Of course, I can understand why such promises are tempting to some parts of the electorate. Many people, especially young people, are struggling right now, a lot. Especially since the 2008 Economic Crisis, and especially since housing costs have increased at a much faster rate than wages have, leading to an overall cost of living crisis that is especially impactful on younger people.

Yet the typical response of those like Mamdani has been to freeze prices, especially on rent, and not to increase supply of housing instead. This will lead to very predictable outcomes, something I have already written about.

Most of all, it already highlights one of the major reasons why communism always fails, and that is prices.

Prices are what you see when purchasing something, but that’s hardly explaining anything. Prices go way beyond that. They are not just numbers. They are not just what some good or service may cost. They are signals and indicators of much broader economic realities.

Realities you ignore at your own peril.

For starters, prices are anything but arbitrary. They tell us what is abundant, what is scarce and what is valuable. They are the result of buyers and sellers making deals, of engaging in a free exchange.

Most of all, prices are information. They tell us where resources should be allocated. They tell producers what to make and in what quantities. If a certain good isn’t selling, but another good is constantly in short supply, that encourages the producer to start producing that other good. Basic economics.

They also align sometimes thousands of producers together without any kind of central authority. It’s quite miraculous really. To produce even a basic good like a pencil with a rubber eraser at the back of it, especially in today’s globalised world, you need to bring together foresters, loggers, rubber producers, miners, metal and graphite workers. People from potentially all four corners of the world. Who do not know each other. Who likely share very different traditions, values and beliefs. Who might even go to war with each other if they met, yet who are working together without even knowing it.

Now remove price tags.

Imagine for a moment what that would look like. Imagine for instance if, walking in a supermarket, nothing had price tags. The smoked salmon, the caviar, the rare wines or exotic coffee beans.

What would you do?

You would likely completely fill up your shopping cart with the most luxurious items, and so would everyone else. The result is immediate scarcity. Producers simply cannot keep up with this new, artificial demand.

Likewise, imagine you live in the suburbs, and your office is on the other side of town. you have several options to get there. By walking, by cycling, by car, by train or by helicopter.

Of course, the helicopter sounds ridiculous to us.

But why though?

After all, what if you could simply fly over whatever traffic there was, and get to your office extremely quickly and efficiently.

The problem, of course, is price. The helicopter is incredibly expensive.

Now however, remove all price tags. What would happen?

Everyone would want the helicopter. Why wouldn’t they if they could actually get one without paying for it, or perhaps paying way under cost for it.

The problem of course is that there aren’t enough helicopters to go around. The government is certainly not going to invest in paying for more helicopters simply to transport people around for free.

The result is artificial scarcity. Shortages and very long waiting lines.

Of course, for helicopters, this might not be so much of a problem. We could even imagine a world where you wait in line digitally, so you can do other things in your home until its your turn for your ride.

But for food however? For medicine? For housing?

Such shortages are deadly.

An estimated 100 million people starved to death under communist governments in the 20th century. At least. From Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot. From Ethiopia and Somalia to, of course, North Korea. Even in countries like Venezuela, with abundant oil reserves, average human body weights have dropped significantly in the last twenty years, sometimes by an estimated 40-50 pounds or 20-25 kgs, despite an exodus of 8 million Venezuelans out of the country.

Even in countries like Zimbabwe, where the Zanu-PF under Robert Mugabe had very clear communist leanings, the white but productive farmers were expelled. Lands were given to the landless and, of course, to those loyal to the new regime. Whether this was a good thing to do for moral and compassionate reasons, to fix the inequalities of the past, doesn’t change the fact that food production collapsed.

As a result, Zimbabwe went from a net food exporter, even exporting half of all food exports on the African continent, to a net food importer. Only international reliefs efforts including the UN and US Food Aid (food produced in one of the most capitalist countries on earth, and the irony should never be lost) prevented the mass starvation of millions.

You have likely experienced this type of government manipulation of prices and the resulting artificial shortages yourself, even if you live in a western country. Living in France, I certainly have. It happens every time, for instance, the government decides to initiate price freezes on gasoline at the pumping station, which they tend to do following oil shocks. They did this in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The result?

People continued to buy oil as though it was cheap, but oil producers and refiners, starved of a significant source of oil from Russia (about 10% of global production at the time) couldn’t keep up. The results were empty gas stations, very long lines at those still open, and government enforced restrictions on how much you could withdraw (only 25 litres maximum, no filling up jerricans, etc.)

However, in neighbouring countries where such price freezes were never implemented, there were no such shortages. No such lines, and no limitations.

Why?

Increases in prices led to people finding solutions to the problem. Working remotely, carpooling, walking when possible. This is also what I have done this year, in the wake of the 2026 Iran War. This time, the French government is not putting in place direct price freezes and restrictions, but is essentially forcing producers to not sell beyond a certain price (which is still a very high price when compared to before the war, but lower than what it would otherwise be).

The result has also been, predictably, shortages and gas station shutdowns at times. So I walk to pick up my son from school, pick up a few things at the local grocery store on the way back, and then go pick up my daughter at the childminder. It’s certainly good for my health, but it also takes me at least an hour to do all of this as opposed to just 10-15 minutes.

Luckily, this is manageable, and my family are all in good health. What would happen however if the French government did this with food? With medicine?

We already know the results of not enough housing, almost always the results of rent freezes and various government restrictions on housing like zoning laws and excessive construction regulations. A housing crisis and a homeless population that has exploded in the last ten years.

Real world prices solve these problems instantly. They immediately reflect millions of data points, from production and opportunity costs to available resources to consumer preferences, into one single number.

So, the cost of a loaf of bread, or a baguette where I’m from, will reflect the price of wheat and flour, water, yeast and salt. The cost of the mill to turn the wheat into flour. The wages of the miller, the cost of materials in the mill and the energy needed to ground the wheat. The wages of the truck driver and the cost of the truck and diesel to deliver the flour to the baker. The wages, cost of rent and electricity for the baker. Then of course, the overall demand for bread and baguettes in your neighbourhood.

This is why the cost of goods, including basic goods like bread, are often a very good approximation for the overall health of the global economy, since many of the goods and raw materials needed to make the bread are now traded on a global scale. If war or a climate disaster leads to a global wheat shortage, the baker will have a decision to make. Pay more for wheat, and thus increase the price of the bread or baguette that he sells, sell other items that don’t require wheat, or perhaps relocate to a cheaper part of town. Consumers, noticing these changes and potential higher prices, might switch to different products as well, or consume less bread overall for the time being.

You of course all know how such economic mechanisms work, yet what’s remarkable about them is that all of this happens in real time across potentially millions of bakers and other producers. There was no central committee, no meetings, no memos. The economy adapted in real time.

In fact, how could there be? How could a small group of people, no matter how smart they were, be able to understand and coordinate these millions of signals in real time?

Not only that, but such a system also evolves over time. Higher prices often lead to new and ingenious solutions. Inventors invent new ways and innovations to deal with the problems causing higher prices. Entrepreneurs see opportunities. Supply chains shift.

Thus, prices are like living languages. Should prices fall too much, it signals to producers that they are producing too much. That they should take at least some of the resources and earnings and start producing other things as well. Likewise, high prices and profit margins tell producers that there is real demand for their goods and services, that they are solving a real problem consumers are willing to pay for. Prices also tell these consumers how to allocate their own money more wisely. If the smoked salmon or caviar mentioned earlier are very expensive, consumers will buy very little of these and treat them like luxuries, and reallocate their limited resources to buying food that can sustain them much more affordably.

Prices make these full costs visible. If you want strawberries in the winter, you’ll have to pay for the greenhouse and heating system within it, making them more expensive. You may not even know that’s the reason. You don’t have to know why your avocados are suddenly more expensive (the result of, say, a fungal outbreak in Mexico). You just see the higher price and then decide. Do I get avocados this week or not?

Likewise, if you want a cheap flight, you might be giving up on everything except a seat on a plane as many low-cost carriers now do, but if there is huge demand for such flights, it could also increase the price of jet fuel.

Which is why, interestingly, it is mostly low-cost carriers that seem to struggle the most in times of oil shocks, despite being cheaper overall than legacy carriers. The reasons seem to be that, beyond a certain price, those who usually take low-cost flights don’t do so anymore. They are simply not low-cost enough for price-sensitive consumers. Likewise, legacy carriers tend to attract those who are less price sensitive, and also those who may have paid for low-cost flights when the difference in price was very high, but who might now be willing to pay just a bit more to get a lot more. In other words, I’m paying a lot for my ticket anyway. I might as well enjoy it.

In short, prices tell producers and investors what to do and where to put their money. Should they invest in building this bridge or that factory instead? Depends on the price, and on the return on investment. That’s why prices are often described by economists as the backbone of modern civilisation, which allow strangers to cooperate and turn scarcity into order.

So what happens when you remove that backbone? What happens when the government decides to either limit the amount of pricing information, through for instance price freezes or subsidies, or ban prices altogether?

You guessed it. The economy, eventually but always in due course, collapses. It’s just a matter of time and how far down the central planner rabbit hole you go.

After the Bolshevik Revolution for instance, the government owned everything. They implemented a policy known as War Communism from 1918 to 1921. Under this system, a small number of people decided, for the entire Soviet Union, what gets made and who gets what. They, of course, requisitioned goods and abolished private businesses, markets and trades.

Factories then produced not based on market signals but on arbitrary orders placed by bureaucrats who, even with the best of intentions, were flying blind, economically speaking, since they didn’t actually know what Soviet citizens wanted. Instead, they essentially made best guesses or simply decided for them like children.

What does this look like?

Factories produced the wrong things in the wrong quantities. Goods that no one wanted piled up in warehouses. Clothes and shoes were made in sizes hardly anyone wanted. Some trains ran almost empty, while others were completely overburdened, the result of wrongly allocating trains based on beliefs, incomplete information and, often enough, personal desires by these powerful bureaucrats.

Worst of all?

A collapse of about 80% of industrial output compared to pre-WW1 levels. Agriculture completely collapsed and millions starved. Entire cities were emptied.

Even if these horrific numbers didn’t happen, how would you even measure success in a communist system like that?

Let’s say a factory met its quota given to it by some central politburo bureaucrat. So what? Was that a good thing for society? How do we know? Were the materials and scare resources used wisely? Was there actual demand for the goods produced by the factory, or was this just what the bureaucrat had deemed to be good?

Without prices, there is no way to know this. There are no profits, no losses, no cost-benefit analyses.

Beyond that, factory workers and managers, fearful of the central bureau or desireful for promotions, lied and falsified numbers. This became widespread across virtually every industry. Thus, since numbers on paper became detached from actual economic and factory output, the entire Soviet economy became an illusion. Central planners could not even believe their own numbers, but there was very little they could do about it. An entire new bureaucracy had to be created, at great expense, just to make sure that the quotas issued by the previous bureaucracy were actually met.

This is why economists like Van Mises claimed as early as 1920 that communism would fail.

Not because it was inefficient.

Because it was simply impossible. Because you can’t do correct economic calculations and adjust productions without those critical real world pricing signals.

Even Lenin himself seemed to agree. By 1921, the War Communism policy was replaced by the New Economic Policy. Certain sectors became private again. Farmers could sell their grain for market prices. Certain factories and small businesses were back in private hands, though certain other, more strategic sectors were of course still under state control. Trade and markets were legalised and reappeared once more.

Yes, even Lenin himself conceded that socialism, the economic arm of communism, had failed, and re-introduced capitalism in many parts of the Soviet economy. Let that be a lesson.

The results were also very predictable. Production rebounded, especially in agriculture. The famines receded, and cities began to bounce back. The entire economy began to restart. Not because of any ideology, no matter how supposedly noble, but because of prices.

Yet this also wouldn’t last. In the 1930s, Stalin reversed everything. Central planning returned. Private businesses, markets and trades were abolished, and once again, famine, especially the Holodomor, returned. This pattern would then repeat throughout the communist and socialist world in the decades to come.

During the Great Leap Forward, Mao abolished private business and ownership.

The result?

A very predictable famine that may have killed as high as one hundred million Chinese. In Communist Ethiopia and Somalia? You guessed it, with the horrific famines of the 1980s. Even Cuba, no longer receiving grain and support from the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991, almost starved in the 1990s despite excellent soils and weather.

These are features of socialism and communism. They happen every time prices are abolished or manipulated with any degree of significance. Market signals are lost, producers cannot produce correctly, shortages inevitably occur.

Prices not only tell us what things cost. They tell us how to act. Without good signals, we can’t act correctly. We consume bread and wheat and oil as though they were abundant, even though production is falling and maybe even collapsing right next door as we are doing this. Like producing a dinner meal for say ten people with absolutely no information about them, their dietary needs or preferences, or of the availability or not of certain foods at the market itself.

That’s what economic and pricing signals do. With them, you can produce based on what people need. Without them, it’s economic chaos, whether the policy was implemented for noble reasons or not. It’s confusion on a civilisational scale. Markets become, at best, distorted from reality.

Even worse?

People stop caring. Producers have no incentive to produce. There’s no reward for efficiency. No penalties for waste. Instead, the system becomes about meeting arbitrary quotas by bureaucrats often focused more on proving loyalty than on being competent. Corruption thrives, initiatives die off. State-owned enterprises continue to produce and can not go bankrupt until the entire economy itself does so, which is exactly what happened to Mao’s China and to the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in private markets, new ideas have to compete and prove themselves. If they work, they are rewarded. If they fail, they disappear from the market. Innovation is rewarded, and prices direct all decision-making.

In planned economies?

New ideas need permissions, signed documents, and go through bureaucratic channels made up of people with often zero entrepreneurial vision. They face delays, resistance and often suspicion, and so planned economies very often stagnate or recede.

More often than not, black markets thrive in such systems. Not by design, but by necessity. People trade in secret through whisper prices. When official prices fail, the black market becomes the real economy. In countries like Iran and Pakistan today, an estimated two-thirds to three quarters of the entire economy is believed to be the black market economy.

People need these price signals simply to survive. When the price system is gone, nothing works anymore.

There can be exceptions to this of course, often for strategic reasons. When the Soviet Union had to compete, first with Nazi Germany and then with the United States during the Cold War, they allowed a high degree (for the Soviets at least) or freedom and entrepreneurship to CEOs of defence companies. Those who made the tanks, rifles, fighters jets and missiles.

That’s why the biggest companies in the Soviet Union were called Sukhoi, Mikoyan and Kalashnikov, names you have likely heard. Those CEOs from which these companies were named often made millions and had their own private residences and datchas, a rare reward by the state from their entrepreneurship and ingenuity.

At least until they went too far that is, gathered too much influence and potentially threatened the existing leadership, and of course needed to be brought back in line with a trip to a prison camp in Siberia. Something we are also seeing in today’s China. Just ask Jack Ma and others.

Thus, even the Soviets understood that you had to leave people alone, at least to a degree, and give them incentives to innovate if you wanted to compete with other countries. Something modern China has understood as well, again to a degree.

Something North Korea has not, its central planning in clear and sharp contrast with its southern neighbour who is now a modern first world economy, despite both countries starting at the very bottom of the economic ladder in the 1950s. Life expectancy in South Korea is now 11 years longer.

One Korea glows at night, the other lives in darkness.

Millions of North Korean citizens have sadly starved since the 50s. To this day, entire buildings lay empty, the country produces goods that no one wants, and its only export is really its labour, to places like China and Russia, including as canon-fodder for its war effort, as opposed to any kind of innovation. Likewise, the North Korean black market is notorious, with farmers and other workers selling their goods in secret despite the immense personal risks to them.

What does all of this have to do with the American Democratic Socialists?

Well, Mamdani has recently opened a government-run grocery store in New York City, where products are reportedly up to 30% lower in price than in private grocery stores.

If true, I already know what’s going to happen.

Take Venezuela for instance. The government has also operated such stores for years, where food, medicine and fuel are well below market prices.

It may sound compassionate, but the results speak for themselves. By setting price ceilings, production collapsed. When the price of bread became below production cost, bakers stopped baking. When fuel was basically free, huge shortages occurred, in the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet. An absurdity in and of itself. More than that, people who could get gas then filled up entire jerricans and, you guessed it, then sold these at much higher prices on the black market. Those people were often, of course, tied to the regime and the Ministry of Oil.

The very people who preach communism in one hand while benefiting lavishly themselves in the other.

Most of all, when grocery prices were fixed, as they now are for the Mamdani store in NYC, consumers rushed to buy these goods at way lower prices, resulting in constantly empty shelves. These same consumers then, of course, resold most of these on the black markets. Since private stores also couldn’t compete against such low and fixed prices, they ended up shutting down. The owners and managers of such stores likely ended up working on the black markets as well.

The result was thus an inevitable mismatch between high demand and collapsing supply, and constantly empty shelves. Hence why so many Venezuelans have lost weight and are suffering from worrying nutritional deficiencies.

Even worse, and also predictably, the Venezuelan government then printed money to cover its expanding deficits due to high social costs. That of course led to one of the worst hyperinflations in recent memories, of 130 000% a year in 2018.

Prices then rose so quickly that menus needed daily reprinting. Higher pay checks became worthless within hours and people had to buy everything they could the second they got paid. Of course, the black market, based on US dollars or gold or even on barter with things like cigarettes, thrived.

Even legal businesses hid their goods to sell them off the books to this black market. When official markets are lies, informal ones become the truth.

The country with the largest oil reserves on the planet has families go without food and hospitals go without medicine. It even has to import fuel because, without proper signals, its own oil production collapsed. A bizarre irony.

Thus, what Mamdani and his revolutionaries are doing, for noble reasons or not, is essentially turning NYC and the places they run into third-world, black markets hellholes. Of course, they can’t print money like Maduro did, at least not until they take control of Congress and the Federal Government, but they would very likely do this as well if they got there. They wouldn’t even necessarily do this out of choice, but out of simple necessity. To maintain the illusion of their wonderfully compassionate system.

If you then argue that they are simply trying to make NYC, Seattle and other places look more like Sweden or Denmark, which the DSA often hold up as examples, that’s ridiculous. The governments of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, or the local governments of Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, do not operate government-run grocery stores. They are very much capitalist driven, and allow for private businesses and price signals to operate. They simply then take the fruits of such a productive economic system and redistribute these along more social welfare lines like education, pensions and healthcare, rather than say defence.

A worthy discussion in itself, for certain, but what Mamdani and co. are doing are different animals entirely. Much more similar to Lenin, Stalin and Mao, economically speaking at least, than with Kamprad and Fredericksen.

With all too predictable results as well.

After all, the New York Times had her at an 85% chance of victory against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump just one day before the election. The HuffPost even had her at 98%. Yet you all know what happened next.

Worst still, 2016 was by no means a one-off.

In 2020, while the pollsters got the Biden election win right, they were actually off by more points (4-8 points), than they had been in 2016. Then again, in 2024, most pollsters also predicted a comfortable Kamala Harris win, especially in all seven swing states that had voted for Biden in 2020. They called it Kamala’s Blue Wall. Even in Iowa, only four days before the election, experienced Iowa pollster Anne Selzer predicted a Kamala Harris win by an astounding 3 points.

In Iowa..

Well, Trump went on to win Iowa by a massive 13 points, and won all seven swing states, along with the popular vote. Selzer, who had been a highly recognised pollster for decades, resigned altogether.

Even worst still was that, in almost all cases since the 2016 elections, the state polling errors were even higher than the national polling errors. In fact, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, essentially America’s national polling organisation, called the 2020 elections “the worst polling year in four decades”. Yet they would repeat such a claim only four years later.

So what is going on? How could the polling industry, who had made very reliable predictions for decades and which is paid handsomely by news, business and political organisations to do so, seemingly now get it so wrong, so often?

For instance, how could they systematically miss Republican support by so much? How could they fail this hard despite their sophisticated mathematical models, all of their collected data and plenty of very smart people working for them? Is it simply political bias gone amok, or is there something else going on?

To begin answering these questions, we need a better understanding of the problem.

In 2016, in all fairness, the national polls were not that far off from the final popular vote. On aggregate, these polls had Hillary Clinton winning by about 3-4 points, and she did win the popular vote by about 2 points. However, this being the American elections, the national results don’t really matter. Instead, how Americans intend to vote in each state, for the purposes of the Electoral College, is what matters to become president.

Prior to the 2016 election, several swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan all had Hillary Clinton up by sometimes 6-7 points, if not higher, just days or even 24 hours before the election. Trump would of course win all three swing states and the White House.

Hence why, if your going to be in the presidential prediction business all together, you need valid and reliable polling data, state by state across all fifty states.

That’s already more of a challenge. A 1-2% margin of error is not all that uncommon in the industry. As someone who personally teaches research methods to Bachelor and Masters students, I know a lot about population representation, random sampling, margins of error, how to ensure valid and reliable data, etc.. There is always a trade-off between more accurate polling and cost. To get down to 1-2% margins of errors require sample sizes in the thousands, which of course means finding ways to contact or interact with thousands of people.

This, in and of itself, is time consuming and expensive. I even tell my own students I’d be happy with a 4-5% margin of error or less, since I know what it takes to get it down to 1-2%.

But it goes beyond that. After all, if you simply asked thousands of New Yorkers how they intend to vote in the next presidential election, that sample would clearly not be representative of the wider country. Building your sample properly to begin with is everything. Introducing too much bias into it, or lacking in geographical distribution, will inevitably taint your sample results.

So how do you ensure your sample is good enough?

You will need a high enough sample size to be mathematically relevant, distributed geographically across the entire country (for national elections at least), and where individuals are randomly selected. Then, for the presidential election, you need to do all of this for each and every state, so you can already see the herculean task for pollsters.

Of course, pollsters failing to do this work for political bias is one of the reasons results can become skewed. There’s no getting around that, and it certainly happens. However, even if pollsters had no political bias, and they genuinely wanted to find how people intended to vote, whomever the candidate may be, ensuring that all of these conditions were met is challenging and expensive.

Still, it is their job, and they are paid to do this. Failing to do so can also have all kinds of impacts, from the short-term immediate impact of the stock market to long-term policy decisions, including going to war or not, who will sit next on the US Supreme Court, or who the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve will be. Most of all, getting it wrong prior to the elections happening means that the American people are misinformed before going to vote. If they believe that their candidate, including for a presidential primary race or any race, is now way behind in the polls than he or she actually is, then momentum and campaign funding could dry up. If people and donors believe a candidate is currently 10 points behind another one when in fact they are only 3-4 points behind, that could have very serious consequences for the future of the country.

In this spirit, I have often claimed and certainly believe that professional journalists, being the fourth estate, should swear an oath of seeking the truth no matter what, for the purposes of producing a well-informed electorate. After all, politicians, judges and doctors are required to swear oaths, because we recognise the very important and even critical nature of their profession. So, why not journalists, and why not pollsters as well, the more one might think about it?

It also wasn’t always like this. Prior to the 2016 elections, pollsters had for decades produced generally reliable prediction results, arguably going all the way back to the 1968 election. Across all fifty states, margins of error were rarely above 2%, and when they were, they distributed almost evenly to the Democrats and to the Republicans. This is exactly what you would expect to find under random sampling and imperfect polling instruments. Yet from 2016 onwards, the error rates were much higher, and all ran in the same Democrat winning direction.

So how and why did this happen? Is it simply a case of Trump bias? Do pollsters, who typically have comfortable office jobs in big blue cities like New York and Washington D.C., simply refuse to believe anyone could vote for the orange man? After all, the one thing all three elections, from 2016 to 2024, had in common was Trump running as the Republican candidate.

In reality, pollsters have been warning of a creeping problem for over a decade now. A problem that predated Trump entering politics. That is, the problem with creating a valid and reliable sample to begin with.

For decades prior to the current problems, pollsters essentially used one method: the phone call.

Almost all Americans by the 1960s had landlines in their homes, and so pollsters called them across the country. This guaranteed obtaining a large and distributed sample size relatively easily. After all, teams of junior pollsters could call thousands of people, at a rate of say 50 people called a day per pollster, almost every day. Even assuming for error rates (that is, the number of people who simply hung up the phone or who would not tell who they intended to vote for), a large enough sample size of people who did express their intentions was good enough. Calling random phone numbers also ensured random geographical distribution across the entire country.

This method of calling people on the phone did not come out of nowhere either. Instead, it came out of another major polling scandal during the 1936 presidential election. Back then, the Literary Digest, who had successfully predicted all five previous elections, gave Republican candidate Alfred Landon a comfortable 57% popular vote win over Democrat incumbent president Franklin Roosevelt. Instead, Roosevelt won the popular vote, and his re-election, by a whopping 62%. The worst error in American polling history.

So how did the Digest get it so wrong?

They thought they had done everything right. They sent 10 million postcards in the mail, a massive undertaking. 2.4 million such postcards came back. A huge sample size giving Landon the win. Very few outsiders could have faulted them for not trying.

However, in polling, quantity is not the same as quality. The newspaper had made a major mistake. They built out their sampling (that is the addresses to send out their voter intention postcards) based on phone records and car registries. However, in 1936, most people still did not have landlines in their homes, nor did they own cars. Those who did were wealthy people, who were typically Republicans, especially back then. Working-class New Deal Democrat voters typically did not yet have such niceties.

The result was a massively skewed sample in favour of Republican candidate Landon, which did not accurately represent the entire country.

This, in many ways, tells you everything. What if the methods you use to contact people to ask for their polling intentions is in itself more likely to be used by one group over another? What if Republican voters in 1936 are more likely to have landlines over Democrat voters? What if Democrat voters, especially younger ones, are more likely to use social media in 2016? You can already see where I’m going with this.

In any event, from the 1960s onwards, almost all homes did have a landline, and this would last until about the 2010s, when landline adoption started falling. Hence the “Golden Age of Polling”, as pollsters have called it, that lasted for about half a century. Huge and geographically varied sample sizes, response rates typically in the 50% range or more. A pollster’s dream.

However, like all good things, this would not last. When smartphone adoption started growing exponentially in the 2010s, trumping landlines, problems started to emerge.

Why did problems emerge when smartphones specifically appeared, and not mobile phones before, which had been around since the late 80s?

Because with smartphones came caller IDs. You could see who was calling you, and see if you were actually familiar with them. Spams also started multiplying, so much so that most people, seeing an unknown phone number, simply began assuming that it was some kind of telemarketer, or outright fraudster attempting to sell them something or steal their money, and so stopped answering the phone altogether.

I am certainly guilty of this myself. I now instruct all new people I give my number to first leave me a message. I will know who it is and register their name immediately, but I no longer answer random numbers. I’ve simply been harassed far too often.

Clearly, many feel the same way, because response rates to pollsters had dropped to single digits by 2016. That already tells you a lot of what went wrong. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse, which is why we see increasing disparities with every new election. In 2024, prior to the elections, one pollster even admitted that they consider themselves lucky if they get a 1-2% response rate. Yet going from a roughly 50% response rate to single digits means you now need to contact nearly 50 times more people. That means going from thousands to hundreds of thousands of people, a hugely expensive and virtually impossible undertaking.

So what have pollsters tended to do instead?

The short answer is to rely on mathematical tricks and, it must be said, some shortcuts and biases, with the polling results we now have.

For instance, pollsters have tried to address the single digit problem through what’s known as weighting. This is exactly what it sounds like. If those who do respond tend to be older, or perhaps more educated, pollsters will mathematically give those responders a lower weight in the final results, in the hopes of better reflecting the overall population. Too many urban voters? Just weight them down. Too many college graduates? Just repeat the process.

This works, but only partially as you can imagine. After all, who determines weighting numbers? What is the criteria, or mathematical formula? Is it just guess work? What are the tools that pollsters use to guarantee accurate representation in their models?

Ultimately, however pollsters build these models will determine everything. A bad model with bad mathematical weights, and polling results can be off by several digits. Besides, this is an old solution. Weighting has been around since polling has been around. It does not, arguably, address the fundamentally new realities of voters today, and how differently they live and go about their lives compared to voters just barely a decade ago.

There is also another polling tool pollsters use called weight on recall, which is weighting based on past electoral results. A pollster will try to sample past voting intentions, and then adjust, at least in part, based on the actual previous election results. Though imperfect, since voters might simply claim they, for instance, voted for the winning candidate when they in fact did not, this has the advantage of knowing that if people today claim to have voted for someone four years ago, and the results of such a survey are completely different to the actual results from four years ago, then you should know, at least in part, to what degree the voters are misleading you. You should therefore know, at least to some degree, by how much your models are off.

The big problem with this method is that it doesn’t always completely represent voter intentions in the next election. Yes, many people who voted one way four years ago are likely to vote the same way today, but many voters are also susceptible to change their votes as well. Thus, even if pollsters got a very accurate weighting picture from four years ago, it doesn’t guarantee correct weighting for the next elections four years later. So again, imperfect.

Other explanations also emerged in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Most common was the Shy Voter Theory.

That is, voters who did respond to pollsters indicated a preference for Hillary Clinton, when in reality they intended to vote for Trump. The theory states that such voters did not indicate Trump for a number of reasons, from being ashamed to admit it, to fearing that information would leak, and friends and their workplace would find out, to simply not wanting to be bothered or harassed by people they thought would do so if this became known. In other words, in what was also, it must be said, convenient for pollsters, the polling models weren’t wrong. Instead, so they claimed, the voters were lying to them.

There was even some precedence for this. In 1982, during the California Governor race, Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, was given a significant polling margin for victory soon before the election. Not double digits of course, but solid single ones. Yet on election day, he lost. The answer, concluded at the time at least with some degree of truth, was that white voters did not want to appear racist to pollsters on the phone, so indicated voting intentions for Bradley, before instead voting for his opponent on election day.

This even became known as the Bradley Effect, and even became a founding assumption for pollsters. That is, on politically charged topics, voters would likely lie to them and skew their results. So, for years after that, very often when a minority candidate lost an election, the Bradley Effect was mentioned.

Another example of this, the Shy Tory Theory, happened in 1992, when all polls showed Labour winning the 1992 General Election in the United Kingdom, only for the Conservatives to win it comfortably. Then again of course, when Clinton became the first woman to win a primary nomination for president and was only one election away from the White House, the Bradley Effect was mentioned as well, this time in relation to gender.

Again, there is very likely some truth to all of this. Some voters very likely indicated voting for Bradley specifically to not appear racist, or Clinton to not appear sexist, even when, for many at least, they likely genuinely didn’t care about the candidate’s race or gender but were still afraid of people associating them with these aspects in a negative manner.

Ultimately though, this did not change the final results, and how wrong the pollsters were.

In fact, some pollsters have dismissed the Shy Voter Theory all together, arguing that sampling and polling models were incorrectly built from the start instead. They began arguing that, in the wake of 2016, voter intentions over the phone could not be trusted anymore, and so called for alternatives like online polling. After all, some claimed, people would be more likely to indicate who they really intended to vote for with the safety and anonymity of a screen in their own homes, instead of having to explain themselves to another person over the phone.

Yet the data, once more, indicated otherwise, with 2020 being even more skewed than 2016 and 2024 being even more skewed than 2020, despite a massive polling effort redirected towards online surveys. Clearly then, if the Shy Voter Theory had any merit at all, then it could be used to explain the online surveys as well, with voters seemingly afraid to admit voting for Trump on a computer or a phone screen as well.

Or, perhaps, something else was at play. Something else was wrong with the modelling all together.

After all, by 2024, Trump was a well known political figure with over 90 million social media followers. If Trump supporters had been shy at all in 2016, they were clearly no longer so by 2024. Yet the polling errors were much wider in 2024 than eight years prior.

Hence why the theory had been starting to lose more and more credibility regardless.

To be fair, it is true that, in general, right-leaning voters tend to distrust the media more, and polling is definitely associated with the media. Meaning that right-leaning voters are less likely to respond to surveys to begin with. Something that cannot be easily weighted, since to do this, you would need to know exactly by how much they are unlikely to answer pollsters, and that’s of course difficult to measure.

More explanations started to emerge as well, including the one of herding.

For those unfamiliar with the term, herding is essentially when individual pollsters who obtain results that are different from the wider industry then assume that their own results and models must be wrong. Thus, rather than questioning the wider industry, they question themselves and often proceed to correct their own results. They will weight them differently for instance, to be more in line with the aggregate. Some refer to this as “pollsters who always chicken out” or PACO.

Why would pollsters do this?

Well, think of it this way. If you are all alone in reporting different results than the wider industry and you do go on to, in fact, get it wrong on election day, then your reputation, and therefore your career, is on the line. It’s easy to forget that pollsters are human beings who have mortgages and kids to feed. If, fearful of such a possibility, individual pollsters then adjust their predictions to be more in line with the wider industry, and then all are collectively wrong together, then at least the individual pollsters don’t get singled out, and are therefore, the theory goes, less likely to lose their job. You could also call this Aggregate or Herding Bias.

Imagine then if you, as a pollster, found in your own model that Trump was ahead by 3 points, yet the wider polling industry claimed that Clinton was going to win by 4 points. You can then imagine what happens next. Even before the elections actually happened, the wider industry, the media, and the Democrat Party would likely target you, laugh at you, call your results ridiculous or prone to political bias, etc. Of course, such herding can also apply the other way around.

In any event, herding would then be the much safer option for you, since it takes genuine courage to claim everyone else in the polling industry is wrong with their predictions. You’re instead much more likely to question the validity or your own polling models, and therefore rework and re-tweak them. Hence the necessity of what I call the polling oath that professional pollsters should be required to undertake. That is, to report on your findings whatever they may say, and then produce your own models for scrutiny.

This would introduce much more transparency and, in principle, far more accurate results. To the contrary, herding is not a modelling error. That happens before herding happens. Instead, herding goes beyond that. It becomes an active decision to then deliberately change your own model in the face of different results, usually out of fear, even when the fears can be somewhat legitimate. Hence why it has such a reputation.

In fact, one of the most famous polling experts in America, Nate Silver, who predicted that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016 but “only” with a 71% probability days before the election (still wrong, but much closer than the 98% for the HuffPost), claimed right before the 2024 election that “there was more herding in swing state polls than at a Scottish sheep farm”.

Silver has of course been wrong with his predictions in the past, just like any other pollster, but he also has built up a reputation for going outside of the herd, and not being afraid to publish polling predictions very different to that of the wider industry. In any event, he also famously said that, going forward after 2024, every poll should be assumed to contain errors, and major ones at that, since the fundamental problem of figuring out who is willing to respond to pollsters, on the phone or online, still hasn’t been solved. Therefore, any model claiming to be reliable should be looked at with a major grain of salt.

Still, while some pollsters herd their results out of career fears, others clearly show political biases as well.

The Washington Post and the New York Times for instance famously downgraded predictions by polling organisations like the Trafalgar Group and Emerson College. Polling firms who actually went against the herd, and showed stronger Trump support than the aggregate going into the 2024 elections. Who therefore got it, to a large degree, right, or at least closer to the final results.

Even Wikipedia famously banned the results of polling aggregator RealClear just weeks prior to the elections, even though RealClear was exactly what it sounds like. It simply aggregated hundreds of different polling predictions wherever they found them, and therefore predicted stronger Trump support compared to a number of individual pollsters. Yet this was enough for Wikipedia to ban them, calling them biased and unreliable in favour of Republicans.

The problem for all of these media and information organisations is that there is actually a due date, the election date, when we find out who got it right and who got it wrong. Wikipedia, likely embarrased by their banning of RealClear, immediately reinstated them on their site after the 2024 elections. Yet it still, inevitably, made them look bad. Likewise with the New York Times, Washington Post or HuffPost. When they dismiss polling groups for predictions that don’t champion the Democrat candidates, it chips away at their reputation over time.

So what are the solutions to all of this? How do we fix what some have dubbed “the polling apocalypse”? After all, nothing is more important than a well informed electorate.

The solutions to the smartphone problem seem simple enough. Perhaps, if pollsters do still insist on calling people to get voter intention, some kind of written title needs to appear on their phone, rather than a random number or No Caller ID. Pollster or Polling, for example. The government could send out a nationwide message saying that when these words appear on their phone, it is to help pollsters understand voting intentions, not to get telemarketers to get you to buy something.

Then again, I’m not sure how many people would still pick up the phone now using this method. Many people, especially on the Republican side, still associate pollsters with the government or the media, are so might be just as likely not to answer the phone even if they know who is calling.

Another method that I can see is simply to make the grinding effort of sending people out in the field, across all fifty states. To ask voters in the street or ring their doorbells to ask them face-to-face about their intentions. Of course, some people will refuse to answer, and some people further will indicate one candidate, say Biden or Harris, when they actually intend to vote for Trump. But again, this was also true of landlines. Yet with a large enough sample size, especially if it is now genuinely randomly distributed, these errors can be minimised once more.

Finally, there is one other method that will definitely be controversial, and that is the one of prediction markets.

Online prediction markets have exploded in recent years. They are essentially contracts on all sorts of questions, due dates and predictions. You can find almost anything on such markets, from “When will the Strait of Hormuz reopen?” to “When will Prince William become King of England?”.

One of the questions that of course now always appears on such markets is “Who will win the next election”.

What’s interesting about this is tracking how people have betted, since this creates an aggregate. Millions of Americans bet on such markets. That alone, if you think about it in terms of sampling, does seem to get some things right. Prediction markets have the sample size. They also have the geographic distribution, since anyone across all fifty states can place a bet.

The probability data is also based on actual betting patterns. That is, real people betting their own real money, so they have an actual stake in the game, as opposed to simply telling a pollster on the phone what they think they might want to hear. This, in theory, helps with reliability.

The question then is the randomness. Do those who play typically skew in terms of, for instance, gender and age?

Typically, yes of course. Men tend to use these markets more than women, and younger men tend to do so more than older men, but that can also, in theory, be mitigated somewhat. After all, if you already have the data of who is betting on these markets, in terms of things like gender and age, which these prediction companies typically do since they require participants to give out such information when signing up, then you can compare such numbers to that of the US Census results and weight accordingly. You also have the data of where they live, since they typically have to give their addresses as well, so you also know how urban or rural they are.

It’s not perfect of course, but in terms of raw numbers and data reliability, it arguably delivers far better accuracy, especially in today’s day and age, than polling teams calling random people on their smartphones.

Ultimately, whatever methods they use, if pollsters are going to regain their credibility going forward, they have to get predictions right again. At the very least, they need to get closer to the final results, not further away as they seem to be doing since 2016.

