The Triumph of Geopolitics
Weeks Where Decades Happen
Executive Summary
I first met John Butler in 2011, but in truth our introduction came earlier than that. And it came not in person, but through a report he had written for what was an early incarnation of The Amphora Report.
It wasn’t simply that I agreed with the conclusions, but that the way he framed the issues forced me to pause and reconsider assumptions I hadn’t yet realized I was making.
It left a lasting impression and lingered with me well beyond the initial read, shaping the way I began to think about money, power, and the deeper mechanics of the financial system.
It was after this first encounter and meeting with John that I went on to read the original edition of his book, The Golden Revolution, Revisited. It is a great book and I recommend it without reservation.
More importantly, it proved foundational to my own education on the subject, arriving at a moment when I was still forming the framework through which I would come to understand monetary history, financial cycles, and the quiet forces that govern global capital flows.
What struck me then, and what has continued to stand out over the years, is that John has never fit neatly into any intellectual box.
He is not what most people would call a traditional “gold guy,” a label that often implies a narrow worldview or a reflexive attachment to a single asset as an answer to every problem.
His perspective is far more difficult to categorize, and far more valuable for that reason.
John’s background is rooted in traditional finance.
He has worked for some of the largest firms in the City of London, operating inside the very institutions that shape modern capital markets rather than merely critiquing them from the outside.
And he has lived and worked in Europe for decades, absorbing not just its financial culture but its political and historical sensibilities as well.
As a result, he is one of the very few people I have met who can move seamlessly and comfortably between a Wall Street boardroom and a gold conference, speaking fluently to both audiences, without talking past either.
That ability is rare, and it matters, especially in an era where financial discourse is increasingly fragmented into ideological silos.
It is precisely for this reason that the guest piece John has written for us fits so naturally into the body of work we have been building.
Much of what we have published over the past several years has revolved around a central theme: the return of great power competition and the recognition that economics, finance, and geopolitics can no longer be treated as separate domains.
We have featured Michael Every and his articulation of a “Grand Macro Strategy”, which reframes markets through the lens of national interest, strategic leverage, and geopolitical intent.
We have explored BowTied Mara’s examination of Argentina under Javier Milei, not as a curiosity, but as a real-time stress test of ideology colliding with political reality.
And we have written extensively about how the United States, particularly under Donald Trump, has been tearing down what was once marketed as a Rules Based Order, revealing a system that was always more conditional and power-driven than many were willing to admit.
John’s contribution sits squarely within this context.
It does not attempt to offer comfort, nor does it pretend that the future will conform neatly to any single model.
Instead, it engages directly with the structural tensions now shaping the global system, asking uncomfortable questions about monetary arrangements, political legitimacy, and the durability of institutions that have long been assumed to be permanent.
Whether one agrees with every conclusion he reaches is, in a sense, beside the point.
What matters is that the questions are asked seriously, grounded in experience, history, and a clear-eyed assessment of incentives.
To be clear, we do not ourselves necessarily agree with all of the points John makes in this piece.
But that has never been our standard for inclusion.
Intellectual agreement is easy, and it is often lazy.
What we care about is rigor, perspective, and the willingness to explore outcomes that may fall outside the consensus view.
In a world where uncertainty is rising, where old assumptions are being challenged by force rather than debate, and where the costs of intellectual complacency are growing, it is essential to keep an open mind.
John’s work deserves that consideration.
It reflects decades of engagement with markets as they actually function, not as textbooks describe them.
It reflects an understanding of Europe and the United States not as abstractions, but as political entities with histories, constraints, and strategic priorities.
And it reflects a willingness to confront the possibility that the next chapter of the global system may look very different from the last.
We hope our readers appreciate our commitment to presenting a wide circle of views.
That commitment is not about balance for its own sake, nor is it about provocation.
In times of transition, clarity is rarely found in consensus alone, but rather in engaging with competing views and resisting the instinct to reject ideas that unsettle established narratives.
It is in that spirit that we are pleased to feature John’s work here.
We believe it will challenge some readers, reinforce others, and encourage all to think more deeply about the forces now reshaping the global landscape.
At a time when the margin for error is narrowing, that kind of engagement is not just valuable.
It is necessary.
Finally, it is worth noting that John delivered us this piece in late December, at a moment when many of these dynamics still felt theoretical to a broad audience.
Yet within the first days of January, events moved decisively.
The United States directly engaged Venezuela, and Nicolás Maduro was removed from power as a result of this U.S. action.
Regardless of how one interprets the legality, necessity, or downstream consequences of that intervention, the escalation itself is unmistakable.
