Christian Smith: If nothing else, the United Nations certainly provides for a great sense of drama. Where else? You have the leaders of nearly every country, including those effectively at war with each other, meeting in one place to hurl lightly veiled threats in front of the entire world. What with events in Yemen, Ukraine and Greenland, it was already a big week for international diplomacy before world leaders descended on New York. But will the ongoing high level debate at the UN actually change anything at all? Does it really matter? Or is it all really just a bit of theater, a curtain raiser, perhaps, for the big US China summit? Welcome to the Geopolitical Futures podcast. I’m Christian Smith. I’m joined, as always, by Geopolitical Futures chairman and founder George Friedman. Now, early next week, we should say we’ll be bringing you an analysis of what is very potentially a hugely consequential summit between President Xi and President Trump of. Of China and America, respectively. But on this episode, we wanted to run through a number of issues and tee up that summit as well, because it has, as I said, been a bit busier than normal this week in terms of geopolitics. George, starting with the UN debate, the high level debate, as it’s called. I know you have views on these sorts of multilateral gatherings. What do you make of this sort of event?
George Friedman: Well, it shows that they’re willing to meet with each other. There are probably side talks that is never on television or else going on between countries, but on the whole, very little comes out of it. UN now is not even a debating session. It is sometimes a meeting like this and they’re important. That gives chance between two nations that might be very hostile to each other and don’t want to be seen talking to each other to discuss things. Otherwise it’s a chance to get to New York.
Christian Smith: Why would you want to do that? I don’t know. Only kidding. Yeah, I do have to admit I find that the fact that you’ve got the Iranian president there while America is effectively at war with his country. Country quite astounding. But I suppose that’s diplomacy for you. Look, let’s not dwell too much on the UN because we’ll be coming back to that. And coming back to the meeting is going on on the sideline as we talk about the issues at hand this week anyway, so it also, a lot of it sort of flows out of there. And as you say, George, some of those side meetings that are going on, let’s start with Europe and Russia. There has been, and we talked about this a few weeks ago on the podcast, growing rhetoric between Russia and Europe and the idea that Russia might be wanting to step up provocations against Europe and even going so far as to test NATO’s Article 5 Europe has, though George perhaps responded a bit more strongly than. Than. Than Putin might have expected.
George Friedman: I think the most important thing is he wanted to create a crisis inside of Europe where the European public was terrified of Russian invasion or Russians sabotage, whatever it is. Okay? That didn’t happen. I was in Poland at the time the missile landed near the border of Poland, and life went on. So I see no sign of any fundamental terror. Now. Why did he want to do this? Because he was really losing the war. He could not defeat the Ukrainians, and he hoped that if he was threatening, okay, the European public would panic, force their governments to do various things to accommodate the Russians. Didn’t happen. Okay. So I think there’s a slight downturn in the amounts of provocation that have been taking place. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that many of the sabotage events were detected before they took place, giving me a sense that we may well have penetrated Russian capabilities, because I did not see a single event, sabotage event take place. But many of them were said to be shut down at the same time. Although it was clear that the Poles are very much focused on and concerned about the Russians at the same time that I think all of Europe is wondering what the United States will do. The thing that the Russians wanted to do was to generate profound opposition to continuing the war in Ukraine, profound opposition to supplying weapons to Ukraine. And quite the reverse happened with the French in particular, wanting to be involved and talking about nuclear coverage for the region. So I think that was a Hail Mary, as they say. He threw the ball, hoped it’d be caught. To this point, nothing they’ve done has really reached that point.
Christian Smith: I mean, we have still seen reports this week, even, that intelligence services across European countries are suggesting that this still might happen. There still might be some kind of escalation. What do you make of that?
George Friedman: Well, you normally, if you’re going to attack somebody, hit them hard, throw them off balance and create a crisis, okay. Slowly edging up allows the other side to adjust to this level. So if this was the intent to slowly let them adjust, I don’t think this was the Russian intent. I’m not even sure they were going to be carrying out these missions. I think they wanted to convince the Europeans that they’re carrying out these missions. They were testing NATO. They were testing the NATO countries individually and as an entity. Okay. They were doing a gut check to see if they were able to hold together. More importantly, they were hoping that there would be risings in the street demanding reduction of support for Ukraine because Europeans were afraid of the war. Well, the Russians didn’t convince them that didn’t happen. So the important result of this is what didn’t happen. There wasn’t a panic in Europe. The Europeans actually not only were calm, but the governments were working very closely together in terms of actually a NATO response emerging with for example, the Germans sending more troops to the Baltics and so on and so forth. The Americans who are leaving Europe saying they’re going to be sending 5,000 more troops, possibly to them, making bases in Poland. So when you take a look at all the things that happened, if this was psychological warfare, it was a test of the Europeans and the Americans and test answered, no panic.
