Glenn Diesen interviews Jiang Xueqin on the structural decline of Pax Americana and the normalization of global instability
Glenn Diesen speaks with Jiang Xueqin, host of the YouTube channel Predictive History, about the decline of US-led world order.
Summary
Jiang Xueqin, host of the YouTube channel Predictive History, joins Glenn Diesen to argue that the structural collapse of Pax Americana is not a contingent political failure but an inevitable consequence of the dollar reserve system's internal contradictions. Jiang argues that the US dollar reserve system created fundamental contradictions — offshoring manufacturing to China while financializing the American economy — that made collapse inevitable. He contends that declining empires historically follow a predictable pattern: cannibalizing allies while waging wars against rivals, and that the United States is now doing both simultaneously, targeting Russia, China, and Iran while extracting tribute from Europe and East Asian partners. He also argues that Europe is further along in its legitimacy crisis than the United States, and that the resolution to the Ukraine war will come not on the battlefield but in the streets of European capitals. On Iran, the guest outlines a US strategy to destroy Iran's proxy network — Hezbollah, the Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen — simultaneously, in order to isolate the IRGC before a possible ground invasion. He illustrates growing societal breakdown with examples including the Montreal shooter's anti-capitalist manifesto and Larry Ellison's purchase of CBS News and CNN, which he sees as evidence of elite insularity and media capture.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the Pillars of Pax Americana
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We have the great pleasure of being joined today by Jiang Xueqin to discuss the decline of Pax Americana. Thank you for coming on the program. It's good to see you again.
Jiang Xueqin: Thanks.
Glenn Diesen: After the Cold War, we know that the US established a world order based on liberal hegemony, or Pax Americana as it's also been referred to. Now, irrespective of what one thinks about this period, it's quite evident that it's at least come to an end now. I was wondering how do you see what were the main pillars of this era of Pax Americana, and what do you think are the main sources of its decline? Is it domestic problems, imperial overstretch, or do you see other variables at play?
Jiang Xueqin: After World War Two, America established Pax Americana. The main pillar of this system was the US dollar as a global reserve currency, which facilitated global trade. America also provided security guarantees so that people were able to trade freely, and nations no longer had to invest their resources into national defense — they could just pursue their competitive advantage. That led to tremendous wealth production these past few decades. It led to an increase in population and an increase in wealth, especially in a place like China.
The problem is that ultimately the system is unsustainable because it creates a lot of contradictions within the system. The relationship between China and the United States is not one of equal trade. Basically, America subcontracted or offshored its manufacturing to China, and then China would take all the money made from exports and reinvest it back into the US economy. So China became the de facto manufacturing power of the world and America became the de facto financial power of the world. When that happens, the economy in America becomes speculative, and it becomes extremely unequal and extremely corrupt over time. So ultimately, the system was bound to collapse.
The problem is that the Americans are addicted to US dollar hegemony because it allows them to have an inflated standard of living and force the world to bear the cost of that standard of living. So now they will fight tooth and nail in order to maintain Pax Americana. There are two ways in which they can do this. The first is to strangle their enemies. The three main enemies are Russia, China, and Iran. Already we're seeing this happening — Ukraine is essentially a proxy war against Russia, the Americans have invaded the Middle East and are attacking Iran, and the Americans for the past ten years have launched a trade war against the Chinese.
But another aspect of how they maintain power is by cannibalizing their allies. Right now America is trying to colonize the Western Hemisphere. It recently launched an attack against Venezuela, it's now talking about invading Cuba and conducting regime change in Cuba, and it is conducting regime change throughout South America. You have a presidential election in Colombia where the front-runner is an extremely pro-American candidate. In Argentina you have an extremely pro-American and pro-Zionist president. So it seems as though America is intent on colonizing the entire Western Hemisphere. How America treats European allies is basically by cannibalizing them — forcing them to pay tribute in terms of raising their NATO budget, pay tariffs, and pay 50% more for American LNG. So these are two aspects: forcing wars on its enemies while simultaneously cannibalizing its allies.
Imperial Decline as a Structural Pattern
Glenn Diesen: Do you see this as being accidental — reactions or reflexes of a declining empire — or do you see this as a deliberate Trump world order?
