Ep 316 - Lions & Lambs with Thomas Fazi

Steve Grumbine: 00:00:44

: All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. I had an opportunity to get some laughs out and get some sanity back with my previous guests. And you know, if you just heard our most recent podcast, that was with none other than John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Today I'm bringing on my friend and many time guest, Thomas Fazi, who's co-author of the book Reclaiming the State. He's also a author at UnHerd and writes a Substack. You definitely want to check out Thomas Fazi. He is a really, really interesting person who splits the difference between the politics and the working-class struggle. You may not agree with everything he says, but what I found him to be is incredibly insightful and on a scale that most people are afraid to touch. He's been willing to look at kind of the whole system across the globe and that's a big pool. And you're going to find out today as we try to make sense of this, stuff is happening in real time. And so we're going to make some speculations. We're going to discuss what's happening around us under Trump 2.0 and the geopolitical landscape and also the ruse that the working class has been snowed under by these billionaires that are now running the US theatrical performance I call kayfabe, you know, as we watch them literally gut the entire public sector and all in the ruse of quote, unquote, digging out fraud. Fraud is so rampant. If they were really going for fraud, they'd be looking at the military industrial complex. But clearly that's not in the works. So without further ado, I bring on my guest, Thomas Fazi. How are you today, sir?

Steve Grumbine: 00:02:26

Thomas Fazi: Hey, Steve. I'm good and it's good to be back on your show.

Steve Grumbine: 00:02:30

: I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, man. And look, like I said in the beginning, we're kind of working our way through this, right. I mean, there's some things that we do know. There's a lot that, you know, you kind of trying to look at the tea leaves and make heads or tails of, right?

Steve Grumbine: 00:02:43

Thomas Fazi: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, we were just commenting about just how much is going on at the moment, there's just so many, you know, moving parts, and it really is just, you know, a)  hard to keep up because it feels like history is accelerating exponentially and it's just, you know, hard to stay on top of everything and most importantly, to figure out how, you know, the various pieces fit together, especially when you're dealing with such an inconsistent and somewhat, you know, schizophrenic character like Trump, which is, you know, riddled with contradictions, which makes it even hard to kind of develop an organic general theory about what's going on with his new administration. And of course, we're in the early weeks of it, which makes it all even harder. But as you said, you know, we'll try at least and, you know, and make sense of what's happening and see how it goes.

Steve Grumbine: 00:03:34

: You know, I want to bring this up for people because I think people have this bad tendency of compartmentalizing things and they don't see the tie ins from history and they don't understand the way things come to be. They just think, hey, it just landed here and this is the way it is. Kind of like, you know, do you condemn Hamas, what happened on, you know, October 6th. Do you condemn Hamas and all this insanity, when in reality, hey, where have you been sleeping the last 50 to 100 years. You know, what's going on. Why didn't you pay attention. Yeah and I think it's important and it's instructive to go back a little bit to the Biden and even to the Trump part one, when they started trying to lay the groundwork and excuse pancake, if you will, for Hillary Clinton's loss, and they tried to start blaming Russia and they had Buff Bernie and they had all the weird, you know, Putin puppets and all the trolls from Macedonia flooding social media. And it all turned out to be largely nonsense. But it has never stopped. And, you know, you go into Biden part one. Well, hopefully Biden part only. And you know, Biden started at his first State of the Union address, not only demonizing Russia, but also demonizing China for what, let's be fair, it's success. So through all this, there's been a planned continuous non stop propaganda machine drumming up fear of Russia, fear of China, while simultaneously instituting austerity on the American people to cover up for our lack of vision, our lack of willingness to manufacture and produce value out of this country that once was the shining star is now a failing empire. Your thoughts?

