Geopolitical Economy Hour

by Radhika Desai

Ben Norton: The US Is Manufacturing Consent For New War On Nicaragua | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Did Nicaragua really just abolish elections, as headlines from the New York Times to the BBC to the UN claimed last week? I am joined by journalist Ben Norton, host of the Geopolitical Economy Report YouTube channel, and fresh from Managua's 47th anniversary celebrations of the Sandinista Revolution, to separate fact from a deliberately distorted quote. Ben explains that Co-President Daniel Ortega's speech, stripped of context, was not a renunciation of elections but a sovereign measure barring foreign-funded parties from contesting them, following the stolen election in Honduras and Gustavo Petro's accusations of US-Israeli interference in Colombia. We trace this back through the Contra war and neoliberal privatisations to Nicaragua's present accomplishments like free healthcare and education, low crime, and Chinese-backed infrastructure, as Marco Rubio names Nicaragua next in line after Venezuela and Cuba.

Aug 4, 2026

1:12:17

Michael Hudson: The Democratic Party Must Die For Workers To Win | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Do the Democrats and Republicans really differ, or are they two wings of the same corporate machine? I am joined by economist Michael Hudson to examine why no progress can be made for American wage earners until the whole electoral system is changed. Michael Hudson argues that the DNC's dependence on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and AIPAC financing has made it as captured by capital as the Republicans it claims to oppose, a capture traceable to the Clinton-era abandonment of the working class and the sidelining of Bernie Sanders. The coming midterms, they argue, are shaping up as a civil war within the Democratic establishment between an emboldened democratic-socialist left and an old guard that would rather lose with a corporate centrist than win with a candidate beholden to ordinary voters.

Aug 4, 2026

1:01:24

Cockroach Revolution: India's Jobless Generation Declares War On Modi | Rohit Azad, Utkarsh Bhardwaj

Is India's youth uprising the beginning of the end for Modi's twelve-year rule? I am joined by Rohit Azad, economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Utkarsh Bhardwaj, Delhi-based activist and former Vice President of the Students Federation of India, Delhi, both of whom have been on the ground throughout the protests, to examine the true scale and character of the movement now sweeping India. Azad and Bhardwaj describe a genuinely decentralized, largely leaderless uprising, sparked by the leak of the CBSE board exam papers and named after a dismissive remark by India's Chief Justice comparing unemployed youth to cockroaches, a label the movement has since turned into a badge of defiance. We examine why the government's repression, from the detention of Sonam Wangchuk to the shutdown of Delhi metro stations, has only swelled the crowds rather than dispersed them, why the protests draw from across the class spectrum rather than being confined to the urban elite, and the underacknowledged role of the organized left in sustaining the movement long before it captured national attention.

Aug 4, 2026

1:03:26

Bikrum Gill: The West Refuses To Admit Iran Already Won | GEH With Radhika Desai

Iran's four-month war with the US and Israel has entered a new, lower-intensity phase. But is this exhaustion, or Iran's most decisive victory yet? I am joined by Dr. Bikram Singh Gill, lecturer in international relations at Cardiff University, to examine the strategic reversals defining this war. Gill explains how the campaign meant to disarm Iran has instead disarmed US deterrence itself, with Iran now controlling the underlying equation of force in the Gulf through its command of the Strait of Hormuz. We examine why Gulf states like Saudi Arabia keep gambling on Washington even as that alliance stops serving their own capital's interests, and draw the parallel to European elites trapped in the same losing bet. We close on the popular legitimacy underwriting states like Iran and China, and the uprising now shaking India after decades of jobless neoliberal growth. The West has misread these societies before. Professor Gill argues it's doing so again.

Aug 4, 2026

53:14

Russia Expert: The West Is Deliberately Boiling The Frog Toward Nuclear War | Oleg Barabanov

Is Ukraine's battlefield momentum actually pushing Europe closer to war with Russia? I am joined by Dr. Oleg Barabanov, Program Director of the Valdai Discussion Club and Deputy Director of the Eurasian Studies Institute at MGIMO, to examine the true state of the war and why Ukraine's tactical successes may be increasing, not decreasing, the risk of wider escalation. Barabanov describes how intensifying Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries have driven up gas prices and disrupted daily life, yet have consolidated Russian public opinion behind the Kremlin rather than eroding it, while Ukraine's own political crisis, triggered by the firing of Mykhailo Fedorov, exposes a parallel struggle between a new generation of drone-focused commanders and the old military establishment. We examine why the drone has rendered classical territorial warfare all but obsolete, replacing large-scale offensives with a grinding war of small infiltration units, and why this same dynamic is playing out in the US war on Iran, where a resurgent Iran has shown that middle powers can now inflict serious costs on great powers who can no longer win quickly or decisively. The West's strategy, Barabanov argues, has been to boil the frog slowly, but the danger is that the frog may yet jump out of the pot.

