to being local again. Innovation will stall. Economic growth will peter out, or fall into economic decline.
One of the biggest criticisms Zeihan’s work has attracted so far is that it’s too bullish on America’s prospects, especially in relation to other major players; too bearish for everyone else. China, he says, is basically over thanks to demographic collapse. Russia doesn’t stand much of a chance either. America, on the other hand, still has that beneficial geography, and by golly it’s going to use it.
So Zeihan is a US-hawk. His perspective is that of the establishment; unsurprising given that, as a successfully employed and published geopolitical analyst, he has no reason to question The Narrative. He takes climate change as a given, for example. AND YET. And yet…
There’s a couple of stand-out facts in this book; one to do with money, the other to do with energy. Here they are, along with their implications.
There Is Literally Not Enough Gold In The World
Since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has collectively mined about 6 billion troy ounces of gold, roughly 420 million lbs (pg. 176). At 1950 prices, that gold was worth $210 billion (I have no idea why he lists the 1950s price; the figure comes amidst a discussion of Bretton Woods, but that happened in 1944. Uncoupling fully from the gold standard didn’t happen ‘til the 1970s).
$210 billion in 1950 is $2.5 trillion today. $2.5 trillion is less than the US government plans to spend on its stimulus package this year alone. Think about what that means. Right wing economists sane people lament the end of the gold standard and the global embrace of fiat debt-based currency, which has absolutely created all manner of unwanted inflationary problems. But it also enabled the massive expansion in global ‘wealth’ far beyond anything the gold standard could have gifted us. According to Statistica, global GDP was at 85.24 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, which was actually two trillion lower than 2019. And that’s just GDP in one year. According to Forbes, in 2021 the total sum of global wealth stood at $431 trillion. That $431 trillion figure includes "the sum of financial wealth and real assets, net of liabilities," Anna Zakrzewski, of Boston Consulting Group told Forbes — which means that actually the sum is even higher (or lower, depending on how you look at it), because in a fiat debt-based world, everything is a liability. While it’s true that technically that wealth is ephermeral, it’s also true that it has translated into real-world goods. Fake money, it turns out, can still buy you a lot of stuff.
Take a walk around Manhattan, or Tokyo, or The City of London. Look up at the glass and steel surrounding you on all sides. Peek into the lobbies, with their gleaming desks, shiny floors and tasteful artworks. Better yet, wander around China’s ghost cities: street after street of empty luxury properties, bought only for their investment value. All of that was built by expanding the money supply.
Of course, it’s not just property. Industrial plant and manufacturing capabilities are also funded using debt, and so is everything that comes out of them: the shoes you’re wearing, the fridge keeping your food fresh, the device you’re currently reading this on. The only reason we have a fast flow of global goods from Amazon’s or AliExpress’s warehouse to our front doors — and you really can get anything, anything, nowadays with just the click of a button — is because we left gold behind.
As the gold fans are constantly reminding us, that can’t last forever. You can’t keep hammering your credit card with no mind to ever paying it all back, and neither can governments. We’ve soared high, but, like Icarus, we’re flying too close to the sun. Their answer is to return to the gold standard and restore sanity to the system. A return to the gold standard is not on the cards, for one very simple reason: there’s not enough of it. We’re short by about half a quadrillion dollars’ worth. That means that either financial Armageddon is inevitable, or another solution must be found.
Zero Carbon is Absolutely Positively NOT Achievable
As mentioned earlier, Zeihan accepts climate change as a given, but he’s also realistic enough to know that our reliance on fossil fuels for electricity and transport is not ending any time soon. He gives a few facts to make his case, which I won’t go into in detail, but the crux of it is that, if we want to decarbonize the electrical grid using solar and wind, which are the only realistic options unless people suddenly become a lot more friendly toward nuclear, we’d need to increase our solar and wind plant ninefold. Transport uses as much energy as the world’s electrical sector generates, so if we want to decarbonise transport too, that nine-fold increase becomes a twenty-fold increase. That’s before accounting for all the infrastructure that would have to be built to get the electricity from where it was generated to point of use. Most places aren’t suitable for either wind or solar. Half of the world’s population live in places where neither are feasible. According to Zeihan, a large-scale greentech build-out for these areas would emit more carbon than it would ever save, and would double the cost to the consumer.
That’s assuming that the sun shines and the wind blows continuously. Because they don’t (obviously), battery tech has to get a lot better to allow generated power to be stored for when it’s actually needed. According to Zeihan (pg 273): “As of 2021… California … has but enough total storage — not battery storage, total storage [including potential energy stored as pumped water] — for one minute of power. Los Angeles, the American metropolitan area with the most aggressive plan for installing grid storage, doesn’t anticipate reaching one total hour of total storage capacity until 2045 … that’s one hour of storage for LA’s current electricity system — not the doubling that would be required to realize the dream of universal electric vehicle adoption for cars and light trucks.”
