US Empire Is ‘Over’: Richard Wolff On The Next Global ‘Policeman’, New Alliances
Summary
Geopolitical Tensions: The podcast discusses the increasing isolation of the United States, particularly its sole support for Israel, and the geopolitical theater involving Russian drone incursions in Eastern Europe.
US Foreign Policy: The conversation highlights the changing dynamics of US foreign policy under Trump, including tariffs and economic sanctions, which have strained relations with Europe.
Military Keynesianism: Professor Wolff introduces the concept of military Keynesianism, where government deficit spending on military expansion supports economic growth but leads to rising inequality and endless wars.
Global Economic Shifts: The discussion touches on the economic rise of China and the BRICS nations, surpassing the G7 in GDP, and the implications for global economic power dynamics.
Decline of US Empire: The podcast suggests that the US is no longer the global hegemon it once was, with its empire in decline and its role as a global policeman being questioned.
Future Global Leadership: There is speculation on whether China will become the next global leader or if a multinational approach, akin to the League of Nations or United Nations, will emerge.
Market Implications: The geopolitical and economic shifts discussed have significant implications for global markets, investment strategies, and the future of international alliances.
Transcript
The United States is no longer in a position to contain anybody. Nothing illustrates the isolation of the United States more than being basically now the sole supporter of Israel. The UN votes show that, the international politics shows it. This is the end for these politicians. They are desperate, which is why some of them want to have war with Russia. Even though it makes no sense. Mr. Trump won the presidency promising to end the war in Ukraine. He has not. He promised to end the horror of Gaza. He has not. The man who said he would end the endless wars is proliferate. >> I'm pleased to welcome back the show, Professor Wolf, professor of economics ameritus at the University of Amherst and the founder of Democracy at Work. Professor Wolf was on the show a few weeks ago talking about the economy. You can find that interview linked down below. And today we're going to do part two, an extension of that interview where we focus primarily on geopolitical matters, the hottest geopolitical topics driving the investment decisions that we make today. So, first we'll talk about uh Russia and the drone incursions sent by Russia into Eastern Europe. How will NATO respond? Will this lead to an all-out war? and uh the situation in Gaza. Trump just said that he will not allow the annexation of the West Bank by Israel. So, we'll see what that means and what that implies for American foreign policy. And finally, Professor Wolf will talk about the rise and the continuation of military Keynesianism. Very interesting concept. Professor Wolf, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to host you. >> Thank you very much, David. I'm glad to be here. Professor Wolf, I'd like to start with uh this announcement by uh the uh Polish uh government issuing an urgent advisory for its citizens regarding Barus. Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a renewed warning to its citizens regarding travel to Barus, urging them to avoid visiting the country and calling on those who are already there to leave immediately. The statement was released by the Polish embassy in Minsk September 25th, which was yesterday. We're speaking today on the 26th. Uh meanwhile, it's been reported by well, this is the CBC, Canadian press, Putin is playing chicken in Eastern Europe says uh a Russian um defense expert, uh there's been a series of incidents involving drones in the past two weeks. There's been drone incursions into first Poland. Poland shot them down, which we'll talk about. uh then Estonia, then a number of other eastern Europe e Eastern European countries. Then just most recently last night, Denmark saw drones enter their airport. Uh this was also near an airport where they fielded uh fighter jets. No attacks were actually done by these drones, but it showed a key weakness in Den in Denmark's air defenses. Uh so um the broad question is what is Russia doing right now? We'll start there. Why have there been so many drone incursions into airspaces in Eastern Europe in such a short amount of time in the past two weeks? And then we can discuss what NATO is going to do about it. Is Putin playing chicken? As this article quotes, >> my response, which may come as a bit of a surprise to your audience, is nothing is happening here. This is political theater. Uh let me begin this way. The incursions in people's airspace is something that happens on and off all over the world all the time. It is understood to be a risk of the world we live in. Uh if a country wants to protest, it can. If the country that committed the incursion wants to acknowledge that it did it, it apologizes and then we get on with it. This has happened for 50 years. So the interesting question is not so much whether the Russians have done this or not. My guess is they probably did. But that's not remarkable. What's remarkable is the response, the Polish response, the Danish response, the entire European response. But then when you think about it, it shouldn't be a surprise because the leaders of those countries have been demonizing and attacking and you know Putin and Russia for many many months. I let me put it better. Ever since Mr. Trump became the president and made it of the United States and made it crystal clear that the relationship between Europe and the United States is going to change under his government. And that change is going to be difficult and costly and painful for Europe. And let me show you how that works. If the war in the Ukraine is going to be fought above all by economic sanctions and if the United States and Europe together are going to impose on Russia the greatest sanctions ever imposed on anyone, which is what they set out to do and what they accomplished. Well, then you notice one of the consequences was that Russia could no longer sell oil and gas to Europe, which had been a crucial part of Russia's income and a crucial part of European energy resources. But the decision to make that sanction was a decision of the West, not of Mr. Trump. He didn't want to lose his customers, but he did. But the problem, and this has to be understood, is that suddenly Europe went into an economic downturn. Serious, continuing for three years and worse now than it was at the beginning of the war. and no mystery. It's because the price of energy central to an industrial economy tripled. Germany used to be the powerhouse economy of Europe based on its industry based on its use of Russian oil and gas. Germany is now a in a recession. That's how bad. It's not a question of growing. They're shrinking. Now, the Europeans could have gotten angry at the United States. Let's review what Mr. Trump did to them. He hit them all with tariffs on steel, on aluminum, on automobiles, a general tariff. He then negotiated with them reducing their tariffs if they committed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars of their money in the United States. That's a shakeddown. But call it what you will, it's a very bad combination for the Europeans, hence their economic catastrophe. But they can't be angry at Donald Trump because he's in a position to hurt them even more. Europe has become dependent on the United States over the last 75 years economically, politically, and militarily. So we have a classic case of what psychologists call displacement. You know, it's like the worker who comes home from his or her job all stressed out and kicks the furniture or kicks the dog or I won't go any further. What we have is Europe demonizing Russia as if that were the problem. using the notion of a Russian danger to get their countries back on track in trying desperately to cope with what the United States has done to them because they can't express it. Just like the worker can't tell the boss off for what happened at the job today, so you take it out on somebody else. Lastly, the Russians are having a hard enough time in Ukraine. There's no question that they're winning that war. Only diluted people think otherwise. But it is a difficult, it's expensive, it's costly. The idea that this difficulty had with Ukraine, one of the poorest countries in Europe, would now be the stepping stone to entering into a military conflict with the rest of Europe. If the Russians were thinking like that, they'd be completely crazy. And there's no sign of that. I want to remind also people since I'm a historian, the great invasions that Russia has been part of in the last 200 years have been invasions from Western Europe into Russia. Napoleon tried it and failed. In the world first world war, Kaiser Wilhelm tried it and failed. In World War II, Hitler tried it and failed. But we there's never been a Russian overrunning of Europe. That's craziness. Western Europe has never been part of any Russian advance. And one more thing, the Russians are very sensitive. And here's the reason. Historically, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, an effort was made by France, Britain, the United States, and Japan, to invade the new Russian government, the Soviet government, which they did in 1918. And the last Japanese troops didn't leave until 1922. The West has invaded Russia much more than anything in the other direction. You put all of this together and the way I see this is a very angry Europe, which I understand, bitter over how their former protector is now cashing in, if you like, the United States, unable to confront their problem, they demonize the Russians. But I I think it's now reached an absurd level of pretending that whatever these incursions are represent anything more than what they seem to be. >> Before we continue with the video, let me tell you about a very important topic. How to protect your