Jul 24, 2026

1:03:54

Trump Wants Iran Destroyed — He Won't Get It | Interview With Dimitri Lascaris

Dimitri Lascaris, one of Canada's most prominent lawyers and an intrepid journalist, has just returned from Iran, where he attended the extraordinary funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei and witnessed the final collapse of the so-called Memorandum of Understanding. I am joined by him to examine the true stakes of the US-Israeli war on Iran, centred on the struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz, and why Trump, far from being trapped by circumstance, is choosing to pursue Iran's destruction regardless of the cost. Dimitri describes standing among millions of mourners in Tehran and Mashhad, where grief for Khamenei ran deeper than for a father and support for negotiation with Washington had all but vanished. We also examine how Iran's capacity to render the Gulf autocracies uninhabitable, by targeting their near-total dependence on desalinated water, has left Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE trapped between an unforgiving Washington and a resurgent axis of resistance. The real question is not whether this war can be won, but how much pain the American public, and Trump's own political fortunes, can absorb before it ends.

Jul 24, 2026

49:01

Historian Richard Sakwa: The West Chooses Self-Destructive War Over Peace | GEH With Radhika Desai

Richard Sakwa and Radhika Desai examine why Europe's leaders continue to escalate a war that most Europeans no longer support. They show that the firing of Ukraine's defense minister for being "too honest," alongside protests in Kyiv and Lviv, exposes a Zelensky government that has abandoned even the pretense of democratic accountability, while Gallup polling finds two-thirds of Ukrainians now want negotiations to end the war. NATO's Ankara summit revealed a alliance divided 31 to 1, yet European elites keep deepening their commitment to a war they cannot win against a nuclear-armed power, treating negotiation itself as capitulation rather than a path to peace. This refusal comes as the war escalates both horizontally, with drone and missile strikes now reaching deep into Russia, and vertically, with hardliners in Moscow openly discussing nuclear deterrence. Sakwa argues that Russia is entering a genuinely post-Western but not post-European phase, rejecting the Atlantic system while still identifying with European civilization, and that Europe's elites are choosing economic and civilizational self-harm over acknowledging any of Russia's legitimate security concerns.

Jul 24, 2026

1:00:19

Michael Hudson: We're Headed for a Depression Worse Than 2008 | | GEH W/ Radhika Desai

Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai examine the gap between Trump's promised economic boom and the reality of an economy sustained by asset bubbles rather than production. They show that the stock market's rise reflects cheap credit, buybacks, and speculation rather than profit, a Ponzi-scheme dynamic that cannot survive the oil shock triggered by Trump's war on Iran. His tariffs have not reversed deindustrialization, and his refusal to end that war guarantees the inflation he promised to kill. The result is a starkly K-shaped economy, in which the wealthiest 1% have seen their assets grow from $10 trillion to over $50 trillion in twenty-five years while the bottom half of Americans have gone from nothing to nothing, pushing the US toward a depression as serious as the 1930s and eroding even his own base's faith in him.

Jul 24, 2026

57:00

Is NATO 3.0 Leading Us Straight Into Nuclear War? Biljana Vankovska & Radhika Desai

The recently concluded NATO summit in Ankara has been widely hailed by mainstream Western media as a triumph of alliance unity, yet beneath the choreographed family photos lies a deeper, far more fractious reality. In this 79th episode of the Geopolitical Economy Hour, I am joined by Professor Bilyana Vankovska to strip away the distorting narratives of Western media and examine the true political economy of "NATO 3.0". We deconstruct how this new phase of the alliance operates as an aggressive instrument of imperialism, driving a massive transfer of public wealth into the hands of private military corporations under the guise of a "military-industrial revolution".

Jul 24, 2026

49:14

From 1776 To The Pentagon: 250 Years Of US G*nocide & Imperialism | KJ Noh & Radhika Desai

As the United States approaches its semi-quincentennial, the contrast between Washington’s triumphalist rhetoric and its material reality has never been starker. Defined by deep precarity at home and centuries of perpetual warfare abroad, this genocidal slaving oligarchy is entering a period of profound systemic decay. Yet, despite decisively losing a major conflict against a middle-tier power like Iran, the Pentagon continues its grandiose, delusional scheme to militarily subdue China. How can a state failing so abysmally still contemplate a war against a peer competitor? The answer lies in a desperate strategy of proxies—attempting to transform Japan and South Korea into the empire's frontline munitions factories, while elite planners increasingly normalize the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Joining me to untangle the deep systemic contradictions of late-stage American empire is regular guest K.J. Noh, a brilliantly informed scholar and journalist. Together, we discuss why the US cannot look itself in its bloodied mirror, how global capital crushes East Asian sovereignty, and why the system is crying out for a complete reboot.

Jul 24, 2026

58:06

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