Christian Smith: Let me ask a more sort of practical question. I was talking to a journalist who works in this area over the weekend and he was suggesting that what they had noticed building up in some parts of the border with the Baltic States were Russian field hospitals, which was something that occurred before the invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. And that was seen as in some ways a bit of an indicator that this might be about to kick off. When intelligence services from NATO, from countries in that area, when they look for things, for trigger warnings, how do they know that something like a field hospital, for example, is a real warning? Or is it just another bluff?
George Friedman: Well, one of the things you have to see is what is deployed there. Okay, so in order to launch an attack, you’ve got to have two things, troops and logistics. You can’t miss the trucks coming with the weapons and so on. You’ll notice that particularly with satellites, on the other hand, they might have been trying to prepare Europe not for an invasion, but for drones. So much of the war in Ukraine buried underground, but the decisive part were the drones trading each other and creating mayhem. Now, we will say that they did have some drone over flights in the areas, but NATO, not the countries themselves, NATO scrambled interceptors to take a look at these and that none of them impacted. Okay, so from that point of view, how do you tell the difference? Well, it’s called commandos going in and taking a look. It means satellites watching them. It’s very hard these days to deploy large numbers of troops without them being noticed. It takes a while to get them into place and everything else. And don’t always trust what you’re reading in the press. In many cases, disinformation is a fundamental weapon in war. In a war, do not expect each side to be giving you the facts of the war. So the Russians were saying certain things, but not doing them. I suspect NATO is doing certain things and not telling the public what they’re doing. So there are two dimensions of this. What they’re actually doing and what they say they’re doing. And that’s the nature of war. That’s not dishonesty. That’s what you got to do.
Christian Smith: Click the link in the description for access to our free newsletter. And for a limited time, you’ll receive an instant download of our special report on NATO’s eastern line by senior analyst Antonia Colibasanu. Well, at the other end of the scale, speaking of someone who was saying something, we heard today that Marco Rubio, from Marco Rubio, that the US was planning on inviting Vladimir Putin to the G20 meeting in Miami in December. Why would President Trump, why would the administration want to do that?
George Friedman: From the very beginning, for the first phone call he had with Putin, he laid an offer on the table. End the war in Ukraine. We will invest in Russia, we will form economic relationships. The wealthy country in terms of resources and stuff like that. That was fundamental position. He’s never changed his position. If the Russians cut it out, okay, that offer still stands. The invitation to G20 is telling the Russians something they want to hear very badly, maybe not Putin, which is that the Russian economy is really in trouble. There is shortages all over the place. There is unemployment. There are a lot of dead soldiers, a lot of families. With these, it is in trouble. The ability to promise an end to this trouble, okay, might become more attractive to not just the Russian public, but. But many of the other political leaders around Trump. Okay, so when you take a look at that offering, this makes a great deal of sense, and it’s not anything new. It’s been the fundamental American position since Trump took office.
Christian Smith: We talked, of course, on a recent podcast about the Russian finance minister being invited to another G20 summit as well. Is this sort of just buttering them up a bit more in that way? And. And as you sort of indicate there, George, maybe a. A signal to the rest of the Russian political class and public that, that this is an offer that, you know, we can turn your economy around.
George Friedman: Well, the Russians are actually members of the G20. What was offered there is, let’s go to the G20 and let’s talk about how we could help each other, implied in that end, the war and everything else. So what, they did it publicly, that is to make it clear to the Russian public, and that stuff gets through these days that he’s offering an end to the war, an economic solution, membership in the G20. Russia is not going to be punished for all the things it did or anything like that, to create stresses inside of Russia, a country that’s been at war for almost five years. Okay. And to create a movement in Russia to end the war. So in the same way that the Russians are trying to intimidate the Europeans, hoping that they’ll stop giving aid to the Ukrainians, this is the other side of the equation, giving the Russian public an opportunity to see, my God, we can be as wealthy as Western Europe and in that way, but we’re not going to do it because we’re trying to occupy Ukraine and can’t do it. So that offer was significant in what it promised, and it was a real offer. So that it’s reminding the Russians in a way how bad a shape they’re in and how good a shape they could be in.
