Trapped between utopian dreams and realist dictates, Europe and Iran must correct their mirrored political pathologies or risk collapse in an era of hegemonic retreat and chaotic global reordering.
Give it a bit. It took the neocons some 12 years of pleading, cajoling, threat inflation and lies to get the War On Iraq that they so craved, but they got what they wanted and Iraq now is a failed state, at the behest of Israel.
Great article as usual, Kevin! Comments and compliments from me:
The four are “now struggling to re-establish the status-quo”? I wouldn’t put it like that, because it’s more the threat that Bzerzinski highlights that is now materializing, so no willingness from these 4 to re-establish any status quo ; it’s the multipolar world that is struggling to be born, and which will be born, as the US tries to resist in all possible ways. My different articles have explored these points, for instance here:
I do not think there is any retrenchment at all from the US side actually, the NSS doc also makes it clear; it’s necessary for the US to secure the base for the final confrontation that is coming with China. This is the embargo and the attempt to fully block China’s maritime and possible landbased commerce (BRI). See “Maritime Blockage Against China” from US Naval War College.
The Vnzla stunt was part of this plan, including for the oil to be restricted (8% of China exports). And the future Iran gambit as well : also representing 18% of China’s imports. Then if they can get Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Oran, to stop exporting to China as well, the plan would be that Russia alone won’t be able to fill entirely the tank for China.
Yes, I agree there might be a swing of the pendulum with Trump himself, but not with the Deep State; which is normal since it is a bureaucratic being with its slow and uniform momentum in one direction. So there is no strategic retreat. Btw this mirage of a "clean retreat" that you mention, is probably valid, in my opinion, to Ukraine as well. Even though Washington wants to hand over this hot Kiev potato to Europe, it won't be possible to escape blame - it's just too big.
Brilliant references to the labors of Hercules, that's so true; US strategy for domination has an infantile quality because it's so typically American in its short term notion of time (as per your previous fantastic essay). And funny that we both called the US a “predator” against it own "allies", as I also did independently from you, since I was referring to Todd’s recent work.
Regarding a “multi-course campaign” for “lebensraum”, I would think it more natural for the US to take Canada, not the rest; historically US almost got it in the War of 1812, it is geographical natural once (or if) Greenland is in the bag, and culturally it will also be a nice fit. Trump has even mentioned Canada as 51st state...
Finally, that's really original comparison using Carr's work for Europe vs Iran. Just an addition: when you say “Europe must ingest a bitter dose of realism”, yes but that realism is also the nation state. The European utopian dilemma is that it cannot be just Bruxelles ; these are nation states. So this means: please do not amalgamate Europe and the EU ; these are different things. The EU will never really replace the millennial nations in Europe in terms also of "national" interests. This is also part of that Bruxelles led utopianism.
Thanks Finn. This helps me above all with where I am not being clear since I tend to agree with your comments. I'll start at the end and work my way up.
Europe vs. EU: I agree and I was being ambiguous here as I did first use Brussels to signify the EU but then I said Europe and mentioned sovereign power, which means EU + Nations. My preference obviously is for a De Gaulle-style Europe of Nations, and in any case they do have to work together on some issues but I was not going to get into the exact mix here.
My Lebensraum comments are slightly tongue in cheek. I like to replay past tropes so the appeasement and domino effect are now in play! Once Trump took Greenland, then yes Canada but will he stop there. He may get Arctic fever and start grabbing Iceland Svalbard, Lapland and why not Gotland!! I'm being a bit sarcastic but it is a sort of payback to all the Swedes who were so eager to join NATO.
I did mean to signify that the retrenchment is more rhetorical than reality. We all know who will win the Tucker vs Mark Levin wrestling match in the end!
I'm not so sure that Russia alone cannot fill China's tank and I thought the goal was to drive a wedge between Russia and China? By the US monopolizing global oil stocks like that, you would drive Russia and China even more deeply together. China certainly wants a diversity of sources but as I understand it Venezuela was 4% of Chinese imports and Iran around 15%. These numbers are rough since there could be a decent amount of smuggling. If this Iranian / Venezuelan oil is diverted to say India, then the Russia oil that previously went there can go to China. As I understand it US refineries are set up for Venezuelan heavy crude.
When I say "re-establish the status quo" I am stretching things a bit. China, Russia and all want a rules based order with free trade. Of course the unipolar world preached that but never truly practised it. It is quite natural for China, as the most powerful exporter, to want free trade, although with China its not really a two way street. But from a rough bird's eye view, the US is becoming a rogue state seeking to overturn its own order (at least rhetorically and a portion of the deep state) while I think China would like a steady predictable system.
