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國際現勢 -- 開欄文
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瀏覽18,615 ｜回應26｜推薦2 |
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川普上台後，世局大戲一齣接一齣；國際高潮一波又一波。他並非原因或主角，只不過身間觸媒和插科打諢兩個角色而已。悲劇變鬧劇一再上演，根據「量變導致質變」法則，在川痞/川瘋/川丑三合一變形臭蟲下台前，我們怕不是要看好幾場慘劇。能不能渡過這個「川劫」，就要看我們大家的造化，和一眾善男信女「阿門」或「阿彌陀佛」的修為了。
由於節目繁多，劇情層出不窮：
1) 「親愛的，我把『規則』變沒了」
2) 「親愛的，我不裝了！自由主義的面具太沉重，還是帝國主義本尊帥氣」
3) 「親愛的，『大衛大戰歌利亞』的戲碼改成『卡尼勇嗆川瘋子』」
4) 「親愛的，『阿貓阿狗』們登場機會來了」
5)、6)、7)、8)、9)…，族繁不及備載。
故開此欄，一起欣賞當下各顯神通，讓人眼花繚爛的棋局和好戲。同喜還是同悲，且聽下回分解。本部落格原有個別地區或重大議題的專欄，仍然照常營業。
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美國武器短缺亞洲盟國心驚 -- Cate Cadell等
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請參看本欄2026/09/08貼文；針對伊朗戰爭所導致：「美國武器短缺」的問題，下文分析更為深入。
U.S. weapons shortage from Iran war alarms allies confronting China
Concerns are growing in Asia and within the Pentagon that dwindling stockpiles will embolden China and North Korea.
Cate Cadell/Noah Robertson/John Hudson, The Washington Post, 08/27/26
FILE - A U.S.-made Patriot missile is launched during an annual exercises in Ilan County, 80 kilometers (49 miles) west of Taipei, Taiwan, on July 20, 2006. Patriot missile systems have long been a hot ticket item for the U.S. and allies in contested areas of the world as a coveted shield against incoming missiles. In Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, they guard against potential strikes from Iran, Somalia and North Korea. So it was a critical turning point when news broke this week that the U.S. has agreed to send a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine (AP Photo/File) 飛彈射擊照片
The massive expenditure of U.S. munitions in the Middle East is increasingly worrying Asian allies and frustrating Pentagon officials overseeing the Indo-Pacific, who fear that the prolonged war with Iran could undermine U.S. readiness for a conflict with China as it continues to step up military pressure across the region.
Concerns about the depleted stockpile come as the United States canceled an amphibious landing exercise with South Korea scheduled for September, citing demands on U.S. forces from the war in Iran, a week after President Donald Trump announced that he was scaling back joint military exercises with the key ally.
South Korea and other U.S. partners in Asia, including Japan and Taiwan, rely on Washington as the dominant supplier of major conventional weapons and are reckoning with years-long backlogs. The Middle East conflict has intensified those strains, consuming and reallocating munitions that could be critical in a war with China.
One Taiwanese official said they expect "significant delays" of Pac-3 Patriot missiles due to the drain on supplies as the Pentagon has depleted most of its interceptor stockpile in the Middle East, describing the shift in focus from the Indo-Pacific as "troubling."
In December, Beijing staged its largest-ever military drill around Taiwan, encircling the democratically governed island with ships and aircraft. Nearly $30 billion in U.S. arms approved for sale to Taiwan have yet to be delivered, including $882 million worth of Patriot missiles, according to Taiwan Security Monitor.
Japan has similarly been warned by the Pentagon of possible delays in defense shipments, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to an Asian diplomat familiar with the matter.
Current and former officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of arms sales discussions and U.S. military supplies.
Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said in May that delays were "possible" but there had been no change in Tokyo's plans to acquire Tomahawk missiles. Taiwanese defense officials told Taiwan's parliament in March that they still expect 102 Patriots to be delivered this year. The Financial Times reported in May that deliveries of 400 Tomahawks to Japan could be delayed as much as two years.
Japan's Embassy in Washington and Taipei's representative office in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. A Defense Department official said "the Joint Force remains postured, ready, and capable of deterring aggression" in the Indo-Pacific, adding that U.S. military resources, including naval forces, routinely move between combatant commands.
"It seems to me that the likelihood that [Taiwan is] going to get a whole 100 is pretty low. I think the number one priority for the United States, rightly, will be refilling its own stockpiles," said Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the Washington think tank Defense Priorities.
"The United States probably also feels like it owes Gulf state allies some replenishment. The war on Iran is not over," she said.
The drain on weapons in Iran has become a source of tension between President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, The Post has reported, though the president has repeatedly denied that U.S. weapons stockpiles are running low.
Borrowed radars, diverted ships
Officials at Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in Asia, have also expressed frustration over the shifting focus and dwindling resources available to deter Beijing, according to three people familiar with the matter.
One U.S. official said more than 30 ships that were supposed to be in the Pacific had been sent to the Middle East during the war.
"It's clear that they're paying a big price, especially on the Navy side of things," the official said.
This month, the Japan-based USS George Washington was diverted to the Middle East, relieving pressure on the USS Abraham Lincoln after concerns about its extended deployment and conditions for sailors aboard the ship.
The departure of the region's last aircraft carrier underscores a broader diversion of U.S. forces from the Indo-Pacific, where China fields the world's largest navy by number of vessels.
Since the Iran war began, the Pentagon has drawn down several advanced missile-defense systems including Patriot interceptors.
In April, Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, confirmed during testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee that radars used in missile defense systems were taken from the Korean Peninsula ahead of U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025, and that additional munitions were moved this year. He said the THAAD interceptor system, the centerpiece of U.S. missile defense on the peninsula, remains in place.
A one-way warming with China
Questions about U.S. military readiness in the region come as Trump is sending warmer overtures to top U.S. adversaries there: Chinese leader Xi Jinping and North Korea's Kim Jong Un.
Trump has repeatedly said that Xi won't invade Taiwan while Trump is president, though Beijing has never publicly stated as much. Trump recently described Kim as "unthreatening and respectful," and said he expects to meet with the North Korean leader this year.
A roughly $14 billion U.S. arms package for Taiwan was shelved ahead of Trump's May summit in Beijing with Xi. The two leaders are expected to meet in Washington on Sept. 24.
One Chinese official said any signals that the White House will approve the package would "severely undermine" further potential visits this year.
Beijing has brushed off requests from the Pentagon's policy chief to visit China for discussions on the military relationship. For months, the undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, has in vain pushed for a meeting with Chinese defense policy planners, according to two diplomats familiar with the matter. China's lack of interest was first reported by Politico.
Colby, alongside others in the White House and the Pentagon, has prodded Asian allies to shoulder more of their own defense costs. At a forum in the Philippines this month, he pushed back against any suggestion that the region is being deprioritized. "We are not leaving; in fact, we are digging in," he said.
Allies have struggled with the contradiction of that pressure to spend more on U.S. arms while facing delays in delivery. "The situation is very challenging," the Taiwanese official said.
Trump in May raised concerns in Taipei about his commitment to Taiwan when he described arms sales to the island as a "good negotiating chip" with China, though an $11 billion arms package approved by the president late last year represents the largest-ever single U.S. arms commitment to Taiwan.
Beijing has continued to ramp up military activity this year. Following its record-breaking military drills around Taiwan in December, China has expanded military infrastructure on disputed reefs in the South China Sea and squeezed Taipei with a spate of new coast guard drills near the island.
In July, Beijing also celebrated its first known test of a sea-based nuclear-capable missile, rattling the United States and its Asian allies.
"Beijing continues to manufacture its own reasons for increased drills and military pressure around the island," said Craig Singleton, senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which tracks the frequency of Chinese incursions near Taiwan.
Window of vulnerability
Questions about the state of U.S. munitions in the Indo-Pacific have sharpened during the war in Ukraine. The U.S. has sent billions of dollars worth of weapons to support Kyiv, but of different types than what would be needed in a long-range, maritime-heavy conflict in the Pacific.
The Iran war, however, has more directly affected the Pentagon's Asia deterrence posture, experts say.
"Between Iran and the western Pacific, there's a lot of overlap," said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior adviser at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has run dozens of war games since 2023 examining how quickly U.S. munitions could be depleted.
Those war games found that defending against an invasion of Taiwan would probably exceed current Pentagon supply plans and that many critical weapons would be exhausted within weeks.
"Even at the beginning of the war against Iran, we were likely inadequate for a conflict with China in the western Pacific," said Cancian.
Xi has instructed China's military to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027, according to U.S. intelligence officials, though recent assessments say Chinese leaders do not currently have imminent plans to do so.
The theoretical deadline, however, underscores what analysts and officials say is a "window of vulnerability" in U.S. munition stores.
The Pentagon has pressed defense contractors to dramatically accelerate weapons production and awarded Lockheed Martin a $58.6 billion contract to triple Patriot interceptor production by 2030.