Steve Grumbine: 00:05:24

Thomas Fazi: Yeah. Well, I mean, clearly empires need enemies. They need external enemies to justify this massive system of domination and control, which in America's case amounts to hundreds of military bases spread out all across the world. And you know, this is kind of has for a long time been the kind of hard material basis of American power. And you know, you can only justify constant interventionism around the world and constant meddling in the affairs of other countries if you can claim that you're fighting an existential threat. And that's, you know, of course, what post war America has done throughout its entire history. You know, it was Soviet Union during the Cold War and the various, you know, alleged proxies of the Soviet Union in Latin America and Asia and elsewhere. And after the end of the Cold War then we started to see America sort of, you know, drum up and literally create out of thin air new enemies Iraq or even rehash, you know, old enemies, Iran. Iran's always been there, you know, that's an evergreen. And that has been the justification. And then it became this kind of ephemeral, invisible but ubiquitous threat in the form of terror or terrorism, which is the ideal enemy because it can be anywhere. It can, you know, assume multiple forms. And that was the justification for a 20 year long disastrous war on terror that wrought chaos and destruction and caused millions of deaths throughout the world, especially in the Middle East, and justified numerous military adventures by the US, most notably of course in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Syria, Libya, I mean, the list of countries destroyed by the US and more in general by NATO just over the course of the "war on terror" is just astonishing. And throughout all these historical phases, there's always been an enemy of choice. And the enemy shifts and, you know, the enemy of choice changes. But there always has to be an enemy. That is a basic rationale of empire. And because such a huge and powerful country like the US for a long time hasn't faced any real existential threats, let alone actually serious military threats. Most cases these threats were literally invented out of thin air. Just, you know, think of the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and, and so on and so forth. More recently, Russia once again became the enemy of choice for the democratic establishment. I think what's interesting is that, and the shift we've seen is that of course these external, often manufactured external threats, they're of course used to expand empire abroad. They're of course also used to control domestic populations. So in this case to control the American citizens by keeping them in a constant state of fear, by having them focus on an external enemy rather than their actual enemy, which you know, usually tends to be much closer to home in the form of the domestic American ruling elites of the American oligarchy. So, you know, these external threats deployed to both expand the empire abroad and manufacture consent and sort of domesticate your citizens. But a variation on the theme that we've witnessed over the past decade really has been the weaponization of the Russian external threat against an internal political enemy of the Democratic Party, i.e., Trump, through the creation of a completely baseless conspiracy, i.e., Russiagate, which has been completely debunked. I mean, it's, it's now been completely debunked even by, you know, the FBI and other American agencies. But this was a massive machination that was put in place by what you may call the American "Deep State," the national security apparatus, the intelligence apparatus, and what was used to essentially try to politically kill a political enemy, i.e., Trump. It's really quite an astonishing story. And yeah, as you were saying, it involved even several countries. I mean, Ukraine and several key figures in the post 2014 Ukraine regime played a key role in bolstering this completely false Russiagate narrative. So I think that this also helps us understand Trump's stance, I think, vis a vis, you know, Ukraine and Russia, by attempting to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, in a way, he's also exacting vengeance in a way at once under democratic establishment and also on those elements of the Ukrainian regime that colluded in Russiagate. So there's also a psychological element at play in all this, I would say, as in a number of other things. I mean, recently I find myself turning more and more often to psychology to try to make sense of our leaders, especially Europe, our leaders policies, because often they just can't be explained in rational terms. And of course, you know, there's not just Russia, there's China, which is kind of a bipartisan enemy in a sense, that there's quite a cross party consensus among both the Democrats and the Republicans that China represents an existential threat to the US and that, you know, it has to be dealt with in one way or another. And the two parties might have different ideas about what's the best way to deal with China, but they do share the underlying assumption that China is the number one threat to the US, and again, you know, the question is, what do we mean by threat. I mean, is it now, clearly China is a threat to the US to the US's sort of hegemonic position in the world. It's a threat to the US Oligarchy that thrives on American global supremacy. But you know, it's not necessarily a threat to ordinary Americans, to ordinary citizens, which in fact haven't benefited at all from America's globe spanning empire and in fact would to a large degree benefit from America just becoming a normal country. Not any other country clearly would remain a significant power, but a major power amongst other major powers. And so the question here is, how is Trump going to approach these issues. When it comes to Russia, at least his stated intention seems to be quite clear. When it comes to China, not so much, it remains to be seen. I mean, my impression is that clearly what we're witnessing is quite a radical regime change in the US in these first weeks, we've seen Trump kind of really take a sledgehammer to both the American state bureaucracy with "DOGE," but also with international status quo, for good and for bad, of course. And so, you know, we've seen on the one hand, completely deranged statements and plans, especially when it comes to Gaza, just completely criminal, immoral plan to forcefully ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza Strip, basically, just absolutely monstrous from any possible point of view. And we've seen quite equally the range statements in terms of annexing Panama and Greenland, Greenland, potentially even Canada. But of course, we've also seen more positive statements. Obviously. I personally look upon very favorably to Trump's intention to at least attempt to wind down the conflict in Ukraine. If he manages to pull that off, that would of course be an incredibly positive development for Ukraine first and foremost, but for the entire Eurasian region and for the world, in fact, even though I think it's going to prove much harder than most people assume, and we can get into that, we've also seen fairly positive statements.  Just, what was it yesterday. I think Trump spoke about wanting to reach a kind of denuclearization plan with China and Russia, sort of stop the arms buildup. And, you know, he spoke of de-nuking and reducing, you know, defense spending in all these countries. We've also had pretty positive, interesting statements from even household neocons like Marco Rubio acknowledging the end of US Primacy and acknowledging the end of the unipolar phase. So it's really hard to try to make sense of these often very contradicting stances and positions and statements. My general impression is that what we're dealing with is not yet what the US would need, which is an acknowledgement that the best course for the US would be to transition towards the status of a quote, unquote, normal country. So US policy, even under Trump, continues to be driven by a kind of ambition, again, statements about Greenland and other countries are clearly testified to that. And even just the absurd Gaza plan that's undergirding, that is the idea that no matter how crazy the plan, we can pull it off. Aside from the ethical dimension, no matter how crazy the plan, we can pull it off because we're America. We can do whatever we want. But, of course, there does seem to be at least a kind of instinctive, realist understanding of the multipolar nature of global politics nowadays. I mean, that's definitely a positive development. But at the same time, Trump is still, I think, driven by an attempt to try to maximize as much as possible, American power within this new context. So, I think what we're witnessing is maybe what we may call a form of maybe realist imperialism, you know, as opposed to kind of globalist imperialism of the Democrats. And realist imperialism means that you try to focus on much more manageable, achievable goals, rather than, you know, ideologically driven goals which aren't ultimately achievable, i.e., militarily defeating Russia or preparing for war with China, or at least when it comes to China, that's my hope and expectation, at least that this is the direction Trump will take, similar direction to the one he's taking with Russia. And that means also focusing on what America considers to be its kind of natural sphere of influence, i.e., the American continent. And so I think this is kind of where we're at with Trump, a new phase of America adjusting to its relative decline in power. And, of course, you know, we see that in the economic sphere as well, with, you know, the tariffs placed on Europe and other countries. So it's an attempt to adjust to this new reality. But, you know, underlying this, there's still a fundamental, I would say, sort of hegemonic drive that remains the biggest obstacle to America actually managing to navigate this minefield without the whole thing ending in catastrophe, which is something we're very close to under Biden.

