Category: Strategy

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Systemic Change, Institutional Lag and Societal Resilience.

The following is a draft of a talk that I am giving to a professional group. I thought that it would be good to trial it here. It is not quite stream-of-consciousness in nature but is fairly loose in terms of argument tightness and structure. My usual approach is to write a long form essay on the theme of the talk, then condense and memorize it for an off-the-cuff presentation. I do not use slides or power point presentations for the talks. 25 years of university lecturing and a lot of public speaking allows me the luxury of distilling fairly complex thoughts into shorter talking points. I have incorporated some references brought up by reader Barbara Matthews because they add depth to the discussion.

Introduction.

As Dickens wrote, “we live in the best of times and we live in the worst of times.” That is because we are experiencing  a moment of systemic transition in world affairs. This transition is political, economic, cultural and technological, something that in aggregate affects the entire global network of human institutions. It also involves changes in nature, which cause and compound the human changes that we are now observing. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, we never step in the same river twice. The moment is fluid and uncertain, the possibilities both open and endless yet potentially dark and forbidding.

In order to make sense of this we might break down the broader picture into component parts. These are 1) the structure of the international system; 2) the rules governing the global order; and 3) the geopolitical repercussions of the changes currently underway.

First, the world is moving from a multipolar to a poly-centric system. In the past 50 years we have seen the long transition from the bipolar world of the Cold War, to the unipolar world of the first post-Cold War decade, then the emergence of a multipolar world where rising great powers like China and India compete for global primacy with declining powers like the US and Russia, and where new and old middle powers are finding necessity in forging alliances amongst themselves and smaller States rather than seek the security provided by larger Powers. That includes the rise of the Global South, exemplified by the emergence of a bloc of so-called BRIC countries, which represent a challenge to traditional “northern” dominance of the international arena (“South” here referring not to a geographic location but an ideological orientation that has roots in anti-colonial struggles).

“Polarity” traditionally has only involved nation-States. Large Powers exercise gravitational “pull” on smaller powers that seek their physical protection and provision of material security. It now includes non-State actors like technology conglomerates and their supply chain adjacents. The “poles” themselves can be divided into techno hubs, entities that use knowledge economies to generate wealth and power, and resource hubs, those that provide energy and material inputs to the global knowledge economy.  Both need each other and in fact hybridisation of these productive models is now the norm in many places such as the Arab Gulf States. When the independent power of non-State actors and cross-border impacts of technology are factored in, we see that rather than multipolarity what is emerging is a polycentric constellation of global-reach actors that cluster around mutual interests or, often enough, conflict nodes based on their rival pursuit of competitive advantages in specific material or ideological realms.

Secondly, this has led to the demise of the post-WW2 “liberal” status quo, which was designed to bring stability and predictability to the exchanges between State and non-State actors in the international field. The disruption of this “liberal” international order (liberal defined not on ideological terms but as a voluntary system of mutual checks and balances governing International relations and foreign affairs), has led us to what is now a “post-liberal” (and often illiberal) world order, one where  liberal rules, norms and conventions are violated and its institutions increasingly  ignored. This is a return to what Hobbes called a “state of nature” in international affairs, often interpreted as a return to “might makes right” doctrines associated with the golden era of late 19th century imperialism. Those who can, do. Those who cannot suffer at the hands of those that can.

The institutional edifice created after WW2, what came to be known as the Liberal International Order, is breaking down. The norms, rules and institutions that made up that order have been rendered ineffective by the rapid changes in human societies, and liberal rules, norms and institutional processes are being increasingly ignored in favour of more self-interested actor-centric approaches to global affairs. An area where this has been seen quite starkly is in the field of international affairs, where the liberal international order attempted to stabilise and regulate away from actor-centric foreign policies and towards mutually cooperative inter- or transnational institutional arrangements that mitigated power disparities between nation-States and among private market agents based on their geographic and political position in the global system. One such regulatory mechanism was the concept of freedom of navigation, which guaranteed safe passage to civilian shipping on the open seas and in smaller maritime spaces (e.g. chokepoints such as straits and small seas) otherwise subject to the interference of adjacent littoral states or non-state actors (like pirates).

Third, that returns us to a core notion now commonly used in non-specialist circles: geopolitics. Put simply, geopolitics  is the relationship between geography and politics. It traditionally used to be seen as a matter of how human politics and military strategy conformed to or utilised immutable geographic characteristics in pursuit of (national) State interests, recognising that geopolitics also encompasses economic, diplomatic and sociological factors as they are influenced by geography and geographic trends. Mass migrations are an example of such activity because they have cultural, economic and security implications, but things like hydro dam construction on rivers that traverse national borders have the potential to become serious diplomatic, economic and military problems as well. The disputes about Mekong River damming, dredging and usage, and the consequent end of traditional riverine lifestyles and population exodus from riverine communities, are an example of this.

Now, although the need for geopolitical adaptation remains a constant of international relations, the relationship between geography and politics has shifted. On the one hand, technologies have made human adaptation or utilisation of geographic features far more extensive than in previous eras. Humans dominate nature in a measure that they did not before, which in turn allows them to exploit terrain and earthcapes in previously unknown ways. Think of undersea and space travel, geospatial mapping, deep sea mining—and warring. Once unimaginable, all are either now currently in existence or on the threshold of becoming reality. Automation, robotics and nano-technologies, to say nothing of AI applications in those fields, allow for the exploitation of geography (and nature in general) in ways unheard of during the golden era of geopolitical thought in the early 20th century.

On the other hand, climate change and other natural shifts have altered the physical world in fundamental ways: consider the melting of the Arctic Ocean icepack opening up the Northern Passage and the retreating ice cover in Antartica opening up accessibility to mineral exploration in ways never seen before. The same is true with the impact of warmer temperatures of drought/deluge cycles on fishery stocks and freshwater supplies. At the intersection of climate change and technological advancement, solar, wind and hydro energy production have significant geopolitical implications that go beyond traditional comparative advantages in one or the other under previous technological regimes.

In summation: geopolitics is at once more fluid and yet remains constant as a guiding principle of international relations. The more things change, the more that they stay the same. In moment of global systemic transition, geopolitics becomes a core feature of the process. That is where human agency becomes a decisive variable for better or worse. What follows is two issues where human agency is at play.

Institutional lag.

“Institutional lag”  refers to the time gap between an event or appearance of a phenomena and the response to them from complex organisations. Derived from management theory, the concept posits that institutions will be slow to respond and adapt to changes in their environment, which in turn will lead to unnecessary costs, superfluous behaviours, design obsolescence, duplication of functions, misplaced objectives and ill-suited planning. 

This syndrome is often more than just a failure to react in a timely or responsive manner. Complex organisations develop a type of bureaucratic inertia where established systems and procedures are resistant to change unless some externality forces them to. Even then, they way the respond is not agile and may often not be what is needed for the adaptive task at hand. The adage about generals always preparing for the last war is an illustration of the concept but the notion extends further. Until a technological or other form of social breakthrough occurs, the organisation is perpetually bound by “tradition” (procedure and usage) and therefore always behind the times. Innovative breakthroughs are more often forced by externalities, not pushed by proactive internal reform within the organisation.

Societal Resilience.

Refers to the ability of human societies, including businesses and economic sectors but extending beyond that, to be adaptable and flexible when it comes to unforeseen, unexpected or sudden events that disrupt their business models and the production chains in which they are located. These can be caused by sudden technological advances, black swan events, political crisis and wars, epidemics and pandemics, natural disasters and other unanticipated phenomena. The term is derived from “Industrial resilience,” which is basically management-speak for changes in processes, procedures and networks caused by external events that require rapid responses via technological advancement and/or diversification of input and output links as well as market substitution, among other things.

In a way, societal resilience, and especially business or industrial resilience, is inversely related to institutional lag. The more resilient a society, industry or social group is, the more bureaucratic inertias can be overcome and institutional lags minimised. Therein lies the problem. Societies and the organisations and demographics that comprise them seek stability, and stability depends on commonly accepted status quos. When something happens that disrupts the whole or part of an institutionalised status quo, the response is often increased resistance to change “in the way things are” rather than flexible adaptability. It is embedded in the human condition so the issue is not trivial in times of systemic change.

