Tyranny Today – Episode 5

In this Article, Tomasz delves into the complexities of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and shines a light on the insidious presence of tyranny in today’s world. Through his analysis, Tomasz uncovers the troubling spread of authoritarianism in countries such as China, Taiwan, Iran, Turkey, Hungary, North Korea, and beyond, revealing the urgent need for vigilance and action against this growing threat.

This article is the transcript of a podcast done regularly by Tomasz Nadrowski. Listen to Tyranny Today. Please excuse any transcript errors in this article.

Welcome to Tyranny Today, our weekly review of what happens in the struggle against autocracies around the world. I’m recording this, um, on a sunny late afternoon of, July the fourth, 4th of July, the national holiday here in the United States, and I’m doing this from deep in the forest of Connecticut.

So if you hear some weird sounds of birds or animals, don’t get alarmed. Now a week since the aborted Duta in Russia and a week before the potentially groundbreaking native summit in Villus, I thought that it would be helpful to ask ourselves how we got here. And it’s not necessarily on the occasion of, the, for of July.

This is a very different place from where we were at this moment before the Deadly virus leaked from the laboratory in W an, in Hubi Province in China over three years ago. That groundbreaking event precipitated responses including monetary and fiscal and health policies that laid the foundations for the world in which we’re living today.

The world of high inflation, of, disconnecting supply chains and of high interest rates. The world of hot war and cold peace. The world of conflicting interest between the defenders of national security or economic security on the one hand, and the hopeful many. Who feared that a high interest rate environment may be the worst possible moment, or at least the most expensive moment to realign the architecture of the global supply chains.

This group, the champions of legacy corporations, continue to see the geopolitics of 2023 as an obstacle to pretend that the world has not really changed since 2019. And now is it more visible than at the World Economic Forum Summit, the TN gene in China. These regional summits, whether in China or in Singapore, are nothing like the devils conclave.

Very few Western leaders travel to China over winter to attend this event. And the way the forum functions as a private organization is by pig piggybacking on the calendar of various leaders. So if say a Prime Minister of New Zealand has a long postponed trip to China on his agenda, then his office is then.

Product to swaying through a WEF event, a World Economic Forum event, often successfully, and certainly in this case, this was successful. The Prime Minister of New Zealand always happy to pander to the interest of his agricultural producers, is the only significant guest in these impoverished Chinese devils.

To great Fafer. He’s flanked only by the less than respectable Putin huggers from Hungary, giving that, Peter, Cito, the Minister of Foreign First from Budapest, also graced beautiful Tian Gene with his presence. Interestingly, he had just performed a pilgrimage to Beijing in May, so clearly that was not enough for Hungary.

The presence of these two figures, one from New Zealand and one from Hungary, just underlies how far the decoupling has actually advanced despite the high cost of rebuilding the logistical infrastructure in alternative locations. Is it ironic that the growth, less recovery of 20 11, 20 12 combined record low-interest rates with investors, apathy and the CapEx strike while the post covid inflation and high-interest rates are accompanied by a rush to industrialized the west and the non-Chinese rest, whether with new energy infrastructure to replace the addiction to fossil fuels from Russia?

Whether by building new chip foundries, even in waterless Arizona, or whether by accelerating the gigafactory build-out in Europe and in America, a development recently hailed by, Janet Yellen in her speech. In fact, contrary to what the economic handbooks would claim, higher interest rates historically correlate positively with wave of CapEx that is capital expenditure.

But nor should it actually surprise us in times of consumer inflation, shoppers accelerate their purchases and fear of the inflationary spiral accelerating. Further, on the contrary, low and even negative interest rates are incapable of incentivizing depressed consumption as the two and a half decades of Japanese experience showed us, and now that we have inflation around the world, it is the Japanese economy that outpaces all other G seven countries.

So if you wanted to make money this year, then the Japanese market was your most grateful host. But let’s come back to New Zealand, the country that Japanese tourists just love visiting. Remember that, um, SRE 1990s movie entitled The Piano Shot on the North Island of Unique Karata Beach in New Zealand.