Steve Grumbine: 00:16:35

: When I think about this, all the points you bring up are fantastic. You know, there's so many points I want to touch on. The fact that the US and NATO, their role and surrounding Russia with bases, and the fact that the American people see the US as the good guy there, which is just bizarre as hell. I mean, that's number one. Number two is the continued trajectory of some form of oligarchic plan where we've gone from the Biden funding of genocide to Trump now carrying that forward and talking about, well, we're not even going to buy Gaza. There's nothing in Gaza. We're just going to take it, just ours, whatever to. And the ethnic cleansing that goes with that. But then, yeah, to the point of DOGE, you know, we've got Elon Musk, the world's richest guy, who got most of his funding, quite frankly, it's not even hard to find, through federal deficit spending to finance his dreams and aspirations. And he's dancing around like a hyena with his kid in the picture telling Trump to shush. Starts to be ridiculous. But the reality is, is that they're slashing and burning all of this government spending. And you know, whether you think the government's wasteful or not, that is real money being spent into the economy, just like the interest income channel to the rich was. That's real payments for electric bills, pay for pizza, pay for, you know, cars or PlayStations for the kids, or maybe it's just books for school even. I mean, the money that the government spends when they cut that off, if there's not a subsequent spend somewhere else that fills that gap, we're talking about severe austerity here. And I don't think most people realize the way this trickles down from the federal government to the state governments, to the local governments, and then by extension to all the poor contractors that'll be the first to get their heads cut off and all the other working class people who are going to be dealing with a massive recession unless there's something to offset that. This is how you and I got to know each other is through the MMT world. What do you take on Trump's and Musk's absolute maniacal drive to quote unquote, "saving taxpayer money?"  I, I think it's a big ruse as Musk knows full well where his bread is buttered.

Steve Grumbine: 00:18:57

Thomas Fazi: Yeah. So, do you want me to start with Ukraine or should we just jump straight to DOGE?

Steve Grumbine: 00:19:02

: Let's go with DOGE first and then we can go back because I think there's so much more on the international stage. But I think that this is happening right here, right now, and it sets the stage for a lot of the other things later. So, if you wouldn't mind.

