Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Diplomacy

Israeli Actions Encourage the Formation of the Coalition That Will Ultimately Defeat It

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On October 6, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

A little lesson in history is in order to understand why Israel remains dominant in the Middle East and continues to wage war against just about everyone. To understand better Israel’s strategic dilemma we have to look back at the Crusades.

The First Crusade established the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099. But, before the Kingdom of Jerusalem could be established invasion routes from the north had to be secured, which occurred in 1098 when the Crusaders conquered Antioch, modern Antakya in Turkey. Second, its flank had to be secured, which is what Baldwin of Boulogne did in 1098 by capturing Edessa, modern day Şanliurfa in southeastern Turkey. Baldwin then created the County of Edessa.

Between 1099 and 1144 the Kingdom of Jerusalem fought against the Fatimids of Egypt, defeating them several times. The kingdom then attacked Damascus several times; winning some fights and losing others. The Crusaders attacked and captured Tyre, Tripoli, Acre and Beirut. They only held Beirut for a time.

The Byzantines were also active in keeping the Arab and Seljuk princedoms in the region divided. They won more battles than they lost. The Byzantine strategic goal was the reconquest of Anatolia. They had some success under Alexis Comnenos, but when he died so did his genius. That said, for most of fifty years Crusader Jerusalem was safe. It would take two to three thousand words to narrate this all comprehensively so I’ve oversimplified. Please be sympathetic.

One might get the impression that with the Byzatines knocking the Seljuks about in Anatolia, keeping them on their back heels and the Crusader States growing steadily and beating Fatimid Egypt several times that victory seemed assured. But even before the first Crusaders captured Jerusalem time was not on their side.

In 1094 the governor of Seljuk Aleppo, Aq Sunqur al-Hajib, was beheaded on accusations of treason by the Seljuk emir of Damascus, Tutush I. Aq Sunqur al-Hajib’s son, Imad al-din Zengi escaped to Mosul and was raised by its governor. As he matured he grew into a fierce warrior, becoming a scourge upon the Crusader states; one they were unable to answer. As the years passed Zengi fought, relentlessly. After many losses but more victories Zengi, in 1144, captured the Country of Edessa, dealing a crippling blow to the Crusader States. This blow necessitated the Second Crusade. For the next quarter century the Kingdom of Jerusalem muddled through, fending off most challenges. But the loss of Edessa caused a persistent drain on the kingdom’s power.

In the year 1171 Saladin came to power in Egypt, a development that would rapidly end the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s decades long containment of Fatimid power. Saladin’s life goal was the destruction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. With Egypt under his complete control, Saladin immediately inaugurated the first part of his great project: unifying the divided states surrounding the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

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Saladin was largely successful in unifying the region, notwithstanding his loss to King Baldwin IV in 1177. The Leper King, Baldwin IV, husbanded a large force and defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard on November 25, 1177. Saladin had the good fortune of defenses in depth and quickly rebuilt his nearly eradicated forces quickly as he ruled both Syria and Egypt.

Catastrophe struck the Kingdom of Jerusalem when King Baldwin IV died in August of 1186. This set off a series of political machinations in Jerusalem wherein ultimate power was gained by a coterie of bigoted incompetents. In 1187 they marched their army towards the Sea of Galilee to challenge Saladin. At the Horns of Hattin, where there was no water, the heavily armored Crusaders quickly grew parched and exhausted. Saladin defeated them easily. The way to Jerusalem was now open. Saladin was ultimately successful in its conquest and by late 1188 the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem was under Saladin’s control.

The point of this brief history is this: the only way the Israelis can be defeated is exactly how the Crusaders were defeated. A coaliton of Arab and Islamic states must unify in common action against Israel.

On the other hand, all Israel must do to exist is maintain a divided region. This has been Israel’s grand strategy since its inception and remains so today, even though Netanyahu is making a mess of it by attacking everyone, everywhere, committing genocide in Gaza while expecting unconditional US support of its every action. A tall order at a time when the US public has begun seriously questioning continued support of Israel, especially in the face of the genocide in Gaza.

So, can the states of the region find common cause? Well, Turkey’s president Erdoğan is sitting on the fence, but could make life very difficult for Israel by simply shutting of its energy supplies, which come from the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. Never mind the size and technological sophistication of its armed forces, that dwarf anything Israel has.

Turkey’s indecision notwithstanding, signs of potential unified effort by several Islamic states are beginning. First, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact that includes a Pakistani nuclear umbrella. Second, “Egypt’s Sisi has called Israel the “enemy’ and is renewing ties with its neighbors,” says Ted Snider at Responsible Statecraft. In a September speech at the Emergency Arab-Islamic Summit in Qatar Sisi gave an unprecedented speech. His three main points were that Israel is the enemy. He then warned the Israelis that there would be no new diplomatic progress in regards to the Abraham Accords, adding that Israeli actions could possibly violate the 1979 Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty. But the really shocking statement came, as Ted Snider recounts, when Sisi said, “it has become imperative for us to establish an Arab-Islamic mechanism for coordination and cooperation to enable us all to confront the major security, political, and economic challenges surrounding us.” Adding to this, “[that] the geography of any Arab country extends from the Ocean to the Gulf and its umbrella is wide enough for all Islamic and peace-loving countries.”