While New Zealand is trying again to play the piano, but it’s not Michael Neiman’s breezy soundtrack this time. Why? Because of Ni Michael Neiman. Channeling his Henry Brazilian staccato. Never tried to play on two keyboards, but that’s exactly what New Zealand’s diplomacy is trying to accomplish today by pandering to Beijing on the one hand, but also by being the smallest, weakest and least reliable member of AP four.

Now what is AP four? AP four stands for Asia Pacific for where we find New Zealand alongside Japan, South Korea, and Australia. These four Pacific nations have been invited to Villus in Lithuania to attend the Native Summit this year. In fact, in a week from now, NATO meaning North Atlantic. Of course geographically in New Zealand from Takara and Toro in the north to Mount Cook and Milford’s.

Sound in the south is anything but North Atlantic. It lies deep in the South Pacific and NATO is not spa, at least not yet, but it may be getting there. So they will meet in venues, one of my favorite Barack cities in Europe, alongside maybe Sanga in Switzerland and NATO and Sicily. Though I’m sure you can have many other charming Barack Jewels in Austria, Germany, France, or Czech Republic.

NATO’s diplomats as they stroll between G Demings Hill and the whole image of Virgin Mary in the Gate of Dome, that Lithuania’s called Ostra Varta and Poles called Ostra. The diplomats will crack their heads on how to tie together the chief objectives of this year’s summit and the pathway that will take the alliance to the crucial meeting in Washington next year.

The process that brings the Asian allies into the notionally North Atlantic Alliance, began with the war in Ukraine in the subsequent summit in Madrid last year, where the AP four attended for the first time. It is the response to the destabilizing actions by Moscow and Beijing and the loss of functionality by some of the post 1945 institutions, not least the United Nations, giving the Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, emasculated the United Nations.

It is the G seven that has taken over the role of a global policy maker in opposition to the next axis of evil, and it is an enlarged G seven, as we saw in the last series of meetings that took place in Japan with the participation of non G seven members such as Australia and South Korea. Well, NATO simply follows this enlargement trend since Douglas MacArthur declared that Western Pacific did not lend itself to multilateral alliances of the kind that the United States backed in Europe.

Washington has endeavored to weave bilateral defense treaties with South Korea, with Japan, with Taiwan till 1979 with the Philippines. And with Thailand, which was pivotal during the Indo-Chinese wars and with Australia. But China’s brinkmanship and Russia’s invasion have transformed the nature of America’s ties to its allies in the Pacific.

The network is no longer as simple hub and spoke, given that some of the spokes have become enclo chat, as they say in Italian interlaced with each other, very much to Washington’s bidding. The first and the most critical security arrangement is the triangular set of agreements on intelligence sharing and missile defense between the us, Japan, and South Korea.

South Korea has always been the weakest link here, given the Confucian past and the tragic history of Japanese colonization that has often been exploited by the Korean left as a divider between Seoul and Tokyo. But President Yuen has been very courageous in prodding South Korea, bels to close the loop on the compensation for the victims of the Japanese occupation.

Thus living up to the original agreement between the two nations from 1965, which consisted in massive infusion of Japanese funds into the Korean economy, helping the Peninsula Nation to kickstart its growth. Beijing abhorred it approachment between South Korea and Japan, but giving the very strongly anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea.

Those threats from Beijing are unlikely to change the trajectory in the near term. The second network is acus the Australia, UK, US Alliance, and to speed up the development of Canberra’s Nuclear submarine technology and thus, potentially shut down the Malacca trades in the keys of conflict with the P R C.

Australia’s hand is also being strengthened in the South Pacific where Beijing had scored several successes in recent years, not least in Solomon Islands, exploiting America’s shocking, the Ontario small and the region. This, of course, has changed recently. The third network is Quad, A partnership reflecting the late Shiza Abbu concept of Indo-Pacific.

As I once mentioned, the origin of the concept linking the two oceans goes back to the father of modern geopolitics. Karl Hoffer Quad was recently strengthened by Prime Minister Maori’s visits to Washington, and he was treated similarly to the South Korean president. This is a type of a lavish reception that no Western European leader has been offered.

