Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Afshin Ritantian. You're watching New Order broadcasting worldwide on RT International, including to an audience of around one and a half billion. On RT India, we examine how global power is being rewritten and how India and its partners are shaping what comes next.
Ankara just hosted NATO's most openly dysfunctional summit in years. Not about the genocides they are arming in Gaza and Lebanon. Not about their use of Ukrainian cannon fodder under their proxy dictator Zelensky. Nor about their leader, Donald Trump, kidnapping a Global south leader. They were bickering over who pays for their crimes. For Trump, European failing economies should have shared the burden of his catastrophic defeat against Iran. Brown University put the cost to the US taxpayer for his killing at a number approaching $100 billion, including increased energy costs to America's working classes. And those costs aren't going away as Iran honors the slain Ayatollah while Modi Southeast Asia. Pakistan's Prime Minister Sharif spent the week in Tehran for Khamenei's funeral, then flew to Istanbul for talks with Erdogan before the Turkish leader hosted NATO. But given the year began with Trump's kidnapping of the leader of the country with the largest known oil reserves, Venezuela, how wary must all Global south leaders be of Washington's hitmen ahead of the upcoming BRICS summit in Delhi? At the end of the show, we'll be joined by New Order's Zahra Khan to answer questions from you, the viewers. But now I'm joined by my guest who has spent 50 years revealing to the world the disgusting ways economic hitmen are deployed by the IMF and World bank to suppress all that is human in the Global South. His next book is the Art of the Steel. Trump and the Economic Hitman Presidency. John Perkins, welcome to New Order. So good to see you, John. Let's just begin, actually, with that upcoming book. People can pre order it, I understand it, the Art of the Steel, how it'll inform the reader and the public at large about the playbook the United States uses to damage the Global South.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thank you.
This is a playbook that I helped to develop as an economic hitman, and it's one that US Presidents have used throughout my lifetime. But this President Trump is the first to actually be an economic hitman. He's taken this to whole new levels. And I think the good news about that is that he has exposed this whole system. So he's brought something out into the open that has been kept hidden up until now, pretty much including the incredible corruption that goes on at high levels of our government. I mean, actually, I don't think we've ever had any corruption quite like Trump's, but he's really brought it out into the open. He doesn't make any bones about the fact that he just made over $2 billion as president this past year, over $1 billion on cryptocurrency. Not the kind of bitcoin type of thing that's somewhat. That's leg, but ones that are obviously just pure corruption. Bribery for him, forcing diplomats to stay in his hotels at prime cost and so on and so forth.
It's rather outrageous. And yet at the same time, as I said, I think it's waking America up to seeing ourselves the way much of the rest of the world has seen us for some time.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's even before the World Cup. But isn't that the point? Previous presidencies have been similar hitmen against countries of the global South. And the wonderful thing about Trump is that he is exposing it. And in fact, is that why so called mainstream media in NATO nations are despairing of the Trump presidency? Because he is revealing it all. It's a bit like your book, but watching the book being acted out in public.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's certainly true. But on the other hand, it's being done on a level that just has never been done before. I think presidents respected the idea of the balance of power. At least they pretended to respect it. If they really didn't, I don't know. But we don't have a balance of power anymore. Trump has the Congress, the legislative in his hands, and he has the judiciary in his hands as well as the executive. So he's got the three pillars of what's considered to be the US Democracy, Republic in his hands. And that's a first, as far as I know. Certainly a first since World War II, you know, and not only does he break the rules, as he did with the, as you mentioned, the World cup, but he also breaks tradition, as he did with the World cup, constantly defying things that have been defining factors in the US Presidency up until now.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: But do you think, I mean, he canceled usaid a lot of it, of course, right at the beginning, some of it. I think your book on economic hitman, your first bestseller, showed how U.S.
and programs like that were used as hitmen. And he's actually pressuring Britain and the European Union more arguably, as we saw at last week's NATO summit, to divert their resources to the military. So is his presidency been relatively good for the developing world in Comparison to previous presidents, apart from, of course, the war in West Asia. I mean, I have to ignore that for a second. There is a war raging, of course, here in the Gulf in West Asia.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Well. And apart from the fact that the whole world, especially the developing world, is suffering from the loss of oil, from the. From the restrictions that have been caused by the war with Iran.