A second round of war with Iran might trigger a more formal defensive alliance structure like that between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. One that would be more comprehensively Islamic, as Iranians are not Arabs, but Persians. The Turks might buy into it as well. I’ll explore what a potential coaliton might look like in a subsequent post. But for now, the ultimate consquences of such an event are not heartening.

The wild card happens when Israel stares down total defeat. At this point Israel’s nuclear ambiguity will be clarified, necessity being the mother of all forced decisions. If Israel faces certain destruction what will it do? Lash out and let the nukes fly? Or accept defeat in the hopes of preserving something? In our complex adaptive global society nothing is inevitable. However, the day is coming when Israel will face a hostile, well armed and coordinated Arab-Islamic coaliton. The results are unforseeable, but more than likely devastating.

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Bad Faith and Criminality

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On September 19, 2025

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~by Sean Paul Kelley

In the aftermath of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, US president Teddy Roosevelt brought together negotiators from Russia and Japan to hammer out a peace. This was the first time the US was ever seen as an ‘honest broker’ in international relations. In 1919 President Wilson sailed to Paris with his 14 Points doing his level best to get the Europeans to negotiate an honorable peace. The wily Europeans outfoxed the rigid and moralizing Southerner in just about all the negotiations. Nevertheless, the US retained the aura of ‘honest broker’ until this century. I can’t say exactly when we lost it—probably when Colin Powell lied to the UN in testimony before the Second Iraqi War—but lost it we did. Somewhere in there we lost the aura of exceptional power we possessed by pissing away a metric shit-ton (yes, an American who can do metric!) of blood and treasure in the sands of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan—and with that loss, we shot whatever credibility we retained right in the foot. But those, shall I say, are different discussions for a different day.

Lost auras being the one thing—at least we still got a chakra, right? (Ugly and poisoned though it may be.) It’s the second thing that grates the teeth at night: an everlasting chronicle of bullshit deeply eroding any sense of diplomatic norms that’s transfigured us into OG rogue nation. So, grab some popcorn, rewind the Wayback Machine and head back to 2014 cause I got a whopper to tell you.

It’s late summer of 2014 and a brushfire war is simmering between Russia and the Ukraine. The US and its European allies are eager to see the Ukraine join NATO. They bring Russia and the Ukraine together and pretty much force feed them the Minsk Accords. Then, over the course of the next eight years the NATO allies string the Russians along encouraging the Ukraine in its ever persistent demands to renegotiate the Minsk Accords.

Nota bene: yes, I write it as the Ukraine. I know the Ukrainians desire their benighted lot to be call Ukraine.

Do I care?

Not one iota.

It was always called the Ukraine—I mean, the Russians use the partitive genitive (don’t ask) when describing the Ukraine as a nation—and it will ever thus be called the Ukraine.

Now, it took the Russians—rarely gullible—a long time to figure out our stunning acts of “bad faith.” But “bad faith” it was. The US and its European allies had no intention of ever compelling the Ukraine to live up to its international agreements with Russia. They were only ever playing for time, waiting for the day they could present Ukrainian membership in NATO as a fait accompli, hoping for a démarche, a dénouement. Damned if we got war in its place.

But the forever-war nation ain’t gonna let a little war-war stop it, no, no, no! Once America sets a precedent it’s game on, bitches! So, in late May-early June 2025 the US negotiated directly with Iranian diplomats signaling that no military action was imminent. While negotiations were held, the US and Israel agreed on America logistical support for an Israeli attack on Iran. A week after Israel launched its first strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, the United States followed suit. Not only is this acting in “bad faith” it’s outright deceit, a line no nation should ever cross in the conduct of negotiations. It’s one thing to bring two sets of instructions to negotiations, one always needs a fall-back position. But deceit? WTF?

Twice then, the US has acted in “bad faith.” It’s at number three when the wise recognize a pattern, three also being proof of outright illegality in the conduct of international affairs, at least according to international and domestic law. So, there is that, you know?

Domestic law, you ask? How so?

“Young grasshopper,” says Master Po, “sit and I will tell you.” (Anyone who gets the reference wins a cookie.)

Treaties signed by the United States and ratified by the Senate are, in accordance with the 1920 Supreme Court ruling Missouri v Holland, the supreme law of the land.

Skeptical-like, you query, “what treaty did we violate, Sean Paul?”

