Transcript of the above video: 

The thumbnail for this video, I took it from a scene in The Sopranos. For those who are fans of that show, I'm a big fan of that show; I loved that show when it came out. I pretty much watched every episode as it came out and I have loved it ever since. There is a great scene in season 1. It is kind of one of the more iconic episodes where he is taking his daughter around to visit colleges while at the same time having to execute a hit on some guy that was a rat from the old days or something. But there's a scene in there where his daughter asks, "are you in the mafia?" And he kind of flips out, he's like, "no I'm not in the Mafia, there is no Mafia." And she's kind of rolling her eyes and eventually he admits, "yeah, well maybe I'm a bit of a wise guy." And it's an interesting scene, and we'll get to the analysis sort of how I analogized that to this topic here in a moment. 

Really quickly, I think it is important to point out I do deep dive analysis of stuff involving geopolitics, banking, finance, economics as well as immigration and visas, how that interacts with expat land out here in Thailand, and how it interacts just kind of generally in terms of just trying to live out here in Southeast Asia. In a way it's kind of news, but it's more the analysis that I think people find interesting about that. So if you are interested in that kind of deep dive analysis, please check us out, [email protected] is the email address, and we'll get you on the email chain to go ahead and receive that deep dive analysis from our paid news service, Integrity News Service. Also while I am talking my book, I think it's worth pointing out that my better half and I did set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace, as the name implies, it's breakfast anytime as well as American Diner style food. We have got cheeseburgers, hamburgers, as well as buffalo wings and again, breakfast anytime. You can check us out; you can find us in the links below to get our location and come see us there, and we'd love to see you.

But going back to The Sopranos where it’s “there's no New World Order”, I thought of that scene immediately when I read this article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: No 'New World Order', only global disorder. Which this is one of these things where it has almost come full circle. If you talked about the "New World Order" back in the '90s, you were just called a crazy conspiracy theorist. I was young then but I'm kind of a politics nerd and I follow these things across the spectrum and by politics nerd, I was at the '88 RNC Convention, I went to the Straw Polls in '92 and '96 as a kid; these are the things that I did as a kid. I am kind of a politics nerd but I also watch things from across the spectrum including from the so-called liberal press as well as from the so-called fringe, alternative media, whatever and I have always found that poo pooing the notion of New World Order seems to be a trope of frankly folks, the same kind of folks that I have had a problem with who are trying to unduly influence Thailand here aka folks like the World Economic Forum etc., who to my mind have already done pretty untold damage to certain aspects of the US and seem to have set their sights, at least in recent months, although I'm kind of wondering if there might be a lull in this activity now, but in recent months have set their sights on Thailand. We have seen a lot of the fallout from that, not least of which national debt issues as well as the attempt to put us under sort of tokenized totalitarian financial sort of grid type of thing. Again, it hasn't been particularly good, but one thing I have enjoyed is that in a sense "enjoy" is probably the wrong word, is I find some level of satisfaction in, is the fact that it looks to me like the Thais are seeing it for what it is, and that's definitely a good thing.