But, you know, it's an interesting point that you make, because I've strongly opposed aspects of US Foreign aid in the past, and I've done that from the standpoint of the developing countries that have been exploited through these economic hitman policies. But as far as, if you look at it from the United States standpoint, from the idea of making America great again, getting rid of foreign aid, getting rid of USAID and causing this rift with NATO is extremely detrimental.
Purely from a US Standpoint, as an
[00:06:29] Speaker A: imperialist power, you're turning into an imperialist, clearly. John, do you want the soft powers?
[00:06:36] Speaker B: I don't.
I don't.
I think this is a good thing. The direction we're moving in. We're creating a multipolar world rather than a union polar world. And I think that's healthy for the world. But what I'm saying is that if you're a staunch populist in this country and you believe that America has to go first, as Trump does, as he states, says he does, and as his mega followers want him to do, then getting rid of USAID and foreign aid and causing a rift within NATO is not doing that. It's doing exactly the opposite. And again, from another perspective, that's a very good thing.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: The contradiction within itself, of course. Obviously, he really showed the world what economic and, I don't know, sociological hitmen can do. When he kidnapped Maduro and Celia Flores, the first lady of Venezuela, do you think that was a sign that ultimately, you know, the new era is not just sanctions propaganda, it is literally kidnapping leaders of countries, Although I think you've delineated before where they've more or less done that. I mean, Obama arguably did it with Harris Deed in Haiti.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. But again, not on this level. And, yeah, so Trump has shown himself not just to be an economic hitman, but also to be the jackal. You know, I talk about how when economic hitmen fail during my time, we send in the jackals, CIA operatives to overthrow presidents or assassinate them. And so he's playing the role of both of these. Now, what he did in Venezuela is particularly fascinating because he didn't take out the leadership of Venezuela. He didn't Reinstate the person that he'd always claimed was legitimately elected. He kept the old administration in there, the followers of Maduro. He took out Maduro, but he didn't take on anybody else. And then he's riding on this wave of adrenaline, I've got to believe. And that's when he goes after Iran and considers that, well, Iran's going to be just the same as Venezuela. I can just go in and take out the leader and take over Iran. He didn't count on the fact that Iran is strategically extremely important to the world because of the Strait of Hormuz.
Venezuela has nothing like that. And, you know, I'll have to say, back in the 70s, I was part of the development of the military establishments along the Strait of Hormuz in Bandar Abbas. And on the Iranian side, you were
[00:09:09] Speaker A: actually in Bandar Abbas working under the US UK armed dictator, the Shah, in Bandarabas, which was bombed in the past few days.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: I spent a lot of time in Bandara Bas. It was one of the hottest places I'd ever been. It was just a tiny fishing village with one good hotel, and we were in the process of developing it into a giant military base. My company was in charge of many aspects of the electrification of that area. Yeah, I was there.
The United States has known for 50 years, the CIA has known, the Pentagon has known, the House has known, that whoever controls those military bases controls the world's oil supply, at least about a very large percentage of the world's oil supply. We've known that. How would a president of the United States do what he did?
Think that taking out the Supreme Leader in a country that has a long history of being able to replace leaders that have been taken out, how would he think that that would be an effective move as long as Iran continued to control the Strait of Hormuz?
It's mysterious. That's all I can say. It's typical Trump. It's shooting from the hip. It's feeling that he can apply to Iran the supposed success he had in Venezuela, which was a total, terrible misjudgment.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, hundreds of millions have been affected in, say, India because of fuel shortages, billions all around the world because of the inflation spikes caused.
