Bob Kagan
speaker
1,471 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 29 Jul
Bob Kagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
it will have shifted particularly in China's favor, because standing behind Iran in these negotiations over how the strait will be run will be China.
And Iran is already talking about asking other countries to pay for transit through the strait in yuan, in Chinese yuan, which will basically, you know, strengthen the Chinese yuan against the American dollar and undermine the petrodollar system, etc.
JVL has a great
piece on this, which is 100% right, except for one thing, which we can get to.
But that is the situation that we're going to be left with.
We will have gone from being the dominant player in this region, which is the region that controls the world oil supply to a large extent, and certainly the world oil price.
We will go from having been the dominant player to one of several players, maybe, or we will basically have lost our influence in the region.
That is going to be the net result of this conflict.
No, we are enunciating it brilliantly.
And it is a central contradiction at the heart of this whole operation.
Because, you know, if you go back to the original America first approach to the world, which was conducted pretty much in the 1920s and 30s after World War I and the disillusionment of World War I, you know,
we had no involvement in the Middle East, none whatsoever.
And our involvement in the Middle East was entirely a consequence of the decision, which we partly forced into and partly undertook ourselves to engage in World War II, which then during World War II, the Middle East was a vital region for those we were trying to defend against those we were trying to fight, you know, control of
North Africa was a big deal.
That was the fact that Germany was threatening to control that, control the Suez Canal, et cetera.
So we fought in World War II in the Middle East to secure it for those whom we were trying to save from Nazi tyranny.
Then during the Cold War, it was a critical region in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
We'll get to Israel in a second.
But it was not because we needed the oil.
At that particular time, and I think in the immediate wake of World War II, the United States produced something like 50% of all the oil in the world.
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