Steve Grumbine: 00:19:14

Thomas Fazi: Yeah, I think the developments, the trajectory that we're witnessing with DOGE, I think in purely macroeconomic terms is very worrying. So let's start with the good stuff. You know, so of course, defunding of what is essentially the USAID-industrial complex, which is nothing more than a cover for this globe spanning kind of regime change, soft power industry that the US has been running for years with organizations like USAID and NED, the National Endowment for Democracy, essentially CIA fronts that have been used throughout the world, from Latin America to the post Soviet sphere to Eastern Europe to essentially fund local quote unquote "NGOs" to promote American economic and geopolitical interests, often even by undermining elected governments, provoking so called color revolutions, or in the case of 2014 in Ukraine, and here we go back to you, even a de facto armed coup. So these are very, very dangerous organizations that have wrought chaos and destruction and caused untold deaths around the world for years. And so, one, as an anti-imperialist, I can only rejoice, at least temporarily, because it remains to be seen whether these agencies are really going to be wound down or simply rehashed or in some other form. So that remains to be seen. But in the short term, I think most people around the world can only rejoice at DOGE and Musk and Trump taking a sledgehammer to these organizations and shutting them down. Now, of course, they're doing it for the wrong reasons. I don't think they fully understand just how central these agencies have been in promoting US global hegemony, which is something that I think neither Trump nor Musk are ideologically opposed to. They see these organizations as kind of undercover extreme left communist organizations undermining the American way of life, basically, which is quite a deranged interpretation of what these agencies actually are. Notwithstanding the fact that they may use certain liberal progressive values to undermine governments. On some occasions, they've also been more than happy to support extreme far right dictatorships and regimes if that happened to be what was in the US interest at the moment. So these are not primarily ideologically driven organizations. But this is how I think people like Musk see these organizations, which is why they've cracked down so hard on them. It's that they see this as a way of avenging the kind of left liberal progressive elites that have been waging war on Trump and Trumpism and MAGA for years. Not without reason, because as we were saying earlier, you know, with Russiagate, many of these domestic agencies were in fact weaponized against Trump. So this is first and foremost sort of a personal vendetta for Trump and Musk. So, we have to keep this in mind, even though its short term impact is no doubt beneficial. But of course, Musk sees this as just a first step in a radical dismantling basically of the American state machinery. And it's a complex issue because of course, even as someone who comes from the Left, I fully agree with the notion that in the current historical phase that we're in, we're witnessing growing state authoritarianism, which is very worrying development. I mean, we've seen states essentially engaging in rampant censorship, rampant suppression of free speech, rampant repression in service of the promotion of elite oligarchic interests. So, you know, I can see why a lot of people, especially in the MAGA movement, especially in the right, tend to subscribe to these kind of libertarian ideologies and almost a kind of crude Reaganism where they see the state, the government as the source of all problems and that if you could just do away with the government, then, you know, all the problems will sort themselves. And of course we know that that's not the case. Notwithstanding the way that governments and states have been instrumentalized against the people in recent decades, throughout the neoliberal era, that doesn't change the fact that states and governments remain fundamental in terms of providing for workers, providing for citizens, creating an economic environment which benefits everyone and not just the elites. So, the unintended or maybe intended consequence of this kind of slash and burn, in fact ultra neoliberal approach to the government that has been spearheaded by Musk and Trump with DOGE actually risks having devastating consequences for ordinary Americans. And again, there are ideological elements to this. I think Musk's understanding of macroeconomics seems to be on that of a six- to seven-year-old kid who's, you know, learned economics by watching Disney movies or. It's incredibly crude. It's just an incredibly crude interpretation of, you know, monetarism, essentially macroeconomic neoliberalism, this idea that government spending is always inflationary, always bad, and simply by taking a sledgehammer to government expenditure, you can solve most problems, including inflation. I mean, this is completely, this is completely deranged. And so he does risk creating huge economic problems for ordinary people. What I would say most Americans that voted for Trump are concerned about is the economy. They're concerned not just about inflation, but they're concerned about decades of erosion of purchasing power, erosion of real wages, erosion of economic security in every possible respect. And solving all those problems requires the state. Simply the idea that you can resort into some kind of extreme monetarist, free market experiment will make people's lives better is completely delusional. In fact, it'll further destroy people's lives, as we've seen happen in Argentina under Milei.

Intermission: 00:25:32

: You are listening to Macro & Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization. All donations are tax deductible. Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon, Substack, or our website, realprogressives.org. Now back to the podcast.