In recent years in Washington, this alone shows where America’s priorities lie. The fourth lag in the web of alliances links the United States to the Philippines. Under the current administration in Manila, Washington succeeded in reopening several navy bases, most importantly in Lau zone facing Taiwan and Bashi channel, through which nearly a hundred percent of Japan’s energy imports transit.

The fifth lag connects the United States to its partners in the Northern Pacific, most vitally Guam home to significant US forces, both Navy and Air Force. Guam is located in the second island chain. As well as, federal states of Micronesia and a similar defense co-operation agreement is still pending with Marshall Islands, where the local authorities are using these negotiations as a leverage to obtain compensation from the United States for 67 nuclear tests that were conducted there between 1946 and 1958 is this fivefold web of connections that is an offer for NATO and Venus, and subsequently on the pathway towards Washington Summit next year.

The idea of NATO opening an office in Tokyo has thus far been resisted by Paris, but since Paris is unable to resist several thousand hooligans rampaging through the carcasses of 4,000 burnt cars around the country is balu, or maybe this opposition to Tokyo office should not be taken very seriously.

France badly stung by the fallout from the arcus agreement, which deprived Paris of a lucrative diesel submarine deal with Canberra has vital interest in the Pacific, not least due to its territorial presence in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Beijing has been trying to cleave New Caledonia away from Metropol by promoting independence of that.

Natural resource, rich territory and Macron’s plan to boost the military by 85 billion. Euro is not about sending tanks to support Poland and its future clashing as Russia. Rather, France will focus on strengthening its expeditionary force with Navy, Marines, special forces and Air Force capable of projecting force far away from the country, including in the Pacific.

It is therefore a key ally of the Western Alliance in the Pacific and maybe less critical for Eastern Europe. But the rest of the Filio Summit will focus precisely on this region, Eastern Europe. In particular, four themes will be on the agenda. Number one, a long-term plan for the security of Ukraine.

Number two, strengthening of the eastern flank. Number three, integration of Finland and possibly Sweden on the northeastern flank. And number four, the question of Belarus. So let me start with the first point, which is fairly straightforward. Although nobody in Kyiv could expect instantaneous integration of Ukrainian todo, the nature of alternative forms of guarantees remains somewhat murky.

So we hope for more clarity. Certainly the commitments have to be much stronger than whatever ki have obtained., back in 1994 in the Budapest memorandum, medicines of course marked the claim that a country at war cannot be admitted into nato saying that this is no obstacle given that Russia is not waging a war, but merely a special operation.

But the reality is that full membership is not in the cards in the near term. What Ukraine should hope for instead is first clear pathway to membership with transparent conditions. Now, peace in quotation marks cannot be one of these conditions as Moscow would then do its atmos to undermine such peace on a perpetual basis in order to define by its own terms what this actually means.

A different formulation is necessary here, such as what would be those necessary conditions for membership without offering Moscow e Vida power. Secondly, Ukraine needs strong, institutionalized support, both military and economic. While it continues defending Europe against Russian aggression, especially buying time for Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and possibly Moldova.

This is good business for the Renaissance of Western European armaments industry, and a fantastic opportunity for future investors double digit returns in Ukraine. The second point on the View News agenda will concern the host directly strengthening of NATO’s Eastern Flank. Here the progress is being slowed down by Turkey’s opposition.

Equally importantly, it is in the vital interest of the Baltic countries, Poland and Romania, that the so-called 1997 NATO Russia founding Act is trashed once and for all. Bizarrely, this document violated repeatedly by Moscow is still considered an act of faith in some Western capitals. And it’s outlined.

It is stated that no permanent military basis of NATO can be installed on the territory of the members admitted between 1999 and 2004. Thus subjecting native decisions to the whims of a non-member that is Moscow and not just any non-member. If we are to believe Germany’s first ever national security strategy, Russia is the main threat to peace and stability.

So what are we waiting for? An elector victory by alternative Deutschland maybe. The third point on the agenda concerns the integration of Finland and Sweden tornado. Here again, it is uncover that is blocking Stockholm’s. Accession. Turkey has been playing hardball, trying to exit deep concessions from the west, going as far back as 1974, and demanding the recognition of a separate Turkish state in Northern Cyprus.