Beijing has not fought in a hot war since its 1979 conflict with Vietnam, but in the decades since, it has built a rapidly expanding arsenal of sophisticated ballistic, hypersonic and anti-ship missiles.
China's defenses are far more advanced than Iran's, making close-in attacks far riskier and increasing reliance on long-range missiles that can strike from safer distances. Across simulations run by CSIS, the U.S. generally expended 5,000 long-range missiles in just four weeks of conflict with China.
The Post reported that more than 850 Tomahawks were fired in the first four weeks of the Iran war. CSIS estimates that figure has since exceeded 1,000, from a prewar stockpile of between 3,100 and 4,500 missiles.
The Pentagon has depleted other key long-range munitions, including roughly a quarter of its prewar stock of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles and as much as three-quarters of its 90 Precision Strike Missiles, according to April CSIS figures.
Most critical, analysts say, is the rapid depletion of defense munitions, including THAAD and Patriot missiles, which have been deployed extensively in both Ukraine and the Middle East.
"They are the most critical because there are no good substitutes. When you run out of Patriots, when you're out of THAADs, there's no way you can stop missiles coming in," said Cancian.
In an Indo-Pacific conflict, missile-defense interceptors would shield the roughly two dozen U.S. bases in Asia and tens of thousands of American troops in Japan and South Korea.
Analysts estimate that the U.S. has already expended most of its pre-Iran-war inventory of Patriots and THAAD interceptors, leaving only around 1,000, according to CSIS figures published in late July.
"China has 3,000 ballistic missiles or more. So that's just bad math," said Kavanagh.
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美軍高端防空飛彈低庫存背景 - Doyle McManus
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希望習總千萬不要因為這篇報導的訊息，而起了躍躍欲試或鋌而走險的念頭。此外，美國的「財大氣粗」碰上無人機這種新科技，就露出一戳就破的「紙老虎」原形。
U.S. is running low on advanced defensive missiles — and it could take years to recover
Doyle McManus, 09/06/26
The statistics are sobering — so sobering that Defense Department officials refuse to confirm, deny or discuss them.
From Feb. 28 through July, the first five months of the war with Iraq, U.S. forces burned through almost 60% of the nation's advanced defensive missiles — the Patriot and THAAD interceptors that protect American troops.
When the war began, the Pentagon had almost 2,800 Patriot and THAAD missiles in its worldwide inventory, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent think tank. By the end of July, that number had dropped to about 1,100, CSIS reported. Almost two-thirds of the Patriots and almost 40% of the longer-range THAAD were gone.
"This is a generational annihilation of our theater missile defense capability," said Tom Karako, director of CSIS's Missile Defense Project. "There's no way you can look at this and not see it's a setback."
The White House and the Pentagon have not challenged the CSIS figures, although they have issued sweeping denials that any shortage exists.
"We have far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need," President Trump said in July.
That's true, but misleading. The U.S. military still holds vast inventories of short-range offensive missiles. But the sophisticated defensive missiles that protect U.S. troops no longer are abundant — as even Trump has acknowledged.
"We have certain types of munitions [of which] we have unlimited, virtual unlimited supply," he said last month. "We have others where it's a little bit tighter."
The result is a squeeze that has prompted U.S. commanders to husband Patriot and THAAD interceptors as scarce assets.
For much of August, when a frayed de facto ceasefire was in effect, U.S. forces did not respond with high-end missiles when Iran attacked oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
But when Iran launched rockets against U.S. bases in Jordan last week, Patriots reportedly were used to knock the incoming missiles down. (The Pentagon has declined to confirm or deny those reports.)
The U.S. weapons arsenal "no longer has the capacity to deter a Chinese attack against Taiwan," the Council on Foreign Relations warned in a report last month. Defense planners share the same concern over a potential Russian assault on the Baltic states.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has forecast that the Pentagon's inventory of missiles would run out "within the first week of a Taiwan conflict."
In Europe, a U.S. defense official told the Associated Press last month that the shortfall was "beyond critical." If Russia attacked a NATO country, the official said, U.S. forces in the area would "take punch after punch in the mouth."
The core question is whether the United States has so few missiles that it cannot credibly deter China or Russia from attacking their neighbors.
"You've got to be strong enough to send a clear message that our enemies should not try anything because we're a credible force," said Leon Panetta, President Obama's former defense secretary. "Now we're losing a lot of that credibility — and that's dangerous."
Knowing that U.S. forces have been left without thousands of weapons needed to deter conflict, Karako said, could in itself be provocative. "It could tempt an aggressor to do something, knowing that we have fewer [missiles] to thwart them."
The obvious remedy is to build more interceptors — a process Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered even before the war began. But ramping up missile production won't immediately replenish the stockpile.
Before the Iran war, defense contractors were producing only about 620 Patriots and 96 THAAD each year — fewer than half the number expended during a few weeks this spring.
At current production rates, it will take at least three years to return the Patriot inventory to its prewar level, and at least four years for THAAD, CSIS reported.
Defense experts warn that the stocks need to be even larger than they were before the war to credibly deter China or Russia.
Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and principal author of the CSIS estimates, says most analysts believe it will take years after replenishing the stocks expended in the Persian Gulf to build a credible deterrent against China.
The Pentagon has enough munitions, both offensive and defensive, to continue fighting the campaign against Iran, he added — but some of those less-sophisticated weapons can be used only at shorter ranges, which means placing more troops in harm's way.
Cancian said the CSIS figures were based on publicly available Pentagon budget and acquisition documents, updated in some cases from recent press reports — but not from leaks of classified information.
The roots of the missile shortage began long before the war with Iran. Trump and Hegseth are not the only ones to blame, although their belief that Iran would quickly capitulate appears to have been a major factor.
Nor did former President Biden cause the shortage, as Trump has claimed Biden gave several hundred Patriots to Ukraine, but the shortfall is far larger than that.
The underlying problem, defense experts say, is that the United States designed its missile defense programs for a world in which only a few major powers like China and Russia posed serious threats.
But the landscape of military technology has changed. Missiles and drones have become cheaper and easier to acquire, and countries like Iran can strike targets at great distances without making a huge investment in weaponry.
That's a transformational change — and the Pentagon has been behind the curve, argues Michael C. Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "This is the kind of situation in which great-power militaries like the United States struggle," he said.
So the Trump administration faces several challenges. It needs to replenish its depleted stores of advanced defensive missiles — a process that has only just begun, and which Congress has not yet funded. Meanwhile, Horowitz and others argue, it also needs to build less expensive missile and drone systems to fill the multiyear gap before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be restored.
The Pentagon has begun that process, deploying several relatively inexpensive anti-drone missile systems.
Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year included $7.7 billion for low-cost missile and drone programs, but 13 months later, more than 90% of the money remains unspent, Horowitz said.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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中、美太空爭霸戰蓄勢欲發 -- Cassell Bryan-Low等
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US, China arm for space warfare: hunter satellites and orbital weapons
Amid the rapidly-evolving field of military space operations, Beijing and Washington are preparing for the possibility of conflict extending into space.
Cassell Bryan-Low/Joey Roulette/Eduardo Baptista, 09/02/26
In June, a secretive unmanned Chinese spaceplane closely monitored by U.S. military analysts released a small satellite hundreds of miles above Earth in an orbital region crowded with commercial and military satellites. The object then looped around another Chinese satellite before returning towards the spaceplane, according to U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs.
Little is known about the satellite or the mission. But the U.S. military operates a similarly secretive spaceplane resembling a small shuttle, also with no crew. Both programs reflect the rapidly evolving field of military space operations as Beijing and Washington prepare for the possibility of conflict extending into space, according to a Reuters review of documents, space-tracking data and interviews with current and former military officials.
Chinese researchers linked to the military are developing technologies ranging from satellites designed to pursue and even capture other spacecraft to systems that could extend fuel supplies while doing so, according to a Reuters review of patent-related documents, procurement notices and academic papers. And the United States and Britain conducted their first joint military operation in space in the path of a suspected Chinese spy satellite, according to commercial space-tracking data.
"The Chinese are rapidly developing capabilities," including ground- and space-based weapons designed to interfere with or destroy targets, U.S. Space Force’s Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman said in July. The threat from China is "substantial," added Saltzman, who is retiring.
Satellites have become indispensable to modern warfare, as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated. For decades they have provided communications, navigation and intelligence services to armed forces on Earth, and once placed in orbit typically remained on fixed paths. Increasingly, however, militaries view them as active weapons platforms capable of launching attacks by disrupting a satellite’s operations through jamming or laser dazzling, or even capturing enemy spacecraft.
Disruption of U.S. space capabilities would "cripple our massive military in the terrestrial sphere," affecting everything from surveillance to missile defense, said Everett Dolman, a former professor at the U.S. Air Force's Air War College. Spaceplanes, because they are agile and capable of deploying satellites or carrying cargo, could appear to opponents as potential "space fighters," he said.