It underscores that the era we are now in is not one of gradual drift, but of abrupt moves and rapidly collapsing assumptions.
In that sense, John’s work has proven not only prescient, but newly urgent.
What may have read as forward-looking analysis just weeks earlier now reads as an attempt to grapple, in real time, with a world in which geopolitical force, monetary power, and national interest are once again openly intertwined.
Biography
John Butler is an international financial professional with a wide variety of experience in North America and Europe.
Working as an investment strategist and portfolio structurer for more than 30 years, John has advised many of the world’s largest institutional investors and central banks.
He has served as a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers and Dresdner Bank, in charge of global teams responsible for macro and commodity strategy and has been ranked #1 for interest rate strategy by Institutional Investor Magazine.
He has also worked in FinTech, most recently as the Head of Treasury for FinTech startup TallyMoney.
Prior he served as Director and CEO of the Lend and Borrow Trust Company, the world’s first regulated peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform on which all loans are collateralised by physically allocated precious metals.
He also served as Vice President and Head of Wealth Services for Goldmoney, a leading gold-backed financial services firm.
John is on the record having predicted some of the most important global financial events during his career, including a historic bull market in gold and a US-centric housing and credit bubble that would eventually burst in 2008.
In 2016, he predicted that a series of balance of payments crises would ripple through emerging markets.
In 2019, he predicted that inflation would begin to surge and “stagflation” would set in thereafter.
John’s publications include The Golden Revolution (John Wiley and Sons, 2012) and The Golden Revolution, Revisited (2017), and books explaining the causes and consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis and exploring the financial market implications of the remonetisation of gold.
THE TRIUMP OF GEOPOLITICS, OR “WEEKS WHERE DECADES HAPPEN”
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” –Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
If it seems that the world is changing more quickly than you can keep up, you’re not alone.
As I write, the recently renamed US Department of War is announcing the summary destruction of yet another fast boat on the high seas.
President Trump has stated that the cargoes of tankers recently seized off the coast of Venezuela are to be confiscated; possibly also the ships themselves.
He has also issued renewed threats to Greenland, or Denmark if you prefer, that the US simply “needs that country” for its polar security and it is going to get it, one way or another.
Russia poses the most obvious threat to US polar security, yet Trump continues his efforts to achieve a peace settlement with the country over Ukraine.
But while the speed of events might indeed be surprising, the events themselves, when placed in context, are less so.
That context is summarized quite neatly by the new US National Security Strategy (NSS).
Published in November, that document states that in recent decades the US has dangerously overextended itself in Eurasia and, by doing so, left itself dangerously vulnerable at home.
It has spent trillions on arguably outright counterproductive foreign wars while allowing China, among others, to cultivate a high degree of influence over not only Venezuela but other Central and South American countries.
(Some might add Canada and even the State of California into that mix.)
While I can only speculate, I wonder whether last year’s Pentagon Conclave of senior commanders normally on duty around all corners of the globe was about more than values.
Could it have been in order to discuss preparations for an imminent, historical shift in defence posture?
A rapid shrinking of a dangerously overextended Eurasian perimeter to one focused on securing, quickly and at whatever cost, the Americas and key strategic maritime chokepoints critical to global trade?
As we know, actions speak louder than words.
Louder than Trumpian rhetoric even.
And those actions indicate this is precisely what the US has now begun to do.
Tipping points are characterised by their surprising suddenness.
But once they arrive, the conditions that brought them about can be seen in retrospect as to some degree inevitable.
In my opinion, we have now reached a geopolitical tipping point.
One characterised by US acceptance, however reluctant, that the world is now not only multipolar but that the best US response to faded hegemony is to revert to the classic, realist geopolitical strategy of acting as an “offshore balancer”.
The paper below is adapted from one I wrote nearly a decade ago, comparing the modern US strategic situation to that of classical Athens.
This provides essential context for the new, final section, which presents the specific geopolitical constraints the US now faces and policy choices it is likely to make as it implements the new NSS.
HUBRIS AND NEMESIS: WHAT THE US MUST LEARN FROM THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE
This paper draws on history to consider something important: how the US should manage its imperial decline if it wishes to avoid fighting a major war with one or more emerging rivals.
This is not a trivial matter.
Athens, arguably the birthplace of much of what we treasure in western civilisation and culture, managed its empire with reckless arrogance.
Socrates and Plato, among others, saw what was happening and did what they could to record and pass the key lessons of imperial hubris down through the generations.
If the US is to avoid a similar fate it should heed their lessons.
But it is Thucydides who saw most clearly what, specifically, precipitated the disastrous Peloponnesian War, from which Athens would never fully recover.