Easy, the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. This treaty enshrined, in international and domestic law, a norm of diplomacy dating back 575 years to the city-state of Milan and its then ruler Francesco Sforza—a norm, or custom only violated three or four times in the last century it’s so sacred. So basic, so important is the principle of the personal sanctity of the negotiator, aka the diplomat, that it is respected by every nation on the goddamned planet.

It is the singular, fundamental law of diplomacy from which spring all the other elements of reciprocity evident in the conduct of international relations. And in typical American fashion, just days ago, we nuked that norm into oblivion when we in concert with Qatar and Israel arranged for an attack on credentialed Hamas negotiators.

I don’t have anything else to add except a few questions. Why would any nation enter into negotiations with us ever again? Who would be that stupid and reckless? And what, if anything, can ever be done to regain international trust? What I’ve detailed are fundamentally outrageous betrayals of diplomatic norms, norms developed over 500 years ago and used for centuries.

It’s not rocket sceince. Hell, it ain’t even algebra. Christ, it’s more basic than fractions. It should be easy to comprehend. And the behavior is so fucking counter-productive I would expect even the stupid to fathom.

I would be wrong.

P.S. And consequences,those things be bad, like ju-ju bee tree bad shit. Didnae take long, aye?

P.P.S. Oh, and by the way, this leads directly to the massive diversification away from petrodollar settlements, which gets us a fuckton closer to the end of the dollar as global reserve currency. That’s going to be one serious painful adjustment for Americans to make, domestic production notwithstanding.

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Euro Proposal For A No Fly Zone in the Ukraine: the Consequences

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On September 16, 2025

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In the aftermath of several errant Russia drones crashing into Poland, said nation’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, invoked Article 4 of NATO, and whilst giving an interview to a German paper, called for  “a limited, NATO/EU-run no-fly buffer for drones nearing alliance airspace.”

Dmitri Medvedev, the former president of the Russiann Federation while speaking at a Russian Security Council meeting on Moday said that “Russia would consider NATO forces protecting Ukrainian airspace as a declaration of war. . . .”

Russia, it should be added, asserted that “that “no targets on the territory of Poland were planned for destruction,” and that the drones it used in Ukraine have a flight range of no more than 700 kilometers (435 miles).” I would add the Russian first deputy Permanent Representative  to the UN made a very good point in an interview this morning. He asked simply, “cui bono?”

Cui bono notwithstanding, a lot remains open for interpreation, especially without the evidence being reported on seriously and assiduously. (Which won’t happen in the West.) That said, the number of drones that landed or were shot down in Poland is troubling. Look at this map for a better idea of what worries me. I’ve heard several explanations, from Ukrainian spoofing and EW warfare, to a false flag operation. Spoofing, EW warfare, cui bono or false flag–any others?–really doesn’t matter. It is simply bad ju-ju for all parties concerned.

Regardless of what really happened, are we absolutely insane?

Have our diplomats and leaders lost all touch with reality? If we declare and attempt to enforce a No-Fly Zone over the Ukraine we are declaring war on the Russian Federation. Declaring war on a nuclear power that could absorb a full force first strike by the USA much better than we could absorb their very robust response is as stupid as someone with brains for dynamite who cannot blow the wax out of their ears if their brains exploded.

Thank heavens for the brothers Lieven, one, Dominic, is an historian of empire, the other, whom I will quote below, is foreign policy analyst that writes frequently for the site Responsible Statecraft. Anatol is an adult in a childish firmament of foreign policy know-nothings, like Kaja Kallas. As one Russian observer said about her: she is critically undereducated. But back to Anatol, as he writes on the drones falling in Poland: “We should remember that during the Cold War, there were a number of far more serious violations of air space by both sides, some of them leading to NATO planes being shot down and American and British airmen killed. These incidents led not to threats of war, but careful attempts to de-escalate tensions and develop ways to avoid such clashes.” What a mature idea. I wish we had more adults in the room, so to speak.

The whole Ukraine debacle has only unravelled our power faster than if adults were running our foreign policy. And a No Fly Zone over the Ukraine is the height of childish, bat-shit crazy ideas. But then, we have not had an adult running our foreign policy since George Schultz left foggy bottom on January 20, 1989. I take that back, the last adult to manage our foreign policy was James A. Baker, who left foggy bottom on August 23, 1992. It has been unipolar willy nilly serially destroying nation after nation ever since.

It has got to stop. I just fear how it ultimately will stop.

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Four Randon Econonic, Political, Geopolitical and Scientific Musings

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On September 15, 2025

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First economic: The US dollar is down 5% over the last six months against a basket of currencies. And over the past year, it’s lost 9.6%. The biggest winner against a dollar has been the euro which has gone up 13% however, which truly is a win for Europe because it makes their natural gas imports from the US less expensive. But their natural gas imports are still a poison chalice. Expect the dollar to continue its slide, perhaps precipitously at some point in the New Year.

