Episode 214: “Ukraine, The Balloon and the Loss of US Hegemony” with Brandon Weichert.

Events are picking up pace rapidly on the world stage and I’ve asked my frequent guest Brandon Weichert to join me to help explain what’s happening. Brandon, geopolitical analyst and publisher of The Weichert Report, is among the best at connecting the dots globally with his bold and unnerving forecasts. Among the many issues brewing that we get into: Russia is amassing up to 400 thousand troops on Ukraine's borders for a winter offensive, objectives unknown. Nuclear escalation looms.  The Chinese sent a satellite balloon hovering ominously across the entire United States as it presumably took surveillance photos. Strangely, the Biden Administration, which is all in to defend the borders of Ukraine, refused to protect America’s own airspace. Why wasn’t it shot down sooner? Our southern border with Mexico has been left wide open for over two years. The United States’ enemies - and its friends - have watched us admit almost five million undocumented aliens, whose purposes and destinations are unknown.  South Korea's president is having a public meltdown about no longer having reliable American nuclear protection. He has reason to be concerned. Joe Biden, just two weeks ago, declared that “global warming is the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced, including nuclear weapons.” Did the way Biden fail to confront the Chinese balloon sooner than he did reflect this priority?   Brandon conjectures: “A political decision in the White House was made to let it just pass by quietly because the Biden administration didn't want to rock the boat going into their global warming negotiations with China. They worried that if they shot it down, that the Chinese would freak out and leave the meeting before anything could get done”. “If it wasn't for a local Montana newspaper, we wouldn't have known about any of this. This would have been just another conspiracy theory on the internet.” With Ukraine, United States strategic objectives could have been the preservation of the Ukrainian core in the western portion of the country and a speedy end to the fighting. Instead, the Biden administration continues to insist that Ukraine drive the Russians completely out. If this means sending in U.S. combat jets and long range missiles, the massive risk is that this widens the war, triggering our NATO agreements, leading to a general - and possibly nuclear - war in Europe.   The German general von Clausewitz told us that “war is an extension of politics through other means.” Well, politics and our politicians seem to have gone mad.  Worryingly, the United States is playing a weaker and weaker hand. Brandon warns that “America’s political and cultural system is collapsing here at home. The rest of the world sees that. Especially in China, they talk about this all the time. China believes the Americans are declining.” There’s a lot to unpack in this episode. Please listen in.