And I have to say that I’m personally sympathetic to this idea. Back in 2004, there was a chance to reunify both sides of the conflict and who torpedo the UN plan back then, the Greek Cyprus. The Greek Cyrus voted no by 70 or 76%, and only 24 of the population voted in favor of the peace plan. However, 65% of Turkish separates voted yes to the UN plan versus 31 who said that they were against it.

Now, for how much longer will Greek Rios hold the status of the north hostage that their politics. B, it as a May, Turkish opposition to Sweden’s full integration into nato gis, the security of Finland, which is the Nunan member and of the Baltic countries. Sweden’s participation would close the Baltic, protect the key islands in the region, most of which belong to Sweden and strengthen the Arctic arc, thus also responding to Canada’s concerns regarding the Northern Theater.

The fourth point on the agenda concerns the gradual, a vanishing sovereignty of Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko has yet again played his cards right by providing his name to the negotiations that Alexi Dome, the governor of Tah Lus. And as I mentioned last week, potential successor of Vladi Putin led with prion and his Muir Prion himself is already in Belarus, and some 10th camps have apparently already been erected for his forces in this country.

Wagner’s presence in Belarus potentially strengthens mis capacity to engage in gray zone tactics and such. Fears have already prompted war, so to send 500 additional troops to the border of Belarus, although this could be an overreaction in the past, Lukashenko used migrants shipped from the Middle East to press against the EU border, but he failed to drive a wedge between the woke east west and the more alert east.

It is not impossible that Wagner might indeed stage gray zone operations that fall below Article five of NATO alliance, thus exposing Poland or Lithuania to a conflict creep. Just how NATO responds to this is an issue that definitely should be on the agenda in villus, but the creeping loss of sovereignty by means the presence of Russian nukes or Belarusian territory, and the prospects of reintegrating the country directly under musco to tell.

Would present a major challenge to NATO’s security. So these are the five main points of NATO’s agenda coordination with the Asian four, the plan for Ukraine’s future membership, the strengthening of the Eastern Flank Sweden’s membership, and the problem of Belarus. Having now sketched these five main points of the salmon agenda, let us step back and return to our opening question today.

That is, how did we get here? I have recently returned to Jack Snyder’s Seminole, 1991 war entitled MIPS of Empire. The author is, to my knowledge, not related to Timothy Snyder, who, works on UK Ukraine, Eastern Europe. I recommended on this show previously, while writing the myths of Empire Snyder, Jack Snyder appeared frustrated by the realist view of the world to them.

Kind of a billard table with countries bouncing off each other in an allegedly predictable fashion. See, he kind of sought to find roots of international ambition and domestic politics now that the book was published in 91, so it’s kind of post Gorbachev, but long before the free world was threatened by the Russian Hydra or the China’s apparently autistic self absorption.

Rather Snyder studies the example of Imperial overreach by Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany and by Maji and Shoa Japan, early Shoa Japan. The themes appear very familiar to all listeners of Tyra today, Germany and Japan, both of which were late to the industrialization race. In their obsession for security triggered construction of defensive alliances that with time became hostile to the interest of Berlin and Tokyo.

, the central myth of both fledgling empires was that their security could only be safeguarded through expansion. And that’s despite the overwhelming evidence that such aggressive policies were actually undermining those state’s security objectives. The economic corollary of such policies was utter key, achievable.

Only if more resources could be controlled by the aggressive state, whether it’s the Ukrainian Black Earth terrain for the German farmers, Orian coal mines for the Japanese steel industry. Invariably, the myths of security through aggression hindered strategic learning until the final categor, in both cases in the middle of the 20th century.

Snyder points out three types of rationale that typically drive this misguided strategy, and each of them in varying degrees can be applied to Russia and China today. The first of the three rationales is the domino theory. We are mostly familiar with Domino Theory is a term pertaining to a legacy power.