That said, quoting again from this article in the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, No 'New World Order', only Global disorder. There is no 'New World Order', - that is how the article starts, which by the way, for people that want to poo poo that term and I get it, there is a lot of really spurious information that is sort of floating around as detritus throughout the ether of the internet on the so-called New World Order, but at the same time George HW Bush used that exact term in multiple speeches of his as did his son. And then we'll hear these things like - and I'll get to that in a moment - "Rules Based International Order" and things. There is an international order, and I'm really kind of tired of this. It's really a played-out trope in my mind of undermining people who are trying to discredit or belittle people who bring up serious concerns they have for their country, the sovereignty of their country, international financial issues etc., and just base it on, "oh, are you a "conspiracy theorist"?  You use the term "New World Order." “Conspiracy Theorists” are not the only ones using it. Former Presidents of the United States have used that term. That said, quoting again: "There is no 'New World Order', although there is certainly A New World disorder. The "rules based international order" that was created after World War II, mainly under American leadership, had been fading away anyway as the West's long economic dominance declined. The arrival of Donald Trump delivered the coup de grâce, but nothing has taken its place." Well first of all that's kind of laughable that Donald Trump delivered the coup de grâce. To my mind, Donald Trump in many ways is being scapegoat - and I'm not a huge fan, like I'm getting all of this like commentary, "oh you're a Trumpist, I'm turning you off now” - I'm not. Like I don't understand the crazy, frankly and I am using that term specifically, crazy way people handle the issue of Donald Trump. You either have to love him completely or hate him totally. There's no analyzing him the way you would analyze any other President. I've said it before on this channel. I didn't particularly love or agree with every policy of Obama's but I could weigh the pros and cons of his Presidency. I can do the same thing with Biden, I can do the same thing with George W Bush, Clinton, HW Bush, Regan; I have my own biases, but you can weigh these things out. I'm starting to wonder if there is a movement to infantilize people's thinking about Donald Trump so that we don't analyze his Presidency in an adult manner and make rational decisions about it, and I see this coming from two sides. Again it's like ‘you either love him completely or you hate him totally’ and there is no in between. It's really kind of ridiculous and attributing every bad thing that's happening in the world to Donald Trump is again, it's very childish; there's really no other word for it. And again Donald Trump has not delivered any coup de grâce. The Bretton Woods System has been in a state of flux throughout its entire lifetime, most notably when Nixon took us off the gold standard or “temporarily shut the gold window”, things fundamentally changed thereafter. We saw major changes during the Clinton Administration, we saw extreme changes during the George W Bush Administration, when deficits and debt started going up a great deal, then with the so-called great financial crisis, I rather prefer to call it the Lehmann crisis, but that incident resulted in what became known as quantitative easing aka money printing, which by the way the Western powers said you can never do that to places like Thailand in 1997 when they opposed austerity on them and all these strict IMF rules, but when they themselves went through economic problems, "oh no, no, no, they just printed the money and moved on down the road!" And we are now seeing the aftermath of that in the inflation that is running rampant across a lot of the West. That said, and the point I'm trying to make with this video, Trump is not the reason the "rules-based order is ending" okay? He did not deliver any coup de grâce. He is presiding over the country as we are seeing it go through a major transition, but to say that he has delivered some coup de grâce is pretty disingenuous. By the way, I think the writer of this article is the same guy that said Hun Sen was stupid, or implied that Hun Sen was stupid in a prior article and I did a video where I basically said, "Hun Sen is a lot of things, he's not stupid." Say whatever you want. A guy doesn't stay in power in a place like Cambodia for over 40 years and become very, very wealthy and be stupid; I mean those two things don't really go together. 

That said, going back to this. Again we are seeing a transition. I did a video over a year ago I think where I talked about the YUASA shift, that there's a point at which the technological and innovative epicenter jumps, and the tendency is for it to go West. And what we are seeing, and I don't know that we are quite there exactly, but I think probably 10 years from now and at what point in between would we say it exactly jumped is hard to say, but 10 years from now I think it would be safe to say, yeah there was a YUASA shift which went from effectively Silicon Valley, and as I talked about at the time, Silicon Valley Bank was in my mind the sort of watershed moment or the red flag that tipped me off that hey, this is happening - the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed - that the YUASA shift, that the innovation centre was moving to Asia and this person gets into this. Let me just keep quoting. Quote: "All the claptrap in the past week about the launch of a new "Asian century" founders on the hard, unyielding fact that there is no Asia except in the strictly geographic sense." And what's your point? I mean there is no America, or North America, South America except in the strictly geographic sense. And as we will get to, there is this grand opus for Europe but the poo-pooing of Asia, which is just crazy to me. Quoting further: "There was a stage-managed coming out party in Beijing for China's new superpower status, with lots of Asian guests, but no actual deals were done." Well couldn't that be because a lot of the deals have already been done? They are just showing up to party in the aftermath. It's the denouement, it's not a climax.

