Global Tantrum! with Steve Palley and Prof. Galen Jackson

Steve Palley, Galen Jackson
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Politics
  • Updated Weekly

Two International Relations PhDs help you make sense of the post-postwar era. globaltantrum.substack.com

  1. Hezbollah's Still Here

    Jun 27

    Hezbollah's Still Here

    The Iran war is winding down, but one front never closed. In southern Lebanon, Israel and Hezbollah are still trading fire, and it’s become one of the biggest sticking points left in the deal between Iran and the United States. The old question is back: what do you actually do about Hezbollah? What CAN you do? Here’s what’s hard about Hezbollah: it is two things at once. On the one hand, it’s a Lebanese political party that holds seats in parliament and runs the clinics and schools the failing Lebanese state can’t. On the other, it’s an Iranian-built army sitting on tens of thousands of missiles, many now cheaply upgraded with GPS guidance, pointed at northern Israel. You can’t bomb away the second without reckoning with the first. In the last few years, Israel has hit Hezbollah harder than ever: the 2024 pager attack, the assassination of longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, supply lines severed when the Assad regime fell in Syria. And yet the organization persists. The only durable fix is political, and Lebanon’s sectarian deadlock makes that nearly impossible. So Israel is left “mowing the grass,” racking up tactical wins that never add up to a strategic one. We trace Hezbollah from the rubble of Lebanon’s civil war to the Party of God of today, why Iran built it and won’t let go, and why beating Hezbollah on the battlefield may not be the same thing as winning. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    42 min
  2. Is Israel Losing USA?

    Jun 20

    Is Israel Losing USA?

    On June 14th, the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the Iran War. The Strait of Hormuz reopens, sanctions lift, and a $300 billion reconstruction fund is on the table. Iran got nearly everything it wanted. America got out. Trump marked the same day by turning 80 and hosting a UFC card on the White House lawn. Iran is off his radar, and he’s turned the keys over to JD Vance. But the deal’s biggest loser isn’t Washington, it’s Jerusalem. Like the U.S. Israel got exactly none of its war aims: nothing on Iran’s regime, missiles, proxies, or uranium enrichment. And Vice President Vance followed up by delivering the bluntest public rebuke of an Israeli government in living memory. So if JD Vance is now holding the keys, Benjamin Netanyahu, titan of modern Israeli politics, is holding the bag. Why does this matter? It’s very simple: the U.S. has an ocean and can (in theory) afford to not pay close attention to who is in charge of what in the Persian Gulf. This is very much not the case for Israel, whose mortal regional enemy has just been empowered. Plus, as American public opinion turns, with 60% now viewing Israel unfavorably, and young voters in both parties leading the shift, the strategic, political, and moral cases for continuing unconditional U.S. support for Israel are all eroding at once. We dig into Netanyahu’s shrinking options, the precedents from Eisenhower to Bush that show how these U.S.-Israel breaches usually end, and why this one might be the first that actually sticks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    1h 5m
  3. America's Empty Arsenal

    Jun 13

    America's Empty Arsenal

    Trump’s recent military excursion against Iran wins several awards from the Global Tantrum Academy: 1) Most Declarations Of Victory, 2) Best Maritime Rescue By A Supporting Autonomous Boat, and 3) Largest Expenditure Of Ultra-Rare Munitions In A Losing Campaign. Depending on what happens over the next three to five years, while the US defense majors crank into gear replacing said munitions, that last one might become the most significant outcome of the conflict. The US blew a quarter to a half of its stockpile of its advanced offensive and defensive missiles trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, leaving our armories depleted and our allies scrambling for options. The door for a certain near-peer competitor to make trouble has opened a little wider. Why in the world would it take the US that long to restock its arsenal? Part of the issue is that the American defense majors have had little meaningful domestic competition for decades, leaving them slow, flabby, and unable to innovate. Another issue is that America globalized away its critical defense supply chains, leaving it something like 2 million skilled tradesmen and defense industrial workers short. And a third problem involves the Pentagon’s procurement strategy, which is now somewhere between one and three decades behind current battlefield needs. So, we’ve got some problems. But as they say, war reveals truth, and the US might now have an opportunity to make the necessary reforms… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    59 min
  4. America's Debt Trap

    Jun 6

    America's Debt Trap

    Most Americans don’t know this: the United States technically defaulted on its debts not once but twice in the last century: once in 1933 and again in 1971. Luckily, the country won World War 2 in between those two incidents, which counted for a lot in terms of international credibility and creditworthiness. However, as any consumer currently out over his or her skis will know, lenders do not make a habit of propping up unsustainable borrowing forever. Not even the most powerful and successful country in world history can ignore this law of financial gravity forever. But the U.S. certainly seems to be trying, especially since the turn of the 21st century. The country’s debt to GDP ratio shot past 100% recently, and it’s now spending more on interest payments than defense. That’s never a good sign. In this episode, we discuss the history of sovereign fiscal crises and debt defaults, the various pathways out of a looming debt trap, and where we think the US might be heading in the decades ahead. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    44 min
  5. Iran Isn't USA's "Suez Moment," But It Sure Isn't A Win