It was thought that the Covid pandemic would force industrial resilience upon the global trading community, and indeed, concepts such as “near-shoring,” “friendshoring,” and regional hubs all gained traction in the international system of production, consumption, telecommunications, transportation and commodity and service exchange. The reality was that genuine resilience strategies was adopted by a minority of businesses, with the majority opting, after a period of disruption, to assume a “business as usual” approach and resume their old ways of doing things. This included “just in time” production schemes that worsened the impact of the pandemic in terms of post-recovery demand increases. With little inventory stockpiled while demand was low, business found themselves unable to fill orders quickly, leading to inflationary pressures resultant from demand on limited stock, compounded by the US imposition of tariffs on a wide range of goods from dozens of countries and regional trading blocs. None of this was anticipated by corporate elites once the Covid wave had crested.

Likewise, once the pandemic peaked in terms of deaths, illness and infection rates, many social actors, including political parties, interest groups, community organisations and an assortment of individuals grouped into a variety of grassroots agencies, engaged in revisionist historical interpretations of the pandemic and its underlying causes. Besides theories about Covid’s origins (in a Chinese lab or wet market, among others), there was questioning of whether the disease existed at all and whether vaccines were needed, necessary, useful in fighting the its spread or were part of some Deep State mind control plot. The use of surgical masks as simple front-line defense against airborne infections was even questioned. People were murdered in disputes over mask usage, and an assortment of quacks sprang forth to offer a range of pseudo- or non-scientific solutions such as injecting bleach into the body (advocated by president Trump), horse vaccines and perineum tanning (advocated by assorted alternative medicine adherents and wellness “influencers”).

This reaffirms the axiom that transitional moments such as that involving global systemic change are marked by conflict, not just in the form of rules and norms violations between competing actors such as nation-States and global non-State powers, including the resort to violence in order to settle disputes, but in the human propensity to resist change per se. That is what resilience must focus on: overcoming the innate human tendency to resist change even when it is forced upon us.

One measure that is both a sign of societal resilience and a stop-gap during periods of institutional lag is hedging. Hedging can be both strategic or practical and can be deployed at both levels simultaneously. Diversifying trade partners, seeking alternative sources of information or material inputs, widening exposure to previously unknown contacts, languages, cultures and experiences, experimenting with new ways of doing things are in one way or the other examples of resisting complacency and stagnation by not putting one’s eggs in one basket. Strategic hedging focuses on planning for (and against) long-term events. Tactical hedging focuses on immediate problems.

For example, if the PRC decides to restrict NZ dairy or meat imports because of displeasure with a NZ foreign policy stance, what does NZ do as a contingency plan? Rescind the foreign policy measure that caused Chinese displeasure? Find alternative foreign markets? Open at a lower price scale or subsidise the domestic market for the excess inventory caused by the Chinese bans? Reduce production and ask producers for patience (and reduced profits)? One decision (what to do with the foreign policy stance) is a strategic matter, the answer to which will determine subsequent tactical choices if necessary.

While that is happening industrial resilience will be tested in the export sector, determining whether it is flexible and adaptable enough to weather the dispute and emerge with better plans that cope with future exigencies.

The point of this illustration is to highlight the utility of hedging as a resilience response to crisis, uncertainty and change. That may or may not lead to more durable patterns of behaviour, and that depends on how the inevitable conflicts that arise are resolved and mitigated. Much money and effort has been spent developing sophisticated risk analyses that offer predictive models for myriad of systemic events. That is helpful in framing and avoiding identified problems but it is in the solutions that stem from them where true resilience is found. Given what has been mentioned above, that may be the most daunting project before us.

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Will Israel nuke Iran? Some background.

Regular reader Barbara Matthews asked me in a comment on a previous post about Israeli nukes. I replied on the comment thread on that post but have decided to flesh out the answer and post it here by way of a primer on Israel’s nuclear weapons since many people do not know much about it. Here goes:

Israel is estimated to have around 100-400 nuclear warheads (more likely closer to the lower figure). The throw weights (explosive power) of these warheads is classified but estimated to be variable but relatively low yield (20-300 kiloton (kt), with 1 kiloton=1000 tons of high explosives), along the lines of US and Russian Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) throw weights but far smaller than the megaton (one million tons of high explosive) + throw weights of US and Russian “heavy” strategic warheads. It is believed that most Israeli nukes are of the “tactical” IRBM type rather than strategic in nature.

Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is believed to have some of its nuclear weapons technology passed on to it by an Israeli spy in the US government (later imprisoned and deported to Israel) who was part of the Lakam nuclear spy ring that operated from the 1950s that helped apartheid South Africa develop a bomb and test it in 1979 over the South Indian Ocean and which supplied nuclear technology to the Argentine military dictatorship in the 1970s, plus a lot of other covert shenanigans. After years of silence and ambiguity and nebulous statements by previous government officials, Netanyahu has implied in public comments that Israel will use nukes on Iran in specific circumstances because it sees Iran as an existential threat. If so it would be the first “first strike” since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and violate the second strike retaliatory premise of modern nuclear deterrence theory.

Israel has a standard delivery system triad of air, sea and land-launched nuclear weapons. The land leg has the “heaviest” warheads that are mounted on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) known as Jericho-1 and Jericho-2s that potentially can reach distant adversaries such as North Korea. I do not know but assume that Israel has MIRV (Multiple Re-Entry Vehicle) technologies in its nuclear fleet, presumably for the heavier warhead-bearing platforms like the Jerichos.

Its main nuclear research and development facilities are at Dimona in the Negev desert, which also serves as a civilian power generating facility that, besides the power generation aspect, produces around 20 kg of Plutonium each year as waste that is directed to the weapons program. 5-6kg of Plutonium is needed for a 20 kiloton warhead, so there are constraints in the Israeli weapons production process, especially for larger-yield warheads. By wy of comparison, the Hiroshima bomb had 15 kilotons of throw weight while the Nagasaki bomb had 20-22 kt of explosive power.

The use of Plutonium is interesting for several reasons. First, its is by-product of nuclear energy production so is not enriched uranium such as those used in both civilian energy (<20–usually 3-5 precent– enriched) production and most advanced nuclear weapons programs (90 percent enriched U235). It is also very unstable and dirty when compared to enriched uranium, which means that besides the risk of accidental chain reactions, the radioactive cloud and plume from a detonation will be far more lethal than those produced by more refined nuclear weapon detonations. That means that detonations in the air at any altitude and on the surface will generate plumes that will then drift hundreds of miles traveling on the prevailing winds, contaminating everything. along the way.

In the case of Iran, Israel would presumably use “bunker-busting” deep penetration missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear stockpiles and delivery platforms widen deep underground. That might minimise or partially contain the fallout contamination that follows such strikes. But Israel has shown little regard for civilian casualties when levelling Gaza, Lebanese neighbourhoods and parts of the West Bank as well as Iran itself, so we cannot discount the possibility that it might use air- or surface-burst weapons, including against civilian targets (these are known as counter-value strikes) as well as “hardened” military targets (known as counter-force strikes).

In my opinion, there is at least a 50-50 chance that Israel will use nukes against Iran if this conflict does not go the way that Netanyahu’s regime wants it to go, especially of the US–yet again– loses interest and withdraws from the conflict as midterm elections approach and GOP political fortunes turn South as commodity prices continue to rise, etc.

If I were to be charitable I would say that unlike the US, which sees Iran as hostile but containable, sort of like North Korea, Israel views Iran as a threat to its very existence. Why? Not because of nukes but because hardliners in Iran have repeatedly uttered serious anti-semitic as well as anti-Zionist rhetoric towards the Jewish state. The former include grotesque stereotypes and caricatures, betraying a profound and twisted hatred of Jews as a people rather than Israel as a nation-State. In light of that Israel wants to eliminate Iran as a functioning State and partition it into various ethnic nationalities in which Persians are just one of many, albeit a dominant group in whatever demographic mosaic is constructed out of the ashes of the Revolutionary Republic. That removes Iran as a threat to Jewish, not just Israel’s existence.

If I were to not be charitable I would say that Bibi and co. just want to degrade but not destroy Iran so as to keep it as a convenient scapegoat and enduring threat that helps them justify their rogue actions and avoid having to account for their own crimes and atrocities. In that perspective, it is the tail that wags the imbecile dog that is the MAGA administration, but that dog is about to turn tail for domestic political reasons in the US and at that point the spectre of Israeli nukes against Iran becomes real.

