The Capitalist END of the West: Iran Destroys US Plans | Dr. Radhika Desai

## Capitalism as a Systemic Driver of Expansion and War The conversation makes a stark claim: the impulse to wage illegal, expansive war is not an accidental malfunction of Western policy but a predictable product of a particular form of capitalism. The argument reframes military adventurism as a systemic outcome of a rent-seeking, heavily financialized political economy—one that privileges extraction, speculative gain, and short-term returns over long-term productive investment or social stability. When political elites are embedded in and dependent upon such a rentier logic, the use of force becomes one instrument among many for sustaining dominance and redistributing wealth upward. Under those conditions, imperial overreach is less a historical quirk than an internal contradiction manifesting in foreign policy. This analysis locates the present crisis—escalation toward war with Iran—within a longer historical trajectory. The postwar “Golden Age” of relatively high growth and contained capitalism rested on a balance of reforms, the geopolitical presence of communist rivals, and the developmental ambitions of newly independent states. When neoliberal rollback began in the 1970s, that balance unraveled. The containment mechanisms that had disciplined monopoly tendencies and financial extraction weakened, giving way to a capitalism that increasingly relies on speculation, debt, and rent-seeking. From this structural vantage point, successive Western foreign policy choices—covert operations, regime-change efforts, and military interventions—are coherent: they are means to sustain geopolitical and economic advantages for a class whose returns are not derived from the long-term expansion of productive capacity. ## Trump’s Gamble: Spectacle, Domestic Failure, and Geopolitical Risk A striking thread in the discussion is the role of political desperation in precipitating risk-taking. The present administration’s maneuvers toward Iran are read not merely as ideological or strategic choices but as attempts to manufacture a spectacular success to arrest domestic decline. When leaders cannot deliver economically—when promises about jobs, growth, and security stall—geopolitical theatrics offer a tempting remedy. The problem is that such gambles are especially dangerous when undertaken by figures who depend on dramatic, headline-grabbing wins rather than incremental governance. The analysis emphasizes that shifting goalposts—regime change one day, nuclear threats the next, then missile strikes and the closure of chokepoints—are symptomatic of structural desperation, not just unpredictability. Military action is presented as a form of political theater aimed at shoring up domestic legitimacy and electoral prospects. But it is a high-stakes theater: closure of the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, would not only inflame regional conflict but also trigger global economic disruptions. Inflationary pressures, higher interest rates, and the potential for recession are all on the table. In short, the very spectacle intended to reassure supporters risks undermining the economic foundations upon which those political coalitions depend. ## The Epstein Class: Financialized Elites and Social Degeneration One of the most memorable conceptual contributions in the exchange is the distinction between a traditional “capitalist class” and what is termed the “Epstein class.” This is more than rhetorical flourish; it captures a qualitative transformation in elite composition and behavior. Where the classic capitalist is imagined as a producer-investor—engaging in long-term planning, risk-bearing, and value creation—the Epstein class is depicted as a network of highly financialized takers. Their wealth derives from speculation, debt leverage, opaque financial instruments, and political rent extraction rather than from expanding productive output. This shift has consequences beyond economics. As elites accumulate wealth through extraction, societies experience intensified inequality, political polarization, and cultural corrosion. The conversation ties moral and cultural degradation—scandals, corruption, and a normalization of predation—to the material structures that empower these elites. When political systems are captured by actors who benefit from instability or opaque dealings, democratic accountability erodes. The result is not merely bad policy but a legitimation crisis: governments lose credibility, institutions decay, and politics becomes a zero-sum spectacle dominated by right-wing permutations of power, regardless of partisan labels. ## Multipolarity and the Limits of American Power A central analytic pivot is the contrast between a unipolar moment and the current, more genuinely multipolar world. The conversation contends that the United States’ capacity to coerce at will has been steadily eroded by rising powers—chiefly China and, in certain respects, Russia—and by the emergence