So let me step back to my South African years for a moment. Despite its unsavory reputation, Johannesburg has several pleasant neighborhoods. Santon is good for shopping. Saxon work is the leafy residential area, but for me, the most pleasant neighborhood was always Rose Bank, half residential, half commercial, and the most normal of neighborhoods.

If you hail as I did from Europe, I used to commute on rose bank’s., main thoroughfare called Jan Avenue. And for those who are more familiar with London than Johannesburg, you may remember that a statue of Jan Smoot stands on Parliament Square, sandwiched between the statues of Lord Palmerson, famous for his, social imperialist views in the wake of the Crem war.

And David Lloyd George, rather infamous for his views about Eastern Europe. And while listeners of tour today may be critical of the role that either British leader played in the country’s colonial past, yam Smut is the only non British figure on London’s Parliament Square. Indeed, the South African Jan Smut was one of the few people that Winston Churchill trusted, and his role was particularly vital during the Greek crisis.

Immediately after the Second World War, SMZ was close to Queen Feder of Greece and convinced Churchill that a fall of Greece into communist hands would cut off Eastern Mediterranean, thus jeopardizing Britain’s access to Suez Canal and by extension to India, and therefore undermining the colonial power’s key source of income.

Whether Britain and Fashoda, the United States and Vietnam varieties of the si smooth’s version of domino theory recur with some regularity in history. But the domino theory from the perspective of an emerging or revisionist power has a distinctly different flavor. And this version conquest increases power because as a result of it, new resources fall under the control of the conqueror.

Indeed failure to capture these resources would mean that they will fall into the hands of the rivals. In other words, analysis on the periphery of the revisionist power would inevitably lead to its collapse, hence the necessity to preempt this, or as Catherine the greats, the ugly lymph infomania German ruler of Russia once said that, which ceases to grow, begins to rot.

This is precisely what Putin has attempted in Ukraine capture and destroyed it. Before it turns decisively in the Western direction. By doing so, Russia has precipitated an unprecedented Western unity. Not unlike the tactical unity between such ideological foes as Stalin’s Soviet Union, and church was Britain in the struggle against the Nazis.

Snyder’s second Russian for the imperial overreach of revisionist powers is the so-called offensive advantage. According to this theory, imperial periphery could become a terrain of cumulative gains, but only and only if aggressive action is taken first. Passivity, on the other hand, would lead to turbulences.

In fact, the opposite seems true. Iner, purely military terms. As the war in Ukraine testifies attack is a lot more honors than the defense, especially when the war is not decided by the initial maneuver. And degenerates into a lengthy attrition campaign. But from a perspective of diplomacy, China’s aggressive rule warrior brinkmanship and punishing attitudes towards its neighbors have pushed South Korea in the arms of the Japanese, opened up Manila’s military bases to the US armed forces.

Made the Vietnamese hail a friendly visit by US aircraft carrier in Ang of all places, and Product Del towards technological cooperation with America’s military Esra Maori’s. Recent, recent splash in Washington shows the third thesis for misguided myth making among revisionist powers is related to the largely incoherent and.

Self contradictory picture that these regimes make of their foes. On the one hand, they view their nemesis as implacable foes that prevent them from obtaining their right full place, as in China’s case today, or from maintaining their indivisible security in the near boar, as in Russia’s case. But on the other hand, they believe wrongly.

That the same implacable foe was little more than a paper tiger unable to stand up to revisionist coercive inroads. This is how Wilhelmine Germany viewed the, and how bizarrely was informed Japanese elites decided to be regarding the industrial and military potential of the United States. The economic corollary of the expansionist mythmaking as observed in Wilhelmine or Nazi Germany and in the military is Japan, is economic Archy the West underappreciated?

To what extent Russian Central Bank prepared the country’s financial system to withstand the sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. In China’s so-called dual circulation economy seeks to turn classic, alter key into an asymmetric system whereby the world is deeply dependent on imports from China, while Beijing imports only those components and commodities that it cannot source domestically, not least, agriculture, energy, and mineral inputs such as soybeans, no liquid natural gas, high quality iron or cobalt or manganese in addition to semiconductors and when the imports are inevitable.