One other factor must be considered in Israel’s strategic equation to launch such strikes: who will retaliate against Israel in the event that it does engage in the first use of nuclear weapons against Iran, much less retaliate in kind with a nuclear counter-strike? Quite frankly, I do not see anyone being capable or willing to do so.

The “Doomsday Clock” run by the Association of Atomic Scientists already sits at 85 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been to nuclear armageddon day, and that was set before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran.

The moment of deadly truth may be fast approaching.

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Regime transition sequencing.

I was reading a recent article in which the author wrote that the US has actually made the transition to democracy in Venezuela more difficult than it could have been by removing Nicolas Maduro and his wife from the country but leaving the rest of his regime intact. In the author’s words, “they took the dictator but left the dictatorship.” He went on to write that the usual order of things is to embark on a political regime transition (presumably to democracy if the starting point is authoritarian) followed by an economic regime transition (say, in simplistic terms, from communism to capitalism) or at least significant economic reform. In Venezuela’s case, the US has pushed for US-investor friendly economic reforms in the extractive industrial sector but left the Bolivarian regime otherwise intact and has not bothered with broader economic reforms that promote market diversification, income redistribution, decreased dependence on primary good exports (including but moving beyond petroleum), and more value-added domestic commodity and service production.

That got me to thinking about one major theme of the first generation regime transition literature of the (late) 1970s-1980s, which focused on the transition from democracy to authoritarianism in Europe, East Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and early 1970s and then the transitions form authoritarianism to democracy in the rest of the 1970s and 1980s. One theme that emerged was the sequence by which regime transitions occurred. We might call it a type of “chicken or egg” question.

Some argued that what was needed first for democracy to obtain was an economic transition from state-centric (e.g., Keynesian welfare or socialist) to free market models, which was believed would promote the civic freedoms needed for democracy to emerge as the corresponding political form (this was grounded in what was known as “modernisation theory,” which was a 1950s-era prescription for overcoming underdevelopment in the “Third World”). That was the “egg” answer, which was used as one justification for the US support for China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. As with original modernization theory, the underpinning syllogism proved incorrect.

Instead, both in the PRC and in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) as of the 1990s, communist party leaders engineered the move from a state-controlled command economy marshalled along what might be described as Stalinist or Maoist lines to a state capitalist economy in which investment and production was incrementally opened to private (including foreign) investment while the State controlled overall economic management decision-making and kept a stake in specific productive assets (e.g., telecommunications in both instances).

In effect, capitalism came but democracy did not. In both the PRC and SRV change occurred within the political regime, not of it, regardless of economic change. Communist Parties still control both countries and staff the leadership of the State. Their respective leadership architectures and other partial regimes within the larger whole have been subjected to reforms of various magnitudes, including those deemed required to accommodate the economic changes undertaken by the national political leaderships in question. The same is true, in another variation on the theme, in Singapore under the PAP regime: the overall regime remains and reforms (in Singapore’s case by “liberalising” when it comes to political and civil rights without giving up ultimate authority) while the economy changes (from post-colonial trading to techno-finance capitalism). In other words, rather than a transitional sequence, in some instances economic change can occur under the aegis of a stable political regime (at least if it is authoritarian).

Others have disagreed with the economic–>political change thesis, noting that political regime change was required before economic regime change could happen because economic policy is ultimately a political choice made by regime leaders. This is the “chicken” answer. The 1948 Chinese, 1959 Cuban and 1979 Nicaraguan revolutions are considered emblematic in this regard.

In both types of sequence, the key issue is one of parametric change: the boundaries of political and economic life are fundamentally altered as a result of the major institutional changes that define regime transition as a social phenomenon no matter which way the chain of causality proceeds.

Among other subtopics, one part of the debate about regime transitions in the 1980s centred on the preferred “regime change sequence” leading to democratisation. It was a simple, perhaps crude measure, but it had the virtue of forcing scholars and policy practitioners to address the linkage between political change and economic development and reform rather than just one or the other. It also broadened the “chicken or egg” question with regard to the linkage between economic development and political regimes, Was there a correlation or causal relationship between specific regime types and certain levels of development? If so, in which direction and of what specific type in both categories? Capitalist to socialist, socialist to capitalist or somewhere in between? Authoritarian to democratic or democratic to authoritarian and if the latter, what type of authoritarian? The possibilities of political-economic regime change are not as straight forward as might seem at first glance.

There is a third type of regime change that is also theoretically possible> It is simultaneous rather than sequential in nature. This is a situation where economic and political regime change occurred simultaneously, as part and parcel of the same transitional dynamic. This alternative was particularly of interest to students of the fall of the USSR and Eastern bloc regimes grouped in the Warsaw Pact as well as of the revolutionary transitions such as that of Nicaragua and Iran in 1979. In the former the hope was they would transition to both democracy and capitalism in short periods of time. In the latter the expectation was that with revolutionary overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, socialism as an economic model could be rapidly imposed. The 1979 Iranian revolution represented a variant on that model, with many hoping that the post-Reza Pahlavi regime would be a theocratic democracy wedded to an Islamic market economy rooted in traditional Bazaari social relations of production.

Sadly, in both instances the 1979 revolutions eventually brought economic changes, but under a different type of authoritarianism than what existed before rather than the democracy that was promised. This may have been partially a product of the hostile reaction and pressure placed on the revolutionary regimes by the US and other Western states, but the fact is that be they simultaneous or sequential, the 1979 revolutionary regimes delivered something different than what was hoped (and fought) for.

The simultaneous transition possibility was also considered in the rise of Hugo Chavez and Bolivarianism in Venezuela in 1979 via electoral means, which presumably would have paved the way for a peaceful revolutionary change towards popular democracy and socialism, much in the way hope was previously raised along the same lines by the 1970 election of Salvador Allende in Chile. Alas, neither expectation was met: Allende was overthrown and killed in 1973 by a US-backed military coup d’état supported by rightwing forces while Chavez and his successor Maduro descended into authoritarian-kleptocratic rule culminating in the US military kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader in January of this year. As the author mentioned at the beginning of this post noted, the Venezuelan political leader has been forcibly removed but the regime has not.

As for former Soviet states, the record is very mixed. Russia has reverted to authoritarianism with a state capitalist/oligarchical hybrid economic model grounded in fossil fuel extraction and modernised Soviet-era industrial production.. Some former Warsaw Pact states have gone both democratic and (mostly) market capitalist. Others have gone autocratic and state capitalist/kleptocratic. Some have gravitated towards the European Union and even NATO. Others have remained within the Russian orbit on both political and economic grounds. This is especially true for Central Asian former Soviet republics (the so-called “Stans”), which have not undergone appreciable political regime change except to use elections as legitimation devices while economic control of extraction-based primary good production remains in the hands of nepotistic political elites and politically-connected interests.

It can be argued that simultaneous regime transitions cannot happen simply because of the turmoil and complexities involved in attempting to manage profound political and economic changes all at once. The cases cited above support that view regardless of what eventuated after the old political regime was displaced or the economic model substantially altered. But the issue of transitional sequencing remains an important one, not just conceptually but also as a matter of policy practice, especially if the goal is to restore or revive democratic governance.

As an example, my stay in the Pentagon in the early 1990s was based on a successful fellowship application that was centred on a proposal on how to democratise civil-military relations in post-authoritarian Latin America. I had noticed the difficulty with which new civilian elected governments were coping with entrenched authoritarian traditions in the (sometimes Prussian) military cultures of several Latin American nations, and so outlined in the fellowship proposal ways in which US non-lethal military aid, weapons sales and peer-to-peer training programs, coupled with legal and normative changes to the institutional relationships between the armed forces and civilian government, might help “democratise” the relations between political leaders and the military hierarchies of the time.

This was just one part of the political regime transition from dictatorship to democracy in that region–what was called “partial regime change,” where the sum of a number of reforms in the constituent parts of an electoral democracy (civil rights, election procedures, interest group intermediation systems, inter-agency accountability, policing authority, budget-setting agendas, federal-state relations, and even the relationship between civilian and military authorities)–were reformed, reconstituted or revitalised with the purpose being to provide institutional underpinnings that would support, then sustain and eventually reproduce democratic governance structures.

Again, the results were mixed but for the most part I am pleased to see that in places like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, the changes that my colleagues and I proposed seem to have stuck.

