The Duran Podcast - Demand Destruction: The Real Energy Crisis Hitting Europe and Japan

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

Demand Destruction: The Real Energy Crisis Hitting Europe and Japan

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the energy situation in the world, which is being impacted by the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is putting out statements saying that Hormuz will not reopen until the United States ends of the war and accepts the terms that Iran has put out there, harder terms than what they originally had, say, a couple of months ago. terms that the United States will not be able to accept. And the United States is putting out statements saying that they can keep the blockade of Iran going on indefinitely. And this is having a big effect on the energy and the oil situation around the world. We are getting reports which are claiming that the shortages are indeed real. and they're going to have a severe impact on global economies in the next month or so. What are your thoughts?

Well, first of all, I should say I agree with that. And I would also quickly add that this vindicates our analysis going all the way back to the start of this conflict in February. We've always been skeptical about negotiated outcomes to this conflict. we always assumed that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed at some point during this conflict. And we've always been skeptical that until this conflict ends and properly ends, I mean, you know, that the Iranians would resist all attempts to get it reopened. Because at the moment, it is what provides them with leverage. It may not be, as we've discussed in various programs,

in their long-term interests to keep the Strait of Hormuz. closed, but at the moment, at this point in time, the arguments for them to keep it closed are compelling. Now, that means that people do need to start acknowledging and accepting and making decisions on the basis that for the next months, way into the autumn and the winter, the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain shut, and the supply of energy into the global economy is going to continue to fall. And on top of all of that, we now have lots of other problems in the energy system beginning to appear as well. And we get reports that the United States has resumed drawing down on its oil reserves. I've heard a report that the United States has now gone below the limit when we were being told just a few weeks ago that if they went below that limit,

the integrity of the caverns in which the oil is held would start to be undermined, but the United States has gone below that. and there are accumulating reports of major shortages in Europe of natural gas. The natural gas reserves are now becoming critically low. I wanted to avoid saying that up to now because it seemed to me that until a few weeks ago, there was time and space to buy liquefied natural gas to build up the reserve. but that hasn't been happening. LNG instead has been flowing to Asia, not to Europe. According to some reports,

Germany's natural gas reserves are at only 50% of the level that you would expect them to be at this time of year, at least, or maybe 50% full, where you would expect them to be around 70% to 80% full at this time of year to prepare for the winter. and it seems that demand for gas in the United States is growing, partly, but not exclusively, because the data centres that are opening all over the United States, the energy that they're relying upon ultimately comes from gas.

So gas use in the United States is growing. and well there's less natural gas around of course pipeline gas from Russia isn't flowing to Europe anymore the Europeans have told each other that they should stop buying LNG from Russia so that is coming to an end and to compound everything else there are now growing shortages of diesel oil and of aviation fuel as well. And prices for these are apparently now rising. So going back to something that you said in previous programs, we've had this very strange situation where despite the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, prices have never gone, crude oil prices have never gone as high as many people expected. And we've seen prices at the pumps and, you know,

in aviation, not appear to spike in the way that we expected. But everything points increasingly to a big surge in prices in the autumn, especially in Europe, especially also probably in the Far East. governments doing nothing to prepare for that, oblivious to this reality, continuing to pursue the policies that, on the contrary, are more likely than not to make these problems worse. And, well, we'll see where that takes us. Are they oblivious to all of this? I mean, I could see some people in Europe are absolutely oblivious to all of this. this. But there are some people also in Europe and in Asia. I believe you're talking about

Japan, which looks very shaky at the moment. There are definitely people in Japan who understand that the situation is catastrophic. Why are they not doing anything about it? And maybe they're not doing anything about it because it's a controlled type of demolition? I mean, they want I'm trying to figure out why would they want this, but maybe they do want the prices to spike, inflation to skyrocket. They don't get hurt by it, do they? The citizens get hurt by it. But what do they gain by burning everything down?

How will this affect people in Japan? Well, it's going to affect them very, very badly. I mean, we're going to see a major surge, a major rise of the cost of living in Europe, in the autumn and winter. I mean, people's budgets are already strained and they're going to get even more strained. The same presumably is going to turn out to be true in Japan and in some of the other big Asian industrial producers. But the other thing that's going to happen, and it's difficult to see how the, this can now be avoided is that in order to keep supplies, at least of gas and some kinds of fuels are available, well, the only way that that looks likely now is through demand destruction.