But of course, it's not just Trump, it's his entire cabinet. I mean, what you're suggesting, they might have lost the CIA file. John Ratcliffe has lost the file. It is a System on its 250th anniversary of its independence that allowed for one estimate, is $100 billion if you count all the extra that American households have to pay in fuel costs that allowed for this.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that is the problem. And that's why my book, as I say, although Trump's name is in the subtit Trump and the Economic Hitman Presidency and his name appears on almost every page, the book really isn't about Trump. Trump is symbolic of a system that's been failing for some time and in fact of a system of overall system of the balance of powers that had a major flaw in it that we haven't recognized until now. So he's brought all this out into the open and at the same time he's done a just a terrible job of creating horrible situations in the United States and around the world.
I think this presidency in history is something far more than a footnote.
It's an inflection point. We around the world are having to change the way that we look at the world and the way we look at the United States.
And I think that's a very interesting point and it's an interesting point for India because Modi certainly looks at this as not being, being a world that's ruled by one power. He sees this as a multi ruled world, multipolar world where you've got many powers. And he sees India as being one of the strategic powers along with China, the United States and perhaps Russia.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: But should he feel threatened and will the hitmen go for India next? I mean, they threaten sanctions against India for importing Russian energy, but there's been no violence so far. I know a US Sponsored Al Qaeda in India as far as I know.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I think anybody should feel threatened by Trump who's irrational.
But as the supreme leader of North Korea said, thank God we've got nuclear weapons because that's kept Trump from doing to us what he did in Iran. And what's happened in Iran is going to encourage countries to get stronger with their nuclear deterrence. I think because it a certain protection and I think that's a terrible, terrible shame. We should be working to get rid of nuclear weapons, not encouraging people to have them.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: John Bergens will continue after the break. Keep watching New Order.
You're watching New Order.
John, you were talking about how the dangers provoked by Donald Trump mean that powers are gonna feel they need nuclear weapons to save themselves before the Trump presidency. I suppose based on your book on economic hitmen, one might think you could look at a table of indebted nations to the IMF and say these are the ones that are most vassal. Like perhaps how important do you think it was that India paid off its IMF to?
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Extremely important.
In the Art of the Steel book, I write about the four pillars of the economic hitman presidency. They are fear, debt, anxiety over scarcity, and divide and conquer. And the fear one is always there these days, especially. Trump has really instituted that. But debt is also huge. And when a country is indebted to another country, the other country has tremendous power over them. That's the whole economic hitman premise, the debt trap. And so I think that was a very, very wise decision on the part of India. Get rid of that debt and stay out of it. Don't get back into it.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Ukraine owes at least 14.3 billion. So clearly, whatever one thinks of the war, Ukraine is now bound up in the United States Federal Reserve somehow.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's something that most Americans don't realize. Oh, we're giving Ukraine all this money. We're giving them all these weap.
People don't realize that we're not giving them all of that by any means.
We're putting them deep into debt. They become extremely dependent on us. And that's a ploy that's always been used by imperialist powers for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, put countries into debt. And it's not just monetary debt. It's that you owe me for my support. You owe me for standing behind you. You owe me personal loyalty. And Trump has a long history of that during his time as a real estate mogul in New York and elsewhere.
This whole idea, the Godfather idea, you owe me. I did you a favor, now you hold me back. And so that's part of this debt thing, too.
And so Modi has pretty much avoided that, for which I think was very, very wise on his part. And Ukraine, on the other hand, has stepped deeply into it. I'm not sure that Zelenskyy had many options, but certainly he has put his country into a very, very difficult, very, very dependent situation. Modi, on the other hand, I think, looks at wanting to keep India as very independent, a partner. A partner, or at least, yeah, I guess a trading partner with both the United States and China. And to stay on the good side of Russia, too, was a very smart move. Don't be beholden to anybody.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Do you think you can identify how? I mean, in your day, the hitman would go in, meet up with government officials in dark bars and cafes, and talk about investing in their country.