Getting back to the subject of Venezuela and now the attempt at forced regime change by the US in Iran, the folly of the move becomes clearer (as if it was not already). Not only were the “decapitation” strikes simply instances of state-sanctioned murder (by proxy, since the Israelis did the actual bombing of targeted leaders like the Ayatollah Khamenei), the Islamic regime and its constituent partial regimes remain intact, albeit with a stronger military influence replacing a weakened clerical caste headed by Khamenei’s badly injured son Mojtaba (something that is more the result of Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) dissatisfaction with the cleric’s enforcement of theocratic social policy prior to the US/Israeli attacks rather than the US/Israeli strikes themselves). If anything, what political regime change might be underway is, by several accounts, one from a theocratic to a military-dominated regime, conveniently reinforced by the foreign aggression waged upon Iranian society.

Lines of succession, promotion, policy and operational authority remain in place. So do the underlying civic structures, including the Bazaari social networks that even if now in opposition to most of the hard-line elements in the regime, remain fiercely anti-Western and Persian nationalist in orientation. In other words, the partial regime mosaic that when taken together constitutes the institutional edifice of the Islamic regime continues in place and functioning. Like in Venezuela, some former leaders are gone (dead) but the regime remains even as it evolves from within. Nor has the economy changed–although porous sanctions and the Revolutionary Guard toll booth blockade of the Hormuz Straits has strengthened the Islamic Republic regime’s control over it.

In effect, we have seen leadership change without regime change, little significant economic change other than a shift in beneficiaries in the Venezuelan case, and no real transitional sequence at all. This demonstrates the shallowness of what passes in the US for strategic thinking, comparative political analysis and foreign country expertise, to say nothing of the ahistorical ignorance of the MAGA elites in and outside of government who enable and support US foreign adventurism under Trump.

In fact, it might do well for scholars, politicians and economic interests alike to return to that literature on authoritarian regime demise to develop a US-focused idiosyncratic conceptual and practical framework for studying the late stage dynamics of the second MAGA administration. Because it is quite feasible that its demise will more resemble that of dictatorial collapse rather than that of democratic decline even if certain electoral trappings and procedural niceties cloak the entire process. The question for the US then is: if the transitional sequence begins with political change away from MAGA, will it a) result in its elimination from political society? and b) what if any economic and other partial regime reforms will come from the anti-MAGA political change if it occurs?

Without both, regime (or at least government) change in the US away from what exists today will not happen. Depending on one’s perspective, that may or may not be a good thing.

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Rumble in a strategic jumble.

In boxing terms, Iran is doing an Ali rope-a-dope defense against the US. Strategically, the US, like Foreman, sought the fight in order to burnish its fearsome (some might say brutish or thuggish) reputation. In return, Iran had to take the fight because it came to it as a matter of reputation, honor and physical defense. For one. the fight was an (ill-advised and ill-conceived) opportunity; for the other, it is existential.

Theoretically a mismatch between a much more powerful state and a far weaker adversary, at a tactical level the conflict has turned into an asymmetrical war of attrition. Asymmetrical because it is not just about weapons capabilities but also about political and social will and comparative timetables. The US has midterm elections, domestic economic factors and the global system of trade to consider and operates on chronological calendar-defined notions of political, military and economic time. The Iranians have their existence to consider and operate on cloud time, not because they are dreamy but because like the movement of clouds, they operate with a different, far slower and longer conceptions of temporal movement. The US initially said that it would win in 6 or so weeks, and because that time frame has now been reached without a win, it has rushed to seek a means of saving face and going home–or even to the status quo ante. It will not achieve the latter but will have to do the former sooner or later. This is an own-goal that makes W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq look like strategic genius.

Saving face will be hard to do, so the MAGA administration may decide to double down and as Trump suggested a few days ago, turn the conflict into a religious civilisational war of annihilation with apocalyptic objectives. That may be delusional, but given what else has happened with the Trump 2.0 administration it is no longer in the realm of the impossible save for the intervention of the global community. Meanwhile, the Iranians have expected and prepared for as much.

For the moment the Iranians are doing the rope-a-dope, Middle Eastern style. Absorbing blows, shifting its centre of gravity, counter-punching just enough to stay in the fight–nimble, agile and patient. Under Trump and Hegseth the US is a lumbering Foreman looking for a knockout but, because it has no strategic rationale, instead is exhausting itself politically/diplomatically while doing so. Meanwhile, after the initial US/Israeli onslaught, Iran is recovering, conserving its resources, digging (further) in and keeping its powder dry for the next rounds.

The difference with the original Ali-Foreman bout is that Iran will not eventually counter-punch a knockout blow, but will force the US to retreat, reduce its barrages, stumble about seeking a different type of military opening, hope for a draw and/or quit. The apocalypse scenario will only delay and raise the costs of the eventual stalemate, even if Israel or the US decide to abandon all rationality and exercise their nuclear options against what still remains a non-nuclear weapons state. Then yes, armageddon may come.

Short of that, the post-fight scenarios will be negative for both aggressors as well. Neither the US or Israel will have the eyes and ears inside of Iran that they once had, Iran will still have its maritime toll system in the straits of Hormuz (basically a pay to play scheme in order to guarantee safe passage), will still have weapons and U235 stockpiles hidden away, and former US and Israeli allies and clients will re-calibrate their relationships with both while the world trade systems adjusts away from Western-centric financing, insuring and perhaps fossil fuel dependency itself (to include derivatives such as plastics and fertiliser as well as non-renewable energy supplies). As others have written, the ultimate irony is that Iran may well come out of this strengthened and the global of system of trade less US-dependent than they were before the preventative US/Israel wars of preventative aggression were launched against the Persian nation-State.

Think of it this way: the Arab oligarchies that thought that they sat safely under the US security umbrella now are being bombed by Iran because they allow the US to attack Iran from bases on their soil. Yet they are too afraid to counter-attack Iran because they fear the implications of a wider regional war on their material fortunes. NATO has now seen what the US security guarantee looks like in practice, and with Trump ranting about quitting the alliance and taking Greenland (while appeasing Putin with regard to Ukraine), they see what the future holds if they persist in trying to accomodate the bully. As for Taiwan and its US security guarantee–may the goddess protect them. Meanwhile, other Great Powers or Great Power wanna-be’s bide their time…

Getting back to the original boxing analogy, this juror’s score is TKO or win by points for the Iranians. Someone needs to tell the self-proclaimed champ that it is time to retire.

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An analogy and an axiom.

Some words to the wise.

Analogy: Trump’s war against Iran might be the geopolitical equivalent of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn. Built on arrogance born of easy bullying in lesser conflicts, he has overestimated his capabilities and grossly underestimated his opponent. Iran may be Trump’s Sitting Bull, but the analogy holds only if Custer had a malevolent manipulator like Netanyahu leading him to his ignominious comeuppance.

Axiom: History shows that the side that prevails in war is not always the one that can deliver greater punishment to the adversary but the one that can absorb the most punishment and keep on fighting. Superior weapons do not always overcome determination and will.

Remember that “asymmetrical warfare” does not only refer to differences in weapons capabilities, kinetic mass and quality of forces brought into battle. It also refers to the motives and commitment that adversaries bring to the fight.

The US is an instant gratification, short attention span culture with a low social pain threshold and technology fetish, especially when it comes to gadgets, weapons and war-fighting (which feeds into the other cultural traits). Iran is the birthplace and seat of a 6000 year old Persian culture that invented chess and carpet weaving. Both of these endeavors require consummate patience, perseverance, imagination, complex multidimensional thought and extended foresight that sees the “play” several moves ahead of the current moment. At the behest of an international pariah client-state partner unable to “go it alone,” the US has launched an opportunistic expeditionary war of aggression against Iran during a midterm election year. Iran is fighting an existential defensive war of attrition in and from its ancestral homeland against the US and its regional (including Arab) allies, including the pariah state.

Given these differences, the axiom could well explain the analogy.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” returns.

For those who may be interested, my buddy Selwyn Manning and I have decided to revive the “A View from Afar” podcast next week.

There is so much going on in the world the days, most of it bad sad to say, but our geopolitical angle perched down in the deep South Pacific may be different than some other perspectives for those who live in other parts of the world (and perhaps surprising to some who live in this neck of the woods)..

The show airs Monday February 23 at 12:00PM NZ time and Sunday February 22 6:00PM US East Coast time. It streams live on YouTube and various streaming platforms and then will be on demand. Just look for the title of the show wherever you listen/watch podcasts.