privacy. Now, your private information doesn't just live in the inbox of your phone. It's being collected, packaged, and stored and tracked by data broker websites all over the internet, even without you knowing. That's where today's sponsor comes in, Delete Me. I use Delete Me to protect my privacy. And here's how. It helps you. It's a platform that helps you remove your personal data, like your name, address, and contact info from hundreds of these data broker websites. When you sign up, you'll get a detailed privacy report showing where your data was found and what's already been removed. And Delete Me keeps working throughout the year, scanning and clearing your information regularly. It's an easy way to take back control of your digital footprint without trying to track everything down yourself. Go to joindeelme.com/davidin and use the promo code davidin at checkout to get 20% off of US plans. Link down below or scan the QR code to get started today. Which is what exactly? Testing air defenses for a possible air strike or simply just political theater like you said. I think the other question here that I'm going to pose to you which is something that the CN the CNN article is asking how should NATO respond to further Russian incursions. Now NATO allies as of today are divided over whether the alliance should be making a policy to shoot down Russian jets which is what Poland did uh or show restraint which is what Germany is urging right now. So the US, Poland, the Baltic nations are uh signaling that future violations should be met with force while Germany urged more restraint. >> Yes. So you'll notice that the Baltic nations are taking the lead. Now, let's be honest for a moment because the media usually aren't. Having the Baltic nations ask for a war is asking for a mouse or excuse me three mice to try to instigate a conflict between the gorillas and the elephants. There's something totally ridiculous here. The country that is in the greatest position of risk dealing with Germany with Russia is Germany because it is the economic powerhouse even now of Western Europe. Germany doesn't want to do Germany wants to respond the way over the last 50 years countries have responded when there is an incursion. You make a protest. You see what the country that made the incursion says. Mr. Putin made it quite clear, at least after the initial experience, that he apologized and explained it was not. Do I know what the Russian strategy here is? Of course not. They don't talk to me or anybody else. They talk to themselves. So, it could be an accident. It could be a provocation. It could be testing limits. All of those things are possible, but in no way is there a war going on. Russia doesn't need or want a war with Europe. What the hell for the Russian Let me remind you of something else. Since February of 2022, using the universally recognized measure of glo of GDP, how well is an economy doing measuring the total output of goods and services in one calendar year? The GDP, the GDP of Russia has increased faster during this war than that of the United States or of any European country. The war is not destroying their economy. It's not driving them to distraction. The war in Ukraine is allowing Russia to stimulate its economy. The way the Great Depression and the war in our country here in the United States enabled the government to stimulate our way out of the Great Depression. That's one thing that happens that what would be the point of Russia in enlarging a war with Europe when the ostensible point according to the Russians was to stop the expansion of NATO to its border. You want to now take the war to NATO and risk all that that means and what the United States might do if it uh went through with with Article Five of the NATO treaty. I don't see I mean I I'm open to the evidence. I'm not interested in defending Mr. Putin against anything or Russia either for that matter. But there's no evidence of anything like that intent and the Russians don't need it. >> Professor, there's this theory that I've heard surfaced that perhaps Putin is trying to drive a wedge between Europe and America such that if there was a direct attack on a European NATO member perhaps in the east, um the US may say, "Hey, hang on. Let's not get hasty. Let's not directly retaliate against Russia. Basically abandon article 5. Would that ever happen? >> Yeah, it could happen. Mr. Trump has on occasion spoken in a way that I could see feeds that kind of theory. But let me tell you, why would Russia want to take the risk? And namely the risk is that the United States either with Mr. Trump's approval or despite him might decide to honor uh title five of that treaty in which case Mr. uh in Russia is is waging a war against the entire collective west. Now you might say he's already doing that in Ukraine. Yes, but that's a very limited uh situation. I don't I don't see him wanting to take that risk. You know, if there was more trouble in Russia, if they were at death's door, if they were impeach, but they're not. They're having a an economic relationship in the bricks with Russ with China and India and Indonesia that is a growing success for them. What Why would you want to do this? The West is a declining part of the world economy. The G7, if you add up the GDP of all of them, works out to about 28% of global GDP. If you do the same thing for China and the bricks, it's 35% of global GDP. China and the bricks is already the emerging growing success. The West is where all the problems lie. Economic growth this year will be five, six, 7% in the bricks generally and one or two two and a half% in the west. In other words, the same story continues. If I were blunt, I would say time is on their side, not the west. And therefore, who's provoking who makes more sense if the West is provoking for fear of where history is going. >> That leads to my final point about the Russian uh Ukraine conflict. This is a clip of uh University of Chicago professor John Mirshimer talking about uh this. He's making a parallel. I'd like you to respond to it. It's a short clip. Take a listen, please. If in 20 years Canada formed a military alliance with China and invited China to put military forces in Canada, what do you think the United States would do? I guarantee you the United States would behave towards Canada in very similar ways to how Russia is behaving towards Ukraine. You might not like this, but this is the way the world works. And I believe Canadians are sophisticated enough to know that this is a bad idea. >> I need I need to respond to this because I I think this is relevant. Um, under what conditions would the Canadians seek a Chinese alliance? [Music] Only if there was an American president who announced that to make America great again, he needs to reunite with with part of the of what was once the same country and they speak English too, don't they? >> I will let you respond to that, professor. Um, and I I I I wonder if you think first of all his parallel even is applicable to the Ukraine situation. You know, it's a bit of a stretch, but I understand uh Mir Shimemer is is a giant in his field. When he talks, it usually pays uh to listen. You're going to learn something. My reaction, however, is that they missed a much more important point. The United States, which used to be a proud, how shall I put it? Hegeimon, a proud daddy, as some European politicians call him, uh Mr. Trump. The United States before Trump and since Trump used to be the the manager of a global empire. They did a good job. The dollar was the global currency. Uh the dollar was very stable. America was a place to park your assets where there'd be no risk uh to them devaluing or being bothered by political moments etc. It is very very hard for the United States and I'm a member of that. and I'm born, lived and worked here all my life here in the United States. Very hard for my fellow citizens to contemplate, even to admit that the American Empire is over. And like every other empire, it is now entered into a decline that it needs to come to terms with. So what are they doing? They performing. Our politicians perform as Mr. Trump did at the UN a few days ago as if we were in 1960 and 70, as if we were the dominant. But we're not. And one of the signs of it is the savage way we are rewriting our relationships with what we used to call our wonderful loyal allies like Canada. So we hit them with tariffs and we hit them where it hurts. Tariffs on their energy exports, tariffs, tariffs on their car industry, etc., etc. So here comes the way you should have had the conversation if I was sitting next to Mr. Mirshimer. What's going to make Canada go to China, which between you and me, in case your audience doesn't know, has already happened. This is not a future prediction. They're going there because their economic viability depends on it. China needs grain. Canada can sell it. China needs energy. Canada can sell it. There are ways these two economies can help each other. And sure, they may choose not to do it, but that would be a process in which Canadians would be shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, they don't like China. Yeah, they don't like socialism. They're all fine. But at the end of the day, what will make an alliance between Canada and China become stronger than it already is is precisely Trump policies toward Canada. >> Would it not, this general question here, would it not uh also be better for global stability if let's say one member of NATO were to become closer with either Russia or China? >> That's already happened. I mean Hungary is I believe Hungary is a member of NATO but yes there are already other countries. Look I know many in Europe. I know economists in Europe including some fairly high in their political structure. Let me tell you that publicly everybody demonizes Russia. privately you will hear and I' I've heard it now for at least the last seven months enormous bitterness and anger at the United States the tariff policy the demand uh Ursula underlying uh committing hundreds of billions of dollars of European money that