In other words, de-industrialization is going to accelerate in Europe and in parts of Asia, because there's no alternative. big factories that depend on energy are going to have to close down because the cost of energy is going to go too high and it will affect their overall competitiveness as it has been doing consistently ever since the energy wars began with the suspension of Nord Stream 2 in February 2020. I mean, the big story of the last five years is of a major war for energy being fought out.

The West has been waging energy wars first and foremost against the Russians, to some extent, as we now see, against the Iranians. And of course, the Russians and the Iranians have responded. And as we also see, at the moment, it is the Western powers, or at least six. some of them, the Europeans and the Japanese, who are becoming most affected. Now, you say is there a plan for demolition here? I can't quite believe it, but there is a theory which I do think might be a little bit more plausible, which is that the surge in energy costs might to some extent be connected with some kind of plan to destabilise the financial systems that are being created through the

bricks mechanisms and first and foremost in China. And there's someone who has been writing about this and doing so in a very intelligent and informed way. And his name is a man called Ryan Perkins, whom I slightly know, I should say. This is very sophisticated to me, and I'm not going to explore it further in this programme. But all I will say is that if that is the strategy, and it's very much linked with the personality of Scott Besson at the Treasury, but if this is indeed the strategy, then it seems to me an extraordinarily reckless strategy, a massive gamble, and one which long before it creates any serious problems in China and in the rest of the Ricks is going to do immense damage to the Western economies, to Europe and to Japan.

And I don't think that this is fully understood by the governments of these countries. Yes, you are absolutely correct. there are posters, there are political advisors, there are people from the energy sector, there are people from the industry sectors who are trying to get governments to understand how dangerous this whole situation is becoming. But it seems to me that the political leaderships in Europe, to a great extent in Britain and in Japan are all trapped within an ideological framework in which they see themselves as in some kind of long-term confrontation with the Russians especially.

And they can't give up on that because giving up on that would be an admission of defeat, which they simply will not do. Yeah, I agree with you. I do think there are people in the collective West in Europe and in Japan who have been told that this is the plan, that they understand that they will have to suffer. Their countries ultimately will have to suffer for the good of empire to take down bricks, to take down China, effectively to take down China in order to preserve the overall empire. And as we've said in many, many videos, there are some elites in Europe and in Japan that understand that and go along with it because at the end of the day, that's what vassals are for. Their job is to preserve the standing of the empire. Is there also a type of wealth transfer in all of this in that you make life so difficult, so expensive, so hard for people that basically the,

Whatever assets they have, whatever wealth they have, whether personal or business, will have to be sold and transferred to a small group of people with money or groups with money. I mean, I'm thinking the case of Greece over the last 15 years since austerity, it was a wealth transfer. I mean, to put it simply, the Greek people suffered greatly. And in order to survive that decade-long austerity crisis, a large portion of the population, had to sell off everything to wealthy foreigners. And it still goes on today, by the way. Absolutely.

Yeah. So could that be part of it as well? Well, quite possibly. I mean, whether or not that is the plan, that is undoubtedly the effect. Wealth is becoming in the West, is becoming. more and more concentrated. I mean, to give one very simple, very obvious example, perhaps the least sinister one. I mean, the rise in energy prices is going to benefit the energy companies and the people who are invested in them. So, I mean, they are doing well out of this,

even if others are not. Now, I'm not, you know, I don't actually think that the energy companies are themselves orchestrating this. I think if we're talking about plans, probably those plans are being made by other people outside the energy industry itself. But there is a massive transfer of wealth and a massive increase in concentration of wealth taking place across the West. of that there is no doubt whatsoever. And of course the confrontation with first and foremost the Russians is accelerating that process. It means the taxes are being increased, spending is being increased, borrowing is being increased in order to provide funds to an ever-shrinking circle of ever-richer people because they are the people who benefit most from this confrontation and who are the people who also, by the way, ultimately play the central role in running the media operations, which constantly call an urge for a continuation of these wars.

So, you know, there is that, there is that too. But, you know, just to say again, if you, if that is your strategy, then it is a profoundly mistaken strategy in historical terms. Because the one thing one can always say about empires is at the moment when they start to collapse is the moment when all the benefits of empire. small, become concentrated in an ever-shinking group. And everybody else feels that they no longer have a stake in it, that all that they get is the burden and none of the benefit.