Intermission: 00:25:55

Thomas Fazi: By engaging in extreme austerity and destroying the purchasing power of Argentinians, he's managed to bring down inflation, but at the cost of a massive increase in poverty rates. And I think there's a real risk of a similar thing happening in the US if DOGE continues on its austerity drive and starts really slashing government programs on which millions of Americans rely for their day to day living. And so yeah, there's an ideological element, but there is of course also a much more self interested element here, which is of course that people like Musk and his broligarchs and fellow tech bros, they don't just want to reduce government spending full stop, they also want a bigger chunk of that government spending for themselves and most importantly, they want a bigger chunk of the defense budget. Because a lot of these Silicon Valley tech bros rotating around Trump, beginning with Musk, but also other people like Peter Thiel of Palantir and companies of this kind, they don't just dabble in civilian technology. They're all deeply embedded in the military industrial complex, beginning with Musk. I mean, Musk essentially operates now the satellite systems which the US Army relies on. And we know, for example, the crucial role that Musk's satellites played in Ukraine in allowing Ukraine to have satellite cap coverage, which they wouldn't have had without Musk's Starlink system. And Musk receives huge amounts of federal funding and defense funding for his companies like SpaceX. And the same goes for a lot of these new tech startups. I recently had an article defined as the new techno military industrial complex, which is the idea that the US military, in order to gain the upper hand primarily against China, needs to completely reinvent itself and bet on AI and cutting edge technology to gain a competitive edge over China. And of course they stand to benefit hugely, to profit hugely from this new course. So, you know, I think what we're witnessing is in effect a clash between different factions of the US oligarchy. So the Democrats and Biden, they were supported by certain factions of the oligarchy, you know, certain factions of big finance and big industry and a kind of legacy military industrial complex, the old monopolists. And now we have this new faction of the oligarchy trying to gain the upper hand. So it's not just an ideological battle against the woke mind virus, as Elon calls it. It's also, I would say, primarily an economic battle over economic resources and they're very much looking out for themselves and for their own interests and for their own profits, rather than looking out for the interests of ordinary Americans. I think it's pretty uncontroversial to assume that the richest man in the world is not concerned with the needs of ordinary Americans who struggle to make ends meet. And so I think this is the kind of material economic basis of the Trump presidency. Again, I mean, it's not that different from the Biden administration. I mean, you know, the oligarchs are always running the show in the U.S. behind the scenes, but of course, you've got different factions of the oligarchy.

Steve Grumbine: 00:29:15

: Yes.

Steve Grumbine: 00:29:16

Thomas Fazi: So Trump supported and represents factions that are, in some cases, opposed to maybe established factions of the oligarchy, and they want a bigger share of the cake for themselves, and that includes huge amounts of public money. And so you can clearly see the hypocrisy at play there. Right. On the one hand, you're advocating austerity, and you're advocating slashing programs that millions of Americans rely on, while at the same time already receiving and trying to get a bigger share of the US public budget, the defense budget more specifically. So clearly, it's incredibly hypocritical, and it could play out very, very badly. But again, this points to a wider story that explains also the kind of schizophrenic nature of the Trump administration. These daysWestern states, and the US in particular, really exemplify the way in which these institutions have become essentially, you know, battlegrounds for struggles among the elite. So the masses, the citizens, even though they engage, they participate in voting and elections, they're never given a real choice. All they get to choose from is different factions of the oligarchy. And often you've got different factions within the same administration and within the same state fighting each other. And I think this is clear in the case of the US and more specifically of the Trump administration. You know, it's not like Trump,even though liberals describe this new government as some kind of tyrannical dictatorship, the reality is that Trump is not fully in control. Trump has to contend with vested interests of all kinds. Vested interests among his funders and supporters, vested interests among even foreign countries, you know, Israel, first and foremost, vested interests in the form of the American national security state, which is still alive and kicking and which Trump has to compromise with, inevitably on some level, with the military industrial complex, which we know continues to wield a huge influence in American politics. And, you know, so he has to deal with all these often-conflicting interests, many of them quite vested in the sense that they're not apparent to the average person. And I think this accounts to some degree for the somewhat contradictory and often schizophrenic nature of his policy approach, really. And we've seen examples of that just in the past few days, often even very contradictory statements. And there's people out there wondering whether this is all part of a strategy. What is this. Just Trump playing his madman card and trying to use that as leverage, you know, just to get everyone thinking that he's so unpredictable and so crazy that they better listen to him because otherwise, you know, he could do anything. We've seen that deployed against the Palestinians in Gaza with his threat of releasing all the hostages or otherwise he, he's going to rain down hell on Gaza. But we've also seen similar statements when it comes to Russia. On the one hand, statements that really seem to want to take into account Russia's legitimate security concerns and Russia's viewpoint in this conflict, while at the same time threatening sanctions and even military action, as JD Vance said just the other day, in case Russia doesn't accept to come to a swift peace agreement. So again, you know, this could be seen as a strategy or it really could be seen as just administration sort of improvising as it deals with these sort of conflicting drives and pressures that come from different directions. So I think that partly explains more in general, kind of the weakness of Western states more in general, including the U.S. You know, once you become a battleground for internal conflicts within the oligarchy, but overall an instrument of the oligarchy, which ordinary people are mostly excluded from, then it becomes very hard even to develop long term coherent policies. And in this sense, this is why Western states these days seem much more irrational than countries like China and even Russia, which seem to have a much more long-term strategic approach, which we're not capable of anymore because there is no underlying consensus about what should be the long-term strategy. There's no single decision making nucleus.