Jiang Xueqin: I think it's structural. If you look at all empires in decline, they behave the same way. If you go back to about 400 BCE, when Athens was the dominant empire in the Mediterranean, it was also cannibalizing its allies as well as conducting wars against its enemies. This is the way that empires behave when they're in decline. Trump is there in order to be the scapegoat for imperial overreach. If he did not authorize this war against Iran, if he was not conducting economic warfare against China, then he would not be president.
Glenn Diesen: The reason we call it Pax Americana is of course to compare it to what we call Pax Romana — that period from roughly 27 BC to about 180 AD, a 200-year period known for relative stability and peace, accompanied by a lot of economic development and political stability, with few wars within the empire. Much like what we've seen over the past 30-plus years. Do you see the rise and fall of Pax Romana following a similar trend to what has happened to the United States, or do you see other similar signs with other rises and declines of civilizations?
Jiang Xueqin: I would say it's very similar. The fall of Pax Romana and the fall of Pax Americana are very similar. It's easy to romanticize and have nostalgia for the Roman Empire, and many do, but we have to remember that the vast majority of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves or peasants who lived very brutal lives. We have a similar situation in Pax Americana where yes, there's a certain global elite — maybe 10% of the population — that are much better off than before, but at the end of the day you also have a majority of the global population, especially in the Global South, that are suffocating under American hegemony.
What we know about empires is that they always produce structural contradictions that will lead to their collapse. The idea that the world would continue to sell its resources cheaply to America in order to finance America's very high standard of living was not sustainable in the long term. An individual member of the American middle class lives better than a Roman emperor — you can have any food from around the world at any time of the year, you can drive two cars, you have air conditioning, you live in a big villa. So ultimately, this was bound to collapse because of the structural contradictions.
Glenn Diesen: The internal and the external seem to be quite connected — with imperial overstretch, a lot of resources are diverted from the core to the periphery of the empire, and it seems like a lot of American society has been hollowed out. How would you assess it? Do you look mostly at the economic, or do you see the political instability as a source of the economic problems? How do you link the social decay, because there seems to be a destabilization of the social aspect and one could also argue a moral collapse — which, if there's a problem in the perceived moral standing of the state, you can see a political legitimacy crisis down the road.
The Three Crises Inside America
Jiang Xueqin: There are certain trends these past few decades that are leading to a crisis of legitimacy and authority in America. The first is the demographic crisis. The baby boomers, for the longest time the largest political cohort in America, control all the wealth, all the political power, and all the status in America. Because of Pax Americana they can live a lot longer than the average life expectancy — maybe 10% of them will live to at least 100 years old. With that comes a lack of social mobility. There are no opportunities for young people, and young people are now choosing a life of degeneracy and gambling rather than hard work, because from their perspective they have absolutely no opportunities to rise. They need to gamble in order to make it rich. Because young people refuse to work, the only way to sustain the economy is to bring in immigrants, whether legal or illegal. There are about 20 million illegal immigrants in America right now, and then you have millions who come legally through the H1B visa program, which is basically a form of slavery if you look at it carefully. Young people now refuse to have children, so you become even more dependent on immigration. This is very similar to what happened to the Roman Empire when women just refused to have children and they were forced to import immigrants to feed the economy.
The second problem is the financial crisis — America no longer makes things. All it does is gamble and speculate. Wall Street controls the economy. Everyone is focused on the stock market and no one is focused on factories. Thomas Piketty writes about this in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century — eventually the crisis of capitalism is that you make more money from rent-seeking than from actual production. No one makes anything anymore. No one works anymore. Everyone is a speculative gambler.
The third major crisis is elite overproduction — you have too many wealthy people competing for too few positions of power and status. If you look at Washington DC, there is almost a civil war going on between the old guard, the financial oligarchy, and the new guard, which is the tech oligarchy who want to bring in AI and data centers. So there are multiple crises going on in America. But again, what's really important to appreciate is that this is all indicative of an empire in decline. It follows the similar pattern in history. And once an empire is in decline, it's only a matter of when it will die, not whether it will die.