Under the guise of investing in the country, they would exert power. Do you think those days are over to a certain extent, or they're still happening right now as I'm interviewing you in Global South. Countries that want to align themselves with BRICs.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Well, I think that's absolutely still going on. I think Trump is helping the economic hitmen of China, for one, and perhaps of India, too. I'm not as familiar with that. I taught at a business school in China, and I realized when I first got there that these students who are Chinese wanted to learn from my mistakes and my successes so they wouldn't make the mistakes and have the successes. China's economic hitmen have done an amazing job.
You know, in the year 2000, the United States was the number one trading partner with 80% of the world's countries.
Today, it's China. China's over 70% of the world's countries.
And that's partly due to China's very good economic hitman.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Except China was saying they don't go around assassinating leaders and fomenting coups.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Well, that's. That's the jackals. So you don't need the jackals if the hitmen are really.
You don't need the jackals. But China has something more than just good hitmen. It's also got the resentment of the United States in so many parts of the world for the things that we did in my time as an economic hitman and have continued to do. The resentment and the resentment of having foreign troops on your soil. You know, the United States has military bases in over 100 countries. China does not. Italy, it has a few and has a couple in Africa, has resupply bases. It's got some other sort of semi military bases, but not to the extent that the U.S.
has. And that causes tremendous resentment. It's one of the reasons we fought the Revolutionary War here in the United States against England. We resented their troops being on our soil.
So the US has made many mistakes since World War II when we came out looking like heroes.
But we've really, really made the big mistakes in the last 10 years or the last 12 years. The first Trump administration, and particularly in this current Trump administration.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Still 800 military bases all around the world. But do you think China offers hope in the sense it could be a cornerstone of any new BRICS currency? And in a sense, what neutralizes the jackals that you spoke of in your bestselling book is the de dollarization of the global South. No longer could jackals go into those countries if they're part of the federal U.S. federal Reserve System.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: I just came back from Latin America, and in the last year, I've spoken at events in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle east and the United States. I travel a lot and everywhere I go I hear people, people really questioning the United States and the dollar and the whole idea of our Federal Reserve System and whether China's in an awkward position as far as replacing the dollar because we owe China a lot of money in dollars.
And if the dollar devalues too much, China loses money. So it's an interesting situation.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Slowly reducing the bond debt in France.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: This, it's doing that. And I think over time the dollar is going to be replaced.
A couple of hallmarks of a true global empire.
Three of them are their currency is the world currency. Well, that's the dollar. And as that goes down, so does the US Influence around the world. Another one is US Military power. And that's being strongly questioned, I think, because it doesn't win wars anymore. The U.S. hasn't won a war since World War II.
And the third one is the language. And English is the language of diplomacy and business to a large degree. Those are three cornerstones of what it means to be a global empire. And we're beginning to fade on all of them, except perhaps English, which still seems to be something that everyone around the world wants to learn.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Yeah, they have the language. But then how does an empire that sees the. That, how does it react?
And can we expect ever more extreme violence? Not the individualized assassinations and coup d' etats and the machinations that you've described so well in your work.
Do we expect much bigger conflagrations and the use of much more powerful weapons?
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Well, historically you can see that when empires start to decline, they get desperate and they often increase violence and warfare. And to a lot degree, that depends on the leadership. I think as long as Trump's in power, there will be that and at least there'll be the threat of that. It's conceivable that another president would come along and change that and understand that that's not accomplishing what America wants to accomplish. That's not serving our best interest, because it isn't.
It's bankrupting because for one thing, it's causing tremendous divisions around the world. It's causing a lot of hatred.
But it is typical of what emperors do when they feel desperate. And Trump, he idolizes the emperor. Approach the king. I am the savior.
Everybody in the world's in trouble. The United States is in trouble and I am the only one who can save you. I'm the savior. I'm the king. That's typical of empires when one collapses, the emperor goes to war.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: So just finally, how urgent will be the need for an actual concrete initiative from the BRICS summit in Delhi in September that will help to at least mitigate against Trump's antics?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's the trillion dollar question.