The first show highlights the death knell of the liberal international order and the US role in ringing that bell. Here is a summary tease of what is in store:

“The sad fact, though, is that the US is the center of our earthly geopolitical universe, serving as the first rock to drop in the global pond whose ripple effects are extensive, negative, and washing up in unexpected and unforeseen ways. That rock, in fact, is a black hole sucking the remnants of the rules-based order into oblivion, or if not oblivion, irrelevance in a new age of power politics (might makes right, etc.). It is a dark force from which things as they exist cannot return.”

See you then!

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Military Extortion as Coercive Diplomacy (UPDATED).

The lethal theatre of the absurd that has been the Trump administration’s sabre rattling performances in the Central American basin over the last few months culminated with the military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and his wife in the early hours of Saturday morning, Caracas time. The tactical precision of the special operation was excellent, efficient and low cost when it came to human lives. While the exact number of Venezuelan casualties are yet unknown (although there have been reports of dozens killed, including Cubans), US forces suffered eight injuries and although some of the helicopters deployed suffered shrapnel damage, all assets returned to base safely. From a military tactical standpoint, the operation was a success and a demonstration of capability.

Even so, the broader picture is more complicated and therefore less straightforward when it comes to assessing the aftermath. Here I shall break down some of the main take-aways so far.

The strike on Venezuela was interesting because it was a hybrid decapitation and intimidation strike. Although US forces attacked military installations in support of the raid (such as by destroying air defence batteries), they only went after Maduro and his wife using their specialist Delta Force teams. That is unusual because most decapitation strikes attempt to remove the entire leadership cadres of the targeted regime, indulging its civilian and military leadership. They also involve seizing ports and airfields to limit adversary movements as well as the main means of communications, such as TV and radio stations, in order to control information flows during and after the event. The last thing that the attacker wants is for the target regime to retain its organizational shape and ability to continue to govern and, most importantly, mount an organised resistance to the armed attackers. This is what the Russians attempted to do with their assault on Kiev in February 2023.

That did not happen in this instance. Instead, the US left the entirety of the Bolivarian regime intact, including its military leadership and civilian authorities. Given reports of CIA infiltration of Venezuela in the months prior to the attack and the muted Venezuelan response to it, it is likely that US agents were in “backdoor” contact with members of the Bolivarian elite before the event, providing assurances and perhaps security guarantees to them (amnesty or non-prosecution for crimes committed while in power) in order to weaken their resistance to the US move. US intelligence may have detected fractures or weakness in the regime and worked behind Maduro’s back to assure wavering Bolivarians that they would not be blamed for his sins and would be treated separately and differently from him.

This might explain Vice President Delcy Rodriguez’s promise to “cooperate” with the US. That remains to be seen but other Bolivarian figures like Interior Minister Diosdaro Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, notorious for their leadership of Maduro’s repressive apparatus, may not be similarly inclined given that their post-Maduro treatment is likely to be very different–and they still may have control over and the loyalty of many of the people under their commands.

Trump says that the US “will run” the country for the foreseeable future until a regime transition scenario is developed, but in light of the limited nature of the military operation, it is unclear how the US proposes to do so. What is clear is that the US had real time intelligence from the CIA and perhaps regime insiders that allowed them to track and isolate Maduro in a moment of vulnerability. Ironically, for Maduro this proved fortunate, because given the surveillance that he was subjected to, any attempt to escape Caracas could have resulted in his death by drone. Instead, he and his wife get to be a guest of the US federal justice system.

(As an aside, it is noteworthy that the Maduro’s were indicted on cocaine trafficking charges and possessions of machine guns. No mention is mentioned in the indictments of fentanyl, the justification for the extra-judicial killings of civilians at sea by US forces and one of the initial excuses for attacking Venezuela itself (the so-called “fentanyl shipment facilities”). Possession of machine guns is not a crime in Venezuela, certainly not by a sitting leader facing constant violent threats from abroad. So the US is basically charging them with unlicensed firearms violations in the US rather than in Venezuela–where it has no jurisdiction–even though they do not reside there while switching the basis for the kidnapping from a fictitious accusation to something that may have more evidentiary substance. But in truth, the legal proceedings against the Maduros are no more than a fig leaf on the real reasons for their extraordinary rendition).

Even if limited in nature as a decapitation strike, the immediate result of the US use of force is intimidation of the remaining Bolivarians in government. Unless they regroup and organise some form of mass resistance using guerrilla/irregular warfare tactics, thereby forcing the US to put boots on the ground in order to subdue the insurgents (and raising the physical and political costs of the venture), at some point the post-Maduro Bolivarians will be forced to accept power-sharing with or replacement by the US backed opposition via eventual elections, and as Trump has indicated, the US will take control of Venezuelan oil assets (in theory at least). In his words: “they (US oil companies) will make a lot of money.” For this to happen the US will maintain its military presence in the Caribbean and adjacent land bases, in what Marco Rubio calls “leverage” in case the Venezuelans do not comply as demanded. This is coercive diplomacy in its starkest form.

Put bluntly, this is an extorsion racket with the US military being used as the muscle with which to heavy the Bolivarians and bring them to heel. In light of Trump’s and the US’s past records, this should not be surprising. The question is, has the US read the situation correctly? Are the Bolivarians ao much disliked that the country will turn against them in droves and support an ongoing US presence in the country? Is the military and civilian leadership so weak or incompetent that they cannot rule without Maduro and need the US for basic governmental functioning (which is what the US appears to believe)? Have all of the gains made by lower class Venezuelans been eroded by Maduro’s corruption to the point that a reversal of the Bolivarian policy agenda in whole or in part is feasible? Will average Venezuelans, while thankful for the departure of the despot, accept abject subordination to the US and its puppets? Or will Cuban and Russian-backed civilian militias and elements in the armed forces retreat into guerrilla warfare. thereby forcing the US into a prolonged occupation without a clear exist strategy (i.e. deja vu all over again)?

There are some interesting twists to the emerging story. Maria Corina Machado, the CIA-backed opposition figure-turned-Nobel Peace Prize winner, has positioned herself to be the power behind the throne for Maduro’s heir apparent, Edmundo Gonzalez, who most election observers believe won the 2024 presidential elections but was denied office due to Maduro’s clearly fraudulent manipulation of the vote count. But Trump says that she “is not ready” and does not have the ” support” or “respect” within Venezuela to run the country. This seems to be code words for “too independent-minded” or “not enough of a puppet” (or even “female”) for Trump, who seems unaware of how a close overt association between his administration and any potential future Venezuelan leader may receive mixed reactions at home and abroad. In any event, sidelining Machado could have some unexpected repercussions.

Then there is the issue of how the US and its Venezuelan allies propose to purge the country of foreign actors like Hezbollah, Russians, Cubans and most importantly from an economic standpoint, the Chinese. Rounding up security operatives is one thing (although even that will not be easy given their levels of experience and preparation); dispossessing Chinese investors of their Venezuelan assets is a very different kettle of fish So far none of this appears to have been thought out in a measure similar to the planning of the military raid itself.

Finally, Trump’s claims that Venezuela “stole” US oil is preposterous. In 1976 a nationalisation decree was signed between the Venezuelan government–a democracy–and US oil companies where Venezuela gained control of the land on which oil facilities were located and received a percentage of profits from them while the private firms continued to staff and maintain the facilities in exchange for sharing profits (retaining a majority share) and paying sightly more in taxes. That situation remained intact until the 1990s, when a series of market-oriented reforms were introduced into the industry that loosened State management over it. After Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 on his Bolivarian platform, that arrangement continued for a short time until 2001 when the Organic Hydrocarbon Law was reformed in order to re-assert State control and foreign firms began withdrawing their skilled labor personnel and some of their equipment when taxes were increased on them. By 2013 the oil infrastructure was decrepit and lacking in skilled workers to staff what facilities are still operating, so Chavez (by then on his death bed) expropriated the remaining private holdings in the industry.

This was clearly unwise but it was not illegal and certainly was not a case of stealing anything. Moreover, the Venezuelan oil industry limped along with help from Bolivarian allies like the PRC and Russia because it is the country’s economic lifeline (and cash cow for the political elite dating back decades). So it is neither stolen or completely collapsed. As with many other things, the complexities of the matter appear to be unknown to or disregarded by Trump in favour of his own version of the “facts.”