There were large moves out of US equities in the spring confirming the adage “sell in May and go away.” What September will look like is anyone’s guess, especially as Israel is more than likely to start the second phase of its war against Iran? Or October—that worst of months for Wall Street? What happens if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz and oil goes above 100 dollars a barrel? That would be great for oil producers, but it would be terrible for markets across the globe, even China, possibly leading to a worldwide recession, especially with Chinese growth being somewhere between 4% and 5% at present.

Regardless of what happens in September or October—both always being bad month’s economically for the US economy, America’s bond market and the value of the dollar will continue its downward trajectory because America’s lenders are now demanding gold for loans instead of treasuries. This smells to me like the beginning of the end of dollar hegemony.

It makes me wonder what kind of “store of value” the BRICS will adopt to support their currency? Will it be a basket of their currencies? Will it be backed by gold and petroleum? That would be truly hard-core, because it would mean we were in for a long era of tight money. Our entire lives, actually, the entire history has been based on easy money. And as you know money creation is only possible when using a fiat currency.

There are many ways to imagine what they’ll do. Maybe blockchain? Who really knows? But there are other commodities that do have a store value, silver among them, maybe even rare earths and others they could use. It certainly is an interesting time to live.

Second domestic political: Niall Ferguson in his interview by Charlie Rose posted a week ago on the Internet was asked about Trump‘s challenges of outright ignoring the constitution with the following question: are we the Roman Republic, is this or are we witnessing the collapse of the constitutional order like the Roman republic. Rose asks if Trump is Augustus. He clearly is not. I would say that Trump is more like Marius and the Kennedys were more like the brothers Gracchi. In fact, I made this argument on a graduate school paper that I got a very good grade on, but in which my professor seriously disagreed with my analogies. Regardless I would say that we are at the beginning of the end of our constitutional order, and that we are looking down the barrel of Caesarism. It’s on the way. Maybe two years, maybe four years but it’s coming. Will it be a general? Will it be a politician? Those are questions we simply can’t answer. But as Ian Welsh has consistently predicted America is heading for a collapse, be it constitutional or economic or both it’s gonna happen and there isn’t anything anyone of us can do about it. Besides, Ferguson, while whip-smart, is kind of a tool.

Third is about some weaknessess the SCO currently must contend with if they are to become the anti-NATO military block. Here they are in no particular order of importance: One, the nations that make up the SCO are too diverse and often times their interests do not align with everyone in the SCO. For example, China and India have serious border issues. Pakistan and India have serious issues in Kashmir. Those are just two examples of several potential conflicts between members of a block, supposedly to oppose NATO. The issues between Pakistan and India make the intra-NATO issues between Greece and Turkey look like a family arguement on Thanksgiving.

Second, as the former director general of Russian international affairs Council said in a recent interview, “ the mandate of the SCO is too general.” The SCO can focus on security, development, or terrorism. Not all three.

Third, China is by far the most powerful member of the SCO and that creates a dangerous asymmetry in the organization. Much like the United States dominated NATO for so long and skewed it’s purpose after the Cold War for its own unfathomable means.

Fourth: This essay on the relative merits of “Superradiance,”.  Is well worth the three minutes it will take to read, plus it is comprehensible to the layman. The essay describes Superradiance as “a collective quantum optical effect in which a group of emitters, such as atoms or molecules, emit light in a highly coherent and amplified manner.  In the context of mammalian neural systems, superradiance occurs when a group of neurons collectively emit photons, resulting in a stronger and more coherent signal compared to individual neuron emissions. This coordinated emission of photons across vast networks of microtubules within neurons could potentially achieve the long-range coherence necessary for the emergence of consciousness.”

The essay stands as a correction of sorts to Sir Roger Penrose’s “Orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR)” theory of human consciousness, which Wikipedia describes thusly: Orch Or “is a controversial theory postulating that consciousness originates at the quantum level inside neurons (rather than being a product of neural connections).” In short, says Penrose, “Consciousness does not collapse the wave function; instead it is the collapse of the wave function that produces consciousness.”

One thing we do know is that consciouness is decidely not computational and most likely occurs in the quantum realm.

As you can tell, I dig this kind of stuff.

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Follow Up and And Reply On My “How to Lose Allies” Post

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On September 10, 2025

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First, I want to follow up on this: “I am due to have a conversation with a friend that lives in Denmark tomorrow and I’m going to ask him about energy prices.”

His reply, and I paraphrase as I did not record it or take notes: “if we still had to make our house payment, we would be totally screwed. The amount of money that we pay for energy now is about equal to what our house payment used to be. It’s about five times higher than it normally is, but what’s even worse is the high cost of energy filters out into everything in the Danish economy. A simple item like bread is three times higher than it used to be. Specialty items are three or four times higher than they used to be. Fish from fisherman that we go to the docks to buy from because we live on an island is four times more expensive because they’re paying four times more for the energy they’re using to go out and fish. It’s brutal and it’s all because the United States or somebody allied with it blew up the Nord stream pipeline. I try to keep my mouth shut about this because most people have drank the Kool-Aid, but I really hope Russia wins because I’m sick of all this global elite bullshit.”