will not be invested in Europe making jobs for Europeans but is committed to the United States in order to get the tariffs lower than they otherwise would be. This is a shakeddown and those European politicians are going to have to face their own public having denied them the jobs and benefits of the money made in their countries by their labor. Th this is this is the end for these politicians. They are desperate which is why some of them want to have war with Russia even though it makes no sense and the major countries in there which are basically Germany, France and Britain uh don't want to do that because of what it will mean for them whether or not the United States commits. And let me remind folks about the American commitment. Mr. Trump won the presidency promising to end the war in Ukraine. He has not. He prom he promised to end the horror of Gaza and the genocide there. He has not. In addition, he's opened a war with Iran and he's currently provoking Venezuela. The man who said he would end the endless wars is proliferate. He's not in a position to add yet another monster war in Europe. This is not going to happen. And what we're watching are games being played by desperate politicians. >> On uh the issue of uh the war in the Gaza Strip, perhaps, and I say this, I stress perhaps Trump is starting to change his tone with Israel. This is what he said uh at a press conference just last night. Take a listen. Uh we'll respond together. >> Please behind you. >> On Gaza, did you promise leaders this week that you would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank? Is that something that you >> I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank? No, I will not allow it. It's not going to happen. >> Did you speak with Netanyahu about this? >> Yeah, but I'm not going to allow it. Whether I spoke to him or not, I did. But I'm not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. >> Is this a change in policy? >> It looks like it. You know, the problem with Mr. Trump, as you know as well as I, is that what he said on Tuesday may not be what it is on Wednesday, uh, the tariffs go up and down. Uh, the delays go up and down. His policy around Israel is up and down. He seems to sometimes change. Maybe this time. I mean, I'm in no position uh I'm in no position to know, but he may be being affected by the fact that the major European countries have now decided to recognize uh Palestinian statethood. Uh over the last few weeks, uh many of the countries there, I noticed from friends of mine that dock workers unions throughout Europe are no longer handling uh Israeli cargo. You c Israel cannot get imports through European ports and it can't sell because the the dock workers will not touch the cargo from Israel. No, they can get around that and they probably will. But you're seeing a level of global horror and frankly I'm I'm ashamed as a world citizen that it's taken this long, but that the world would allow Israel and and the Palestinians uh to do this kind of behavior one to the other uh both ways is is astonishing. uh for me as an American to know that it's my government that is funding what Israel is doing, is providing the weapons for what Israel is doing and so on is unspeakable. And and let me drive home to your audience, it is becoming politically dangerous for Mr. Trump the pro Palestinian feeling which is mostly anti what Israel is doing there. It's not anti-semitic. It's not about Jews. It's about the particular policy of a particular government in Israel that is becoming so pronounced that Mr. Trump is losing votes. He's losing political support. I'm speaking to you from New York City where the largest Jewish population anywhere in this country, the United States, is in New York City. And a prepundonderance of them are joining the rest of the people of New York about to vote a Muslim socialist to be the mayor of the largest city in this country. These are signs you cannot miss. despite all the repression of the pro Palestinian efforts on campuses and so on, the the support for Palestine keeps growing and it's becoming impossible to resist and that may have finally reached even Mr. Trump. >> All right. Uh, another interesting development I should ask you about is the tension rising between China and Israel. perhaps is always there. But recently uh Israeli lawmakers have uh taken upon themselves to visit Taiwan and visit uh the president of Taiwan uh last week, just last week. This is from uh the official page, Twitter page of the president of Taiwan. Pleased to welcome uh the delegation uh led by uh Toporovski whose strong support for Taiwan's global participation we deeply value. This is China's response calls Israeli politician who visited Taiwan a troublemaker. Uh Taiwan is a true friend of Israel that has supported and continues to support the citizens of Israel from October 7th until this day and even funded the establishment of a maritime resilience center in Palman Chim which has already treated over a thousand survivors of October 7th and their families. He said on ex this is from uh the president of Taiwan. Uh China's response is that uh he is a troublemaker u for the sound of development of bilateral ties. The Chinese embassy in Israel strongly condemns this detrimental word uh sorry this uh his detrimental words and actions. If the Israeli lawmaker does not reign at the reign in at the brink of the precipice, he will fall and be shattered to pieces. Kind of an ominous warning. I What? Why would did Israeli lawmakers visit Taiwan? I mean, what what what geopolitical gain does Israel have from visiting Taiwan here? >> Pandering to the United States is the only thing I can think of. I mean, I have no special knowledge that I can give you uh as to why it's done. Uh I'm struck that it's a particular member of parliament uh who who either doesn't have or at least cannot admit that the net Netanyahu government supports or doesn't the initiative that he apparently took. Normally government-to-government relationships are not handled by a member of parliament on his own. They are handled by a delegation that has an official letter from the prime minister or the president so that they are there in an official capacity. He it looks like from the clipping he just went on his own. Now maybe he was put up to it. I don't know. But other than pandering to those forces in the United States who want to use Taiwan mostly as a bargaining chip, the sad reality for the people of Taiwan is that they don't want to admit that that's what they have always been, a bargaining chip between China and the United States. each one wondering how far the other one will go uh to claim the chip. You know what Taiwan needs or wants. Nobody could care that I can see. Nobody could care less. Uh so I I I don't think this is very meaningful. I think the re here's the real story. The United States and Israel are now isolated. You know, from 1945, the great slogan of the United States foreign policy was containment. We were going to contain communism, socialism, the Soviet Union. George Kennan, one of the most famous of our politicians and philosophers, containment. And it worked for 70 years. We contained more or less. But now the United States is no longer in a position to contain anybody. What it is doing with its policies, whether this is the intent or not, is to isolate itself. The tariffs, declaring tariff war on everyone, is an isolating act. It leads everyone to have an incentive not to deal with the United States because it's too dangerous. it's too unstable. If you sell there, they can whack you because you do, etc., etc. So, nothing illustrates the isolation of the United States more than being basically now the sole supporter of Israel and in the in the war in Gaza, if not altogether. The UN votes show that, the international politics shows it. And so I'm sure there are forces both in Israel and here that feel acutely that isolation and want in any way they can to diminish it to offset it. So yeah, go and have a visit in Taiwan and and pretend that Taiwan's uh closeness to you is some sort of reduction in the isolation that you're surrounded with everywhere else. >> To further highlight this isolation you're talking about perhaps is the fact that uh the Shanghai Corporation organization hosted a summit of 20 world leaders. Uh this was right after we spoke in the summertime in August. This happened a week after we spoke. Um several key highlights we can bring up from that conference. But more broadly speaking, how is the world order changing now that we have an entire block of nations converging to detail political and economic alliances without the West's involvement or attendance at this meeting? >> Yeah. Now the well the the west has excluded itself. The west devoted itself for most of the last 75 years. Let let me just remind folks the revolution in China that brought in Mount Sungong and so on that's 1949 right so it took him 20 plus years before the United States recognized China as a place as a country exchanged embassies we all remember or we should the visit of Nixon and Kissinger uh to China to quote unquote open China as if it had been closed. We have seen an effort to stop, to slow, to limit Chinese economic development. It hasn't worked and that's a tragedy for the West and it seems incapable of doing anything about it. The last time the G7, the United States and its allies, were as big an economic unit as China and the bricks, was in the year 2020. Now, five plus years later, the gap is getting bigger and bigger. China and the bricks is a larger, richer unit of the world economy than is the United States and its G7 allies. I don't think most Americans have understood what I just said. >> Dr. Wolf, you you grew up in in a at a time when American dominance and hedgemony was prevalent in the world. >> Yes. When you were a student, did you at all or perhaps your peers, did you and your peers envision a future in which this is a conversation we're having in 2025? >> Most of the time I was a student and I didn't envision it. My professors did not envision it. It