Glenn Diesen: The American oligarchy is an interesting feature. Traditionally, at least over the past 200 years, if Europeans had two powerful oligarchs, the assumption was that they took the money from us and we would end up chopping off their heads or in some other form of brutal social justice. But in the United States, they always had a different sentiment — if they saw people being wealthy, the rhetoric was that they earned it. It created some stability, but perhaps only temporary. The premise was always that yes, some are rich and some are poor, but the key thing was social mobility. You could start off with nothing in your pockets and become rich — the American dream, essentially. But once that social mobility is gone, there's no reason to assume the oligarchy would be treated any less harshly in the United States than elsewhere. But what happens when the Pax Americana is declining or dying? If you draw your lessons from history, are we talking about an American civil war, or simply a retreat of empire? What are the possible pathways?
Jiang Xueqin: If history is a guide, the American empire will fight to its last dying breath, and the way it will do so is by sending young people to die in wars overseas in order to maintain its empire. That's what Athens did. That's what the Romans did. That's what the British did in World War One and World War Two. What I would predict is that eventually you will have a national draft in order to continue this war in Iran, because as America continues its bombardment of Iran, it will eventually run out of expensive munitions and aircraft. So it must send in young men to die to maintain this war.
If it does that, it will create a crisis of legitimacy in America because a lot of young men will refuse to go die for Israel. They believe that it is Israel that has provoked this war in the Middle East and they do not want to fight for the Zionists. This would cause a lot of political conflict in America — very similar to the Vietnam War. Already we are seeing anti-Zionist movements in America. In New York City you have Mayor Mamdani, and we can see a major anti-Zionist political movement emerging there. We can expect this to happen in other major cities as well. We can also expect a political revolution to happen within the Democratic Party that would make it much more left-oriented. Right now the Democratic Party is very beholden to the Zionists as well as the financial elite.
So we can expect a major political rupture to emerge in America over the next few years. Also, when an empire is in decline, the political system loses its moral authority and its legitimacy, so that a tyrant like Julius Caesar can arise and say, "Aren't you better off with a king who will redistribute wealth and cancel your debt?" And quite honestly, at that time the majority of the citizens of the Roman Republic agreed with him — that's why you have the rise of the empire. I can possibly see Donald Trump in 2028 trying to obtain a third term. You'd be surprised that there'll be a sizable majority of the American population who support that, because they see it as the only way to get rid of the oligarchy that has captured America. Because of that, we should see a lot more political violence. Again, this is just how empires behave when they're in decline — overstretched overseas fighting pointless wars they can't possibly win, and internally facing crises of legitimacy and moral authority.
Europe's Legitimacy Crisis
Glenn Diesen: Do you see a similar trend in Europe? Because it feels like things are perhaps worse there. We see economic decline, but unlike the Americans there's no technological sovereignty or any cohesive economic model moving forward. They're also having unprecedented warmongering — at least unprecedented over the past few decades. They only speak the language of war. There's much less acceptance of dissent. We see this authoritarian wing growing as they try to keep people more in check. I would also argue there's some ideological subversion — the old status quo isn't delivering anymore, so we see overt efforts to change very basic beliefs, values, and political views, essentially replacing old institutions and structures. Whether or not it's successful or just temporarily holding back the tide and making matters much worse, I personally believe this is going to cause a massive legitimacy crisis. Do you see Europe moving in the same direction, or are they ahead of or behind the Americans?
Jiang Xueqin: I think Europe is far ahead of America. In many places — Britain, France — they're on the brink of a civil war right now because they've let in too many immigrants. The political system has become very authoritarian. Right now in England you're much more likely to get arrested for complaining about crime on social media than if you actually commit a crime. The system has become extremely bureaucratic and overbearing. People have lost faith in the political system. Starmer has resigned but everyone knows that his replacement will just be another puppet of the oligarchy. So it doesn't really matter — you're still going to invest in this war in Ukraine, you're still going to let in too many immigrants, you're still not going to deal with crime, you're still going to have an overbearing bureaucracy. Nothing will change.
Eventually at some point the people will get enough and they will rise up, and we will see a cascade of that throughout Europe. We don't know where the first spark will be — it's hard to guess — but once the first spark is lit, it will be very hard for the current European political elite to maintain power.