These words were spoken by a well educated American married to a Dane with two teen-aged Danish children. If the Danish economy is suffering like this Germany must be fucked.

Where does Europe get its energy now? From the US, now exporting LNG (liquid natural gas) to Europe for 4x the price of Russian and Turkmen natural gas. Here is my question as a Texan: why haven’t natural gas prices risen in tandem with the export of the commodity? People I have asked who recieve natural gas royalties are pissed because there is no price increase pass through. So, owners of the wells are getting screwed and so are the buyers of the product. Welcome to Oligarchical America.

Next I want to address a handful of commenters in my post, best reprersented by Mark Level. He writes, in a very gracious and polite comment that he takes issue with my outline of American Grand Strategy. He notes, “This insane hobby-horse (or idee fixe, choose your metaphor) dates back far more than 120 years, probably 3x that long, and originates in British Colonial phobias about Russia and “the East” generally. Halford John Mackinder developed this lunacy & published it almost exactly 120 years ago, but it had a long pre-natal development among arrogant Imperial gits in Asia. (Gits and twits, upper-class British twits, like the Monty Python sketch.) See here, and the delightful childish fantasy of being Alexander Magnus from this Mackinder thought bubble . . . .”

Please note, first and foremost, I used the word hostile power or hostile coalition. Hostile being the primary variable.

I’ve read Mackinder’s works. Anyone who has traveled across the Silk Road pretty much has to read them. His idea is not necessarily original. It’s more a fusion of ideas that came out of the late 18th century and 19th century Western European dominance of the world that began, as I previously mentioned, with the defeat of Venice in 1509,  Portugal’s conquest of a Spice Empire, and its desrtuction of the Ottoman Navy in the Indian Ocean, thus having no rivals, and of course Spain’s rapacious theft of New World gold and silver.

During the 17th and 18th century, a new idea developed with the growth of the British Navy, who outstripped the Dutch and pretty much took over their empire. New York City was, after all, New Amsterdam. What these developments presaged was an idea that centered around the ascendancy of the Littoral powers over the Continental Empires that had ruled Eurasia for millenia. Gunpowder, boats, better firearms, better steel and in the New World, devastating disease leading to genocide in many cases up and down North and South America. The Littoral is defined by strategists “as those land areas (and their adjacent areas and associated air space) that are susceptible to engagement and influence from the sea.” Thus the emphasis on a strong navy by Alfred Thayer Mahan who proved just how dominant Littoral Powers could be. For a time, that is, only for a time, as I see it.

Add to this ascendancy the wars of the Western European powers of the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire primarily fought during the 18th century for two strategic reasons, primarily by two very different nations with very different vital national interests at stake.

One, was the United Kingdom’s insistence that no power could dominate the Low Lands of the Netherlands and later Belgium because if they could, it would threaten an invasion of the British Isles, plus their massive exports of wool textiles, fueling the nascent industrial revolution. Smart, if ruthless policy.

Second, we must understand France‘s main goal during the wars of this time (and for several centruies prior) was to ensure a divided Germany. So long as the German states were littered into 100 different little principalities France had nothing to worry about. Thus France could go on dominating the continent. The first seismic change to this was the War of the Sixth Coalition which saw for the first time Russia flex its true potential when Russian troops occupied Paris. France’s cataclysm occured not in 1941 but in 1870 with her defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. The result of which was Prussia unifying all of Germany into one empire, adding insult to injury by having the Kaiser crowned in Versailles and taking Alsace Lorraine away as its prize.

Fuse those two strategies together and it is not too far an intellectual leap, considering the Great Game going on at the time between the UK and the Russian Empire, for Mackinder to conjure up his ideas. Were his ideas taken up by the United Kingdom? You bet, but by 1917 when it was clear that the United Kingdom could no longer maintain the balance of power in Europe and the United States had to intervene, (everyone should read AJP Taylor’s magnum opus, The Struggle For Mastery in Europe, to understand the balance of power and its collapse in 1917) US foreign policy intellectuals adopted it. And rightly so.

I think it’s the correct idea. But my reasons for thinking it’s the correct idea are not gonna make many of you happy. You might have to face some hard truths. Oh yeah, I did tell you I was a Realist in the old school manner of the word? In fact there have been a few times when Ian has chastened me pretty seriously for my realism. With that admisssion I will make another one: I don’t mind the criticism from Ian or from others. Ian is probably the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life and I listen to what he has to say. And when I say listen to him, I mean, I consider his words deeply. A man who cannot change his mind will never change anything. Nevertheless, I digress.