was, and this is probably a kind of human failing, it was a a behavior that wanted what it assumed, that this would somehow go on forever. Did we know that every other dominant economy eventually stopped being dominant? Sure, we did. We studied, we were required to study economic history. We knew that the Roman and the Greek and the Ottoman and all the other empires rose and fell. But the notion that ours was an empire was difficult. They didn't want to admit that. They didn't want to say that. But the notion that we were one that could or would fail, yes, that was not present. That and that's why it's been so hard. That's why you're watching a Mr. Trump who is a specialist in pretense. This is politics as theater or if you like theater as politics and it's a theater which to be fair to Mr. Trump many of his constituents want they want to be reassured. You're asking me about when I was a student. Now, even with the accumulation of evidence to the contrary, they want to believe that their president can hit the world like like like an ancient god with tariffs, with punishments, with tribute they have to pay without any consequence. He can just do that and they will all scurry around as he said and come to his office at the Oval Office begging him uh to lower the tariff and they'll give him a hundred billion dollars of in my god this is a this is a game but for many Americans this is so much more palatable than looking at the alternative that he keeps capturing a s it's a it's a minority but it's a significant minority who want that theater. >> This raises the question and I'll end the conversation here on your article as to how we got here from American exceptionalism to have perhaps still American exceptionalism but uh in a world where there's multipolar powers at play. Military Keynesianism then and now is is the article title here. democracywork.com uh sorry.substack.com is where you can find this article. Um to summarize for us, professor, I think the key message here is that military Keynesianism is defined by deficit spending to justify uh the expansion of the military-industrial complex especially post World War II. Uh this has led to growth, but this has also led to rising inequality and perhaps endless wars. you argued and it raises the question of of whether or not capitalism should be replaced altogether. Anyway, I'll let you explain the summary probably much better than I did. Um, what was your core finding and what is your core message here? >> The core message is starts with the work of Mr. John Maynard Kanes, a British economist who wrote a great book in the middle of the Great Depression, 1936 to be precise. And in that, as a professor of economics at Cambridge University, he made a key admission that capitalism left to the in the hands of private capitalists can sometimes crash catastrophically. And of course, writing in 1936, nobody could argue with him because the world had a catastrophic crash at that time, the one that began in 1929. And he concluded that the only way to get out of these crashes, to stop them, or at least to moderate them, was to have the government step in. And when there wasn't enough purchasing of the goods and services, the government would do it. The government became a crutch, a constant observer of the economy, coming in with ways of boosting the spending that people undertook so the goods being produced would be sold and the jobs of those producing them would be preserved. Keynesianism is simply the view that the government should use its monetary and fiscal policies to sustain the capitalist system. The problem of this idea which by the way all developed capitalist countries adopted in the in the decades after 1936. The problem was among those who adopted it a lingering anxiety as old as capitalism itself. And that anxiety is usually associated with the phrase less afair. that private capitalists are afraid of the government because in a universal suffrage system, the government is voted on by the mass of the people who may constrain it to serve them rather than take care of the capitalists. They don't want that. They don't want a strong government. They don't want a government that interferes in the economy. It is a risk to the system. So there's the contradiction. The capitalists don't want it, but the capitalists, as Kane's taught, can't do without it. The solution found in uh capitalism was what I call military Keynesianism. We won't talk about sustaining the economy. We will talk about the government borrowing money to perform all of its necessary functions and above all maintain an enormously expensive military capability. This country has and has had for 70 years over 700 military bases around the world. No other country has ever had anything remotely like that. And that includes Russia, China, or anybody else. It's enormously expensive. It's the most technologically developed. It has the biggest missile arsenal, the biggest air force, on and on and on. And it requires the government to stimulate the economy because it can't dare raise taxes from the people to support all of this. If the people understood their taxes are the cost they pay for this big big military establishment, we wouldn't have one. So the solution was link the taxes to what the government spends on everything else and the borrowing will take care of the defense. So we get the stimulus, government borrowing to spend on top of what the private sector does. That gives you the Keynesian support of our economy. And you can justify that by what the Europeans are doing now, telling everybody all the time that somebody out there, either the Russians or the Soviets or the terrorists or the Chinese are eager to get us and we just have to do what we are doing. And that gets you the Keynesian support without giving the government a special place in the economy because it's all focused on the military. >> My only comment to this and I'll end it here, professor, is that uh as you stated here, the United States took over those empires and operated an informal US empire following the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This is what you alluded to earlier. Uh it fits well with the United States wanting to play the role of global policemen. I would argue that perhaps this role of global policemen has to some extent worked. Uh there has been the longest period of global peace observed in recent history. I'm not you know obviously there's been Afghanistan and Iraq and so on and so forth but there hasn't been two global powers fighting in open conflict with each other since World War II which has been a common phenomenon before World War II. So maybe this is correlation not causation. But what would you say to the argument that by expanding the military-industrial complex to 700 bases and so on like you talked about it has worked in providing global stability? >> I I accept all of that. I don't find this an eitheror argument. I think in other words these things go together. It's it's what people in my philosophic framework call the dialectic. It's the fact that good things and bad things happen intertwined with one another uh and very rarely uh separate. No, I think you're right. The United States was able uh to prevent a kind of war that would have risked itself and so it had lots of little wars. It wasn't a period of peace in that sense as it is in the peace now. But it did avoid the really big ones uh on the scale of World War I and two and and the whole world has to be grateful for all of that. No question. I think that's I think that's part of of what is now frightening the world that the Russians and the Chinese they have not just the nuclear weapons but they have an economic system together especially that is capable of more weapon production not less than the United States. You're seeing that already in Ukraine. drone wars will be won by the people in the greatest position to produce and that's not the west that's the east and that's part of the economic change that the world economy uh is going through. >> Oh, one final question before we go. Uh we have a few minutes left. Who or what then will be the global policeman of the 21st century into the 22nd? Long after you and I are are gone, who is going to be the next US? Is it still going to be the US? >> No. I think what we're going to see for better or worse um we're going to see that decision is going to be made either by the Chinese as the next global hegeimon or which the Chinese say sometimes that they have learned from the up and down history of every empire not to do it again. and that they have learned and that they will lead an effort to realize a western idea. It's the idea after World War I of a League of Nations. And it's the idea after World War II of the United Nations. And that the Chinese in order to avoid the decline they observe in the United States because they see the process. of course they may want to genuinely establish a multinational way of managing the problems of this planet. So my real hope, and I leave you with this, is that the United States will have the kind of leadership that seizes that opportunity, that tendency in the Chinese leadership to reach out a hand and say, "Let's try to do that together." That's the best hope for the human race that I can see. >> Excellent. Thank you very much, professor. Where can we follow you, study your work? The easiest way is to go uh to my website democracyatwork.info or substack democracyatwork. It's the same name. All our work is available there. >> All right. Thank you very much. We'll put the links down below. Follow Democracy at Work and Professor Richard Wolf down there. We'll see you next time, Professor. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Um and I enjoyed speaking with you this summer. I'll see you again soon. Take care for now. I hope so. And I appreciate you're going into these issues in an open and honest way. It's an enormously important contribution. >> Absolutely. Thank you for your contribution as well. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow Professor Wolf in the links down below.