Christian Smith: Is there a risk that it puts off? One of the things that’s being spoken about on this already here in the British press is that it might create a dilemma for someone like the British Prime Minister, and I imagine others in that vein as well, about whether they go because it might be seen as legitimizing Putin and his role in the war.
George Friedman: Well, you make peace with your enemies, okay? So if you’re in such a hostile position toward your enemy, you keep fighting the war. Now, I don’t know how many British soldiers died in this war, but I would think that the British would like to end it. So the idea that we will end this war not by defeating the Russians militarily, sending troops in, but. But by ignoring them, is you’re showing your displeasure at them is not going to work. You’ve got to open the door. So it’s very easy to give signals and how outraged you are while your troops are not involved. When the troops are involved or in danger, okay, you’ll look at it differently. So we should take a look at the war in terms of the Ukrainians that are fighting and think about how much longer they can hold out or likely succeed in holding on, what it will cost. And not to put it in terms of how angry we are being shocked. Shocked, I say, about what you’ve done. Russia is, I won’t say, a typical British strategy. It’s no one’s strategy. Okay, so you can say that, but how does the war end? It ends in one of two ways. NATO invades Russia and defeats it, taking Moscow, which isn’t going to happen. They’ve already provided enough aid to the Ukrainians that the Ukrainians have blocked them. But the Russians are able to carry on the war or they made peace. So some way or another, I mean, it may be satisfying for a prime minister to involve much in it, to say, I’m too honorable to be negotiating with these guys, but all wars end the negotiation, except surrender negotiation.
Christian Smith: At the same time, it’s interesting. There’s something I wanted to ask you about, George, is that the US is trying to agree what’s been described as a major fertilizer deal with Belarus. Obviously, Belarus being, if not a puppet state, then an extremely close ally of Russia. Why is that going on?
George Friedman: Belarus is important because, firstly, it has a long border with Poland. Russia itself has only relatively short borders. The Russians also cannot reach those borders because they’re blocked by the Ukrainians. When you look at a map, you can see that Belarus would be the only rational way in which they could have large numbers of forces going in there. Well, we certainly don’t want them to be attacking Poland at this point. We have 10,000 troops in the United States deployed there. Okay. So by reaching out with this offer, okay, and implicit in this offer is a lot of other goodies that you can have. Belarus, if you stop siding with the Russians, is, if not treating Lukashenko, the head of Belarus and close to Putin, because in a way, Putin put him in power, but persuading the Belarusian public that they’re on the wrong side, both in the sense that the Russians are weak and in the sense that there’s much to be gained. So it was a very rational offer. It seems to come out of nowhere. But it comes to the heart of the matter. Without Belarus, they’re going to be very hard to even fake an invasion of Europe. And if the Belarusians were to accept this offer, this would place Russia at a really difficult position in bluffing an invasion.
Christian Smith: There’s the Canada aspect as well, of course, because Trump is trying to stick it to the Canadians over the fertilizer. But still leaves, as you’ve explained there, George, it still leaves the question of why Belarus of anywhere.
George Friedman: I suppose Belarus is. The Russians have said and not said, but we have said the Russians are in the process of threatening Europe. You sit down, you look at a map, you ask the question, how can they threaten Europe with invasion? And the map says, well, they can’t get through the border of Poland very well because they’re blocked by the Ukrainians. They can to the east, in a way, do that by going through Belarus. Belarus is an ally. If they can break that alliance, then any threats of ground warfare coming into Europe close.
Christian Smith: Well, we said we’re going to run through these things, and so we are. So let’s turn to Iran now before we get to China. I imagine listeners will be more than familiar with President Trump’s speech at the UN which he threatened to annihilate Iran. Iran’s president has also done a response. George, we’ve heard these threats before. I mean, am I, I can’t be the only one sitting here going, has anything actually changed? This is just. We’ve heard Trump threaten to bomb the hell out of the country. We’ve heard Iran say that it’s going to, you know, ignore, ignore Trump and ignore the US and that the US are terrorists. What’s going on?
George Friedman: After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt promised wreak vengeance on the Japanese empire.
Christian Smith: I didn’t expect you to start with Pearl Harbor.
George Friedman: But it took five years. Okay, so you make threats, okay, One to encourage your people, possibly another to say something manly. But it is not unlikely in an event of war, okay, that you will claim to be doing things that you can’t possibly do but might in the future. So he puts that online. It can’t hurt them. It may be that some Iranians hear that speech and start worrying about nuclear attack or something. Okay? So when you take a look at war, it has many dimensions. The military is the critical one, but there’s a psychological one. You’ve seen how the Russians are trying to use psychology on Europe to try to get them to back off. Okay? So he made this bravado speech, okay, Price zero possibility, something, you know, if you go up there and stand up there, we’re willing to make peace, we’re ready to negotiate, please. That’s not going to scare anybody in Iran.