Steve Grumbine: 00:33:45

: Can I jump in. If I look out at, you know, [Pete] Hegseth. Hegseth said, hey, it looks like just looking at foreign policy in this space and we'll kind of pivot back to Ukraine in this case. He said there's a possibility that we could see US not patrolling the earth, you know, not being the world policeman, basically. He said something little bit different than that, but something similar to that nonetheless. And you have Marco Rubio in some very out of character statement, basically saying, hey, you know, I think the end of unipolar world has hit us. We're looking at a multipolar world now. And so you watch these things happening and you watch Europe respond to this stuff. I mean, we, the United States has treated Europe like its bastard stepchild, you know, the redheaded stepchild. Just sort of do this, do that, vacillation. And you can go back to when we blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Steve Grumbine: 00:34:40

Thomas Fazi: Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:34:41

: We have dominated European logics for a long time. They've just sort of done what we've said. But now, as the US is pulling back from Ukraine and is pulling back from military imperialism, you're watching Europe kind of shed the US and sort of take on its own neocon, militaristic, saber-rattling approach here. What do you think the impact is on Europe with Trump's approach. The kind of I don't know where he's going, what is he doing kind of approach, where do you see the power shift going on in Europe?

Steve Grumbine: 00:35:15

Thomas Fazi: Yeah, again, I think we have to go back to psychology. I mean, you mentioned Hegseth. I think what goes for Europe also goes for America. And I'll get to Europe in a moment. But I think when it comes to the apparently contradictory approaches of people like Hegseth, I think what we're witnessing is this split American mind. So you've got kind of the rational side of these policymakers, which is inclined to a degree of realism, but at the same time, you've got the more irrational sphere of the American mind, which is still very much steeped in American exceptionalism, American hegemonism, American suprematism. And I think that explains how they swing from one approach to the other in quite a contradictory manner. And so, on one hand, you've got the rational mind speaking to Russia and saying, we understand your concerns. You want to sit down and find an agreement. We understand you guys, and you've got some valid points, and we want to take them into account in reaching an agreement, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, they're like, okay, but we also want to do this real quick. And so if you don't agree to basically your very kind concession in agreeing to come to an agreement with you, then we're going to crush you. Because, you know, we're still America, we're still number one. I think we've seen this with Hegseth statements, but also I think, with some of Vance's statements. And again, you know, I think it really has to do with deep seated psychological underpinnings that really permeate the minds of American elites, even new elites such as the ones that are now at the forefront of the MAGA movement. But they're still steeped in those ideologies in many respects, even maybe, you know, subconsciously. And when it comes to Europe, I think that's even more evident. It's clear why, in psychological terms, Trump is breaking their minds. Here we've got someone that has been essentially telling them what to do for the past, as you say, the US is de facto dominated Europe economically and militarily through NATO, ever since World War II, really. But especially in recent years, we've seen an intensification of this kind of vacillation of Europe with America really very aggressively pressuring Europe into essentially going along with the US imperial strategy, first and foremost, vis a vis Ukraine, but also China. And so here you have exactly that this child who's been quite aggressively forced by their dad, we could say, in this case, to adopt a certain policy. And now you have that same sort of fatherly figure turn around and say, what are you completely fucked up now. We're completely changing policy. You have to go in a completely different direction. And you can see how this would break a child's mind in the same way that this is breaking the minds of European policymakers. In a way, we've got elements of, you know, you could say Stockholm Syndrome here. You know, European elites have been in a very abusive relationship for a very long time. And in a way, now that the abuser wants to break away and loses interest in them, they're having hysterical reactions in a way they can't free themselves from the abuser because they're used to being abused and to be told what to do. Though, of course, they realize that they can't just go along with America's U turn, because the cognitive dissonance in that case would be even bigger. So even though they've been strongly pressured by America, including through economic sabotage, you mentioned the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline. They've been strongly pressured by the US to adopt policies that went completely against Europe's interest. And in fact, I would say that to a large degree, the US proxy