US Empire Is ‘Over’: Richard Wolff On The Next Global ‘Policeman’, New Alliances
Summary
Transcript
The United States is no longer in a position to contain anybody. Nothing illustrates the isolation of the United States more than being basically now the sole supporter of Israel. The UN votes show that, the international politics shows it. This is the end for these politicians. They are desperate, which is why some of them want to have war with Russia. Even though it makes no sense. Mr. Trump won the presidency promising to end the war in Ukraine. He has not. He promised to end the horror of Gaza. He has not. The man who said he would end the endless wars is proliferate. >> I'm pleased to welcome back the show, Professor Wolf, professor of economics ameritus at the University of Amherst and the founder of Democracy at Work. Professor Wolf was on the show a few weeks ago talking about the economy. You can find that interview linked down below. And today we're going to do part two, an extension of that interview where we focus primarily on geopolitical matters, the hottest geopolitical topics driving the investment decisions that we make today. So, first we'll talk about uh Russia and the drone incursions sent by Russia into Eastern Europe. How will NATO respond? Will this lead to an all-out war? and uh the situation in Gaza. Trump just said that he will not allow the annexation of the West Bank by Israel. So, we'll see what that means and what that implies for American foreign policy. And finally, Professor Wolf will talk about the rise and the continuation of military Keynesianism. Very interesting concept. Professor Wolf, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure to host you. >> Thank you very much, David. I'm glad to be here. Professor Wolf, I'd like to start with uh this announcement by uh the uh Polish uh government issuing an urgent advisory for its citizens regarding Barus. Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued a renewed warning to its citizens regarding travel to Barus, urging them to avoid visiting the country and calling on those who are already there to leave immediately. The statement was released by the Polish embassy in Minsk September 25th, which was yesterday. We're speaking today on the 26th. Uh meanwhile, it's been reported by well, this is the CBC, Canadian press, Putin is playing chicken in Eastern Europe says uh a Russian um defense expert, uh there's been a series of incidents involving drones in the past two weeks. There's been drone incursions into first Poland. Poland shot them down, which we'll talk about. uh then Estonia, then a number of other eastern Europe e Eastern European countries. Then just most recently last night, Denmark saw drones enter their airport. Uh this was also near an airport where they fielded uh fighter jets. No attacks were actually done by these drones, but it showed a key weakness in Den in Denmark's air defenses. Uh so um the broad question is what is Russia doing right now? We'll start there. Why have there been so many drone incursions into airspaces in Eastern Europe in such a short amount of time in the past two weeks? And then we can discuss what NATO is going to do about it. Is Putin playing chicken? As this article quotes, >> my response, which may come as a bit of a surprise to your audience, is nothing is happening here. This is political theater. Uh let me begin this way. The incursions in people's airspace is something that happens on and off all over the world all the time. It is understood to be a risk of the world we live in. Uh if a country wants to protest, it can. If the country that committed the incursion wants to acknowledge that it did it, it apologizes and then we get on with it. This has happened for 50 years. So the interesting question is not so much whether the Russians have done this or not. My guess is they probably did. But that's not remarkable. What's remarkable is the response, the Polish response, the Danish response, the entire European response. But then when you think about it, it shouldn't be a surprise because the leaders of those countries have been demonizing and attacking and you know Putin and Russia for many many months. I let me put it better. Ever since Mr. Trump became the president and made it of the United States and made it crystal clear that the relationship between Europe and the United States is going to change under his government. And that change is going to be difficult and costly and painful for Europe. And let me show you how that works. If the war in the Ukraine is going to be fought above all by economic sanctions and if the United States and Europe together are going to impose on Russia the greatest sanctions ever imposed on anyone, which is what they set out to do and what they accomplished. Well, then you notice one of the consequences was that Russia could no longer sell oil and gas to Europe, which had been a crucial part of Russia's income and a crucial part of European energy resources. But the decision to make that sanction was a decision of the West, not of Mr. Trump. He didn't want to lose his customers, but he did. But the problem, and this has to be understood, is that suddenly Europe went into an economic downturn. Serious, continuing for three years and worse now than it was at the beginning of the war. and no mystery. It's because the price of energy central to an industrial economy tripled. Germany used to be the powerhouse economy of Europe based on its industry based on its use of Russian oil and gas. Germany is now a in a recession. That's how bad. It's not a question of growing. They're shrinking. Now, the Europeans could have gotten angry at the United States. Let's review what Mr. Trump did to them. He hit them all with tariffs on steel, on aluminum, on automobiles, a general tariff. He then negotiated with them reducing their tariffs if they committed to invest hundreds of billions of dollars of their money in the United States. That's a shakeddown. But call it what you will, it's a very bad combination for the Europeans, hence their economic catastrophe. But they can't be angry at Donald Trump because he's in a position to hurt them even more. Europe has become dependent on the United States over the last 75 years economically, politically, and militarily. So we have a classic case of what psychologists call displacement. You know, it's like the worker who comes home from his or her job all stressed out and kicks the furniture or kicks the dog or I won't go any further. What we have is Europe demonizing Russia as if that were the problem. using the notion of a Russian danger to get their countries back on track in trying desperately to cope with what the United States has done to them because they can't express it. Just like the worker can't tell the boss off for what happened at the job today, so you take it out on somebody else. Lastly, the Russians are having a hard enough time in Ukraine. There's no question that they're winning that war. Only diluted people think otherwise. But it is a difficult, it's expensive, it's costly. The idea that this difficulty had with Ukraine, one of the poorest countries in Europe, would now be the stepping stone to entering into a military conflict with the rest of Europe. If the Russians were thinking like that, they'd be completely crazy. And there's no sign of that. I want to remind also people since I'm a historian, the great invasions that Russia has been part of in the last 200 years have been invasions from Western Europe into Russia. Napoleon tried it and failed. In the world first world war, Kaiser Wilhelm tried it and failed. In World War II, Hitler tried it and failed. But we there's never been a Russian overrunning of Europe. That's craziness. Western Europe has never been part of any Russian advance. And one more thing, the Russians are very sensitive. And here's the reason. Historically, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, an effort was made by France, Britain, the United States, and Japan, to invade the new Russian government, the Soviet government, which they did in 1918. And the last Japanese troops didn't leave until 1922. The West has invaded Russia much more than anything in the other direction. You put all of this together and the way I see this is a very angry Europe, which I understand, bitter over how their former protector is now cashing in, if you like, the United States, unable to confront their problem, they demonize the Russians. But I I think it's now reached an absurd level of pretending that whatever these incursions are represent anything more than what they seem to be. >> Before we continue with the video, let me tell you about a very important topic. How to protect your privacy. Now, your private information doesn't just live in the inbox of your phone. It's being collected, packaged, and stored and tracked by data broker websites all over the internet, even without you knowing. That's where today's sponsor comes in, Delete Me. I use Delete Me to protect my privacy. And here's how. It helps you. It's a platform that helps you remove your personal data, like your name, address, and contact info from hundreds of these data broker websites. When you sign up, you'll get a detailed privacy report showing where your data was found and what's already been removed. And Delete Me keeps working throughout the year, scanning and clearing your information regularly. It's an easy way to take back control of your digital footprint without trying to track everything down yourself. Go to joindeelme.com/davidin and use the promo code davidin at checkout to get 20% off of US plans. Link down below or scan the QR code to get started today. Which is what exactly? Testing air defenses for a possible air