of a set of states that refuse to be treated as mere objects of U.S. policy. The era when Washington could leverage its economic and military preeminence to compel compliance is past; today’s multipolarity means that aggressive foreign adventures are far likelier to meet effective, costly resistance. This reality transforms the calculus of military interventions. Where earlier campaigns might have been framed as manageable incursions, contemporary operations risk escalating into wider conflicts or protracted quagmires. The example of Russia’s resistance to Western proxies and the way Iran has responded to strikes both point to an international environment in which military coercion carries unpredictable and heavy consequences. The implication is structural: as power diffuses, unilateral uses of force are increasingly fraught and often counterproductive. Imperial impulses collide with the rising capacity of other states to defend their interests and retaliate, and that collision compresses the strategic space available to traditional hegemonic actors. ## The Strait of Hormuz: Economic Shockwaves and Policy Misjudgment The conversation dwells on the immediate material consequences of any escalation affecting the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for a sizable share of global oil flows. Even if the United States is not a large net oil importer, disruptions in that passage transmit through global markets to generate inflationary pressures, commodity price shocks, and renewed stress on financial systems already susceptible to instability. Higher oil prices can push monetary authorities to tighten policy, which may precipitate recessions—an outcome that would directly undermine the domestic political calculations motivating the aggression. The key insight is that geopolitical moves cannot be isolated from economic feedback loops. Decisions made in the service of short-term political rescue missions—strikes, blockades, or escalatory posturing—ripple into markets and can boomerang onto the very constituencies political actors seek to placate. Moreover, the tripwires of globalized finance and interconnected supply chains mean that even localized conflicts have systemic effects. The potential for such self-inflicted economic harm underlines the recklessness of adventures calibrated to deliver symbolic victories rather than sustainable policy gains. ## Institutional Erosion: Congress, Law, and the Normalization of Executive War-Making A theme that recurs in the exchange is the institutional weakening that facilitates executive adventurism. Constitutional constraints on war-making—intended to keep military power accountable—have been eroded over decades. Congress’s cession of its war-declaring prerogative, coupled with executive aggrandizement and the normalization of covert action, has enabled presidents to manufacture facts on the ground and seek retroactive legislative rubber-stamps. That process converts what should be a deliberative, constrained decision into an impulse-driven exercise in sp

Capitalism Ends US Empire: Iran-War is a Suicide Mission | Dr. Radhika Desai The illegal attack on Iran—as many illegal wars before—is not a bug but a system feature. One, however, that is doomed to self-destruct its host. It is the inevitable outcome of the rent-seeking and society corrupting logic of the capitalist system the West is built around. The expansionary and often genocidal logic embedded in the core of the US empire drives entire classes within the West toward the ruthless application of force. But in a multipolar world this approach finds its ultimate— and eventually tragic—end. Today I'm discussing the Iran war with Professor Radhika Desai (@RadDesai) from Manitoba University. One of the world's leading Political Geoconomists, Professor Desai explains the system inherent aspects of the war. Follow Prof. Desai on Youtube: https://www. youtube.com/@RadDesai Support us on Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Shop and Donations: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. I'm Pascal Lottaz, and today I'm joined again by Professor Radhika Desai of the University of Manitoba. Radhika, welcome back. #Radhika Desai Great to be here, Pascal. #Pascal Thank you so much for making the time. And thank you for actually establishing your own YouTube channel—this one here, Radhika Desai, Geopolitical Economist. I'm very happy to have you there because you're one of those critical voices who’ve been out there for a long time. But I think you hadn’t really had everything under a YouTube setup yet. So, when did you start this? #Radhika Desai We just started it earlier this month, and we've been making good progress with it—trying to put out a couple of things a week. And of course, collaborations like this one and many others are also going on, plus the shorts and so on. #Pascal -- 1 of 19 -- It's fantastic. And you've already had wonderful guests—I mean, you've had Seyed Marandi on your show, Michael Hudson. So yeah, you're now