Multipolarity

After weeks of Iran drumbeats - time for something a bit different.
George Yeo is the former Foreign Minister of Singapore
Educated at University of Cambridge and later at Harvard Business School, he's a former Brigadier-General in the nation's Air Force, and one of its most distinctive strategic thinkers - a man whose career tracks the rise of modern Asia itself.
Yeo served in government for over two decades, holding key portfolios including Trade and Industry.
As Singapore’s Foreign Minister from 2004 to 2011, he played a central role in shaping the country’s global posture.
Since leaving frontline politics, Yeo has become a widely followed voice on geopolitics, civilisational identity, and the shifting balance of power in Asia.
We wanted to ask him about the view from Singapore.
Singaporean diplomats are renowned for their coolheaded, realist approach. They are highly skilled - and they have to be.
A unique fragment of the complex geometry of South East Asia, Singapore has to balance its warm relations with the West, its unmatched status as a trading hub, and the rise of the Goliath on its doorstep - China.

The hot question this summer: Can you bring your own jerry can of diesel onto an EasyJet?
As all the major airlines begin to cancel flights, bump surcharges, and post losses, the looming fuel crisis is finally hitting landfall - in the skies.
Meanwhile, Hungary’s Prime Minister elect, Péter Magyar, has decided he wants to unilaterally remove the country’s President and the head of the Constitutional Court. Another win for Democracy and the Rule of Law.
As his administration takes flesh, Magyar has declared that he will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu – last seen touring Budapest in May – the next time he enters the country. The International Criminal Court wants a word with BiBi, and the new regime is keen to be seen as a responsible global citizen.
But what Magyar doesn’t seem to know is that this is an EU stalking horse for pulling him back into line, by linking it with another man with a price on his head – Vladimir Putin.
Finally, the bot singularity is coming for the markets. Turns out it’s not just journalists and email jobbers who are quietly outsourcing their work to LLMs. Market traders are increasingly sloppi
ng out on the S&P. For now, this is about capturing delta. But what happens when everyone on the internet is a dog?

Trump blockades a blockade.
The world holds its breath: will the Iranians blockade the blockade of the blockade?
Are we destined for battleship Tetris piling up in the Gulf?
Or is this just one more instance of the real war being the PR one?
Then, with his Fidesz party reduced to a rump, what happens when the lynchpin of anti-Brussels energy falls out?
The EU threw everything at Orbán, and it has paid off handsomely.
Ursula von der Leyen clearly had her speech about moving to qualified majority voting written before the polls closed.
Beyond a cost of living election in a landlocked medium-sized country, this is a story about the future of the EU. Apres Viktor, le deluge…
IMPORTANT A Note on Substack
You might already know that we have a Substack, and we’re growing it. (multipolaritypod.substack.com)
We’ve run into a small issue, in that lately, a few people have been signing up on Substack, with the intent of getting the premium episodes of the podcast - which have so far been exclusive to Patreon.
So we’ve decided to take the premium podcast to Substack, and bundle it with a new range of articles we’re in the process of producing.
The deal is this -
The Substack will be $12 a month - that will get you the podcast and then various paywalled articles on top.
We’re not paywalling the Substack yet - all the pieces you can presently read are free of charge - but we have plans to start gating the odd piece. And as we said, we will gate the premium podcast on Substack.
Of course, if you’re an existing subscriber, you can do whatever you like - Patreon, or Substack. The one gives you the pod only. The other will give you both. Obviously, your price won’t change unless you change platforms. So there’s no need to do anything.

Annihilation - no more.
On Tuesday, the world was saved at five minutes to midnight.
For the next two weeks, at least…
But while the power plants are safe for now, the tragi-comic spectacle conflict in Iran has poked bigger holes in the global defence-industrial system.
No one knows this better than Malcom Kyeyune, the Mad Mullah of Malmö, who is back on the pod to take a victory lap, after predicting much of what was to come in the first week of the war.
This comes fresh on the back of his new essay in UnHerd - https://unherd.com/2026/04/the-twilight-of-americas-sky-knights/ - where he compares the US dilemma with the strategy of the Hussites in the earliest Reformation wars.

1973.
Beyond the war, we’re hacking into the coming implications of the major energy crisis that’s brewing - as the last tankers to leave the Gulf trundle into the ports of Europe.
From Volkswagen to venture capital, we’ll be charting what life looks like with oil at 150 or 200 dollars a barrel.
Energy lockdowns. Rationing. Bond crises.
All of these are being whispered in the press right now. As much as our leaders dare.
But this is still the Ardennes Forest in spring 1940. Eerily quiet.
Soon enough, the flamethrowers will burn through the Old Continent, and then begin to ricochet back onto America itself.
Will this break up the order we once took for granted?
Are we at the end of the US consumption model of economics?
Will resource rich Canada end up speared by its bigger brother?
We’ll be taking a grand view from the sidelines, as we start to figure out how to live through the latest version of the polycrisis - after 2008, after Covid, after Ukraine - this is the next major re-shaping of the world we live in.
Of course, this is a premium Multipolarity episode - so you’ll have to be on the Patreon list if you want to listen to the full episode. That’s easily done - simply go to Patreon and sign up. It’s 8 dollars, and you can cancel any time you like….