ALLIES JOIN THE U.S. EFFORT
The growing competition comes as Earth's orbit becomes increasingly crowded. SpaceX, which recently debuted on public markets, operates about 11,000 Starlink satellites and plans a constellation of larger AI-enabled data centers in space. China is building rival networks, while U.S. President Donald Trump's Golden Dome missile defense program envisions space-based interceptors.
The United States is also refining capabilities that could prove important in a future conflict.
In the joint U.S.-British operation in September last year, U.S. space forces working from a base in Colorado directed a U.S. military satellite to swoop in close to a UK one as China's Shiyan 12-01 satellite passed about 83 kilometers beneath them, according to space intelligence company Slingshot Aerospace. At that altitude, specialists consider the distance relatively close.
Three space experts with military backgrounds told Reuters it appeared intended as a signal to Beijing, including at space-tracking firm COMSPOC. Andrew Turner, a retired senior British air force officer who is now a space consultant, said it was “almost certainly a strategic signal to China” to demonstrate allied unity, capability and a warning to not interfere with the UK satellite.
The U.S. and Britain publicly announced the operation, the first known one between two members of the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance, but did not disclose its proximity to a Chinese spacecraft. Much of what occurs in space remains classified because of its intelligence implications.
U.S. Space Command told Reuters the mission demonstrated the ability to work with allies in space. Britain's defense ministry said space is increasingly important to military operations and the UK and its partners were conducting advanced orbital operations to protect their national and military interests. Neither commented on the operation’s proximity to the Chinese satellite.
The U.S. Space Force’s next chief of space operations, Lieutenant General Douglas Schiess, had been involved in the operation. In an interview shortly afterward, he said operating close to another spacecraft could help verify whether an allied satellite is functioning properly or determine whether an adversary is "doing something it shouldn't." He declined to say at the time whether another country's satellite had been nearby.
Britain recently disclosed that the mission was conducted alongside a maritime deployment to the Indo-Pacific region.
Using space not only to support military operations on Earth but also to influence their outcome is "really, really important," then U.K. Space Command chief Major General Paul Tedman said in April at a conference. He has since retired from the military.
China's foreign ministry said it was not familiar with the specific details of the U.S.-British operation. More broadly, Beijing opposes the weaponization of space and supports its peaceful use, the ministry said, while accusing Washington of stoking an arms race through efforts including the missile defense system Golden Dome and potential space-based weapons.
Asked about Shiyan 12-01 and the Chinese spaceplane, the ministry said it had no information. State news agency Xinhua has described Shiyan 12-01 as conducting space environment surveys, and the spaceplane as an experimental craft supporting the peaceful use of space.
U.S. Space Force says its own spaceplane is carrying out a range of tests and experiments.
SPACE WEAPONS
U.S. Space Command head General Stephen Whiting has repeatedly emphasized the importance of space to modern warfare, warning that adversaries are developing capabilities to deny the United States access to key systems and reduce military effectiveness. He has said adversaries would likely seek to target U.S. space assets early in a conflict.
To counter such threats, the U.S. must adopt a more active warfighting posture in space, Whiting argues. That means not only protecting U.S. systems but also being prepared to threaten or strike hostile assets if necessary. He has called for orbital interceptors and other weapons.
"We must be well-prepared for conflict in space. And if deterrence fails, we will fight and win," he told a conference in April.
We must be well-prepared for conflict in space
U.S. Space Command chief General Stephen Whiting
Western officials warn of a range of threats, including ground-based lasers, electronic jammers, cyberattacks and anti-satellite missiles.
In orbit, the United States, China and Russia all operate maneuverable satellites capable of approaching and inspecting other spacecraft. Such systems could be adapted to carry weapons, including lasers or projectiles. Western officials say Beijing and Moscow have demonstrated technologies that could be used to threaten U.S. and allied satellites.
The U.S. has also accused Russia of developing an anti-satellite capability involving a satellite designed to carry a nuclear weapon. Moscow has denied that it is developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon.
The UK's Tedman, in an interview last fall, said militaries now see satellites as “weapons systems” that need to maneuver and fight. The West is “working hard to retain our strategic advantage in space,” he said.
Some specialists note that disrupting satellites remains easier from Earth than through spacecraft-on-spacecraft attacks.
In a rare disclosure about its own capabilities, the U.S. Space Force announced in June that it had introduced an earthbound electromagnetic weapon from L3Harris Technologies designed to disable or disrupt adversary satellites.
"DOGFIGHTING" AND HUNTER SATELLITES
Although the United States remains the world's leading space power, China is rapidly expanding both the number of satellites it operates and the complexity of its missions.
Chinese satellites have demonstrated what U.S. officials describe as orbital "dogfighting," which includes multiple satellites moving in a synchronized way in proximity. Chinese spacecraft have also shown the ability to capture a defunct satellite and move it into a different orbit.
Last year, China conducted what was likely an on-orbit refueling attempt, according to a U.S. Space Force official. Refueling would be a major breakthrough because satellites are normally constrained by the fuel they launch with. The ability to replenish fuel could determine whether a spacecraft remains a hunter or becomes the hunted.
Chinese institutions continue to pursue new capabilities. Patent-related documents show the maker of some of China's most advanced military aircraft acquired technology that allows satellites to autonomously calculate fuel-efficient maneuvers while pursuing another spacecraft.
Meanwhile, a technology-transfer notice published by the National University of Defense Technology described a mature system capable of managing hundreds of satellites simultaneously for both defensive and operational purposes.
Researchers at another major Chinese university with close military ties have also been developing pursuit satellites, including concepts involving multiple spacecraft using nets to capture targets, according to patent-related documents.
The institutions and the People's Liberation Army did not respond to requests for comment. On-orbit capabilities such as re-fueling and capturing another satellite could have non-military uses.
China's official military's newspaper, PLA Daily, said in a 2022 editorial that controlling space was essential for safeguarding national security, seizing the strategic initiative and achieving victory in war.
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伊朗戰爭的確改變了中東局勢 – Joseph Krasuss
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請參考：
* US and Iran trade attacks, marking first major military escalation in a month (08/31)
* Iran Is Facing Its Soviet Moment and Possibly Its End (08/30)
* Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations (08/30)
* Six Months Into the Iran War, Who Is Winning? (08/28)
* After six months, the Iran war has reached its endgame - a costly stalemate (08/27)
Six months on, the Iran war has changed the Middle East, but not in the way its architects had hoped
JOSEPH KRAUSS, 08/28/26
It's been six months since the United States and Israel attacked Iran with the perennial goal of transforming the Middle East through military force. The region has changed, but not in the way they had hoped.
The Islamic Republic survived the assassination of its top leaders and weeks of heavy bombing, and found a potent form of leverage in the Strait of Hormuz. Gulf Arab nations saw worrying gaps open up in the American security umbrella they have relied on for decades — and some are looking at alternatives.
Israel has once again thrashed its enemies without defeating them, and after nearly three years of war in Gaza and new land seizures, is at risk of a generational rupture with the U.S., its closest ally. Hopes of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia — another enduring U.S. and Israeli aspiration — have dimmed even further.
When they attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the U.S. and Israel hoped to topple its clerical leadership and replace it with a pro-Western government. Instead, they've ended up with a "hardened and very radical regime," said Barbara Leaf, a former ambassador who served as assistant secretary of state for the Middle East in the Biden administration.
"That is going to be exceptionally difficult to deal with, to say the least," she said. Iran's "confidence has grown over the months that it cannot only survive, but it can prevail, it can reset the regional landscape."
Iran was on the ropes before the attack
In the runup to the war, the Islamic Republic appeared more vulnerable than at any point since Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded in 1980.
Iran's currency had cratered, setting off some of the biggest anti-government protests in its history, which were brutally suppressed in January, with thousands killed. Israel and the U.S. had pounded its military and nuclear sites during a 12-day war the previous summer, and its militant allies had been throttled in the wars that followed Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of Gaza.
But the tide changed shortly after the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes, as Iran's leaders were quickly replaced and its people — sheltering from the war — ignored exhortations from the attackers to rise up again.
Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical trade route for oil and gas, and attacked Gulf countries hosting U.S. troops, rattling the global economy. U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to a ceasefire in April and signed a deal with Iran in June, which crumbled weeks later.
Iran is now determined to exert permanent control over the strait, to use it to ward off future attacks and secure other concessions, while giving no ground on its disputed nuclear program. It's a risky gamble, especially as the U.S. tightens its blockade and vows new sanctions on Iran's already battered economy.
"Iran has demonstrated that Hormuz gives it significant leverage, but prolonged disruption also hurts its neighbors, China, and the global economy, while encouraging alternatives to the strait," said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on Iran and the Gulf at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.
"Tehran's danger is confusing its ability to survive with victory and demanding more than its leverage can deliver," he said.
Gulf nations doubt US security guarantees
For decades, the U.S. has been committed to protecting wealthy Gulf oil exporters from external aggression, using a sprawling network of bases across the region.