Regardless, the PRC and Russia have stepped into the breech and invested in Venezuela’s oil industry with people and equipment. They may resist displacement or drive a hard bargain to be bought out. It will therefore not be as simple as Trump claims it to be for US firms to return and “make a lot of money” from Venezuelan oil.

It is these and myriad other “after entry” (to use a trade negotiator’s term) problems that will make or break the post-Maduro regime, whatever its composition. In the US the word is that the US “broke it so now owns it,” but the US will never do that. It has seldom lived up to its promises to its erstwhile allies in difficult and complex political cultures that it does not understand. It has a very short attention span, reinforced by domestic election cycles where foreign affairs is of secondary importance. So it is easily manipulated by opportunists and grifters seeking to capitalise on US military, political and economic support in order to advance their own fortunes (some would say this of the MAGA administration itself). If this sounds familiar it is because it is a very real syndrome of and pathology in US foreign affairs: focus on the military side of the equation, conduct kinetic operations, then try to figure out what else to do (nation-build? keep the peace? broker a deal amongst antagonistic locals?) rather than simply declare victory and depart. Instead, the US eventually leaves on terms dictated by others and with destruction in its wake.

One thing that should be obvious is that for all the jingoistic flag-waving amongst US conservatives and Venezuelan exiles, their problems when it comes to Venezuela may just have started. Because now they “own” what is to come, and if what comes is not the peace and prosperity promised by Trump, Rubio, Machado and others, then that is when things will start to get real. “Real” as in Great Power regional conflict real, because launching a war of opportunity on Venezuela in the current geopolitical context invites responses in kind from adversaries elsewhere that the US is ill-equipped to respond to, much less control.

The precedent has been set and somewhere, perhaps in more than one theatre, the invitation to reply is open.

Stay tuned and watch this space.

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The hollow hegemon.

Trump 2.0’s foreign policy has revitalised “old school” realists who, after years of being challenged by neo-realists, idealists, liberal internationalists and constructivists, have embraced the return of Great Power politics based on balancing power capabilities, national self-interest and geopolitical notions of spheres of influence, drawing on historical antecedents for policy-making precedent. This brings back memories of my own education in the discipline, where I studied under some of the foremost International Relations (IR) scholars of the late 20th century (including Hans Morgenthau’s last lectures as an emeritus professor and sit-in attendance at Henry Kissinger’s first course in academia after leaving government service) as well as people like Albert Wohstetter and Paul Ello for nuclear strategy and Morton Kaplan on international systems theory.

During that period of time I also was introduced to the study of comparative politics by the likes of Adam Przeworski, Philippe Schmitter, Guillermo O’Donnell, Loyd and Susanne Rudolph, something that made me appreciate the nuances and differences between national political systems (both authoritarian and democratic) as well as their impact on foreign policy and International relations. Przeworski, Schmitter and O’Donnell as well as other colleagues and students were the driving force in the study of comparative authoritarian regime decline in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then of the transitions to democracy in the late 1980s. Although fourth generation scholars have resurrected the focus (or perhaps reinvented the analytic wheel) on democratic backsliding or decay and the ways in which authoritarians emerge in democracies, the earlier works remain fundamental to understanding the dynamics of regime change, be it to or from democracy/dictatorship.

Sadly, the international relations literature (and US policy-makers) ignored and continue to ignore these and other aspects of comparative politics, thereby leaving a void in IR understanding of how foreign policy and strategic perspectives are made in different national contexts. The focus on the State as a unitary actor in a world of similars blinds it to the differences between States the it comes to addressing the external world. Geopolitics recognises that size, for example, matters, but it does not recognise how size and size differentials, resource endowments, etc.–the basis of geopolitics–translates into foreign policy perspectives and making. Think of it this way: even if both are small liberal democratic primary good exporters, NZ has a very different political culture and foreign policy than Uruguay. They are not uniform in their approaches to the world and even if both are mice in a global elephant show, they react very differently to many world events.

In light of these analytic deficiencies in the IR field, I made comparative foreign policy a regular feature of my own research and teaching because I felt that there was a gap between the study of international relations, especially the realist school of IR theory, and the study of comparative politics, which tended to be more region-specific and usually did not extend beyond the borders of the country under study. However, comparative politics research (at least then) required language training and cultural immersion, which was the main reason why I chose my adopted home country, Argentina, as the subject of my Ph.D. research ( I spent my childhood and teenage years there so was immersed in the culture and politics of the place). I also began to see that although thorough reading of Thucydides, Hobbes, Metternich, Clausewitz and Sun Tse were essential to understanding the history of IR and warfare, old school realism, back then and now in its resurgence, suffers from the same intellectual flaws: selective historicism and a lack of political depth when its comes to cross-national engagement. The State as unit of analysis is fine as a broad brush stroke, but it is in the finer, sometimes idiosyncratic aspects of foreign policy making where the differences between States are made. That should be better accounted for.

For example, let’s start with the notion of “spheres of influence.” Apparently the Trump 2.0 foreign policy “brain” trust has decided that a return to dividing the world into Great Power spheres of influence–that is, geographic areas in which their interests dominate and their power is unchallenged–is a good thing. The US reclaims the Western Hemisphere and Greenland under the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, Russia gets East Europe and Central Asia, the PRC gets East continental Asia, the Middle East is considered shared influence space and they agree to compete for influence and territory in Africa (because, as Kissinger once joked, it was a good place to trial weapons). The historical precedent for this “neo-Gilded” view is the McKinley presidency and that of his successor Teddy Roosevelt during the so-called “golden age of imperialism” in the late 1800s-early 1900s, something that I have recently written about here.

The “spheres of influence” posture derives from geopolitical theory. Geopolitics is about the relationship between geography, political power and power projection. There are three main types of geopolitical theory, one being a continental view based on control of land masses (MacKinder), the second being a maritime focused view based on control of the seas (Mahan), and the third being aerial (or vertical) geopolitical theory focused on air power domination (de Seversky, Douhet, Mitchell). Spheres or zones of influence (as per MacKinder) are areas within the physical control or direct influence of a given power and where its interests prevail unchallenged by competing powers.

As weapons technologies have advanced, so have the scope of geopolitical thought, leading to hybrid theories (cyber warfare and joint forces automated warfare) and the expansion of the reach of sub-types into space and nuclear weapons (aerial), submarine and seabed warfare (maritime) and irregular guerrilla warfare (continental). Great Powers such as the US and PRC now embrace all geopolitical perspectives in their national security strategies, with smaller powers left to focus on a more limited range of strategies based on their resource capabilities and geographic location.

The trouble is that the “spheres of influence” scheme is a product of a different, less technologically advanced era when physical barriers to power projection were more important to strategic calculations. In today’s strategic environment those impediments have been increasingly overcome by technological advancement (especially hybridisation and joint force automation), so the notion that a Great Power can wall off entire regions as as if they were its own is archaic at best and ludicrous at worst. Moreover, it fails to account for how the nation-states located in a given region react to attempted Great Power sphere of influence projection. The original premise of the term was based on strategic conceit born of overwhelming military superiority, where a Great Power forced nation-states within its self-proclaimed sphere of influence to bend to its will while strategic competitors acquiesced to or at least did not dare challenge the claim in the face of a bilateral overmatch.

This ignores the true historical record. Take the Western Hemisphere and the Monroe Doctrine. The US proclaimed it as the foundation of its approach to “its” region at a time when it was hard for competitors like France, Germany and Russia to reclaim or lay claims to Western Hemisphere territory. But some did (think of the French, UK and Dutch presence in the Caribbean), and later during the Cold War both Soviet and Chinese covert operations worked hard to support Marxist-Leninist/Maoist insurgencies against US backed (most often authoritarian) regimes. That is because Western Hemisphere societies, including elements within political elites, did not recognise the Monroe Doctrine as anything other than an imperialist statement of intent. Only the most craven boot-licking dictators like Somoza, Batista or Trujillo bent to Uncle Sam’s will back in the day. But even then many in their societies did not, a sentiment that was and is wide-spread throughout the region to this day. Other than contemporary brownnosers like Bukele and Miilei, few in the Western Hemisphere consent to being part of a US sphere of influence. Many will not acquiesce either if push comes to shove.

