Blame discredited elites for the decline and fall of the West in 2016 December 19, 2016 “The more I practice the luckier I get.” – Golfing great Gary Player In essence, political risk analysis is like nothing so much as American baseball: there is an undoubted element of chance to the game and even the best player strikes out with soul-destroying regularity. Saying this, it is not dumb luck that the legendary [...]
Donald Trump is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in powder keg Asia December 12, 2016 Donald Trump is off to a surprisingly good start. While his enemies in the Democratic party and the American press (which is largely the same thing) froth at the mouth, enraged that their world view has been found wanting, the President-elect has assembled a thoroughly solid cabinet up to now. While there are some (to coin [...]
Italy’s referendum has started the clock ticking on the collapse of Europe December 6, 2016 There are real advantages to playing the dumb American. As much of the world thinks no one born on my continent could ever know anything about their country, I am at a perpetual advantage. Just over a week ago I found myself in Milan, explaining to investors the reasons for the Trump phenomenon. Late in [...]
Saudi Arabia has surrendered control of the global oil market to US shale December 5, 2016 “Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.” – PJ O’Rourke The new Opec deal to cut oil output – the cartel’s first since 2008 – amounts to nothing less than Saudi Arabia’s surrender to the power of American shale. It has come about due to Riyadh’s belated, horrified understanding that it has utterly lost control over [...]
It’s time to face facts: Pandora’s Box is open and Europe is finished December 1, 2016 “Therefore, send not to know/For whom the bell tolls, /It tolls for thee.” – John Donne, 1624 Let me begin with a truism. My analytical career has not suffered from betting against Europe. For much as I love the lifestyle and all that comes with it, the continent’s complete, pathetic inability to solve any of [...]
America’s psychological divisions foretell a toxic era of partisan gridlock November 28, 2016 The political blow to the Democratic Party following its surprise loss to Donald Trump has been cataclysmic. Rather than holding the presidency and retaking the Senate as was expected, America’s ruling party finds itself shut out of power in every branch of the federal government and at the state and local levels, too. By this [...]
Dear Mr Trump… An open letter to the President-Elect on the foreign policy principles that will maintain America’s greatness November 21, 2016 “Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim/The walls of my room are closing in/There’s a war outside still raging/You say it ain’t ours anymore to win/I want to sleep beneath/Peaceful skies in my lover’s bed/With a wide open country in my eyes/And these romantic dreams in my head” – Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender [...]
The world according to Trump: American nationalism now drives US foreign policy November 14, 2016 “Every good citizen makes his country’s honour his own.” – Andrew Jackson, seventh US President Donald Trump’s overall foreign policy views are not the mystery the highly-discredited commentariat presently make them out to be. He largely hews to what Walter Russell Mead calls the Jacksonian nationalist strain of American foreign policy, long a minority (if [...]
America’s nervous breakdown leaves the free world without a protector November 9, 2016 Once at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, the great and the good assembled there were invited to say what they saw as the number one single greatest problem confronting the world. The usual answers were tamely trotted out: Nuclear Proliferation, Pandemics, Terrorism, Global Warming, the tired four horsemen of the imaginary [...]
Donald Trump is poison for America, Hillary Clinton is poison for the world November 7, 2016 A particularly low point in French politics was reached in 2002, when the electorate was left to choose their President from between the louche, conniving, incumbent Jacques Chirac, and the beyond-the-pale Jean-Marie Le Pen. The French people, without any joy but mindful that the credibility of the Fifth Republic was on the line, opted for [...]