The arrangement helped secure global energy markets, deterred Saddam's Iraq and later Iran, and contributed to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf nations becoming havens of prosperity in a volatile region.
It's been tested before, but never like this.
Iran retaliated against Israel, but it also trained its missiles and drones on Gulf nations that had hoped to stay out of the war. It struck U.S. bases and critical energy infrastructure, stretching air defenses and drawing down American supplies of sophisticated interceptors.
Iran responded to attacks on its civilian infrastructure by striking its neighbors' desalination plants. That raised fears that a war begun without consultation with Gulf nations could lead to catastrophic attacks on their water and electricity.
"The fact that the war began without a clear political objective and against the advice of key regional partners, and that there has not been clear evidence of a Plan B once the initial attacks failed to dislodge the Iranian regime, is likely to undermine confidence in the U.S. across the region and may take some time to repair," said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Last month, Saudi Arabia entered into a new defense pact with Pakistan and Turkey, an early indication that stalwart American allies might seek new security arrangements. Their options are limited, however.
"The dilemma facing Gulf states is there is no viable alternative to the full range of defense and security networks with the U.S.," Ulrichsen said.
Israel batters its enemies but risks losing its closest friend
Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah launched missiles into Israel days after the outbreak of the war, triggering heavy retaliatory airstrikes and another ground invasion. Israel has reoccupied large parts of southern Lebanon, adding to its wider seizure of territory following the Oct. 7 attack.
Its many tactical victories have come at a mounting cost in international isolation. Israel has been widely accused of genocide in Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, all of which Israel adamantly denies.
Of greater concern for Israel is its unprecedented erosion of support in the United States. That accelerated as some critics came to see it as having led the U.S. into another Mideast war, something to which the Trump administration has at times lent credence.
As the war settled into a stalemate over the summer, outspoken critics of Israel won some key Democratic primaries across the United States and more than half of House Democrats voted to cut aid to Israel. Israel has also come in for growing criticism from the right.
In addition to deteriorating sentiment in the U.S., there's less chance of forming stronger ties with other countries. Normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia appears increasingly distant.
"The conflicts that have swept across the region since Oct. 7 have led officials in Saudi Arabia to view the current Israeli leadership as contributing to regional instability and not therefore a viable diplomatic partner at the moment," Ulrichsen said.
Krauss reported from across the Middle East for over two decades, including postings in Cairo, Jerusalem and Baghdad.
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世界將走向「具有中國特色」 - Mark Leonard
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A Future With Chinese Characteristics
Mark Leonard, 08/18/26
The world is undergoing a historical and cultural rupture. Just as Hollywood and other American exports once gave the rest of the world a glimpse of modern life and the future that awaited them, China is now doing the same for African, Latin American, and even American young people.
BERLIN—For much of the 20th century, the United States represented not just a place on the map. It was also a point in time. When Western Europeans looked at images of America after World War II—depictions of Hollywood’s glamor, American cars, and newfangled labor-saving devices—they thought they were looking into the future.
The American Dream had an especially irresistible draw for East Europeans behind the Iron Curtain, and for tens of millions of Chinese during the opening and reform era that began after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. China’s great economic reinvention was inspired, in part, by Deng Xiaoping’s awe at American modernity, which he witnessed firsthand during an official visit in 1979.
But fast-forward to 2026, and the positions have been reversed. For most people in most countries, the future can now be seen in China. Just as Hollywood once showed the world what modern life looked like, China is showing African, Latin American, and even American young people what an economy built on green energy, mobile payments and other services, and advanced robotics looks like. For Cobus van Staden of the China-Global South Project, the West is “increasingly being framed as backward-looking [and] associated with the past,” a phenomenon presumably accelerated by Trumpism, with its rejection of renewable energy, diversity, and its social conservatism.
In many parts of the West, disillusionment has given rise to Chinamaxxing on social media, with American and European influencers performatively embracing Chinese mannerisms and aesthetics. And in the Global South, young people aren’t just imitating Chinese practices like drinking hot water or trying out tai chi. They are watching as China reshapes their daily experiences.
This signals a genuine historical rupture. For generations, most countries defined themselves in relation to the West. Some sought (or were convinced) to emulate Western development models like the Washington Consensus, and many were keen to acquire Western technology and aid, or simply to get the West’s approval. Other countries did push back against the West’s influence and attack Western hypocrisy, but their counter-models were themselves defined by opposition to the West.
Either way, West-centrism was the prism through which geopolitics was conducted and interpreted. When countries in the Sahel invited Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries to help them deal with insurgencies, it was seen as a reaction against France and its traditional role in the region. When Angola invited Sinopec to exploit its oil fields, it was seen as a snub to Portugal and the United Kingdom. And then there are the many challenges to US hegemony in the Middle East, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Around the world, memories of bloody Western interventions or financial crises still linger.
Yet younger generations around the world are not even pro- or anti-Western so much as they are post-Western. For them, China, not the US, is at the center of their conceptual universe and envisaged future.
What happened? One of the big differences between countries in the Global South and the Global North is their demographic profile. In the US and Europe, the median age is 40–50, compared to 19 in Nigeria, and 29 in South Africa, India, and Lebanon. That means some 70% of Nigerians aren’t even old enough to have registered the 2003 US invasion of Iraq or the 2008 global financial crisis. As Cobus points out, young West Africans “never knew anything more than the US as we know it now.” The era of Donald Trump encompasses their entire political memory, and they presumably are not very impressed.
This shift in perceptions is not just an African story, of course. In Vietnam, which has long had a fraught relationship with China, young people are becoming less reflexively Sinophobic than their elders. Chelsea Nguyen, a researcher at the London School of Economics, credits the COVID-19 pandemic for catalyzing this change. The West’s perceived mishandling of the pandemic undermined its status as a model worthy of emulation. Many Vietnamese turned to exploring their own history and that of their Asian neighbors, including China. As in much of Africa, growing exposure to China’s rapid technological progress and Chinese consumer goods transformed the country’s global brand.
Meanwhile, Loubna El Amine, a China scholar at King’s College London, notes that in regions riven by instability—such as the Middle East, where the US itself is a big part of the problem—“a lot of the attraction of China is its absence rather than presence.” The latest Arab Opinion Index bears this out, showing that 77% of respondents view US policies as a threat to the region’s security and stability, compared with just 25% for China—and that was well before Trump launched his catastrophic war against Iran. And, of course, China carries none of the colonial baggage that complicates European interventions (or even peacebuilding efforts) in the region.
Still, China has been known to be aggressive in pursuing its economic agenda in the developing world, whether through predatory loans, acquiring critical national infrastructure, or deliberately exporting its domestic overcapacity. Such behavior ruffles feathers as much in Thailand, Mexico, and Nigeria as it does in the US and Europe. Moreover, young people’s widespread distrust of their governments can easily bleed into unhappiness with China when political leaders are seen to be giving it undue privileges.
Since the pivot to China as an exemplar of modernity is in many ways pragmatic and non-ideological, its hold on the popular imagination is still tenuous. Lots of leaders in the West want to compete with China for “soft power.” But the key is not to counter Chinese “propaganda” or improve Western PR. The winners in the battle for hearts and minds will be those who offer real solutions to people’s problems and create more opportunities for prosperity than are currently available.
Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, is the author, most recently, of Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail (Polity Press, 2026). He’s been writing for PS since 2004.
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美海軍最後一艘亞洲航母移防中東 – Ben Finley/Didi Tang
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請參考：
* How Trump’s war blew a hole in Western defences (子標題：Months of downing Iranian missiles has left stocks of Patriots and Thaads dangerously depleted)
* Centcom commander visits USS Abraham Lincoln amid questions about conditions on ship
US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere
BEN FINLEY/DIDI TANG, 08/16/26
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's war against Iran is stretching the limits of U.S. aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships as China shows more signs of aggression.
The USS George Washington is departing the Pacific and expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East amid growing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed carrier. The Lincoln has had its time at sea extended from its original May return date to support operations against Iran.
The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.
"The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere," said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, the U.S. is "doing the exact opposite" of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.
American allies in the Pacific are unsettled over the unpredictability of the Republican administration, Poling said, while Beijing "is quite happy with U.S. distraction, with the frustration of U.S. allies and partners."
China may take advantage of US carrier's absence
Beijing sees the U.S. military presence in the region as a threat to China's rise and an obstacle to its ambition to seize Taiwan, the self-governing island it claims as its own. But the United States has argued that the Pacific region is too important economically to lose.
No one expects China to invade Taiwan because an American aircraft carrier has left the region. But the carrier's absence gives the Chinese another opportunity to show its strength, said Bryan Clark, a former Navy submariner who is a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.
"They're using this as part of the narrative to demonstrate to the Philippines, to Japan, to Indonesia and others that the U.S. is not the big dog in the western Pacific anymore," Clark said. "They would just prefer that countries in the region decide that China is the bigger power and the U.S. is not able to guarantee their security anymore."