    May 30

    Iran Isn't USA's "Suez Moment," But It Sure Isn't A Win

    After a bruising war with Iran, the editorials wrote themselves: the Strait of Hormuz closed, US bases hit, interceptors burned, and nothing decisive to show for it. Pundits reached for the ultimate decline metaphor. Could this be America’s “Suez Moment,” referring here to the the 1956 foreign policy fiasco / humiliation that ended Britain and France’s time as major independent global actors? We don’t buy it. Suez worked as a death knell because there was a senior partner, the United States, able to bankrupt London and Paris if they failed to toe the line. In 2026 there’s no one who can play that role against Washington. Suez was a story about can’t. America’s problem is won’t, and occasionally will, but in the wrong place at the wrong time. That distinction matters because the real game isn’t the Persian Gulf; it’s East Asia. So the question becomes whether a loss to Iran dents US credibility where it counts: around the Taiwan Strait. One school says credibility is one interconnected currency; another, the “differentiated credibility” camp, says what matters is the local balance, not what you did three theaters away. We work through the Suez history, the balancing-vs-bandwagoning problem in the Middle East, what allies in Seoul and Taipei actually learned watching this war, and why in international politics “you can come back, but you (maybe) can’t come back all the way.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    1h 1m
  6. Cuba Goes Dark

    May 23

    Cuba Goes Dark

    After the US deposed Maduro and installed Delcy Rodriguez in Caracas, Venezuela stopped shipping oil to Cuba. That oil, heavily subsidized in exchange for Cuban doctors, teachers, and security advisors since the Chávez era, was the foundation of the Cuban economy. The last Russian tanker arrived in March. Now there’s no replacement coming and Cubans are living through 22-hour-a-day blackouts. This isn’t a humanitarian story dressed up as geopolitics. The USS Nimitz strike group is parked under Southern Command. Trump’s DOJ just indicted 94-year-old Raul Castro for the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, 30 years after the fact, and conveniently right as the vice tightens. The administration is offering $100 million in food aid, but only through the Catholic Church. Why now? Cuba imports 70% of its food, has no fuel, no electricity, no Soviet patron, and a regime that depends on Venezuelan oil it can no longer get. Meanwhile, the presence of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military and intelligence assets on Cuban soil a mere 90 miles from US territory has raised the administration’s hackles. So the question isn’t whether something happens. It’s what: civil collapse, a quiet Castro exit, a Maduro-style “tyrant change,” or something messier. We work through the historical parallels (yes, Bay of Pigs comes up), the strategic logic of squeezing Havana now, and why we’re skeptical about US troops on the ground, even if the indictment hints otherwise. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    1h 13m
  7. Xi Cleans House

    May 9

    Xi Cleans House

    Since 2022, more than 100 senior People’s Liberation Army officers have been removed, disappeared, or placed under investigation, and last week two former defense ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, were handed suspended death sentences that will commute to life imprisonment without parole. The Central Military Commission, which is supposed to have seven members, is down to two: Xi himself and a discipline specialist. Xi’s hand-picked vice chairman, the PLA’s top professional soldier, is now under investigation. It’s tempting to read this as pure power consolidation, a Stalin-style coup-proofing where the dictator clears out anyone who could plausibly threaten him. There’s some of that. But it doesn’t fit on its own. The PLA was, by all accounts, a deeply broken institution: officer commissions bought and sold, Rocket Force silos with blast doors that wouldn’t open, missiles found filled with water instead of fuel. Xi seems to genuinely care that the party’s military can fight. So why now, and why this hard? Two readings, probably both true. Yes, he’s removing potential rivals and reasserting Communist Party control over a force that had drifted into a kind of fiefdom. But he’s also clearing deadwood ahead of what he plainly considers the main event of the next decade: Taiwan. The PLA hasn’t fought a real war since 1979 against Vietnam, and got humiliated then. If you’re planning to do amphibious combined-arms operations across the strait, a patronage racket won’t get you there. We compare this to Stalin’s late-1930s purges, which gutted Soviet readiness right before Barbarossa, talk through what it means that the man Xi appointed to actually run the army is the one being disappeared, and ask the uncomfortable question: does a leaner, less corrupt, more politically loyal PLA make a Taiwan move more likely or less? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    47 min
  8. Project Mythos & AI's Zero-Day Edge

    Apr 25

    Project Mythos & AI's Zero-Day Edge

    On April 7, Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell pulled the CEOs of the biggest U.S. banks into Treasury for an urgent, closed-door briefing — not about rates, not about liquidity, but about an AI model. Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview is apparently an order of magnitude better than anything currently public at finding software vulnerabilities. Rather than release it, Anthropic built a consortium called Project Glasswing and gave the major platform companies early access to patch before the capability proliferates. The warning shot landed loud: Mozilla used Mythos to find and fix 271 previously unknown vulnerabilities in Firefox 150. On the prior version, Anthropic’s best publicly available model had surfaced 22. That’s a one-version jump from a couple dozen to several hundred. When a process improves by an order of magnitude overnight, you pay attention. The reason policymakers are rattled isn’t that Mythos will suddenly own your bank account tomorrow — Anthropic is keeping the model caged, and non-state actors can’t train their own. The fear is the gap period: a stretch of months where a Mythos-class capability exists, hasn’t been fully used for defense yet, and could be replicated by a nation-state adversary with the means and the motive. China can probably build one. Iran and Russia probably can’t — yet. Whichever side gets through the world’s legacy open-source libraries first owns the window. The underappreciated story is that this round of the offense-defense arms race may actually tip toward the defense. Mythos didn’t find bugs an elite human researcher couldn’t have caught; it just did it at machine speed and machine scale. Applied to new code, that points at a future where shipped software arrives without the kind of rotten foundations that made Equifax, NotPetya, and every critical-infrastructure nightmare possible. The catch is that the patching has to get done before the capability gets out. Glasswing is supposed to run through the summer. That’s the runway. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com

    47 min
See All (52)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Two International Relations PhDs help you make sense of the post-postwar era. globaltantrum.substack.com

Information

You Might Also Like