Hello all!,

Apologies for the long time in posting, life has been crazy busy this year. Re-reading my last post on the new world dis-order, I would say overall it reads well but potentially I might be have not factored in the pace in which these changes take place.

The Europeans have played a reasonably good game trying to keep in President Trump’s good books (even calling him Daddy at the NATO summit!). Their commitments to a 5% spending on defence and defence related spending clearly worked in avoiding a short-term rupture of the alliance.

Ultimately, I still think the US is going to pull out over time but it might be a bit more extended time-frame. Much depends upon the evolution of the Ukraine war where the Russians are making slow but steady progress in the eastern front-line.

I’m wary of making any hard forecasts on this war but my best sense is the Ukrainians will struggle on until 2026 when the superiority of Russian power will finally overwhelm their frontlines, leading to collapses in critical front-lines across the front. Some type of resolution of the war will likely happen by 2026 although what exactly remains to be seen.

How the US adapts to that likely endgame is unclear, potentially the Americans may use the end of active fighting to accelerate their withdraw from NATO.

The Israeli-Iranian war was a fascinating war to watch, in part because it has such polarising perspectives. A friend of mine was adamant that Iran was winning the entire time, even after Israeli drones and airplanes were flying around Tehran knocking out prestigious regime targets day after day. I’ve seen before but it continues to amaze me how Israel seems to drive some people beyond the bend. It’s hard not to conclude that there is at least subconsciously an anti-Semitic strain to their mentality even if anti-Jewish racism remains, by and large, a taboo in Western society (although that is sadly starting to change).

I have my own theory that based on my cyclical view of history that when the last living survivor of a horrible period in history dies, the society will end of repeating the horrors not long afterwards. After the revolutionary wars following the French Revolution, it was a 100 years before everyone decided that a massive European war was something to look forward to (ergo WW1).* So on that basis, anti-Semitism returning makes sense over the next generation or so, as the remaining survivors of the Holocaust die off.

*You might ask, how about the European WW2. My view is very few people wanted WW2, other than deranged Nazis leaders. Most German folk, including their military didn’t want war and certainly not the Allied population. Without Hitler and the Nazi gang in power, WW2 was unlikely to have ever happened precisely because Europe was still traumatised by WW1.

Going back to the Israel-Iran it looks like Israel is the winner although at a high reputational cost given the on-going disaster of Gaza. Whether the Iranians can recover over the next few years will be interesting to watch.

Overall, my base case remains the same, we are in a decline era, a big economic and potentially geopolitical crisis is coming around 2030 and the next decade looks like a rather grim Greater Depression era for much of the world. And whilst the Russians do remain a credible military threat, particularly to the Baltics within a 10 year timeframe, the longer term threat to western Europe remains the rising power and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and similar minded Islamist groups who are slowly but surely gaining control of the biggest cities of western Europe.

If you have any questions, please fire them over and I would be happy to answer them.