282 - Richard Wolff: China, Russia, Iran, and World War III

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:27)
This episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health offers a new kind of coach, built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change, availability and results vary, not intended for medical purposes, works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

**Robinson Erhardt** (1:06)
When you look at the world right now, and you think of the war in Ukraine, general European rearmament, the US-Israel-Iran war, China's obvious continued economic rise, what do you think is the big global picture that most mainstream commentators are missing?

**Richard Wolff** (1:30)
I'm afraid it is the decline of Europe above all else. The decline of a quote-unquote West, Europe and the United States.
The United States started its decline much later than Europe. It basically inherited the European empires, but they were in the process of disappearing. And so the United States got them, and then he's done the process of losing them because they learned across the latter half of the 20th century and now the beginning of this one, that having crawled out from under European colonialism, they now have to crawl out from underneath the United States' inherited reworking of that system without the formal colonialism. Although you can tell Mr. Trump is reacting to that in his own blind way by fantasies of taking Greenland or making Canada into a 51st state or snatching Panama or whatever comes to his mind as he tries to prevent what is unfolding as he can see it, which is, as I say, half blind. Meanwhile, China, and it's not just China, it's everybody who's hitching their horse to that cart, or hitching their cart to that horse, whichever metaphor works better. But the Chinese rise is relentless. It crosses more and more categories of product. They dominate now in electric vehicles. They dominate in the technology, the harness energy from the sun and wind.
They are becoming producers of modern technologically advanced medication. They are becoming equal to the Silicon Valley in every new technical AI or agent AI. I mean, wherever you turn, it's just, and their population is enormous, and their commitment to doing this is enormous. And with these advantages, they've taken the steps to build that initiative, built in road to go to Europe directly. They have built an alliance system, the BRICS, which is vibrant and alive. And they're watching the West implode. They're watching this split between Europe and America. People should understand that has been a problem for the rest of the world, the alliance between the United States and Europe for quite some time. And that's gone now, or in the process of disintegration. And that means that the upper options, and you can see it, among other places, in the Middle East. Iran has brought the United States to another defeat militarily. There's no way around it. The Iranians are in the driver's seat. All kinds of pretense, but that's very American, to deny everything so as to not have to deal with it. But muddling by in that way, which we could do when we were the sole hegemon after 1990 But even before, I like to remind people, being an economist, the United States, for example now, has a GDP in the trillions, you know, 30, 40 trillion dollars. Russia's GDP is three or four trillion. It's not the same class. It never was. The so-called conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was a mirage. If it had any truth, if it had any, it had to do with nuclear weapons. They had those, and that was serious. And that was a problem, no question. But other than that, and that's why it's so important to understand that the relationship with China now is completely different. Yes, they have nuclear weapons too, so they got that going for them. But unlike anything Russia or the Soviet Union ever had, China is an economic competitor, a real one, a serious one. Their GDP is in the high teens, 18, 19, 20 It's not the American, but it's catching up, and it's in that league, and nobody else is in that league, including Russia.