war in Ukraine wasn't just directed at Russia, it was also directed at Europe itself. Let's not forget, a strategic imperative for the US has long been that of driving a wedge between Europe and Russia. Because one of America's greatest fears has always been the emergence of a kind of Eurasian sphere of influence, the creation of ever growing economic and cultural and geopolitical links between Europe and Russia, which really would have created a hugely influential geopolitical landmass that really would have threatened American hegemony. So, you know, dividing Europe, and especially Germany from Russia has always been critical for the US and the proxy war in Ukraine was also up to a large degree about this. And from that point of view, it's been a complete success in the sense that they have succeeded in completely delinking Europe from Russia and transforming Russia into an existential enemy in the eyes of European elites, which it clearly isn't. You know, it doesn't pose a realistic military threat whatsoever to Europe. And clearly Europe's interests would have been in avoiding breaking off their economic and energy ties from Russia. And their interest now would be to renormalize relations with Russia. But clearly they can't do that, because for them to do a similar U-turn on Ukraine would be to admit that their entire policy was completely flawed. It would mean admitting that not only did, you know, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians die for nothing, but that in the process, even the European economy was destroyed as well. And clearly that's something that they just can't admit to. And so that, I think, goes a long way in explaining why now they're doubling down on this flawed Ukraine strategy. In a way, they're saying we are going to become the abuser. If we want to go back psychology once more, we are going to become the US and in a way, subconsciously, I think they're still pandering to America's desires and requests, because what does Trump keep saying that he wants from Europe. What do people like Vance and Hegseth keep saying that Europe has to, you know, spend more on defense. It has to increase its defense spending. It has to stand up for itself, including against supposed threats like Russia. And so, in a way, you could say that what European leaders are trying to do is subconsciously impress their former abuser by showing them, you know, that they can be even more manly than they expect them to be. So you've got very basic political rationales, I think, that explain the really absurd stance of what you could call this fear of peace that seems to have gripped, you know, European leaders. There are obvious political reasons, but I think there are also deeper psychological reasons for that. And I think it's also somewhat related to the clash within the American elites. Because when we say that European elites have been under America's thumb for a very long time, that doesn't mean that, you know, European elites have been under the thumb just of the executive arm of government, just of the White House. They've also been under the thumb of what lies below the American national security state, which as we know, often operates even independently from the elected government. And I wouldn't rule out that that is still happening, that in a way we're seeing European elites take their cues from factions within the American establishment that maybe don't agree with Trump's strategy. And so in a way, you know, they're once again using Europe as a proxy to kind of sabotage Trump's plans. I think this is something that can't be ruled out either. So, you know, as you can see, I think there's many facets to what's happening in Europe, but I mean, it's completely insane. It really is insane to see now after having completely gone along with a disastrous war that has destroyed Ukraine for no reason whatsoever, a war that Ukraine never had any chance of winning while at the same time crushing the European economy, sending millions of Europeans into poverty, after having gone along with all this against the interests of Europe, of European citizens, just to please their American master, now we see them standing up to America in order to continue this flawed policy. Now that America is sort of asking them or telling them to wind this policy down. It's really quite astonishing. It's almost the stuff that maybe we will need novelists to really be able to explain one day more than simply economic or geopolitical analysts like myself, because the dynamics, I think, run very deep.

Steve Grumbine: 00:43:45

: Let me jump in real quick. The final thing I want to hit on, because I know we're at time, is obviously you've been a staunch detractor, rightfully so, for the Euro and the European Union and that kind of idiocy of giving up their own monetary sovereignty to an unelected troika or the entire system that they built over there is just bastardized. But I'm curious, how do they manage to take up the slack when they've got such harsh anti deficit spending rules and such a limited ability, because one of the things that make the U.S. able to do what it did was massive deficit spending on the military industrial complex, literally not giving a care about it. Well, Europe has such tight controls over that. How does that play out?