They are also going to have to do so repeatedly, so that we don’t believe it to be a lucky guess. This will take time, and perhaps even new and untested models. The alternative is people no longer taking them seriously going forward, threatening our desire for a well-informed electorate, while also risking the very existence of the polling industry as a whole, and the countless jobs that go with it.

Author’s note: Hey everyone. If you’ve read this far, I want to personally thank you for giving me your time. I hope you found this article interesting. I have just passed 100 articles on Substack, and I’m so grateful for that, and for your support in reaching this milestone. If you found this article interesting, you’ll hopefully find my other ones here on my Substack page interesting as well.

My goal is to help those interested in better understanding the current events and aspects of our crazy, modern world. If I have done so for you, I hope you’ll subscribe. Take care.

Now, to be clear, the threat of tariffs and the calls for Canada to become the 51st US state have clearly ruffled some feathers across the border. This was arguably manifested in the recent United States-Canada hockey game, where the players ended up landing punches on faces rather than pucks in nets. Expect US-Canada relations to remain low for the duration of the Trump presidency, no matter who is in charge in Ottawa.

Nevertheless, beyond the bombastic and destabilising rhetoric coming from the American president, Canada is in a difficult position. One that came about, not by Trump, but arguably by successive Canadian policies.

Trump’s threats of tariffs and trolling rhetoric have certainly rattled the Canadian government. However, such shaking has been made possible because the foundations of the Canadian economy have also never been weaker than they are today.

For instance, prior to Trump’s arrival in the White House, Canada did have a $100 billion trade surplus with the US, which has definitely irked the American president, although trade balances are part of much wider and complex payment balances (which include things like tourism, investments, remittances, etc) and should therefore not really be measured alone when determining policy.

Nevertheless, a 25% tariff on various Canadian goods coming into the US will definitely be painful for their economy.

Canada could of course retaliate, no doubt will and may already have done so by the time you are reading this article, but this will likely lead to even higher American tariffs. In the knowledge that Canada does indeed sell considerably more to their southern neighbour than vice-versa, Canada therefore also has far more to lose, especially if such a trade war persists

Let us therefore be clear about the causes of such a trade dispute between the two countries. This trade deficit did not emerge under Donald Trump, including during his first mandate. Whatever one’s own views of Trump may be, this deficit has emerged because Canada has arguably failed up until now to invest sufficiently into its export capacities to other countries around the world, and therefore has no other choie but to sell to its southern neighour at significantly discounted prices, which in turn fuels the deficit and the discontent.

After all, if we exclude the tiny Hans island (and I mean tiny, at merely 130 hectares or 320 acres) in the high Arctic, where Canada shares an equally tiny land border with Greenland, the United States is the only country it shares a land border with. If Canada therefore wishes to export to other countries around the world and diversify its economy away from the United States, it therefore inevitably means first investing in the necessary infrastructure like highways, railways and pipelines that would provide enough capacity to get Canadian goods to the east and west coasts of the country, and then investing into ports large and adequate enough to export these goods across oceans.

Yet both such areas have arguably received significant underinvestment by recent Canadian governments, not least by the Trudeau one.

To give you a scale of the problem today, Canada is a resource powerhouse, producing significant amounts of foodstuffs, energy and minerals. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Despite this, there are times when up to 99% of all of this exported oil goes to its southern neighbour, even though there are 191 other countries across the globe. That’s because Canada has lacked the necessary pipelines to get enough of this oil to both the Saint Lawrence river and the British Columbia coast for export.

There is some capacity of course, like the TransCanada pipeline for gas that goes from Alberta to the east of the country, or the Trans Mountain pipeline for oil that goes to Vancouver. However, both were built in the 1950s, when populations were much smaller, and capacities much more limited. Today, such pipelines barely cover domestic needs in these provinces. Even if Canada did have more modern and higher-capacity pipelines, it also lacks the export terminals, particularly along the Saint-Lawrence, to then ship such resources to the wider world. Needless to say that if it did, many countries around the world would be paying top Canadian dollar for their oil right now, not least across Europe in the wake of the Ukraine war.

Why does this situation create a trade deficit for the United States?

Most of the existing Canadian pipeline capacity goes, not eastwards or westwards, but directly to the United States, and it has also been regularly increasing, with all of the necessary investment to do so, for decades. The infamous Keystone pipeline extension, for instance, that caused much political debate in the United States, especially around the land rights of First Nations people, was a part of that overall expansion effort. Now, and as previously mentioned, virtually all oil and gas capacity from Canada crosses the border south.

Even worse, a significant amount of such exported oil to the United States, over 400 000 barrel per day, has to then be re-imported back into Canada, particularly in its eastern provinces like Ontario and Quebec, because of this lack in pipeline capacity from west to east. Not only that, but even if such pipeline infrastructure were to magically appear tomorrow, many refineries in these eastern Canadian provinces are also not well suited to refine the types of oil coming out of Alberta.

As a result, such oil has no other “choice” but to head south into the United States, often all the way to refineries in Texas, get refined there and then travel back up north. Finally, when it does stay in the US for american markets, it also has to compete with increasing American shale oil production, not least from the Barnett, Eagle Ford and other shales in Texas.

Simply put, for decades prior to the shale revolution of the last fifteen years, the American appetite for oil, combined with increasingly limited US domestic production, kept Canadian oil producers happy sending their products down south. Especially leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, when China has also a major oil consumer and world oil prices peaked at $145/barrel.

After that however, much of the world entered into a recession, but worst of all for Canadian producers, the American shale revolution was kicking into gear. So much so that now, fifteen years later, the United States has become by far the world’s largest oil producer. Not only that, but in a twist of irony, the US now exports more oil and gas by far to other markets around the world, not least Europe, than Canada does.

Because of such infrastructure setups, and the lack of necessary investment for expansion towards other markets, Canada has had no choice but to sell their oil and gas into this highly competitive and arguably saturated American market. To do so, they have had to offer major price discounts to secure market share. This means that Canadian oil producers are barely making any profits, while American producers are also seeing their margins reduced by having to compete with discounted Canadian oil and gas, all the while the entire situation helps to create a major trade deficit for the United States in the background.

A situation that would have happened with or without Trump.

If, however, Canada had much greater capacity to export to world markets, then they could both earn much more and also reduce such a trade imbalance.

There are of course other areas that also contribute to this imbalance. Canadian wages and productivity levels have fallen significantly behind American ones, to the point where the average American now makes about $70 000 USD, whereas the average Canadian makes $50 000 USD. It’s been in the news quite a bit in recent years how the average wages in even the richest Canadian provinces are now lower than in even the poorest American states. Yet wages are highly tied to productivity, and Canadian productivity has simply not kept up. In 1984, Canadian productivity rates were 88% that of American productivity. By 2022, these had fallen to just 71%.

Productivity is tied to innovation, higher education and available capital. Yet the United States reformed their capital markets in the 1980s to allow much more venture capital funding, fuelling tech innovation. Canada has lagged behind, and as a result, wages have also lagged behind.

Lower wages and lower capital have also contributed to a lower Canadian dollar, which has also fallen behind its southern counterpart. Up until the 1980s, the Canadian dollar had been virtually on par with the American one. Since then, it has kept falling, slowly but surely, and is now barely worth 70%. Yet a lower currency, combined with lower wages, will also facilitate trade imbalances, by making Canadian products cheaper.

To fix these problems, Canada needs to both invest into necessary energy infrastructure and also reform their capital markets. This has not occurred under the Trudeau government. To be fair to Trudeau, it did not happen with the prior governments either. Trudeau also came into office in 2014, the year oil prices crashed, not least because of increase shale oil capacity flooding the markets. This made it less likely, especially under a Liberal government who prioritises environmental protection, for such new pipelines to be built. Yet the threat from US shale was arguably known since 2008, and it’s something the previous Harper government could have done something about, not least by investing in new pipeline capacity to also help stimulate the Canadian economy in the wake of the recession.

Oil prices didn’t start to go back up in any significant manner until 2018, by which time, and to Trudeau’s credit, the government of Canada purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, in order to keep the project alive to double its oil transportation capacity, as well as not oppose the LNG Canada project across British Columbia. I have written about both such projects in this previous article:

Nevertheless, Canada under Trudeau failed to expand its TransCanada infrastructure, which was built all the way back into the 1950s. It also failed to enable its own domestic shale revolution. It has failed to do so despite oil prices going up in 2018, and despite US shale firmly eating away at Canadian profits even then. Since then, no doubt under pressure by its even more pro-environment NDP allies, and despite oil prices shooting up even further in 2022 in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, it has still not done so.

The Trudeau government, as well as previous governments, have also failed to reform their capital markets like their southern neighbours have to enable more venture investment, which would have helped both the Canadian tech and shale sectors, and have also failed to create, for instance, a Norwegian-style national sovereign wealth fund, despite oil prices being overall high for the past twenty-five years.

Instead, the Canadian growth story of the past decade has been largely thanks to mass immigration. Canada has had, by far, the highest rates of immigration per capita of any western country under the Trudeau administration. This can lead to overall growth, since more people also means more workers and therefore a growing economy. However, GDP per capita and productivity have simply not risen in line with such population growth. Worse, such immigration levels have inevitably led to skyrocketing housing prices. Canada now has some of the highest housing prices relative to income anywhere in the world, despite having vast empty lands, which in turn has led to a major inflation and cost of living crisis. Canadian construction companies simply cannot keep up with such demand, particularly as regulatory policies introduced by the Trudeau government, like restrictive zoning and the carbon tax, have made construction costs higher.

Well, such inflation, now combined with stagnant growth, has inevitably created the stagflation environment Canada now finds itself in, making Canada that much more vulnerable to Trump’s return to the White House.

In many ways, these Canadian policies, and lack of infrastructure investment, really contrast the differences in vision and values, not just between the Trudeau and Trump, but between the old world and the new. Between the pre-covid, pre-Ukraine globalised world, where there was mass immigration, no trade disputes, and where the abundance of raw materials coming out of the Russian space meant that Canada could focus on its own energy transition efforts. Trudeau came to power in such an environment and, despite being much younger than Trump, is arguably a product of such previous times. His main opponent, Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party, has repeatedly used the campaign slogan “Axe the Tax”, in reference to the carbon tax that is on everything including food in Canada, to attack Trudeau. Incidentally since the Trump tariff threats, Poilievre has also promised to invest in major infrastructure development from west to east, saying Canada should have done this years ago.

Trump himself has clearly stated that America needed to be tough and project peace through strength. A completely different vision, and one that arguably better reflects the new geopolitical realities. He also arguably sees the Liberals of Justin Trudeau as the equivalent of northern Democrats, who have often sneered and looked down upon him and Republicans in the past. Those same liberals who dominate the largest Canadian cities, particularly in the Ontario and Quebec provinces, who are also highly dependent on oil and natural gas coming from the United States.

Perhaps Trudeau thought that he would outlast Trump. He did outlast Trump's first term in office, after all, when tariff threats were made but hardly implemented. Perhaps he thought the same thing would happen now, or that Trump would never get re-elected for a second term. Perhaps he thought that the same old world would continue, at least until he left office on a high note, and that successive American presidents would never come after him over the trade deficit.

Instead, by failing to prepare for the worst during the good times, Canada now finds itself in a much more precarious position.

It has however led to one clear regional winner: South America.

Since the beginning of the year, there has been impressive industry growth. Oil production in South America grew by 7.5% in 2025 alone according to energy firm Rystad Energy, and will likely grow by double digits this year.

Not only that, but the same company also estimates that nearly half of all global oil production growth from 2025 to 2030 will come from South America. That is, unlike Russia, the Middle-East or North America, where capacity and infrastructure is already more or less maxed out (although Saudi Arabia and the UAE do have quite a bit of spare capacity, but that capacity is vulnerable right now), South America is the continent where expanding oil output potential is by far the highest. Simply put, Latin America is well on its way to becoming the new Persian Gulf, and that has major implications.

The reasons for this are many, and not simply because of already existing oil and gas reserves on the southern continent.

For starters, Latin America is much more geopolitically stable than Russia or the Middle-East, which in turn presents far fewer risks to the Asian markets who, until earlier this year, represented the bulk of Middle-Eastern oil exports. Secondly, there are no straits, narrow maritime passages or choke points coming out of South America. The oil and gas from the Atlantic side sails around the Cape of Good Hope and off to Asia without going through Hormuz or the Suez Canal. Even if oil from say Venezuela passed through the Panama Canal, the latter is also geopolitically stable, and currently suffers more from a lack of rainfall than anything else.

Finally, South America is undergoing a major conservative wave at the moment, arguably starting with the election of Javier Milei or Argentina and his subsequent 2025 legislative election win. Since then, various South American countries, such as Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Chile, now all have right-wing political leadership. Even Bolivia recently moved away from two decades of socialist government. Now, all eyes are on the Brazilian elections later this year. Well, such right-wing governments, imaged by Milei, tend to be anti-regulatory, and many have already begun removing regulations and capital restrictions on oil and gas extraction.

Even without such a conservative wave, Asian nations have now also clearly signalled their desire and intent to diversify their sources of oil and gas away from the Persian Gulf, just like the Europeans did half a century ago during the oil shocks of the 1970s. In this regard, Latin America presents the highest energy output increase potential, especially for the least amount of geopolitical cost, and so demand will likely continuously increase. Politicians, either on the right or the left of the political spectrum, are unlikely to push back against such demands and opportunities.

Secondly, OPEC has presented reports signalling that global demand for oil will actually continue to rise in the future, from about 100 million barrels/day today to about 120 million barrels/day by 2050. This presents a major shift from even ten years ago when the IEA and even OPEC themselves predicted a global oil demand peak by the 2030s of around 100 million barrels/day, and thus creates a need to find oil wherever it can be found, further pointing to South America. Of course, this is OPEC, so they are biased and would very much like for oil consumption to continue. However, even the IEA has expressed growth from 100 million barrels/day, only at a slower pace.

On a side note, this does not necessarily mean a continued rise in global carbon emissions. By all accounts, these emissions will likely peak by 2030, if they haven’t already, for a number of reasons related mostly to the Chinese carbon peak, the phasing out of coal as an energy source worldwide, and the overall electrification of housing, offices and factories that didn’t typically rely on oil to begin with. The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom have all seen their own carbon emissions decrease since the 1970s, despite increases in both population and oil consumption. China and India are following suit very rapidly.

Oil and gas booms can also tremendously help producing nations decarbonise and electrify faster. Just ask Norway. The bulk of their economy depends on oil and gas exports, yet they have used such money wisely. Their entire electricity now comes virtually exclusively from renewables, and they have also gone further than any other country to electrify. That is, to convert fossil fuel based energy systems into electric ones. Think gas boilers to electric boilers to heat homes in the cold Norwegian winters. Norway is expected to become the first fully electrified nation on the planet, and they could never have done so, paradoxically, without oil and gas.

Anyways, back to the main story.

Where will this growth in Latin America be found the most?

For starters, there is Brazil. It already produces about 5.5 million barrels/day in oil and gas equivalent output, thanks largely to major offshore oil deposits off Rio de Janeiro. By all accounts by 2030, Brazil will even be the fourth largest oil producer in the world, only behind the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Not my words, but those of The Economist.

Not only do they have major Atlantic deposits, but it is widely believed that there are also major offshore deposits further north, where the Amazon meets the Atlantic, in what is known as the Equatorial Margin. That area could hold as much as 30 billion barrels. Petrobras, Brazil’s oil champion, has already invested $2.5 billion in the Equatorial Margin in early exploration, and total investment in the region could reach as high as $52 billion. That could create up to 350 000 high-paid oil jobs, in one of the poorest areas in the country. A new rubber-like oil boom could thus potentially await this part of the world.

The reason it is believed there is so much oil underneath this offshore area is because major oil discoveries have already happened in neighbouring Guyana. This tiny state, home to barely 1 million people, has enjoyed the highest economic growth of any country in the world in the past five years, at close to 50%, and is now believed to hold more oil reserves per capita than any other country, including Norway, Qatar and Kuwait. By the end of 2025, Guyana already produced close to 1 million barrels/day, and is on course to reaching near 2 million by 2030. They also have huge estimated reserves of natural gas lying beneath this oil, up to 450 billion cubic metres.

Hence the threats coming from the Maduro regime to invade Guyana, or at least the western Essequibo part of the country. Officially, it is because of old land claims dating back to colonial times. In reality of course, it would be to seize such oil and gas deposits and, more crucially, the western infrastructure and capital invested in the region. The Chavez regime had previously done this to Venezuela’s own oil and gas industry over 25 years ago now, forcing western companies to leave but failing to maintain the infrastructure at equivalent outputs. Since the Venezuelan government cannot maintain their own infrastructure due to a lack of expertise and foreign investment, resulting in small and smaller oil outputs very year, seizing the infrastructure of their tiny neighbour would have partially solved their problems. This, in a nutshell, speaks volumes about state-controlled means of production. Seize the work and investments of others. A short-term strategy with no long-term viability except further seizure and expropriation.

Then there is Suriname, which shares the same geology as Guyana and northern Brazil. Major discoveries by TotalEnergies have occurred just off the coast of its capital city Paramaribo. A total of 760 million barrels, with a potential capacity for 220 000 barrels/day of export. Over $10 billion in investment, and therefore the kinds of very high paying jobs and major boost to the local economy, like neighbouring Guyana has recently experienced. Production is expected to begin in 2028.

Then there is Venezuela. Yes, since the removal of Nicolas Maduro, his successor Delcy Rodriguez, who used to run to oil ministry and who therefore knows more than most what is required for the sector. Combined with the lifting of major US sanctions, and the results are starting to show. In May alone, Venezuela exported 1.2 million barrels/day on average. That is nearly double any average day in 2024 and 2025. Major oil companies like Eni, Repsol and Shell, as well as major American investment firms, have reportedly struck deals with local Venezuelan oil officials. Of course, the country is still far away from the nearly 4 million barrels/day it had before Hugo Chavez took over, but it’s definitely, for now at least, on the right track. Let’s not forget that Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Finally, and it’s a big one, there is Argentina.

Turns out, there is a huge oil and gas formation in the Patagonian desert. Known locally as Vaca Muerta, it holds over 16 billion barrels of shale oil and trillions of cubic metres of shale gas reserves. That’s right, a shale formation just like the Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken and Marcellus formations in the United States. A huge 35 000 km² area, one of the largest shale formations in the world, only behind the Permian Bassin in Texas. A formation where oil and gas extraction have gone into overdrive since Milei came to power, largely due to deregulation, the lifting of capital controls and the exchange-rate stabilisation observed in the country since his election.

As a result, in late 2025, Argentina broke it’s all time export record of nearly 1 million barrels/day, more than double what it was exporting barely a decade ago. Likewise with natural gas. Argentina is even becoming a major LNG exporter. One major floating LNG terminal is also set to open in 2027. This is a sea change compared to then. Back in, say, 2013, Argentina was a net energy importer and even had major gas shortages at the pump on a regular basis. As with the other countries, billions of dollars in capital investment, if not tens of billions, are now flowing into the country to further expand output at Vaca Muerta. Shell, Eni, all the usual suspects are present. Decades of shale expertise in the United States is also now being exported to Argentina as well.

In short, for these five countries (Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Venezuela and Argentina), oil and gas production is booming, at a time when the world, faced with major turmoil and oil shortages coming out of Russian and the Middle-East, desperately needs it.

Finally, there is still one major player that has yet to really turn things around, even though the potential is like these other countries, and that is Mexico.

Mexico has seen a major decline in its own once thriving oil sector since the mid-2000s, when it used to export about 4 million barrels/day, just like Venezuela. Since then, oil production has declined, reaching less than two million barrels/day in 2025. What happened was essentially like a lighter version of Chavismo, with all kinds of capital controls imposed on the oil sector in the last 20 years.

Mexico also imports nearly 75% of all of its natural gas needs, about 6.5 billion cubic feet/day, primarily from its northern American neighbour. Specifically from right across the border in Texas, where vast shale fields dot the land.

Yet Mexico, especially northeastern Mexico, and states like Coahuila and Nuevo Leon, often share the very same shale formations as their Texas neighbour does. The Sabinas-Burro-Picachos shale field for instance is said to hold 67 Trillion Cubic Feet of natural gas. The neighbouring Burgos field, an extension of the Eagle Ford field in Texas, is said to hold 54 Tcfg. All in all, Mexico is said to have 142 Tcfg.

Currently, Mexico is led by Claudia Scheinbaum. She is from a left-leaning party, but has so far been far more pragmatic than her predecessor Lopez Obrador, who was much more of an ideologue. She has historically been opposed to fracking, as many left-leaning leaders have been, but has begun to show tentative pilot projects in the region, no doubt attracted by the Argentinean boom and her own country’s need to reduce gas imports at current sky-high prices. Should she also engage in significant reforms and the lifting of capital controls, there is also no reason why Mexico cannot follow in the paths of its other Latin American counterparts.

In short, Latin America is poised to become a major player in oil and gas production, and therefore in the geopolitics of energy, in the coming decades. Combined with the withdrawal of the UAE from OPEC in May and the likely withdrawal of Saudi Arabia from the cartel as well, this means that there could be new regional OPECs formed in near the future as well, including of course a Latin American one. Not great for the world of course, but certainly a lot better than one single global entity controlling almost all of the world’s oil output.

Let’s now hope that Latin American uses the oil and gas money wisely. When Venezuela was on top of the world in the 1990s, the oil money did not trickle down, and it led to one of the unequal countries in the world. A few haves and many very have-nots. This in turn led to the massive overcorrection that was Chavismo, which arguably ravaged Venezuela and did far more harm than good, all on the promise of a more equal society, and that oil revenues would be redistributed more fairly.

A major boom across other countries, if not handled well, could lead to similar political tensions and outcomes.

Likewise with Dutch disease. An oil and gas boom can lead to a surging currency, since there is huge global demand for your energy commodity. Not to mention that the very high paying jobs in the oil and gas sector encourages a lot of the talent base in your country to work in that industry, meaning other industries have to compete for such workers. Well, higher wages and stronger currencies mean that other sectors, particularly the manufacturing one, have the hardest time competing for customers on global markets.

This leads to their contraction, something we’ve seen in places like the Netherlands (hence the term) but also Russia, Australia and Canada, where manufacturing has shrunk over the last several decades as commodities have risen in price. Brazil and Argentina in particular, as well as Mexico should they turn things around (the other countries not really having manufacturing sectors at all) could follow suit.

Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing. A Brazilian worker earning a six-figure salary in oil and gas is surely better than the same worker earning a five-figure salary on an automotive production line. Likewise, a Brazilian government, boosted by oil revenues, could better support other high paying industries, like aerospace with Embraer, which is now seriously vying for global market share in certain aircraft categories against Boeing and Airbus.

However, the governments of these countries will need to be careful. The oil and gas industry is very capital intensive but actually relatively worker light. You don’t need that many employees to run an oil rig. This could lead to a few people earning huge salaries while most people who don’t work in the sector struggle with overall higher prices and increasing import costs. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The United States themselves have seen their manufacturing sector shrink in recent decades, not least with the rise of China, but they have seen growth in both high paying oil jobs and high paying aerospace jobs, from NASA to Boeing to SpaceX. Brazil for instance could do the same, as well as encourage other sectors like software and AI.

The Norwegians have learned to deal with this. The Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor (formerly Statoil) is majority state-owned, and most of the revenues from oil and gas sales go into their huge sovereign wealth fund. The Norwegian people then benefit from the interest payments, usually in the form of receiving thousands of dollars equivalents every year for things like healthcare and pensions, as well as major infrastructure investments. Norway is rapidly electrifying for instance, as well as building a huge underwater highway and railway system to better connect the entire country. They are even building a giant tunnel under a mountain to connect ferries from one fjord to another, bypassing the very rough North Sea.

This is what Latin American countries need to do. Like the Norwegians, almost all of their oil and gas majors are majority state-owned. The revenues therefore need to spread out across the people, in the form of sovereign wealth funds, social services or tax-rebates, the supporting of key strategic companies to better compete globally, as well as major infrastructure spending. I would even prioritise the latter, since Latin America is quite far behind the developed world when it comes to such infrastructure needs. This also has the benefit of creating hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs.

Of course, corruption has always been rife in Latin America, particularly for oil and gas. The former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff long had accusations of taking bribes and personal self-enrichment tied to Petrobras, the state oil company, although she was never convicted of such. Don’t even get me started on Venezuela.

Still, now that these countries are, for the most part, solid democracies, such a sovereign-wealth fund strategy could very well work in the region.

Let’s hope, for the sake of all of Latin America, that it finally does.

Yet Xi Jinping, China’s leader since 2012, has not only repeatedly called in public speeches for a reunification with their island neighbour, by no later than 2027, but has also presided over a major Chinese military buildout.

This should of course ring alarm bells in any political and military circles.

Believe it or not, figuring out whether China will, and then can, take Taiwan is far more complex than many might at first imagine, as is often the case with Chinese political leadership. Yet to attempt to provide an answer, we first need clear questions, which I have listed as follows:

• Will Xi actually order the attack and invasion of Taiwan, as opposed to just putting out rhetoric?

• Will the generals and officers actually follow his order to attack?

• Would it involve the United States, with a potential WWWIII, nuclear face-off between the two world’s superpowers, if they did?

• Could a Chinese invasion actually succeed in capturing the island, and even if they did, what would the overall global cost be to China afterwards?

Of course, it’s impossible to know for certain if Xi Jinping will actually order the invasion of Taiwan. Maybe he already has in secret. Maybe he has already given the order years ago to a small group of generals, who have been getting ready since then. Or maybe it is all rhetoric. There is simply no way, at least to the public, of knowing for sure.

He has however, repeatedly and publicly, called for reunification by 2027 at the latest on many occasions. This, to many, is a clear call that the country needs to be ready for this moment. After all, when the leader gives wishes publicly, these are rarely just wishes to the people, and to those listening, but are much more like commands. Even when Xi issued a statement saying that everything needed to be done to combat Covid-19, some Chinese officials started spraying runways with cleaning sprays. Yes, I’m not kidding. That is often how things work in communist dictatorships. It’s often about interpreting the wishes of the leader, since doing nothing could be interpreted as an offense or, worse still, a challenge.

In any event, China has clearly been following a number of policies that would lend credibility to this, from weakening the West with massive product dumping to Xi himself saying that consumption for his fellow Chinese citizens was a western sin, and that Chinese people needed to be prepared to work hard and suffer for the collective good.

There also does seem to be a genuine attempt, since Xi Jinping came to power, to steer China in a much more nationalistic and energy-independent direction.

Chinese movies for instance have been instructed by Beijing to be much more patriotic, with famous ones like Wolf Warrior coming out. Hence the term Wolf Warrior Diplomacy from the Chiniese. Then there the fact that China is building out massive electrification infrastructure, from massive solar panel areas in the desert, to EVs now dominating car sales in China, to high-speed rail. All in the attempts to reduce its dependence on oil and gas imports, which they have reduced by 30-40% already since Xi came to power.

Of course, the counter to this argument is that the rhetoric of invading Taiwan, rather than the actual invasion, is beneficial to the CCP and Xi Jinping, since it allows for unity under nationalist sentiment, and for certain policies to be initiated for security rather than economic ones, in an era of diminishing economic growth rates. Whether or not this is the case, this rhetoric theory is certainly powerful enough that it cannot be dismissed outright.

In any event, it’s likely that Xi himself wishes very much to capture the island. It’s easy to understand why. Should he be successful, he would likely be regarded in high regards by pretty much all of Chinese society. Likely on par with the great emperors of the past. Then again, Vladimir Putin almost certainly thought the same prior to invading Ukraine. That once Ukraine was conquered, he would go down in history along the likes of Peter and Catherine the Great. Both Xi and Putin are the same age, nearing their mid-70s, and both likely have a very similar worldview for their respective countries, to essentially be powerful empire-like nations with their own spheres of influence, not least to not be dependant on the US-led western sphere of influence as well.

Beyond that, if he did wish to do so, he is probably also thinking that the time to invade should be about now.

For one, Chinese demographics are now indicating a clear population decline. Last year, China lost people overall for the fourth year in a row, this time by more than 3 million people. According to some demographers who specialise in China, such as Yi Fuxian of Wisconsin-Madison University, China’s birth rate, of less than 8 million babies in 2025, has not been seen since 1738.

It’s easy to see where this leads China to in the future. Even assuming that China is able to maintain, but no longer increase, such birth rates of about 8 million babies per year, when multiplied by a life expectancy of say 80 years old, the result would be 640 million Chinese people by 2106. A drop of more than 50% from the current, and officially claimed, 1.4 billion population, though there are many who dispute even those numbers, since these are official government numbers, and the CCP have every incentive to lie or exaggerate in order to project strength.

Whatever the true number may be today, I have long maintained that demographics has been one of the main reasons why Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022. Birth rates in Russia plunged after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992 and so, thirty years on, the country was no longer producing young adults at an alarming rate. Capturing Ukraine and it’s 40 million inhabitants would have also, on top of the new land and resources feeding the oligarchic economy of Russia, added a major and sudden population boost as well. Invading by 2022 also meant invading with a last millennial generation born prior to 1992.

Xi Jinping will not, of course, invade Taiwan simply to boost Chinese population numbers. Taiwan is an island of barely 22 million people, who also suffers from major demographic problems of their own. However, had Putin waited another ten years to attack Ukraine, he would also have done so with a tremendously smaller population of young fighting-age men. Something which impacts everything from the wider economy to military costs. Maintaining a standing army of a million young men, after all, means taking those one million young men away from other parts of the economy. Something that only increases inflation when you have fewer and fewer young men to begin with, since the other areas of the economy, like companies in the private sector for instance, struggle even more over time to recruit such people and therefore have to raise wages more rapidly.

Well, the same principle applies to China, which already has the largest standing army in the world, in a country that is resource poor and who depends more than almost any country on their labour force, particularly for manufacturing and exports. Taking three million young people away from such a workforce only makes wages higher and Chinese exports less competitive on global markets, and this problem will only compound over time now.

Thus, the longer Xi Jinping waits to attack Taiwan, the less competitive China’s economy as a whole becomes if and when he does decide to do so. China has already seen its economic growth numbers fall considerably since Covid-19, in large parts because of this demographic freeze. Waiting any longer will likely mean attacking when growth numbers are even lower still.

There are other factors that Xi is likely considering. The United States of have recently exhausted a significant number of their missile stockpiles for the Iran War. Yet they also failed to succeed in overthrowing what many, the Chinese included, no doubt saw as a very weakened regime. That plus the Trump reluctance to finish the job, deploy boots on the ground and insist on negotiations instead, are certainly something Beijing is looking at with interest.

Then there is Ukraine. Just last year, Trump told Zelenskyy that the latter had no cards left, and that the Ukrainian president should come to some kind of settlement with Vladimir Putin. Zelenskyy of course refused, but it did also reveal Trump’s positions on these issues. One position where he would prefer to settle and negotiate quickly, rather than prolong any conflict, and another one where Trump would likely be very reluctant to deploy troops at all to defend Taiwan.

In Xi’s mind then, it could be a win-win. Should the Chinese capture Taiwan quickly, Trump could realise the game is up and settle with Beijing, even if this means abandoning Taiwan. Should the conflict instead go on for many months or even years as it has with Ukraine, Trump would also likely try to negotiate a way out of it, giving Beijing the upper hand.

The only scenario then where Beijing were to lose is if they were to give up quickly, after taking massive hits themselves.

Thus, Xi could think that, like with Iran, the CCP needs only to endure whatever punishment the US Air Force and Navy throw at them, for a relatively short period of time ranging in months but not years, until Trump gives up. It wouldn’t be the first time either, from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to more recently Ukraine and the people of Iran fighting their oppressive regime. The United States, sadly, has a history of lacking in commitment when it comes to properly defending and supporting its allies, before and especially after Washington have already committed themselves.

Thus, the recent Iran War might be the signal Xi needs to finally move ahead with Taiwan.

However, China could also end up making the same mistakes as Russia. After all, many believe that the hasty and chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, when images of US military cargo planes at Kabul airport were swamped with thousands of people, also played a major role in convincing Putin to go ahead with attacking Ukraine barely eight months later. Trump’s Iran moment could therefore be Biden’s Afghanistan moment for Xi. Yet we all know what happened to Russia afterwards, and how their miscalculations have cost them dearly, whatever the final outcome of the war in Ukraine becomes.

The same could happen to Xi, not least because of how much more difficult it would be to invade Taiwan compared to Ukraine, where the Russian Army “only” had to “walk” across the border.

For starters, pulling off a successful amphibious invasion of Taiwan is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, even for the Chinese. The Taiwan Strait is about 100 miles of some of the choppiest waters in the world. Meaning that the invasion by sea itself would very likely be limited to either the month of April or that of October, due to the typically bad weather and high winds in the area (think summer typhoons for instance, or winter storms).

Likewise, there are only a limited number of beaches on Taiwan suitable for such a landing, and they will all be heavily defended. Finally, Taiwan will have 200 000 full-time soldiers whose sole focus will be to defend their islands, alongside most of the 22 million Taiwanese people (minus those of course, in the minority, who support reunification, but that’s another issue) who like the Ukrainians who do not flee will also likely do whatever they can, since this will be existential for them as well.

For comparison, just look at D-Day, the Normandy landings of WWII. A massive armada, led by the huge industrial might of the United States, the Arsenal of Democracy, but also the Royal Navy of the British Empire. Plus Canadian troops and ships, French troops and naval assets, and all kinds of soldiers from other countries and colonies. A million men ready to land in France in the first six weeks, followed by millions more after that.

Before the landings even happened, there were nearly two years of prior air and naval campaigns aimed at first neutralising the enemy navy and air force. A huge bombing campaign to weaken German industrial output. A massive Eastern Front against the Soviet Union already tying down 3-4 million German soldiers. Not to mention other campaigns like Italy, which would end up also tying down an extra one million German soldiers. The Third Reich only had about 600-800 000 soldiers in all of France prior to the invasion.

Despite all of that, the outcome of Operation Overlord was, for a long time, very uncertain. A number of soldiers got tied down in places like Omaha Beach, with major causalities, and even after getting past the beaches, the Allies would then get halted for nearly two months in the Normandy Bocage. The terrain, like Taiwan which is primarily urban areas, jungle and mountains, simply heavily favoured the defenders. Even prior to the landings, the Allies needed very specific weather, wave and tidal conditions in order to land, on beaches with specific sand and soil samples that would be strong enough, even after heavy rainfall, to hold up tanks and other tracked vehicles. Thus, they needed massive intelligence gathering prior to the landings, and afterwards, the Allies also had the benefit of having French locals and resistance fighters on their side when they did land.

Now imagine China, this time fighting, and certainly landing troops in Taiwan, very likely with no allies whatsoever, and likely against not only Taiwan but, possibly, the United States, Japan and South Korea as well. Even if, for instance, North Korea joined them in the war, it’s very unlikely North Korean troops would get deployed against the island, but would likely focus on attacking South Korea and Japan instead. Then, against whatever the Chinese muster, it could be an armada of other countries joining Taiwan, even indirectly by supporting them with weapons and supplies just like with Ukraine. Countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, even the United Kingdom and the European Union, etc. Also, and unlike the allies in Normandy, Chinese forces will have to deal with the angry locals shooting at them instead.

Based on the Normandy example as well, China would also have to do one of two things. They will either have launch a major air and naval campaign first, likely to blockade the island for months if not years to weaken local resistance, before launching any kind of amphibious invasion, and they would likely have to do this while being fired at themselves from some of the world’s most advanced and powerful militaries. Or, instead, they will have to launch some kind of Russian-style surprise invasion against the island.

However, how could the Chinese realistically achieve the element of surprise here? How could they possibly mobilise hundreds of thousands of troops towards the Chinese coastline without American satellites picking up on such movements? After all, Russia announced manoeuvring exercises in the three months prior to attacking Ukraine, yet everyone saw the military buildout at the border. Why would China then think that Taiwan and the wider world wouldn’t see a buildout of their own?

Not only that, but Taiwan has learned much from Ukraine, and will likely learn from Iran as well. They already have large numbers of aerial drones and many naval drone vessels to strike at any incoming Chinese ships. They will have long-range precision missiles to hit the Chinese mainline, taking out air and naval bases, factories, bridges, power stations, etc. Some have even suggested they could hit the Three Gorges Dam, though this is unlikely due to the high civilian casualties this would cause, leading to accusations of war crimes against the Taiwanese. However, should the Chinese relentlessly kill Taiwanese civilians themselves, and if they really were on the verge of capturing the island, the Taiwanese might launch this Hail Mary. Something China has to consider as well.

However they do decide to strike back, the Taiwanese will also know that every day they endure is a day where China is likely under major western sanctions, will have almost all of its export markets cut off, and many of their own resource and raw material imports cut off as well. Thus, every day they hold on is a day China cannot afford to waste, and is a day that brings Taiwan closer to ensuring its own independence and victory.

After all, any advancing military does so on oil, iron, metals and other components for its industry and weapons manufacturing. Something where Russia actually has a major advantage over China. The latter is, as we all know, very dependant on raw materials from all over the world. Iron ore from Australia and Brazil. Lithium from Chile and Bolivia. Cobalt, copper and many other elements from Africa. Oil from Russia and the Middle East. Yes, they definitely have resources of their own, particularly rare-earths as is well known, but rarely do they have enough critical minerals for their own economic and industrial needs. China also happens to be a net importer of food, now for more than half of their food needs.

In a wartime scenario then, the US Navy will likely cut off all maritime routes to China. This includes all oil and gas from the Middle East, especially via Hormuz as we have just gotten a taste off, and from Africa and Latin America, on top of Australia shutting off its iron and other exports. Hence why another wider Iran War would also likely happen once more if China did invade Taiwan. Yet for oil alone, China imports two thirds of all of its oil needs, and 75% of that comes from just the Middle East.

The Chinese, for all of their military might, ship buildout and huge navy on paper in terms of sheer numbers, also do not have a blue ocean navy capable of matching the United States. They only have three aircraft carriers for instance, compared to the American eleven, with the first two being more like prototypes to test out new technologies (since they never had carriers prior to these) and most of their vessels are coastal vessels. For instance, they have just over half the number of destroyers that the United States alone have, before mentioning Japan, the UK or South Korea on top of that.

