Welcome To The Fools-Based Order. The New Diplomatic Brutalism. The Quiet Rise of the Global South. Citizen Musk. And The Man Behind The Helmet! #239
Grüezi!
1?? The Brutalist – Welcome To The Fools-Based Order
How Trump’s blunt force approach shatters decades of careful pretence.
When Trump threatened to buy Greenland and seize the Panama Canal, he did more than rattle a few diplomatic cages. He exposed the polite fictions that have kept the post-war order ticking along for 75 years.
NATO has always worked through careful pretence. Denmark ‘controls’ Greenland whilst hosting vital US bases. Panama ‘manages’ its canal while guaranteeing American naval access. Everyone knows the real power dynamics, but nobody says it out loud.
Until now.
By explicitly threatening both an ally (Denmark) and a strategic partner (Panama), Trump hasn’t just broken diplomatic protocol – he’s shattered the careful ambiguity that lets smaller nations maintain dignity whilst accepting American hegemony.
When the dominant power explicitly threatens territorial coercion, it breaks not just specific rules but the entire framework of strategic ambiguity that makes the rules workable.
This matters because:
What to look out for?
The crisis isn’t the specific territorial ambitions – it’s that Trump’s “diplomatic brutalism” makes it impossible to maintain the careful fictions that allow international order to function despite power inequalities.
For China, this creates openings as the diplomatic architecture restraining raw power politics crumbles.
2?? The World’s First Globalist
Not George Soros. Elon Musk.
When Emmanuel Macron warned this week about “a new international reactionary movement,” he wasn’t just talking about ideology. The French president was acknowledging a new reality – the emergence of a form of private power that can hold Western alliances hostage.
At the centre stands Elon Musk, who has become perhaps the world’s foremost globalist – able to turn corporate influence into geopolitical power beyond Orson Welles’s dreams.
Consider the situation unfolding in Brussels. The European Union, architect of the world’s most sophisticated digital regulations, finds itself paralysed. Why? Because Trump’s team suggested that US support for NATO might depend on how Europe treats Musk’s companies.
When European regulators contemplate fining X (formerly Twitter), they must now weigh not just legal merits, but the potential European security costs.
The result? The EU has paused investigations into American platforms that could result in fines worth billions in global revenue. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – though ill – has been conspicuously silent.
Meanwhile, Musk plays Europe off against itself. Even as Macron sours on him, Italy’s PM praises Musk’s “genius.” Each response is shaped by national vulnerabilities, undermining any possibility of coordinated action.
Previous corporate titans influenced politics through money or media ownership. Musk has gone further, turning his businesses into pressure points in the Western alliance system itself.
What happens when corporate power exploits geopolitical fault lines? When regulatory decisions become inseparable from security considerations?
One Brussels-based diplomat put it bluntly:
“Musk wants to destroy the European Union.”
Maybe. But his business realpolitik risks weakening US alliances even further... if there is a point, perhaps – say cynics – that is his real aim.
3?? Trump vs Xi – the Rematch.
But who’s been training harder?
In 1969, Xi Jinping was in a flea-ridden cave, 500 miles from Beijing. Family connections had made him an internal “exile.” His father – one of China’s original revolutionaries – a victim of the Cultural Revolution’s persecution and punishment.
Donald Trump was in Brooklyn, starting work for the real estate empire of his autocratic father Fred – pulling every string possible to dodge the Vietnam draft.
Soon he returns to the White House, with a bold, tariff-charged plan to confront Xi’s China.
So what’s Xi’s Trump strategy? It’s systematic, determined, and ruthless when needed. There are three clear tracks:
Track 1 - Retaliation: Beijing’s already firing warning shots:
Classic power moves from someone who knows that deterrence requires teeth.
Track 2 - Adaptation: Xi’s pushing major fiscal/monetary stimulus. Why? Because he learned in exile: survive first, thrive later. He’s creating economic resilience to weather potential Trump tariffs.
Track 3 - Diversification: New deep-water ports in Latin America, talks with global economic organisations, potential unilateral tariff cuts for non-US partners. Xi’s building alternatives systematically.