It is preferable for Beijing to source these shipments from nations that can easily be subjugated or otherwise influenced rather than from implacable strategic folks. In other words, ironer from Guinea is preferred to Ironer from Australia, and soybeans from Brazil are preferred to soybeans from Iowa.

This obsession of Archy Soy emblematic for revisionist powers brings back yet another myth that Snyder enumerated in his 1991 work, the Myth of El Dorado. Chinese communists believe today that if only they can overwhelm Taiwan, the problem of their technological backwardness vis-a-vis the west will be magically solved.

And Russia’s obsession of Ukraine and Belarus turns these lands into necessary buffers without which Moscow feels vulnerable in the alleged confrontation of the West. Of course, it is the threat addressed to Taiwan and the aggression of Ukraine that have led to strengthening of the alliances, both in Europe and in the Pacific.

In other words, Snyder’s thesis has stood the test of time, but some parallels between the early 20th century and the early 21st century. Are not that perfect. Today’s industrial capacity of the United States, which is the legacy power, is a fraction of China’s. The United States has only four public shipyards that perform a role for the Navy.

China has more than three times as as many naval shipyards, and one of them has capacity that is larger than all of America’s shipyards combined. So while we can run parallels between the old and new, here’s the limit underlying it. Again, the imperative for the Biden administration or other successors to maintain the viability of the alliances, which is kind of unusual for a legacy power.

For example, in the slew of generous agreements with India, last week, the US Navy gained access to repairs at Indian shippers, which is absolutely critical given that Indian Ocean is the most distant body of water from America’s shores. The second difference with the examples from the early 20th century takes us back to T n G.

The industrial interest of Wilhelmine Germany and Major Japan were created largely top-down with the support of the state and bank financing directed from above the corporate system linked conglomerates into TSU in Japan, such as Yasuda Mitsubishi, Mitsui, or Sumitomo, or in the case of Nazi Germany, large conglomerates like I a K or the flick.

And these were in favor of territorial expansion as a way to gain markets and access to natural resources. In other words, they favored by and large military expansion is of the revisionist powers. That is not quite the case today. In fact, the bottom up independent capital market rather than banking reliant capital system dominated by large American firms remains in favor of the pre 2020 world where access to the Chinese market determines corporate strategies and no amount of derisking, French sharing, nearshoring or decoupling.

Not to mention national security arguments will change the optics of an Elon Musk, an Apple or a Bill Gates. When will Beijing succeed, therefore, when it pursues policies that are very much unlike historical Germany’s or Japan’s, and instead when it adopts the policy of Colonial Britain. What was this policy?

It was the policy of selective appeasement, which divided various rivals and prevented them from building lasting anti British alliance. This is why, according to historian, Paul Kennedy, the British Empire lasted so long. It is too early to say which Chinese policy wins over the aggressive wolf warrior diplomacy that alienates one trade partner after another, or the more subversive term offensive at their world Economic Forum in Ji.

And how do we know which one is winning from the statistics? If the Japanese stock market is beating records today, it is partly because of its monetary policy sweet spot, but also due to late Shinzo Abbas dedicated strategy to pull the value at its sectors from China back to Japan. There may indeed be few places where to take basic tchotchke factory.

For a long time, the bet was on Vietnam, but the recent wave of strikes in Vietnam and the sinking of the country’s president in an anti-graft probe earlier this year are warning signs that Vietnam may not become the new Pearl River Delta. But for more advanced industries, opportunities about all it takes is a set of incentives.

Now last, for the largest US corporations that have four years alluded the IRS for imaginative offshore structures, that fiscal average may be limited. There is no agreement on whether involvement of large US companies in the US presents a guarantee of peace or whether it’ll continue undermining US national security.

When Anthony Blinken and Beijing states that US is not intending to decouple, it means precisely the opposite i e, that it will decouple. And when I look at the statistics, the hypothesis of blinken double speak is corroborated. Why? Because China’s trade with the US is down 11% year on year, and China’s trade with the European Union is down 4%, and that is before a recession hits the West for real, which it will, if not this year.

Then next, it’s all for today. We’ll meet again in a couple of days. Have a great week.