This could potentially be good enough for concentrated engagements in the Taiwan Strait, but certainly not beyond that. China simply do not have the naval capacity to take on the United States, much less a coalition of ships, beyond Taiwan into the Pacific or Indian Oceans. Yet being cut off from maritime access with the wider world could lead to a major reduction in Chinese industrial capabilities, even assuming that no Chinese factory was struck in the war, which they likely will be. In a worst-case scenario not involving nuclear weapons, China could even suffer a major famine afflicting hundreds of millions of their citizens, such is their dependence now on food imports.

Hence why, in a wartime scenario, the Chinese would likely import more such food, energy and minerals from Russia, particularly from the Russian Far East, and from Iran and Central Asia, this time via road and railway than through shipping, though this would likely not be anywhere near enough to meet wartime needs. Yet this would be a very inefficient way to fuel its war economy (just ask Nazi Germany), even assuming once more that factories, refineries and smelters didn’t get hit by enemy precision strikes.

Should there be any turmoil in these countries in return, such as the Russian government collapsing following a defeat in Ukraine, the PLA might even go so far as to invade such resource-rich territories like the Russian Far East, which China also considers as historically theirs to begin with. This would be to guarantee such supplies of course, but it would also mean further stretching their armed forces, since this would be a major red line for any newly emerging post-Putin Russian government, no matter how democratic, or authoritarian and brutal, the latter turned out to be.

Then there is the air campaign, and China also faces problems there. Even assuming that the PLA Air Force, the second largest in the world in terms of fighter jets, could compete on par with American fighter jets in both numbers and capabilities, and even assuming it did not suffer from any graft and corruption problems like, say, the Russian Air Force has and they very likely have as well, China still has a major problem. That of mid-air refuelling tankers, or rather than lack thereof.

To give you an idea of the problem, the United States have about one such refuelling tanker for every four jet fighters and bomber aircraft that they possess, and even that is something that the US Air Force has called a crisis, since they used to have a higher ratio than that. Such tankers are a massive force multiplier, since they can allow fighters and bombers to travel greater distances, sometimes even from the mainland United States themselves rather than being based in other countries (with all of the potential security risks that comes with), patrol in the skies over an area for much longer, and carry more weapons.

Thanks to these critical aircraft, it’s not uncommon for such fighter jets such American F22s, F15s and F16s, to patrol over a given theatre of war, like they have in Iran most recently, for 8-10 hours at a time, rather than barely one or two, waiting for targets of opportunity.

China, based on all recent intelligence that I could find, only has a ratio of about 1 refuelling tanker for about 100 fighter jets. Twenty-five times less. Even if those numbers were off by half, it would still make prolonged air operations, over Taiwan for example, virtually impossible for the PLA Air Force. Every time most fighter jets took off from the mainland, they could probably stay over Taiwan for a couple of hours at best before having to return, forcing China to use perhaps two to three times more fighter jets for such an operation than the United States would have to in a similar situation.

It also makes the Chinese Air Force particularly vulnerable. We have just seen the United States lose two such highly valuable planes during the Iran War, as well as an AWACS early warning and detection plane on an Saudi airbase as well, struck at its base by an Iranian long-range missile. Now imagine China losing what very few such planes it has in a similar manner, struck by Taiwanese long-range missiles. It would make defending Taiwanese skies for the small island and its allies that much “easier” so to speak, putting a major hamper on Chinese momentum.

Of course, the Chinese will likely learn from the Iran War, particularly when it comes to properly rotating such aircraft. Moving them constantly from parking place to parking place even on the same base for instance, using decoys, camouflage, reinforced bunkers, fake nearby bases to trick enemy satellites, etc. This is not a new problem either, the Americans and the British being faced with such air base vulnerabilities during WWII and resorting to such tactics as well.

However, considering how important these planes are, yet how few exist for the PLA, Taiwan will likely do everything it can to take them out. Perhaps even a Ukrainian-inspired Operation Spiders Web of their own, smuggling drones and special operators deep within China itself to hunt for these planes.

Finally, it goes without saying that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would very likely result in major financial sanctions against it. Much like Russia who had most of its assets frozen, western companies leaving and a cutoff from the SWIFT international payment system. Yet China is far more dependant on foreign investment and trade than Russia is. An invasion of Taiwan would therefore absolutely wreck their economy. Just imagine China no longer being able to export what it currently does to the wider world, from cheap goods to solar panels to EVs.

Well, many if not most taizidangs, or red princelings, who inherited a post-Mao China with an economy opening up to the West in the 1980s, often have major ties, and company shares sometimes worth billions, to Chinese state-owned companies. Everything from energy to steel to telecoms and more. Most such individuals are often not in politics at all, even though they are of course members of the CCP. These princelings also have major assets and investments throughout the West, such as real estate, as a form of diversifying their money and protecting this from any domestic political changes against them. A way to flee should their own situation become untenable within China.

As such, even if Xi Jinping did not care about Western investments within China anymore, he would also have to worry about the taizidangs, which you could view as the Chinese oligarchs, turning against him, on top of potential military generals turning against him as well. Hence his fears, paranoia and recent purges. This, on top of everything else, is not the mindset you want if you are to pull of a successful attack, and an amphibious attack at that, on a neighbouring state.

All of this to say that an invasion of Taiwan would be a very bad idea for China, and Xi Jinping in particular. It is an extremely complex military operation to pull-off even in the best of circumstances, and if they only had to contend with Taiwanese forces. In reality, China would likely be cut-off from most of the world afterwards if they did. Even countries willing to sell resources and critical minerals to them, such as Russia, Iran and several African nations, would likely be unable to do so via maritime sea lanes, forcing China into expensive land-based workaround and, potentially, costly neighbouring landgrabs for resources that stretched their armed forces even more. All of this would happen while at least some military and business forces back home likely conspired to take Xi out.

Still, there is the possibility that this is a price worth paying for Xi Jinping, or that he doesn’t fully understand such implications, since he might reject and even threaten advisers and messengers who would dare to give him such information. It could even be the main reason why he has launched so many military purges in just the last year, including of nearly the entire Central Military Commission and the overall n°2 of the PLA armed forces, Zhang Youxia, earlier this year. It could be that most generals understood such risks and tried to inform Xi, only for him to reject their pleas and see these as a challenge to his authority.

Thus, let us assume that Xi actually gives the secret order for Chinese forces to assemble on the coast, ready to launch such an invasion, and let us also assume that he had enough military and business support, or at the very least lack of opposition, to do so as well.

If he did, the more likely scenario I can see would be one similar to what just happened in Iran, but on a larger scale. A major air, missile and naval campaign to bomb Taiwan, hopefully into submission, though this alone, like Iran and Ukraine, is unlikely to happen. Blockade Taiwan and, most of all, take out as many American bases as possible in a first strike move. Especially all American locations within the First-Island Chain, including in South Korea and the Philippines and, if possible, Guam and even Pearl Harbour. Yes, another first strike on Pearl Harbour could very well happen. Taking out the Panama Canal, somehow if they could, would also be a Chinese objective, to prevent or delay major American naval reinforcements. Hence, I believe, Trump’s early obsession with retaking the canal, and making sure it wasn’t in Chinese hands.

Could China do this? Could they take out American, Japanese and South Korean bases and missile sites first, in order to then bomb and blockade Taiwan?

I reckon the probability of doing this successfully is about as much as the Russians successfully, and quickly, overrunning Ukraine. Possible in theory of course. In practice, given known Chinese military capabilities and political infighting, highly improbable.

Instead, a Chinese order to strike at these bases and invade Taiwan would all but guarantee that China, and the PLA, get bogged down in a very similar manner to the United States in Iran. Remember that Iran has been very much an air and naval war as well. There have been no boots on the ground so far.

It’s also highly unlikely that, should the United States go to war with China over Taiwan, American boots get deployed on the Chinese mainland as well, since it would serve no purpose unless the US administration deemed regime change and marching on Beijing as the only viable option to end the war. Instead, the fighting will be at sea and in the air.

QHence why Trump is so focused on building out the Golden Fleet, and American naval capacity and new naval yards all over again, much like Reagan with his 600 fleet policy in the 1980s. Hence his call to build medium-range ballistic missile battleships, to hit Chinese bases, factories and missile sites from the sea directly.

Would the sanctions and blockades on China impact the rest of the world? Oh yes. Big time. Huge trade volumes occur between them as we all know. Should the United States block shipments to China, it would have a major impact on countries that export to them, particularly in Africa and Latin America. Hence why I can see Latin American leaders, especially the increasing number of conservative ones following recent elections in places like Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia, export their materials to the United States or Europe in the event of a Taiwan War instead, just to try and recuperate some of their market losses.

Will it be inflationary? Oh yes. China is the world’s factory, and exports at significant discount prices for a number of reasons. Hence the current trade and tariff wars happening with China, not just with the United States, but increasingly with the European Union, Brazil, Mexico, etc.

The Chinese government subsidises a large number of manufacturing sectors, firstly for social reasons in order to provide jobs and keep unemployment low in the absence of free and fair elections. It also controls all banks, who in-turn hand out low interest rates to such companies as a matter of industrial policy. They have also often depreciated the Renminbi many times in the past to make their export products more competitive. None of this is accidental.

Then they have, or at least had until now, the advantage of buying up cheap discounted Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil, which also gives Chinese factories an energy advantage. Finally, this also has the advantage of gaining market share in the West, which makes them in theory more reliable on China and therefore more suggestable to Chinese influence. Again however, Russia thought very much the same way with their oil and gas prior to the Ukraine War.

In any event, these policies and access to cheap energy, on top of the sunk cost of already having the existing manufacturing capabilities, makes Chinese goods significantly cheaper than western equivalents, or really any equivalent. Even if Chinese wages are rising and are becoming less competitive over time, the United States and the European Union would first and foremost have to build out additional manufacturing and factories before any first unit of production came off the assembly line, at a cost of billions, which they would have to do in the event of a Taiwan War. This alone would be hugely inflationary even if wages became on par with Chinese ones.

Still, it doesn’t have to be all bad for the west. No more Chinese EVs and solar panels means greater western consumer demand for American and European manufacturing. A war situation means significant amounts of deregulation and a focus away from shareholders, since the goal would then be national security and ultimate victory, as well higher taxes and war bonds on the rich to fund the war effort. This transfer of capital and wealth from the stakeholder to the worker would inevitably lead to extremely low unemployment and major wage hikes. This is exactly what we saw, for instance, during World War II, and has been one of the benefits that Ukraine, for instance, has gotten from the war, if you can call this beneficial of course, as well as for Russia, until the Kremlin started running out of money to fund their war effort. The other side of WWII for instance saw the United States and the West benefit from one of its longest sustained periods of economic growth ever.

Still, I can see China test the waters first. I can see them fly their air force over Taiwan, or declare that commercial ships cannot pass the Strait for a period of time, much like the Islamic regime has done with Hormuz, to see American and international reaction. I can see yet another Taiwan Strait Crisis happening. There have already been up to four such crises in the past, depending on who you ask. The first two in the 1950s, the third in 1995-1996, and the last being in 2022, when the Chinese engaged in a series of large military drills off of Taiwan following the visit of US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

All such crises included displaying some form of military might on the Chinese part, and the two back in the 1950s involved live-fire and military exchanges between the two sides and the United States.

A clear Chinese engagement then to capture Taiwan, even in the absence of American boots on the ground, and even an absence of Chinese boots making it to Taiwanese shores, would still definitely dwarf all of these.

Let’s hope then, for the sake of the world, that it never comes to that.

Author’s note: Hey everyone. If you’ve read this far, I want to personally thank you for giving me your time. I hope you found this article interesting. I have just passed 100 articles on Substack, and I’m so grateful for that, and for your support in reaching this milestone. If you found this article interesting, you’ll hopefully find my other ones here on my Substack page interesting as well.

My goal is to help those interested in better understanding the current events and aspects of our crazy, modern world. If I have done so for you, I hope you’ll subscribe. Take care.

Trump has yet to actually sign anything, so I’ll reserve judgement until such a thing happens, but the announcement of such a deal is in itself telling.

In any event, to know if such a deal represents a victory for Trump, even an overall partial one, we first need a good understanding of what the overall American grand strategy is.

We often speak of grand strategy in geopolitical circles, but what does that mean exactly, and how does a grand strategy differ from any regular strategy, military or otherwise?

A strategy, any strategy, is the means by which you will accomplish your objectives. A combination of methods and tools at your disposal to reach such goals.

A clever strategist therefore will reach their objectives in an intelligent and admirable manner, quickly, efficiently, decisively, only using for instance limited time and resources to accomplish this. Sun Tzu for instance, often considered the grandmaster of strategy with his famous work “The Art of War”, made it very clear that the height of skill was not winning a hundreds battles but winning without fighting, or that no one benefited from prolonged conflict.

To do so therefore requires of a strategist to have very clearly defined and realistically achievable objectives, which are very often political in nature. In that regards, the military are a means to a political end, a tool to be used to reach such goals but, in the words of Clausewitz, another famous historical strategist, not an end in and of themselves. There can be other tools and methods, and often better ones, than simply always relying on the military as well. Something many leaders throughout history have often forgotten.

In this context, we often refer to grand strategy as the overall tools and means for a state or political entity, for instance it the United States, Russia, China or the European Union, to achieve their overall geopolitical objectives. Yes, in this context, the military, and warfare, are a possible means to do so. However, there are also many other tools at a leader’s disposal. Diplomacy, treaties and negotiations. Economics, trade and economic warfare (tariffs, sanctions, etc). Access to resources, raw materials and expertise. Spy agencies, intelligence gathering, sabotage, intellectual property theft, and, yes, even assassinations.

Professor of strategy Sarah Paine for instance defines grand strategy as “the integration of all relevant instruments of national power in the pursuit of national objectives”.

Those objectives can, of course, be just as varied. A desire for one country to grab land or various resources and raw materials. A desire to further economic growth and prosperity at all costs. Another desire for security, and to obtain allies and alliances, particularly for smaller nations facing off against larger ones.

Think of Taiwan’s Silicon Shield strategy for instance. Without firing a shot, Taiwan has made itself incredibly important as a partner to the United States and the West, which makes it more likely for these nations to defend it should China attempt an invasion. Israel very much does the same, but with defense, software tech and intelligence gathering, rather than semiconductors. Likewise, Ukraine is becoming so as well in terms of drone warfare capabilities.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the latter might have been the overall grand objective of the Putin regime, or simply a means to another, larger grand objective, but the Russian military has been mired in the Ukrainian conflict for more than four years now, for barely 19% of internationally recognised Ukrainian territory. There were clearly failures of strategy on the part of the Kremlin, anticipating easy victories and underestimating Ukrainian resistance and capabilities while overestimating their own. Not to mention the shower of international sanctions that have fallen on Russia since.

Had Putin come up with a better strategy to conquer all of Ukraine quickly, as was likely his hopes and intention, it would have cost him far fewer Russian lives and treasury, and perhaps western nations, understanding the new realities, would have ended up lifting sanctions on Russian on moved on. This would have been considered a major win for Putin, both politically and economically, cementing his legacy as a great Russian leader in the veins of Peter and Catherine the Greats. Instead, the invasion failed, and there are now cautious signs, four years on, that Ukraine is turning the tables on Russia.

Putin failed because his forces were simply not strong enough to accomplish the objectives he had set out for them. When he invaded Ukraine with 200 000 men, this was simply not enough to conquer and occupy a country of 40 million people that was prepared to mount any kind of existential resistance to it. The Ukrainian Army itself had come a long way since 2014 and the fall of Crimea, with new doctrines, reforms and training. The Ukrainians created an entire non-commissioned officer corps for instance in the wake of 2014, mimicking western nations and allowing for much more tactical flexibility on the battlefield, leading to very early local victories. This meant that the war could not be won quickly for Russia, and Putin failed to understand this.

Likewise, those Russian soldiers also had very little more than basic, almost-parade like training. Much of their equipment also did not work properly. There has always been widespread evidence of graft and corruption within the Russian ministry of defence, with Putin’s loyal friend Shoigu, the head of the MOD for a long time, clearly taking much if not most of the defence procurement budget for himself and his cronies, leaving very little for the actual frontline soldiers.

Simply put, the Russian Army was, in its 2022 form, not ready for a major war.

Then, in September of 2022, when it was clear the Ukrainians were pushing back and even regaining lost territory, Putin reacted by calling for a general mobilisation. What resulted was a massive backlash even within Russia itself, and a million fighting age Russian men fleeing the country. Putin had to backtrack, and resort to volunteers and prisoners in exchange for high salaries and fighting bonuses. This is also something that a smart strategist should have also anticipated prior to launching the war in the first place.

Finally, almost half of all Russian state assets were placed in Western capital markets prior to the war. It was Putin’s belief that such assets would not be seized and frozen. Again, it wasn’t a completely foolish belief, since such a move against Russia by the West was almost unprecendented in 80 years. Still, he failed to anticipate such a financial move. Perhaps he should have better listened to his finance minister, instead of his defence one. In grand strategy, the different members of your cabinet, from defence to finance to industry, from director of intelligence to governor of the central bank, all should share an equal position and voice.

Putin is not alone is such strategic miscalculations. The clerics and generals of the IRGC in Iran made similar ones as well. They pursued a nuclear weapons program against the will of the international community, and pursued military and proxy aggression against their neighbours in various forms throughout the Middle-East, despite having a relatively small economy to do so. Meanwhile, they neglected their own population to the point of revolt, which was violently supressed. More recently, their crossing of the Hormuz Rubicon, by blocking the vital strait during the recent conflict, will lead to the long-term disengagement of their neighbours with the strait itself, meaning Iran will have fewer and fewer leverages on such neighbours in pursuit of their political objectives.

Simply put, for a regime that ambitioned to dominate the Middle-East, their terrible grand strategy has made them the weakest they have ever been in 47 years.

Of course, there are countless historical examples to choose from as well. The Imperial Japanese pushing their civilian government out of the cabinet in the 1930s, to better pursue a military strategy only, which would result in the invasion of China and the attack on the United States at Pearl Harbour. This strategy was pursued despite the fact that many within the civilian government, not least the Japanese Finance Minister of the time, said that the financial cost of such a strategy would bankrupt Japan.

In this context, what is the overall American grand strategy? Is it reasonable or realistic? Does it simply vary from one US president to another?

First and foremost, the overarching American national objectives have been that of hemispheric defence and deterrence. This goes all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, some two centuries ago now.

Simply put, the United States will not accept another major global power interfering in the Americas against them. That is, setting up any kind of military, forward operating or intelligence gathering capabilities, geopolitical influence or coercion, inside countries within the western hemisphere. From Canada down to Argentina.

Other countries can of course trade and do business with these countries, but beware if they engage in military or intelligence gathering activities. For some examples of this, just ask the Soviets about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It’s not just the Soviets though. Already in 1823, the United States barely existed and were much smaller than today, so they first expanded westward. This expansion, which came to be known as Manifest Destiny and which resulted in countless US-Indian wars, makes much more sense if you look at it from a great powers perspective. After all, if you are the American government in 1823, you have already first fought a war of independence against a great power barely half a century ago, and then you just fought them again in the much more recent War of 1812. A war in which your own centre of power, the White House, was burned down by the enemy, and your largest trading port, New Orleans, was the subject of a bitter campaign and bloody battles to keep control of it.

Now imagine if that same British Empire, which controlled Canada and which was also expanding westward through this territory, ended up controlling everything west of you and effectively encircling you. Or if the Spanish of French empire ended up doing so instead. The United States would be surrounded, a big geopolitical no-go. Hence Manifest Destiny. Hence the Louisiana purchase. Hence the Alaska purchase. Hence the Mexican-American war that gave the United States access to California and the Pacific.

Once that westward expansion had been completed, then came the pursuit of overseas islands and territories that could potentially threaten the United States. After all, the British had used forward naval bases in Canada and the Caribbean to attack the United States, during both the Wars of Independence and 1812. Hence the Spanish-American War of 1898. Hence the United States taking over Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Ultimately, Cuba would become independent while Puerto Rico remained a US territory, but from the American perspective, the important thing was that a European power did not have forward bases too close to home.

This should explain how aggressive the United States were during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly brought the world to nuclear war. Hence how much the CIA pursued anti-communist efforts in Central and South America during the Cold War. Hence why, more recently, Donald Trump has been very aggressive, not only with Venezuela and Cuba but with Panama as well. Recall that he threatened to take over the canal which, in his words, was controlled by the Chinese, by military force. Well, ever since both ports on either side of the canal were sold by C.K. Hutchinson, a Hong-Kong conglomerate therefore under Chinese government oversight, to an American consortium, Trump has largely been quiet about Panama.

Of course, many of you might question the virtue of such a Monroe doctrine. By doing so, and by being so aggressive with its Latin American neighbours, are the United States not burning bridges instead, not least trade ones, and therefore compromising its own long term growth?

Perhaps to a small degree, but the United States is nearly 30% of the entire world economy. More than this, it is also the developed nation with the least amount of GDP being determined by international trade. Simply put, the United States don’t export or import all that much in comparison to other nations like China, Japan and Germany. Most American producers and workers sell mostly to American consumers instead. Of course, having productive trade relationships with Latin America would be beneficial, but not at the expense of their own security. Especially if such trade only represented a tiny fraction of their overall GDP anyway.

Regardless of good or bad, the Monroe Doctrine has effectively been in effect for over two centuries. It has simply been in hiatus over the past thirty years, the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unipolar world led by the United States that has emerged from it. Now however, with the rise of China and geopolitical tensions growing, America is becoming more aggressive and assertive once again. This would likely always have happened anyway because of the Chinese rise, whether Trump was US president or not. Especially if an alternative Republican candidate like Vance or Rubio had won the presidency in 2016, 2020 or 2024 instead.

If anything, historically seaking, the United States have always been more likely than not to pursue this hemispheric isolationism. After all, they were fairly isolationist to events happening outside of the Americas right up until World War 1. Prior to both World Wars for instance, the United States had very limited military capabilities. In 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, the United States Army ranked 17th in the world in terms of total number of soldiers. Even Portugal had more soldiers than Uncle Sam.

Hence the belief, for instance that the United States was “weak, decadent and materialistic, run by Jews and Negroes” in the words of Adolf Hitler. Let’s not forget that after the Japanese attacked, it would be Hitler himself that would declare war on the United States. That’s right, it was Nazi Germany that declared war on the United States three days after Pearl Harbour, not the other way around as many believe, despite already becoming bogged down on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union and facing the prospects of a two-front war. That’s how weak Hitler thought the United States were. Isolationism, if anything, projects weakness rather than strength. Especially to autocrats who primarily view the world in such ways.

Yet barely two years later, in both World Wars, America would unleash the Arsenal of Democracy, producing record numbers of military vehicles from its factories and sending millions, if not over ten million, military personnel overseas. Both Hitler and the Japanese failed to learn this key lesson from World War 1, and awoken a sleeping giant instead. Let’s hope China, and Xi Jinping in particular, do learn these lessons from history

Secondly, it is true that since World War 2, the United States has always been likely to go to war overseas to secure vital resources if it happened to lack them. That is clear national objective number 2. Luckily for the most part, it does not lack in resources, especially with Canada, itself a huge raw material provider, just next door. However, it nearly invaded Brazil in World War 2 simply to secure vital rubber exports, and to prevent these same exports from reaching Nazi Germany. It has since gone to war in the Middle East on several occasions to secure vital oil and gas flows, back when it became a major oil and gas importer following the energy shocks on the 1970s. Only with the shale revolution in the 2010s has the United States become a major energy producer once more.

The United States will therefore very likely fight for Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, because of the highly advanced semiconductor chips that they benefit from and that only the island of Taiwan, along with South Korea to a certain extent, are currently capable of producing. This has arguably been the mistake Ukraine, and Zelenskyy in particular, have made in the past, especially with Donald Trump. To simply assume that US military and financial aid was always going to reach them more or less unconditionally. Perhaps this would be true under a Democrat president, but even former president Joe Biden, who we could argue wanted to help Ukraine more or less unconditionally for the sake of argument (even though he also restricted weapons flow during the 2024 election year), had to contend with a very divided Congress on this issue.

Instead, Ukraine, and the European Union to a wider extent, should learn from Israel and Taiwan, two of the United States’s closest allies. Always have something of value to trade with them in exchange for American security guarantees.

That’s why Trump pushed for a minerals deal with Ukraine. That’s why Ukraine should use its drone expertise, and especially counter-drone expertise, as a bargaining chip, which in all fariness Ukraine is increasingly doing. The European Union, as a major weapons producer, should also use that geopolitical leverage with the United States. After all, in the event of a Taiwan flashpoint, it may require the combined might of the United States, the European Union, and various smaller allies like South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada to counter the immense Chinese industrial capacity.

Likewise with the Middle East, which had oil to trade with the United States for a long time. Even now, when the United States no longer has a direct need for Middle-Eastern oil, ensuring a reliable flow of oil and gas out of the Middle East keeps global prices down, which is essential to American prosperity and presidential popularity. A belligerent Iran was always a threat in that respect. That the Islamic regime then pursued a major short and medium range ballistic missile program, meaning that fixed US airbases across the Middle-East could potentially be wiped out in a sudden strike, was always going to generate major tensions between the two countries. Trump in the White House or not.

Beyond the flow of oil however, especially in relations to the Islamic regime in Iran, there is the matter of China, which brings us to our last point about American grand strategy and national objectives. The United States wish to be secure in their own hemisphere, and they wish to be economically prosperous. Those have always been clear national objectives. The final objective they will always pursue, especially since World War 2, is to be ahead in any superpower competition. Whether that be Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union or China today.

Recall that the United States fought two wars on American soil precisely because the British empire was, on paper at least, significantly stronger at the time than they were. Having a strong economy and military therefore, first and foremost, means that such overseas threats are less likely to attack the United States directly. Whatever fighting there needs to be instead has to happen elsewhere and not close to American shores.

Secondly, in terms of superpower competition, this hasn’t really been a concern for the United states against China, so long as the latter was focused on low-cost manufacturing, and not building out their military capabilities or even soft power (such as the Belt and Road initiative) abroad. Today however, there very much is a new space race to the moon once more (Artemis program), a major AI competition, a new Scramble for Africa between the two superpower, and initiatives like the Golden Dome and Golden Fleet programs.

Again, there is precedance for this. Against the Soviet Union for instance, the United States engaged in both a space race to the moon and a major military buildout. Think of all of the major air fighter programs of the 1970s (F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18) and the 600 Navy fleet pursued by the Reagan administration. Think of the Star Wars program of the 1980s. The Soviet Union was forced to compete but couldn’t, and ended up bankrupt. Likewise, the United States fought communist forces, even indirectly, wherever they could during the Cold War. Think of Korea, Vietnam, Central and South America and across African nations. This prevented, for the most part, the Soviet Union from dominating these areas whose resources and economic capabilities could go towards supporting them.

South Korea for instance is today a major US ally. Now imagine if they had fallen to communist forces instead. Likewise with Thailand. Likewise with Colombia who, for the most part, has been a solid ally of the United States. Likewise, of course, with Western Europe. The 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran was largely to prevent a communist coup being prepared in the country as well, and was always going to happen, given how important an oil-rich allied Iran under the Shah was to the United States back then. In an alternative world where all of these areas had fallen to the communist onslaught, the United States would have been economically weaker and have fewer allies to fight alongside with. The oil from Iran would no longer have flown to the West.

Likewise, when the Shah was toppled in the 79 revolution, the United States then focused their diplomatic efforts on the Arab Gulf states, very much for the same reasons. Hence the raid against Maduro in Venezuela earlier this year. In doing so, and in lifting sanctions on Caracas in exchange for better security cooperation, especially against Chinese influence, Venezuela can now sell their oil at higher unsanctioned prices. This ultimately hurts China, which benefited from cheaper sanctioned Venezuelan oil under Maduro.

Hence, likely, the recent events of the Iran War. Iran sold nearly 90% of their own sanctioned, and therefore much cheaper, oil to the Chinese. Trump likely gambled that major air and naval strikes on the regime, combined with a blockade of Iranian oil, would be enough to finally bring down the regime. If this had happened, a number of benefits would have occurred. No more nuclear program in Iran, no more ballistic missile program, no more funding of proxy forces in the region, and no more cheap oil going to China.

Of course, this has not happened, at least not completely. Make no mistake, the regime is battered, and their long-term survival remains an open question. We also don’t know the details of the peace deal yet, but Trump has indicated that Iran will not pursue nuclear weapons and that the oil will flow out of the strait of Hormuz. Maybe some economic sanctions will be lifted against the regime in exchange for this, so perhaps we end up with no nuclear weapons for Iran and more expensive oil for China. Trump will definitely sell that as a win, although to be sure only a partial one with respects to his initial objectives.

The Iran War has also weakened China indirectly and helped the United States in relation to the US Dollar. Recall that most oil barrels traded internationally are done so in US Dollars. China and other countries have attempted to create alternatives, like a BRICS currency, or simply convincing Gulf States to accept payments in Yuan for instance. However, the Iran War has made Gulf States revert to the Dollar, since the United States is the only nation capable of military protection for the Gulf States. China must therefore both buy more dollars on international forex markets to buy such oil barrels and more dollars because of higher oil prices. A double effect.

Yet what most countries, China included, do with such dollars, rather than simply sit on them or put them under their pillow, is to invest them. Since they can’t risk losing such dollars either, they typically invest them in extremely safe US Treasury bonds, especially T-bills. So, the Iran War has indirectly forced more countries, China included, to buy more dollars on the open markets and then invest these dollars into US T-bills.

What happens when there is a greater amount of buyers for government bonds?

Yields that governments have to pay overtime go down, and it makes debt repayment easier. In short, the Iran War has made it, temporarily at least, easier for the United States to manage its otherwise spiralling national debt. That plus the weakening of China. So the Iran War is, at least, a partial victory for the United States in this regards, or at the very least a temporary reprieval, though Trump would have almost certainly preferred to see the regime fall without having to send in boots on the ground.

Likewise with tariffs. In order to compete economically and militarily with China, Trump believes the United States also needs to be strong industrially. There is some truth to this. Recall how much civilian factories quickly switched to making war munitions during World War 2. Hard to repeat such a thing if there are no factories to begin with. Of course, I also have no doubt that if it really came to it, the United States could very quickly build out such industrial capacity if they needed to.

In any event, Trump would clearly prefer the United States to move away from China as much as they can in terms of manufacturing, and be a, in his own words “manufacturing powerhouse like it used to be”. One tool that would help in this pursuit is of course tariffs, even if such tariffs ultimately hurt American consumers. That is likely a price Trump is willing to pay to some degree, although he would never admit it publicly. This may also explain why he’s so fervent on reducing all kinds of regulations, especially environmental ones, to produce more energy, so as to have cheaper energy to compensate for higher import prices. Cheap energy is the bedrock of manufacturing, and Trump likely believes that cheap energy and higher import prices, combined with higher energy prices for China, will compensate for American labour costs. Time will tell.

This is also why he has been very critical of the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, arguing that he was incompetent to say the least, because Powell would not lower interest rates further. Lowering interest rates of course would make borrowing cheaper, and easier for both consumers to consume and for businesses to produce, but at the risk of higher inflation. In any event, Trump clearly wants cheap energy and cheap credit to fuel American economic growth and stay ahead of China. Meanwhile, anything that can hurt the Chinese economy, such as tariffs and higher energy prices, is also in play.

Why tariffs on everyone then? Seemingly every country in the world?

The shortest and simplest answer is leverage to obtain concessions. Whether it be higher defence spending in NATO, cheaper or free access to military bases (likely the reason behind Trump’s push to obtain Greenland), or simply better market access for American companies. If Trump can compel various nations to do more business with the United States, in exchange for security garantees for instance, then such countries will also have to trade in US dollars, and also invest in US T-Bills which help the American debt situation.

In any event, are these strategies working? Is the overall American grand strategy working?

The answer is very much a mix bag. In the context of making America stronger and China weaker, Panama and Venezuela are definitely American victories. The Iran War, while weakening the United States and every country in the world, has also weakened China significantly more, since China got most of its imported oil from the Middle East and has suffered much higher oil prices as a result.

As for tariffs, the overall size of the American economy, and their current growth rates of around 2-3%, actually mean that total added GDP per year is higher than that of China. After all, if the US economy is roughly $30 trillion, and the United States has a 2.5% annual growth, that’s an additional $750 billion added to the US economy each year. China, at roughly $15 trillion, would need at least 5% economic growth to match that added GDP, and it’s currently very doubtful that they are hitting such numbers despite official government results.

Cuba is likely next on the Trump hit list for these reasons. The Trump administration claims that Cuba has imported Shahed drones from Russia, and is collecting signals intelligence for China. It might be true, it might not be true. What is clear is that, in a potential war against China, the United States cannot stretch its military assets across the globe and worry about its own citizens in their own backyard. Simply put, it cannot fight in the Asia-Pacific, in the Middle-East, in Europe and also have to worry about near-states like Cuba and Venezuela firing missiles and drones at US soil directly. It cannot fight such a war and have to worry about the Panama canal as well.

Hence why the US administration is removing potential threats in its own hemisphere. It’s just a retelling of the Monroe Doctrine, which has now become known as the Donroe Doctrine in reference to Trump.

The United States is however also taking hits. Such is the cost of any grand strategy. It now has far worse relations with the EU, Canada, Britain and arguably Japan, the Gulf States and even Israel than it did just a year ago. This could definitely come back to haunt them in the event of a global conflict, since the United States could benefit from the economic and industrial assistance of these nations in the event of a China flashpoint.

Still, should Democrats retake the White House in two years, they tend to be better at international relations and cooperation overall, and so could likely mend a number of fences there while maintaining overall US objectives. Then again, maybe the damage will take years if not decades to recover.

The question then becomes if such strategic gains mentioned before are worth these costs that the United States has now paid around the world.

As has become almost inevitable at this point, this latest iteration has not been without controversy. In fact, in what are growing calls worldwide, many have been arguing for decades whether or not such global sporting events, from the World Cup to the Olympics, are actually worth it at all for host cities and nations, once all the final accounting is complete.

Some have even argued that Taylor Swift concerts, like those held in such cities during her 2023 Eras Tour, are in fact much more beneficial for these places to host than the World Cup.

Is this true?

However, to understand whether or not Taylor Swift did better than FIFA for host cities requires us to ask the right questions, and have a good understanding of economics.

After all, on the face of it, the 2023 Eras Tour and the 2026 World Cup should share many similar benefits to the local economies. In both cases, hordes of interstate and international fans descend upon the host cities and stadiums, buy overpriced tickets, and spend their money on flights, hotels, restaurants, buses, taxis, etc. Many of them make entire vacations out of these events, also visiting museums, monuments, beaches, parks, casinos and all kinds of travel activities around them.

So why do many economists now consider the Eras Tour to have been far more successful and impactful for local economies? And what does this say for the future of hosting major sporting events if the economics don’t quite work out?

The results of the Eras Tour are undeniable. Many, from The Economist to Forbes to TIME magasine, have written about this. In almost every city Taylor Swift held a concert, many observed a mini-economic boom. Some economists have even argued that the entire tour added up to $5-6 billion to the overall US economy.

So why is this better than FIFA? What’s wrong with hosting the World Cup?

To better understand these differences between Swift and FIFA, one must first understand that not all World Cup games are created equal.

In the opening weeks of the World Cup were the group matches, and not all of these could be considered major events. In fact, by opening the tournament to a record 48 nations, FIFA arguably did not create any major line-ups between the big nations early on.

Prior to the 2026 edition, all previous World Cups, played by 32 teams, typically had at least one “death group”, whereby major teams like say Germany, Portugal, Mexico and Morocco all ended up in the same group, from which only two could move on to the next round of last 16, creating major stakes for all teams and therefore gameplay. Now, with 48 teams, the first two nations of each group go through, leading to 24 teams that would qualify for the next round, but 8 more spots were up for grabs for the best third teams throughout the 12 groups.

Simply put, this arguably created far fewer stakes and tensions, while also creating a number of matches that didn’t inspire many locals to purchase stadium tickets.

Yes, when major teams like Spain, France, the Netherlands, England, Brazil and Argentina were playing, stadiums were packed full. Many Americans, Canadians and Mexicans also sometimes travelled for several hours or even out of state (or province in the case of Canada) and joined the international supporters to watch these games inside the stadium.

However, for every one of these big games, arguably half a dozen smaller games had a much smaller effect.

For instance, and without wishing any disrespect upon these nations, how many Americans, Canadians and Mexicans showed up to watch games like Qatar vs Bosnia-Herzegovina, Uzbekistan vs DR Congo, or Panama vs Ghana? How many of them living outside of these cities proper were going to book flights and hotel rooms to see these games? Sure, some small nations like Cape Verde managed to go far into the tournament and became major sensations, a success well deserved.

Many other nations however did not.

Here lies difference number one between Taylor Swift and FIFA. Every Taylor Swift concert was a major event, especially for the host city. Every FIFA World Cup game was.. not.

Sure, these smaller football nations attracted their own international supporters who came to support their teams, but often in numbers nowhere near enough to fill out major stadiums, while most local residents would struggle to name a single player in these teams or, frankly, find some of these places on a map. Most matches were certainly not France vs Spain or England vs Argentina. I would even argue that, at best, out of the 104 games that took place during the World Cup 2026, only about a dozen or so matched the draw and magnitude of a Taylor Swift concert.

Difference number two is that Taylor Swift typically stayed in a city for one concert, maybe two, and then moved on to the next city in the next state. This, in turn, did not change any major habits among the local populations in these cities. At worst, locals who had no interest in attending an Eras Tour concert avoided the downtown area, where the stadiums often were, for one evening and one evening only. By all accounts, even on the day of the concert, life very much continued as normal during the day. People from the suburbs often went to work at their offices, and local restaurants served local residents and workers for lunch.

Meanwhile, despite most games not exactly being major draws, the contractual obligations that FIFA had of host cities would make even the most seasoned sports lawyer blush. All 16 host cities, whether they hosted big games or small ones, had an A-list celebrity’s laundry list of requirements. Everything from providing total security expenses, including dozens of snipers on the roofs of each stadium, to security details and bodyguards for all FIFA officials, to entire street closures, to actually building downtown official fan festival areas. Even airspace closures occurred during the games, and you can imagine the economic disruption at airports from that, regardless of how small these games were. You wouldn’t want a loud plane flying over the stadium ruining the sound of the match commentators on TVs halfway around the world, would you..