China conducted naval exercises this week with Indonesia and recently has shown signs of aggression toward Japan and the Philippines, two key U.S. allies that also have territorial disputes with Beijing.
China carried out military drills this month near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Both China and the Philippines have claims over the shoal. Last month, a Chinese guided-missile destroyer conducted a live-fire exercise off Japan's southernmost island of Okinotori.
Adm. Frank Bradley, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, has been trying to reassure regional allies of Washington's commitment. He was in Manila on Thursday, telling his Filipino counterparts that U.S. special operations forces are ready to step up joint exercises to strengthen the countries' alliance. He also is expected to travel to Japan.
"We have the ability to project force, the United States, anywhere on the globe," Bradley told The Associated Press. "And when the threat in the region of the Middle East has been attended to, we will redeploy and reorient and be able to project that force wherever else it might be required."
"I also feel very confident in the Armed Forces of the Philippines' ability to protect their sovereignty here and for us to remain close with them," he said.
Evan Sankey, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute who focuses on U.S. policy toward China, said aircraft carriers provide psychological assurance to U.S. allies. The absence of carriers in the region, he said, "adds to the general sense that the U.S. is distracted by events in the Middle East."
Trump has relied on aircraft carriers for military actions
Trump has relied heavily on aircraft carriers to support military operations during his second term. For example, the USS Gerald R. Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported the U.S. fight against Iran and the capture of Venezuela's then-leader, Nicolás Maduro.
The Ford had experienced a fire in a laundry space that forced the carrier to turn around and return to the Mediterranean Sea for repairs and left hundreds of sailors without places to sleep. Meanwhile, the Lincoln has spent a record uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days. Democratic lawmakers have been calling for investigations and greater visibility into conditions aboard the ship.
Warships and their crews can only handle so much, said Robert Farley, who teaches national security and diplomacy at the University of Kentucky and often writes about aircraft carriers.
"People don't get enough rest. It's psychologically exhausting. And R&R is part of keeping the crew healthy," Farley said. "Sometimes it's framed as, 'These people haven't had a vacation.' But we are dealing with well-known limits on the capacity of a crew to operate at top efficiency over time. And that just declines."
Clark, of the Hudson Institute, said the squeeze on the nation's aircraft carriers stems from the lack of preparation and planning for the Iran war.
"If we were going to mobilize to do this kind of conflict, and we anticipated it might go this long, we might have done some changes to the carrier schedule to make sure more would be available," Clark said.
Clark said the Navy has 11 aircraft carriers and typically deploys two or three at a time. But it could soon deploy four if the USS Theodore Roosevelt leaves San Diego for the Middle East, allowing the Washington to return to Pacific.
But the massive warships will need maintenance, likely causing a bottleneck at the nation's only two carrier shipyards.
"We'll end up with a maintenance debt that needs to be paid for the next few years," Clark said. "We'll probably have less carrier presence than we've had in the previous years because carriers will be lined up to get into the shipyard."
There are questions about the use of aircraft carriers in modern warfare
Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow in the Quincy Institute's East Asia Program, questions the future need for aircraft carriers as warfare rapidly changes.
Carriers can be more easily targeted with drones and missiles, particularly by an adversary such as China, Swaine said, while smaller ships and submarines can be as effective in striking targets as the fighter jets that launch off a carrier.
Top Navy officials have indicated a desire to move away from a heavy reliance on carriers. Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, told The Associated Press in February that he wants to convince commanders to use smaller, newer ships and other assets instead of consistently turning to huge aircraft carriers.
Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.
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麥加協議：沙、土、巴聯防 -- Timour Azhari等
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請參考：
* The Strategic Rationale for the Mecca Pact
* The Houthis could be first big test for Mecca mutual defense pact
* ‘Muslim Nato’ could see Saudia Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan clash with Israel or Iran
這個「聯防協議」只是虛晃一槍，說來聽聽；不可能有任何實際聯防作用。
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan pledge mutual defence as Middle East turmoil escalates
Timour Azhari/Ariba Shahid/Tuvan Gumrukcu, 08/07/26
Summary
* Pact says armed attack on one signatory would count as attack on all
* Statement gives no specifics on commitments or defence obligations
* Agreement follows nearly a year of negotiations, Reuters reported in January
RIYADH/KARACHI/ANKARA, Aug 7 - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed a joint defence agreement in Mecca on Friday, wedding Sunni Muslim U.S. allies alarmed at a regional conflagration that has brought Iranian missile fire onto Gulf oil exporters.
Iran and its allies have been firing on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and blockading their energy shipments, since the U.S. and Israel attacked it on February 28 in a major escalation after years of regional tumult.
The "Mecca Joint Defence Agreement" is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression and stipulates that an armed attack against any of the three would be regarded as an attack on all, they said in a joint statement.
However, the statement did not give specifics on the commitments each had accepted and it was not clear how far their agreement would bind them to any particular military action in each other's defence.
Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said the agreement was not aimed at any specific country. A Turkish official added that it was purely defensive and did not abrogate any existing agreements the countries had with other states.
The three nations share concerns about the increasingly aggressive military stances of both Israel and revolutionary Shi'ite Iran, as their longtime U.S. ally struggles to contain regional upheaval that has caused a global energy crisis.
POWERFUL POLITICAL SYMBOLISM
"Three of the Muslim world's most influential states are convening at a moment of heightened uncertainty, demonstrating a growing willingness among regional and middle powers to coordinate more closely on security matters," said Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of the Gulf Research Center, a Saudi-based think tank.
"The trilateral framework could strengthen the three countries' collective diplomatic and defense weight while contributing to the emergence of a more regionally driven security architecture," Sager added.
Turkey has NATO's second-largest military. Saudi Arabia is home to Islam's holiest sites and one of the world's top oil exporters, while Pakistan is the only nuclear-armed Muslim country.
However, Rayed Krimly, Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy, said in a social media post that the accord does not represent an effort to establish a military axis or a sectarian bloc.
"Nor is it linked to any nuclear ambitions or arms race," he said.
Although Pakistan agreed a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia last year, it has not responded to Iran's attacks on the kingdom militarily. It has also played down suggestions its nuclear deterrent might be extended to allies, saying last year of its pact with Saudi Arabia that atomic weapons were "not on the radar".
Both Pakistan and Turkey have also voiced support for a maritime defence coalition Saudi Arabia has announced to protect regional shipping and energy routes.
Friday's pact was signed in Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and follows nearly a year of negotiations, reported by Reuters in January.
PACT BUILDS ON LONGSTANDING MILITARY TIES
The Middle East has been in flames for nearly three years since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
Israel has waged war in Gaza, invaded southern Lebanon and seized territory in Syria as well as launching two air campaigns against Iran. Tehran has fired on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan and Israel.
While Turkey and Pakistan, on the fringes of the Middle East, have avoided significant direct attacks, both are anxious to calm conflicts that threaten their own security and economies.
For Saudi Arabia, three years of Middle East conflicts have imperiled its oil exports and ambitious development plans and drawn big questions over the reliability of its longstanding U.S. security umbrella.
Burcu Ozcelik, senior research fellow for Middle East Security at the RUSI think tank, said the agreement was focused on counterbalancing Iranian hegemony in the region and building deterrence against Israel rather than moving towards a confrontation with Tehran.
"I think the objective is very much the opposite," Ozcelik said.
Pakistan has provided training and technical assistance to Saudi forces for decades, while Turkey and Pakistan have exchanged warships and training aircraft. Saudi Arabia is a major purchaser of drones from Turkey.
Pakistan has deployed about 8,000 troops, fighter jets, drones and an air-defence system to the kingdom and opened negotiations with Kuwait to provide security in exchange for energy cooperation and investment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office declined to comment. A spokesperson for India's Foreign Ministry said the pact was a development that the country was closely following. Iran did not immediately comment.
By Timour Azhari, Ariba Shahid, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Samia Nakhoul; Additional reporting by Daren Butler, Maha El-Dahan, Ramiy Ayyub, Menna Alaa El Din and Saurabh Sharma; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Sharon Singleton
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Ariba Shahid is a Reuters correspondent based in Pakistan, reporting on the economy, energy, mining, climate and foreign policy. She previously reported for DealStreetAsia and Profit magazine, and was an OCCRP research fellow in South Asia.