strike or simply just political theater like you said. I think the other question here that I'm going to pose to you which is something that the CN the CNN article is asking how should NATO respond to further Russian incursions. Now NATO allies as of today are divided over whether the alliance should be making a policy to shoot down Russian jets which is what Poland did uh or show restraint which is what Germany is urging right now. So the US, Poland, the Baltic nations are uh signaling that future violations should be met with force while Germany urged more restraint. >> Yes. So you'll notice that the Baltic nations are taking the lead. Now, let's be honest for a moment because the media usually aren't. Having the Baltic nations ask for a war is asking for a mouse or excuse me three mice to try to instigate a conflict between the gorillas and the elephants. There's something totally ridiculous here. The country that is in the greatest position of risk dealing with Germany with Russia is Germany because it is the economic powerhouse even now of Western Europe. Germany doesn't want to do Germany wants to respond the way over the last 50 years countries have responded when there is an incursion. You make a protest. You see what the country that made the incursion says. Mr. Putin made it quite clear, at least after the initial experience, that he apologized and explained it was not. Do I know what the Russian strategy here is? Of course not. They don't talk to me or anybody else. They talk to themselves. So, it could be an accident. It could be a provocation. It could be testing limits. All of those things are possible, but in no way is there a war going on. Russia doesn't need or want a war with Europe. What the hell for the Russian Let me remind you of something else. Since February of 2022, using the universally recognized measure of glo of GDP, how well is an economy doing measuring the total output of goods and services in one calendar year? The GDP, the GDP of Russia has increased faster during this war than that of the United States or of any European country. The war is not destroying their economy. It's not driving them to distraction. The war in Ukraine is allowing Russia to stimulate its economy. The way the Great Depression and the war in our country here in the United States enabled the government to stimulate our way out of the Great Depression. That's one thing that happens that what would be the point of Russia in enlarging a war with Europe when the ostensible point according to the Russians was to stop the expansion of NATO to its border. You want to now take the war to NATO and risk all that that means and what the United States might do if it uh went through with with Article Five of the NATO treaty. I don't see I mean I I'm open to the evidence. I'm not interested in defending Mr. Putin against anything or Russia either for that matter. But there's no evidence of anything like that intent and the Russians don't need it. >> Professor, there's this theory that I've heard surfaced that perhaps Putin is trying to drive a wedge between Europe and America such that if there was a direct attack on a European NATO member perhaps in the east, um the US may say, "Hey, hang on. Let's not get hasty. Let's not directly retaliate against Russia. Basically abandon article 5. Would that ever happen? >> Yeah, it could happen. Mr. Trump has on occasion spoken in a way that I could see feeds that kind of theory. But let me tell you, why would Russia want to take the risk? And namely the risk is that the United States either with Mr. Trump's approval or despite him might decide to honor uh title five of that treaty in which case Mr. uh in Russia is is waging a war against the entire collective west. Now you might say he's already doing that in Ukraine. Yes, but that's a very limited uh situation. I don't I don't see him wanting to take that risk. You know, if there was more trouble in Russia, if they were at death's door, if they were impeach, but they're not. They're having a an economic relationship in the bricks with Russ with China and India and Indonesia that is a growing success for them. What Why would you want to do this? The West is a declining part of the world economy. The G7, if you add up the GDP of all of them, works out to about 28% of global GDP. If you do the same thing for China and the bricks, it's 35% of global GDP. China and the bricks is already the emerging growing success. The West is where all the problems lie. Economic growth this year will be five, six, 7% in the bricks generally and one or two two and a half% in the west. In other words, the same story continues. If I were blunt, I would say time is on their side, not the west. And therefore, who's provoking who makes more sense if the West is provoking for fear of where history is going. >> That leads to my final point about the Russian uh Ukraine conflict. This is a clip of uh University of Chicago professor John Mirshimer talking about uh this. He's making a parallel. I'd like you to respond to it. It's a short clip. Take a listen, please. If in 20 years Canada formed a military alliance with China and invited China to put military forces in Canada, what do you think the United States would do? I guarantee you the United States would behave towards Canada in very similar ways to how Russia is behaving towards Ukraine. You might not like this, but this is the way the world works. And I believe Canadians are sophisticated enough to know that this is a bad idea. >> I need I need to respond to this because I I think this is relevant. Um, under what conditions would the Canadians seek a Chinese alliance? [Music] Only if there was an American president who announced that to make America great again, he needs to reunite with with part of the of what was once the same country and they speak English too, don't they? >> I will let you respond to that, professor. Um, and I I I I wonder if you think first of all his parallel even is applicable to the Ukraine situation. You know, it's a bit of a stretch, but I understand uh Mir Shimemer is is a giant in his field. When he talks, it usually pays uh to listen. You're going to learn something. My reaction, however, is that they missed a much more important point. The United States, which used to be a proud, how shall I put it? Hegeimon, a proud daddy, as some European politicians call him, uh Mr. Trump. The United States before Trump and since Trump used to be the the manager of a global empire. They did a good job. The dollar was the global currency. Uh the dollar was very stable. America was a place to park your assets where there'd be no risk uh to them devaluing or being bothered by political moments etc. It is very very hard for the United States and I'm a member of that. and I'm born, lived and worked here all my life here in the United States. Very hard for my fellow citizens to contemplate, even to admit that the American Empire is over. And like every other empire, it is now entered into a decline that it needs to come to terms with. So what are they doing? They performing. Our politicians perform as Mr. Trump did at the UN a few days ago as if we were in 1960 and 70, as if we were the dominant. But we're not. And one of the signs of it is the savage way we are rewriting our relationships with what we used to call our wonderful loyal allies like Canada. So we hit them with tariffs and we hit them where it hurts. Tariffs on their energy exports, tariffs, tariffs on their car industry, etc., etc. So here comes the way you should have had the conversation if I was sitting next to Mr. Mirshimer. What's going to make Canada go to China, which between you and me, in case your audience doesn't know, has already happened. This is not a future prediction. They're going there because their economic viability depends on it. China needs grain. Canada can sell it. China needs energy. Canada can sell it. There are ways these two economies can help each other. And sure, they may choose not to do it, but that would be a process in which Canadians would be shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, they don't like China. Yeah, they don't like socialism. They're all fine. But at the end of the day, what will make an alliance between Canada and China become stronger than it already is is precisely Trump policies toward Canada. >> Would it not, this general question here, would it not uh also be better for global stability if let's say one member of NATO were to become closer with either Russia or China? >> That's already happened. I mean Hungary is I believe Hungary is a member of NATO but yes there are already other countries. Look I know many in Europe. I know economists in Europe including some fairly high in their political structure. Let me tell you that publicly everybody demonizes Russia. privately you will hear and I' I've heard it now for at least the last seven months enormous bitterness and anger at the United States the tariff policy the demand uh Ursula underlying uh committing hundreds of billions of dollars of European money that will not be invested in Europe making jobs for Europeans but is committed to the United States in order to get the tariffs lower than they otherwise would be. This is a shakeddown and those European politicians are going to have to face their own public having denied them the jobs and benefits of the money made in their countries by their labor. Th this is this is the end for these politicians. They are desperate which is why some of them want to have war with Russia even though it makes no sense and the major countries in there which are basically Germany, France and Britain uh don't want to do that because of what it will mean for them whether or not the United States