There’s more… “A true shift to carbon-neutral power would require the capacity [to store] months of electricity for seasons that are not windy or sunny. … There is not enough lithium ore on the entire planet to enable a rich country like the United States to achieve such a goal, much less the world writ large.”
Here’s another fun little paragraph (pg 300): “A typical 100-kw-hour Tesla lithium-ion battery is built in China on a largely coal-powered grid. Such an energy and carbon intensive manufacturing process releases 13,500 kgs of CO2 emissions, roughly equivalent to the carbon pollution released by a conventional gasoline-powered car traveling 33,000 miles. That 33,000-miles figure assumes the Tesla is only recharged by 100% greentech-generated electricity. More realistically? The American grid is powered by 40% natural gas and 19% coal. This … extends the '“carbon break-even” point of the Tesla out to 55,000 miles. If anything, this overstates how green-friendly an electric vehicle might be. Most cars — EVs included — are driven in the day. That means they charge at night, when solar generated electricity cannot be part of the fuel mix.”
The American Century: The New World Order Arises
Why do we live in such a clown world? Why did Biden think that blowing up Nord Stream was a good idea? Why are 16-yr-old boys being pulled off the streets in Ukraine to go fight Russia? Why are 15-minute cities being implemented across the UK (but not in Colchester — yay!) Why are governments going so hard and fast on Net Zero? They’re not ignorant of the facts given above. If mainstream analysts like Zeihan know Net Zero is unfeasible, then so do our government ministers because they’re advised by mainstream analysts. Which means these are not crazy questions, yet do you hear any analyst tackling them?
At this point most awake people jump in with: “It’s simple, innit. Our governments want power. They want full control over us. They want neo-feudalism.” And yeah, OK, that is basically it, if you want to be lax about it, but I think we can be a bit more nuanced than that, and I think that being a bit more nuanced will help us figure out what to do. The slightly more sophisticated answer lies in the name they themselves have given their project: The New World Order.
Most people hear the ‘New World Order’ and think of it as the ‘Novel World Order’, ie, something totally brand-spanking new. But that’s not how it’s meant. Rather, hear it as ‘The Next World Order’ — because, as alluded to above, we’ve been living within a World Order for nearly 80 years now. That Order is Globalism.
Hear what Zeihan has to say — and remember, he’s not criticising America, he’s just saying it as it is (p366):
“Most people think of the Bretton Woods system as a sort of Pax Americana. The American Century, if you will. But that’s simply not the case. The entire concept of the Order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That’s what globalisation is. The past several decades haven’t been an American century. They’ve been an American sacrifice.
“Which is over. With the American withdrawal, the various structural, strategic, and economic factors that have artificially propped up the entire Asian and European systems are ending. What consumption remains is concentrated in North America. Only North America sports a demographic profile that doesn’t have to immediately adapt to a fundamentally new — and fundamentally unknown — financial reality.
“The real, actual American Century is only now beginning.”
I don’t know what it’s like in your family, but in my family, games of Monopoly only ever end in one way: Someone runs out of cash. The Bank either won’t lend, or is also out of cash and can’t lend anymore. Everyone gets into a massive row and someone flips the board, sending houses, hotels, money, and that cute little dog all flying high into the air. The last 80 years have been a global game. A lot of money changed hands. A lot of houses and hotels were built. But now the bank is out of cash, and the row is brewing. The Globalist Order: America Buys Friends by Playing Monopoly, is nearing its end.
As mentioned above, the unanswered question in Zeihan’s book is: Why is America now withdrawing from being the World Police? We can now answer that: Because it’s moving into The New World Order: Total American Imperialism. America no longer needs friends (or so it believes). America now demands subjects.
That explains Ukraine and Nord Stream at least. As the game of monopoly comes to an end and everyone cashes in, America is attempting to pivoting from global peace keeper to global dictator, but it can only do that if there are no rivals left on the board. That’s why Europe must be split from Russia (so far, Europe is doing exactly as the US asks). Expect the US to go hard after China next. No one else comes close to being a potential rival. (Again, the video linked to above touches on this, including the contribution of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor and architect of the Trilateral Commission… more on him another day).
But what about Net Zero? What explains our leaders going so hard on something so untenable?
Power is absolutely a hefty part of the reason. Climate change can be and is used as a cudgel to beat people, allowing the ruling class to take away our wealth and freedom. But something else does that too: Religion.