This, in turn, led to many locals actually fleeing these host cities, or at best simply staying home and not going out to local bars, shops and restaurants, often for weeks on end, since they knew they would likely face downtown disruptions, traffic chaos, and scores of celebrating and drinking supporters. Many companies even encouraged workers to work from home during the event, for fear of such traffic and chaos. This, in turn, led to a downtown economic contraction from such a lack of locals and workers. A contraction that, at best, needed to be made up by World Cup visitors to make it worthwhile, and for many such games, it simply wasn’t.

To be fair, if that’s your kind of thing, it can be awesome. There are plenty of videos on social media of locals dancing with the Dutch, Scottish and French fans who knew how to have a party.

If that’s not your thing however, well, you probably booked your vacation elsewhere and stayed well clear of these host cities. Such disruptions also often occurred for the entire tournament, including on days when the host city did not actually host any games.

This is what economists call Displacement. Yes, the World Cup did overall bring many interstate visitors, international visitors and corporate sponsor guests to the host countries and cities. However, most of the spending and economic activity that these visitors generated likely simply replaced, rather than added to, economic activity that was always going to happen in these host cities anyway.

This is even somewhat easy to visualise and understand. For every international visitor that came to the US or Mexico during the World Cup, there was no doubt another one, who might have visited these countries on any other year, who otherwise simply stayed home or visited other countries instead. Likewise for interstate and corporate travellers. If these host cities had not hosted the World Cup in June 2026, they might have hosted other events. Fairs, seminars, conferences, expos, festivals, etc. Sure, local restaurants might serve these football fans coming to the city, but they could otherwise just as easily have been serving locals or other visitors who are now avoiding the area entirely. As a result, total spending in these cities, at best, barely moved.

Difference number three is scheduling. Most World Cup matches took place in the early afternoon local time, to coincide with the evening time in Europe. 3:00 pm in New York after all is 8:00 pm in London and 9:00 pm in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Madrid. The FIFA World Cup, unlike the Taylor Swift tour, is first and foremost a television product, and the television slots that matter the most are European prime time. That’s because Europe is 450 million people living in the second largest economy on the planet and who, for a much larger part and unlike most Americans, are religiously passionate football fans.

Most of all, it’s where the bulk of FIFA’s revenues from broadcasting rights and advertisement comes from. Billions in revenues of course, that simply do not go to the local host cities who actually suffered from such scheduling, since the offices that still remained open during the World Cup often closed early on such game days or made sure everyone worked remotely. Workers who therefore did not go for their usual lunch habits in the city near such offices, or on their typical shopping or coffee treat after work before going home. If the typical spending from such locals and workers cannot be made up by the football visitors, then you have contraction, not an economic boom.

Even worse, this significantly impacted hotel rooms. Yes, international visitors are going to book them in the host cities, but when games start at 2:00 or 3:00 pm, many local and interstate travellers might not. After all, if you live two or three hours away from the stadium, that’s plenty of time to get to the stadium by leaving home in the morning and then getting back home afterwards for a late evening dinner. There’s no need to book a hotel for the night before or after.

By contrast, all of Taylor Swifts concerts started in the evening, typically around 8:00 pm or 9:00 pm. That meant far fewer if any daytime disruptions for locals and workers going to the office, and it also meant that many travellers going to such concerts had to book hotels for the night, likely along with breakfast the next day, as well as taxis to go to and from these hotels to the concert stadium.

This is the opposite of economic displacement. This is adding to whatever economic activity already happens during the day. Hence economists looking at the Eras Tour so favourably.

Finally, difference number four is that the Eras Tour promoters also, in contrast to FIFA, hired and paid for their own production crews, their own stadium security, their own hotel rooms and, most of all, rented out their stadiums at market prices to stadium owners. No taxpayer money was involved at all except for basic local law enforcement. This does not strictly add or subtract from total local spending and economic activity of course, but this sure is easier to sell to locals and politicians. In this regards, FIFA demands a lot more and seemingly gives far less in return.

Of course, FIFA can demand that cities and nations ensure all of the required security, host officials in five-star hotels and set up festival areas, all paid for with taxpayer money, but that only works if they actually find cities and nations willing to do so, and that number is seemingly shrinking.

Likewise, the IOC, which is responsible for handing out the Olympic Games, has also been increasingly running into this problem, with fewer and fewer host nations and cities willing to put up with such stringent demands, especially at a time when there is inflation and a cost of living crisis. Only Paris and Los Angeles were candidates to host the 2024 Olympics in 2017, whereas there were five candidate cities a decade earlier. Hence why the IOC took the unprecedented step of awarding two games (2024 for Paris and 2028 for Los Angeles) at their 2017 announcement ceremony. This was very likely to avoid another headache of absent candidate cities.

For the Winter Games, it’s often only been one city in recent events as well. Hence the IOC’s recent decision to become much more flexible. The latest Winter Games in 2026 were held not only in two places rather than one, but across a vast area of the Italian Alps, from Milan to Cortina d’Ampezzo. That’s a five hour drive between the two cities.

FIFA has probably seen the writing on the wall as well. The four prior World Cups, from South Africa to Brazil to Russia to Qatar, faced widespread accusations of building countless stadiums that became white elephants, that is serving no real purpose after the tournament ended and often falling into ruins afterwards. Brazil built a brand new stadium in Manaus in the middle of the Amazon, despite not having a local team there. Russia built its Winter Olympics in Sochi almost entirely from scratch, and Qatar built an additional seven stadiums almost within visual range of each in one of the smaller countries of the world. If anything, 2026 represented a breakaway moment, since all stadiums in all three host countries existed and were used long before FIFA came along.

The next FIFA World Cup in 2030 will be held across a record six countries. Officially to mark the centenary of the tournament. Unofficially to spread out such economic costs on host cities and nations so as to make it less burdensome for them. Of course, there’s no provision for giving up their special demands yet, from taxpayer funded security to officials being wined and dined in five-star hotels. It’s hard to give up privileges once you have them.

What is clear however is that, as people, cities and nations become more aware of the principles behind economic displacement, they will have less and less appetite to host such big sporting events in the future. Which is why FIFA, the IOC and any other sporting body are going to have to come up with more creative ways to minimise such displacement. Everything from tournament size and length to players and teams involved to simple daytime versus evening scheduling.

Or they could, of course, increasingly turn to Russia (2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 World Cup), China (2022 Winter Olympics), Qatar (2022 World Cup), Saudi Arabia (2034 World Cup) and any other authoritarian state they can find to simply sportswash these problems away, in pursuit of wider geopolitical image and image branding goals.

Economics and sportsmanship be damned.

Author’s note: Hello everyone. If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope you’ve found this article interesting. For me, it really highlights how seemingly small differences for similar events can add up to a huge difference in outcomes. It’s why I study economics, and try to figure out what works where and why. Why similar economic approaches and policies can have widely different results from one city or nation to the next.

In any case, I really appreciate you guys reading my articles. It means everything to me. If you did like this article, I have over a hundreds now here on Substack, and plan on writing many more, so don’t hesitate and subscribe. Take care, and see you for my next one.

Most places in France also don’t have A/C.

To be clear, such temperatures, even in a warming climate, are quite unprecedented. We are beating multiple records here. I even looked up temperatures for my city of Nantes, located in the Loire Valley, and compared it to Death Valley on the same day. Nantes beat out the hottest place on earth by 2°C. Hence my joking to friends and family that we should hand over the Death Valley Crown to the Loire Valley instead, at least for this year.

Likewise for our European neighbours. Spain, the UK, Germany. All are sweltering under the heat. Most people living in these places also don’t have A/C, which of course has ignited all kinds of political debates and led to several major scandals, not least involving the EU Commission headquarters (where apparently the top seven floors, including the very top one where EU Commissioner Von der Layen has her office, were under A/C but not the other ones, leading to accusations of feudalism and rules for thee and not for me).

What is most shocking of course is that, as many struggle to cope with the heat, as the death toll from such scorching temperatures keeps on rising, there are those, often of a particular political leaning, still telling others, and quite aggressively at that, not to install A/C units. Not just in their homes, but even schools, hospitals and retirement homes, almost with a sort a religious zeal.

Why? Well, the arguments typically go something like this:

1. It’s bad for the climate

2. We need to reach our net zero targets

3. A/C units only send heat outside, but don’t solve higher temperatures

4. We need to be reducing our electricity demand, not increasing it

5. You are, of course, a climate denier if you support A/C.

Obviously, far from me to tell these individuals what to do with their own lives and homes. If they wish to cook in a furnace during the summer months, by all means let them. My wife and I absolutely plan on getting A/C. We can’t right now because all A/C companies are fully booked for the summer, so likely next winter before the following summer season is upon us. Particularly if European heatwaves are only likely to get worse in the future. If anything, that will also increase the resale value of our home as well.

Regardless, we have realised several things by not having A/C. It’s not just about living in higher temperatures. It’s the lack of focus, like having your brain in a constant fog. It’s having difficulty concentrating and getting any work done, not having the energy to do anything, having the hardest time sleeping at night, etc. Living in high temperatures takes a major toll on the mind and body. As a couple with a one year old, we often had to put our baby in the bath in the middle of the night because her skin was getting hot. That, more than anything, convinced me of getting A/C.

All of this even though we tried to keep the house cool by any non A/C means we had. Blankets in the freezer, sleeping on the bottom floor. Only eating cold food. Not using the oven or even induction pans. Closing all shutters and living in darkness in the middle of the day. Not using the dryer of course, but simply putting the clothes to dry outside. None of these prevented our house, slowly but surely over the course of several days, from getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter. Even waking up every morning at five-thirty to open all windows only reduced temperatures by a few degrees, since it was already sometimes well over 20°C even when the sun came out.

Well, I’m going to make things perfectly clear. We cannot, and won’t, go on living like this. We’re not living and working under such conditions. With A/C, we can live normally and work productively. We won’t have to worry about having to take our one year old to the hospital for heat exhaustion, or getting a hotel room for several nights simply because that room has A/C and ours doesn’t. The total costs of that will, if anything, quickly surpass the cost of installing a small A/C unit over time, particularly if summers keep getting hotter.

Beyond that personal preference of actually wating to get on with a normal life even when the weather goes crazy, I’d like to argue why recent net zero policies put out by many European governments border on the insane and even on the criminally negligent.

For starters, no, I am not a climate denier. I actually have a Masters Degree in Sustainable Environmental Management, and one of my majors was climate science. I arguably know more about how the climate works than most, except for climatologists themselves of course. I also teach, among other things, two module courses called Geopolitics and Climate Challenges and Environmental Governance, where I specifically teach about the Conference of the Parties (like Kyoto, Paris and Belem), the IPCC and their famous climate reports, the different climate scenarios they present, and all of the collected and analysed data, including thousands of weather stations around the world, ice core samples, tree rings and so forth. I literally present the science to my students.

In case none of this was enough, then let me spell it out clearly right here. Yes, global temperatures are rising. Yes, they have been since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Yes, human activities and carbon emissions represent the bulk of such warming. Yes, global temperatures will continue to rise, likely by at least two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if not more, based on the best available models. None of this, as far as I’m concerned, is in dispute.

Yet net zero is, or at least has become as far as I’m aware as well, hardly about the science, and much more about and ideology. An ideology with terrible and even deadly consequences.

For starters, while I’m not disputing that human activities are causing global temperatures to increase, I’m also arguing that this is hardly the only time that such temperatures have increased or decreased as well.

Back during the last interglacial period for instance, about 130 000 years ago, global average temperatures were so high that there were elephants roaming in Britain and hippos swimming in the Thames river. Much more recently, during the Roman Warm Period, it was at least one-two degrees warmer than it is today, and warm enough for the Romans to grow grapes alongside Hadrian’s Wall. That’s the wall close to the Scottish border. Even more recently, during the Medieval Warm Period, the Vikings were farming in Greenland. Not just herding woolly sheep that are accustomed to such a climate, but actual wheat, barley and vegetables. Hence why they called it Greenland at the time.

Then, the Little Ice Age happened, during which times global temperatures fell by about 1-2°C compared to today. Throughout this period, which lasted about five centuries, it was so cold that many European rivers froze almost every winter. The Dutch were out ice-skating in their canals, and developed such a culture around it that they are, to this day, the fastest speed skaters at every Winter Olympics. The Thames River had regular frost fairs. That’s right, market places on the ice, in the middle of the river, where vendors would set up their booths and sell their goods. Makes sense when you think about it, frozen rivers being essentially open highways for people to move in and out of quickly. Obviously, this did not happen every winter during this period, but the last recorded Thames frost fair was in 1815, right when we were coming out of this mini ice age and entering the industrial revolution.

All of this to say that those claiming that global temperatures are, and should somehow remain, stable throughout time are the ones being unscientific climate deniers. One only has to look at the last two thousand years, or even that last five hundred, to know this.

Ah, but I hear them say. Yes, global temperatures have fluctuated throughout history. Nobody would dispute that. However, surely the rapid increases we are seeing in our times are unprecedented and should be cause for concern, right?

Cause for concern and action? Yes. Unprecedented? No.

11 700 years ago, global temperatures rose by about 10°C average in a matter of decades. That’s right, decades. Our own global temperatures have so far risen by about 1°C since 1815, and will likely rise by another 2-3°C by 2115. During the Younger Dryas period that preceded this incredible increase in temperatures, the planet also cooled so rapidly back to near ice-age levels that such a cooling only appears in a single ice core layer throughout the polar regions.

As for the concern, we should move away from burning fossil fuels. I have no issue with that. Why would I care if you drive an EV instead of an ICE vehicle? If you get your electricity from wind and solar rather than coal? Most people clearly don’t care either. Fossil fuels, on top of their climate impacts, also have terrible air pollution and health impacts, particularly on children and the elderly. Not to mention their geopolitical costs. Costs that are not always properly factored into their final price at the pump. In any case, why should we continue with these if better alternatives exist?

Yet there is a difference between supporting new and better alternatives to emerge on the market, which we should do, and raising energy prices so high that it completely kills our economy, our industries, our jobs and, worst of all, causes people to die of heat stroke in the summer and freeze to death in the winter. That’s absurd and even murderous. Every year, about 2500-3000 people die in Britain from cold-related deaths, because their heating bills are amongst the highest in the world and their meagre pensions don’t cover this. Every year in France, roughly the same number of people die of heat stroke in the summer. This year will likely be much worse.

Yet net zero is exactly that. The deliberate hiking of energy and heating prices through taxes and other government mechanisms, in order to reach net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible.

Ah, but surely it is also important to do so, and to limit global temperature increases as soon as we can, my critics would say?

Yes, to a degree. I don’t disagree. The question then becomes, how many people are you willing to sacrifice on your way to getting to net zero more quickly? How many people have to die to achieve this goal?

After all, in theory at least, you could fix energy prices so high that all factories shut down and all ICE cars, buses and trucks simply stopped moving, simply because they can’t afford such energy prices. The economics stop making sense. Yes, that would definitely reduce carbon emissions very, very quickly. It would also be an absolute economic and human disaster.

If trucks alone for instance could not transport goods like food anymore, you could quickly imagine the result. One only has to remember Covid-19 to recall all of the supply chain issues there, and that was with most trucks on the road still driving properly. Beyond that, high energy prices make industries and exports far less competitive, leading to job losses, currency devaluation and rising unemployment, on top of inflation and a cost of living crisis. Many have even argued that the sluggish stagnation and even stagflation of the EU of the past ten years have been in large part due to energy policies and net zero obsessions.

Of course, I’m not claiming it’s that simple. Higher costs for ICE vehicles should, in theory, also encourage alternatives to emerge. Yet most of these alternatives, such as freight railways and waterways, require national and even trans-national infrastructure policies and tens of billions of euros mobilised. Something that has many difficulties happening, for reasons I will shortly get into. Even electric trucks so far don’t come anywhere near what is required in terms of load factor and distance to hope to replace ICE trucks in the near future.

Thus, if you are really serious about reducing carbon emissions, you don’t make energy more expensive. You encourage alternatives while helping your economy grow as much as possible, so as to pay for such a transition quickly. High energy prices simply shoot your economy in the foot and make such a transition take longer. You know, on top of actually killing people. If people have less money or have just lost their jobs, they’re not going to install more expensive but energy efficient heat pumps, or switch to EVs.

Worst of all is that other nations are very unlikely to follow such policies by example, if such were the hopes of these nations who engage in net zero. China currently emits 30% of all global carbon emissions. The United States is about 14%. India stands at over 8%. These three countries therefore emit more than half of all global carbon emissions. All three also extensively use A/C.

Britain and France meanwhile produce barely 1% each. That’s right, the United Kingdom could entirely sink into the North Sea and it would reduce global annual carbon emissions by just one measly percent. Yet Britain today has some of the highest industrial and consumer energy costs in the world. Costs that result from deliberate policy choices from, for instance, the extreme difficulty of building new nuclear power plants (or any type of infrastructure project really, like HS2 or Heathrow’s third runway), the refusal to grant new oil and gas exploration licences in the North Sea despite the current Russian and Middle-Eastern turmoil, or to build more or larger dams in Wales or the Scottish Highlands.

Yes, Britain has huge wind potential in the North Sea, arguably the best geographic location for wind power in the world, but such wind farms reflect everything wrong with the existing system. From planning and construction permits that cost millions and take years to obtain, to the inevitable following court cases for any energy or infrastructure project today, since someone, somewhere, from local residents to conservation groups to NGO activists, will inevitably sue. What happens then is effectively a doubling of construction costs, since all of the planning and construction permits, the environmental reviews and so forth which have already been done now need to be checked one by one by the courts as well to ensure compliance. This takes many more years and further millions in costs.

Thus, it’s not uncommon for a project, even a supposed green wind farm project in the North Sea, to take over a decade to get off the ground, and huge upfront capital costs. Which, of course, discourages rather than encourages companies and investors from taking the risk.

In fact, how can it even be possible that, in 2025, European companies like Orsted, one of the largest wind turbine companies in the world, face major financial difficulties as they currently do? Because, in part, they’ve had to cancel a project to build one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms in the English North Sea. Why? The company cited increasing inflationary and regulatory costs. Again, in 2025, despite the already high electricity prices facing the UK. Despite global geopolitical tensions. With everything going on, this should be a golden moment for wind companies like Orsted. That it isn’t tells you everything.

Likewise in France, home to some of the highest taxes in the world, and Germany, where even the historical Deutsche Bahn is now a shadow of its former self, facing major delays and cancellations as infrastructure projects take forever to happen. One such project, Stuttgart 21, took a whopping 27 years to get completed. 27 years…in Germany. Meanwhile, China built the world’s largest high speed rail network in barely over a decade.

Needless to say, countries like China and India will not be looking to France, Britain and Germany to emulate their net zero policies. Nobody will, and since these countries now represent such low percentages of global emissions, reducing their emissions further by hurting their own economies and people is ridiculous. It would be much better for these countries to adapt to the coming climate change, which we are already living through. Yes, that includes A/C.

The same people who will typically tell the rest of us not to adopt A/C don’t seem to understand their own policies. In France, the government actively encourages people to replace their gas boilers with heat pumps, because the latter runs on electricity and is much more energy efficient. Sounds like a good policy, and it is. Yet A/C units and heat pumps share almost everything in common. They both use electricity, which could be obtained using renewable sources or nuclear power, especially in France, to act as air/water pumps, either to heat or cool a given space. Over 70% of France’s electricity already comes from nuclear. Even during summer heatwaves, when nuclear power tends to run lower due to lower water levels in rivers, solar tends to make up the difference.

Which means that the same people who want us to use electricity, particularly nuclear electricity, to heat our homes in the winter, also don’t want us to use the same power sources to cool our homes in the summer, often using the same installations. In fact, many heat pumps are specifically built to also act as A/C units during the summer. It’s just a matter of reversing the direction of the air flow. Yet politicians don’t want this to happen somehow.

To be clear, with the same existing heat pumps that the French government encourages, using the same nuclear or renewable energy, people for the most part could be cooling their homes during the summer heatwaves as well. No additional carbon emissions required. Thousands of lives could be saved. Worker productivity and economic output could be largely maintained. Yet they oppose this.

It’s hard to understand why. The only reason I can come up with, considering that such A/C units could be powered by clean energy using existing infrastructure, is that they want overall electricity consumption to go down, not up, likely because they associate electricity and A/C units with capitalism, which is of course evil and responsible for all the world’s problems, including the climate.

Well, if such is the case, then they are actively encouraging negative economic growth as a policy. Hence their norms, processes, regulations and endless appeals. Hence why nothing gets built. Hence the economic stagnation the EU and the UK have face for the better part of two decades now.

To be clear, A/C alone is not a silver bullet. The government could very well encourage new housing, construction and urban planning norms to better account for future heatwaves using passive cooling systems. These already exist, and have for thousands of years, in hot countries from Spain to Iran to India. From thicker stone walls to smaller windows and natural ventilation systems. All of these should be encouraged. In Barcelona, they are pedestrianising hundreds of streets and planting millions of trees across them. In China, the city of Yuncheng is experimenting with spraying water mist from its buildings, providing such a mist to the people below during the hottest hours of the day. No doubt many other cities will experiment as well.

However, to actively and aggressively discourage the use of A/C, for the supposed virtue of reducing already tiny carbon emissions by global standards, at the cost of thousands of lives each year, is simply criminal, and should be called out as such. This, more than anything, has always been the problem with those who care about virtues more than outcomes. Who care about what sounds or feels good, as opposed to looking at the final result. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you are good people, because you have good intentions.

If however, you refuse to change your beliefs in the face of evidence, particularly evidence of people dying as a result of your policies, then don’t come to me claiming to be wonderful people.

You most certainly are not.

Indeed, from the raid in January to remove Venezuelan president Maduro from power, to the Trump threats of annexing Greenland, to the current Iran War and global energy shocks, it has been eventful to say the least, and we’re barely in May.

With all of these things happening, it’s almost easy to forget that a major 4-year long war is still ongoing in Europe.

However, for those who have not paid close attention to the conflict, there are some very important new developments. So important in fact that many are now, cautiously, optimistic about Ukraine’s chances of winning its war against Putin’s Russia.

For starters, Ukraine has been regaining ground since February. Relatively small amounts of course, but that trend has been positive for three months straight now, which has not happened since October of 2022. This is despite Putin’s announced Spring Offensive back at the end of that month, which has seemingly gone nowhere. Even if you account for the fact that measuring actual frontlines has now become more difficult, since there are no longer any military trenches or clear lines on the ground, instead replaced by a wide no-man’s land of constant aerial drone surveillance, virtually nobody, including within Russian military blogger circles, is disputing this fact.

The reasons should not be too surprising. Since the beginning of the year, monthly recruitment numbers for the Russian military have been on the decline, despite the higher and higher salaries, signup bonuses and death benefits to families offered to volunteers to go and fight. Stockpiles of Russian vehicles, especially armoured vehicles like tanks and IFVs, have also effectively dried up, and large armoured columns, the likes of which were very common in 2023 and 2024 and still quite common last year, have barely been observed since 2026 began.

This is a major problem for Russia. After all, Russian missiles and drones may target Ukrainian positions, but without the columns to then go and capture them, Russia cannot move forward.

Meanwhile, Ukraine keeps going from strength the strength, producing ever more drones and receiving even more weapons and vehicles, including fighter jets, from the West. They have received major financial lifelines from the European Union. They have also just completed major defensive works across their entire frontline, which makes it difficult to imagine just how Russian forces on the ground, with their now more limited armour and assault capabilities, might get through these in the future.

Russian frontline soldiers have also now effectively lost access to the Starlink communications system since February as well. They were technically banned from using it before, but they found ways around this. Now, the Ukrainians provide serial numbers to SpaceX for every terminal they themselves use. Every terminal not falling on that list, likely in the hands of the Russians themselves, is now no longer receiving satellite signals. This has led to an incredible drop of around 75% of Starlink data traffic in the Donbass region, showing just how much the Russians relied on it for their own communications before.

This, in turn, has made any kind of large-scale Russian coordinated assault far more difficult to pull off. After all, how do you coordinate thousands of troops for an assault if they cannot even talk to each other properly in real-time?

Of course, the Russians could use alternatives, but they don’t have satellite constellation communications of their own, meaning every alternative satellite is either much slower or lacks signal all together at times. Like those satellite phones of the 90s being the source of jokes. They could of course communicate via direct radio signals, but those can get jammed or intercepted by the Ukrainians.

They could communicate via instant messaging and social media platforms like Telegram but, in addition to being hacked or intercepted by the Ukrainians, the latter has also been shut off the Russian soldiers in the field since February as well, the clear sign of a paranoid government not trusting their own soldiers not to turn on them. After all, if soldiers wanted to mount a coup and an armoured spearhead towards Moscow, they would also need to communicate effectively to do so.

None of this looks good for Putin.

Not only have soldiers been banned for using Telegram, but Russian civilians have been so as well, along with a number of VPNs, even though they as well are finding all kinds of creative ways around such censorship. Yet Telegram is the most used app for instant messaging in Russia, the equivalent of WhatsApp in the west. There have also been widespread mobile internet shutdowns, especially in cities like Moscow and St Petersburg, across the months of March and April, although landline internet still seems to function.

Why might this be so? Why landlines but no mobile internet access?

There have been all kinds of rumours, speculations and conspiracy theories about this, and most if not all are likely to be false. From secretly hiding the new Ayatollah of Iran Mojtaba Khamenei, who is supposedly receiving medical treatment somewhere in Moscow, to pre-emptively stopping any kind of protest that will inevitably arise after supposedly announcing a mass mobilisation. After all, protests are more difficult to coordinate in real time if people cannot communicate on the move.

So far, no such mass mobilisation has been announced, and it would be very surprising, and very desperate indeed, if it was, considering how unpopular the last general mobilisation call in September 2022 was in Russia. At a time back when, it should be pointed out, the war overall still had widespread support among the Russian people. So long as they didn’t have to go fight it themselves.

In any event, whatever the reasons for the mobile blackouts may be, they point to a very fearful and likely paranoid Putin regime. A fear of its own people, or perhaps of a top-down coup organised by others, from the oligarchy to members of the intelligence services.

Again, not looking good for Putin.

Russia has also failed to capitalise on the current global energy shock. After all, being a major oil producer and exporter, it should be swimming in oil money right now. Yet its own refineries, which service mostly domestic customers but which also have some export capacity, have been hit hard since the beginning of the year. Putin himself banned refined gasoline exports from Russia in April. Considering how much the Russian economy needs foreign currencies for its war effort, at a time of high prices for oil and related products, that was a major decision to say the least.

Not only that, but since the Iran War began, Ukraine has also been targeting what seems to be all of Russia’s energy nodes, from pumping stations to oil export terminals. Not only in the Black Sea, but in the Baltic Sea as well. Russia, and Russian air-defence systems, have seemingly been incapable of stopping these attacks, which have resulted in 40-60% fewer crude oil exports all together, depending on whose numbers you believe.

This is worse for Putin than seemingly falling budget revenues for his government. After all, a large part of why the Russian people have overall supported the war for so long was that:

1. They saw Ukraine as historically belonging to Russia

2. They did not have to go fight in the war unless they volunteered

3. The shift to a war economy, draining the government reserves for military spending, along with over a million men removed from the workforce to go and fight, meant that Russia experienced several years of significant economic growth. Averages wages reliably went up as a result.

Now, Russia is in a recession, the result of falling oil exports, falling government revenues and financial reserves to fund the war effort drying up. This means less money going to the factories, going to wages, etc.. Mass lay-offs are very likely to begin soon, and with these, a major reason for the Russian people to support the war will also evaporate.

Let’s not forget that the main reason for the major January uprisings in Iran, and the subsequent brutal government crackdown, was the terrible economic situation ordinary Iranians found themselves in. Ordinary Iranians who may not have either supported nor opposed a conflict with say Israel, but who were now feeling major strains on their daily lives and ability to feed their families.

Putin is now very likely to experience similar economic resentment coming from his own people.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough for Russia, Ukraine is now winning the air and drone war. It is getting better and better at intercepting Russian missiles and drones, not only at scale but cost-effectively as well, often with its own interceptor designs like the Sting and Octopus drones. Ukraine has also been increasingly hitting supply targets in the Russian rear-areas, including, remarkably, supply trucks in Mariupol, over 100 kilometres behind the front lines. The same Mariupol that was a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, and that only fell after many months of heavy fighting in 2022.

This is, once again, worse for Putin than simply losing the trucks. Of course, without trucks supplying them with food and ammunition, the Russian soldiers on the front lines cannot fight. As soon as they show signs of weakness, radio signals indicating their supply predicament for instance, Ukrainian assault forces, including now ground robotic vehicles, have attacked these vulnerable Russian positions. This is why they have been remarkably successful in recent months in recapturing such positions.

But beyond that, it will only lead to Russia’s current recruitement crisis getting worse. After all, many Russians signed on to join the military on the promise of being placed in the rear areas, where they had a lower likelihood of getting killed. Even if, in many instances, those promises turned out to be lies, and such Russians ended up on the front lines, it was also true for many other Russians. For years, they were probably safe from Ukrainian strikes, by being placed in places like Mariupol.

Now however, that is no longer the case, which will have a big impact on morale and make other Russians even less likely to sign up and join the military. This, in turn, will only exacerbate Russia’s already shrinking recruitement numbers.

Ukraine is also getting better at hitting Russian air-defence systems, and at finding ways to manoeuvre around them. The recent strikes on major Russian oil export terminals in both the Black and Baltic Seas, as well as across airbases in Crimea, are all testament to this. There also seems to be very little Russia can do about this, the momentum clearly being on the Ukrainian side.

That also seems to be the takeaway from recent events. When it comes to wars like this, especially high-intensity wars that depend on manpower numbers, financial reserves and economic output, it is often better to not look at where the war is today but where it is likely to go in the future. In doing so, it’s now very hard to see a path forward for Russia.

After all, the Ukrainians now have much better defences all around, and much better abilities to strike at their enemy’s heartland. They now have a stronger industrial base than ever before. They have even began a clear trend of taking territory back. They have yet to mobilise their 18-25 year olds, a sign that their manpower reserves are still holding despite four years of war. They now assault Russian positions using ground robotics without risking their own soldiers.

They have also secured funding from the EU amounting to over €90 billion, guaranteeing their warfighting efforts for years to come. A deal which happened at the end of April. They are also now getting funded by the Gulf states, to the tune of billions if not tens of billions of dollars, to help them defend against Iranian drones, the result of their own comparative expertise.

Meanwhile, Russia is facing not only huge casualties on the battlefield, but increasing daily combat losses, now estimated at around 1500 soldiers per day. It is facing shrinking recruitment numbers, shrinking weapons capacities, shrinking oil revenues and shrinking government budgets, without any clear indication of how Putin might get out of these conundrums. In fact, the only thing that seems to be increasing now in Russia is the general discontent.

Simply put, in every war, there comes a critical turning point. One where it becomes very difficult to see how one particular side could possibly win or even prevent a total loss or retreat, given the existing and future forces and numbers at play. Nazi Germany arguably experienced this at some point after D-Day in June of 1944, when overwhelming Allied manpower, military and industrial might, combined with the solid footholds they had just achieved on the European continent, all but guaranteed their defeat. Imperial Japan likely experienced this after the Battle of the Philippine Sea, when the Imperial Navy had essentially lost all of their carriers and naval pilots, guaranteeing US control of the seas and cutting Japan off from the resources in Asia that it needed to continue the war effort. In both cases, defeat came less than a year later.

Have we reached such a critical turning point in Ukraine?

It certainly, though cautiously of course, seems that way now.

During that time, the Islamic Republic attacked its Gulf neighbours and declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. The Trump administration has in turn declared their own naval blockade for ships going to and from Iranian ports, and there have been ceasefires and negotiation attempts of various lengths and promises. All things most people are fully aware of.

For all of the tough rhetoric, the Islamic Regime of Iran, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that act as their main military wing, have made far too many strategic mistakes to hope to survive over the next five-ten years.

What most might not be aware of however are the long term, 5-10 year consequences of such strategic decisions on both the United States and the Islamic regime itself. I intend to write the same article about this for the United States shortly, but for now, I’m focusing on the Islamic regime, since I believe the consequences for them of their many, many strategic miscalculations will be far more dire, and will arrive much sooner.

After all, as it is often said in war, whichever side will win is the one that makes the fewest mistakes. Well, this is also very much true for grand strategy, and all of the things done before a war even begins.

That is, the entire strategy of the government, which doesn’t just involve military capabilities but everything from economics, intelligence gathering, industrial capacity, available resources, and existing and potential future alliance networks. Not to mention, of course, the support of the people themselves. The Islamic regime has arguably made major mistakes in each and every one of these categories.

For starters, the Islamic Republic was already in dire straits at home even before the war began. Major hyperinflation, a complete collapse of the currency, huge economic difficulties, chronic water shortages, and significant swathes of the population calling for flat-out regime change. Particularly since the 2022 protests following the murder of Mahsa Amini. The desire by the people of Iran to remove the regime entirely is not my opinion. It is what institutes like the Dutch Gamaan institute have shown repeatedly for years.

Worse for the regime was that all of these problems existed even before the October 7th 2023 attacks on Israel. The resulting war, which has been called the Gaza War but which has really opposed Israel to actors in seven countries across the Middle East, not only saw a major degradation of the regime’s proxy forces like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, not only saw the overthrow of the allied Assad regime in Syria, but even led to missile skirmishes directly between the two countries.

First in April of 2024, when Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones and Israel following the latter’s strike on an IRGC building in Damascus adjacent to the Iranian embassy, which led to Israeli reprisals five days later, mostly targeting their air-defence systems.

Then, in October of 2024, following Israel’s successful strikes on Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, the regime also fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, followed by similar Israeli reprisals against air-defence systems in Iran.

Then of course, in a much broader escalation, Israel launched major air strikes on the Islamic Republic in June of 2025, in what became known as the 12-Day War. During this short conflict, Israel successfully targeted multiple IRGC leaders and nuclear scientists. Most of all, they successfully struck a number of air defence sites, indicating a clear pattern to slowly but surely attrite Iran’s defensive capabilities. At the end of the conflict, the United States then successfully bombed three nuclear sites at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow. Iran of course retaliated themselves, firing over 500 missiles and over 1000 drones at Israel but causing relatively little damage, the Iron Dome system intercepting more than 90% of them.

Finally, major uprisings across Iran, the likes the country has arguably not seen since the 1979 revolution itself, occurred in January of 2026. The regime responded with extreme brutality and, even though they have also shut off the internet since, we do know through the use of Iranians using VPNs and contacting their families and friends in the 10-million strong Iranian diaspora around the world, as well as signals intercepts, that at least tens of thousands of protestor have been killed during that month alone. Since then, the regime has only cracked down harder, hunting down anyone using a VPN or a Starlink dish to send messages to the outside world.

Here already lie some of the major strategic mistakes of the Islamic regime even before this war began, and even if the simple end goal of the regime was for survival itself. By focusing huge swathes of their very limited economy on power projection abroad, missile and drone buildout and the support of proxy forces, they neglected their own domestic economy and population far too much, leading to widespread discontent.

After all, we often hear for instance about how Russia, for all of its size, resources and military might, has an economy not even the size of Italy’s, which is true. Well, where does Iran’s GDP stand as of 2025, according to the IMF?

Not even the size of Greece, which is a country of barely ten million people and considered one of the poorer nations in the EU. Iran has over 90 million people. The Israeli economy, despite only being ten million people itself? More than double the size of Iran’s.

To be clear then, Iran has attempted, directly or indirectly over the decades, to take on and wipe out a nation with an economy twice the size of their own, and a far more advanced military and capable intelligence agency. Whatever one may feel morally or politically about either country, that’s a major strategic mistake right there, simply because it guarantees conflict that Iran has almost no chance of winning, especially since any direct conflict was always likely to be an air and missile one that depended on military innovation and economic might even more, rather than sheer troop numbers on the ground. All while guaranteeing that the civilian economy gets neglected.

As a result, the regime has ended up between a nation more powerful economically and militarily than itself and the anger and fury of its own people. Between a rock and a hard place. Something entirely of its own making, and this is even before we talk about the current war that it is now fighting not only with Israel, but also against the most powerful economic and military nation on earth as well, the United States.

Of course, the United States and Israel started this current war, so you could argue that the regime did nothing wrong this time around, as with the 12-Day War. However, before the war even began, the regime had never been weaker. It’s proxy forces like Hezbollah and Hamas have been severely degraded, and the Syrian land-bridge between the regime and such forces has been severed following the Assad fall. The Iranian regime also saw most of their air-defence network degraded as well leading up to the current conflict, on top of widespread internal protests. They have therefore become a vulnerable target for anyone wishing to finally wipe them out. Projecting strength is key in the world of geopolitics, even more so in the Middle East, and the regime has been quickly running out of it.

Thus, if one were the leader of Iran during such times, one might think to fall back and regroup. Stabilise your own internal system and politics, rebuild your own air-defence networks, and lay low for a while. It is Trump’s last term in office after all, and he will be gone in less than three years. None of the seven US presidents before him have ever attacked Iran directly since the 1979 revolution, making Trump the anomaly. The next president, whomever it may be, might try diplomacy and negotiations all over again. Netanyahu meanwhile faces very challenging elections this year in October as well.

What does the regime do instead, during negotiation talks with US counterparts in Geneva earlier this year?

They threaten to continue their nuclear program, brag that they are only weeks away from getting nuclear bombs, and vow to build out a 10 000 ballistic missile arsenal.

To be clear then, even if the nuclear bombs were somehow a bluff, Iran already has a number of medium range ballistic missiles, which they have used to fire repeatedly on Israel and, more recently, on a number of nations in the Gulf and beyond. Should they ever have ten thousand such missiles, then holding any kind of airbases in the region for the United States, Israel and the Gulf nations would effectively become impossible, all but guaranteeing Iran’s long-term control of the region and the Strait of Hormuz.

To sum up then, in the months leading up to the current war, a regime that was extremely weakened over the past three years, that was arguably the weakest it has ever been to the point where they have to open fire on tens of thousands of their own people just to survive, threatened the most powerful country on earth of holding 20% of the world’s oil exports hostage. Something Saddam Hussein tried to do in 1990 during the Gulf War, only for his own military forces to get decimated. Even if, like him, the regime ended up surviving in the short term, that was still an incredibly reckless thing to do, strategically speaking. Like provoking the strongest kid in the playground after you had already broken your arm.