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烏克蘭在裏海襲擊伊朗貨輪 -- Tim Lister/Leila Gharagozlou
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請參考：
* Caspian Sea：裏海：世界上最大的封閉內陸水體；或被歸類為最大的湖泊；或是歸類為條件完整的海。它是一個內流盆地，位於歐洲和亞洲之間，處高加索以東；中亞廣闊乾草原以西；東歐俄羅斯南部肥沃平原以南；西亞多山伊朗高原以北。
* Chalk One Up for Ukraine (關於烏克蘭無人機技術和空防能力領先地位的報導)
這個事件有趣的地方在於：雙方針對攻擊「目標」各說各話；伊朗宣稱貨物是從俄國運到伊朗；烏克蘭則宣稱貨物是從伊朗運到俄國。烏克蘭在「公湖/公海」襲擊伊朗貨輪的「事實」未變；但襲擊行為的「正當性」就天差地別了。
The Iran and Ukraine wars are colliding on the world’s biggest lake. Here’s what to know
Tim Lister/Leila Gharagozlou, 07/27/26
A satellite image of the Caspian Sea. Planet Observer/Universal Images Group/Getty Images 衛星照片
The Caspian Sea has become the latest region to be sucked into the growing conflict between Iran and its adversaries – not least because it’s a vital artery in the growing relationship between Iran and Russia.
Ukraine at the weekend said its drones had struck two Russian vessels carrying military cargoes in the Caspian, the world’s largest inland body of water. It asserted that both had left Iran for a Russian port.
In a post on X Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the targets included “ships that were involved in transporting military cargo from Iran, as well as a warship,” subsequently identified by Ukraine’s security service as a Russian missile boat.
Iran countered that one of its commercial vessels carrying a cargo of iron had been struck, killing one seafarer and injuring three others.
The ship, which it did not name, was sailing from the Russian port of Astrakhan to Anzali in Iran, which Iranian regional governor Hadi Hagh-Shenas described as “a safe and reliable corridor for commercial exchanges between the two ports.”
Tensions escalated further Monday when Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said, “Ukraine’s dangerous adventurism will certainly not go unanswered by us.” Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Chargé d’Affaires in Tehran was summoned to the foreign ministry over the incident.
Where is the Caspian Sea?
The recriminations reflect the growing importance of the Caspian, which is bordered by five countries, including Iran and Russia. With the blockade of Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, the Caspian has taken on new significance as a trade route.
The Caspian can help Iran towards “a diversified trade strategy, especially if Iran promotes trade with Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, China via rail, and, indirectly, Eastern Europe,” according to Bijan Khajehpour, managing partner of Vienna-based Eurasian Nexus Partners, a consulting firm.
It is “a strategic complement rather than a substitute for Iran’s existing maritime access through the southern waters,” Khajehpour told CNN.
Russian grain and steel are among the cargoes that cross the Caspian. Iran has developed several significant ports on the sea, among them Anzali. Oil and gas from Kazakhstan are transported from the Caspian to a hub on the Black Sea.
For Russia, the Caspian is an important conduit to central Asia and Iran – and a critical route in its expanding strategic partnership with Tehran, one that has a military component as well as Russia’s role in Iran’s civilian nuclear program and oil exploration in Iran.
“The recent blockade by the US (of Iranian ports) has underlined the strategic value of the Caspian Sea route” says Khajehpour. It is also less vulnerable to international sanctions because it is landlocked and largely controlled by Iran, Russia and neighboring states beyond Western naval reach.
Why is the sea so valuable to both Iran and Russia?
The Caspian has become a passageway for the growing military links between Moscow and Tehran. Iran and Russia have a broad strategic agreement covering economic and military collaboration, although it is not a mutual defense pact.
Russia received its first batches of Iranian Shahed attack drones via the Caspian early in its war with Ukraine and has since produced new versions of the drones in plants on Russian soil.
The Caspian route linking Iran’s northern ports to the Russian port of Astrakhan has been targeted by Ukraine before. Last August a cargo ship – the Port Olya 4 – was destroyed while reportedly loaded with Shahed-136 drone components and Iranian munitions.
In 2024, CNN reported that a Russian cargo ship suspected of carrying Iranian ballistic missiles for Moscow’s war against Ukraine was seen at a Russian port on the Caspian Sea. The US Treasury department assessed that the Russian Ministry of Defense had “used the vessel Port Olya-3 to transport CRBMs (close-range ballistic missiles) from Iran to Russia.”
Then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington believed the Russian military had received shipments of Iranian Fatah-360 ballistic missiles and would “likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians.”
At the same time, the US National Security Council warned of the deepening military cooperation between Iran and Russia. Spokesperson Sean Savett told CNN back then that “any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support” for the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine.
Iran denied it was providing military assistance to Russia at that time.
What is Ukraine hoping to achieve from its strikes?
Ukraine’s drone attacks on vessels and energy infrastructure in the Caspian at the weekend are a demonstration of its growing long-range capabilities and its goal of damaging the industries that support Russia’s war effort.
It’s also a recognition that Iran – like North Korea – plays a significant role in supplying Russia with weapons.
And above all, it’s astute timing from the Ukrainians, with Zelensky traveling to Washington this week to meet with President Donald Trump. Besides the Caspian strikes, Zelensky has said that according to Ukrainian intelligence Russia has provided satellite data to Iran to carry out attacks on US facilities in the Middle East.
The message: we are on the same side.
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烏克蘭成功對西方國家的啟示 - Chrystia Freeland
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下文雖然有明顯的偏執，論述也跳不出西方人「民主八股」的窠臼；但其部份觀點仍然有參考價值。例如：作者在最後一段把普丁和川蠢視為「一丘之貉」。
What Ukraine’s Success Means for the West
Chrystia Freeland, 07/24/26
There are several reasons why Ukraine has been able to stymie its much larger aggressor. For the world’s democracies, the most important lesson to draw from Ukrainians' doggedness and brilliant innovations and improvisations may be that we should not be so surprised.
OXFORD—The changing face of the battle for Ukraine has taken much of the world by surprise, both in terms of the horrific scale of casualties that Russia is enduring—nearly 40,000 last month, according to Ukrainian officials—and the dynamism and sheer chutzpah that has characterized Ukraine’s war effort.
For the world’s democracies, the most important lesson to draw from Ukraine’s doggedness and brilliant innovations and improvisations may be that we should not be so surprised. Our lack of confidence in Ukraine, particularly at the start of the war, and our overestimation of Russia’s military might, is closely connected to our weakening faith in democracy as a system. This political alienation is not only wrong, but dangerous. The courage and determination of ordinary Ukrainians in the face of almost immeasurable challenges should give us more confidence in our core values and way of life.
Ukrainians recently demonstrated those values after four and a half years of war. When determined and constructive mass public protests erupted in the wake of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s sacking last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky responded no less constructively to the complaints by replacing the army commander-in-chief who had opposed Fedorov and his focus on high-tech warfare, underscoring the remarkable fact that Ukraine is determined to fight this war as a democracy.
The Roots of Perseverance
There are several reasons why Ukraine has been able to stymie its much larger aggressor. For starters, Ukraine is not the fractured society Russian President Vladimir Putin brutishly proclaims it to be. Archbishop Borys Gudziak, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States and president of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, told me, shortly after the war started, that Zelensky is so effective because he is following the lead of the ordinary people of Ukraine. That much was clear in his response to the countrywide pro-Fedorov demonstrations.
The fundamental importance of unity under fire should be familiar to the West. What we are seeing in Ukraine is a latter-day version of the united, democratic British national spirit we recall so proudly in commemorating the escape from Dunkirk, 86 years ago last month.
Ukraine’s system of decentralized, grassroots military procurement is an example of democratic unity in action. Brigades buy their own weapons, directly from arms-makers. Sometimes, they make their own weapons. That means very close interaction between fighters and weapons makers, with innovation cycles sometimes as truncated as two weeks. The defense ministry rewards the most successful brigades with more money to buy weapons. Civilians can and do make direct contributions to their favorite units.
Armin Papperger, CEO of Rheinmetall, the giant German defense firm, commented on this very homegrown defense sector at the end of March: “It’s Ukrainian housewives,” he told an interviewer. “They have 3-D printers in the kitchen, and they produce parts for drones. This is not innovation.”
Ukrainians could have been insulted, but they decided to see the comment as a back-handed compliment. A #MadeByHousewives hashtag went viral on Ukrainian social media within 24 hours. My friend Oleksandr Kamyshin replied on X: “Rheinmetall says our #LEGODrones are #MadeByHousewives in their kitchens. Fine. Meanwhile our #LEGODrones already burned more than 11,000 Russian tanks.”
Unsurprisingly, Rheinmetall walked back the comment, posting: “We have the utmost respect for the Ukrainian people’s immense efforts in defending themselves ... It is to Ukraine’s particular credit that it is fighting highly effectively even with limited resources.”
At the same time, Ukraine has found that its diversity is its strength, something many Western democracies also should remember. In a political environment where inclusiveness is derided as virtue-signaling, if not positively dangerous, and where we are subjected to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s cartoonish cosplay of vitriolic white Christian masculinity in the Pentagon, Ukraine’s lived reality of war—neither macho nor ethnically rooted—is a powerful corrective.
Women are central to Ukraine’s war effort. Consider Iryna Terekh, the CEO of Fire Point, and possibly the very “housewife” who inspired Papperger’s thoughtless comment. She makes the “flamingo” missiles that were used in the strike on Titan-Barrikady, the Volgograd producer of launch systems for ballistic missiles, last month.