Again, anybody who knows me, the notion of a very powerful Communist State i.e. China, and everybody seems to kind of forget that mainland China is communist, and I don't care what anybody says, "oh they have adopted capitalism and their different, whatever,"  there is a building somewhere that effectively operates as a filing cabinet for Marxist doctrinaires and Maoist doctrinaires and Leninist doctrinaires who sit around and try to figure out how to get it “right” the next time, okay? That's what Communism does. It sits there and tries to incubate the next Marxist Revolution; it's never worked, it's terrible. Read Gulag Archipelago or anything else or understand what it was, and I'm not saying the Soviet Union was absolutely imperfect, it wasn't hell on Earth necessarily, although the Stalin years you could have made some serious arguments, but there is a reason it collapsed, okay. There is a reason the Chinese adopted Western economic thinking. It didn't work fundamentally. The only point I am trying to make in this video though is one, I am not like going to be a big pusher of the narrative that China's rise is like an inherent sort of monolithic good, okay? I do think they want to do business. They tend to not like going into wars although maybe I'm being a little naïve there or they like to do war their way; maybe that's the way to look at it. But my point is, they tend to want to do business. That tends to be Asia's way; everybody out here wants to make money. It doesn't matter: Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia or the Middle Kingdom, at the end of the day we all just want to feed our families and get on with our lives. That's basically what everybody wants to do.

But this notion that "oh well, no deals were made." Well yeah, because the BRICS has been doing nothing but building for the last couple of years, in earnest. To say nothing of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. And meanwhile, I don't know if this was intentional, I don't think it necessarily was, but the bellicosity with which India was approached especially by America recently, and how that has kind of nudged them over into a much less hostile posture vis a vis China especially, it ain't good. India was one member of the BRICS that to my mind leaned pretty heavily toward the West; Western economic thinking albeit Keynesianism which I am not thrilled with but a kind of affinity if you will for Anglo-thinking, for the Anglosphere. I won't say they are Anglophiles, but they are English speakers, and they have affinity for English language literature, English language content if you will. That augured well for sort of the Anglosphere, the West if you will. Again to sort of see them alienated and then you see Modi hugging and holding hands with Xi and Putin, I don't think you can just poo poo that. And then we get into this, okay so there's no Asia per se, but apparently there is a Europe. Quoting further: "Europe" is a real strategic concept. Its half-billion inhabitants living in half a hundred countries have cooperated, competed and fought one another for three millennia and they almost all belong to the same cultural universe." Is that the cultural universe that kept going to war so much that the Americans and the Russians had to split the place apart like little kids being separated in the kindergarten for 75 years? I mean as an American, especially as a Kansan, for years it has just rankled me that Europe is, especially when you read the history, that Europe is sort of placed on this pedestal as like this cradle of civilization. In many ways it is. The Greeks, the Romans even the Holy Roman Empire, the British Empire. Even the French to a certain extent during certain points, especially the ancient regime and even the Napoleonic era although primarily brought us mostly new mechanisms for war, and most of the new mechanisms, although for law, on that point Napoleon did a lot for that. But it was law brought at the end of the bayonet, so that's something else to keep in mind. The only point I am trying to make is it is always put on this pedestal, as like "oh it's so peaceful, and everything is so good." Yeah, because others are securing its security for one thing. Things like NATO, and you go back to the Cold War the Russians had the Warsaw pact, the Americans had NATO, they had to be split up like kindergarteners and then now it's there's never any problems whatsoever in Europe; it's the bastion of all civilization. I just don't see it and frankly if you look at footage of the modern Europe and if you talk to any of the expats who are coming from over there, I mean just talk to any of them, they're not saying that same thing either. Quoting further: "When they split up into rival alliances (as they do most of the time)" so again this person is even saying, "oh, these split up all the time", so what are you talking about? And by the way - excuse me, I'm dealing with a bit of a cold here - by the way, China went through the warring states period or various warring states period, I don't think anybody would disagree that China is civilized.

Now again Communism, I have my own issues with, but China is a civilized country; it always has been. In many ways, when the westerners arrived out here, the one big determining factor between the two countries in terms of their might was guns; the book Guns, Germs and Steel, gets into a lot of those issues. But the point I am trying to make is this notion of Europe as the only cradle of civilization it's kind of ridiculous. Quoting further: "Even that process runs along familiar grooves. The Asian continent by contrast is rife with wars and confrontations." Really? Really? Compared to World War I and World War II? I mean especially World War I. World War I was just an unmitigated bloodbath, a mechanized bloodbath. There is still footage; I was listening to some podcast years ago, there is still footage in the British Archives of World War I soldiers, the human waves, that's still classified. It's so horrific they just don't want people to see it. I mean come on, this notion of Asia is all barbaric but Europe is okay, and meanwhile name me the major wars that have occurred out here recently? At the behest of whom? I mean since World War II, you had Korea and you had Vietnam, which again I'm pretty staunch anti-Communist so I can get on board with the reasoning behind them, but I don't think anybody would disagree with the idea that at the very least, outside forces exacerbated in most cases what was already an internal rather limited, if not national, but like limited regional conflict. So this notion that Asia is somehow barbaric, and Europe is not, just really rankles me. Quoting again: "The Asian continent, by contrast, is rife with Wars and confrontations -- but almost never do they actually involve the entire continent." Do you remember World War II? I mean that involved the entire continent. Quoting further: "It's too big, too culturally diverse, too split up by mountain ranges and ocean straits -- and fundamentally too lacking in common interests and ambitions that might bring it into conflict." 