Here are my reasons for why I believe the prevention of a single hostile power or coalition of hostile powers from dominating the Eurasian landmass is smart policy. Please, if you take anything away from this sentence, take the meaning hostile. 

Number one: the Monroe Doctrine. Oh, I hear you screaming already. But the fact is that if this were not “our” hemisphere, not a one of us would have the standard of living we do today. Our hegemony of the Western Hemisphere is the primary foundation of our wealth and our power. You might not like it. I grimace frequently at the crimes we comitt to protect it. But, the Westphalian System is not built on justice. It is built on the acceptance of international anarchy. Each nation to its own. There is no single sovereign power governing planet Earth. Thus, violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. Is this a grim Hobbesian outlook? Yes. I don’t like it and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. But as a realist, I take the world as it is, not as I desire it to be. A hostile power or coalition of hostile powers that dominate Eurasia can take that hegemony away. You might not like it but trust me when I say you don’t want that to happen.

Second, a hostile power or coalition of hostile powers that dominate Eurasia can take more than our hegemony away, it/they can invade us. We don’t want that either. Thus we have a powerful navy that projects power to keep Eurasia divided–for the time being, because I think if we get into a war with China, their indirect way of war–read your Sun Tzu–will probably outwit us on the high seas. I’ve spent a great deal of time in China and have a healthy fear of their capabilities. However, my greatest fear is that in our arrogance we will engender the very hostility we must prevent and by our own devices bring about the doom we should seek to avoid. We have lost our edge, our generosity of spirit and our understanding of power. We have become a mean spirited, two-bit, cheap and vulgar people. And sadly, because so many of us are beaten down economically by rich elites who are delusional, we’re going to lose a big war in a painful way. A war that could be avoided, but probably won’t be. I hope I’m wrong, but don’t think I am.

That said, these very wise words, written by Robert D. Kaplan recently, convey the gravity of our present predicament, “There is no prediction. It is only through coming to terms with the past and vividly, realizing the present that we can have premonitions about the future.” Moreover, as a wise woman wrote about history, “the more I study history, the more I learn the art of prophecy.” Deeply contradictory statements, yet both true in their essence.

Are we any more perceptive now about what awaits our planet than were the Russians of 1917, or all of Europe in 1914, and, for that matter, the Germans of the 1920s and the early 30s?

Do we honestly think we know better than they did? With all of our gadgets and our technological triumphalism I bet you there are a handful of you out there that think we do know better than they did. I hate to disappoint you, but we don’t. History is the story of contingency and human agency, not inevtiablity.

So, there it is. Rip me to shreds if you wish. I’ve suffered enough Shakespearean arrows of outrageous fortune in my 54 years to handle it. In fact, I welcome your ideas and if you got this far I’m grateful for your time.

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How To Lose Allies and Create Enemies

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On September 7, 2025

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In 1936 Dale Carnegie published his seminal self-help work, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” As a book dedicated purely to interpersonal relations I read it in my late-teens early-twenties and took a few damn good lessons away from it. But, I’m not writing today to discuss Dale Carnegie. I’m here to write the first chapter of a book entitled, “How to Lose Allies and Create Enemies.”

The American way of war and diplomacy (the two are inseparable, remember your Clausewitz) has grown too open-ended. We excel at the operational art of war and tactics, more often than not winning battle after battle. Yet, like Hannibal at the gates of Rome in the aftermath of Cannae we have forgotten how to turn tactical and operational victory into strategic peace. Part of this is we have, either consciously or unconsciously, forgotten question five of the Powell Doctrine: is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless engagement. This question represents to me the supreme invocation and obligation of every great statesman: prudence. Or restraint, if you prefer.

We also have fetishized, military, and military technology. Our armed forces call it total spectrum dominance. (If the technological advances made in the Russo-Ukrainian War are not giving our generals and intellectual colonels indigestion we are well and truly fucked.) This reliance on Big Data during wartime has made American generals dangerously indecisive while the sip coffee and wait for the accrual of more and more data. But, as U.S. Grant said, “in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide.” It has also made us forget the absolute supreme importance of strategy. Now, in warfare there are tactics, operations and strategy. But my focus here is more on the outright diplomatic arrogant dismissal of grand strategy since 1992. I ask each and every one of you who cares about the subject: have you heard any discussion anywhere in the last 30 years about what kind of grand strategy we should have?

No, you have not, which is criminal because American grand strategy has been the same, and should have remained so during the so-called Uni-polar Moment, for more than a century.

Since the days of the Great White Fleet 120 years ago the United States has had a simple grand strategy, one easily understood by a high school educated American citizen: no one power or coalition of hostile powers can dominate the Eurasian landmass. If that were to occur they would have the resources to invade the Western Hemisphere with ease. Full Stop.

Today Americans are so globally and geographically ignorant, enamored with their gadgets and so overcome with financial difficulties–all features not bug bequeathed by our ruling class–that this simple idea is now difficult to understand by the average Josephine.