Terekh is in her early thirties, a mother of two, and trained as an architect. She decided to become a missile maker after surviving, with her children and a girlfriend, the occupation and massacre of civilians in Bucha at the start of the war.
Terekh escaped unscathed, and told herself she never wanted to be afraid of being raped by invading soldiers again. At presentations, she likes to give out hot-pink socks, labeled “MILF tech,” inscribed with the motto, “Keep your legs warm and your arsenals full.”
Ukrainian women are fighting, too, including in combat positions. Some 20% of military cadets are women and an astounding 80% of Ukrainians support women’s inclusion in the military. Ukrainian women soldiers tell me they see fighting as feminine. Ukrainian mothers are especially convinced of this. After all, it is a mother’s job to protect her children.
Defining the Nation
Ukraine today is very intentionally a political nation. It is fighting this war as a society united by its values, rather than the sort of “blood and soil” ethnic bond that captivates right-wing populists. Muslim Crimean Tatars, for example, are an important and celebrated part of the war effort, particularly doing dangerous espionage and sabotage operations in Russian-controlled Crimea. And, of course, Ukraine’s war leader, Zelensky, is proudly Jewish.
Another important lesson Ukraine provides to the West is that patriotism can be a powerful force in defense of liberal democracy. Patriotism often frightens or alienates liberals and progressives, especially when they see it evoked by the extreme right. But patriotism is being harnessed to unite not only Ukraine, but democracies like Denmark, Canada, and Spain, all of which feel threatened by the United States under President Donald Trump.
To survive, small democracies need allies, and democratic Europe, unlike Trump, is stepping up for Ukraine. It is trendy, especially in US business circles, to write Europe off as rudderless and economically stagnant: “a pretty museum,” a trope embraced by the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans in Congress. But today, when it comes to Ukraine, Europe is meeting the moment.
With former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ouster in Hungary, Europe has defended its own democracy, and is now united on Ukraine. European Union membership played a critical role in the Hungarian vote.
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has flirted with pro-MAGA, anti-Ukrainian positions, has now publicly backed Ukraine’s EU membership bid. That has unblocked the EU’s €90 billion ($102 billion) loan—hugely significant support that will keep Ukraine solvent and able to fight through 2026 and into 2027.
Europe’s attitude toward Ukraine, and toward Russia, is entirely different from its position at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, speaking at an informal European Council meeting in late April, expressed what is increasingly the mainstream European view: “I want to wake up those who are living under illusions. Russia is preparing for further acts of aggression.”
As a result, for Europe, Ukraine is no longer a charity case, or a righteous victim to be pitied. Europe has come to view Russia as an existential threat, and Ukraine as the only country in the world that knows how to keep Russia at bay. Ukraine is now—quite rightly—seen as Europe’s shield and arsenal.
Renegade America
The contrast with the US under Trump is jarring. Not only has the US withdrawn most support for Ukraine, but it has also shown real sympathy to Russia—and is proud to say so. In April, Vice President JD Vance told Turning Point USA, the late Charlie Kirk’s quasi-evangelical, MAGA-friendly activist group: “One of the things I’m proudest that we’ve done in this administration is that we told Europe: if you want to buy weapons, you can, but the United States is not buying weapons and sending them to Ukraine anymore. We’re just out of that business.”
The same month, Hegseth, testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee, was shown a chart by Senator Angus King of Maine illustrating that Ukraine has been receiving aid only from European states. “I think that is a beautiful chart,” Hegseth smugly replied.
Meanwhile, the US fired more Patriot missiles in the first four days of the Iran war than it gave to Ukraine over the past four years. The absurdity of the US position comes into stark relief when one considers Russia’s assistance to Iran with intelligence and weapons. Components that could have been from the Cheboksary plant Ukraine’s flamingos hit last month were found inside an Iran-linked Shahed attack.
This is all important to note, because we could be on the verge of revisionist history. Trump has, all of a sudden, started to praise Ukraine, and even offered at the recent NATO summit to license the Patriot system for Ukraine’s domestic production.
Some of his fans, accustomed to adjusting even core beliefs in line with their hero’s changing whim, are starting to suggest that the US cold shoulder has in fact been a bit of cunning diplomatic jujitsu. Trump, they suggest, has actually helped Ukraine and the EU by forcing them to figure things out on their own.
The real lesson of the war in Ukraine is far different. We are learning that the US, or at least this US administration, cannot be counted on to defend democracy and its traditional allies, even in a fight that democratic forces can win. That is a lesson with consequences far beyond Ukraine.
When Experts Fail
The war in Ukraine should prompt two final reflections.
The first is that many Western experts, if not most, got it wrong from the very beginning (some still do). They predicted that Ukraine would fall quickly, evidently believing Putin’s promise of a three-day “special military operation.” When that turned out to be wrong, they continued to predict Ukraine’s defeat was just a matter of time.
This expert failure has had real consequences. It meant NATO allies held back on arming Ukraine before the war started, because of their conviction that those arms would fall into Russian hands. Assumptions that Russia would inevitably win last year meant Ukraine was forced to devote scarce time and energy to fending off demands that it actually surrender territory unoccupied by Russia to secure peace.
As University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky has pointed out, we need to ask why the experts got it so wrong on Ukraine, in part because we need to take care not to repeat those analytical failures elsewhere. It is easy to imagine how the same habits of mind that misled us on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine could lead us astray on China and Taiwan.
The second reflection prompted by Ukraine’s fight for survival is that we live in an age of technological marvels and political failures. Drones and deep-strike missiles mean that everyone is physically vulnerable. From the glittering skyscrapers of Dubai to the onion domes of Red Square, we are all within reach. And yet the Trump-engineered collapse of the rules-based international order, including threats to NATO itself, mean that no one has a reliable insurance policy against that material threat.
In other words, we need to learn from Ukraine because, in the world that Putin and Trump are intent on creating, we are all Ukrainians now.
Chrystia Freeland, a former foreign minister, finance minister, and deputy prime minister of Canada, is Warden of Rhodes House at the University of Oxford. He’s been writing for PS since 2025.
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以規範為基礎社會失序的原因 - Benn Steil
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Why Rules-Based Orders Fail
Benn Steil, 06/26/26
For a brief period after the Cold War, Americans persuaded themselves that the liberal order had become self-sustaining. And yet, any rules-based system elaborate enough to govern and interpret its own operations will eventually confront questions that its rules cannot answer.
NEW YORK—In 1980, Douglas Hofstadter, an obscure young computer science professor at Indiana University, won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Equal parts brain-straining, witty, and epiphanic, “GEB”—as its devotees call it—leveraged math, art, and music to illuminate a remarkable feature of reality. Though systems may appear solid and self-sustaining, they also may contain contradictions that they can never resolve from within.
Consciousness itself is such a system, Hofstadter argued. My brain constructs symbolic representations of the world, and among those symbols is a model of my brain as “myself.” But “I” am not an entity apart from my brain. The idea of “me” emerges from my own brain’s recursive symbolic activity. The self is both real and illusory: a stable experience generated by a process that can never fully explain itself.
This recursive structure, Hofstadter showed, is a source of human creativity and self-awareness. But it can also produce paralysis or collapse. I may fear something, observe that I am fearful, fear that my fearfulness is weakness, and fear that others may disdain me for it. In this case, I will have become trapped in a recursive loop in which my consciousness destabilizes my action.
Can political orders fall into the same pattern? I believe that they can and often do.
Turtles All the Way Down
Consider the so-called rules-based international order. Formulated and largely enacted by the United States at the end of World War II—at the apex of US military and economic dominance—a latticework of global rules and standards took shape, covering security, nuclear nonproliferation, trade, finance, navigation, aviation, communications, public health, food safety, cross-border crime, and human rights. America’s ambition was to create an order that functioned much like a model liberal democracy, in which the rule of law prevailed and political actors operated wholly within and according to its strictures.
Yet the work of philosopher-mathematician Kurt Gödel—the first central figure in Hofstadter’s bestseller—suggests that a fully self-regulating rules-based political order is unattainable. Gödel’s famed “incompleteness theorem,” published in 1931, used an ingenious mathematical argument to demonstrate that any rules-based system elaborate enough to govern and interpret its own operations will eventually confront questions its rules cannot answer.
In a political context, such a system must have rules not just for governing society, but for governing, interpreting, and modifying the rules themselves. Once a political order becomes sufficiently recursive, however, situations inevitably arise in which the rules themselves become contested.
For example, if constitutions must be created through pre-constitutional means, who decides when they are legitimate? Who determines whether an emergency justifies suspending rights? When may judges overrule elected majorities? What if institutions deadlock? Who decides whether a state is acting in legitimate self-defense? Does a treaty obligation supersede national sovereignty?