Look, I haven't talked about this very much here. I talked about it on my other channel when I had it, and I may sort of resuscitate those videos. There was a guy in the British Empire days named Halford Mackinder that talked about the so-called World Island; there was the World Island and the periphery. And I disagree with Mackinder insofar as he believes that "he who controls the World Island, controls the world". Yeah, it's going to be - I don't think any one power can actually control the World Island so that's part of it - but also look the periphery so-called is basically everything that is not the land mass of Eurasian and Africa - which that is a lot - and a lot of economic activity has come from there, most notably North and South America and yes, Europe and Australia and the rest of the sort of Maritime World - you could call it a thalassocracy if you want - there's a lot of economic activity that has come from there. I don't see any reason why that is going to end. What I do see happening though, whether people like it or not and I'm kind of ambivalent on it, I'm at mixed minds on it, I think there is good signs and bad signs; I live here. I think for Thailand it is going to cause a lot of soul searching where they are going to have to make decisions that are going to come down to the national interest, and that's kind of the point of the video that that's what Thailand should be focusing on is the national interest and not these notions of Grand World Orders and things, because if anything, BRICS for whatever it represents, it does at least seem to embody an increasingly synergizing World Island economically. Again I don't think any one power is going to come to control it, but economically Eurasia is coming together; it is being knit together slowly but surely, and there's going to be a lot of economic activity that comes out of that. Meanwhile, I don't think that the West is necessarily declining, although you could make serious arguments for that. I have said it before and I will say it again, it's not a zero-sum game. If the pie gets bigger and America or Europe continues to have the same peace they have always had, is that necessarily a bad thing, a good thing, or anything. It's just basically status quo as far as those jurisdictions are concerned. 

So I guess the point I am trying to make with this video is one, the notion of poo pooing the idea of a New World Order is kind of ridiculous; there are clearly folks that are trying for a New World Order but they are kind of trying in vain. The nation state model seems to have consistently been the one that keeps coming to the foreground because people organize themselves most organically - not to be sort of redundant there - in nation states. People that share their same cultural history, their same language; that's how they organize. And they are going to present themselves to the world through the prism of that nation-state model. I don't think that is ending any time soon. I don't think the BRICS necessarily counters that. If anything I think it probably will operate to maybe even amplify it a little bit as each of these nation states pursues its national economic interest within the framework of not only BRICS but broader international trade. 

So the point I am trying to make with this video is yeah look the rules-based order, the so-called Bretton Woods System, that's how I look at it, it's Bretton Woods, basically what came out of World War II in the international financial system, and that then came to fully dominate. So Nixon closes the gold window, then in '91 specifically Christmas '91, Gorbachev basically throws in the towel with the USSR and that's no longer a thing. So it became the “unipolar” moment where we had this rules-based order. It is now going through another transition and that transition is going to see changes out here in Asia. But I don't think you can either dismiss or belittle the upcoming economic might of the nation states here in Asia, nor do I think it is really a good idea to somehow belittle Asia versus Europe when comparing them as continents because one, they don't operate as continents to begin with. Neither place does much as the EU would like to say that it does. As a practical matter, if you look at geopolitics and things it doesn't, but more to the point, that's not the prism to be looking through to figure out how is this all going to play out and what is going to be the economic landscape moving forward. My personal opinion, the notion of the YUASA shift, YUASA, you can search for that in the search function of our channel. YUASA shift, the notion that the innovative epicenter is moving to Asia. I think that is the best way to look at the way things are moving out here in Asia and Southeast Asia moving forward.