Beijing sees 2025 differently from 2017:
Xi’s “Marxist Nationalism” (Kevin Rudd’s term) isn’t just rhetoric. It’s a worldview forged by seeing Soviet collapse + experiencing the Cultural Revolution. He believes that ideological weakness is national vulnerability. Stop believing in the Chinese Communist Party and you stop believing in China as it stands today.
What happens when enough people stop believing in the system? Well, he can look warily at the White House and ponder. At least, there you can vote to tear it down.
4?? More BRICs Than Kicks
How Xi’s Global South strategy is paying off.
Indonesia’s quiet entry into BRICS is another sleeper success for China’s systematic and patient courtship of the Global South – and Xi Jinping’s long game against Western economic dominance.
With Indonesia’s addition this month, BRICS now represents 45% of global population and a third of world GDP. More tellingly, 95% of Russia-China trade now happens in local currencies, concrete progress for Xi’s de-dollarisation push.
Indonesia – the world’s fourth most populous nation – is a textbook example of China’s economic pull. In 2023, Jakarta got $7.3 billion in Belt and Road funding – making it China’s biggest BRI recipient. The underlying economics helped drive membership under its new President Prabowo Subianto.
Malaysia and Thailand have both applied for BRICS membership. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined in 2024. Each addition strengthens China’s alternative to Western-led institutions.
Multi-alignment is the new neutrality in a fragmenting world.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister insists “It does not mean we are joining a certain camp.” And even NATO member Türkiye partners with BRICS, shows how nations are hedging their bets.
Indonesia’s quiet membership shows how methodically China has constructed parallel economic architecture that appeals to developing nations’ practical needs – from funding to technology sharing – without Western conditions, and beyond US reach.
As Trump plans fresh tariffs, Xi’s systematic cultivation of the Global South may prove his strongest counter.
5?? Silicon Valley VCs Talk Up Tariffs
Let’s hope their investment record is better than their history.
Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Andreessen ended 2024 by highlighting an intriguing chart showing tariffs as a share of federal revenue from 1870-1914.
The suggestion? That this high-tariff period was somehow connected to the remarkable technological progress of the Second Industrial Revolution.
And … he’s partially right! Tariffs were a huge % of federal revenue from 1870-1914. But his chart tells us nothing about whether they were good or bad for industrialisation. It just shows us that tariffs were one of the only ways the federal government could raise money.
That share dropped off a cliff, because in late 1913 the US got income taxes, not because innovation stopped.
The Second Industrial Revolution was driven by electrification, mass production, standardisation, scientific management, and the spread of railroads.
Attributing it to tariff revenue? It’s like crediting the Internet boom to the price of oat milk lattes in Palo Alto.
6?? Jimmy Carter, Massacres And Morality
What we remember and what we forget: geopolitics and memory.
When Jimmy Carter died, obituaries rightly reflected on his public service and human rights legacy. They didn’t mention Gwangju.
I spent the holidays reading Korean writer Han Kang’s “Human Acts,” a fictionalised account of 1980 massacre in the South Korean city.
Carter’s administration was told in advance about the deployment of the soldiers who carried out the massacres that Han Kang so chillingly describes.
The background? In 1979, when South Korea’s dictator was assassinated, another general, Chun Doo-hwan, seized power. In 1980, when Gwangju’s citizens began to protest against martial law and for democracy, Chun prepared a crackdown. US intelligence knew what was coming.
On 8 May, 1980, a US cable detailed the specific units Chun was planning to send to Gwangju – they were special forces “ready and willing to break heads.” The next day, Chun was told Carter’s administration “will not in any way suggest that the US opposes” using the army against protesters.
A US aircraft carrier was sent to the region. When Gwangju’s people heard the news they assumed it was coming to protect them from Chun’s troops. Carter’s White House had prioritised “restoration of order” – the carrier was a signal to North Korea to back off, not for protesters to rise up.
In Gwangju, Chun’s troops beat and murdered protesters. The uprising began on 18 May, 1980. When it was finally crushed at the end of the month, the official death toll was nearly 200. Locals said more like 2,000.