Glenn Diesen: It's possible this civil war — I mean, people are voting for economically sound policies, they're voting for peace, they're voting for more conservative values. But essentially what they get is war, pride events, mass immigration, and political leadership which ignores national interest in favor of global institutions where they have a nice position. How do you see a civil war playing out? What will be the dividing alliances? Is it ethnic groups, class struggle, people against elites, nationalists versus globalists? How do you see the divide?
Jiang Xueqin: I think it'll just be a total breakdown in society, with multiple conflicts on multiple fronts. The problem with the world today is that the will of the majority of people no longer matters. In America and Europe, you have a very old, out-of-touch bureaucracy that is insular and engages in delusion. The Europeans think they're winning this war in Ukraine. They think that any day now there'll be a coup against Putin, Russia will collapse, and then the Europeans will be able to collect reparations from Russia. The American elite in Washington DC think they are just a day away from winning this war in Iran. They think that eventually China will surrender and allow Wall Street to cannibalize the Chinese financial system. They don't really care what other people think. All they care about is what their friends in this bubble think, and if you don't agree with them, you are unceremoniously kicked out.
Look at what's happening in American media. Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in America, has bought CBS News and CNN. He's installed Bari Weiss to run both organizations, and she is destroying both — she's already destroyed CBS News and we can expect her to destroy CNN as well. A lot of journalists complain that these organizations are no longer objective and have become partisan. You ask yourself: why would Larry Ellison, who is not a dumb man, spend this much money buying CBS News and CNN, both of which are dying organizations? The answer is that from their perspective, only the opinions of baby boomers matter now. As long as they're able to reach this small cohort of the population — these baby boomers who overwhelmingly support Israel and the war in Iran — as long as they're able to control them, then they can do whatever they want, because they control everything else: the financial system, the political system, the military.
So we're in a situation where the elite are in a bubble, becoming more deluded day by day, and are intent on carrying out their agenda. In this process, everyone else is going to fight over the crumbs. In Europe you might have sectarian violence, but you also might have political violence where the left fights against the right, you might have revolutionaries. You may have seen the news about the shooter in Montreal who tried to shoot up the Pornhub offices. A couple of people were shot in the crossfire and died. What's interesting is that he left behind a manifesto — a coherent and articulate manifesto — in which he railed against capitalism and said that all representatives of the global order, including police officers and executives, deserve to be targeted. There's always going to be a small minority of the population — maybe a hundred a year — who will take up arms and try to overthrow the hierarchy because they think it's a just cause. We can expect these numbers to only increase over time. Think of Tsarist Russia at the end of the 19th century — you had organized groups like the People's Will, a lot of anarchist organizations targeting the Tsar. They succeeded in killing Tsar Alexander II and a lot of aristocrats. The violence that's coming will just be complete chaos.
Normalizing Insanity
Glenn Diesen: Whenever I speak to people and the topic of possible civil war comes up, people often treat it as being hyperbolic or very unlikely. But all the indicators are showing that this is the direction we're headed — maybe not tomorrow, but the indicators are there and they're getting worse. You can see in the polling in the US that people expect more violence and more resentment towards other groups. You hear concerns about civil war from the top brass of the French military and from British politicians. Yet if you argue that a civil war might be coming, people think it's hyperbolic. I think this shows a weakness in human nature — the assumption that the status quo is always permanent. We always had a turbulent history, but now essentially end-of-history logic has set in. It's only been 35 years since we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union, and the assumption that this period would somehow last forever is still cemented in people's minds. But sorry — you were going to say something?
Jiang Xueqin: Look, let's go back ten years to 2016. If in 2016 I told you that in Britain people would be arrested for their social media tweets, that the United States would invade Iran for no reason, that people would be cancelled for some silly speech they make, that there would be a global lockdown over a virus and people would be forced to be vaccinated — in 2016, people would think you were just insane. They would lock you up for being absolutely delusional. These things would just be unimaginable to anyone in 2016, including us.
Glenn Diesen: You could also go back to 2016 and say, "Well, in a few years, NATO is going to be assisting with long-range strikes deep into Russia. We're going to supply the weapons, the intelligence. We're going to have contractors on the ground operating the weapons. We're going to use our own territory to attack the northern parts of Russia." I think most people would have said, "No, we're a defensive alliance. Where is this coming from?"