And what role will Modi play? What role will India play? I hope that India will assume a stronger leadership role as a sort of a leader in an independence movement that doesn't align with any of these powers, but uses them all to its benefit.
Unity is the strongest thing people have. That's why divide and conquer is one of those four pillars of the economic hitman strategy. People who are divided are easily exploited. People who unite in certain alliances are very strong. And so if the developing world, if you want to call it, or
[00:23:52] Speaker C: the
[00:23:53] Speaker B: non aligned world can continue to be aligned from an economic standpoint and from a point of determination not to give in to either of the other world powers, or maybe there's three if you include Russia. It's a little iffy, but I think for the non aligned world to really be not aligned with those powers, but at the same time to be aligned with each other in terms of support each other and keeping their independence and not taking on a lot of debt, not succumbing to the threats that are fearful to the threats of violence, not succumbing to the idea that they're terribly poor, that they don't have intelligence, they don't have education, they don't have health. That's the anxiety over scarcity.
Trump says whole countries, I mean, that's terrible. But what that does is it tells the country, oh, well, well, we've got to then buy into your model and take money from you, take loans from you. Don't buy into that and don't buy into the divide and conquer aspect. Don't allow yourselves to get divided.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: John Perkins, thank you.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: My pleasure. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: And now I'm joined by Zahra Khan with some of your questions. Are always great to get the economic hitman himself, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman Man.
[00:25:20] Speaker C: It was fascinating hearing what he had to say. But let's get some questions out. Teller Hart has asked what big strategic risk does India face over the next decade that the public just isn't paying enough attention to?
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Well, from what John Perkins was saying, it could be increased violence from the United States. I kind of mentioned there that they do. The United States is famous for sponsoring Al Qaeda, supporting the mujahideen in Afghanistan, crypto Islamic groups that aren't really Islamic to cause tension. But I was thinking climate change, asteroids, perhaps that could be something facing India, solar flares, let alone this US Proxy attack. But actually, it's probably water. And probably the Indian government has to realize 18% of the world's population, 4% of the water resources. So water clearly the most strategic risk facing India that people aren't really talking about. Are they in India?
[00:26:15] Speaker C: I mean, the data centers are a big conversation right now. But moving on, Bob has asked, why did Iran sign the MOU when all the evidence proved us is totally untrustworthy?
[00:26:25] Speaker A: That's what a lot of Iranians seem to be saying on the streets. Media interviewing people who are mourning at the largest funeral in history in Tehran appeared to be saying they were interviewing people on the street. They just said, why have they signed the mou? Well, it's clearly not because they're gullible, but it's because they're buying time.
And they're buying time because, as certain Iranian officials are saying, saying try on with the ground troops. The Iranian active duty military forces comprise 610,000.
There's about a million active in reserves. That's three and a half times peak Iraq war troop deployments by the United States and its coalition of the willing, five times the ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The Iranian army and the military are waiting for Trump to commit the classic mistake of sending in US Soldiers into Iran. The MOU gives that time for Trump to realize, to decide on whether he's going to send them.
[00:27:26] Speaker C: And speaking of some of the other players in the multipolar world, AB has asked, do the US And Europe think India is the best alternative to China?
[00:27:33] Speaker A: You know, I don't think India is an alternative to China specifically because China and India are so interlocked.
India's biggest trading partner, India, is China overtaking the United States now $151 billion and let alone the fact that NATO needs Chinese rare earths for its missiles and military equipment. So Europe and the United States need China. And arguably with China comes India. They also need India.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Thank you for those answers. We'll pick this back up next week.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Thank you, Zahra Khan. And before we wrap, here's a question for you to answer. What should replace the dollar as the world's most trusted currency? If anything, send us your answer on Xewaudert.
And we'll be back next Sunday tracking how global power is being reshaped in real time and what it means for India's position in this new order.