So that isn't going to preserve the empire in the long term or even the median term. It is likely to trigger its crisis even more, even faster. Now, I just want to say a few things about Japan, because Japan is a very interesting country, not a country about which I've historically been very well informed, at least about its modern history. But we did a program recently with Ray Zuccaro, in which we discussed how the energy prices, the surge in energy prices and energy costs is contributing to the decline. of the yen, which despite Scott Besson's intervention, has resumed, by the way, and the problem that the fall of the yen might potentially cause to the wider global financial

system. Japan is an interesting case study because Japan is very dependent, extremely dependent, on imported energy. The obvious place it should be importing energy from is the big energy producer, which is right on its doorstep, which is Russia. Russia is a major producer of energy in the Far East, in Sahalin, in other Far Eastern regions, in the Arctic. Japan, earlier Japanese prime ministers, like Shinsu Abe, for example, were very, very key to link Japan up with Russia.

And Abe pursued a strong policy of trying to develop good relations with the Russians. I would add that I understand that there is none of the hostility, the public, popular hostility to Russia amongst the Japanese people. that you find amongst some people, amongst much of the populations of Europe. So you would have thought that this was an obvious arrangement for Japan to make. And yet it hasn't happened. And again, it hasn't happened because Japan, a big country, a big economy, an industrial powerhouse, nonetheless, also continues to follow the empire's dictations. if you like. They've imposed sanctions on the Russians. They have reduced significantly the

energy that they purchase. They buy from Russia. They've supported the oil price caps that the Americans under Biden insisted upon. And the result is that instead of gaining access to Russian energy, relations between Japan and Russia have deteriorated. And Putin, who's just been traveling in the Far East, has done a whole speech about this, talking about the way in which relations with Japan have soured incomprehensively to him. And of course, he's now given the Japanese a further signal that Russia is not going to be. changing its policies any time soon, and that it's Japan that needs to rethink its policies, because he's now visited the Kuriil Islands. I believe he's the first Russian leader ever to have

done so. And of course, the Kui-Veylon. I believe Medvedev-D. You're right. You're right. Medvedev-12, you're right. Medvedev-D. That's it. That's it. So, anyway, Putin has gone to the Kouriel islands, again re-emphasizing to the Japanese, that these islands are not for sale. The Japan, that they're Russian, that they have Russian populations, and that they will remain so. And I can't help but think that this is in part intended by Putin as a rebuke to the Japanese, telling them, look, you see where loyalty to the Americans is leading you. Your economy is now under pressure.

Your currency is now under pressure. You could have sorted things out with us, as Shinzo Abe advocated not so long ago, but instead things are getting worse for between us, which ultimately means worse for you. Yeah. Takaichi is turning into a disaster. Well, absolutely. She's looking like she's going to be a complete disaster, yeah. Well, indeed, again, and it's baffling.

I mean, she's taking a very anti-strong anti-Chinese position. But, you know, Abe was also took a strong anti-Chinese position, but he was very, very careful to try to balance that by trying to maintain good relations with the Russians. Takaichi obviously does not have Arbe's skills. Yeah, she's taken a strong anti-everyone except the collective West. She's anti-everybody except the collective West. Exactly.

And it's leading Japan to disaster. That's for sure. They're now saying that they're going to place additional sanctions on Russia because of Putin's visit to the Karel island. Whatever. Yes. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. But by now, it ought to be obvious.

that the biggest losers from the economic wars and they are economic wars are the vassals of the United States. Now the United States also to some extent is affected but nowhere

near the same extent because it is a continental economy so sufficient to a great extent not entirely but to a certain extent in energy and in food, it does not have to trade to the same extent as its facels do. Germany is a trading country. Japan is a trading country.

Both imported energy. So by the way is Britain. And yet they've all sacrificed their economic futures for a strategy that makes absolutely no geopolitical sense for them. Look, if you're the empire, if you're the U.S., the neo-Kan empire faction of the U.S., and you've decided to go down this route, to go down this war in order to preserve the empire, and you're saying, you're saying, look, we need to destroy bricks, we need to destroy China, we have to destroy Russia, Iran, ultimately China is the target.