It gets worse for the regime, both with their own people (if such a thing was possible) and with their neighbours.

Firstly, the opening day of the current war saw the death of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, along with about 40 other senior regime and IRGC figures. What did the regime do next? Who did they choose to become the new spiritual leader of the country?

Khamenei’s own son, Mojtaba, a man widely known within Iran itself for his own brutality and incompetence. Not that anyone has actually seen or heard from him since the war began. This has, in turn, fuelled all kinds of speculation about his whereabouts, from a hidden cave deep underneath a mountain to Moscow itself, or if he’s alive at all. Not exactly the calming presence you want for your country in a crisis.

Not only that, but let’s not forget that the revolution, the entire Islamic revolution of 1979 was specifically to overthrow a dynasty, the Pahlavi dynasty. That one of the benefits of the revolution was no more hereditary Shahs, Crown Princes and titles.

What have the regime done now? Created a dynasty of their own. How do you think that is going to go down with the people of Iran? Particularly those who fully supported the revolution back in 79 and in the years following, and who have likely been the most fervent supporters of the regime until now?

The Islamic regime, which came to power following a revolution in 79 to overthrow a dynasty, have just installed a dynasty of their own to power, not least with a man, Mojtaba Khamanei (seen here on the right), widely viewed as as brutal and incompetent. Not what you want when the long-term goal for the regime is survival.

Then there are the huge mistakes made towards their neighbours.

Prior to the current war, the Gulf states had arguably done everything they could to minimise the fallout of such a conflict against them. Oman and Qatar had long positioned themselves as neutral and even hosted a number of bilateral talks between representatives of the United States, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas over the year. Many IRGC members and their families lived in Qatar. Saudi Arabia has negotiated their own normalisation of relations with the Iranian regime under a China backed deal known as the Beijing Agreement in 2023. Most of all, none of these countries had allowed the United States or Israel to use either their bases or airspaces to conduct military operations against Iran.

Despite that, the regime attacked them anyway, launching swarms of missiles and drones from day 1. The UAE alone have now been targeted nearly three thousand times, though thankfully most get intercepted. Countless military, industrial and civilian targets were hit all across the region. Some of the world’s largest airports like Dubai and Doha have been closed. Oil and LNG terminals were hit and also had to be shut down. The Gulf states are taking a huge hit economically despite their best attempts to initially stay out of the conflict, and this was before Iran began blockading the Strait of Hormuz.

To be clear, blocking Hormuz is impacting the entire world. Nobody is immune from it, and certain countries, particularly in Asia as well as in Europe to a lesser degree, are being hit hard.

None whatsoever though are being hit anywhere near as badly as the Gulf states themselves, particularly those entirely facing the Persian Gulf. Nations like Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain or Kuwait. Not only are their economies almost entirely export driven, but such exports almost entirely sail out through Hormuz. Not to mention the billions that companies like Qatar Airways and Emirates are losing virtually every week. Most critically however are the lack of food imports coming in by sea for these countries, forcing them to find very expensive workarounds by truck.

The regime likely believed that attacking these countries and taking Hormuz hostage would make these countries put any pressure they can on the Trump administration. Again, this is a major strategic mistake. Nobody pressures Trump in this way, certainly not the Gulf countries. This is a man who has threatened conflict with the Europeans over Greenland and has gone to economic war with the Chinese. Sure, these Gulf States can protest, they can send official letters of discontent to the US State Department, but its all falling on deaf ears. Such countries don’t really have anything to pressure Trump with, especially now that these countries realise the United States are the only ones who can realistically hit back at the regime for doing this with any kind of scale.

The biggest mistake of all however for the Islamic regime was crossing these lines to begin with. Before the war, there was an understanding between Iran and the Gulf States. Don’t support attacks against us, and we won’t retaliate against you. The Gulf States upheld their end of the bargain, yet Iran attacked them anyway.

The results have been dramatic. Prior to the war, the Gulf States had very difficult relationships between themselves. They were, to put it bluntly, divided. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been fighting their own proxy wars against one another in places like Yemen and Sudan for many years now, and Qatar, mostly due to its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, was actually placed under a blockade of its own by its Gulf neighbours in 2017. That meant no travelling of goods or people whatsoever by land or by air from Qatar into Saudi Arabia for instance, forcing Qatar Airways in particular to engage in much longer detours.

Now, such countries have all but united under a common goal against the Islamic regime in Iran. Now, the meetings these nations are having with each other are to discuss whether they should enter offensive operations against Iran or not. Whether they should accelerate the end of the regime or not. All IRGC and proxy members have now been expelled from places like Qatar, the UAE and Oman, meaning a severe loss of influence there. Naturally, they are also now allowing American and Israeli military aircraft to use their bases and airspace as they please.

Worse than that for the regime was that prior to the war, the Saudis in particular had all but ended any ties with Israel due to the Gaza War. Signing the Abraham Accords, which the Saudis were on the verge of doing before October 7th happened, was all but dead. Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia is by far the most powerful Gulf State in the region, economically and militarily. The severing of ties between the Kingdom and Israel was a major strategic win for the Islamic regime.

Now? That same Islamic regime of Iran has effectively brought back and cemented the Abraham Accords between all of the Gulf States and Israel, Saudi Arabia included, in all but name. Now, all of the Gulf States are actively participating in shooting down missiles and drones headed for the Jewish state. Now, they are all collaborating in defence and intelligence sharing with Israel once more. Not only that, but the Gulf States are now likely to purchase countless numbers of Israeli air-defence systems, guaranteeing tens of billions of dollars in hard currency for the Jewish state for years to come. This, if anything, will make Israel’s economy only that much stronger in comparison to Iran’s.

Worst of all for the Islamic regime?

The strategic ambiguity prior to the war meant that the Gulf nations continued to rely on using the Strait of Hormuz for their own economic activities. They did not seek alternative routes, they did not engage in billion dollar infrastructure projects to export oil and gas by other means. Only Saudi Arabia, following the tanker wars of the 1980s, built out a 7 million barrel/day pipeline from its eastern fields to its Red Sea Coast, meaning about one third of Persian Gulf oil exports can travel that way, while the UAE built a much smaller 1.5 million barrel/day pipeline to Oman, even though they have the capacity to produce about 5 million barrels/day at max capacity.

Now, all such Gulf states will be looking for alternatives. They will negotiate with each other for transit rights to guarantee that their oil and natural gas, ALL of their oil and gas, can travel either to the Red Sea and away from Hormuz or, worst of all for the Islamic regime in Tehran, possibly through Israel itself, giving the latter transit revenue and relationship normalisation as well.

Why? Because the Suez Canal is also a strategically vulnerable chokepoint, at risk from say a Houthi-like organisation operating in the Sinai peninsula should one ever fully emerge there. It’s also not impossible to imagine, since the Egyptians have been battling known terrorist groups in the peninsula for many years now. So, if you’re going to invest billions into such pipelines in the future, you might want to make them reach the Mediterranean Sea entirely to begin with.

At the very least, Saudi Arabia might very well build a second 7 million barrel/ pipeline to Yonbu on the Red Sea, while Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE will discuss oil and gas pipelines, both through Saudi Arabia and to the south into Oman. Yes, this might take 3-5 years or longer to build out, but the long term consequences for Iran are all but sealed. I would even expect such projects to get built more rapidly than this, simply because of how vital such infrastructure now is for these states, combined with their very limited environmental requirements and knowing that the terrain is almost entirely flat desert. No forests, no mountains, no swamps to build across, but hundreds of miles of open space, one of the easiest geographies in the world on which to build these pipelines.

A number of alternative pipeline projects throughout the Middle-East were closed or defunct over the last fourty years. The current Hormuz crisis could be the tipping point for Gulf states to build out that capacity away from Hormuz once more.

Simply put, Iran has crossed the Rubicon.

By attacking the Gulf States and blocking Hormuz, they have shown the world, and their neighbours most of all, that they will be perfectly capable of doing so again in the future, even if the current war stopped tomorrow, despite their prior promises never to do so. Like being the first to launch a nuclear weapon. Once you do so, there is no going back to the world that existed before.

This, in turn, will make the Gulf States move away from Hormuz as much as they can, turning it from a critical chokepoint into a liability for Iran. Too much of their economies depend on oil and gas exports to leave this dependent on the whims of Tehran. They have the money to invest in such pipelines, roads and railways to better connect them directly to the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean. The Saudi Arabian economy alone is four times the size of Iran’s. The UAE’s is more than double, and even tiny Qatar, which has barely more than a million people living there, has a GDP almost identical to their own.

Slowly but surely then, the Iranian regime will be losing whatever leverage they now have in the short term, on top of completely isolating themselves in relation to their direct neighbours.

There is no long-term way a regime can survive all of this. A massively weakened political and military state, a population more hungry for regime change than ever, and a complete strategic isolation within its own region. Neighbouring states who are uniting against it and who will now be actively plotting to remove them from power, if only behind the scenes. That’s even before we factor in whatever mood the United States happens to be in against it in the future.

Finally, let’s not forget that China, the world’s largest importer of oil, imports more than half of its oil from the Middle East, yet most of that oil is not Iranian, despite 90% of Iranian exports going to China. That means that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia in particular, have far more leverage on the Chinese than Iran could ever hope for.

Prior to the war, these states sought cooperation with Iran. Now they see the Islamic regime as an existential threat. That changes everything. They are very likely to pressure China into not supporting the regime anymore as well. Since the Chinese are the world’s largest importers of oil, that matters.

Such is the damage the regime has done despite the promises not to do so against their neighbours.

Such is the cost of strategic miscalculation.

During that time, the Islamic Republic attacked its Gulf neighbours and declared the Strait of Hormuz closed.

The Trump administration has in turn declared their own naval blockade for ships going to and from Iranian ports, and there have been ceasefires and negotiation attempts of various lengths and promises.

All things most people are fully aware of.

What most might not be aware of however are the long term, 5-10 year consequences of such strategic decisions to both the United States and the Islamic regime itself. I intend to write the same article about this for the United States shortly, and on the overall American grand strategy.

For now, I’m focusing on the Islamic regime, since I believe the consequences for them of their many, many strategic miscalculations will be far more dire, and will arrive much sooner.

After all, as it is often said that in war, whichever side will win is the one that makes the fewest mistakes. Well, this is also very much true for grand strategy, and all of the things done before a war even begins. That is, the entire strategy of the government, which doesn’t just involve military capabilities but everything from economics, intelligence gathering, industrial capacity, available resources, and existing and potential future alliance networks. Not to mention, of course, the support of the people themselves.

The Islamic regime has arguably made major mistakes in each and every one of these categories.

For starters, the Islamic Republic was already in dire straits at home even before the war began. Major hyperinflation, a complete collapse of the currency, huge economic difficulties, chronic water shortages, and significant swathes of the population calling for flat-out regime change. Particularly since the 2022 protests following the murder of Mahsa Amini. The desire by the people of Iran to remove the regime entirely is not my opinion. It is what institutes like the Dutch Gamaan institute have shown repeatedly for years.

Worse for the regime was that all of these problems existed even before the October 7th 2023 attacks on Israel.

The resulting war, which has been called the Gaza War but which has really opposed Israel to actors in seven countries across the Middle East, not only saw a major degradation of the regime’s proxy forces like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, not only saw the overthrow of the allied Assad regime in Syria, but even led to missile skirmishes directly between the two countries.

First in April 2024, when Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones and Israel following the latter’s strike on an IRGC building in Damascus adjacent to the Iranian embassy. This led to Israeli reprisals five days later, mostly targeting their air-defence systems.

Then, in October of 2024, following Israel’s successful strikes on Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, the regime also fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, followed by similar Israeli reprisals against air-defence systems in Iran.

Then of course, in a much broader escalation, Israel launched major air strikes on the Islamic Republic in June of 2025, in what became known as the 12-Day War. During this short conflict, Israel successfully targeted multiple IRGC leaders and nuclear scientists. Most of all, they successfully struck a number of air defence sites, indicating a clear pattern to slowly but surely attrite Iran’s defensive capabilities.

At the end of the conflict, the United States then successfully bombed three nuclear sites at Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow.

Iran of course retaliated themselves, firing over 500 missiles and over 1000 drones at Israel but causing relatively little damage, the Iron Dome system intercepting more than 90% of them.

Finally, major uprisings across Iran, the likes the country has arguably not seen since the 1979 revolution itself, occurred in January of 2026. The regime responded with extreme brutality and, even though they have also shut off the internet since, we do know through the use of Iranians using VPNs and contacting their families and friends in the 10-million strong Iranian diaspora around the world, as well as signals intercepts, that at least tens of thousands of protestor have been killed during that month alone. Since then, the regime has only cracked down harder, hunting down anyone using for instance a VPN or a Starlink dish to send messages to the outside world.

Here already lie some of the major strategic mistakes of the Islamic regime even before this war began, and even if the simple end goal of the regime was for survival itself.

Firstly, by focusing huge swathes of their very limited economy on power projection abroad, missile and drone buildout and the support of proxy forces, they arguably neglected their own domestic economy and population far too much, leading to widespread discontent.

After all, we often hear how Russia, for all of its size, resources and military might, has an economy not even the size of Italy’s, which is true. Well, where does Iran’s GDP stand as of 2025, according to the IMF? Not even the size of Greece’s, which is a country of barely ten million people and considered one of the poorer nations in the EU. Iran has over 90 million people. The Israeli economy, despite only being ten million people itself? More than double the size of Iran’s.

To be clear then, Iran has attempted, directly or indirectly over the decades, to take on and wipe out a nation with an economy twice the size of their own, and a far more advanced military and capable intelligence gathering agency.

Whatever one may feel morally or politically about either country, that’s a major strategic mistake right there, simply because it guarantees conflict that Iran has almost no chance of winning, especially since any direct conflict was always likely to be an air and missile one that depended on military innovation and economic might even more, rather than sheer troop numbers on the ground. All while guaranteeing that the civilian economy gets neglected.

As a result, the regime has ended up between a nation more powerful economically and militarily than itself and the anger and fury of its own people. Between a rock and a hard place. Something entirely of its own making, and this is even before we talk about the current war that it is now fighting not only with Israel, but also against the most powerful economic and military nation on earth as well, the United States.

Of course, the United States and Israel started this current war, so you could argue that the regime did nothing wrong this time around, as with the 12-Day War. However, before the war even began, the regime had never been weaker. It’s proxy forces like Hezbollah and Hamas have been severely degraded, and the Syrian land-bridge between the regime and such forces has been severed following the Assad fall. The Iranian regime also saw most of their air-defence network degraded as well leading up to the current conflict, on top of widespread internal protests.

They have therefore become a vulnerable target for anyone wishing to finally wipe them out. Projecting strength is key in the world of geopolitics, even more so in the Middle East, and the regime has been quickly running out of it.

Thus, if one were the leader of Iran during such times, one might think to fall back and regroup. Stabilise your own internal system and politics, rebuild your own air-defence networks, and lay low for a while. It is Trump’s last term in office after all, and he will be gone in less than three years. None of the seven US presidents before him have ever attacked Iran directly since the 1979 revolution, making Trump the anomaly. The next president, whomever it may be, might try diplomacy and negotiations all over again. Netanyahu meanwhile faces very challenging elections this year in October as well.

What does the regime do instead, during negotiation talks with US counterparts in Geneva earlier this year?

They threaten to continue their nuclear program, brag that they are only weeks away from getting nuclear bombs, and vow to build out a 10 000 ballistic missile arsenal.

Even if the nuclear bombs were somehow a bluff, Iran already has a number of medium range ballistic missiles, which they have used to fire repeatedly on Israel and, more recently, on a number of nations in the Gulf and beyond. Should they ever have ten thousand such missiles, then holding any kind of airbases in the region for the United States, Israel and the Gulf nations would effectively become impossible, all but guaranteeing Iran’s long-term control of the region and the Strait of Hormuz.

To sum it up so far then, in the months leading up to the current war, a regime that was extremely weakened over the past three years, that was arguably the weakest it has ever been to the point where they have to open fire on tens of thousands of their own people just to survive, threatened the most powerful country on earth of holding 20% of the world’s oil exports hostage. Something Saddam Hussein tried to do in 1990 during the Gulf War, only for his own military forces to get decimated.

Even if, like him, the regime ended up surviving in the short term, that was still an incredibly reckless thing to do, strategically speaking. Like provoking the strongest kid in the playground after you had already broken your arm.

It gets worse for the regime, both with their own people (if such a thing was possible) and with their neighbours.

Firstly, the opening day of the current war saw the death of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, along with about 40 other senior regime and IRGC figures.

What did the regime do next? Who did they choose to become the new spiritual leader of the country?

Khamenei’s own son, Mojtaba, a man widely known within Iran itself for his own brutality and incompetence. Not that anyone has actually seen or heard from him since the war began. This has, in turn, fuelled all kinds of speculation about his whereabouts, from a hidden cave deep underneath a mountain to Moscow itself, or if he’s alive at all. Not exactly the calming presence you want for your country in a crisis.

Not only that, but let’s not forget that the revolution, the entire Islamic revolution of 1979 was specifically to overthrow a dynasty, the Pahlavi dynasty. That one of the benefits of the revolution was no more hereditary Shahs, Crown Princes and titles.

What have the regime done now?

Create a dynasty of their own.

How do you think that is going to go down with the people of Iran? Particularly those who fully supported the revolution back in 79 and in the following years, and who have likely been the most fervent supporters of the regime until now?

Then there are the huge mistakes made towards their neighbours.

Prior to the current war, the Gulf states had arguably done everything they could to minimise the fallout of such a conflict against them. Oman and Qatar had long positioned themselves as neutral and even hosted a number of bilateral talks between representatives of the United States, Iran, Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas over the years. Many IRGC members and their families lived in Qatar. Saudi Arabia has negotiated their own normalisation of relations with the Iranian regime under a China backed deal known as the Beijing Agreement in 2023.

Most of all, none of these countries had allowed the United States or Israel to use either their bases or airspaces to conduct military operations against Iran.

Despite that, the regime attacked them anyway, launching swarms of missiles and drones at them from the very first day. The UAE alone have now been targeted nearly three thousand times, though most such weapons thankfully get intercepted. Countless military, industrial and civilian targets were hit all across the region. Some of the world’s largest airports like Dubai and Doha have been closed. Oil and LNG terminals were hit and also had to be shut down. The Gulf states are taking a huge hit economically despite their best attempts to initially stay out of the conflict, and this was all before Iran began blockading the Strait of Hormuz.

To be clear, blocking Hormuz is impacting the entire world. Nobody is immune from it, and certain countries, particularly in Asia as well as in Europe to a lesser degree, are being hit hard.

None whatsoever though are being hit anywhere near as badly as the Gulf states themselves, particularly those entirely facing the Persian Gulf. Nations like Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain or Kuwait.

Not only are their economies almost entirely export driven, but such exports almost entirely sail out through Hormuz. Not to mention the billions that companies like Qatar Airways and Emirates are losing virtually every week. Most critically however are the lack of food imports coming in by sea for these countries, forcing them to find very expensive workarounds by truck.

The regime likely believed that attacking these countries and taking Hormuz hostage would make these countries put any pressure they can on the Trump administration. Again, this is a major strategic mistake. Nobody pressures Trump in this way, certainly not the Gulf countries. This is a man who has threatened conflict with the Europeans over Greenland and has gone to economic war with the Chinese.

Sure, these Gulf States can protest, they can send official letters of discontent to the US State Department, but its all falling on deaf ears. Such countries don’t really have anything to pressure Trump with, especially now that these countries realise the United States are the only ones who can realistically hit back at the regime for doing this with any kind of scale.

The biggest mistake of all however for the Islamic regime was crossing these lines to begin with.

Before the war, there was an understanding between Iran and the Gulf States. Don’t support attacks against us, and we won’t retaliate against you. The Gulf States upheld their end of the bargain, yet Iran attacked them anyway.

The results have been dramatic. Prior to the war, the Gulf States had very difficult relationships between themselves. They were, to put it bluntly, divided. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been fighting their own proxy wars against one another in places like Yemen and Sudan for many years now, and Qatar, mostly due to its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, was actually placed under a blockade of its own by its Gulf neighbours in 2017. That meant no travelling of goods or people whatsoever by land or by air from Qatar into Saudi Arabia for instance, forcing Qatar Airways in particular to engage in much longer detours.

Now, such countries have all but united under a common goal against the Islamic regime in Iran. Now, the meetings these nations are having with each other are to discuss whether they should enter offensive operations against Iran or not. Whether they should accelerate the end of the regime or not.

All IRGC and proxy members have now been expelled from places like Qatar, the UAE and Oman, meaning a severe loss of influence there. Naturally, they are also now allowing American and Israeli military aircraft to use their bases and airspace as they please.

Worse than that for the regime was that prior to the war, the Saudis in particular had all but ended any ties with Israel due to the Gaza War. Signing the Abraham Accords, which the Saudis were on the verge of doing before October 7th happened, was all but dead. Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia is by far the most powerful Gulf State in the region, economically and militarily. The severing of ties between the Kingdom and Israel was a major strategic win for the Islamic regime.

Now? That same Islamic regime of Iran has effectively brought back and cemented the Abraham Accords between all of the Gulf States and Israel, Saudi Arabia included, in all but name. Now, all of the Gulf States are actively participating in shooting down missiles and drones headed for the Jewish state. Now, they are all collaborating in defence and intelligence sharing with Israel once more.

Not only that, but the Gulf States are now likely to purchase countless numbers of Israeli air-defence systems, guaranteeing tens of billions of dollars in hard currency for the Jewish state for years to come. This, if anything, will make Israel’s economy only that much stronger in comparison to Iran’s.

Worst of all for the Islamic regime?

The strategic ambiguity prior to the war meant that the Gulf nations continued to rely on using the Strait of Hormuz for their own economic activities. They did not seek alternative routes, they did not engage in billion dollar infrastructure projects to export oil and gas by other means. Only Saudi Arabia, following the tanker wars of the 1980s, built out a 7 million barrel/day pipeline from its eastern fields to its Red Sea Coast, meaning about one third of Persian Gulf oil exports can travel that way, while the UAE built a much smaller 1.5 million barrel/day pipeline to Oman, even though they have the capacity to produce about 5 million barrels/day at max capacity.

Now, all such Gulf states will be looking for alternatives. They will negotiate with each other for transit rights to guarantee that their oil and natural gas, ALL of their oil and gas, can travel either to the Red Sea and away from Hormuz or, worst of all for the Islamic regime in Tehran, possibly through Israel itself, giving the latter both transit revenue and relationship normalisation as well.

Why? Because the Suez Canal is also a strategically vulnerable chokepoint, at risk from say a Houthi-like organisation operating in the Sinai peninsula should one ever fully emerge there. It’s also not impossible to imagine, since the Egyptians have been battling known terrorist groups in the peninsula for many years now. So, if you’re going to invest billions into such pipelines in the future, you might want to make them reach the Mediterranean Sea entirely to begin with.

At the very least, Saudi Arabia might very well build a second 7 million barrel/ pipeline to Yonbu on the Red Sea, while Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE will discuss oil and gas pipelines through Saudi Arabia itself, as well as to the south of Oman.

Yes, this might take 3-5 years or longer to build out, but the long term consequences for Iran are all but sealed. I would even expect such projects to get built more rapidly than this, simply because of how vital such infrastructure now is for these states, combined with their very limited environmental requirements and knowing that the terrain is almost entirely flat desert. No forests, no mountains, no swamps to build across, but hundreds of miles of open space, one of the easiest geographies in the world on which to build these pipelines.

Simply put, Iran has crossed the Rubicon.

By attacking the Gulf States and blocking Hormuz, they have shown the world, and their neighbours most of all, that they will be perfectly capable of doing so again in the future, even if the current war stopped tomorrow, despite their prior promises never to do so. Like being the first to launch a nuclear weapon. Once you do so, there is no going back to the world that existed before.

This, in turn, will make the Gulf States move away from Hormuz as much as they can, turning it from a critical chokepoint into a liability for Iran. Too much of their economies depend on oil and gas exports to leave this dependent on the whims of Tehran’s leaders, whomever they now may be. They have the money to invest in such pipelines, roads and railways to better connect them directly to the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the Mediterranean. The Saudi Arabian economy alone is four times the size of Iran’s. The UAE’s is more than double, and even tiny Qatar, which has barely more than a million people living there, has a GDP almost identical to their own.

Slowly but surely then, the Iranian regime will be losing whatever leverage they now have in the short term, on top of completely isolating themselves in relation to their direct neighbours. Unlike the Gulf States, there is simply no other realistic way for Iran to get its oil and gas out to global markets then by ship through Hormuz, and such shipments can be blockaded themselves as we have seen.

Iran is now becoming the North Korea of the Middle East. A massively weakened political and military state, a population more hungry for regime change than ever, and a complete strategic isolation within its own region. It’s only hope for survival now being complete and utter terror and brutality on its own people, along with nuclear and ballistic threats against the rest of the world.

That’s why I wouldn’t believe any so called treaty or peace deal announcement whereby the regime agrees to renounce nuclear enrichment or ballistic missile programs. Whatever the Trump administration claims.

Neighbouring states are also now uniting against Iran and who will now be actively plotting to remove them from power, if only behind the scenes. That’s even before we factor in whatever mood the United States happens to be in against it in the future.

Finally, let’s not forget that China, the world’s largest importer of oil, imports more than half of its oil from the Middle East, yet most of that oil is not Iranian, despite 90% of Iranian exports going to China.

That means that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia in particular, have far more leverage on the Chinese than Iran could ever hope for.

Prior to the war, these states sought cooperation with Iran. Now they see the Islamic regime as an existential threat.

That changes everything.

They are very likely to pressure China into not supporting the regime anymore as well. Since the Chinese are the world’s largest importers of oil, that matters.

Such is the damage the regime has done despite the promises not to do so against their neighbours.

Such is the cost of strategic miscalculation.

As such, the Battle of Hormuz, as part of the wider Iran War, is now very much underway, and whoever loses it could very well lose the war itself.

Both the United States and the Iranian regime have declared a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, denying commercial shipping that benefits their adversary from passing. Who will outlast the other?

US president Trump, War Secretary Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have since all promised that the Strait will be reopened “soon”, without of course giving a specific timeline. How exactly might they do so? What is stopping them from doing it already? How long could these blockades last, and who is likely to outlast the other?

Surely, on paper at the very least, the US military have overwhelming firepower compared to Iran, right? Surely they can push through whatever defences the Iranians are using in the strait?

All valid questions, which I will attempt to answer here.

The first thing to understand is that this is not a classic naval blockade. The IRGC forces in the region are technically not blocking the Strait of Hormuz at all using a conventional naval force of lined-up ships. In fact, much of the Iranian Navy, and certainly all of their large vessels, have by all accounts already been sunk or destroyed.

Instead, the strait remains closed because of more unconventional and asymmetrical threats that first need to be dealt with. Threats like coastal missiles, drones, boat swarms and naval mines.

It’s also not an easy or quick fix for the United States. The Islamic regime has been preparing for this very moment for decades. They have a multi-layered military attack capability aimed squarely at this small chokepoint, in a manner far more sophisticated than, say, the Houthis facing the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

For starters, they have anti-ship missile batteries, hiding on large trucks in tunnel bunkers along or near the Iranian coastline. These can quickly come out of such tunnels, fire their missiles at slow moving oil tankers and other commercial vessels, before retreating back into them. Then, of course, they have drones. Not just the Shahed drones which can technically be re-purposed to hit moving targets like tankers, but also small FPV drones, often provided by Russia, that operate using fibre optic cables. These are extremely thin flexible glass cables that can now reach up to twenty miles depending on the model, the results of four years of Ukraine War. Meaning they too can potentially reach such ships, especially along the narrowest point in the Strait, which is only about 15 nautical miles or just over 20 standard miles (around 30 kilometres).

On top of the land-based threats to the strait, the Iranian Navy have a number of naval ones. Fast-attack boats, reportedly in their hundreds before the war began, capable of carrying either one or two anti-ship missiles or torpedoes each and swarm target ships at up to 50 knots. These small boats can also carry several naval mines, dropping them for instance in the dead of night before returning to their hidden coves along the Iranian coast. There are also reports of naval drones, sometimes simple small boats loaded up with explosives and a radio. Mainland Iran also has a very rugged and mountainous coastline, with many shallow coves found across the region, perfect for hiding such small boats and crafts.

Finally, if all of this wasn’t enough, the IRGC and IRIN also possess submarines. Before the war began, we know they had 3 Tariq-class submarines (older Soviet-era diesel submarines, but with cruise missiles and naval mines), 1 more modern Fateh-class submarine, commissioned in 2014 but sunk on March 3rd according to CENTCOM, and about 20 Ghadir-class midget submarines. The latter are reported to be extremely silent small subs, capable of both operating in very shallow waters near the Iranian coastline and firing limited numbers of torpedoes.

IRGC fast attack boats, which Iran is reported to have hundreds of, can swarm commercial ships and even military vessels like US destroyers, provided enough of them are operational to do so. They can also lay down 2-4 naval mines at a time.

A very complex defensive web then. One actually put in place by the regime, reportedly, following wargames done by the US Defense Department in the early 2000s, whereby such a scenario was wargamed to be extremely costly to the United States.

So, such a defensive network is likely to keep the strait closed indefinitely then?

Not necessarily, because the US Navy has also had 25 years to learn from these wargames.

For instance, while it was common for the navy to enter the Persian Gulf during the 80s and 90s, they simply don’t do so anymore today, at least until most of these threats can first be taken out with stand-off weapons. Instead, their ships, including the USS Lincoln supercarrier, are sailing across the Arabian Sea, far enough away south of the Strait of Hormuz, to be out of range of Iranian threats.

As such, along with the Air Force, they are hitting their targets from a safe distance. This is sensible, if time-consuming, since it would be difficult to engage early-on in evasive manoeuvres for such large military vessels facing both drone and boat swarm attacks, potentially against hundreds of drones and fast-attack boats, both in the strait and in the Persian Gulf beyond it. There is a reason why the Persian Gulf has been nicknamed “the bathtub” by military influencers.

Thus, IRGC forces are slowly but surely being attrited from a safe distance, particularly the larger targets like missiles launchers and ships, and there is very little they can do about it. By all accounts, US forces have already destroyed many small attack boats through targeted strikes on Iranian ports. They have likely destroyed several Ghadir-class midget submarines this way as well. Likewise, the US Air Force, with their B2 bombers and infamous “bunker-buster” bombs, have also been targeting the coastal tunnels sheltering the anti-ship missile batteries. Many if not most of them have, by all accounts, been destroyed.

Beyond that, the factories that build these missiles, drones and naval mines have also been hit from the wider overall air campaign, meaning that the IRGC cannot easily replace whatever such weapons have already been fired or lost in this conflict. This is also the likely reason why the numbers of missiles and drones being fired from Iran have been dwindling almost every day since the war began. From hundreds fired on day one to barely a dozen fired today.

Hence why it will be increasingly difficult for the IRGC to concentrate a critical number of vessels to attack ships, especially ships protected by a potential future US Navy convoy escort system, using swarm-like tactics going forward. After all, the entire purpose of any swarm attack is that enough of your own weapons, be it missiles, drones or fast-attack boats, overwhelm enemy defences and survive long enough to get through and strike at the main target. This simply cannot be acheived if there aren’t enough such missiles, drones and attack craft to begin with.

Likewise, both the Air Force and the Army have also deployed A10 Thunderbolts, also known as Warthogs, and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters to patrol and intercept any drones and fast attack boats. These land-based vehicles were not actually forward deployed in places like Oman and the UAE at the beginning of the conflict, simply because these Gulf states did not allow for the presence of such US military assets for offensive operations with Iran, hoping to buy goodwill with the latter. However, now that they have been attacked themselves anyway, these countries have since allowed such aircraft to operate from their bases and airspace.

Hence why the IRGC was able to declare the Strait of Hormuz closed early on in the conflict. The United States simply didn’t have the necessary military assets in the region then, especially close enough from land bases in the UAE or Oman to the strait itself, to provide such constant patrolling.

However, now that more and more such aircraft, along with ISR and attack drones like Reapers and Predators, are being forward-deployed to the region and patrolling overhead, the skies and surface waters of Hormuz are simply becoming no-go areas for the IRGC, certainly not in the large swarm-like numbers. Of course, they may attempt such attacks, perhaps at least once or twice, but its very unlikely to go beyond such numbers now.

As a result, and as every day goes by, the numbers increasingly favour the United States, militarily at least, as they eliminate enemy capabilities while moving more and more of their own into the region. Most Iranian launchers and boats have likely been destroyed, and most of what remains will increasingly get intercepted at sea before reaching their targets.

A10s and Apache helicopters, which are significantly cheaper to fly than modern fighter jets like the F35, along with long endurance drones, are now patrolling above the Strait of Hormuz virtually 24/7, and can intercept both drones and fast attack boats.

Even if a few were to make it to the commercial ships passing south about 15 nautical miles away from the Iranian coastline, such vessels and drones, if in low enough numbers, could then be intercepted by any modern naval escort in the near-future. After all, it historically takes about one warship for every four commercial ships to be effective. In peacetime, 100 vessels crossed the strait back and forth every day, so about 50 one-way. Let’s argue that 10 of those came from Iran, and are currently blocked.

As such, it would take about 10 Arleigh Burke class Aegis destroyers for a proper one-way escort and back. Such destroyers are specialised defence interceptors. Their job, their entire design purpose, is to literally take out missiles, drones and asymmetrical naval threats to carrier strike groups, and the Aegis radar defence system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world in this regard.

Not impossible, but definitely stretching the US Navy, who currently only have 75 active right now, even though 10 more such ships are being built and 17 more are planned. That’s also why Trump wants an international coalition of such ships. Every other destroyer or frigate, from a European nation for instance, is one such Arleigh Burke that can be deployed elsewhere.

Not only that, but US marines could also be deployed onto these commercial ships as well, targeting fast attack boats and drones as a last line of defence. The USS Tripoli and USS Boxer, two amphibious assault ships carrying 5000 marines in total, are now in the Arabian Sea, pre-positioned to deploy such marines as we speak. They were not in the early stages of the conflict. Was this a miscalculation by the Trump administration? Possibly, but these marines used to be stationed in Okinawa, forward deployed to face China. The administration likely did not want to have to move such marines from such a critical location if Hormuz was not going to be targeted by the Islamic regime. After all, the latter did not blockade the strait in previous military engagements, such as the 12-Day War last year and previous missile skirmishes with Israel in 2024.

These ships are also specialised air assault ships, meaning that they carry marines in large helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft that can travel for hundreds of miles, especially with mid-air refuelling capabilities. With such capacities, they can fly directly over Oman and the UAE from the Arabian Sea and not sail anywhere near Hormuz to reach the ships trapped on the other side of the strait. No sailing into danger, no risk of hitting naval mines, no risk of getting swarmed by fast attack boats.

On top of such capabilities, these marines are now specialised island warfare operators, as part of the Marine Corps Force Design 2030 doctrine. Their job, which used to focus on counter-insurgency during the War on Terror, is now to land on small islands, especially within the First Island Chain facing China, and target and harass Chinese naval vessels with missiles, drones, ISR and electronic warfare capabilities, should a war there ever erupt. Since such marines would then be vulnerable to precision fires from the enemy, they typically land on such islands, quickly set up operations, gather ISR, fire on the enemy or take out forward assets, and then quickly pack up and leave, in what would be their own asymmetric campaign of harassment.

In theory, Hormuz could be the perfect place to test such a new doctrine. We know that a number of small Iranian attack boats are likely lurking on islands in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Imagine then the following operation. Imagine first Navy SEALs or combat divers taking out the underwater fiber optic cables that connect such islands to the mainland, preventing the garrisons there from contacting command and control. Islands like Larak, Greater and Lesser Tunb, Abu Musa, Qeshm and Hengam. Then imagine a coordinated airstrike and electronic jamming campaign against targets on these islands, taking out whatever military cabilities then can and preventing drones and radio signals from operating.

Finally, imagine marines then landing on these islands quickly by helicopter, finding and taking out whatever fast attack boats and midget submarines they can hiding there, including in coves that can’t be detected from the air, before retreating just as quickly, perhaps in a single night, using those same helicopters. Before the IRGC knew what happened or could fire back at the marines using missiles and drones from the mainland. Even if the IRGC then wanted to send more boats to hide in and secure these islands once more, such boats would have to sail in open waters to reach them, now under a constant 24/7 air patrol.

The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz have a number of small islands and coral outcrops dotted throughout, where known IRGC garrisons operate from and where small fast attack boats and midget submarines could be hiding.

Under Force Design 2030, US marines now get air dropped onto their target zones by helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft, avoiding any surface or underwater threats. In theory, they can land on small islands, quickly take out threats, and then quickly leave before the enemy can retaliate against them on the ground.

This leaves the threat of naval mines and submarines.

The United States has reportedly taken out all three Kilo-class submarines early in the operation, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth reported on March 19th that “all 11 of Iran’s midget submarines have been destroyed”. However, since the regime was reported to have up to 20 such submarines and possibly more, that would leave at least 9 such submarines unaccounted for. They are designed to be extremely quiet, essentially laying on the shallow seabed waiting for enemy ships to sail by before launching torpedoes. Still, such midget submarines have very limited capabilities, and can likely only stay underwater for 24-48 hours at a time. Meaning they too, should some still be hiding in mountain coves waiting to sail, are unlikely to survive very long once at sea, given the relentless air patrol overhead now in place at Hormuz.

Likewise, air strikes are said to have taken out all 16 of Iran’s larger mine-laying vessels early in the operation, almost certainly eliminating the risk of swarms of naval mines drifting through the strait. However, whatever small boats that do remain can still lay down two to four such naval mines at a time, at a cost of barely a few thousand dollars per mine, against warships and tankers that can cost in the hundreds of millions.

Therein lies the problem. Modern naval mines come in different forms, with some drifting silently with sea currents, while others hide among shallow reef beds waiting for ships to sail over them. The regime was reported to have up to 6000 of them before the war started. Even if say 80% of such mines were destroyed before being deployed at sea, that would still leave close to one thousand unaccounted for.