How did we get here?

Two easy answers: first, thirty years of post-cold war dominance of global decision making. Decision making that made no consideration for consequences became the norm. Ignorance of future potential peer competitors become the norm. By this time the Neo-con influence of total dominance became the norm. These three norms led to serious incuriosity in our diplomatic and security apparatus, creating only careerists rising up the ladder. A true danger to national well being.

Second, and most importantly, we forgot the most important Iron Law of Westphalian international relations: great powers have no permanent friends (or enemies) only interests. After thirty years of attempting dominance and willfully or otherwise ignoring the Iron Law our power diminished and is now in visible decline. The consequences of this wearing before our very eyes is like a massive pile up on the opposite lane of interstate, yet our policy makers drive by the looming catastrophe (not even rubber-necking) laboring under the delusion that all is well and our unipolar world is robust and healthy. It most certainly is not.

With Xi Jing Ping’s announcement that it was time to bury the global rules based order, multi-polarity was born. The siege has begun. NATO is dead. Although the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is not yet the organizational security block opposing NATO it soon will be. Not in two years, but maybe five, certainly ten.

Let’s explore the SCO a bit.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was founded in June 2001 as a security organization to combat terrorism in Central and East Asia two full months before 9/11. Originally founded by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan it now includes as full members the following: India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus are now full members as well. Official observers are too many to list. See this link for details.

This week, under the auspices of the SCO, China, Mongolia and Russia, finally clinched the Siberian gas field pipeline deal. This is now the largest energy project on the entire planet. We have driven our adversaries into the arms of each other by our stupidity. Let me repeat that: our blistering arrogance first drove Russia into the arms of China by uparming the Ukraine. Now Trumps idiocy in levying secondary sanctions on the purchase of Russian oil has driven India into the arms of China and Russia. Ukraine was and is a corrupt failing state that we engineered a coup against a democratically elected pro-Russian president to install a comedian. All Russia asked for was Ukrainian neutrality but with every hi-tech NATO weapon in existence at his disposal the little comedian began his drama, thus precipitating a war that ultimately drove Russia into the arms of China. Even worse it ratcheted up an ongoing demonization campaign against China as an enemy because we just don’t know how to live in peace with anyone.

For now the SCO is still a security organization but it is branching out. Its first step is to become the Chinese engine of Eurasian economic integration. So to was NATO the European engine of integration in the beginning under the Marshall Plan. But China’s ambitions outstrip those of Truman’s era. The true driving force behind Eurasian integration is China’s Belt and Road project. This project which seeks to reintegrate all of Eurasia into a single Chinese dominated ecumene, barring Western Europe, is the single greatest threat to American sovereignty that we have ever faced. I do not overstate my case here. This is an enormous long-term threat we have no answer to as yet. I doubt we ever will which is why I have developed a mid-term peace plan that would prevent war with China. I’ll post it in the near future.

Regardless, I’m a sucker for Silk Road romanticism. I have traveled the length, width and breadth of the entire Silk Road: from China to Iran to Istanbul and finally Venice. But if the lands from Istanbul to China are integrated economically by Chinese power and infrastructure America—so long as we carry on with our now customary arrogance is mortal danger. In a word: fucked.

An example of the kind of fuckery we can soon anticipate—a danger I saw coming in 2015 when I noticed the ATMs in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan no longer offered American Dollars but Chinese Renminbi—is the singular most important and major project discussed at the SCO Summit: creation of an alternative payment system to the Swift banking architecture of the west that emerged in the later years as an offshoot to the the Brenton Woods Agreement after World War II.

You know you want even more fuckery. So here it is: Xi has secured an agreement from all the members of the SCO to create an SCO Development Bank, which will rival the IMF and World Bank in the West. He’s been trying to secure this for a decade. Trump delivered it to him in a week of tomfoolery and double-speak on social media.

Need more? No problem. Another item up for discussion between several of the SCO countries was the Arctic: investments in the Arctic; how to exploit the Arctic; how to dominate the Arctic. Note: no Americans were at the SCO as observers, not even as a member of the Arctic Council. Think about that for just a moment. Our diplomats are completely ignorant of discussions that our allies, like the South Koreans are engaging in with the SCO. Is this diplomatic insanity, malfeasance, malpractice, or just outright stupidity? I report, you decide.

Another edifying aside of mass fuckery: at the beginning of Trump‘s second term Indian Prime Minister Modi visited Trump, and there was a palpable sense of excitement about Indian and American relations going forward. There is very real potential for joint naval and space operations between the two nations. Moreover, India could be the third pole we need to contain China. Thus, it was clear from Trump‘s first term that Modi and Trump had a good relationship. Of course, this says much, much more about Modi and Indian desires than it does Trump perspicacity (he probably doesn’t even know what that word means by the way). Nonetheless Trump outright betrayed Modi when he agreed to the EU and NATO levying secondary sanctions against China and India for importing Russian oil. This should come as no surprise. After all, Trump’s raison de vivre is winning the daily 24 hour news cycle first and foremost. Why not fuck Modi in the process of domestic glory? Thus he pushed a potential ally and leader of the largest population on earth into the arms of the SCO. And made him a star at the BRICS summit where he could ham it up with Putin and Xi.

