That's great, it starts in the Ukraine, That pays for Hunter’s crack cocaine. Sleepy Joe is not afraid. It's the end of their world as they knew it. And I feel fine. (with apologies to REM)
As I wrote for Insight yesterday, the war in the Ukraine is globalism’s Berlin Wall moment. The ruling conceit of the globalist elite, that a benign dictatorship of global capitalism (with them at the helm, of course) represented the “end of history”. High priest of globalism, Thomas Friedman, made it a dictum that no two countries with McDonalds would ever go to war.
Except, now they have. Just as the Marxists were forced by reality to rethink their ideology, so, too, the globalists are waking up that reality hasn’t measured up to the theory.
The next government of Australia, like others around the world, will face an environment vastly different from anything that recent previous administrations have experienced. Both global and local business enterprises also face different trading conditions.
Perhaps the biggest change is the end of globalisation as we have known it. The world seems headed into a series of trading blocks.
In other words, the world as it was before triumphant globalism swept the globe in the 90s.
Globalism is not the same as globalisation. The former is an ideology imposed on the latter, which is a process that has ebbed and flowed throughout human history, from the Silk Road to the spice trade. It reached its former peak in the late 19th century, via steam power and the telegraph. Then, the ideology imposed on globalisation was imperialism. Post-WWII, globalisation went into retreat and the world became a patchwork of trading blocs which persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.
Once again, war and plague (although in reverse order to 1918) are forcing globalisation into retreat.
Already, Covid-19 supply chain disruptions have made most countries seek greater supply security either via home manufacture or greater diversity. That movement will boost costs. And Europe is scrambling to lessen its reliance on Russian gas.
The Russian sanctions have pushed China and Russia into a block that will face its first test after the Russian’s request for Chinese arms. If China agrees, then not only is the risk of a greater conflict intensified, but there will be a huge pressure to isolate China which may hit iron ore exports. Similarly, the Ukraine has united the US and Europe.
But the biggest force that will concentrate trading blocks is the sudden realisation in Russia and China that their internet and associated data and communication networks can be turned off or severely disrupted by the US.
The buzzword now is “splinternet”. We’ve already had a divided internet, of course, thanks to the Great Chinese Firewall. Russia is also having to confront the danger of relying on Silicon Valley. The US will likewise have to look elsewhere for essential materials, from lithium to semiconductors.
The future we’re confronting is starting to look an awful lot like the past: a democratic (or so we’re told) West and an authoritarian East. Ramped-up defence spending. “Inflation, stagflation and recession”.
It’s the Cold War all over again, but this time racing straight into the 70s, without the boom times of the 50s and 60s behind it.
The fall of the Wall forced Marxists into temporary retreat. But, as we all know, rather than throw their dog-eared copies of Capital in the dustbin of history, they just did a cut-and-paste job, and, boom! Cultural Marxism was born.
So, what will the globalists do?
We’ll get a good idea when we see how one of their key convictions survives the test of reality. I’m talking about climate change alarmism, of course.
Until Ukraine, climate considerations dominated global strategic thinking but now there is a scramble for gas and coal. Having opposed oil fracking, President Biden has taken to the oil pumps and encouraging as much production as possible. High energy prices will encourage capital to boost oil, gas and coal but also to replace them with renewables.
The Australian
As a famous Australian politician once said, you can’t walk a barbed-wire fence with a foot in each paddock. As “renewables” are forced to actually compete with fossil fuels, their shortcomings will become more and more undeniable. Even Elon Musk has admitted that “We need to increase oil & gas output immediately… sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports”.
In that single, “yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but…” tweet, we can see exactly what’s going to happen. The globalist climate cult will just do what the Marxists did: rejig the script instead of admitting their ideology is busted.
“Sustainable energy solutions” cannot just make up for fossil fuels “instantly”, but (for the foreseeable future, barring a breakthrough new technology) at all.
The only way the cult has been able to keep the fiction going is by pumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into subsidising “renewables”. But rent-seekers run out of other peoples’ money in wartime faster than ever. When the choice comes down to being able to defend themselves or keep up the virtue-signalling facade of “net zero”, the hangman’s noose of Cold War will focus the minds of even the numpties in our governments pretty fast.
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