The US Navy does have mine clearing vessels. By all accounts, from helicopters using LIDAR to unmanned surface vehicles to underwater drones using sonar reflection, they arguably have the most impressive naval mine-clearing assets in the world. Certainly now impressive in that, in theory at least, not a single human being needs to even enter the killzone ever again to remove them.

The US Navy now have, amongst other assets, unmmaned maritime vehicles that can enter a minefield without risking any human life to find and remove such threats.

However, such naval mine detection is not straightforward. Such vessels need to comb an entire quadrant that the IRGC themselves have said is 1400 km2, and they need to make multiple passes in order to reduce the probability of missing a mine to near-zero. They also tend to sail extremely slowly, at barely several knots and, if that wasn’t bad enough, potentially have to do so under threat from whatever coastal antiship missiles, drones and fast attack boats remain.

Hence why any mine clearing operation in such an area, if and when it takes place, will likely take weeks if not months. Also, since such a clearing operation would also be pointless if the IRGC and their fast attack boats could then simply re-lay naval mines all over again once they did so, the US Navy is likely to wait until a critical mass of attack boats and midget submarines have been confirmed to be destroyed, and until they are ready to fully support their mine-clearning vessels with a permanent escort.

Iranian naval mines, deployed by fast attack boats 2-4 at a time, have left an entire quadrant off limits to shipping for now, even though the exact numbers and types of naval mines having been deployed are still largely unknown. This has enabled the regime to force ships northwards, close to Larak island, where a safe passage toll said to reach $2 million dollars is demanded.

Hence why the Battle of Hormuz is likely to last for many months, unless some kind of deal can be struck before. The United States might be able to take out most of Iran’s coastal and sea-denying capabilities, let’s say even up to 90% or even 99%, but all it takes to instill fear in both global shipping and insurance companies is for one such missile, drone, naval mine or fast-attack boat to hit a single commercial ship crossing the strait. The Iranians only need to get lucky once. Even if the United States declared that Hormuz was open again, and that they would be providing a clear naval escort with Aegis destroyers from now on, most shipping companies and captains would then likely wait and stare at each other, seeing if one of them was brave enough to cross. This will also take time.

Of course, the US Navy have their own blockade of Iranian ships in place, and this is reportedly costing the regime hundreds of millions of dollars a day in lost oil and gas revenue. Even worse for them, most of the Iranian economy, and most of the Iranian civil and military service, get paid using this revenue. Hundreds of thousands of civil servants, as well as the 200 000 or so members of the IRGC, have their salaries paid for this way.

How will the regime keep paying these salaries or import their military components with such a blockade in place?

It’s difficult to see a workaround for them. Of course, the regime could simply print money, but that would just lead to an even greater hyperinflation situation than the country already faces. Already the Iranian Rial has lost 90% of its value to the dollar in barely a year. This could very well be the tipping point and make whoever didn’t oppose the regime to begin with finally do so. Likewise, many IRGC members, especially younger members, might be fanatically devoted to the regime, might be willing to give their lives defending it, but such devotion doesn’t pay the bills. How many of them will start turning on their once it becomes all but impossible to feed their families?

How many IRGC fighters and Basij militias will continue supporting the regime without getting paid to pay the bills and feed their families, now that the IRGC cannot export their oil and gas?

Of course, the Iranian blockade of the Strait hurts the global economy as well, and certainly hurts the United States. However, it arguably hurts the United States less than almost any other nation on Earth. Yes, gasoline prices at the pump have increased and are now over $4/gallon there. Yes, that could lead to economic hardship and even a recession down the road. However, such oil prices are also quite low by global standards, about half the price you now find in France and Germany, and are certainly manageable for most Americans given how they also have one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world. A pain in the neck for sure, but hardly catastrophic.

The United States is, after all, the world’s largest producer and soon to be exporter of oil and gas, and have actually increased their exports to other countries and gained market share, particularly in Europe, compared to the Gulf States, in the wake of this war. In 2022, before the midterm elections, president Biden even stopped all American oil exports, due to the high prices following the Ukraine war, thus flooding the American market with oil. Trump could easily do so as well, particularly in the months leading up to this year’s midterm elections in November.

This would of course leave other nations, particularly in Europe and Asia, high and dry, but Trump likely doesn’t care. His policy has always been very consistent, to make America great again. His priority is only America, not least because much higher oil prices elsewhere hurts the economies of Europe and Asia, especially China, in comparison to the United States, thus making the latter relatively stronger. Let’s not forget that, prior to 2026, China got cheap oil at a discount, due to sanctions, from Russia, Venezuela and Iran. Now, they no longer do so from Venezuela, and the Ukrainians have taken out significant chunks of Russia’s oil export terminals in both the Black and Baltic Sea back in March and early April. There is no way they did so without American approval, since the United States continue to provide the satellite imagery and GPS targeting capabilities necessary for such strikes, so this was likely a part of the Trump plan as well.

Finally, being double sanctioned, 90% of Iran’s oil and gas previously went to China at a major discount, meaning that China received very cheap energy to power its economy and industries, giving it a competitive edge in global manufacturing and export markets. While the blockade is in place, China stops receiving such cheap oil. Should the regime fall, China might still import such oil from the new Iran, but no longer at the cheap discount prices it has come to rely upon. All of this will make China, and China’s economy, weaker than before relative to the United States. Not to mention that the United States is now making buyers of Venezuelan oil, and perhaps soon buyers of Iranian oil, pay for such oil in US dollars, thereby reducing bond yields (since most holders of US dollars typically buy US Treasuries to avoid losing dollar value from inflation) and therefore making it easier for the United States to finance their enormous treasury debt.

Simply put, when the war finally ends, China might end up paying more for their energy, in dollars no less, while simultaneously helping the United States more easily pay off their debt burden.

Trump could of course lose the midterm elections coming up in November. This is likely, if only based on historical records for the incumbent occupier of the White House. Should the Democrats win, they might even try to stop his military action against Iran through a Congressional order. However, Trump would also challenge such an order as well, arguing it violated his War Powers Act of 1973. Such a dispute would then inevitably end up in front of the Supreme Court, which would also take many months.

The question then becomes, can the Iranian regime survive all of this time, given how much money they are already losing? Who will outlast the other?

My money is certainly not on the latter.

The number of rolling blackouts hitting the island-nation of Cuba in recent months has sharply accelerated, the result of the raid to capture Nicolas Maduro by the Trump administration. However, the fundamentals of the Cuban economy were in dire straits long before that happened.

There have been so many at this point, since the beginning of the year alone, that there is really no point in counting them anymore, or perhaps counting days without any blackouts would be easier. The Cuban people now experience these on a near-daily basis, often planned ahead of time and lasting anywhere from 12 to 18 hours. This has major and frightening consequences, as anyone can imagine, not least for sectors of the economy like healthcare and schools.

The blackouts are simply due to one factor, as everybody knows. The lack of oil supplies reaching the island. In fact, the oil situation has gotten so bad since the beginning of the year that most airlines which used to travel to Cuba, noticeably Canadian ones, have now halted all flights going there, simply for fear of not having enough fuel on the island to take off again. This, in turn, severely harms the tourism-dependant Cuban economy.

Many people seem to believe that these blackouts are the result of the US raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. After all, for years, Venezuela has been a sort of lifeline for Cuba, regularly providing them with oil shipments. At one point, Venezuela was providing so much oil to Cuba that the latter even re-exported it back onto global markets, enabling the island and its government to earn hard foreign currency, helping to stabilise their own economy. People also believe, now that Maduro is gone and Venezuela is no longer sending oil to Cuba, that other oil shipments are not arriving to the island because of a supposed US naval blockade surrounding the island.

However, while there might be a kernel of truth to this, since Venezuelan oil is essentially no longer reaching Cuba at all, it also fails to understand Cuba as a whole over the last ten years.

The sad truth is that there have been many, many blackouts across the island, going back years at this point, long before Trump became president for a second term and long before Maduro was removed from power. In fact, the oil and rolling blackout situation has always been bad, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, and has arguably been so for one simple reason: economic mismanagement.

After all, any first year economics lesson would tell us that if you wish to import a good, any good like oil for instance, you first need to earn hard currency like US dollars to have the money to pay for such imports in the first place. For that to happen, you first need to either exports goods or services to other countries yourself, or bring in tourism and investment money from such countries. A basic balance of payment situation.

You could of course print your own currency as much as you wanted to, for instance to pay for government salaries, but we all know that the more you did so, the more the value of your currency on global exchange markets would also go down and eventually collapse. Thus, even if you completely ignored the likely hyperinflation and economic misery that you inflicted on your own people as a result of printing all this money, no other country in the world would accept your now worthless currency as payment for their own exports, of oil or of anything else. Sri Lanka experienced this terrible situation in 2022, and Cuba is facing it now. They simply don’t have the foreign currency reserves, particularly since Covid-19, to pay for oil at global market prices.

Granted, the situation has not been entirely Cuba’s fault, at least at the beginning of the major blackouts back in 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic did keep millions of visitors, bringing in billions in hard currency, mostly away for two years. However, during that time, Venezuela was also sending them as much free or subsidised oil as they could as well, yet the blackouts were happening anyway.

This can hardly be blamed on Trump, at least until recently, as well. During his first term in office and except for reversing Obama’s Cuba policy, Trump basically left Cuba alone. While the United States has had an economic embargo on Cuba since the Kennedy administration, which Obama overturned at least in part, Trump going back to it afterwards simply meant, for the Cuban regime at least, going back to the previous system that had been in place for decades. This decision by Trump alone could therefore not have been enough to explain the situation Cuba finds itself in today. Besides, there were no major blackouts on the island during Trump’s first term in office, at least until the pandemic happened, or in the decades prior despite the embargo.

Tourism numbers also did rebound after Covid-19 was over. However, they never rebounded to anywhere near the levels Cuba enjoyed prior to the pandemic, in large parts due to the constant blackouts. It’s easy to understand why. Imagine visiting the island, having an entire itinerary planned out, only for your cars or vans to constantly lack gasoline, or for your hotels to never have any air conditioning or even any lights on. Imagine finding yourself in a Cuban hospital after a hiking accident or stepping on something on the beach, only for medical equipment to simply not work. That’s enough to deter most from visiting.

Of course, there are those who are undeterred by such material considerations and may even be attracted to this type of experience, which has been dubbed “communism safaris”. In any event, even if such visitors did exist, they are far too few in numbers or wallet size to sustain the island’s economy.

Would it help if the United States did not have an economic embargo on Cuba?

Of course. The island is situated right next to the largest economy in the world. American visitors would travel much more freely to Cuba, and the island could in turn no doubt export things like cigars, rhum and tropical foodstuffs to the mainland in return.

However, the lack of access to the American market alone cannot explain the Cuban fall. After all, pretty much the entire rest of the world is free to travel to the island and import goods from them in return. Since the United States represents about a quarter of the global economy, that would theoretically mean that Cubans could still earn about three of every four dollars they could otherwise earn even with the American embargo. Even if the real number was closer to two out of four global dollars equivalent, that’s still very large sums of money for an island of barely ten million people. Besides, once again, Cuba did not experience such blackouts until very recently, despite the American embargo existing for nearly seven decades at this point.

So why has it experienced such blackouts recently?

The answer is simple. It no longer receives enough Venezuelan oil to sustain its power grid.

Oh, you mean no more Venezuelan oil since the Maduro raid back in January?

No, long before that. Venezuela itself has seen its own oil production drop over the last twenty six years since Hugo Chavez came to power, and it has especially fallen after Nicolas Maduro did in 2013, from nearly 4 million barrels/day in 2000 to barely half a million in 2024. Under such conditions, there was simply not enough oil that could reach Cuba (after oil first reached Venezuelans themselves and then export markets that enabled Venezuela to earn hard currencies) to sustain the power grid and literally keep the lights on.

Why has Venezuelan oil production fallen so drastically? No, it’s not the American embargo put on it in 2010, since the oil could then simply have found other customers, especially China. Instead, it is simply due to a lack of investment. Foreign companies for instance no longer came to Venezuela to establish oil wells and maintain equipment, in fear of the government simply seizing their assets, as they had previously done to American and Spanish oil companies.

Of course, the Venezuelan government itself could have made such investments, through the national oil company PDVSA for instance, especially during the era of high oil prices up to 2014. Instead, most of the money went into social programs. These are of course fine in principle, and go a long way to explaining why Hugo Chavez came to power in the first place. After all, an oil-rich nation, standing on top of vast resources that also had some of the worst inequalities in not just Latin America but the entire world was simply asking for a communist takeover.

However, as a result of focusing arguably far too much on social programs, in essence also to buy off the population’s support in the absence of free and fair elections, the government completely neglected to maintain the national oil infrastructure, leading to a slow but steady decline in production over time. It also didn’t help that the competent experts and engineers often left the country, and we’re replaced by those loyal to the regime but not knowing much about petroleum engineering.

Venezuelan oil production, on which Cuba has depended on since the fall of the Soviet Union at hugely discounted prices, has also been in freefall since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998.

Cuba in turn has largely survived economically by receiving subsidised oil, first from the Soviet Union and later from Venezuela under Chavismo. Again, nothing technically stopped them from buying oil from other countries around the world, except for the United States. Uncle Sam has also not maintained a giant navy around the island blockading oil shipments for 66 years. This is true today even after the Maduro raid. In fact, a Russian shadow fleet tanker recently arrived in Cuba, though one ship is of course not going to turn the situation around.

In other words, the United States is simply not currently using its navy, even under Trump 2, to blockade oil shipments to the island. Cuba simply can’t afford to pay for them. Cuba could also have imported liquefied natural gas or coal or even electricity via undersea cables, from the United States or even Mexico. But that would also mean opening up their economy and paying global market prices for these. Far easier to get it for free from Venezuela.

The Cuban government has also long neglected their own power grid, mimicking the Venezuelan neglect of the oil infrastructure and leading to its slow but inevitable deterioration over time. This results in requiring more oil than before simply to keep the lights on, since the machines don’t work as well as before.

Russia, for its part, is simply trying to keep a potential ally economically alive through subsidised charity, and this is, and has always been, Cuba’s main weakness. They essentially need an oil sugar daddy who despises the United States enough to help them by donating oil, at a discount or even for free, even though the same countries could be earning hard currency by selling this oil to other countries who actually had the means to pay for it in full.

That is simply not, and was never going to be, a viable long-term economic strategy, and it is coming crashing down as we speak. Sooner or later, the sugar daddy was always going to stop supporting Cuba, especially if it also happened to be a centrally planned communist economy, sharing similar political alignments and facing their own economic collapse, as the Soviet Union did and Venezuela has.

In other words, the Maduro raid may have accelerated the inevitable, but oil shipments to Cuba had been declining for years anyway. The situation Cuba now finds itself in, bar an extraordinary economic change of course, was always going to happen at some point.

What is even more of a shame is that Cuba could be rich. Cuba after all does have highly fertile soils, a well educated population, some of the highest number of medical doctors per 100 000 inhabitants in the world, and thousands of miles of beachfront property. They are also right next to the world’s largest economy and consumer market, the United States. Not to mention a very weak, and therefore attractive, currency to foreign investors. I can therefore easily imagine, for instance beachfront medical tourism, among other things, as their main competitive advantage, welcoming people, and especially Americans, for all kinds of affordable medical checkups and procedures under the Cuban sun.

Far too many buildings are in a serious state of dilapidation in Cuba, with many collapsing annually, inculuding in prime beachfront locations. Yet with the right investment, the country has so much potential.

However, for this to happen, you need investment, infrastructure and a reliable power grid, and for that to happen, you need the kind of property rights, independent judiciary, and institutions that guarantee that the government won’t simply seize businesses or whatever money foreign investors put into the country. And, ideally of course, good relations with the United States.

That also cannot happen under the current government, in yet another lesson as to why such planned economies, sadly, do not work.

In turn, this has led to widespread speculation that these countries, on the receiving end of such strikes, will soon run out of interceptors, and that Iran will then be able to destroy all of their energy infrastructure and reign down terror on their own cities and civilian areas, much like the Russians do to Ukrainian cities, at will and on a much wider scale.

So, are these concerns legitimate? Will the Gulf partners soon run out of interceptors to stop these missiles and drones coming in? Are the United States themselves scrambling to deploy advanced missiles like Patriots from places like South Korea, to the ire of the latter? Doesn’t this show the lack of strategic preparedness on the part of the United States?

A number of cities and energy facilities across the Gulf states in the Persian Gulf have recently been hit by Iranian missiles and, perhaps more critically, Shahed drones. This has raised several difficult questions about the preparedness of these states, and the United States more generally, in defending against these new types of threats.

As often, these questions are complex and multilayered, much more so than what news headlines might say. However, at their core, it is essentially a matter of Iranian missiles and drones, and the amounts they have left to fire at the Gulf States, versus the number of interceptors the Gulf States and the United States have to stop them.

In other words, who will exhaust their inventories first?

Regarding Iranian missiles, those can only be intercepted with highly advanced interceptor missiles, such as THAAD or Patriot missiles, in return. These missiles are of course very expensive, typically costing millions of dollars to produce each, and can only be produced in limited numbers, perhaps in the high hundreds, but certainly not in the thousands, every year.

There are a couple of misapprehensions with this. Yes, such highly advanced interceptors can only be produced in limited numbers. Yes, they could not sustain an air and missile campaign where they had to intercept dozens, if not hundreds, of Iranian missiles every single day for weeks or months on end. However, Iranian missiles are also quite expensive and limited in numbers, and the United States and Israel have prioritised hitting Iranian missile launchers early on in the campaign, with seemingly a high level of success. Such missile launchers, typically on large trucks, hide in mountain bunkers with stockpiles of missiles within these bunkers. Whenever the launcher is hit, it might therefore render dozens of missiles impotent. A case of shooting the archer, not the arrow.

As a result, the number of missiles fired by the regime has also fallen sharply, from 480 missiles fired on February 28th to just 40 fired on March 9th. A 92% drop.

A decline on both sides then, meaning that, although the number of interceptor missiles available in the region has also declined, the Iranian missile problem, since it is also declining fast in numbers, could also still be at least manageable, and not a catastrophe as some headlines have suggest.

Again, there is precedence for this. During the 1991 Gulf War for instance, Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles all across the region, including at Saudi Arabia and Israel. Many, but not all of them, were intercepted, not least by the US Patriot missile which experienced its combat debut then. The coalition led by the United States then made it a priority to hunt down and destroy the mobile Scud launchers, and within weeks, the number of missiles fired by Iraqi forces had drastically fallen. To believe then that the Gulf states did not have the stockpiles of necessary interceptor missiles to endure a prolonged missile campaign is to forget that Iran was always very unlikely to maintain a high rate of missiles launched over time as well.

Of course, the Iranians could be holding on to more missiles and drones in reserve, waiting for an ultimate strike if they really felt as though they were about to be definitively removed from power, in the wake of a ground invasion for example. However:

1. That supposes that a ground invasion of the Iranian mainland (islands in the Persian Gulf are another matter which we will discuss in my next Substack article) with American troops will happen, which is questionable at best.

2. It would also be very questionable strategically for the Iranians to hold off on firing these weapons, since every day they are not fired is a day they could end up being destroyed before they are fired anyway.

Still, even if the Iranians were holding off on a major strike with missiles and drones in reserve, and even if the Gulf states were able to intercept over 90% of them, all it takes is for one major hit to take an entire energy facility offline, at least temporarily, which in turn leads to fear and panic spreading across global markets. Not least because many such facilities are now de facto turned off, since it would lead to far less destruction if such facilities, refineries and depots were not full of inflammable fuels and gases if they do end up getting struck.

Of course, repairs are likely underway at any such facilities that have been hit and, unlike with Russia when their production sites and refineries were hit, the Gulf States do benefit from western expertise and logistics to bring repair tools and qualified personnel over quickly. Thus, should the war end tomorrow, production and shipping are likely to resume much faster.

Which brings us to the drones, and the Iranian Shahed drones in particular.

Yes, drones are also a major headache as well for these countries on the receiving end, arguably more so than the missiles, since Iran likely has, or at least had, thousands if not tens of thousands of them before the war began. To be clear, the number of drones that Iran has fired since the beginning of the war has also fallen sharply, from 720/day on the first day to just 60/day on March 9th as well.

Iran’s rate of Shahed drone launches has significantly declined since the first day of the war. However, by shifting to a distributed production system and new component supply routes out of China and Central Asia, Iran could reverse this trend in the coming months.

However, it could also be the case that such a number eventually ceases to trend downwards, and even starts rising again in the coming months, for a number of reasons.

Shahed drones are of course different to missiles. They are much cheaper to build, costing somewhere between $20 000 and $50 000 dollars. They take up far less room than missiles do, meaning far more of them can be stockpiled, in underground mountain bunkers for instance. They can also be assembled more easily and therefore in a more distributed manner, making it harder to destroy the smaller and more scattered production sites. Something that the Ukrainians for instance now do exceedingly well. Most of all, they don’t require large dedicated launcher trucks. Instead, they can be launched from almost any mobile platform, including small pickup trucks, making them much harder to track and destroy on the ground.

Yes, the factories and component stockpiles that once made these drones quickly in large numbers, like the one in Qom, have now been destroyed, meaning that, at best, Iran will be producing such drones at lower rates. Not only that, but 60% of the components that make up these Shahed drones come from China, and are not made in Iran at all.

As such, if the United States military control the skies over Iran, and the shipping lanes in the Arabian Sea leading to the Persian Gulf, they do in theory have the ability to intercept any Chinese ship or plane attempting to deliver supplies to Iran. However, there are also reports of such drone factories in places like Tajikistan, or even in China itself, which are then transported by road across Central Asia and into northeastern Iran. It could therefore also be that, as supply routes and distributed factories come online, Iran will be able to once again build out Shahed drone capabilities over time as well.

Thus, a new arms race, between Iran acquiring drones and the Gulf states acquiring interceptors, has begun in the region.

To be clear, Shahed drones are relatively easy to intercept, at least by modern military standards. They are in effect low-cost cruise missiles, detectable on any standard military radar, particularly airborne ones and particularly when they fly over water. They tend to follow GPS coordinates on fixed targets, are quite slow, and tend to travel in very straight and predictable lines. In Ukraine, countless platforms have already been used to shoot them down, from F-16s and helicopters armed with rockets and targeting pods, to ground mobile anti-aircraft gun platforms like the German Guepard.

The Ukrainians hemselves have also remarkably developed interceptor drones as well, like the Sting interceptors, which are reported to cost the same or even less than the Shahed drones themselves. Meanwhile, the attack aircraft and helicopters used in the Gulf are also said to be using specialised rocket pods that can fire laser guided rockets at the Shaheds for the same price per shot. Both the Russians and the Iranians know this, so the goal is to swarm enemy defences, by sending out not just some drones but hundreds of them at enemy targets.

Of course, in certain situations, expensive air defence missiles like the Patriot have also been used, creating a wide price disparity between the drone and the interceptor missile. There are again some misapprehensions and false stories circulating around such missiles. Because these have been used in very limited circumstances to intercept drones, many have reported that, in the long run, the United States and her allies have no chance of winning this war, since they will clearly run out of these high-tech, million-dollar missiles long before the Iranians run out of drones.

However, more than 95% of the time, such missiles are not used to intercept low-cost, one-way attack drones. They are only used as a last resort, should all other interceptors fail, and if the likely target, like an AWACS plane or a refuelling tanker, is of far greater value than the interceptor missile itself.

Still, even in a distributed production system, the Iranians, if they do have access to Chinese and Tajik production facilities, or at least the components themselves which the Iranians then assemble in a dispersed manner all across the country, are still likely to produce more Shahed drones than the Gulf states are likely to receive high-end interceptor missiles. Thus, a much more integrated drone defence network, with all kinds of more cost-effective solutions has to be set up quickly.

What might this look like?

A good place to look is of course Ukraine, where they have had to find cost-effective solutions to shoot down swarms of Shahed drones for nearly four years now. In doing so, they have not only pioneered various interceptor drones, missiles and helicopters firing solutions, but have also pioneered innovative drone detection solutions as well.

For instance, since Shahed drones can fly low to the ground, making it difficult to detect them on radar, Ukraine has developed the Sky Fortress Acoustic Detection System. This is exactly what it sounds like, no pun intended. Each Sky Fortress sensor, costing as little as $1000, listens for the distinct signature sounds of Shahed drones, whose propellers make a unique lawnmower type hum. Because these systems are so much cheaper than radar systems, Ukraine has been able to deploy over 15 000 of these across its territory, and since such drones typically have to travel hundreds of miles within Ukraine just to hit targets in Kiev for example, such a layered defence virtually guarantees drone detection long before the target is hit, and in a very cost-effective manner. Then, all kinds of anti-drone systems can deploy to shoot the relatively slow moving drones out of the sky.

Already there are reports of Ukrainian advisors, having travelled to the region, shooting down several Shahed drones with Sting interceptors. This, along with Sky Fortress, is of course a major opportunity for Ukraine, who benefits from unique expertise in the area. Not only could they be looking at billion dollar contracts, further aiding in their own war effort as the Gulf states have money to spend and are desperate for solutions to the drone problem as quickly as possible, but this would come with even more additional negotiation power. After all, if the Gulf states, and potentially Israel itself, become dependent on Ukraine for their own drone defence, they will then have a major interest in seeing Ukraine survive their own war against Russia as well. In turn, Ukraine can leverage these states to put pressure on the United States to also further help in its own defence, by for instance providing more Patriot missiles for Ukraine later in time, something it has sorely lacked in large enough numbers up until now.

Ukrainian UAV specialists have been reported to have already shot down several Shahed drones in the Gulf states with their own Sting interceptor drones, the latter being cost-competitive with the Shaheds themselves. This gives Ukraine a unique opportunity to both develop major export markets and buy more strategic leverage ensuring its own survival.

Beyond interceptor drones, a number of solutions have already been found. The Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis are now using their air forces extensively to shoot down drones. There are even reports of both Israeli and Emirati AH-64 Apache helicopters shooting down Shahed drones in recent weeks. A10s Warthogs from the Air Force, with those distinct rotating guns at the front, are now reported to be regularly patrolling the skies over the Persian gulf, looking to shoot down both drones and Iranian fast-attack boats to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

Several Gulf states and the United States themselves are also reported to be looking at purchasing large numbers of Embraer Super Tucanos from Brazil. These are essentially modern versions of WW2 fighter planes like the P-51 Mustang, which can patrol the skies over the Persian Gulf for many hours at a time, and for a fraction of the flight-hour costs of a modern jet. These planes can also carry significant numbers of rocket pods with cost-effective targeting solutions, meaning that they could, in theory, shoot down dozens of Shaheds in a single patrol. There are even reports of the Air Force mounting the same rocket pods onto Reaper and Predator drones of their own, to also patrol the skies over the Gulf for hours on end.

Brazilian Super Tucanos, originally built to cost-effectively patrol over the Amazon for very long hours on end to hunt down illicit loggers and drug traffickers, are being purchased by Gulf States for a similar reason, this time as Shahed drone hunters. A low-tech solution to a low-tech problem.

Even the close range C-Ram air-defence guns, typically seen in large US Navy warships, have also already been used against Shaheds, not least to defend US embassies. The US Navy itself, should they finally unlock the Strait, could send in a number of US cruisers and destroyers to form a defensive line across the Persian Gulf. These vessels were built to provide close air defence to US supercarriers, and are perfectly tailored, with their own short range interceptor missiles, guns and even, reportedly, lasers, to shoot down drones by the dozens. There are even tests being carried out of energy weapons that can, in theory, shoot down dozens of frones in a single burst of energy, by “frying” their electronics.

Of course, no one wants to end up in a Ukrainian like situation, whereby an integrated air defence network has to be constantly replenished and financed every single day just to stop the next wave of attack drones coming at them, possibly for years. Hence why these Gulf States will all be looking at ending the war, one way or another, as quickly as possible.

To summarize then, in the short term, Iran is likely to fire a limited number of drones throughout the region, and most of those are likely to get intercepted. Over time, if the war doesn’t end, their drone production and launch rate might actually go up, as new production and supply routes emerge. In turn, The Gulf states and Israel will likely further add all kinds of cost-effective solutions to the air-defence networks to intercept these drones, as close to 100% as possible, reliably and cheaply. An arms race will then be on between these nations, and how quickly they can build out their own capabilities, offensive or defensive-wise.

This, along with Ukraine, signals a new type of war. One where air defence networks have to be strengthened and layered at the bottom of the scale. Not just high-end interceptor missiles taking out high end enemy cruise and ballistic missiles, but low-end interceptor drones, loitering aircraft and munitions to take out the low-cost attack drones as well.

Both Europe and East Asia should take notice of this, and engage in Operation Warp Speed, as historian Niall Ferguson has put it, to reinforce their own current layered defence networks with such low-cost solutions as quickly as possible. The Gulf States have suffered significant damage because of their failure to understand this new element of war despite four years of the Ukraine War.

Europe facing down Russia and East Asia facing down China should not make the same mistake before its too late.

There is of course no way of knowing what will happen next at this point. Will a deal be made? Will the war begin anew? Will the truce be broken early? What exactly does Trump hope to gain by announcing this five day truce?

In any event, the war has had a major impact on energy prices, due to the Iranian regime both targeting energy infrastructure across the Gulf countries, like the Saudi Ras Tanura oil refinery and the Qatari Ras Laffan LNG export terminal attacks by Iranian drones, and threatening to block off the Strait of Hormuz, the vital maritime chokepoint only 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest.

In late February of this year, right before the war began, the price of Brent Crude hovered around the $70/barrel mark. As of late March, it was now hovering around $100/barrel. To be clear, Brent Crude is not the only oil price benchmark. There are many different such benchmarks, such as West Texas Intermediate, Urals Oil and, more recently, the Dubai Intermediate, as well. All such benchmarks typically, but not always, follow each other and are usually put together to give an overall price of oil. Still, Brent Crude is usually the overall benchmark used, and it has gained around 40% in barely a month. At the time of the announced truce, it had risen to $106/barrel, though started falling quite significantly afterwards.

This is clearly the definition, by any standard, of an energy shock, which will inevitably have an impact on the global economy. We will all feel it to some degree. The question then is how bad will it get? Will we experience an oil apocalypse? Will we simply run out of oil and other derived products, and experience hours-long queues at the pumping stations like our grandparents did in the 1970s?

In the wake of the Iran War, oil prices have risen rapidly. The question on everyone’s minds then is how bad will things get, for oil prices, inflation, and the global economy?

Back in the 1970s, such oil shocks led to major stagflation, a combination of an economic slowdown, even recessions at time, and higher energy and overall prices, meaning inflation. Something similar also happened in 2022, after Russia, a major energy exporter, invaded Ukraine, completely disrupting usual energy trade flows. Many of us today remember the inflation that came out of 2022 and 2023, in part because of this.

After all, Russia itself was responsible, prior to the Ukraine War, for about 10-13% of global maritime oil exports, yet we are constantly hearing in the news that 20% of global maritime oil exports come out of the Persian Gulf on any given day. Surely then, the consequences will be even more severe for us today than back in 2022?

Unfortunately, it’s far more complicated than that, though this could of course still be the outcome we face depending on how the current war evolves. One of the major unknowns of course is how long this war is going to last and, most critically even if the war was to last, how quickly the United States and its coalition of the willing, whoever those turn out to be, can both reopen the Strait of Hormuz and protect the critical land based energy infrastructure across the Gulf States. I plan on talking about that in my next Substack, so stay tuned.

Should the war end tomorrow, the effects will be far more limited than we might imagine, and certainly more limited than the oil apocalypse that certain journalists and influencers are currently claiming. Should the war end in a matter of weeks, the effects should also be somewhat limited. Let’s not forget that it took nearly four months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the price of Brent to reach $112 in June of 2022, before inflation then really began to bite. That’s the dollar equivalent of about $130 dollars today in 2026. Likewise in 1973, the price of a barrel of oil reached $40 then. Sounds wonderful if we had such a price today, but it was actually the equivalent $ 180 dollars/barrel today. Something similar also happened in 78, after the Islamic revolution in Iran. Yeah, those were definite energy shocks, which led to an overall decade of stagflation.

The worst however was actually 2008. Right before the financial crisis, Brent had reached a peak of $147/barrel. That’s the 2026 equivalent of $223/barrel. No wonder the world economy plunged shortly afterwards. Back then, the United States was a major global importer of oil, as was the European Union. This was before the shale revolution that would really start to take hold after the crisis during the 2010s. Both were growing economically at very healthy rates, not seen since then, in Europe for particular .

This was hardly surprising, considering the huge influx of money into both the American and southern European property markets, largely fuelled by cheap debt and, in the US case, subprime loans. Not only that, but China, in the midst of its huge economic buildout, was growing at its highest rates it has seen since, before or afterwards. All of these were major areas of economic growth and therefore oil imports, at a time when there were fewer major centres of oil production. Luckily, it peaked quickly, and also rose gradually rather than suddenly, which explains why no one really considers 2008 as an energy shock year.

Oil prices reached $147/barrel in 2008, the dollar equivalent of $223/barrel in 2026. We have barely reached half that level so far with the current energy crisis, though it could of course continue to increase and get worse before improvements are seen.

Still, however you wish to define these events, we have clearly not reached such levels yet, and we may never do depending on how this war goes and how long, or short, it lasts. Even if we did, we also came out ok back then, and we will come out ok this time as well. Thus, there are good reasons to go beyond the apocalyptic headlines we see and hear far too often nowadays, and simply use critical thinking to help reassure ourselves, at least to a degree.

Beyond such numbers, part of the reason they reached such levels back in 2022 was because the Russian invasion of Ukraine continued. It was not a short war. Global energy supply chains were not just paused, they were permanently disrupted and changed. Countless nations around the world, not least the Europeans who sought to move away from Russian energy dependence, began scrambling to buy whatever oil and LNG they could on the global markets, and had the money to do so. What then typically happened was that the other less wealthy nations could no longer buy the oil and natural gas they once could. Nations like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka for instance regularly experienced hour long and even day long blackouts in 2022 as a result of this. Some even say this is what caused the Sri Lankan government at the time to collapse and go bankrupt on its debt.

Then however, slowly but surely, global oil and LNG prices started to stabilise and then trend back downwards again, to the point of hitting below $50/barrel in late 2025.

For starters, the International Energy Agency, or IEA, released 182 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves in 2022, to help counter rising oil prices. They have just released 400 million barrels in the wake of the 2026 Iran War. Beyond that, they have room to release far more if it came to that. After all, since the energy shocks of the 70s, all 32 IEA members, including the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and virtually all European countries, are required to hold 90 days worth of total oil imports in strategic reserves. That was the response created at the time to minimise the impacts of any future oil shocks.

90 days may not sound like a lot, but remember that this is total oil imports. Yet the Persian Gulf represents about 20% of maritime oil exports to the rest of the world. Not even 20% of total oil exports, which are around 20 million barrels/day. It’s also not as bad as some news headlines make it out to be, since some of that can be rerouted from Saudi Arabia via pipelines to the Red Sea, about 7 million a day. So the current loss is at about 13 million barrels/day.

Thus, if those 90 days cover all oil imports, then they should be able to cover 14-20% oil imports for much longer, potentially as high as five times longer. In theory, that would be 450 days, or nearly a year and a half’sworth of oil imports. Even if we measure on the low end, that’s still probably close to a year’s worth of reserves. Granted, the situation is different for every member state of the IEA, depending on where the majority of their imported oil normally came from in peace time. Should a nation depend overwhelmingly on oil coming out of the Persian Gulf, they won’t be able to stretch those 90 days anywhere close to one year.

Still, this is one of the reasons we are unlikely to see an oil apocalypse at the pumping station. We have the reserves today that we just didn’t have back in the 1970s. Nothing prevents the IEA nations them from releasing more barrels again and again, for a number of times throughout the year if it came to that. A reminder that no such shortages and long lines at the gas stations were observed in 2022 either, even though the situation was arguably worse then, for now at least, than it is today. Likewise in the late 1980s, in the wake of several maritime confrontations between the United States and Iran, and in 1991, in the wake of Operation Desert Storm and Saddam Hussein burning the Kuwaiti oil fields out of revenge.

IEA members have already released 400 million barrels of strategic oil reserves into their respective markets, the largest such release in IEA history. They have the capacity to do this again multiple times if necessary.

What also happened in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to bring energy prices, slowly but surely, back down?

Norway for instance nearly doubled its oil and gas capacity to primarily supply Europe. The United States, even before the war, had been regularly increasing oil and gas production every year since the shale revolution of the late 2000s, and has been building out export terminal capacity, especially since 2022. They will undoubtedly continue to do so. Other countries like Canada, Australia, Brazil and Argentina have been increasing production and export capacity as well. New producers like Guyana are coming online. Even Nigeria, after decades of production decline, has experienced a somewhat remarkable comeback, and has even opened its first oil refinery in the country.

Higher oil prices will also encourage additional capacity in other parts of the world to come online rapidly. Various shale and oil sand productions sites in the United States and Canada, specifically, come to mind. Norway, Brazil, Argentina and Nigeria might be able to increase some capacity as well. Not only that, but higher oil and gas prices also encourage alternatives or less consumption. France and Finland both accelerated construction and repairs on nuclear power stations after Russia invaded Ukraine. Spain and Germany opened new LNG import terminals. Canada completed its new Trans Mountain pipeline which I have already talked about here. They also began LNG shipments from their newly built Kitimat LNG terminal in British Columbia in 2025. China currently has a plethora of nuclear and renewable energy projects already scheduled to open soon. These will likely open even sooner.

People also tend to find ways to use less when oil prices are high. They simply drive less if they can, perhaps walk or cycle more if possible. Back in 2022, most indoor pools in my country of France simply shut down, since they were heated by natural gas. Countless other examples, including in some extreme cases shutting down certain industrial plants, also happened then, and could happen now. We are also “lucky” enough that this war has started in March, when spring is returning in the northern hemisphere, meaning higher temperatures and less indoor heating requirements. This was also the case back in 2022, and it gave the Europeans in particular the time to organise themselves, bring new energy capacity online, and buy up natural gas from around the world to store for the following winter.

The same logic also applies to inflation. We experienced a lot of it in 2022 and the first parts of 2023. Inflation in the United States for instance nearly reached 10% then, as it did in the United Kingdom and across most of Europe. Could inflation get as bad or worse now in 2026?