Though Hofstadter does not mention him, the Nobel laureate economist Kenneth Arrow’s famed “impossibility theorem,” published in 1950, is closely related in structure and implication to Gödel’s theorem. Arrow used mathematics to answer a deceptively simple but profoundly important question about democracy: Is it possible to design a voting system that converts individual preferences into a logically coherent collective decision, while simultaneously satisfying basic standards of democratic fairness?
The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is no. Though countless political theorists had assumed democracy to be a valid mechanism for discovering the public will, Arrow showed that the aggregation problem is insoluble. Democracy cannot reliably transform private preferences into a coherent collective rationality. It tends, instead, to produce incoherence or unfairness.
Gödel’s and Arrow’s findings cast logical doubt on Francis Fukuyama’s famous proposition that liberal democracy represented “the end of history”—the telos of human political evolution. The “liberal” part of liberal democracy relates to the rule of law, which Gödel’s theorem showed to be insufficient for a fully stable political order. The “democracy” part relates to elections, which Arrow’s theorem showed to be insufficient for identifying a coherent collective will.
States of Exception
This brings us to Hofstadter’s second central figure, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, whose famous mind-bending drawings show how systems governed by simple component rules can generate larger structures that appear paradoxical, self-creating, or logically impossible. These include hands drawing themselves, staircases rising endlessly, waterfalls powering themselves, and worlds in which figure and background reverse position. Escher’s art offers a way to visualize the interaction between the liberal-democratic order and its borderlands.
Hofstadter’s third figure is the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach, but our analysis is better served by substituting for him the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt. As the Nazi regime’s “crown jurist” from 1933 to 1936, Schmitt is best known for his pithy, unsettling assertion that the “sovereign is he who decides the exception”—meaning the exception to the prevailing constitutional order in which the decider finds himself.
Schmitt rejected the idea that the rule of law is, or can be, sovereign. Consistent with Gödel, there will always be emergency situations in which the law offers no guidance. Not only is liberal democracy inherently fragile, but, according to Schmitt, its obsession with rules, procedures, and debate—rather than timely and effective action—poses a danger to national security.
That sounds plausible, until one considers that “exceptions” have been numerous and momentous in American history, while commitment to the constitutional order has generally remained strong. Consider Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in 1861, or the more ambitious elements of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. None rested on a firm constitutional foundation, yet all came to be widely regarded as legitimate.
The Louisiana Purchase was later seen as foundational to national development. Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus took place alongside continued elections and was followed by restoration of constitutional order after the Civil War. And in the wake of FDR’s New Deal, expansive executive regulatory authority was absorbed into the normal structure of governance. In each case, discretionary departures from established rules were not repudiated but retrospectively validated, reinforcing rather than undermining constitutional legitimacy.
Schmitt emphasized the critical historical role of figures who assume extra-legal powers. Those of whom he approved, such as Lincoln, did so to conserve the constitutional order; he referred to them as “commissarial dictators.” By contrast, those who had wrecked the prevailing constitutional order, such as Joseph Stalin, were “sovereign dictators.”
But Schmitt neglected the critical role of public demands and expectations for ensuring restoration of a constitutional order. The best way to understand this dynamic is to visualize liberal democracy as an Escher woodcut in which figure and background are reversible. A Schmittian might identify the black birds in the woodcut below as the foreground of liberal democracy—the rules-based constitutional framework—with the white space representing the realm of exceptions beyond that framework.
M. C. Escher 木刻畫
Yet, just as the white “background” in the woodcut can be perceived as white birds in the true foreground, so exceptions in liberal democracy can be understood, contra Schmitt, as a cooperative domain—the space where actual governance occurs when rules prove insufficient to determine outcomes. Far from undermining liberal democracy, action in this realm often reinforces public confidence by demonstrating that competence and integrity can substitute temporarily for the inherent incompleteness of rules. If confidence remains that the constitutional order will return to the foreground once the crisis has passed, the sovereign is not “he who decides the exception,” but the public that retrospectively legitimizes the decision.
What we may call an “Escher equilibrium” is a condition of political stability in which a rules-based constitutional order retains legitimacy even as governance periodically operates through discretionary action. Like an Escher figure-background reversal, rules occupy the visible foreground of public justification, while the management of exceptions, a necessary but less visible domain, operates in the background. The equilibrium holds so long as discretionary action is perceived as bounded, impersonal, and temporary. It breaks down when exceptions are experienced as limitless, selectively applied, or fundamentally inconsistent with the principles the constitutional order is meant to sustain.
Up Schmitt’s Creek
Over the past quarter-century, however, the US has experienced exceptions that large segments of the public have strongly resisted. These are best understood as Schmittian threats to constitutional order, not merely because they involved departures from ordinary legal constraints, but because they weakened confidence in the system’s ability to manage crises through neutral, rule-bound procedures.
Four cases stand out.
The first was the post-9/11 expansion of the national-security state, which included mass electronic surveillance and assertions of broad executive detention authority, both of which undermined confidence that the rule of law remained operative.
Then came the bailout of major financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis, which appeared to reward the well-connected at the expense of ordinary households.
The third exception consisted of the COVID-era interventions—including sweeping public-health mandates and emergency administrative measures—which were inconsistently applied and, in some instances, appeared to exceed statutory authority.
The fourth case was the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol and the broader effort to delegitimize the 2020 election. President Donald Trump’s subsequent mass pardon of many participants further deepened divisions between those who saw the attack as an assault on the constitutional order and those who accepted Trump’s false claim that the election had been rigged.
These episodes not only tested the constitutional order but altered how it was perceived. In each case, the exercise of extraordinary power was accompanied by a growing suspicion that the rules were selectively applied, politically manipulated, or simply inadequate. Across very different crises, a growing share of the public came to doubt that liberal-democratic procedures could manage emergencies in both an effective and an impartial manner.
Domestically, the result has been consistent with Schmitt’s critique of the failing Weimar Republic of the 1920s, which exhibited increasing polarization and declining tolerance for liberal-democratic proceduralism. Trump has exploited similar sentiment to test the judicial branch’s willingness and ability to enforce constitutional limits on executive power.
What about internationally? The global rules-based order has always relied on what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a useful fiction—that the rules themselves, rather than the distribution of geopolitical power, governed international conduct. In reality, the system depended heavily on the one country capable of operating simultaneously within and beyond the rules. The erosion of American predominance, and the rise of China as a near-peer competitor, has shattered that sensitive equilibrium. The US now increasingly demands discretionary freedom of action and rejects the institutional constraints that it created and upheld for decades.
The implications of Gödel and Arrow’s theorems strike directly at the two foundational assumptions of postwar liberal internationalism: that sufficiently comprehensive rules can govern international conduct; and that sufficiently inclusive rules can generate coherent and legitimate collective outcomes. Consider the contrast between the remarkable success of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade—which helped reduce average industrial tariffs from roughly 35% in 1947 to 4% by the early 1990s—and the paralysis of the World Trade Organization under the combined pressures of Chinese mercantilism and American protectionism.
Arrow’s theorem implies that as a rules-based regime becomes more inclusive and diversity of preferences increases, coherent and broadly legitimate outcomes become harder to sustain. The GATT excluded the Soviet Union, resulting in a relatively high degree of systemic compatibility among its market-oriented members. But the US wanted a universal WTO, and therefore assented to China’s admission before it had demonstrated adherence to core market principles. A single rules-based system, as Arrow might have anticipated, has proven unable to reconcile the conflicting economic principles under which the two behemoths operate.
The early 1990s represented the apex of the liberal international order, overseen by a single dominant power that both animated the system and broadly operated within its rules. The exemplar was the 1991 Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. Though set in motion by US President George H.W. Bush, it was conducted strictly in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 678. Because the resolution did not authorize regime change, Bush halted offensive operations once Iraqi forces had been expelled. By the time his son returned US forces to Iraq in 2003, such restraint had become almost unimaginable.
Today, the conditions that sustained the liberal international order have eroded further. The Escher equilibrium that long underpinned it has fractured. The US—sliding toward Schmittian “plebiscitary democracy,” in which an autocrat rules by staged acclamation—is now pursuing a predatory deformation of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, China seeks to dominate its Asia-Pacific neighborhood through economic coercion and military pressure, and Russia and the European Union contest the political and territorial order of Europe. The global system is no longer anchored by a single hegemonic power willing to subordinate itself to rules that it established and that define the global system.
For a brief period after the Cold War, Americans persuaded themselves that the liberal order had become self-sustaining—that universal rules, democratic legitimacy, and economic interdependence had rendered old-fashioned power politics obsolete. But the order rested less on the autonomous authority of rules than on a historically exceptional concentration of American power and institutional confidence.
That foundation has eroded. The institutions remain, but they have been drained of authority. The rival major powers invoke rules selectively, interpret them opportunistically, or ignore them outright. The exceptions are no longer hidden in the background, as in an Escher woodcut. They have moved to the foreground. And once seen, they can never be unseen.
Benn Steil is Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2024). He’s been writing for PS since 2011.
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