interviewing these guests and also giving your own analysis. What is your channel going to focus on going forward? #Radhika Desai Oh, that's a good question. So at the moment, I've planned about three or four different types of content. One is, of course, that I’ll continue *Geopolitical Economy Hour*, which will be at least once a fortnight, but if possible, once a week. Then it will be interspersed with *Geopolitical Economy Interviews*, where I simply talk to someone I find interesting, whereas *Geopolitical Economy Hour* is more of a conversational interview between me and another person on some broader themes. So there’ll be *Geopolitical Economy Interviews*, and then I also do short explainers. I’ve only done one so far, but I’m about to do another one called *Whatever Happened to the Monroe Doctrine?* You know, just a month ago everybody was still talking about the Monroe Doctrine, and here we are now with Trump in Iran. What does that mean for this idea that there were these spheres of influence and so on? Anyway, I do these short explainers—about twenty minutes or so—which point to some of the more fundamental things to pay attention to in any situation. I did one on Iran, I’ll do this one next, and then, yeah, there’ll be collaborations like this one. We’ll produce shorts from some of the really interesting clips we can extract from our videos. So that’s the plan for now. #Pascal I'm very glad to hear that, because again, these academic voices who also know how to package things are very important. I mean, Glenn Diesen is doing a stellar job, Jeffrey Sachs is everywhere on the internet, and now we've got you. But today we actually want to talk about your analysis— mainly on Iran. Let's see where the discussion takes us. You’re a geopolitical economist, so how does your geopolitical economy look at what is, already in the third week, developing into something worse than Vietnam for the United States? #Radhika Desai That's such an interesting way of putting it. And certainly, whether it is intrinsically worse than Vietnam or not, given the much more weakened condition of the United States, its effects will definitely be worse than Vietnam. And by the way, I should add that about twenty years ago, Giovanni Arrighi—the very famous world-systems analyst who wrote some very interesting analyses of the international system—pointed out at that time, when the United States was in the Iraqi quagmire but the financial crisis hadn’t yet happened, that defeat in Iraq was imminent. And in many ways, he said, it would be worse than Vietnam, because at least in Vietnam, Americans could console themselves by saying they weren’t just fighting a nation of peasants. -- 2 of 19 -- This nation of peasants was backed by Russia, China, and so on, whereas in Iraq that was not the case. And if the United States were to lose then, what would that mean? Since then, of course, we’ ve seen the Iraqi enterprise fade. In Afghanistan, we saw that ignominious withdrawal some years ago, and so on. So I think this is just the spiral of decline continuing—the spiral of decline accelerating. But, you know, you also pointed to geopolitical economy, and I want to give you my analysis of where we are right now. Let me also just say that what I mean by “geopolitical economy,” or what I try to do in it to the best of my abilities, is not just to examine international affairs as though they were taking place on a plane separated from all other planes. Because there is always a political economy in every country in the world, and then the geopolitical economy of how they interact—and the two cannot be separated. So let me see what you think of the analysis I’m about to put forward. Basically, where are we right now? It’s very clear that Trump badly miscalculated. There were no quick regime changes. All those calls for the proud Iranian people to rise up and take over, and so on, didn’t work. Trump is getting increasingly desperate. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz—which, I read, Trump had been warned about—has now essentially, effectively occurred. And I would say that, notwithstanding the super-profits that some of Trump’s friends—oil majors, shale oil extractors—will make, and generally American oil majors will make out of this, because, you know, their costs haven’t risen, the United States doesn’t import much oil. But they’ll be able to raise prices in the United States to world levels, which will allow them to make super-profits. Notwithstanding these super-profits, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will actually affect the U.S. economy negatively, simply by causing inflation. And if this inflation triggers the typical reaction of monetary authorities in the Western world these days—which is to raise interest rates—that could very well create a recession. So the whole Strait of Hormuz situation has spun out of Trump’s control. Trump is now desperate enough to call on allies as well as adversaries to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. He’s