Steve Grumbine: 00:44:37

Thomas Fazi: They can't do it. They can't do it. I mean, it's. It's pretty clear that there's no way that Europe can. Even if we just limit ourselves to Ukraine, there's no way that Europe can fill the gap left by the US, both in terms of financing and even less so in terms of hard military power. We don't have the military productive capacities. And you rightly note, we also have, you know, incredibly harsh fiscal constraints, self imposed fiscal constraints, but nonetheless actually existent fiscal constraints that essentially render that impossible, which really makes the whole approach even more schizophrenic. And of course, now all they're talking about is the need to ramp up military production and ramp up defense spending. And to some degree they have managed to work around some of the rules. So, for example, defense spending now is to a large degree excluded from the calculation of the deficit limits, which is absurd in itself. You know, at a time when they're continuing to impose austerity, when it comes to social spending, when it comes to welfare spending, all forms of spending that actually go to improve people's lives continue to be subject to very harsh and strict fiscal rules, while at the same time they're coming up with all kinds of exceptions to the rule for defense spending, which is incredibly a) immoral and b) clearly shows that just the extent to which these rules are entirely politically motivated and have no basis in the physical realm whatsoever, they're purely self imposed rules for political reasons. But nonetheless they exist. And so as much as they've, you know, managed to work around them a bit, clearly huge fiscal constraints do remain. And not to mention the fact that Europe is more divided than ever. As much as all countries at the moment, or at least most countries are now talking with one voice when it comes to Ukraine. The reality is that the underlying kind of economic and geopolitical and cultural makeup of European countries is more diverse and more divergent than ever. So the idea that you can come up with some kind of systemic, organic foreign policy is just completely delusional. And I think, in fact, as I'm sure you're aware, there's huge political upheaval in Europe at the moment. We've got, quote, unquote, anti establishment populist parties that are rising in a number of countries, first and foremost, of course, in Europe's largest economy, Germany. So we're really on a cusp, I think, of serious political upheaval in Europe. And I think the current European establishment also nowadays views the war and Russia's external threat in the same way that American elites have long sort of instrumentalized external threats, as I was saying at the beginning, to domesticate the local population. So I think this constant fear mongering, this constant raising of the Russian monster, of the need to defend against the imminent Russian invasion of Europe, is also a way for these increasingly delegitimized authorities to try to keep their populations in check, to try to kind of distract them from the profound crisis and crises that Europe is facing. And I wouldn't even exclude this completely fictional Russian threat that is being ramped up could be used even to essentially sabotage basic democratic processes. I think at this point, we've reached a stage where, you know, European elites have gone so far down the rabbit hole, they're so desperate to hold onto power. I wouldn't put it beyond them using the threat of war even to potentially, at some point down the road, you know, suspend elections, for example. I mean, they're already using the Russian threat as an excuse to crack down on free speech, especially online free speech, to censor dissenting voices. From there on, it's just a small step to create an artificial state of emergency that requires a suspension of basic democratic rights. So I think this is not a scenario that's completely inconceivable at the moment. And I think it's also one of the reasons why, you know, European elites are so adamant about hanging on to this war, because if this war comes to an end, the emperor will really be naked in the eyes of most citizens. I think that they're terrified of this.

Steve Grumbine: 00:49:14

: Indeed. All right, listen, Thomas, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you always taking a risk and walking through these things with me. It's impossible to know everything that's going on. You can only take the best understandings you have of the system and kind of mash that up against what you see happening, at least overtly, because, you know, we don't know what happens in closed doors with smoky rooms. We can only guess. And when something's leaked, make some sort of educated guess. But it is. It is wild, wild west right now. And I think the whole world's on pins and needles for a variety of reasons. I know in the US I'm gripping because I'm fearful of, once they start cutting, what that looks like for workers, working class people, the people that supposedly supported Trump. As the crackdown on finance begins and it starts shrinking up the economy, you know, without some major intervention, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a really, really rough ride and put myself in that bucket, too. It's a scary time for us all. Anyway, tell everybody where we can find more of your work, sir.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:19

Thomas Fazi: These days, I'm most on Substack @thomasfazi.com and on X under the nickname Battle for Europe. Yeah. So that's where you can follow me. Yeah.

Steve Grumbine: 00:50:31

: Awesome. And I do follow you there, so. All right, listen, thank you so much for spending the time with me. Folks. Check out Tom's work. It's fantastic. I read it all the time. I really, really recommend it. And without further ado, I am Steve Grumbine, the host of Macro N Cheese, part of Real Progressives network. We are a 501(c)3 not for profit. We survive on your donations so please consider donating to us. You can go to our Patreon which is at Real Progressives. You can also go to our Substack which is Real Progressives and you can go to our website which is real progressives.org.  Please consider becoming a monthly donor or any kind of donation would be just fantastic because without you there is no us. And without further ado I bid you adieu on behalf of Thomas and myself, Macro N Cheese. We are outta here.

End Credits: 00:51:39

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