Jiang Xueqin: The world is already insane. The problem is that we've normalized this insanity. Look at what's happening in Gaza. Look at what Israel is doing in the Middle East — just ongoing war all over the place. Israel is in Lebanon, and now they're considering war against Turkey and Egypt. The world is just insane. But unfortunately we have the capacity to very quickly normalize insanity, and a year from now I think things will be a lot worse and we will just normalize that too. Because we're able to normalize this insanity, we just dig the hole deeper and deeper. If at this point all of us got together and said, "This is enough — what's happening in Gaza is atrocious, Ukraine launching drone strikes against Moscow is atrocious because it could lead to nuclear war, the Americans invading Iran could force a global collapse" — if we all said this is insane, then this insanity would stop. But because we unfortunately have a habit of normalizing insanity, it just gets worse and worse.
The Ukraine Escalation
Glenn Diesen: How do you see what's happening now with Ukraine? This has escalated in a big way, and what I keep hearing from Moscow is that it can't continue like this — they made a mistake by allowing their deterrence to be weakened to such an extent. Some are saying we have to escalate heavily against the Ukrainians, others are saying well, that's the proxy — if you go after the puppet masters in the NATO countries, irrespective of what it is, it doesn't appear that the war will stay the same. We're going to continue to escalate. The Americans also appear to be moving away from the diplomatic path and taking a more overt role in Ukraine. Trump has definitely made this his war as well. Where do you see this going? Because in the media in Europe, they've returned to "Ukraine is winning" and "NATO is not involved" — but also we're supplying hundreds of thousands of drones.
Jiang Xueqin: I think you're absolutely right — this can only escalate. This past month there's been a massive escalation. Ukraine has crossed many red lines. Ukraine targeted a student dormitory in Luhansk, killing about six people. There's been a massive drone strike against Moscow. A lot of Russia's oil infrastructure has been targeted in strikes. Crimea is under siege right now and a lot of people are leaving. So it seems Ukraine is very intent on escalating this war. And you're absolutely right that there's no way Ukraine is doing this by itself — Ukraine basically ran out of momentum about a year ago and the morale among Ukrainian forces is very low. So we can expect that it's the Europeans, it's NATO, that is providing all these munitions, all these drones, all this targeting, all this intelligence, all this strategy. I would not be surprised if a month or two from now there's a major Ukrainian ground offensive against Russia.
But if I'm Russia, I would actually be patient and strategic about this. If the Europeans believe this war can be won and Ukraine is taking an offensive, then I would assume the Ukrainians are going to bet big on that offensive. I would just let them come. Taking the fight to them opens a can of worms. I would just let the Ukrainians exhaust themselves. I believe that's what the Russians will do.
Glenn Diesen: I keep looking at Crimea. It looks as if they could be planning a crossing, at least in the Zaporizhzhia or Kherson region — across the Dnipro — but also from the Odessa or Kherson region trying to cross over. They seem to be softening targets in preparation.
Jiang Xueqin: Yeah, let them come, because they'll be encircled. They want to go in to encircle the Russian forces, but they don't have the manpower, they don't have the morale, they don't have the political will to commit. So let them come and let them exhaust themselves. This is what's been happening for the past few years — that's why the Ukrainian forces have been so depleted.
Glenn Diesen: Let's say tomorrow the Ukrainian army collapses or begins to collapse, Russia pushes through all the front lines, makes it all the way to the Dnipro River from north to south, or as Putin said, the objective now is Donbas and Novorossiya — the southern regions. If this is achieved, you would think the Ukrainians would say, "Okay, we don't want to do this anymore." But it's not Kyiv that's running this war — it's being run out of the West. Why would the West give up the opportunity? This is a large territory, a lot of Ukrainians under essentially NATO control. NATO can use the Ukrainians to strike Russia with long-range missiles. All they have to do is supply weapons and they can continue to pound Russia. Why would NATO accept any peace agreement? They've sabotaged all of them since 2014. Would they end just because Russia seized some territory?
Jiang Xueqin: It's a sunk-cost policy. The Europeans have already invested billions of dollars into this war. They feel that once this war is over, they'll have control over all of Ukraine's resources and they'll be able to force Russia to pay reparations. They've already sucked in a trillion dollars and they're willing to suck in another trillion, ten trillion dollars into this war. The Europeans will not give up.