Again, we will definitely experience inflation, as we always do when oil prices go up. However, 2022 was also quite exceptional since, on top on the energy shock of early 2022 with the Russian invasion, we also experience two other major shocks then as well. One was a supply chain shock coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only was everything from manufacturing to logistics to shipping disrupted in some capacity, sometimes with container ships waiting for weeks or even months in front of ports like Los Angeles, but China had also not lifted its drastic Covid restrictions then. They would not do so until the end of 2022.

Likewise, due to impeding recession fears in 2020 and 2021, most western government initiated major stimulus packages. In the United States, this meant that most Americans received money, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, in their mailboxes, on top of record savings buildup, since most Americans were still working, either online or not, but couldn’t really go out and spend it in any real capacity. On top of that, but the Trump and Biden administrations tried to one-up each other in spending, the latter with his huge infrastructure and chip acts injecting trillions into the economy.

What then happened when restrictions were lifted was a huge increase in spending, at a time when there was also a production crunch still in effect in China and an energy shock coming out of Russia. A perfect storm of sorts. And all of this was when oil reached the equivalent of $130 2026 dollars in June of 2022, right in the middle of the inflation spike.

Today, things are different. There is no spending spree, no trillion dollar bailouts or stimulus packages, and far fewer supply chain disruption, at least coming out of China and the wider Asia. Should 2026 oil prices remain lower than 2022 oil prices, there is also no reason to believe inflation will get as bad as it did back then.

However, let’s also be clear, this war is going to hurt the global economy, and increase prices for the average consumer. The question then is simply by how much, and how quickly?

After all, even if the Saudis can reroute 7 million barrels of oil a day as previously mentioned, that’s still a loss of 14 million barrels. For Qatari LNG and fertiliser exports, the situation is even more dire. Qatari LNG represents at least 20% of global supply, and nitrogen fertiliser from the Middle East recently represented as high as one-third of all global nitrogen fertiliser exports.

Which countries will be impacted the most? Likely those who have become more dependant of Middle-East oil in the past two decades following the American shale revolution. Particularly Asian countries, all of whom, except for Japan and South Korea, are not members of the IEA and are therefore not bound by the 90 day total oil import rule. We have already seen various measures taken place in Pakistan, Sri Lanka (where one day a week is now a national holiday, just to shut schools and various businesses down), Malaysia and the Philippines, who are reported to only have several weeks worth of oil reserves left. Africa, Brazil, and other places highly dependant on fertiliser, for agriculture in the tropics in particular, are likely to be significantly hit should the fertiliser shortages continue much longer.

The biggest unknown is, of course China, who are the world’s largest importer of maritime oil, about 10 million barrels/day. Granted, some of that oil is still coming from Russia on shadow fleet tankers. Granted, Iran is seemingly letting oil tankers bound for China cross the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States is also letting them through. Still, should the war continue, things could start to look very dire for the Chinese. Already there are clear signs that they are experiencing their first oil apocalypse.

There are already long queues and hiked up prices at gas stations in China, meaning that they are likely experiencing their first major oil shock. By its sheer size and total amount of oil imports, China has the most to lose from the current Iran War.

Evidently then, the sooner the war ends or, at the very least, the sooner energy infrastructure and the Strat of Hormuz can be secured, the better.

Following the air strikes that killed many senior leaders of the Islamic Republic in Iran, including Ayatollah Khamenei himself, many within Iran and across a disapora of millions of Iranians around the world took to the streets to celebrate, echoing US president Trump’s calls for regime change.

Many however, including within the United States, have expressed concern, if not outright alarm and anger, at these new American military operations in the Middle East, and it’s completely understandable as to why, following the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Particularly as the retreat from the latter showed images of complete chaos and seeming incompetence back in 2021. President Trump himself has continuously campaigned on the platform of opposing such forever wars.

Yet his intervention now, after campaigning against such interventions and particularly with the midterm elections only 6 months away, should also make things very clear that this was likely the only option, and that the world was running out of time to stop this regime.

Some might say that it’s simply because Trump still has a Republican majority in both houses, but that’s unlikely. The War Powers Act essentially gives presidents a free reign to engage in whatever military operations they chose for a period of 90 days, after which Congress is within its rights to demand answers of the operations and, if they are not satisfied, end operations. However, since the War Powers Act, signed by a supermajority in Congress in 1973 and therefore overriding president Nixon’s veto at the time, was never challenged on its constitutional merits in the Supreme Court, Trump would likely do so if Congress did do this, and the Court, while not always ruling in Trump’s favour, is heavily stacked with Trump appointees. In any event, a Republican Congress is unlikely to challenge Operation Epic Fury, the name of the American campaign against Iran, at least if the war does not drag on for months and gets to close to election time.

The question then becomes if a military intervention against the Islamic regime was necessary and warranted at all. The short answer is yes, but to answer that, we must first understand the full strategic picture of the Middle East prior to the air strikes beginning.

Of course, I could point to the tens of thousands of Iranians, many of whom were young women and children, who have been murdered by the regime earlier this year for protesting against it and legitimately demanding a better future for themselves. I could also point to prior major protests, such as the 2023 Mahsa Amini protests, which also killed hundreds if not thousands of people. I could point to the 2018-2019 protests, the 2017 protests, the 2009 protests, or the overall hundreds of thousands of people who have been murdered by this regime since it came to power 47 years ago. Not least the tens of thousands of young Marxist revolutionaries that helped the mullahs overthrow the Shah in 1979, only to then be promptly massacred themselves. I could argue in good faith that any regime that massacres hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, as well as being fascist in nature by not allowing any opposition or independent media, has absolutely no legitimacy.

The Islamic regime in Iran is widely believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians over the past 47 years. This alone should be enough to justify calls for regime change.

Still, even that might not convince you. After all, there are many brutal regimes around the world, who also murder their own citizens. Even if you did wish for all of these regimes to fall, and for the people there to rise up and enjoy a better future, should the United States intervene to remove all of them, you might say? Does every evil regime justify military intervention and war? Some of those regimes, like Saudi Arabia for instance, are even close allies to the United States itself.

Fair enough, but the Islamic regime is a different beast entirely.

I could then argue that this regime has both attacked and threatened all of its neighbours in the Middle East. That it has been the number one sponsor of international terrorism for nearly half a century. That its proxy forces have murdered thousands of Americans over the past 47 years. Whether it be Hezbollah in Lebanon, when they murdered hundreds of US marines in 1983, whether it be by providing nearly half of all of the IEDs in Afghanistan to the Taliban, or by arming proxy militia forces in Iraq, encouraging them to launch an insurgency, during the War on Terror. This in order to take over the country and install a puppet Shia government in Iraq, answerable to the Ayatollah. Arguably at the very least, far fewer Americans would have died in the War on Terror, and the outcomes of those wars may have gone very differently, had the Islamic regime never existed in the first place.

Of course, I could also talk about how the regime also makes daily chants in its parliament of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. But it goes far beyond that, in a way most people in the West simply do not understand.

Under the Ayatollah’s messianic Twelver Shia doctrine (Twelver Shia being the largest branch in Shia Islam by number of followers worldwide), the 12th and final Iman, the al-Mahdi or Messiah, will return to lead the forces of righteousness against evil and usher in a new golden Islamic age of peace, equality and justice around the world only once certain conditions are met. Namely, and according to the founding documents of the regime, written by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, Iran has been chosen as “the Vanguard of the Mahdi”, the place from which the Mahdi will return, and that the regime has been put on this earth to prepare for that coming.

Most of all, that “Israel is an obstacle to the return of the Mahdi”, and that in order for the messiah to return, “the last drop of Jewish blood must be spilled”. A notion that, to the best of my knowledge, is absolutely nowhere to be found in the Quran itself, and which has instead seemingly come about in the 60s and 70s, by Khomeini himself, to give his regime spiritual legitimacy, three decades after the founding of the modern Jewish state. In other words, while the belief in the return of the Mahdi long predates the modern state of Israel, by centuries if not millennia (and similar notions are also found in the Bible and the Torah), attaching such a coming to the destruction of this state galvanised the supporters of the mullahs in Iran after the fall of the pro-American and pro-Israel Shah.

Ayatollah Khomeini himself was very active in convincing scholars, including western ones like French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, that his Islamic struggle was also an anti-western, anti-imperialist one. Where have I heard that one before? It will never cease to amaze and worry me how easy it is to influence even the most well known intellectuals, academics and scholars to one’s cause, no matter how violent and fascistic that cause turns out to be, so long as you describe it as an anti-western imperialist cause. There’s a lesson here for many in the world today who are forming alliances with such Islamists simply because the latter present themselves as such. I certainly see this in my home country of France, with parties like LFI, and in Britain, not least under current prime minister Keir Starmer, as well as on many college campuses across the United States, Canada, Australia and generally across the Western World.

Well, if you are one of such people, all I can do is point to you how such an Islamist regime, once they were successful in coming to power and overthrowing the previous western-aligned Shah of Iran in 1979, then immediately proceeded to massacre tens of thousands of idealist Marxists. The very same people who had helped them in the first place, filled with dreams of liberating Iran from western imperialism. Khomenei himself, while in exile in France, had identified such dreams and leaned hard on them, while promising to both make way for a Marxist revolution in Iran and to only become the spiritual and not the political leader. A clear and obvious lie, as history has since shown, but far too many young idealists, as well as the not so young Sartre and other “intellectuals”, believed in it at the time, as they still do today.

If you are one such idealist, then this is your wake-up call. You may hate the west in general, you may hate Trump, and you may hate me, but we are not actively seeking to kill you simply because you are some flavour of a marxist socialist idealist. I guarantee you, if Islamists ever did come to power in places like France or the United Kingdom following a strange alliance with leftists, those leftists would then be the first to get massacred, once they had served their revolutionary purpose. This is exactly what happened in Iran in 79. The islamists wouldn’t want a new revolution to take place once they’ve succeeded in establishing a new regime now, would they?

In any event, if you are such an anti-western idealist, don’t blindly follow thugs and monsters simply because they present themselves as such, anti-imperialist or anti-Trump. Don’t follow those who have clear imperialistic and fascistic tendencies, simply because they oppose the United States. After all, would you have supported Hitler if he had presented himself in that anti-American manner, which he absolutely did by the way, calling the United States '‘a racially degenerate, decadent plutocracy run by Jews and Negroes”?

To be clear, there should be no two ways about it. The Islamic regime in Iran today is very much the modern equivalent of the Nazi regime of the 20th century. Those are not my words. Those are the words of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia himself, Mohammed Bin Salmane, going so far as to call ayatollah Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor, “Hitler”. It’s easy to see why he would say such a thing. The Islamic regime shared very similar views on Jews and on non-Abrahamic minorities than the Nazis did. They are fascistic, do and did not allow for any opposition, and have and had complete state control of the media. The IRGC itself, the military wing of the regime and not to be confused with the regular Artesh army of Iran, is very much the regime equivalent of the SS, whose sole function was the survival of the Nazi regime and of Hitler himself, not the defence of their people. Certainly, both regimes have shown equal brutality against their own people. Most of all, from MBS’s position, they are imperialists themselves, wishing to conquer the wider Middle-East. If true, is it then ok to wish to conquer the region so long as you are not a western power?

And no, I’m not going to defend Saudi Arabia. They have their own apalling track record on human rights, particularly when it comes to women, journalists and sexual minorites. They also don’t allow any opposition or an independant media. Ever since I’ve been old enough to remember, there have been those questioning whether the United States and the West in general should have close ties to the Kingdom or not. However, as far as I’m aware, Saudi Arabia has also not massacred hundreds of thousands of their own people. They have not called for every single drop of Jewish blood to be spilt, and they also don’t have imperialist ambitions to conquer their surrounding neighbours. The mullahs however very much do, and that’s why they represent such a threat to the wider world.

In any event, this is, to the leadership of the Islamic regime that is, why Israel is not merely a political rival, but a spiritual challenge that must be overcome to bring forth divine prophecy. Thus, how on Earth could Israel possibly ever achieve any kinds of successful negotiation, diplomatic solution or compromise with such a regime? How could you even attempt such things, when the regime has an official Al-Quds Day, the Day of Jerusalem, where it is mandatory for Iranians to go into the streets to swear they will give their blood to the destruction of Israel and the capturing of the holy city?

The mullahs follow not only Twelver Shia Islam, which promises the return of the Mahdi to guide the righteous and true believers (that is, the narrow followers of that specific faith, at the expense of everyone else) to paradise, but the messaianic interpretation of their faith as written by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, which anchors such beliefs around the destruction of both America and Israel, and the spilling of the last drop of Jewish blood. In other words, a second Holocaust. Even if some clerics in Tehran didn’t believe in such things, it is part of the founding documents of the Islamic Republic itself. One of the main lesson from history is that when people tell you who they are, believe them.

Still, you might ask, as bad as this might be for them, this concerns Israel and the wider Middle-East, not the United States. Why should Americans spill their blood for the Jewish state, you might ask? Certainly, many, on both the American far-right and the American left, who have become very anti-war in the wake of October 7^th and the Trump election victory, are asking exactly that question? Why help Israel at all?

To be clear, Israel is indeed currently the main adversary of the Islamic regime, but it is also by no means the only one. And yes, there are many legitimate reasons for the United States to support Israel, which would warrant an entire Substack all on its own. I have already written a similar article on why the United States should absolutely support Ukraine, for very similar reasons.

In any evet, the Twelver Shia prophecy argues that when the Mahdi returns, most on earth “will have already been consumed by evil”, and that “only the true followers of Twelver Shia Islam will remain on the righteous path at the end of time”. In other words, even Sunni Muslims, i.e. most Muslims in the Middle-East and the wider world, will be destroyed by the army of the Mahdi at the end of time, since they do not follow the right lineage going back to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and have thus strayed from the divine path ever since. Let us not forget that Sunnis and Shias have fought many wars in the past, going all the way back to 680 and the Battle of Karbala, shortly after death of the Muhammad. Thus, most Muslims are also in the firing line, not least because the regime would very much also like to conquer the cities of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in all of Islam, to further legitimise their rule. Again, their words and chants on a regular basis, not mine.

Finally, if most Muslims themselves are viewed as having fallen to evil and strayed from the path of righteousness, then you can imagine what the regime thinks of non-Muslims. There is a reason they don’t like Westerners, and the United States in particular, not least because the latter were such close allies to the Shah of Iran. Let us not forget that the United States is designated as the “Great Satan” by the regime, and that the parliament regularly burns the American flag. Let us not forget the hundreds of Americans that were taken hostage by the regime after his fall in 1979. Let us not forget the thousands of Americans that have been killed by this regime over the last 47 years. Let us not forget the multiple plots by the regime to both assassinate president Trump and to launch various terrorist attacks in places like the UK, according to MI5.

Hence the following question to the anti-Israel crowd. Do you really think any of this would change if, in some alternate parallel universe, the modern state of Israel had never existed? The Twelver Shia messianic prophecy predates the creation of Israel by over a millennia, even if Khomeini then gave it a modern update. If Israel had, for instance, not come to exist in 1948, or had been destroyed in the wars of 67 or 73, but the 1979 Iranian revolution had still taken place, what would have happened then?

I guarantee you that Khomeini would have framed the legitimacy of his regime as a struggle against western imperialism and the Great Satan. Not to mention that the United States funded and armed Saddam Hussein in 1980 in large part so that he would attack the newly founded Islamic regime in Iran, resulting in the 8 year Iran-Iraq war. Not to mention that the United States destroyed much of the Iranian Navy in 1988 during Operation Praying Mantis, as part of the wider effort to enable oil tankers from the Gulf states to sail out of the Strait of Hormuz. After all, keeping oil prices low, and therefore oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf, was as important then as it is today for the health of the American economy, and US presidents were always going to act on this. Israel or not.

This is, of course, reflected in the regime’s proxy network. Hezbollah terrorises the people of Lebanon and is now arguably the single greatest drug cartel distributing drugs to Europe. Hamas brutalised the people of Gaza long before they launched their attack against Israel on October 7th 2023, and the Houthis have held international shipping hostages on multiple occasions, again impacting both the US and the world economy. It also supported the Assad regime in Syria, even when the latter killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, including with the use of chemical weapons. Finally, it has both provided tens of thousands of Shahed drones to Russia, which the latter has used to terrorise Ukrainian cities and, under former president Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela had also signed a leasing agreement to build a Shahed drone factory. Well, such drones, if then fired from the Latin American state, could have reached parts of the United States and the Panama canal. Again, hurting America directly, without the need to mention Israel.

To sum up then. This regime has killed hundreds of thousands of its own people in the last 47 years of its existence. It has killed thousands of Americans. It has threatened to annihilate Israel, a direct American ally, to wage war against the Gulf states and to conquer the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It sponsors international terrorism. It threatens global shipping, and it has helped both Russia and Venezuela. Most of all, it has promised “Death to America”, and given their messianic beliefs, you better believe them about it.

Nevertheless, you might still argue, somehow deespite all of this, that even these threats to America are just words and fiery rhetoric. How could they possibly achieve this even if they wanted to?

Well, at the very beginning of negotiations between American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and their Iranian counterparts earlier this year in Geneva, the Iranians made it very clear, in no uncertain terms at the beginnings of the negotiations that they could quickly produce 11 nuclear bombs in a matter of months if it came to that, and that they are also capable of building 100 ballistic missiles every month, with the stated goal of reaching 8000 ballistic missiles.

How is this possible? Didn’t US B2 bombers destroy the nuclear enrichment sites at Ispahan and Fordow during the 12-Day War in June of 2025? Didn’t Trump gloat that these were “completely obliterated”?

The sites themselves arguably were to a large degree, but some of the hundreds of centrifuges inside these underground facilities may have survived, even if the sites themselves are now unusable. If so, these centrifuges might still contain uranium gas enriched to 60%. Satellite observations have since shown that the regime has been digging tunnels at Fordow, likely to try and retrieve such uranium if they can. Maybe this is a bluff, we don’t know, but if you were the US president, would you take such a chance? We also don’t know exactly how many centrifuges were moved out of these sites prior to the air strikes.

In any event, air strikes alone are unlikely to completely stop the regime from completing their nuclear program in the future. Even if the Fordow and Isfahan sites were completely obliterated, centrifuges can be rebuilt and then sufficiently dispersed that not all of them could be taken out in future strikes. Thus, air strikes alone were always guaranteed to only kick the can down the road, not stop the program entirely. Not to mention that, enrichment being exponential, it could now only take a small amount of time to further enrich the uranium they still might have up to the critical 90% necessary to make a nuclear bomb. After all, it takes roughly the same amount of time to enrich uranium235 from 4% to 8% as it does to enrich from 1% to 2% and from 2% to 4%. You do the math at 60%. This is why the envoys of the regime told Witkoff and Kushner that they could have 11 bombs ready in a short matter of time. It could be a bluff, but are you going to take such chances when dealing with nuclear weapons?

If the regime does acquire nuclear weapons, combined with their hundreds or even thousands of medium range ballistic missiles, they could use them to, of course, destroy the small state of Israel, but also a number of small Gulf states like Kuwait, Bahrain or the UAE. They could wipe out Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in a single strike. Or they could hold these states, the United States and the rest of the world hostage, while they use their proxy forces to wage a ground war and a terror campaign across the Middle East. They could threaten the use of nuclear weapons to call for a mass Shia uprising in the gulf monarchies, or push to install puppet regimes, like they attempted to do in Iraq. They could also potentially control all of the oil that flows out of the Persian Gulf, or at least hold it to ransom.

They could even potentially strike Europe with nuclear weapons. After all, their ballistic missiles now have the range to reach most of Europe, and will very likely soon have the range to reach London and Paris.

There’s a great episode in the series The West Wing, made over 20 years ago now, about this very scenario. The British Prime minister is calling for strikes to be made on Iran before they acquire the bomb, while the American president is calling for restraint, arguing that the people of Iran will soon rise up and overthrow the regime. Sounds prophetic, although the current UK prime minister Keir Starmer will likely check with his international lawyers about striking Iran, even if it did make threats to destroy London. In any event, the British Ambassador in the series asks the US president Bartlet “how long must we wait for the people to rise up? 5 years? Ten years? Twenty years? Would you risk your capital on it?”.

Point taken, which is why it is so puzzling why the governments of Europe have been so timid in their response to the current war.

The regime’s ballistic missiles can now reach across the Middle-East and most of Europe. It’s only a short matter of time before they can reach London or Paris, and a short time after that until they can reach New York City and Washington D.C.

Finally, the regime could pass such enriched uranium to anyone within their terrorist proxy network, or even outside of it like ISIS, giving them a dirty bomb that they could attempt to smuggle into Europe or the United States, including by drone. Wasn’t that after all the very reason given to go into Iraq in 2003? That Saddam Hussein was attempting to aquire weapons of mass destruction? Well, now we have the very Iranian regime saying exactly that to US envoys in Geneva. Imagine then if Saddam himself had gloated about that back in 2003? Not to mention that it’s also only a matter of time until, probably several years at most, before the regime has ballistic missiles advanced enough to reach the eastern seaboard of the United States, and cities like New York and Washington D.C.

So yes, for all of these reasons, the regime has to go. Even in a world full of autocrats, they are monsters to their own people, and are too much of a threat to the wider region and to the wider world, including to the United States. With enough of a nuclear and ballistic missile arsenal, they would effectively force all of these nations into strategic surrender. That is, there would be nothing the United States and her partners could do to stop such a regime with such weapons without the risk of them using these in sufficient numbers in return to make such a war to stop them worth it. This would effectively guarantee the regime’s long-term survival and the continued immiseration of the people of Iran, a five thousand year old civilisation, along with its further ability to wage war and blackmail its neighbours.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned China yet.

Just imagine if the CCP decided to attack Taiwan tomorrow. Imagine if they did so in a world where Nicolas Maduro is still in power and has access to thousands of Shahed drones. Where they then instructed Maduro to use such drones to knock out the Panama canal, and also instructed Iran to close off the Strait of Hormuz. The United States would be forced to disperse their naval forces to deal with both the Venezuelan and Iranian threats, all while what remained of their navy on their eastern seaboard could no longer go through the Panama canal and had to go the long way around South American in order to reach the Indo-Pacific. Such dispersal of US naval forces, and the resulting time loss, could very well be what is needed to tip the scale of that war in China’s favour.

To be clear, I don’t know if the current American-Israeli airstrikes, combined with potential future ground operations by special forces, Kurdish Peshmergas and an uprising by the people of Iran, will succeed in overthrowing this regime. That much needs to be said. I plan on writing a follow-up article on some of the mistakes I have seen the Trump administration make so far, and what the outcome of the war will likely be.

What I do know however is that the attempt, at the very least, to finally end this regime needed to be made. When looking at this from a purely strategic perspective, there is of course the cost of going to war (lives lost, treasury costs, impacts on allies and the wider economy), but there is also the opportunity-cost, the cost of not going to war. Well, not going to war means a near future where Iran potentially has a dozen or so nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles. It means a future where the regime cannot be removed even with military action, at least not without major military and economic cost far greater than what we even see today. It means the potential annihilation of Israel and the threat to NATO allies in Europe. It means the potential invasion, regime change or blackmail of the Gulf monarchies, and holding the Strait of Hormuz, and therefore the world, hostage.

That, in case it wasn’t clearn is a position one must be prepared to defend if they are against this war. It can’t always be those who support the war who have to justify themselves. One must be able to say that they don’t mind such a future scenario. That the alternative, going to war today, is worse than allowing such a regime to endure or to potentially have to go to war in the future.

This is the problem with the politics of appeasement. Far too many people, including political leaders still today, keep confusing appeasement for peace. Neville Chamberlain infamously signed a peace treaty with Adolf Hitler in 1938. It should have been called an Appeasement Treaty. 10 months later, Hitler invaded Poland, the world fell in to WW2, and Britain was at war with Germany once more. Churchill meanwhile, who then replaced Chamberlain, argued that you could never negotiate with a tiger while your head was in its mouth. He resisted every single call made to him, including by many prominent members of his own party, to sue for peace on unfavourable terms. He was prepared to fight to the end, because he understood what was at stake. That’s why he’s remembered as a war hero in Britain today. Without someone, as flawed as they may otherwise have been, willing to stand up to evil and do what is right, Britain may have ceased to exist as a nation entirely.

Yes, we are also at that point when it comes to this regime. It is either to go to war or not. It has become clear now that all diplomatic solutions seem to have been exhausted. The Trump administration tried negotiating for months last year, ultimately to no avail and leading to the 12 Day War, and tried negotiating for months this year, again to no avail. No international solution has been achieved either. The United Nations have arguably been completely incapable of checking this regime up until now as well.

Of course, there will always be those who will defend negotiations, and a diplomatic solution, right until the bitter end, believing these can actually somehow still come about despite all of the evidence. I understand the sentiment. Of course no one wants to see war, but this is also the problem with defending appeasement until this very end. There are those who will seek appeasement no matter what, even when the opposing regime is getting stronger and stronger, until they one day can no longer be stopped, at least not without a much greater war and much greater sacrifice. This is what happened with Nazi Germany. They could have been stopped much sooner, as soon as they began rearming in 1935 in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but appeasement prevailed until it became impossible to continue doing so. By then, Nazi Germany was much more powerfull, and it took tens of millions of lives to finally end it.

That is still what is unfotunately happening today.

Yes, the Obama administration had struck a deal with the regime back in 2015, but this deal gave the regime $50 billion in US taxpayer money, in exchange for pausing their nuclear enrichment provisions until 2030. The Biden administration then proceeded to do the same, this time with $ 16 billion. The regime then subsequently used such money to fund their proxy forces throughout the Middle-East, leading to October 7th, all the while denying continuing to enrich uranium. Such a deal, since it would inevitably allow the regime to pick up nuclear enrichment once more anyway in the future, arguably therefore simply kicked the can down the road for another US president to deal with.

Well, that time has arguably come, and even if you were willing to argue that it has not yet come, it still becomes more difficult with every passing day to argue that such a time will never be upon us in the future anyway.

Of course, the regime has systematically denied enriching uranium to build a bomb, claiming their nuclear program was merely civilian, even though that is the only reason to reach 60% enrichment in the first place, as a final stepping stone to 90%. At this point, can anyone really argue in good faith that they were being truthful about this? Besides, why build enrichment facilities under a mountain at all, if it was purely for civilian purposes? Why admit to enriching to 60% at all, when civilian reactors only require between 3%-5% enrichment? Why not import uranium enriched to these small levels for civilian use, and not develop enrichment capabilities yourself, if you only had civilian intentions? This is what many other countries that have civilian nuclear reactors already do. Clearly, they had other intentions.

All of this is why such a war has become inevitable, due to the very nature of the regime and its complete unwillingness to ed its nuclear ambitions and funding of proxy forces throughout the region. Due to the threats it poses to the United States, Europe and the wider world. Just like with Nazi Gemany, appeasement was tried over and over again, and arguably for far too long, until it could no longer hold.

I don’t know if this particular war will finally end the regime. Maybe Trump will give up before it happens. Maybe enough pressure will be put on him to change course. However, I’ve been constantly reminded since this war began of the words of General Eisenhower, a man who was also looking to end another such evil regime. When asked about his Operation Overlord preparations by none other than the King of England himself, and the risk and fear of suffering severe casualties by the Allies, he responsed by saying ‘if we do not pay the price now, we will pay for it with added gallons later.”

The same will be true here. Failure to remove the Islamic regime of Iran from power now will only result in more inevitable wars in the future, and in far more blood spilled.

This was in response to the current information coming out of China, that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had launched a coup against most of the senior ranking members of the Chinese military.

In early 2026, Xi Jinping launched his latest, and arguably his most risky, purge against potential rivals within the CCP, this time amongst the highest ranks of the Chinese military. This is fraught with risk even for Xi, although we likely won’t know about the fallout for many months, if ever.

Just how cutthroat can Chinese politics be, especially behind this external facade of harmony?

A good example of this was back in 2002 when, publicly at least, Jiang Zemin, then General Secretary of the Party, gave Hu Jintao, Deng Xiaoping’s protégé, his blessing to become the next Secretary General. This was prudent, since Hu had been designated as such by Deng five years earlier, right before the latter’s passing. It was very promising, not just for China but for the wider world, as this was really the first time anywhere that there had been a bloodless transition of power within any communist party, the Soviet Union included. While no one was calling China a democracy, many in the west were still thrilled to see this, symbolising to them a new era of progress within China.

Behind the scenes however, it was clear that Jiang was doing everything he could to stay in charge. The Politburo and the Central Military Commission were stacked with loyalists from his Shanghai clique, the most important faction at the time. Hu, despite becoming General Secretary, was essentially reduced to barely more than a figurehead. The military even famously entered the People’s Hall during the CCP’s 16th Congress in 2002 and “asked” (demanded!), that Jiang remain Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Despite this, Hu would go on to resist Jiang’s influence and build out influence of his own, leading to a power struggle for years within the CCP.

This all came to a head in May of 2006 when, during a naval exercise in the Yellow Sea, attended by Hu Jintao himself on a naval destroyer, two warships opened fire on him.

Officially, it was a training accident. Unofficially, Hong Kong reporters indicated that Zhang Dingfa, the PLA admiral in charge of the Yellow Sea Fleet, had given orders to fire on Hu Jintao’s ship. Hu would survive, escaping in a helicopter after enduring 10 minutes under fire in the armoured command room of the ship, but five sailors lost their lives. Hu then reportedly fled to Yunnan, where he was neither seen nor heard of for a week. Many speculated that he might have died from injuries sustained.

Why would Zhang have done this, and opened fire on the Secretary General and President of China?

Because Zhang was a member of the Shanghai clique, and a stark Jiang Zhemin loyalist who had, as was claimed by some, received orders from Jiang himself to do so.

Later on, by the end of 2006, Zhang Dingfa would be pronounced dead, officially from terminal cancer. No mourning or eulogy was given, and no mention of him was written within the Liberation Army Daily.

Eventually, Hu and Jiang would bury the hatchet. Hu’s publication of Jiang’s works elevated his historical standing within the party at 80 years of age, while Jiang would then essentially push his own protégé, Chen Liangyu, under the bus in favour of Hu within the party.

Jiang Zemin, seen here on the left, was General Secretary from 89 to 2002. Hu Jintao, seen on the right, held that position from 2002 to 2012. They were often seen publicly together, shaking hands and showing unity. Behind the scenes however was a veritable battle for position and influence, resulting in assassination attempts and undeclared coups.

In fact, such divisions, feuds and violence within the party led to the arrival of Xi Jinping himself to power.

After all, neither Jiang nor Hu’s successors were acceptable to the party as a whole, since neither faction wielded enough influence to unilaterally dominate it. Thus, both factions had to agree on a compromise candidate. Xi was seen as low-key, rule following and, for Jiang, had risen up the ranks within the Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, and had been Shanghai Party Secretary. He was thus deemed acceptable by the Shanghai clique.

Xi was also a taizidang, or red princeling. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of the leaders of the CCP Central Committee under Mao, making him one of the founding members of the People’s Republic of China. Later on in the 1980s, Xi Zhongxun had also been close to Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary before Jiang. Because of this, and because of Xi Zhongxun’s close relationship with Deng Xiaoping, who would later personally designated Hu Jintao as the next General Secretary to the CCP, Hu Jintao himself also considered Xi Jingping, his son, to be one of his allies.

Simply put, both the Jiang and Hu factions had seen Xi to be both non-threatening and on their side, and so Xi became General Secretary in 2012 and president in 2013. Clearly, both sides saw Xi as a useful puppet that they could influence and both string along behind the scenes.

Clearly, what actually played out was very different, with Xi consolidating more power and influence within the CCP than arguably anyone since Mao himself. Was this then all a clever bit of political manoeuvring by Xi, learning keys lessons from both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in the art of political survival across the bloody totem pole of Chinese politics?

Largely, yes. Xi very likely learned several key lessons to become the new leader of China. First was his direct witnessing of the chaos that came from such factional feuds behind party doors. He was the compromise candidate between Zhiang and Hu, meaning he witnessed firsthand the infighting between both sides. It would not be surprising therefore that, once nominated by the Party Congress, Xi moved quickly to first remove major political rivals and weaken their factions within the CCP as quickly as he could.

In fact, it was not so much the desire to remove rival influence from within the party, but rather the speed at which Xi did it, that surprised most China observers at the time. There were even reports in 2013 of a potential assassination attempt against Xi by the Zhiang faction, especially following his arrest of Bo Xilai, Jiang’s own successor candidate before the compromise, which if true would have made Xi even more paranoid.

The second and arguably most important lesson arguably came from Xi’s father himself, Xi Zhongxun.

As mentioned, the latter was, with Mao, one of the founding members of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. However, following Mao’s purges during the Cultural Revolution, he was paraded as an enemy of the revolution, before being placed under house arrest, and the young Xi himself was sent to live in a cave house in the very rural (backwards, even by Xi’s own admittance) western province of Liangjiahe, after his own mother had to publicly denounce his father and his own sister took her own life.

One should pause to consider that. Xi’s father was a founding member of the PRC, and a close friend of Mao Zedong himself, yet was purged anyway, and his entire family suffered for it. So why did this happen? Why did Mao Zedong himself do this to a once close friend and ally?

Xi Zhongxun was, by all accounts, a popular man. During one denunciation protest for instance, when locals were expected to denounce him publicly, many instead confronted the Red Guards holding him and even held up umbrellas to protect him from the burning sun. Why? Because Xi Zhongxun had apparently distributed food to these locals during the 1962 famine, and many were grateful. Many no doubt owed their very survival to him. Let’s not forget that China produced enough food at the time, but the collectivisation efforts by Mao allowed him to use food as a political weapon, by starving those he saw as disloyal or potential hotspots for uprisings.

Such popular support therefore made Xi Zhongxun become seen as a potential rival to Mao, leading to his arrest and house-imprisonment. In Mao’s mind, if left to fester, Xi and his popular influence could potentially lead people to one day rise up against him. A former friend, or perhaps still a friend in Mao’s mind, who could later become a major rival. There are arguably no friendships because of this in Chinese politics, only the quest for power and influence. Xi Jinping, the son who is now the current leader of China, likely understood this lesson early on.

Likewise, after the death of Mao, Xi Zhongxun saw the political charges against him rescinded and subsequently returned to Beijing. He then soon became First Secretary of the Guandong Province, the same province that borders Hong Kong. Seeing the disparity between communist China and capitalist Hong Kong, and the mass migration towards the latter, it was Xi senior who initiated the creation of the Special Economic Zone, which would lead to Shenzhen going from a small village to one of China’s largest cities, and a major global hotspot for innovation, over the last forty years.

He also had a reputation for encouraging the addressing of local grievances by ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs and Tibetans. In fact, way back in 1954, Xi had the opportunity to meet the young 14th Dalai-Lama, the current Tenzin Gyatso, in Beijing, five years before the Tibetan Uprising. When later asked, the Dalai Lama reportedly fondly recalled meeting Xi, and described him as “very friendly and open-minded” and even apparently gifted Xi an Omega watch.

Finally, in 1987, Xi was even the only member of the Central Committee to defend Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary at the time who was accused by the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping of being too liberal. In other words, Xi Zhgonxun stood alone defending a man whose economic reforms were seen as being so progressive that Deng himself, who encouraged reform in the first place, believed they had the potential to tear the CCP apart between the reformers and the old guard. Xi would then be invited to “retire” one year later.

Thus, Xi Zhongxun had the reputation of being a reformer and genuinely caring about the people, only for him to end up purged, placed under house arrest, and forced into retirement. Xi Jinping also saw this, and likely learned the cost of being both too progressive, friendly and popular. Hence perhaps his low profile and mild manners while he didn’t wield any major influence himself, only to then unleash his own ruthlessness against rivals once in power to do so.

Many have even compared the father and son relationship to the one of Tytos and Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones. If you’re not familiar with the popular fantasy story by George R.R. Martin, Tytos the father, Lord of House Lannister, was genuinely friendly and generous to many, including his own people, but was also widely perceived as weak by political rivals in the political game of thrones for power and influence. His son, Tywin, learning from his father’s mistakes, was ruthless and uncompromising in ascending his house to power, becoming Hand of the King and, during the War of the Five Kings, widely seen as the most powerful man in Westeros, while his grandson Geoffrey was the ineffectual figurehead puppet king of the seven kingdoms.

In case the analogy wasn’t clear, Xi Jinping is Tywin Lannnister, a man who, learning from his own firendly and popular but ultimately weak father, understood where true power lies, and how one needs to be ruthless, even against former friends and allies if need be, to reach the top of the political totem pole.

In any event, in 2013 and with only a year in power, in what must have been seen as a major stab in the back, Xi would go after the entire Shanghai clique, and removed several Jiang Zhemin loyalists from key positions, famously including Bo Xilai, who was arrested and imprisoned on corruption charges, after widely being considered to be Xi’s main political rival prior to the 18th Party Congress in 2012. Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao themselves, likely on account of their former positions and old age in a country that reveres its elders, continued to appear at Party Congresses. Remember the importance of presenting a united front to the people and the wider world. However, this was largely ceremonial, and Hu Jintao himself would be infamously removed from the Great Hall on camera, while sitting next to Xi, at the 20th Party Congress in 2022.

Hu Jintao, the former General Secretary, was infamously removed from the Great Hall during the 20th Party Congress, in what was widely seen as a symbolic total capture of the CCP by Xi, since Hu’s faction was widely seen as the last one within the party to oppose his own influence.

The purges then continued, and across wider areas of Chinese society. Jack Ma, the famous Alibaba CEO, disappeared for a period of time in 2020, after criticising the country’s financial system. Then, in 2022, China’s former Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua was also arrested for corruption. Apparently being Justice Minister in China under Xi is ill-advised for one’s health, as Fu’s successor, Tang Yujin, an actual close friend and colleague of Xi himself during his years in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai, was also arrested and later sentenced to life for corruption.

The military were also not untouched, though this would mostly come later on. In 2023, Rocket Force leader Li Yuchao was removed amid reports of missile failure and corruption in procurement. In 2024, Defence Minister Li Shangfu disappeared and was expelled from the CCP. In 2025, several CMC members, including the other CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong, were removed, in what became known as the October Wave. Finally of course, Zhang Youxia himself, was also recently arrested in early 2026, under corruption and espionage charges. This was especially surprising, considering that Zhang was a close friend of Xi since childhood, was seen as one of Xi’s closest loyalists, and had survived the arrests within the CMC during the October Wave only months earlier.