commits. And let me remind folks about the American commitment. Mr. Trump won the presidency promising to end the war in Ukraine. He has not. He prom he promised to end the horror of Gaza and the genocide there. He has not. In addition, he's opened a war with Iran and he's currently provoking Venezuela. The man who said he would end the endless wars is proliferate. He's not in a position to add yet another monster war in Europe. This is not going to happen. And what we're watching are games being played by desperate politicians. >> On uh the issue of uh the war in the Gaza Strip, perhaps, and I say this, I stress perhaps Trump is starting to change his tone with Israel. This is what he said uh at a press conference just last night. Take a listen. Uh we'll respond together. >> Please behind you. >> On Gaza, did you promise leaders this week that you would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank? Is that something that you >> I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank? No, I will not allow it. It's not going to happen. >> Did you speak with Netanyahu about this? >> Yeah, but I'm not going to allow it. Whether I spoke to him or not, I did. But I'm not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. >> Is this a change in policy? >> It looks like it. You know, the problem with Mr. Trump, as you know as well as I, is that what he said on Tuesday may not be what it is on Wednesday, uh, the tariffs go up and down. Uh, the delays go up and down. His policy around Israel is up and down. He seems to sometimes change. Maybe this time. I mean, I'm in no position uh I'm in no position to know, but he may be being affected by the fact that the major European countries have now decided to recognize uh Palestinian statethood. Uh over the last few weeks, uh many of the countries there, I noticed from friends of mine that dock workers unions throughout Europe are no longer handling uh Israeli cargo. You c Israel cannot get imports through European ports and it can't sell because the the dock workers will not touch the cargo from Israel. No, they can get around that and they probably will. But you're seeing a level of global horror and frankly I'm I'm ashamed as a world citizen that it's taken this long, but that the world would allow Israel and and the Palestinians uh to do this kind of behavior one to the other uh both ways is is astonishing. uh for me as an American to know that it's my government that is funding what Israel is doing, is providing the weapons for what Israel is doing and so on is unspeakable. And and let me drive home to your audience, it is becoming politically dangerous for Mr. Trump the pro Palestinian feeling which is mostly anti what Israel is doing there. It's not anti-semitic. It's not about Jews. It's about the particular policy of a particular government in Israel that is becoming so pronounced that Mr. Trump is losing votes. He's losing political support. I'm speaking to you from New York City where the largest Jewish population anywhere in this country, the United States, is in New York City. And a prepundonderance of them are joining the rest of the people of New York about to vote a Muslim socialist to be the mayor of the largest city in this country. These are signs you cannot miss. despite all the repression of the pro Palestinian efforts on campuses and so on, the the support for Palestine keeps growing and it's becoming impossible to resist and that may have finally reached even Mr. Trump. >> All right. Uh, another interesting development I should ask you about is the tension rising between China and Israel. perhaps is always there. But recently uh Israeli lawmakers have uh taken upon themselves to visit Taiwan and visit uh the president of Taiwan uh last week, just last week. This is from uh the official page, Twitter page of the president of Taiwan. Pleased to welcome uh the delegation uh led by uh Toporovski whose strong support for Taiwan's global participation we deeply value. This is China's response calls Israeli politician who visited Taiwan a troublemaker. Uh Taiwan is a true friend of Israel that has supported and continues to support the citizens of Israel from October 7th until this day and even funded the establishment of a maritime resilience center in Palman Chim which has already treated over a thousand survivors of October 7th and their families. He said on ex this is from uh the president of Taiwan. Uh China's response is that uh he is a troublemaker u for the sound of development of bilateral ties. The Chinese embassy in Israel strongly condemns this detrimental word uh sorry this uh his detrimental words and actions. If the Israeli lawmaker does not reign at the reign in at the brink of the precipice, he will fall and be shattered to pieces. Kind of an ominous warning. I What? Why would did Israeli lawmakers visit Taiwan? I mean, what what what geopolitical gain does Israel have from visiting Taiwan here? >> Pandering to the United States is the only thing I can think of. I mean, I have no special knowledge that I can give you uh as to why it's done. Uh I'm struck that it's a particular member of parliament uh who who either doesn't have or at least cannot admit that the net Netanyahu government supports or doesn't the initiative that he apparently took. Normally government-to-government relationships are not handled by a member of parliament on his own. They are handled by a delegation that has an official letter from the prime minister or the president so that they are there in an official capacity. He it looks like from the clipping he just went on his own. Now maybe he was put up to it. I don't know. But other than pandering to those forces in the United States who want to use Taiwan mostly as a bargaining chip, the sad reality for the people of Taiwan is that they don't want to admit that that's what they have always been, a bargaining chip between China and the United States. each one wondering how far the other one will go uh to claim the chip. You know what Taiwan needs or wants. Nobody could care that I can see. Nobody could care less. Uh so I I I don't think this is very meaningful. I think the re here's the real story. The United States and Israel are now isolated. You know, from 1945, the great slogan of the United States foreign policy was containment. We were going to contain communism, socialism, the Soviet Union. George Kennan, one of the most famous of our politicians and philosophers, containment. And it worked for 70 years. We contained more or less. But now the United States is no longer in a position to contain anybody. What it is doing with its policies, whether this is the intent or not, is to isolate itself. The tariffs, declaring tariff war on everyone, is an isolating act. It leads everyone to have an incentive not to deal with the United States because it's too dangerous. it's too unstable. If you sell there, they can whack you because you do, etc., etc. So, nothing illustrates the isolation of the United States more than being basically now the sole supporter of Israel and in the in the war in Gaza, if not altogether. The UN votes show that, the international politics shows it. And so I'm sure there are forces both in Israel and here that feel acutely that isolation and want in any way they can to diminish it to offset it. So yeah, go and have a visit in Taiwan and and pretend that Taiwan's uh closeness to you is some sort of reduction in the isolation that you're surrounded with everywhere else. >> To further highlight this isolation you're talking about perhaps is the fact that uh the Shanghai Corporation organization hosted a summit of 20 world leaders. Uh this was right after we spoke in the summertime in August. This happened a week after we spoke. Um several key highlights we can bring up from that conference. But more broadly speaking, how is the world order changing now that we have an entire block of nations converging to detail political and economic alliances without the West's involvement or attendance at this meeting? >> Yeah. Now the well the the west has excluded itself. The west devoted itself for most of the last 75 years. Let let me just remind folks the revolution in China that brought in Mount Sungong and so on that's 1949 right so it took him 20 plus years before the United States recognized China as a place as a country exchanged embassies we all remember or we should the visit of Nixon and Kissinger uh to China to quote unquote open China as if it had been closed. We have seen an effort to stop, to slow, to limit Chinese economic development. It hasn't worked and that's a tragedy for the West and it seems incapable of doing anything about it. The last time the G7, the United States and its allies, were as big an economic unit as China and the bricks, was in the year 2020. Now, five plus years later, the gap is getting bigger and bigger. China and the bricks is a larger, richer unit of the world economy than is the United States and its G7 allies. I don't think most Americans have understood what I just said. >> Dr. Wolf, you you grew up in in a at a time when American dominance and hedgemony was prevalent in the world. >> Yes. When you were a student, did you at all or perhaps your peers, did you and your peers envision a future in which this is a conversation we're having in 2025? >> Most of the time I was a student and I didn't envision it. My professors did not envision it. It was, and this is probably a kind of human failing, it was a a behavior that wanted what it assumed, that this would somehow go on forever. Did we know that every other dominant economy eventually stopped being dominant? Sure, we did. We studied, we were required to study economic history. We knew that the Roman and the Greek and the Ottoman