The multipolar world, according to two Aussie bogans
My interview on the multipolar world with Joel Jenkins of Bogan Intelligentsia
What is the multipolar world, really? It is a question many are asking after the BRICS 2025 Summit in Brazil. Since the USA went 100 per cent gangster mode, many around the world have started to think the multipolar world might be worth a crack. Even in the ultra-loyalist American imperial outpost of Australia.
This week I had an in-depth, wide-ranging conversation with
of about these issues.1We covered a lot of ground. Multipolarism, World Order, world history, Greater Europe, Australia, Russia, India, Pakistan, West Asia, Indonesia, the United Nations, and even the crazed oligarch, Peter Thiel. Joel also taught me a thing or two about that shady organisation, the CIA.
Watch the full interview - Bogan Intelligentsia Ep. 12: Jeff Rich on Multipolarism and Australia’s role within a changing world - here:
And make sure you subscribe to Joel Jenkins’s Youtube channel and substack. He has done some other great interviews with other members of the dissident Australian bogan intelligentsia.
Since the interview goes for 100 minutes, I decided to make it my principal content for readers this week. I also had a lot of technical, practical obstacles this week, including a complete all-day power outage in the middle of the week.
So, I am holding over my planned post of Week 2 of the India World Power World History Tour this week, with our guide, Joya Chatterji, Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century. It will focus on the 1947 Partition and its consequences for how India constructed the ideas of its nation.
The post is timely given in May 2025 India and Pakistan fought a short war, instigated by the Pahalgam terror attack in the Jammu-Kashmir area. This war has its origins not in “ancient hatreds” going back a thousand years, as the USA President reported. Its immediate cause was a response to terrorism. The deeper roots were the Partition of 1947 and the paths of nation-building taken since by India, Pakistan, and, in 1971, the former East Pakistan, Bangladesh.
During the interview, Joel and I discussed this complex situation in South Asia, involving conflicts between India, Pakistan, China and the USA (four nuclear powers) as one of the neglected flashpoints as the multipolar world struggles to be born.
I also shared my thoughts of how Australia could follow India’s model of multi-alignment in diplomacy, defence and foreign policy. In some ways India’s rise to global influence is a great opportunity for Australia. If the USA can tolerate a multi-aligned India of 1.4 billion people, surely the USA can cope with a multi-aligned Australia of 25 million friendly bogan people.
Readers might like to check my early piece on Substack on this issue here:
How Australia could pivot from USA to India
Australia has made headlines around the world, for all the wrong reasons, with its AUKUS deal. The Australian Government agreed to pay $368B for some hand-me-down American submarines in the 2030’s, and for joint operation with the British of more nuclear submarines in the late 2040’s. All of this money sent to Anglo-American military contractors is to protect our trade routes with China…. from China. And America gets to station nuclear submarines in Perth in time for its planned war with Taiwan in 2025 or 2027. What?
In the article I wrote that Australia should advocate for India’s membership of the United Nations Security Council.
India has a clear objective to join this Council as a permanent member. I would propose that Australia propose India become a permanent member, and also propose the withdrawal of Britain and France from the Security Council. So long as NATO exists in its current form, only a single NATO power should be on the Security Council. Perhaps only a genuinely neutral power, such as Austria or Switzerland or a future neutral Germany, should represent Europe on the UN Security Council. Major states from Africa, South/Central America, and the Muslim world (potentially Indonesia) should also join as permanent members.
I also discussed the need to get the United Nations back on track with Joel. India scored another diplomatic victory towards that end with the BRICS Summit declaration supporting these reforms to the Security Council. Until now, China, as India’s rival for leadership of Asia and the Global South, has resisted this explicit support for Indian membership.
My post, “How Australia could pivot from the USA to India: a modest 10 year peace proposal” is from March 2023. But I think this week has shown it to be prescient. It only has a 100-odd views. Give it a read and a share.
Other Content Catch-up
You might also want to catch up on my other content over the last week.
I did my first livestream on Substack reviewing the Slow Read of the Books of Jacob
Thanks for all the comments on the Slow Read. I will be catching up and replying to them over the next couple of days.
I completed my YouTube Video series on the Rise and Fall of Empires 1400 to 2000 with the final chapter on the post-1945 world, Historian REVEALS the Surprising Real History of the Post-1945 World
I did a commentary video outlining the nature and the madness of American ‘grand strategy’ in foreign policy, The USA's MAD, FAILING 7-point plan to dominate the world
I did a preview and promo video for my interview with
from Bogan Intelligentsia on the Youtube channel, playfully named, in service of the YouTube algorithm, The MUST-WATCH, definitive interview on the MULTIPOLAR world, I guess
During the interview with Joel, I referred to my book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing. I actually dipped into the book myself this week to remind myself of how I told the story of leaving the “maze of power.” Towards the end of the book, I wrote:
“The maze had dissipated, and I could see the open field in the distance, and how easy it was to leave the underworld.”
The metaphor struck me as relevant to how we all adapt to the multipolar world. The mists are clearing. The obstacles we feared are not there. We can leave the hell of the world being dominated by one country.
You can buy Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing
Many thanks to all my subscribers, paid and unpaid, for supporting me in this fantastic journey through history. I hope it helps you to live in tune with a changing world. Please consider upgrading your subscription to get more from my guides, deep dives, and slow reads.
For international readers, in Australian and New Zealand slang, a "bogan" refers to someone considered unrefined, unsophisticated, or uncouth in their speech, clothing, behaviour, or attitudes. The term can be used in a derogatory way or, in some contexts, humorously and self-deprecatingly. It often reflects stereotypes about class and social status. Like some former insults, it is worn by colonials as a badge of pride.