Live! Imperial End Times: The Geopolitics of Class War in a Post-American World | Ep. 303

About this episode

Dr. Van Jackson discusses the implications of a declining American hegemony and the rise of multipolarity in global geopolitics.

This episode is a live public lecture to the New Zealand Fabian Society in Wellington. Our governments are clinging to outdated mental maps of the world—maps that obscure the pain and profit associated with their foreign-policy choices. In this public talk, Dr. Van Jackson diagnoses our moment of global “polycrisis” as a crisis of capitalism anchored to a single declining hegemon. The United States has repudiated its former global role; the world is becoming more multipolar; and prolonged economic stagnation is plaguing the global North and South to varying degrees. These forces are propelling modern national states toward “primitive accumulation”—using state power to hoard both wealth and security at the expense of the working classes. Linking America’s permanent war economy to the rentier economies of wealthy nations like New Zealand, Jackson argues that imperialist statecraft is becoming a more common mode of geopolitics—a mode that benefits oligarchs and turns the institutions of “national security” against us all. Refusing this dystopian trajectory means struggling to retain our shared humanity and construct a global order without empire.

People in this episode

Host: Van Jackson

Topics covered

• geopolitics
• class war
• capitalism
• imperialism
• multipolar world
• national security
• economic stagnation

Keywords

• polycrisis
• primitive accumulation
• foreign policy
• national states
• war economy
• oligarchs
• shared humanity

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: New Zealand Fabian Society

Places: New Zealand, Wellington, United States, global North, global South

More episodes of The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

• Who Should Run Democratic Party Foreign Policy? Not the Genocide Squad! With Harrison Mann | Ep. 306 · June 12, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Anti-Tech Extremism, or Populism? | China-Data Center Conspiracy Theory | New Zealand’s Military Trap | Bernie’s A.I. Proposal | Hegseth’s Shangri-La Primacy Fantasy | Ep. 305 · June 5, 2026 · 45 min
• Comedians Against Nuclear War, War Crimes, and Wars on Democracy, w/ Orli Matlow and William Hartung | Ep. 304 · May 29, 2026 · 1h 7m
• China Summit Realism | Graham Platner Defines the Working Class | Gorka's Counter-Terrorism Anxiety | Ep. 302 · May 15, 2026 · 45 min
• A Non-Aligned Global Order and the Post-American World, w/ Nils Gilman | Ep. 301 · May 8, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Imperialist Worldmaking | Graham Platner’s Victory | Israeli Piracy | China Threat Decline | Rubio’s Panama Problem | Ep. 300 · May 1, 2026 · 30 min