Meanwhile, what about the Second Law of Westphalian politics? You know, the law of Unintended Consequences? Well here’s a whopper for you: the agreement of the Siberian 2 pipeline between Russia, China, and Mongolia will take all of the natural gas that has been sent to Europe for the last 50 years and will now send it to China and other places for the next 30. Europe is now paying four times what it used to for liquid natural gas that is being imported from the United States. It is looking at an extremely cold winter without enough energy and that is going to drive inflation. I am due to have a conversation with a friend that lives in Denmark tomorrow and I’m going to ask him about energy prices. The chaos of rising energy prices is devastating European industry. In the last year alone Germany has lost 196,000 businesses. I repeat 196,000 businesses in Germany closed in one year. That’s devastating to any economy, but Germany long the economic engine of Europe and the EU is deindustrializing for one simple reason: the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, which has been an absolute catastrophe for Europe. The United States is responsible for it.

As Kissinger said about being America’s friend, “The word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The reason we don’t know how to live in peace with anyone anymore is that after the end of the Cold War, we reigned triumphant for 35 years and could do damn well whatever we want it all over the world and nobody could oppose us. Well after 35 years it becomes a habit and habits are hard to break, especially mental ones and that’s why our ruling elites are so delusional in their thinking about international affairs. We are now creating the very monster that can actually threaten our hegemony of the Western Hemisphere. This is the most dangerous possible time in American history when it comes to international relations, and we are being ruled by fools. I fear for the future more than anyone can possibly imagine.

Meanwhile, Putin is probably incredibly surprised at how easy it now appears to fracture NATO and to gain new potential allies in Eastern and Central Europe. We are also looking at the proto-formation of a Chinese-Russian-Indian entente. Consider the immense rewards Putin will gain after starting a small war that threatened not a single American vital interest? One in which Russia simply demanded neutrality from its neighbor. The war’s consequences have propelled Russia into a potential global order shifting alliance. This was not Putin’s original intent nor goal. But because the US, under Biden and now Trump, have scored so many “own goals” this is where we are.

The US now behaves much like Venice before the 1508 when the first Holy Alliance, formed by Pope Julius II, also known as the League of Cambrai came together. It took everyone in the European inter state system to band together to defeat Venice. Of course, Venetian behavior prior to the war against it had been high handed. They raised prices on spices, silk and all the goods they imported from the East at will, bringing penury to the elites of Europe, who were the only ones who could afford such luxury. Europe had had enough. The League included France, the Hapsburg Monarchy, the Papal States and the Spanish Empire. Venice suffered a chastening defeat at the battle of Agnadello in 1509. Before this alliance, no one could defeat the Serene Republic. The League of Cambrai did collapse over personality disputes, but not before they took Venice down two pegs. And this is when Venice began its terminal decline that ended when Napoleon overthrew the republic. But after 1509 world change seriously accelerated: Spain pilfered the New World and Portugal built a spice empire in the East by rounding Africa, conquering parts of India, destroying the Ottoman navy in the Indian Ocean and upon entering the Golden Chersonese, conquered the greatest spice entrepôt in the world, the city of Malacca and its adjoining straits, thereby dominating the spice trade from Indonesia. The arrogant behavior of Venice incited all the developments leading to lost income, increasing debt and decline, just as the US is doing now. Unintended consequences have a way of creating fuckery.

The US, however, unlike Venice, is not just passively letting these nations find common interests, the US under Biden and Trump has actively pushed them together. Secondary sanctions on India were a slap in the face of a natural ally of the United States. We already know what happened: Modi went to Beijing and held hands with Putin and Xi.

Own goal!

But the biggest problem we have, as I see it, is that the US can no longer be considered a ‘rational actor’ in the anarchic Westphalian state system presently in existence. Why? One word: Trump. Trump has three huge crippling defects as a leader. Number one: his biggest donors are hard right conservative Jewish dual citizens (Yeah, I said it. You can only serve one master. Fuck off if you disagree). Donors like Mrs. Adelson and others own Trump’s Israel policy. They drive the policy supporting genocide which is not rational by any stretch of the imagination. Second, Trump is one of those pusillanimous leaders in history who acts on what he hears from the last person he talks to. This is truly, epically bad. Third: TACO. Trump always chickens out. At heart the man is a coward. But as my great-grandfather told me, there is nothing more dangerous than a coward in a corner. We must endure three more years of this.

As the Guatemalans used to say during the years of genocide: la puebla es jodida.

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