Christian Smith: So it’s less of a reflection of, of something that has changed and more of a tactic to bring about change.
George Friedman: I suppose in a war, one of the things is psychological, make the other side’s public think the catastrophe is about to come. Usually they won’t believe it, but it doesn’t cost anything. So if he stood up and said, the one thing I want is negotiations right now, please, that would show weakness. You’ve been in a bar, you have a guy comes up to you, you stand up. You don’t walk away men, because he’s going to come after you. Then you stand up and you look tough. So we all, at least men among us, some of the women, too, have experienced a confrontation. And you know how fear increases the likelihood of danger. Do not look fearful. So really, this, I think, is a very minor thing. It’s not going to accomplish very much, but certainly there’s no advantage at this time of war when the government is not under pressure by the public to end it, to frighten them. If they don’t, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. So one of the most important things about war is never listen to anybody’s statement. Inevitably, they’re not going to tell you what they’re going to do. Lying is the essence of war.
Christian Smith: Take a moment to follow and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re already watching on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe. Well, one way that Iran will also crop up this week is in this meeting between President Trump and President Xi. This is the second summit that they’ve had this year. It’s another big one. It’s one I know at Geopolitical Futures this team has been keeping an eye on very, very closely and looking forward to in terms of what it brings. George, how much will Iran factor, do you think, in the meeting this week?
George Friedman: Somewhat. The most important thing to remember is something Bessent said. We’ve been writing a long time. China produces more products than it can consume. Okay. Why? Because it’s number two economic size, number 71 per capita income. It’s a poor country. It can’t use these. It has to export them. China’s economy is built on exports. Okay? Its largest customer is the United States. And given the fact the United States is the largest customer and many of the products it sells, creates, can only be sold to the United States is for the American market. They need to have access. Their growth rate, as I’ve said before, is about 4% now. It used to be 15% at the high point. Okay. So in other words, they need this accommodation with the United States. The United States turned around, put tariffs on them, making the situation even harder. So there’s an imperative on the part of the Chinese. Get access to the US market. Now, the Americans are going to be setting another price for that. Okay? It’s an essential thing for the Chinese. Imperative. Give us a hand on this war. And the Chinese have said, who, me? But recently the Chinese were saying quietly, something else that you could pick up, which is that they might consider, consider closing their banking system to the Iranians. Now, this has to be explained. Iran doesn’t have good relations in many countries. The Chinese banking system is their access to the world using Chinese yuan or dollars the Chinese have. The Iranians can buy things that they need to have for their economy just for the well being, okay? And one of the things that they are trying to do at this point is to stabilize their own country. If the Chinese banking system no longer accommodates purchases from Iran, okay, the Chinese, the Iranian system really gets boxed in. So what the Americans are going to be asking for is to close the banking system. That, that would be miss significant. And the Chinese have already quietly stated only to New York Times and such places very quietly that they might consider doing this. So this summit has two sides though. One, the Chinese really have to reach an agreement on tariffs with the United States to increase exports to the United States. Two, the Americans really need the Chinese help to shut down the Iranians. Now this is something that’s going to be discussed. People will say absolutely not and walk out of the room enraged. And all the things you do when you negotiate and maybe reach to this meeting, but maybe not. It’ll be quietly reached in some bar somewhere in the long run. But this is a fundamental weapon that the Chinese have in their hand that can end the war. Also remember that the war in Iran has cost many economies a great deal of viability based on oil prices. Therefore, the countries that China was exporting to as well, like England for example, may not be in a position to buy those goods. So the Chinese have a fundamental interest in loosening up the oil market for their own sake and for the sake of exports. So this is an important thing for the Chinese too. Now will they charge a price for it? Well, sure, as much as they can get. But it seems to be. It’s clear that Xi is coming to the United States. It’s clear that these things have been discussed extensively at lower levels. So when we take a look at this, it is a possible evolution here. The Americans need the Chinese, the Chinese need the Americans, the Chinese need the war to stop so that other countries can be out of crisis and so on. So there is actually an alignment of US and Chinese interest in this matter. One thing stands out, Taiwan. For the Chinese, Taiwan is a fundamental issue. Taiwan was part of China. It broke away after the Chinese Communists took over. It’s a very well to do country. It has massive technology capabilities and so on and so forth. And China wants it back. What it really doesn’t want is the United States should provide it with weapons. The US used to provide them with weapons because that was the blocking part between Japan and the Philippines. In other words, so long as Taiwan was in their hands, it was going to be hard for the Chinese to send ships to sea and to get them back. We can block them with missiles and stuff like that. So the United States has, ever since the end of the civil war in China years ago, been supporting Taiwan. Now, what the Chinese want them to do, and many in Taiwan as well want, is to have this confrontation ended. And there are many, about half of China by polls, half of Taiwan by polls, wants accommodation with China. So you’ve got a situation here where if Trump agrees not to send weapons to Taiwan, other allies, NATO, for example, say, my goodness, he betrayed them, okay? And Dahi doesn’t want to have to do that. On the other hand, if this is a Chinese price for getting us out of Iran, they may. And I think this is going to be what’s being discussed.