On a practical level, although the US can bully Venezuela and other small neighbouring states, it is entirely different matter when it comes to larger countries like Brazil, Colombia and Mexico (and Canada!). Moreover, the PRC has developed extensive infrastructure facilities and networks throughout the region (including the largest container port and hub distribution center in South America in Peru) and is heavily invested in extractive enterprises as well as supplying advanced telecommunications technologies to regional clients. Although PRC firms relinquished control of container processing terminals on either end of the Panama Canal when the US pressured Panama on the matter, it is the largest Latin American agricultural commodity purchaser, including of soybean quotas normally allocated to the US but disrupted by Trump 2.0’s tariffs (which Argentina and Brazil happily stepped in fill). Other entities like the EU also have extensive economic ties to the Western Hemisphere, so without using military means extra-regional actors have created a situation that is far from conducive to a repeat of the “Gilded Age’ where the US called the shots using, as I have mentioned before, Gunboat Diplomacy and the Big Stick policy in order to do so. Finally, global lines of communication, including supply chains and telecommunications networks, make it impossible to return to a sphere of influence-based international system. There are simply too many systemic variables and changes to allow for a return to the past.

Put simply, the US may be selling the Monroe Doctrine as the bottom line when it comes to claiming that the Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence, but the inhabitants of the region, to now include economic, social and political elites not beholden to the US and who have developed ties to non-regional actors like the PRC and EU, are not buying the idea that the claim has a legitimate basis for it. To the contrary, only the US has a long history of military and covert interventionism in regional affairs, so there is a large reservoir of ill-will towards it that is now once again being tapped. Other than the bullying antics and influence-peddling in a few instances, for most of the Western Hemisphere the US claims and threats are more of the same ole’, same ‘ole, but this time with more bluster than substance.

That brings up another realist chestnut: the notion of a “hegemon” that dominates a given geopolitical space and the networks established within it, be they regional or global in nature. Here again, the lack of analytic depth and comparative politics cross-pollination is evident. For realists hegemony is equal to domination based on power asymmetries and national resource capability differentials. Since national interest determines the foreign policy of Great Powers and power is the currency used to secure that interest, Great Powers work to dominate other powers in contested areas and especially within spheres of influence. Given contending or opposing national interests, this inevitably leads to conflict, which itself can be cultural, economic, diplomatic, social and/or both overt and covert military/kinetic. Conflict is the systems regulator and the exercise of national power is the ultimate determinate of conflict outcomes. In that view, durable peace is an anomaly, not a normality, which is why establishing spheres of influence provides for international systems stability via balance of power politics.

The trouble here is that realism does not recognize domestic agency on the part of individual nation-states. They are just units of analysis in a larger power-balancing game. Although scholars have raised the issue of the “second image” in recent years, that is, the role of domestic factors in shaping foreign policy, realists remain fixated at the nation-state level, treating it as a homogenous actor with uniform preferences and interests. With that variable controlled, realists can then focus (fixate?) on power balancing within the international system rather than on the causes and motivations of decision-makers operating within it.

Comparative politics helps in this regard. For example, in the neo-Gramscian school of IR theory, the notion of consent is introduced in order differentiate between domination (which is unilateral imposition of preferences on others and their subordination and acquiescence to that superior force), and hegemony understood properly as social order based on consent. For realists hegemony and domination are synonymous and consent does not matter–subordination and acquiescence do.

For comparative politics theorists consent is the core feature that distinguishes between democracy and authoritarianism. Democracies are based on mass contingent consent, reproduced and reinforced via things like regular open elections and freedoms of association, movement, speech and the like. Authoritarianism, on the other hand and whatever its specific guise, is based on the domination of one social group over all others. In some cases the dictatorship is theocratic. In others it is military. In others still, it is clan, ethnic, tribal or class-based. In all cases it is imposed rather than consented to.

Therein lies the problem with the selective historicism and shallow analytic approach that serves as the realist foundation for Trump foreign policy 2.0. It confuses acquiescence with consent, hegemony with domination and removes agency from actors other than the US while using outdated concepts to make revisionist claims on other people’s territory. Trump and his entourage may think that might makes right and that a new era of Great Power balancing based on spheres of influence is at hand, but it does not have the Might or Right to re-make the global system in its preferred retrograde vision because, quite frankly, times have changed and it has neither the internal unity or external capabilities or will to pay the costs required to effectively secure a sphere of influence-based balance of power in an increasingly polycentric (as opposed to multipolar) context.

In that sense, Trump foreign policy 2.0 is that of a hollow hegemon, devoid of the moral, ethical, intellectual and ultimately physical ability to fully cash in the checks that the mouths of Trump and his sycophantic minions are writing. They can certainly deliver on some short-term promises (say, impeding drug trafficking) and achieve short-term goals (e.g., influencing foreign elections) while doing harm to others and the US reputation, but over the long term the self-appointed role of the US as global hegemon will be hollowed out to the point that all that will remain is a paper tiger growling in a cage of its own making.

Truth be told, the US has started to look like the Soviet Union in its decline. It is a military giant, but a bloated one as well, with waste, fraud and corruption embedded throughout the military-industrial complex. It is ruled by a self-serving, corrupt, pandering and highly partisan political society that is disconnected from the social realities of most of its citizens and obsequious to the interests of the economic elites that fund them (the so-called “techbros” and Wall Street being foremost amongst them). And it is deeply divided–one might say increasingly splintered–along racial, religious, ethnic, sectarian, cultural and political lines that serve as diversions from and disguises for the class divisions that underpin the increasingly frayed social fabric. That is not the stuff that a hegemon is made of.

Because in the end the real measure of power is social cohesion, political unity and policy-making discipline grounded in practical reality coupled with a realistic strategic vision that takes account the a nation’s comparative global position given the tenor and technologies of the times rather than the performative symbolism of political theatre–or perhaps better said, the cruel and vacuous circus side-show–that the Trump 2.0 administration has become.

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Another Hollow Bluff.

I know from reviewing readership stats that KP readers are not as much interested in international relations as they are in NZ domestic and foreign policy and various social issues. There is some interest in what Donald Trump is doing to the world from his throne in the Oval Office, so I figured I would scratch that itch and write a brief about yet another moronic move that he has recently made.

After being trolled on Telegraph by former Russian president and current Russian National Security Council Deputy Chair Dimitry Medvedev, Trump posted on his Truth Social media account that he had ordered two nuclear submarines “closer to Russia” in “the (appropriate) regions.” He repeated this on the conservative Newsmax television channel a few hours later, claiming that what Medvedev said was a threat that needed a strong response. However, given the realities, I doubt that Medvedev or Putin are quaking in their boots. Let me break down why they are not.

To begin with, Trump is presumably talking about nuclear armed submarines like the Ohio-class “boomers” that carry sea launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The US has plenty of nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) like the Virginia class boats that are the basis of the AUKUS development project with Australia and Great Britain, but these do not carry SLBMs and would not provide any deterrent effect on Russia or another hostile nuclear-armed State. If the message is not meant as a strategic deterrent and SSN;s are being sent, then their strike value is limited and tactical.. Given that Trump’s complaints about Russia are about a strategic ceasefire in Ukraine, a tactical response is unlikely to move the Russians into compliance and will just escalate the situation beyond Ukrainian borders.

So Trump is likely referring to the Ohio class boats, which carry Trident II D5 SLBMs that have ranges of 4100-7600/11,500-14,000+ nautical miles/kilometers and travel at supersonic speeds ranging upwards from MACH 19 (20,000 feet per second or 18,000 mph/29,000 kph). The carry 8-14 multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) with warheads that have “throw-weights” of 100 to 435 kilotons (the latter deigned to hit “hardened” targets like missile silos, command bunkers and deep tunnel complexes. In comparison, the “Little Boy” bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 15 kilotons). They tend to lurk in off shore deep waters, often in undersea canyons, waiting for the order to strike. Given their ranges and speeds, there is no need for SLBM platforms like the Ohio class boats to “get closer” to targets. In fact, to do so is folly.

Why? When the order comes, these submarines must rise from deep water (they are said to be able to dive as deep as 1,500 feet or more) to relatively shallow depths of 150-200 feet. That is because the underwater propulsion stage of the SLBM, which uses a sophisticated variant of steam-based propulsion, does not have the energy or pushing power to reach the surface from greater depths. Once the surface is reached, a solid gas propellant is ignited, accelerating the missile to supersonic speed before MIRV re-entry.