and all the other empires rose and fell. But the notion that ours was an empire was difficult. They didn't want to admit that. They didn't want to say that. But the notion that we were one that could or would fail, yes, that was not present. That and that's why it's been so hard. That's why you're watching a Mr. Trump who is a specialist in pretense. This is politics as theater or if you like theater as politics and it's a theater which to be fair to Mr. Trump many of his constituents want they want to be reassured. You're asking me about when I was a student. Now, even with the accumulation of evidence to the contrary, they want to believe that their president can hit the world like like like an ancient god with tariffs, with punishments, with tribute they have to pay without any consequence. He can just do that and they will all scurry around as he said and come to his office at the Oval Office begging him uh to lower the tariff and they'll give him a hundred billion dollars of in my god this is a this is a game but for many Americans this is so much more palatable than looking at the alternative that he keeps capturing a s it's a it's a minority but it's a significant minority who want that theater. >> This raises the question and I'll end the conversation here on your article as to how we got here from American exceptionalism to have perhaps still American exceptionalism but uh in a world where there's multipolar powers at play. Military Keynesianism then and now is is the article title here. democracywork.com uh sorry.substack.com is where you can find this article. Um to summarize for us, professor, I think the key message here is that military Keynesianism is defined by deficit spending to justify uh the expansion of the military-industrial complex especially post World War II. Uh this has led to growth, but this has also led to rising inequality and perhaps endless wars. you argued and it raises the question of of whether or not capitalism should be replaced altogether. Anyway, I'll let you explain the summary probably much better than I did. Um, what was your core finding and what is your core message here? >> The core message is starts with the work of Mr. John Maynard Kanes, a British economist who wrote a great book in the middle of the Great Depression, 1936 to be precise. And in that, as a professor of economics at Cambridge University, he made a key admission that capitalism left to the in the hands of private capitalists can sometimes crash catastrophically. And of course, writing in 1936, nobody could argue with him because the world had a catastrophic crash at that time, the one that began in 1929. And he concluded that the only way to get out of these crashes, to stop them, or at least to moderate them, was to have the government step in. And when there wasn't enough purchasing of the goods and services, the government would do it. The government became a crutch, a constant observer of the economy, coming in with ways of boosting the spending that people undertook so the goods being produced would be sold and the jobs of those producing them would be preserved. Keynesianism is simply the view that the government should use its monetary and fiscal policies to sustain the capitalist system. The problem of this idea which by the way all developed capitalist countries adopted in the in the decades after 1936. The problem was among those who adopted it a lingering anxiety as old as capitalism itself. And that anxiety is usually associated with the phrase less afair. that private capitalists are afraid of the government because in a universal suffrage system, the government is voted on by the mass of the people who may constrain it to serve them rather than take care of the capitalists. They don't want that. They don't want a strong government. They don't want a government that interferes in the economy. It is a risk to the system. So there's the contradiction. The capitalists don't want it, but the capitalists, as Kane's taught, can't do without it. The solution found in uh capitalism was what I call military Keynesianism. We won't talk about sustaining the economy. We will talk about the government borrowing money to perform all of its necessary functions and above all maintain an enormously expensive military capability. This country has and has had for 70 years over 700 military bases around the world. No other country has ever had anything remotely like that. And that includes Russia, China, or anybody else. It's enormously expensive. It's the most technologically developed. It has the biggest missile arsenal, the biggest air force, on and on and on. And it requires the government to stimulate the economy because it can't dare raise taxes from the people to support all of this. If the people understood their taxes are the cost they pay for this big big military establishment, we wouldn't have one. So the solution was link the taxes to what the government spends on everything else and the borrowing will take care of the defense. So we get the stimulus, government borrowing to spend on top of what the private sector does. That gives you the Keynesian support of our economy. And you can justify that by what the Europeans are doing now, telling everybody all the time that somebody out there, either the Russians or the Soviets or the terrorists or the Chinese are eager to get us and we just have to do what we are doing. And that gets you the Keynesian support without giving the government a special place in the economy because it's all focused on the military. >> My only comment to this and I'll end it here, professor, is that uh as you stated here, the United States took over those empires and operated an informal US empire following the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This is what you alluded to earlier. Uh it fits well with the United States wanting to play the role of global policemen. I would argue that perhaps this role of global policemen has to some extent worked. Uh there has been the longest period of global peace observed in recent history. I'm not you know obviously there's been Afghanistan and Iraq and so on and so forth but there hasn't been two global powers fighting in open conflict with each other since World War II which has been a common phenomenon before World War II. So maybe this is correlation not causation. But what would you say to the argument that by expanding the military-industrial complex to 700 bases and so on like you talked about it has worked in providing global stability? >> I I accept all of that. I don't find this an eitheror argument. I think in other words these things go together. It's it's what people in my philosophic framework call the dialectic. It's the fact that good things and bad things happen intertwined with one another uh and very rarely uh separate. No, I think you're right. The United States was able uh to prevent a kind of war that would have risked itself and so it had lots of little wars. It wasn't a period of peace in that sense as it is in the peace now. But it did avoid the really big ones uh on the scale of World War I and two and and the whole world has to be grateful for all of that. No question. I think that's I think that's part of of what is now frightening the world that the Russians and the Chinese they have not just the nuclear weapons but they have an economic system together especially that is capable of more weapon production not less than the United States. You're seeing that already in Ukraine. drone wars will be won by the people in the greatest position to produce and that's not the west that's the east and that's part of the economic change that the world economy uh is going through. >> Oh, one final question before we go. Uh we have a few minutes left. Who or what then will be the global policeman of the 21st century into the 22nd? Long after you and I are are gone, who is going to be the next US? Is it still going to be the US? >> No. I think what we're going to see for better or worse um we're going to see that decision is going to be made either by the Chinese as the next global hegeimon or which the Chinese say sometimes that they have learned from the up and down history of every empire not to do it again. and that they have learned and that they will lead an effort to realize a western idea. It's the idea after World War I of a League of Nations. And it's the idea after World War II of the United Nations. And that the Chinese in order to avoid the decline they observe in the United States because they see the process. of course they may want to genuinely establish a multinational way of managing the problems of this planet. So my real hope, and I leave you with this, is that the United States will have the kind of leadership that seizes that opportunity, that tendency in the Chinese leadership to reach out a hand and say, "Let's try to do that together." That's the best hope for the human race that I can see. >> Excellent. Thank you very much, professor. Where can we follow you, study your work? The easiest way is to go uh to my website democracyatwork.info or substack democracyatwork. It's the same name. All our work is available there. >> All right. Thank you very much. We'll put the links down below. Follow Democracy at Work and Professor Richard Wolf down there. We'll see you next time, Professor. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Um and I enjoyed speaking with you this summer. I'll see you again soon. Take care for now. I hope so. And I appreciate you're going into these issues in an open and honest way. It's an enormously important contribution. >> Absolutely. Thank you for your contribution as well. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow Professor Wolf in the links down below.