That's what we're going to do. If that's your goal, your policy, then the strategy makes sense. You put your vassals out in front, right? You put your pawns, you move your pawns first. And the two biggest pawns, or the three biggest pawns, are Germany, the UK and Japan. And you move them out in front and let them get destroyed. And it gives you time and space. And you hope that they do some damage to.

to the countries that you're targeting specifically to Bricks and to China. You know, if you put it in that context, you know, go ahead, Vassals, do your thing. And they do it. And they do it. And they do it. And they do it willingly and in some cases enthusiastically, which is extremely strange. I mean, it is, his historians are going to be baffled. by a lot of this.

Well, what's the dispute with the Corral Islands to end the video there? What is the historical dispute? It goes back even before World War II. After World War II, Yalta, there were agreements made by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. There were treaties that were supposed to be signed in San Francisco. There were Cold War disputes about the treaties. Japan's alignment with the United States, which pissed off the Soviet Union. What's the history behind the Karel Islands, the southern territory according to, the

southern islands according to Russia, four islands is what we're talking about. The southern islands according to Russia, the northern territory, according to Japan. Yes. Well, Japan claims that the Kulil Islands are part of the Japanese chain of islands, and that they're an integral part of Japan. Now, I'm not absolutely, I'm going to get into the details of all of this. All I will say is that both the Russians. Yeah. As to why this dispute exists, because there's never been a real treaty between.

No, there's been no treaty. The Soviet Union in Japan since World War II. No, there's been no treaty. I mean, I should say that control of these territories has swung backwards and forwards between the Russians and the Japanese, between the late 19th century and the middle of the 20th century. As you know, there was the Russo-Japanese, well, first of all, the Russians established a presence in Sahalin and in some of these Kural Islands in the 19th century. Then there was the Russo-Japanese wall. The Japanese were able to push the Russians back. They obtained southern Sahalin and some of these islands, I believe. Then there was the Second World War, which is we also know, Japan lost. The Soviet Union went to war with Japan in the very last

weeks of the Second World War, something which still provokes bitterness in Japan, because Japan and the Soviet Union had a neutrality treaty with each other, just to say. And the Japanese feel that this is a major violation of that treaty by the Soviet Union. We won't get into the politics of this. I think that is, frankly, I mean, it just doesn't look at the realities of what was going on in the late 1940s in 1945. Anyway, the Soviet Union took the whole of Sahalin. It occupied or reacquired the Kouril Islands. Then, after the Second World War and up to the mid-1950s, especially after the death of Joseph Stalin,

there were negotiations between the Soviet Union and Japan to agree a peace treaty. And as part of that peace treaty, the Soviets agreed to give to Japan the two southern Kuril Islands and to keep the two northern ones, and a treaty was agreed and drafted between Japan and the Soviet Union on that basis. The United States, this is the Cold War period, of course, objected and told the Japanese

that they were giving up some of their national territory, and this was wrong. And of course, the United States did not want a peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union. So Japan pulled out of the agreement and the peace treaty between the Soviet Union and Japan was never finalized. And the result was that the Soviets retained the two southern Kuril Islands. And the problem has festered ever since. Now, between the 1950s and today, we are talking about passage of what seven, years, the Russian population of the Kural Islands has increased, but also their strategic importance has increased. Because if you look at a map, you see that the Kural Islands provide an island

barrier protecting a very large, very large body of ocean called the Sea of Ochozsk. The Sea of Ochozsk is where Soviet nuclear submarines conduct their patrols. I mean, the intercontinental ballistic missile submarines, the ones that form part of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. And because the Russians control all of the Kural Islands, that makes it very, very difficult, or much more difficult for the Americans and the Japanese. to establish counter-patrolls within the sea of Ochozsk, keeping track on what the Soviet submarines are doing. So there is even more of an imperative for the Russians to hold on to these islands. And they've made it absolutely clear now, and they've been making it clear for some time, that they are not prepared to give up these islands. So the result is that since Japan insists that they must be returned,

and since the Russians categorically refuse ever to return them, and it is now contrary to the Russian Constitution to return them, the relationship between Japan and Russia remains sort of frozen, and a peace treaty between the two is impossible. All right, we will end the video there, the durand.com, we're on X, we're on Rumble, we're on telegram, we are also on substacks so check us out there and on the durand shop we have a summer special going on right now so the link to durand shop is the inscription box down below take care