This is where Trump’s bluff is called. Ordering US SBMs “closer to Russia” negates the advantages of deep water concealment because it brings the submarines over shallower coastal shelves or seas (say, the Baltic or Black Seas). That makes it easier for Russian anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms (including attack submarines of their own) to hunt, locate and track them. In addition to sonar and radar as well as satellite imagery, modern hydrophone detection systems and seafloor thermal and acoustic mapping arrays are used to seek out and record the acoustic signatures of submarines (which can be as distinctive as finger prints), something that is easier in more shallow and warmer waters given sea layer temperature variations produced by water density, depth pressure, refraction, salinity, thermoclines, etc., including the waters of narrows, straits and other maritime chokepoints. Even deep water can conduct and bend sound over long distances, such as in the low frequency SOFAR channel that extends from 600-1200 meters down in low to middle latitudes to near the surface at higher latitudes (which is one way of listening to whale calls with hydrophones). All of which is to say that the frequency, wavelength, bend and amplitude of underwater sounds are related to water temperature and depth, so have become important markers for underwater scientists and engineers, including those in the submarine/ASW businesses.

Phrased another way that Trump might understand: cold and deep water good for submarines; warm and shallow, bad. Trump clearly has not gotten this brief. Or perhaps his version came from the same advisors who told him that a tariff is a non-transferable tax paid by foreign exporters to the US.

In that light ordering US SLBM submarines into shallower and possibly warmer waters near Russian coasts as a show of force and then giving the precise number of those being told to so is a breach of basic submarine operational security. It allows the opportunity the Russians the opportunity to refine their ASW skills and perhaps even get a better idea of how the two particular submarines in question look and sound like underwater. In other words, besides the childish nature of the tit-for-tat spat with Medvedev, Trump has been suckered into blurting out, yet again, potentially sensitive information about US naval capabilities and operations.

The US Navy has choices to make. It can do nothing and try to pretend that it followed his orders, hoping that his minions in the Navy and Pentagon are kept out of the submariner information loop. It could order the ships to drive around in circles and claim that it followed orders. It can object to the commander-in-chief’s order and try to convince him to rescind it at the risk of having careers ended (if he in fact issued one). Or they can salute and follow commands as they are instructed to do even if it puts crews and contingency plans at risk. None of this was necessary given current US submarine operational protocols and capabilities, so this was not a believable warning much less a credible threat. It was theatrical bluster without merit.

But then again Trump is a mixture of ignorance, impulse, thin-skinned ego, bully and pomposity, so his meaningless showman’s gesture will remind Medvedev, Putin and many otherwise US-allied leaders yet again that there is a petulant knucklehead sitting in the Oval Office as POTUS.

MAGA!

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Careful what you wish for.

One gets the sense that Netanyahu has used his post-October 7 military successes (including ethnic cleansing and IDF war crimes in Gaza) to prepare for this moment of friction vis a vis Iran while manoeuvring Trump into a corner on joining the war in pursuit of regime change as much or more than nuclear non-proliferation (as I have pointed out in previous posts, Trump is an empty intellectual vessel devoid of firm policy positions other than those that he thinks serve himself. He is therefore highly susceptible to suggestions that appeal to his vanity and self-interest, such as being “the saviour of Iran” if he joins Israel in the military campaign against the theocratic regime).

Already, the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has broadcast statements claiming that he and his supporters will return to Iran soon after the collapse of the current theocratic regime. Pahlavi is close to Netanyahu and Trump’s inner circle and US-based heirs of the Shah’s exiled supporters (many concentrated in and around LA) are willing to assume control of a post-theocratic government under Reza Pahlavi’s leadership. The stage appears to being set for a regime take-over following military defeat of the ayatollahs.

The trouble is that while many Iranians abhor the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard, they also remember very well what the Shah’s rule was all about (SAVAK, anyone?). They remember well that Israel was the Shah’s best ally, and that Mossad helped train and shared intelligence with SAVAK. So it is not clear that his heirs will be universally welcomed, something that sets the stage for prolonged internal conflict within the Persian power. In addition, with the old leadership gone a new generation of militant leaders may emerge in their place, hardened by their experiences with Israel and its Western backers. They may not prove easily removable or amenable to a negotiated compromise on governing alongside Western-backed groups.

Even if the West gets its way and the ayatollahs are deposed, there is the issue whether a new generation of Iranian expats, many coming from monied backgrounds in places like Southern California, have the skillsets with which to govern a country, and culture, that mixes pre-modern beliefs with post-modern technologies and a ponderous bureaucracy that straddles a stark urban/rural demographic divide. Will the US pour in aid to help them with the task of reconstruction at a time when DOGE is cutting back on all types of US foreign aid? Will Iranians welcome such assistance and the US/Western personnel that deliver it? Or will they resist what could be seen as an affront to their nationalistic and cultural pride?

This is a noteworthy point. Persian nationalism is rooted in millennia, not the last half century. Persians come in many faiths and ethnicities, and what unites them isa rejection of foreign interference in their affairs, especially by Sunni Arabs and Western colonisers (and their descendants). In the US and other interested parties there appears to be a failure to understand how deep Persian nationalism runs as an ideological glue in Iranian society. This could prove costly for the adherents of forcible regime change in that country.

The US and Israel appear to believe that after they bomb Iranian nuclear development and storage sites, military infrastructure and command and control facilities and kill leaders of the revolutionary regime, the people will rise up, the regime will fall, a new government will be installed and everyone will go home happy. The truth is otherwise. Iran will have to undergo a long term military occupation if a new order is to be imposed. Who is going to do that? Iran is a huge country and as mentioned, not all of its inhabitants welcome foreign interference in their affairs. The US and Israel do not have the capability to impose an occupation regime, not does any other State in part because of their realistic unwillingness to do so. So the operative assumption in Washington and Tel Aviv about regime change in Iran seems to be based on a pipe dream conjured up in the war-fevered minds of Trump and Netanyahu’s strategic advisors. And a reality check is also worth noting: the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan this century by Western-led coalitions have not ended well for them or with the stated objectives of their missions being achieved.

Then there is the reaction of the global Shiite diaspora to seeing their most venerated leaders killed, incapacitated or imprisoned by Western powers or those backed by the West. Iran may not be able to defend itself against Israel and the US by conventional and nuclear military means, but it has many unconventional assets at its disposal, and they have global reach. The current tit-for-tat exchanges may be a prelude to a widening regional and perhaps global conflict fought by unconventional means. The end to the current (fairly short) conventional military war may be just the beginning of a protracted unconventional, asymmetrical conflict that could spill into other States in the region and beyond.

And here is another background thought: The modern Western-led international community has always reacted poorly to revolutionary regimes, e.g.: USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Algeria, Granada, DPRK, etc.. The specific evolutionary ideology matters less than the usurpation of power by force because it upsets the international status quo because it upsets an international status based on acceptance of shared rules and norms (if not values). That is, states agree to get along within established rules of conduct and revolutionaries do not respect that basic rule of the game and seek parametric change in their societies as well as in their relations with the external world..

In response, revolutionary regimes tend to support each other against former colonial and imperialist Western powers, creating a vicious circle of hostile action/reaction. It may be 46 years after the Iranian revolution, but perhaps this is somehow at play here?

Whatever the case, I have a bad feeling that this is not going to end well, except perhaps for Netanyahu (who will receive a boost in domestic support after the Iranian regime is ousted as well as perhaps further delay his court trial on corruption charges and the collapse of his coalition government). Trump is being slow-walked by Netanyahu into joining a war of convenience rather than necessity that may spiral into a deeper regional confrontation that will consume US blood and treasure for some time to come (in exact contravention of Trump’s promises to end US foreign “entanglements”). With the US mid-term elections scheduled for next year, prolonged involvement in Iran may prove damaging to Trump’s allies in Congress and hinder pursuit of the GOP/MAGA policy agenda if they lose one or both majorities in the Deliberative Chambers. Meanwhile, Iran’s allies Russia and China sit quietly on the sidelines, either out of impotence or because they are hedging their bets. One gets the feeling that, especially with regard to the PRC, they are not impotent.

The slanted (often triumphant) Western media coverage of the conflict disguises the fact this may not be entirely over soon, and that whatever its battlefield successes Israel may pay a heavy reputational and diplomatic price for its actions, as the rise of global anti-semitism suggests is in fact now the case.

Dark and sad times ahead, I’m afraid.