Wherever Empires have arisen, they have been accompanied by state religions which have given rise to a priestly class. And always state and priests have used the religion to part the masses willingly from their freedom and wealth.
Like this (subtitles on):
Climate change has all the hallmarks of an apocalyptic religion. It has it’s own genesis myth of sorts — since the dawn of the industrial revolution, humans have filled the atmosphere with CO2 which is heating up the planet (so simple a child can learn it) — and it’s own doomsday narrative: the world will end within years if we don’t ‘do something’. It has it’s own High Priests: Greta Thunberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore (among others), and a priestly class in the halls of local municipalities and institutions. They compel their followers to sacrifice their own person comfort for a ‘higher good’ (so far mostly by donning Lycra and cycling even in the rain, but that’s about to give way to total lack of freedom and the ability to stay warm in winter). Those who don’t believe are ‘Climate heretics’. Even the ludicrousness of the story is a feature, not a bug: persuade people to believe something utterly absurd, and you own their minds. Just look at the Scientologists. Or the Branch Covidians.
So all this crazy shit has been going down because the Old World Order has run its course. Those at the top know that if they want to hold on to their places, something new must be constructed. That something new is the New World Order, American Global Imperialism. They have chosen Climate Change as their state religion. Using this model, they aim to be the uncontested God Emperors of planet earth.
Will it work?
I don’t think so.
Pride Cometh Before A Fall
The Americans have been getting things their own way for a while now. A good 70 years or so. That’s made them complacent.
It’s clear that Biden and his allies thought that if Russia could be lured into Ukraine, it would be crushed within a couple of weeks. When Russia didn’t follow the American tactic of Shock and Awe, the US mistook their go-slow for weakness, and assumed it meant victory was imminent for the World Order. Instead, a year on, Russia is set to stage a massive offensive, crushing Ukraine beneath its wheels.
This video is worth a watch to understand how reckless and precarious America’s position is here:
Meanwhile, while blowing up Nord Stream may have been an effective way to stop Germany from going soft on Russian sanctions, it’s also likely to make it impossible for the Germans to keep their lights on long term, which can only foment unrest within Europe; an outcome that Biden didn’t consider because he simply didn’t care about anything other than his own objectives.
And the great Climate Change religion too, while being a useful excuse indeed to part the masses from their freedom and cash, is likely to be a miscalculation. People might be persuaded that an eternity in paradise is worth sacrifices in the corporal plane. They’re not going to give up their own comforts (let alone their ability to stay warm and eat) so easily for the sake of the polar bears, who are thriving anyway.
I think what we’re seeing here is a massive and soon to be fatal dose of hubris on the part of Western leaders. I think they’ve underestimated Putin and their own people. I think that the New World Order is a project doomed to failure by its own contradictions. It cannot work. The maths just doesn’t add up.
I think we should understand that our so called leaders are attempting to lead us off a cliff, and I think we should leave them to it, but start walking in the other direction very quickly.
The demographic, financial and logistical problems Zeihan lays out in his book are very real and pressing. The World Order is coming to and end not because our leaders want it to exactly, but because it has run up against the hard realities laid out by demographics and finances. That means the old way of life is now gone, whatever happens next.
If we’re looking for leadership as we move into what comes next, we’ll be sorely dissapointed. We’re not going to find the answers to these real-world problems by looking in parliament buildings and town halls. They’ve already proven that the only answers they have are to come down hard on the rest of us. We will find them by working together, by putting in place the local infrastructure we’ll need to survive in a post-globalist world: agriculture, industry, social support.
Our leaders have drunk their own cool aid. We don’t have to.
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The EU industrial base is being totally destroyed. https://youtu.be/7DimL5e19iw Globalists will rejoice about the collapse of fertilizer production in EU, Ukraine and Russia and the ensuing famines and depopulation/desperation. https://www.prweb.com/releases/germany_teeters_on_the_brink_of_energy_disaster_global_food_crisis_looms_says_friends_of_science/prweb18791146.htm People have no idea of what's coming....not to mention the most likely reprisals for Nordstream.
While it's quite plausible (means, opportunity, motive) that the USA triggered the Nordstream pipe destruction, Hersh's case is still somewhat speculative. It relies on one anonymous source who appears to be all-knowing. The single source was both knowledgeable of the actual planning and also the legal statutes that would keep the operation secret from the Gang of Eight.
I admittedly struggle with the motive for the Russians to destroy Nordstream. And Joe Biden was quite clear that the US would not allow Nordstream to function. But Joe Biden says many things that are not founded in reality. My conclusion is that Hersh's report is a 'maybe'.