Carter stood by Chun’s crackdown. On 1 June, 1980, on a visit to Atlanta to see a wounded civil rights activist, he told CNN:
“Maintenance of a nation’s security from Communist subversion... is a prerequisite to the honouring of human rights.”
Reading Han Kang’s novel today, the gaps are revealing. She won 2024’s literature Nobel in part for illuminating cruelty, but novelists have little time for international relations..
Carter died praised for his human rights work. Undoubtedly, as president, the world’s woes washed upon his desk in 1980. But geopolitics casts its amorality wide.
This is how it shapes our memory. Not through direct censorship – there’s no-one taking down references to Gwangju – but through what stories we choose to recall and what we collectively agree to “disremember.” In Western memory, the massacres barely exist. They don’t fit the stories we like to tell about ourselves.
Between the president and the novelist lies a truth we’re still happier to forget.
7?? The Man Behind The Iron Mask
What kind of man wore this helmet?
Want to understand Anglo-Saxon warrior elites? Think high-end management consultants:
less finger-jabbing, more actual stabbing.
Instead of a Patagonia gilet, they’re wearing armour. Rather than PowerPoint decks, they’re wielding swords. But the professional model is pretty familiar. Like today’s strategy consultants, Anglo-Saxon warriors were:
When the Byzantine Empire needed global talent in 575 CE, they did what big companies do today – launched a massive international recruitment drive, with premium compensation packages.
Instead of stock options, you got gold. Instead of signing bonuses, fancy armour.
Anglo-Saxon warriors were effectively taking international assignments in the Byzantine “firm.” Syria was their Dubai – a prestige foreign posting where you could make serious money and build a reputation.
The “princely burials” archaeologists find? The 6th century equivalent of a McMansion filled with luxury brands. They’re showing off their international experience and success just like today’s consultancy partners flex their Rolexes and lounge passes.
And just as today’s global consultants form a transnational elite who have more in common with each other than with locals, these warriors shared their culture across Britain. Like today’s graduate trainees:
Maybe not that, but the career path is similar! Serve abroad for 15-20 years, make your money, then return home to leverage your experience and connections into local power and influence.
Next time you see a consultant with their cashmere quarter-zip and lounge pass, remember – they’re carrying on a millennium and a half tradition – and back then, you really could be the richest guy in the graveyard.
Thanks for reading!
Best
Adrian
Meticulous, on-brand copywriting, editing & content strategy for purpose-led businesses and solopreneurs
1 个月I gain so much understanding of the world from every edition; this one was particularly absorbing, thank you.
MAEd in Guidance and Counseling
1 个月Your contribution to global information is incomparable. Thank you, Sir!
Head of Written and Audio Content at World Economic Forum
2 个月‘Geopolitics casts its amorality wide’ - that says it. Seems the choices are often between bad and not good.
Alternative Medicine Specialist at Anveshan Health and Research Centre
2 个月Dissecting this article as an unbiased ex editor- journalist Adrian Monck TRUMP: We needed Trump to trumpet about the plan of America to OWN the world overtly. Remember it is a fool who treads... to create a new world with fewer men to enjoy the natural resources provided there is life post man -made calamities. He has Elon Musk in his team who has barred the 3 rd party fact check agencies globally on is platforms for people had concerns of chat gpt and AI . I truly hope it has nothingto do with this union. Marriage of busines with politics? Xi has recouped and putting his eggs in various baskets as mentioned by you to accomodate population with a role to play the king with other growing nations coming together to break the dollar power. Aha the saga of BRICS expanding to play the 'RODA' - But will it? Or gloriously go down like the Un? a toothless organisation with different agenda and subagendas. Point to ponder. As for Siicon billioners. lets hope they along with state and fedral government understand that tarriffs all the time for all the people by the governments cannot enhance economy always! Late Jimmy Carter did built his foundation to uplift human life post his debale with the war in Korea. Join me to destress with mask
Deputy Ambassador, International Human Rights Commission, New York.
2 个月Your informative newsletter stands as “required reading” for people who want succinct and honest global news assessment. Thank you!