To be clear, corruption is, or at least has been, rife in China for decades, since there is such a close connection between the state, party officials and large state-owned companies. Every time there is a government contract being awarded, big or small, national or provincial, there are likely added bonuses and “consultancy” fees paid for as well for various government officials. Not to mention how senior party leaders have often made themselves board members to these large companies since the 90s. Some CCP members have even become billionaires this way, creating a new Chinese oligarchy. Certainly Zhang Youxia, as the most senior ranking military officer, had major influence over defence and procurement contracts as well.

In any event, whether all of these men were corrupt or not, their fates were likely sealed a long time ago. Mirroring what Vladimir Putin did in the 2000s in order to consolidate his own power, Xi Jinping positioned himself as the anti-corruption president, and went after such oligarchs and high party officials. Corruption is everywhere in China, so everyone is guilty of it, meaning that it can also always be used as a very convenient tool to remove any political rival.

What most Chinese observers that I have listened do to seem to agree on however is that the accusation of selling nuclear secrets to the CIA, as Zhang Youxia was accused of doing, is very likely a bogus one. This makes sense. Again, it would be as if the current US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also happened to be a decorated war veteran of say the Vietnam War, was also secretly selling American nuclear secrets to China. Technically possible of course, but highly unlikely. Instead, Xi is clearly removing a potential rival off the board.

In fact, these men were likely arrested because they became too popular themselves, and popularity and strong networks in China automatically become perceived as the potential beginnings of rival powerbases to one day challenge the leader. Just recall how popular Xi Zhongxun was, and how much good it actually did him in the end. Tang Yujin spent thirty years moving up the political ranks in Zhejiang, one of the most populous and powerful provinces in all of China, alongside Xi himself, and likely had a substantial network of his own as a result. Zhang Youxia was also widely popular, especially within military circles. Even if they had no political ambitions beyond their current status, a likely increasingly paranoid Xi was never going to take such risks.

Why now though? Why remove such a powerful figure of the PLA today, and a close friend and loyalist for so long, and not back in 2013 for instance?

Because Zhang was likely untouchable until now. He was also a red princeling, whose own father had served as a senior general in the early days of the PLA. He was a decorated war hero. He had been in the Central Military Committee since 2012, mirroring Xi’s own arrival to power, and therefore wielded major influence within the party itself. Finally, Zhang was 75 when the purge happened. Normally, party officials must retire after the age of 68, so many China observers interpreted Zhang’s staying on as a sign of deep trust from the otherwise paranoid Xi. This matched the narrative of their close relationship growing up as red princelings, mirroring the relationship both of their fathers had.

Was it all a facade?

Xi likely has very deep respect for Zhang, and likely sees him as a close friend, even now, but he was also fearful of his influence within the party. Inevitably then, as Xi’s own influence and paranoia grew, his mistrust of his generals would also grow. It may have only been a matter of time then, even for the loyal Zhang, before the hammer would finally fall.

In fact, such a climate of uncertainty, naturally, fuels all kinds of speculation. Some have even argued that the latest purges (the October Wave and Zhang Youxia) follow an attempted silent move against Xi by the military last year. Many speculated for instance that Xi’s absence from the public for over two weeks leading up to the BRICS summit in Brazil in July of 2025, followed by his absence from the summit itself (a first for him for such a BRICS event, which he clearly views as of paramount importance to China itself), must have been the result of a major move against him, likely by the military itself. Likewise, when Xi reappeared in public, many also noticed that his number of bodyguards was significantly reduced compared to before, by as much as half. Was this the military’s way of reducing Xi to the rank of a figurehead, without any actual substantiative power?

Again, there’s no way to know for sure if such rumours have merit, and one should probably take many such stories with a big grain of salt. This is the internet after all, and people love creating stories about such things. One story circulating on social media mentions that Zhang and the other cadres of the military have been attempting to overthrow Xi for many months now. That Xi has been homeless for the past several months (some have even speculated years), never sleeps in the same place, and keeps moving from secret location to secret location.

Most of these stories, if not all of them, are very likely untrue, and often come from Chinese people themsleves living out of China (Chinese-Americans for instance) that have been “talking” with someone back home, behind the Great Chinese Firewall. Hence their “exclusive sources and scoops”. Why on earth would average Chinese Joe have any more information on such things than professional western observers and intelligence collectors is, of course, your guess as much as mine.

Still, this does reflect a wide reign of uncertainty, and even terror, going on in China right now. Is there a move against Xi? Did Zhang Youxia participate in any of this, and to what degree? Did Xi make a preemptive move against the generals because of this, fearing for his own power and influence? After all, remember how Hu Jintao himself was largely reduced to the role of a figurehead by Jiang Zhemin and the military in 2002, only to then fight back against them for power and influence over the next ten years? Certainly Xi has not forgotten.

Social media went ablaze with speculation after it was announced that Xi jinping, who had not been seen in public for weeks, would be missing a BRICS Summit in Brazil in July 2025, a first for him. Most of the stories that resulted were very likely untrue, but still demonstrated the reigning atmosphere of uncertainty and tensions within China itself, and its relationship with the wider world.

Did Zhang Youxia have personal power ambitions of his own, or simply a desire to remove Xi?

Probably not, since he was now 75 years old, way past retirement age to aspire to any new official position like General Secretary, and was a military man his entire career. The military, of course, swear loyalty to the CCP and not the state, but this wouldn’t matter to Xi. If the latter perceived Zhang to be a threat in any way, even in some paranoia form, he would then act upon it, as he has now done. Or, perhaps Xi saw Zhang and the other members of the Central Military Commission as not loyal enough in anticipation of some future attack plan on Taiwan, because they might have expressed doubts or reformulations about any hypothetical plan. Xi has repeatedly called for the PLA to be ready to take back Taiwan by 2027, the centennial year of the founding of the PLA. If so, perhaps Xi simply wanted new, more loyal leadership within such senior military ranks, in anticipation of such a strike, and feared the CMC response, and even Zhang’s response, if he went through with it.

So then, has Xi succeeded in consolidating total power?

On paper, yes. He has been General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2012, and President since 2013. He has even been declared a Paramount Leader, mirroring Mao himself and Deng Xiaoping.

Remember however that in China, the one who wields power is the one who wields the most influence behind the scenes. The purges within the military right now are akin to a shadow civil war happening there. We won’t know exactly what’s going on, likely for months, or possibly ever, as these are happening behind closed doors in a country already infamous for being closed off, particularly to western media.

Such a move therefore is rife with risk, and, even if most stories you hear coming out of China are likely to be fantasist, there is no guaranteeing that Xi himself stays in power after the next National Party Congress taking place in 2027. Or, maybe he does, but purely as a ceremonial figurehead, again to preserve party unity appearance, with the true power shifting towards the military, should the ousted military generals manage to launch a successful move for influence within the CCP against him. The next several months will be crucial in that regard, and many Chinese observers will be carefully scrutinising every story, speech and image that does come out of China.

Because, in the bloody game of Chinese politics, even details as insignificant as missing a meeting due to health issues, or the total number of bodyguards the leader has, can take on a whole different political meaning.

This is consequential for two reasons. Not only is this the latest in Xi Jinping’s (the CCP General Secretary and President of China) anti-corruption purge across multiple areas of society, but it also arguably represents a major turning point for China itself, similar to the Stalin purges within the Soviet military in the 1930s.

Since Xi Jinping’s announced purges, five of the seven members of the Chinese Central Military Commission, the equivalent to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been removed, with Xi himself being one of the only two members remaining.

To be clear, Zhang Youxia was not just the top general in the Chinese military. He was Vice-president of the Chinese Military Commission, the equivalent of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a decorated war hero and veteran of the China-Vietnam War of 1979 (meaning he’s one of the very few in the Chinese military to have actual combat experience), and was a red princeling, whose own father was one of the People’s Republic of China founding members alongside Mao himself.

This means that he wielded huge influence within the CCP itself, including at the very highest levels. Hence why this goes far beyond removing, say, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be in the United States, even if that chairman was a decorated war veteran.

Unfortunately, to understand how significant his removal truly is, we must first (attempt to) understand the crazy world of internal Chinese politics.

A fair bit of warning though. This is not going to be easy to wrap your head around, especially if you live in the West, and will certainly not be a perfect analogy with any western system of government, since Chinese politics is organised very differently to anything most of us are familiar with. It certainly took me years to understand Chinese politics and, to be honest, I still don’t quite do either. It would require an entire class on the subject simply to better understand even a little bit how things truly work in China.

Nevertheless, some context is required.

For starters, we all know that there is only one political party in China that holds power, the Chinese Communist Party, presided over by the General Secretary. It would therefore be very easy, and very oversimplified, to compare it to, say, the Republican Party in the United States, if such a party was the only party allowed and controlled all areas of the state, and if the Chairman of the Republican Party was also the head of state. However, the CCP, currently made up of nearly 100 million members, is much more than that. In effect, in China, the Communist Party leads, and the government then executes.

Every five years, within the Great Hall of the People (which you have probably seen images of in your news feed), the National Party Congress takes place. The last one, in 2022, hosted just shy of 2300 top party members, chosen from grassroot party organisations across China. To better reflect Chinese society, these members often come from many walks of life. From farmers to factory workers, from mayors to celebrities. For the sake of promoting national harmony and unity, many ethnic minorities, including Tibetans and Uyghurs, are also paraded around in their traditional dresses.

The National Party Congress of the CCP, which takes place every five years in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Notice the hammer and sickle on the wall. This is not to be confused with the National People Congress, which also take place in the same Great Hall, this time once every year.

During this National Party Congress, the members debate what changes need to be made to the constitution and issue ideological statements. These are not laws per se, but act as the foundation for future laws to then be implemented by the National People’s Congress (careful, not the Party Congress that we have so far been talking about). The National Party Congress also has a system of staggered elections, whereby one level of the party votes for the members of the next higher level and so on, from the Central Committee to the Politburo and all the way up to the Council of Seven and the General Secretary.

To be clear though, the candidates for these higher CCP levels are almost entirely selected in advance, ensuring that the results are already decided for. In 2017 for instance, during the 19th National Congress, there were only 222 candidates for the Central Committee, for 204 seats available. This means that only 9% of the candidates could get rejected, thus giving the illusion of candidacy choice. The Central Committee then elects the 25 members of the Politburo, who in turn elect the 7-9 members of the Council of Seven (yes, sometimes they have more than seven members on the council of seven), who then designate the Secretary General.

A general overview of the structure of the Chinese Communist Party, as of October 2025.

Now we move on to the National People’s Congress which, as already mentioned, is not the same as the Party Congress, even though the members of the People’s Congress also meet in the exact same building, the Great Hall of the People.

This time, the People’s Congress, also made up of about 3000 members from provincial people’s congress (but not the same as the 2300 CCP members), meet once a year, during what is called a plenum. The year of the National Party Congress (the other one), the plenum typically takes place six months later in the Spring (the Party Congress always taking place in the Fall). Of course, the nomination and election process for the National People’s Congress is also tightly controlled by the CCP.

The People’s Congress will then nominate the President of China (the head of state, but careful, not the head of the party, that goes to the General Secretary), the Chinese Premier (the equivalent of prime minister and head of government), government ministers themselves, supreme court justices, provincial governors, etc. They will also vote legislation, but in practice, this is more akin to rubber stamping the policies put forward by the Politburo.

The National People’s Congress, which takes place once a year. Xi Jinping, in this instance, is the president of China, and to his side is his Premier and members of government. Notice that the Emblem on the Wall with the five stars is the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China, which is different from the hammer and sickle of the National Party Congress.

This is very important to understand. China is a party-state, meaning it is ruled by a single ruling party. The CCP takes precedence over the state and, therefore, the members of the Party Congress oversee who gets nominated and elected to the People’s Congress, and what policies get approved. Thus, who is ultimately in charge of the affairs of state.

If that weren’t confusing enough, positions can, and often do, overlap. General Secretaries of the past for instance, nominated during the Party Congress, have very often also become the President of the State during the People’s Congress. Wouldn’t want a potential rival taking too much power for themselves now, would we?

So, if you’ve been following so far, Xi Jinping is currently both the Secretary General of the CCP, first nominated during the Party Congress of 2012, and the President of China, nominated during the following People’s Congress six months later in 2013. Like Trump if he were both the Chairman of the Republican Party and President of the United States, if Chairman actually outranked the President.

The CCP draft ideological statements during their five-year congress, control nominations and election processes, and are in charge of the overall big-picture affairs. Meanwhile, the members of the National People’s Congress are more like general secretaries, in charge of the day-to-day execution of the will of the CCP.

Thus, for the western equivalent, it would be as though there was only one political party allowed in the United States, let’s say the Republican Party for the sake of argument, and every five years, the Republicans held their own internal congress to decide on who the chairman and the top party members would be. This meeting would take place in the halls of Congress inside the US Capitol Building.

These party members would then overlook who the ,ext members of both Congress and the leaders of the Federal Government would be. Six months later and then every year after that, these US Congress members would meet, again inside the halls of the same US Capitol building, officially to pass legislature and run the country, but in practice of course to take their marching orders from the leaders of the Republican Party.

Perhaps another, better way to understand it is by looking at the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yes, Iran technically has a president, and a government who run the day-to-day affairs of the country. In theory, the Supreme Leader, currently the Ayatollah Khamenei as I write this and the clergy, also known as the mullahs, only serves as the spiritual guide to the nation. In practice though, the mullahs designate who can run for office, including the presidency, and decide on the overall big-picture direction of the country. Likewise, in China, the Communist Party essentially serves as the “spiritual” leaders of the country, designate who then administers it and, of course, punishes those who fail or are deemed disloyal to the party.

This logic also applies to many aspects of Chinese society, and becomes very confusing to outsiders. For instance, there is a Chinese Central Military Commission, but there is also a People’s Central Military Commission. In practice though, both are made up of exactly the same members, operate out of the exact same building, and serve the exact same role. So why the distinction at all?

Because in China, the PLA, or People’s Liberation Army, actually serve the CCP and not the country, but for foreign affairs, its useful to have a military that represents the country as a whole and not just the party.

Likewise, the CCP have their own separate justice system for party members. There are also Provincial General Secretaries and Provincial Governors, the equivalent of the governors of US states like Texas and California. The former, designated by the Party Congress every five years, overlook the work done by the latter, who really act as administrators. The latter might handle the basic day to day affairs of the province, but the party secretary gives the five year direction the provincial governor must follow. Likewise with cities, who have both a general party secretary and a mayor.

In fact, for every city, since licence plates and attributed to cities and not states, the general secretary of the city has the licence plate number 1, while the mayor has the licence plate number 2. This should tell you everything you need to know about who is really running the country, at all levels of government.

Bearing that in mind, here are the following three main bodies within Chinese politics and, currently, Xi Jinping is the leader of all three of these:

• The Chinese Communist Party

• The Chinese State

• The Central Military Commission of the People’s Liberation Army

To be clear here as well, because none of this is confusing enough, the “Army” in the Chinese context is actually the military as a whole, even though the term army usually refers to the ground forces in other nations. Within this “Army” are then such branches as the Ground Forces, Air Forces, Navy and Rocket Forces. Hence you’ll sometimes hear terms like the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

In any event, Xi Jinping is now the leader of all three of these branches, so for clarity once again, it would be the equivalent of Trump being the head of the Republican Party, the President of the United States, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

A good overview of the current political system of China. The CCP influences both the government and the central military commission, with many of its members occupying dual seats within both the party and the government/military.

Historically, this was also not always the case. For instance, when Hu Jintao became Party General Secretary in 2002, his predecessor Jiang Zemin remained the Chairman of the Central Military Commission for another two years, and wielded considerable influence within it afterwards.

If Chinese politics were still not confusing enough, there are also very powerful unofficial positions in China known as “Paramount Leaders”.

For instance, you’ve probably heard of Deng Xiaoping, the pioneer of China’s Reform Era after the death of Mao Zedong. Well, believe it or not, Deng was never General Secretary, nor President of China. So how was he able to achieve such famous economic reforms that led to China’s huge economic growth, and visit foreign nations like the United States under president Jimmy Carter in the late 70s, basically as the Chinese head of state?

Because instead, he was Paramount Leader, an unofficial position and informal nickname.

Within the National Party Congress (the five years one), there are factions, known in China as cliques. In most western democracies of course, such cliques would likely be separate political parties. Well, Deng Xiaoping, as one of the founders of the PRC alongside Mao, in a country who revers its elders and leaders, simply had control over the largest faction after the death of Mao, and therefore wielded the most influence, even though he officially only climed as high as Vice Party Chairman and Vice Premier (so the vice-president to the prime minister).

Thus, everyone, up to the Party General Secretary of the time, whose name you’ve probably never heard of (and that’s the point I’m trying to make here, men like Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang if you’re wondering), took their marching orders from him. Again, by analogy, it would be as if Trump had never been President of the United States or Chairman of the Republican Party, but still controlled the party by controlling the largest faction within it, let’s say the MAGA faction for the sake of argument. Imagine Trump then, in this alternate universe scenario, despite being officially at least nothing more than, say, the vice-president’s chief of staff, still visiting China as the de facto head of state of the United States, as Deng did with Jimmy Carter. Welcome to the crazy world of Chinese politics.

In fact, in 92 when Deng was 87 years old and fully retired from any official positions, he travelled to Shenzhen and called for more economic reforms. The then General Secretary Jiang Zemin was actually in favour at the time of returning China to be more in line with Mao’s hardline centralised vision. Yet several journals, not least the PLA Daily, sided with Deng. This was a clear signal that Jiang did not have the support of the military and various other factions, and was likely to face major opposition within the CCP itself if he pursued this route, and so economic reforms went ahead, leading to the economic miracle China has since been known for.

To be clear then, power in China does not lie necessarily with any particular official position, even that of General Secretary, President or Premier. Deng Xiaoping was none of these things in his day and yet was clearly the most powerful man in China. So, where does true power in China lie today? Who wields it? Is it the Secretary General? The President? The Chairman of the Central Military Commission? The Paramount Leader?

The truth is that power lies behind the scenes with whomever has the most influence. Power is not earned in China through titles, but instead has to be won through influence.

Which is why Chinese internal politics can be absolutely brutal. Violence, disappearances, assassinations, false accusations of corruption and espionage. Officially, the CCP must always present a united front, both to the people of China and to the wider world. Such disputes and power struggles between party members, branches and factions therefore take place behind the scenes, regardless of how House of Cards of Game of Thrones they might become.

Part 2 of the Chinese Purges will be about everything I know about Xi Jinping’s coming to power, his own political manoeuvres, his current purges against the military, the backlash he has faced, where China might go next, and of course what all of this might mean for Taiwan and the wider world.

Late last year, not too long before the raid on Maduro, Trump announced withdrawing military and economic support for Colombia, which shares a border with Venezuela and which has long had to fight a guerilla war with various groups, noticeably the FARC. The questions then naturally become what this all means for Colombia, and if Petro is next on the Delta Force hit list.

US president Donald Trump and Colombian president Gustavo Petro have recently fallen out, with Trump even calling him a “drug leader”. This has compromised thirty-five years of successful US-Colombian relationships.

To understand how things have gotten to this point between the two once very friendly nations, a bit of context is no doubt required.

Colombia, like many Latin American countries, has long been a land of sharp political contrast, going back to colonial times, when wealthy aristocrats typically bought up (or outright stole) huge chuncks of land, dispossessing and brutalising the natives, and then running those lands as plantations. Even after independence from Spain and the eventual abolition of slavery, such inequalities largely prevailed, creating a wealthy landowner class, typically supported by the Church and the military, and a dispossessed class, typically supported by students and intellectuals. Eventually, both sides would become represented by the two main political parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

By the late 1940s, such tensions between both sides had reached a boiling point, especially after the assassination of the very promising and charismatic Jorge Eliecer Gaitan of the Liberal Party, who was running for president at the time and who would likely have won the race. This resulted in major violence, what historians have even come to call a civil war, between both sides, in a period known as La Violencia. An estimated and terrifying 300 000 people were killed in Colombia in the ten years following Gaitan’s murder, and millions more were displaced.

To be clear, this wasn’t a conflict with two clearly denominated military forces wearing uniforms. These were, for the most part, civilians targeting each other. Both sides began targeting each other in bitter attacks and assassinations, and both sides formed their own militias and guerrilla forces in response. Since this was a matter of perspective and political beliefs, everyone began to suspect everyone else of belonging to the other side. Neighbour turned against neighbour, and the political violence was often a pretext to settle personal scores. Hardly anyone was untouched by this period.

Mostly, after the military seized power in a coup in 1953 and began hunting down various Marxist groups who were often hiding in the mountains and jungles far away from the cities, this encouraged such groups band together into one larger guerrilla force. Eventually, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, would be born.

In turn, the consolidation and growth of the FARC also led to the creation of right-wing paramilitary groups in response, often to defend the wealthy landowners and their properties while the official military hunted the FARC in the jungles. It also led to other left-leaning and Marxist groups, like the ELN, being formed in the 1960s as well. Finally, this being the 1950s and 60s and the height of Cold War tensions, the United States, fearful of a communist takeover of Colombia and the wider Latin America region, largely supported the military against the FARC, in what would become a partnership that would only grow over time.

Tens years after the eruption of La Violencia, and five years after the military had seized power, civilian rule returned. Both the Liberal and the Conservative Parties agreed to create the Frente Nacional, or National Front. During this sixteen year period, both parties agreed to rotate power, with the president coming from either party every four years. Mostly, all other political parties were banned. This encouraged the FARC to use even more revolutionary and violent means to achieve their political goals, since they now believed such goals could no longer be reached politically and electorally.

The FARC kept growing throughout the 70s, recruiting students, intellectuals and even foreign combatants, who often saw them as romantic rebels despite their large-scale kidnappings (mostly to raise money to fund themselves) and extortion. In doing so, they took over certain parts of Colombia, which became known as independent republics, with de facto their own laws and enforcement outside of the central government’s control. It certainly helped the FARC that throughout the 1970s, land reforms by the Conservatives were actually encouraging wealthy landowner to expand their land ownership to less populated parts of the country even more, often as a tactic to take over FARC territory.

At their height, the FARC were the largest militia group in Latin America, and fought against the Colombian and Aerican governments for nearly 50 years.

As a result, many small scale farmers had to flee their lands, and often ended up in even more unproductive and remote lands controlled by the FARC. However, in taking such zones they also helped sow the seeds for the drug cartels that would emerge in the country, since the peasants operating in these areas were now cut off from any legal markets and institutional support. Because of this, they very often turned to cocaine production, often as a means simply to survive.

Coca leaf production had many advantages over other crops, especially when other markets are closed off to you. After all, it does not require any fertiliser or pesticide to grow, while the price remains both relatively fix and high, since market demand also remains high through addiction. All that was needed then was drug traffickers to bring it to market, especially the US market.

Inevitably then came the War on Drugs. In 1971, president Nixon declare his famous “drugs are public enemy n°1” speech, while in 1976, Pablo Escobar founded the Medellin Cartel, and would go on to control the trade routes from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador as well, all the way to the United States. By the 1980s, his cartel would become a huge drug empire, and Escobar himself would become one of the world’s richest men.

The FARCs tried to stop coca production at first, in the areas they controlled. Local farmers becoming rich could stop supporting the Marxist guerrilla struggle after all, ideologically but also simply by buying more land. There were even fears that coca cultivation was introduced deliberately by “imperialist” forces, not least by the United States, specifically to achieve this, and separate the farmers, often the base of their support, from the FARC. However, they also realised that attacking farmers growing coca leaves would inevitably turn them away from them and into the hands of the government. A “losing the hearts and minds” risk, in the middle of the on-going resistance.

As a result, the FARC decided to extort the farmers instead, introducing a tax on coca farmers in the areas they controlled, primarily in the lower areas south of Bogota. Over time, and especially after Escobar himself was killed in 1993, various guerrilla and paramilitary groups, both left and right leaning and including the FARC, would fight each other, not only for political control, but for territorial control of the lucrative cocaine trade as well. By the early 2000s, especially after the Pastrana peace-talks went nowhere, the FARC were arguably at the height of their power, having about 20 000 members and controlling about one-third of all Colombian territory. The kidnappings brought them hundreds of millions of dollars equivalent very year, while the cocaine trade brought them billions. At the same time, Colombia was producing and distributing about 90% of the world’s illicit cocaine, whose main market was the United States.

As a general rule, much of this political situation in Colombia has been determined by the very specific geography of the country itself. The country is situated very close to the Equator, and is one of the most rain-prone countries on earth. It has a series of flat areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, with the former leading into the Amazonian Bassin. These flat plains are then separated by a series of mountain ranges where most of the people live. Essentially, most of the population live in the permanent temperate zone above the tropical line but below the tundra line, and enjoy a climate of near-permanent spring as a result.

The legal crops that Colombia is known for, like coffee, flowers and cocoa, mostly grow in the lower tropical areas along the mountain slopes. These crops need a good 12 hours of sunlight every day, good levels of heat and no frost whatsoever, and good levels of rain and humidity but not floodings, as can happen in the lowlands. The mountains of Colombia, often with their rich volcanic soils, are perfect for this kind of cultivation. There’s a reason Colombia is famous around the world for its coffee. Finally, of course, there are coca leaves, used to make cocaine, which also love these kind of growing conditions.

The otherwise beautiful geography of Colombia can explain much of its history, with major urban centres in the higher temperate altitudes, while various cartels and guerrilla groups could hide and run into the remote jungle lowlands, where infrastructure access was often limited at best.

By 2002, Alvaro Uribe of the Conservative Party was elected president. Uribe took a no nonsense approach and cracked down hard on the guerrilla fighters, not unlike what president Bukele of El Salvador has done recently against gang violence in his country today. The United States also decided then to massively step up its support for Colombia.

Under Uribe, murder and kidnappings fell by 40% and 80% respectively. By the time the FARC came around for peace talks in 2012, their numbers had fallen from 20 000 members to just 7000. Their historic leader, Juan Antonio Marin, had died in 2008. The FARC were fracturing, and retreating from controlling land to focusing on hit and run attacks and trying to increase their political reach. In 2016, this cumulated in the historic peace agreement, ending the decades long conflict with the FARC obtaining permanent seats in the national legislature, while the 7000 remaining armed members had to deposit their weapons in 23 hamlets to a UN commission around the country.

Since then, however, and after a brief period of noticeable peace in the country, the violence has sadly returned, not least because the removal of the FARC from large tracks of Colombian territory left a power vacuum that other groups, not least the ELN, have since exploited.

Essentially, the ELN has become the new FARC, oftentime recuiting former FARC members, and there are now frequent skirmishes, ambushes and hit-and-run attacks against the Colombian military. This is not unlike what has happened in Mexico since 2016 as well, follwing the capture of El Chapo, the infamous Sinaloa cartel leader, which also resulted in the fracturing of his own drug empire and the emergence of a new rival cartel, Jalisco New Generation. The drug trade is simply too lucrative for people not to fight over it.

Most of all, Colombia and the United States had long accused Venezuela, and the Maduro regime specifically, of harbouring and providing a safe shelter for the ELN to retreat to every time it gets into a fight with the Colombian military. Not unlike how Pakistan, either through assistance or simply inability to do anything about it, allowed the Taliban to always retreat from Afghanistan after getting into fights with the US military during the War on Terror.

The ELN, or National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional). They are arguably the successor movement to the FARCs, and have long benefited from support from the Maduro regime, even as much as waging a guerrilla war against the Colombian military and then retreating into neighbouring Venezuela, where the military cannot go.

What does all of this have to do with Trump, the left-leaning Colombian Petro?

Since the 2000s, in addition to providing military and drug enforcement assistance, the United States have also focused on economic development, particularly in the lower areas of Colombia. The idea was to give the campesinos (peasant farmers cultivating the more difficult plots of land in the more remote parts of the country, rather than the rich landowners) greater funding and access to legal markets, particularly the US one, so as to encourage them to move away from cocaine production. A hearts and minds strategy which, when combined with Uribe’s no-nonsense approach to fighting the FARC, was remarkably successful.

How successful? Total surface area in Colombia devoted to coca leaf production fell from over 160 000 hectares in 2000 to under 80 000 in 2007, a more than 50% drop. By and large then, these economic aid policies were working in reducing Colombian coca production, further weakening the FARC until the historic peace agreement. Since then however, the ELN and other groups have come in to fill the void, and coca production has, paradoxically, increased since 2016.

Gustavo Petro of the Liberal Party was elected president of Colombia in 2022, the first left-leaning president since the 90s. Already back in his youth, at 17 years old, he was a member of the infamous M-19 urban guerrilla movement, which, among other things was responsible for the theft of Simon Bolivar’s Sword, the murder of several prominent people including union leader José Raquel Mercado, and the siege of both the Dominican Republic embassy and the Palace of Justice, the latter where the group murdered 13 people. Petro himself would be arrested and imprisoned, though would also be released after M-19 entered peace talks with the government. Later on, he would go on to start his own political party, the M-19 Democratic Alliance, meet Hugo Chavez in 1994, get elected to the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate and, after starting yet another party, Humane Colombia, become mayor of Bogota and, eventually, president three years ago.

Petro has been called many things, from a liberal to a socialist to worse, and he does have a strong left-leaning political position. However, he is not really a serious marxist in the manner of, say, a Castro or a Chavez may have been. Instead, Petro is much more of an AMLO (Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador), the former left-leaning president of Mexico. Not exactly a socialist, and certainly not a marxist, but more of a left-leaning populist. A bombastic firebrand and larger-than-life character with a big ego and an “us vs. them” view of the world, who doesn’t like “elitist” institutions whom he accuses of always coming after him personally. Not unlike a certain current occupier of the White House as we speak.

Petro has been described by many as a populist, not unlike Trump himself, though with different political leanings. However, Trump’s withdrawal of funds to Colombian farmers, combined with the Maduro raid, is clearly designed to put maximum pressure on him, and for his country to realign itself with American interests.

Most of all, Petro has taken a very different attitude towards fighting the war on drugs, which he says has been a failed policy. He has instead insisted that drugs be considered a health emergency, and has even talked of legalising all drugs, including cocaine, in Colombia. He has regularly offered peace terms to the ELN and other groups, but with little success. In many ways, he has also tried a similar approach to AMLO, who also adopted his “Hugs, Not Bullets” policy in Mexico during his presidency, only for this to be quietly abandoned by his successsor Claudia Sheinbaum.

In fact, the main difference between Petro and AMLO seems to have been Trump himself, and the way he engaged with both men. Trump largely left AMLO alone during the course of 2019 and 2020, during his first term and after AMLO was elected, (and unlike his own successor Biden). He did not threaten to withhold any kind of aid or support to Mexico in response to Hugs not Bullets, despite the Mexican cartels sending ever more amounts of drugs over the border. The only area where he really requested AMLO’s support on was the southern border, and curbing immigration flows.

So why has Trump, by contrast, been so agressive with Petro?

This reflects a very different world, a worldview, that Trump has adopted between his first and second terms. Since leaving office in 2021, there has been the War in Ukraine, A major Chinese military buildout, yet another major war in the Middle-East, and of course the second Trump term in office. The latter has made it very clear that he would revive the Monroe doctrine, and would seek to place maximum pressure on Latin American nations not aligning themselves with American interests. Maduro was therefore very much a shock demonstration of this commitment to other nations in the western hemisphere, and Petro has been put on notice.

Trump is likely negotiating with Petro as we speak. He is notorious now (Iran, Venezuela, Greenland) for instigating all kinds of pressure tactics before major negotiations even begin. In the case of Colombia itself, he has clearly now removed such financial programs, from Colombian farmers in particular, so as to force Petro to negotiate on his terms.

Will Trump launch a Delta Force raid against Petro? This is very doubtful. Unlike Maduro, Petro was clearly and indisputably democratically elected in 2022, and his win was widely recognised by the international community, including the United States. His first term is not even over yet. To do so, especially after the Maduro raid, would definitely seal any semblance of goodwill between the United States and Latin America. Besides, despite the public rhetoric against each other, and unlike with Venezuela, the United States and Colombia still very much cooperate in many areas of the War on Drugs. It’s more about the manner in which this is carried out that both parties disagree.

Still, until a new deal is announced, and assuming Petro will even go along with such a deal, this withdrawal of funds to Colombian farmers will likely push many of them even more into cocaine production (since coffee and flowers will no longer receive the subsidies they once did), and into the hands of the ELN, the FARC’s designated successor group. This cannot be good either for Colombia, the wider region, or the United States themselves.

However, the removal of Nicolas Maduro from power in Venezuela also changes many things. Should Delcy Rodriguez, his designated successor, turn her country away from being a narco-state, which is possible given the new American pressure, she will likely stop harbouring ELN members on Venezuela’s western border with Colombia as well. This, in turn, will make life far more difficult for the ELN, not unlike what happened to the FARC in the 2000s.

Thus, the Maduro raid is clearly being used as a carrot and stick approach. Trump has put Petro on notice that he expects him to take a firmer approach to tackling drugs, whilst also providing the Colombian military with one of the best means of doing so. Now the ball is in Petro’s hands.

One thing seems certain though. Until Petro makes such deal, Trump is likely to only further up the pressure on him.

All the parties involved had agreed to what has been called the Arctic Framework.

This, of course, followed a ten-day long spat between the US president and his Danish and European counterparts over the island territory of Greenland.

Trump had threatened tariffs on 8 European nations over this and even evoked the possibility of military intervention. In the aftermath of the raid in Venezuela to capture president Maduro, such threats seemed all too real to many across the Pond. Several European states had even sent troops, albeit in small numbers, to the northern island in response.

Such an intervention was always unlikely to happen, for the many reasons I have written about here. Not least, because this would have been a sharp break away from Trump’s usual negotiation tactics, and because he also did not place any kind of military assets closer to Greenland to further put pressure on the Europeans in attempt to get a deal done, as he has elsewhere.

As such, the threats and fiery rhetoric were always clearly designed to upset and destabilise his negotiating counterparts prior to Davos.

Trump has long used such brazen and frankly bullying tactics prior to any negotiations, going back to his days as a real-estate mogul and long before he entered politics.

For instance, he once bought the plot of land in front of Mar-O-Lago, his famous estate and national landmark on the Florida coast, and then threatened to build a high rise building in front of it. When negotiations actually began with the then-owners of the estate, the property value of Mar-O-Lago had already fallen by several tens of millions of dollars, just on this announcement alone, and he was then able to buy the property, today valued at over $150 million, for just $7 million.

This is something that the Europeans must finally understand moving forward. Trump repeatedly talked about such negotiation tactics in the Art of the Deal, and has shown it over and over by now. He will always look for weaknesses in advance, find things most upsetting to you, put a maximum pressure on such weaknesses, all before even sitting at the negotiating table. He has done so not only with the Europeans over Greenland, but has of course also done so with Canada, making repeated calls for it to become the 51st state despite having no intention of carrying through with this. Placing Navy ships in the Caribbean to put a maximum pressure on Maduro prior to beginning negotiations with him. Etc, etc..

He also doesn’t care if such statements are deeply upsetting or insulting to you, and will experiment with words that will sometimes absolutely go too far, like shamefully belittling the fallen soldiers of allied nations who fought alongside American ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, during the War on Terror. Not least because this also panders to elements of his political base. He has since repeatedly apologised for such vile comments, but of course the damage is done.

Still, make no mistake, he will absolutely continue to do so again every time he needs to sit down at the table with the Europeans, or anyone else. You can see it as his own personal negotiation battle strategy, for that is exactly how he sees every such negotiation.

How should his counterparts respond?

There are two options. If he’s not carrying out any kind of action to seemingly back up his threats, the best option is to simply ignore and not respond. Wait him out until the meetings actually take place, like with Greenland. Despite the threats, Trump did not actually carry out the tariffs, did not actually place military assets closer to Greenland and has since apologised for his comments. It was all bluff.

If he does place military assets closer to you, like he did in the Caribbean Sea or across the Middle-East last year, then you know he is likely to use such assets in some capacity, since he’s already engaged them. The best option then is to quickly enter into direct negotiations, and be prepared to compromise since Trump has now shown he’s willing to use the military option. Something the mullahs failed to do prior to the end of negotiations that then started the 12-Day War. Something Maduro did not understand, but that his successor Delcy Rodriguez seemingly has.

Should the Europeans try to respond in kind next time? Should they pre-emptively strike first across the media, and try to rattle Trump, including with threats before negotiations begin?

They technically could. They could question for instance their commitment to the United States if it were to ever find itself in a war in the Pacific against China, for instance, just as Trump has questioned US involvement in a European war against Russia. They could express doubt as to whether or not they wish to continue using the Dollar as a reserve currency, or threaten to sell off US Treasuries, which would absolutely cause a debt crisis in the United States. Someone like Macron could, for instance, ask for the Statue of Liberty back, or say they’re on their way to New Amsterdam and not New York, for a UN summit for instance. It’s petty of course, but it is the tactics Trump uses already.

However, it’s not recommended. Trump very much sees the world as divided into those who are strong and those who are weak. If you threaten Trump, he will feel obligated to show strength, and therefore likely overreact, with all of the unpredictable escalating consequences that could have.

Right now, it is simply a framework and not an actual final deal, and of course doesn’t mention Greenland directly, since that has become too sensitive a subject matter. Still, it does mean that after Davos, Trump and the Europeans have agreed to the beginnings of a deal. They’ve likely agreed to the main points of contention, like the United States having military bases on the island. I’ve even heard rumours that there might be a deal to make such bases sovereign US territory, like the British bases on the islands of Cyprus or Diego Garcia, or the American cemeteries in Normandy. It’s certainly something I can see the Danes agreeing to, since it will give them the added benefit of not having to defend Greenland itself from Russia, in an era of doubtful alliance commitments, especially on the American side.

Now, such a framework simply needs to chisel out the details, in order to become a final deal. Maybe even a treaty. Something that will be done behind closed doors and away from the cameras, with others like special envoys or diplomats working on it.

Not Trump himself of course. He doesn’t do the actual negotiating himself, except maybe on the final day. Instead, he understand the power of the media all too well. He understands how much they can be used as a bargaining chip to put maximum pressure on his counterparties before the negotiations begin.

As such, until his term is finally over, you better believe he’s all there for the cameras.