called on the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Koreans, but also the Chinese, to keep the strait open. None of them, of course, are biting. The trip to China has been postponed. This, of course, has to do with some other things as well. Basically, I think Trump has realized there’s nothing he can bring back from Beijing that he can wave around and say, “Look, I won this wonderful victory in Beijing.” That’s not happening. It’s clear from the talks that have been taking place in the background. Of course, the Gulf states are questioning the wisdom of their reliance on the United States—what will happen next. And the damage in Israel is considerable, but of course largely undisclosed. So that’ s the broad situation we’re in. What do I make of it? There are many elements to this, but let me just state two or three points. The first is that the very fact that this enterprise—this is a very serious enterprise, by the way—the United States, successive U.S. governments, have been slavering over attacking Iran for a long time, but they haven’t done it, for good reasons. -- 3 of 19 -- And Trump has sort of, you know, thrown the United States into this situation with barely a thought, which is why the goalposts keep shifting. One day it’s about changing the regime, another day it’s about Iran’s nuclear weapons, the third day it’s about missiles and what have you. And of course, now it’s about the Strait of Hormuz. So these shifting goalposts, to me, tell a much more interesting story than Trump’s inconsistency or his deliberate unpredictability—the idea that somehow Trump likes to be unpredictable so that he’ll keep his opponents off balance—or even the conflicting aims of different parts of the Trump administration, or Trump’s own psychological problems, which I’m sure are numerous. So it’s not about Trump himself—the deeper problem, out of which these inconsistencies and changes of direction emerge, is structural. Trump basically has not, and cannot, keep the promises on which he was elected. And since he cannot keep those promises, his numbers have been declining since a month or two into the beginning of his administration. Since late last year, he’s been seeking some kind of spectacular success to boost his numbers, which is why we saw all those shenanigans around Venezuela, Greenland, whatever happened at Davos and Munich, and so on. But despite all these efforts, such a success has eluded him, and his numbers have not improved. They keep going down, and such success will keep eluding him. By the way, Venezuela was not a success—we can discuss that later if you want. No matter what he stakes in this process, he’s kind of throwing everything in. He’s wagering more and more in his desperate attempt to achieve that success. The reason this is happening is that, basically, Trump—at one level, of course—portrayed himself as very different from Biden. The main difference lies in what he promised in order to win the election. But what Trump actually does in office isn’t much different from Biden, in the sense that he serves the same corporate ruling class. The only difference is that the corporate ruling class he serves includes many more maverick elements than was the case with the Biden administration. I think this is part of a larger syndrome— the deterioration of leadership in the United States and the West. Basically, you know, I mean, what are you doing? That’s what brings to the fore leaders like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Donald Trump, Kaja Kallas. I mean, this is all a bit crazy. To me—and this, of course, today—cannot be talked about without mentioning the Epstein situation, the whole phenomenon, etc. I believe the Iranian government has been at the forefront of basically saying, you know, this is our war against the Epstein class, right? #Pascal Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mahmoud Marandi uses that phrase a lot—the Epstein class, the Epstein class. Although I... It’s an interesting term because it’s basically a proxy for the moneyed, ruling, capitalist class, but with an even darker spin, right? Hey, very brief intermission: I was recently banned from -- 4 of 19 -- YouTube, and although I’m back, this could happen again anytime. So please consider subscribing not only here but also to my mailing list on Substack—that’s pascallottaz.substack.com. The link’s going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. #Radhika Desai Well, you know, the term “capitalist class” itself is kind of—well, I want to say a couple of things. You’re so right about this. Number one, I read that—I myself said that, you know, Professor Marandi, in my interview with him, I said, “Professor Marandi, you’ve been the person, and I thank you for this, who helped popularize the term ‘Epstein class,’ because it’s so important.” Not “appropriate,” right?—to describe this. But I’ve since read that this is actually part of the discourse of the Iranian government as a whole, and I found that out more r