You may have heard that the Ukrainians plan to recruit about 100,000 foreign mercenaries. This is just the way this war will be fought for the next few years. The Europeans will continue to support Ukraine and continue to invest resources into Ukraine. Given the casualties and losses Ukraine has suffered these past few years because of their counter-offensives, it's very hard for me to believe that the Ukrainians are fighting this war by themselves. I would not be surprised if there are many European special forces embedded within the Ukrainian forces right now. And definitely you have a lot of European weaponry with the Ukrainians. These long-range strikes against Moscow — it's not Kyiv that's doing this. It's Brussels. It's NATO. So for all intents and purposes, NATO is already in the war. And once they're in the war, the sunk-cost fallacy takes over. They will fight to the bitter end.
And if the bitter end does not mean Moscow marching against Paris, London, Brussels, and Berlin, what it means is the Europeans invest so much into this war, and this war is so unwinnable, that they're forced to announce a national draft — and then this will cause a revolution in Europe. So that's the resolution to this war: not on the battlefield, but in the streets of Paris, London, Berlin, and Brussels.
Glenn Diesen: Do you see any difference between the European and the American position? It's unclear to me what exactly the US is aiming for. The US role in Ukraine is growing, but has the goal of the Trump administration simply been to outsource the war to the Europeans? Are they looking to put an end to it because they need to work with Russia as they have other priorities — the Middle East, China, the Western Hemisphere? Are they just ramping up a favorable negotiating position, or do you see their position as essentially aligned completely with the Europeans — just drain Russia to the last Ukrainian?
Jiang Xueqin: It's more than drain Russia — it's drain Europe. We go back to the beginning of this conversation: empire in decline cannibalizes its allies. From the American perspective, this war between Europe and Russia going on forever is great. Why? Because first of all, they can sell more weapons to the Europeans and finance it, forcing the Europeans to go into debt. The Europeans will prop up the US dollar. America can sell them the resources and LNG they desperately need — and they can only get LNG from America right now, given what's happening in the Middle East. This war in Ukraine is also targeting Russia's oil export facilities, so now Russia can't export oil, and East Asia becomes dependent on American oil resources. From the American perspective, they don't care who wins this war as long as this war continues.
Cannibalizing Allies in Europe and East Asia
Glenn Diesen: With this cannibalizing of allies and partners — we've seen this as a key feature over the past few years, especially in the second Trump administration, but I would also include the Biden administration. The Europeans are now defining energy security as only buying American, which is very strange. You're supposed to diversify your suppliers. All those people who studied energy security as being about cheap, reliable energy dependent on diversifying suppliers — all those textbooks apparently have to be rewritten to say: cut yourself off from your main supplier, which is Russia, and bet everything on more expensive, unreliable energy from the United States. And the trade deals — the Europeans are willing to give up everything, including their dignity, to appease Washington. But you also see in East Asia, Trump telling Taiwan they should move semiconductor factories to the US, the South Koreans should invest more in the United States and move production. How do you see this cannibalization of allies? Because it seems like the opposite of what happened after World War Two — America always saw benefits in having strong frontline states. Western Germany was stronger than Eastern Germany, Taiwan was wealthier than mainland China, South Korea was more prosperous than North Korea. It was a good time to be a frontline state. But these days, how do you see this going? Because it's not sustainable.
Jiang Xueqin: At the end of the day, it's a zero-sum game. For the West to have achieved its standard of living after World War Two, you needed to exploit the third world. Now that the third world has risen and the West is extremely corrupt, for America to maintain its standard of living it needs to cannibalize and exploit its allies. As you point out, America once protected Europe and Japan, and now it basically wants to throw Europe and Japan to the wolves — force Japan to confront China, even though it may not be in Japan's best interest to do so, and force Europe to confront Russia. In the process, America will sell Europe and Japan the energy, the resources, and the weapons they need in order to help maintain the American empire. This is just blatant cannibalism. All empires behave like this.
The only way to save Europe is if there's a political revolution in the streets. When that happens, America will probably send in forces to attack Europe. This is just how empires behave historically. Hopefully this doesn't happen, but this is just how empires behave.
