starting in 2001 and then picking up speed ever since americans bit
by bit by bit have lost interest in and faith in the international order
and now we're to the point where the u.s is just you know letting the ceiling of civilization
fall and for the countries like the europeans like the chinese like the saudi arabians
this is going to be a disaster because there is nothing about their economic and political systems
that is sustainable without the americans holding the center and the americans are leaving
the countries that have benefited the most are definitely germany and china i mean here are
two countries that are geographically constrained anytime that they tend to have an economic moment
they scare one around them into forming a coalition to tear them down and so their
their moments in the sun historically have been brief to non-existent
what really sets these two apart now is how integrated they've become with the wider world
and with each other in an era where the americans have removed security concerns from the table
put those security concerns back on the table and everything that has made the german and the
chinese systems thrive in the past 70 years really goes away overnight so we're going
to see some spectacular collapses in those two countries in the not too distant future
for banging the head against the order the better countries to look at are probably iran
and russia now the global order was formed to face down the soviet union so the russians are
pretty obvious there but iran the united states doesn't use a lot of persian gulf oil never has
what happens is the oil flows out of the persian gulf to fuel global trade
and global trade is what gives the americans their alliance network and the alliance network is
what gives the americans their security while the americans are now defining security differently
they've never really used the trade courtesy of the shale revolution they don't care about the oil
so everything that's kind of kept the americans bound to this region is now gone which means that
iran has gone from fighting the order because the americans are in charge of it to all of a sudden
being one of the countries that is most dependent upon freedom of the seas the iranian navy wouldn't
do well in a bathtub and it certainly can't protect outgoing cargo shipments it's americans
that have allowed that to happen i mean the idea of the order was so holistic that the united
states even protected the shipping of countries that it was bombing at the time and so iran has
gone from a country that hates everything about the global order that the americans lead to all of
a sudden be one of its biggest beneficiaries and the same goes for the russians the russians export
rock commodities whether it's oil or natural gas or timber or iron ore or whatever it happens to be
all of that requires a placid international environment so when the americans step back
and countries start taking matters into their own hands these countries that have so reflexively
fought everything about the international system for decades all of a sudden are going to discover
that there are two of the countries that are going to suffer the most when the americans are gone
the american presence is what has made the persian gulf region so calm for the last 70 years
and i gotta underline that despite all the wars in iraq and afghanistan saudi arabia and syria this
is the calmest period in this region's history and the only reason it's been relatively calm is the
americans had to have the oil flowing to power the global order now that the americans don't care now
that the americans are leaving this region goes back to the old rivalries and these two powers
iran and saudi arabia are going to be at each other's throats very soon you could actually
argue that the civil war in syria is kind of the opening gambit in this conflict the saudis and the
iranians have backed opposite sides the iranians get a lot of flack in the united states for being
hyper violent they are but they're not nearly as violent as what the saudis have done because at
the end of the day the iranians actually want to rule this region and so they've worked with
the standing government of bashar assad the saudis don't they know that no one in the region respects
them they know that they lack the institutional capacity to actually rule this region so they're
willing to burn it down burn it all down if that hurts iran so when you look at all these
conflicts that are similar in the region in syria and afghanistan in iraq and yemen you know this is
what they are in a moment of calm when the saudis still have some hope that the americans are going
to remain engaged and impose some sort of stability on the region from the outside
as soon as the saudis give up on that hope the gloves come off and this gets serious
i would argue that the iranians are doing everything that they can that they're if anything
overexposed right now so their ability to surge violence into this region i don't think it exists
that doesn't mean that they're done by any stretch of the imagination but i think they've pushed as
hard as they possibly can they might be able to maintain this tempo but i don't think they can
increase it the saudis absolutely can the saudis conservatively have two trillion dollars saved
up in their sovereign wealth funds not all of which is on the books they also every once in a
while prune minor branches of the family tree and throw princes in prison and take all their cash so
their ability to ramp up what they're doing is extreme keep in mind that some of the back room
quiet militant groups that the saudis have spawned and unleashed upon their enemies in the past
include groups like isis and al qaeda so their capacity for in just with a few weeks notice
to go up and stir up a lot of trouble throw a lot of cash at a militant group provide them
with a little bit of intelligence and weapons you know that's almost bottomless and the only
reason it hasn't been more is because they think that the americans might not be ready to leave
now as soon as the americans do formally leave they're going
to try to find the new sponsor but really there aren't a lot of players
the europeans and the asians really don't have the staying power to play a role and certainly don't
have the deployable militaries in terms of you know getting a large army to the region to make a
difference turkey's a possibility but honestly the turks think as badly of the saudis i think as i do
the best bet is probably israel israel is of the firm belief that if we can get various members
of the islamic world fighting each other then they're not going to have the spare bandwidth
to go after the jewish state and you know that's probably a really good plan so they're providing
already the saudis with weapons training with some equipment that the americans won't give them with
time on target intelligence they're stirring up groups around the region in parallel with
the saudis to a little degree and there's never ever going to be an israeli base in saudi arabia
they've done a very good job at keeping this relatively low profile from a pr point of view
but it's pretty safe to say that most of the arab world nations today actually prefer working with
israel to iran they don't see the israelis wanting to conquer them and that makes all the difference
if you're a jihadi group you might have a different interpretation of that but remember that
most sunni jihadi groups including isis including al qaeda consider iran a more hateful enemy than
the united states but i doubt that the iranians can make a functional nuclear device but having
a nuclear device and having a fully weaponized systems those are two very different things
the missile program is harder than the nuclear program because you have to miniaturize ruggedize
whatever the device is that i am unclear whether the iranians can manage it
but if it ever does appear that the iranians are getting close i can guarantee you
that the saudis will go to either israel or pakistan and just buy a few in a heartbeat i
mean you got to remember the united states developed a nuclear weapon during world
war ii because we didn't think we could win the conventional fight we didn't nuke germany because
that ultimately became a land war where we had the proponents of power and we didn't nuke them
in japan we were gonna have to do an amphibious landing of the home islands and we're projecting
in excess of a million casualties that was too high a price so we went with the nuclear option
the countries that use nukes are not the ones that think they can win the conventional fight
so in a straight-up fight in the desert between iran and saudi arabia the iranians would win hand
down they've got a larger army they might not be as well equipped but they actually have people who
know how to fight the saudi army probably wouldn't do very well outside of an air-conditioned garage
so the saudis would go with nukes and you can play that replay that
anywhere in the world i don't worry about chinese nukes i worry about taiwanese nukes
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