Christian Smith: I mean, is the US in a much worse position now than because of the war in Iran than it was, say, at the start of the year before? These summits were planned in the sense that if Iran wasn’t an issue for the US to worry about, and I suppose you could make the point that it was inevitable that it would be because of Iranian plans for nuclear development and that sort of thing, but let’s just say it wasn’t that, that the US could be pushing for different things at the moment, a better bargain with China.
George Friedman: Well, Chinese are also in trouble because of the war. They’re in trouble because of tariffs. And now with the American economy troubled greatly by high oil prices, but also the rest of the world troubled, China has a problem. But you have to remember that China, over and over again, have to remember they must export to maintain their economy. To export, they must be exported to countries that can afford their goods. And the oil problem that derived from the Iran situation is causing trouble all over the world. So it’s not just the Americans that are in this position, but the Chinese need the war to end as well because of the nature of their economy. So in a strange way, the US national interest and the Chinese national interest aligns. Now it becomes a political question. How does Xi do this? Interestingly, a couple of days before the meetings, he fired the two chiefs of staff of Chinese military. Okay? I’m not saying it was a coup or anything like that. I am saying that was a hell of a time to do this, to fire these guys, okay? But he did inside the United States. He’s got an election coming up, President, the midterm elections he got in his war. He’s got to get out of it before the elections. Okay, so he, Trump is in a bad place. Xi seems to be in a better place, but only seems to be given the people he’s firing. So we have two leaders who may have common interests in getting a settlement, and certainly two nations that have the same interest in ending the economic crisis in the world. And so that might drive them together,
Christian Smith: I should say, at this point. You can go back and listen to an episode we did a few episodes ago on the purges basically going on in China, in the Chinese military that Xi is putting through. George, one final question, I suppose before we wrap up. Trump has made the deals with China a central part of his presidency, or always intended to. We’re now two years ish into Trump’s presidency, and in many respects there’s two years to go until the next election, basically, at which point, of course, Trump’s time in terms of his authority is likely to fade away. Like any president, if you’re President Xi, if you’re China right now, how much weight do you put on the fact that Trump won’t be here in a couple of years and any deal may not be worth the paper it’s written on? I do quite enjoy the image of Xi and Trump at the back of a dive bar in Washington doing a deal on a napkin, but it may not be worth anything, that paper that it’s written on. So how do they view this?
George Friedman: They view it. Can we last two, three years without the global economy absorbing what we produce? So you have unemployment in China, you have bank failures in China, you have all sorts of economic problems going on in China. So it’s always easy to look at an open society like the United States and say, oh, this president’s really in trouble. But look inside a country like China and you can see problems he’s got, too. He’s not firing generals because he’s feeling secure. Okay? He’s got some reason to do it before the summit. I would not think he would do that before the summit. So I’m saying you take a look, try to think through the position of the Chinese head as well as Trump. They have a mutual relationship. Both need this settlement. Okay? Trump needs the Iran war to end. China needs access to the American economy for its exports and cannot really live through a major meltdown of the global economy because they depend on economy. So they have common interests. And that’s the finest indicator of what politicians will do. The one thing leaders of countries know how to do is, is cover their butts. And these are two butts that are way exposed
Christian Smith: and on that image, I suppose. Let’s leave it there. George, as always, thanks very much. We’ll be back again next week, as we said at the top, early next week with another podcast kind of analyzing debriefing from that summit. But until then, thanks very much and goodbye. Find all of our expert geopolitical analysis at geopoliticalfutures.com.