The Iran Strategy and the Proxy War
Glenn Diesen: Just my last question. You already touched a bit on Iran, but overall where do you see this going? There were many people who were excited about the memorandum of understanding, even though I think most people would recognize there was no way the US would actually implement it — there was no way they could control Israel. Where is this going? Because now they're back to fighting. Lebanon looks like it's being set up for civil war. The Iranians are not going to be strung along and essentially allow the Americans to pick and choose which parts of the MOU they follow. Where does this leave us?
Jiang Xueqin: The MOU — this is my analysis — but I think the sticking point is Lebanon. The Americans basically give the Iranians a lot of incentives, but Lebanon is the sticking issue because Iran demands that Lebanon also be part of whatever peace settlement they agree to. They want Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Israel is not going to do that. So over these next few months, what America wants to do is create a wedge issue between the IRGC and the Iranian political establishment. What America wants to do is basically destroy the proxies. There are three proxies right now: the Shia militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. The way the IRGC controls power in Iran is by controlling Hamas. So the American strategy moving forward is to dislodge the IRGC from Hamas while simultaneously destroying the proxies.
We're already seeing this — there's now a peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel which is going to provoke a civil war targeting Hezbollah. I would not be surprised if Syria comes in and attacks Hezbollah from the north, then Israel comes in from the south, and then the Lebanese government attacks Hezbollah from within. So Hezbollah is in a lot of trouble and it's very hard for the IRGC to protect Hezbollah. You have this coup happening right now in Baghdad where the prime minister has arrested a lot of his political opponents — and he would not be doing this without American support. I would not be surprised if they want to destroy the Shia militias in Iraq. We are now hearing that Saudi Arabia is arming tribal fighters in Yemen to go against the Houthis. And at the same time we're seeing these air strikes against IRGC air defenses in the Strait of Hormuz. I would not be surprised if they attempt a ground landing in order to dislodge the IRGC from the Strait of Hormuz.
If you're able to accomplish all these goals at once, then Iran would basically be forced to surrender, because the last holdout is really the IRGC. If President Pezeshkian had his way, they would have signed the MOU right away — they wouldn't have had that Lebanon clause in there. So that's the strategy moving forward.
Glenn Diesen: Yeah, I was thinking the same — the US could promise the world, a very sweet deal for the Iranians. But the better the deal, the more likely the Iranians would try to hold on to it even if one thing is violated. In other words, if you can give Iran this great deal if they just step away and allow Lebanon to be destroyed by the Israelis, then yeah, that would be a good approach. But of course, once Lebanon is destroyed, Iran stands a lot weaker, and there's no guarantee — I would say it's very unlikely — that the US would actually fulfill its obligations under the MOU.
Jiang Xueqin: The IRGC cannot afford for Hezbollah to fall. The Shia militias and the Houthis matter, but Hezbollah is so critical to the forward defense of the IRGC because only Hezbollah threatens Israel. If Hezbollah falls, then America can divert all its attention to a grand invasion of Iran, possibly as early as next spring — from two directions, from Pakistan and from Iraq. I think the Americans are already arming the Kurds as well as Sunni militia forces in Iraq, preparing for a full-scale invasion of Iran.
Glenn Diesen: Trump actually suggested that it would be better to use his al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria — that is, al-Jolani — to take out Hezbollah in Lebanon instead of the Israelis. I remember all those years when the news was filled with the idea that we have to help the people of Syria who are being killed by their own government, and people always bought this narrative regardless of the consequences. Look where we are now — we've put in place an al-Qaeda leader to rule Syria, who is massacring minorities, and Trump now envisions using him to again destroy Lebanon. There are no lessons learned. We still have to pretend that in Ukraine we really just want to help the Ukrainians. It's so absurd, but we keep falling for it. No wonder the same script is used every time — because it works every time. Whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya, it's always the same script, and people always buy it.
Jiang Xueqin: Look, there's overwhelming evidence that both al-Qaeda and ISIS were American creations. And if you go back to the time of the British Empire, there's overwhelming evidence that the Wahhabis and all these Islamic extremists were creations of the British Empire. So Islamic extremism is the creation of the Anglo-American Empire, and they are not indigenous to Islam — no matter what bigots say about Islam.
Glenn Diesen: Well, we've run out of time. I wanted to thank you very much for your great analysis, and I always look forward to it.
Jiang Xueqin: Thanks, man.