I think where our views diverge is that you see the mullahs and the US/Israelis as binary opposites whereas I see them as locked in a cycle of mutual reinforcement, where each justifies the other's existence and hard-line policies. A close reading of recent regime-change history supports my view. I see a recurring pattern where the strategic calculus of US/Israel often prefers Machiavellian efficiency over ideological alignment. And the last thing they care about is the fate of the people.
This dynamic manifests in predictable ways when regime change is on the agenda, as shown by two clear models from recent history, exemplified by Venezuela and Syria.
In Venezuela, we saw the model of swift decapitation. When the opportunity arose to displace the existing Communist structure, Trump explicitly chose stability over ideology. Despite a formidable and energetic expatriate opposition, the decision was to negotiate a Communist continuity. The existing power structure was kept in place. This model suggests that in the event of a clean decapitation in Iran, external powers would likely choose "moderate" mullahs from within the regime promoted to lead a new government. Since their first priority would be consolidating control, that would logically mean side-lining or repressing the very secular, revolutionary ex-pat elements that agitated for change.
In Syria, we witnessed the tragic model of protracted civil war. If US/Israel cannot achieve a quick decapitation, this is the model they would fall back in. There, Assad’s secular government was targeted for overthrow, but the power vacuum was eventually filled by Al Qaida, rebranded as moderate Jihadis. Now, as we speak, Al Qaida's forces are beheading the men and raping the female soldiers of the very secular Kurdish forces the West once so fiercely championed. The Syrian model suggests that even after a decade of devastating conflict, the ultimate settlement imposed by external powers favours a strong, controlling, and often religiously conservative authority they believe can govern a shattered society. For Iran, both models converge on the same grim conclusion: the perpetuation of a theocratic authority acceptable to external powers.
I share your hope for a free and flourishing Iran. My caution is simply that the better path there may be through Moscow and Beijing, not Tel Aviv and Washington.
Kevin - great article as always. Where do Russian-European relations go from here? If the US does in fact go for Greenland, do you see Europe re-opening up its markets to Russian energy? Perhaps a Common European Home 2.0 may be in the works over the long term?
Thanks William. Unless Trump quickly TACO's out (Trump Always Chickens Out) Russian-European relations are only going to get better. Chinese-European relations as well. To save pride and to protect itself, Europe will need to go forward with Eurasian integration and perhaps eventually open itself to the BRICS. Canada is showing the way. Ukraine's value is quickly becoming diminished, it has "hit the wall" if you will and is now much more of a liability to be avoided than a potential asset to be exploited. It seems that Oreshnik strike in Lvov has demonstrated to Europe their proper place in the hierarchy of power! So yes, I see Europe going back to Russian energy and even opening up to Chinese EV's. The one dark note will be Eastern Europe / Baltics will not be pleased with any of this, to them Greenland is useless and should simply be sacrificed to Trump.
The comparison or contrast between Iran and Europe I think is flawed from a strategic viewpoint as it fails to acknowledge the vast cultural gap between the two entities.
Europe is in the process of committing cultural seppeku. It has completely abandoned its traditional value system. As a result it’s populations are weak and barely capable of reproducing (hence the influx of people who are more than capable in this regard). Few in their native populations have the will much less the capability of fighting and dying for it.
Iran on the other hand continues to cling to it’s traditional values and it has a civilisational memory which includes centuries of interaction with both Russia and China, interactions within which it has maintained its cultural integrity.
This is still their model and while I am not familiar with Carr’s writings on this , it appears to lack an appreciation of the determining role of what Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah.
The Shiite heritage is very much rooted in conflict and war and their fondness for martyrdom , demonstrated in the war with Iraq , is something westerners do not understand, and haven’t since the crusades. This is one aspect of asabiyyah, which Iran still possesses.
The natural barriers the country enjoys means invasion is by the US is simply impossible (as is the case in Venezuela). The only mechanism the senile and decrepit hegemon and its zionist brain parasite possess then is destabilisation via external pressure(trade restrictions) or internal psyops.
Both have been going on unsuccessfully for a long time and will continue to.Their effectiveness however will likely be increasingly diminished as Iran forges stronger alliances economically via BRICS and politically via alignment with China and Russia.
They have already defeated the zionist parasite, together with its stumbling host recently, and, via their missiles and electronic warfare have the means to do so again. Valuable lessons have been learned, supply lines with Russia, China and North Korea reinforced, electronic defences improved.
They take the long view as a civilisational state of temporary alliances, however critical they may seem a certain point in time (including those with China and Russia). This may appear as weakness to a western political mindset accustomed to what they somewhat shortsightedly term “quick and decisive” actions which are mainly played out in the media.
Your focus on culture powerfully only deepens the analysis. You are right to propose a cultural spectrum—from deracination/liquidity to tradition/rigidity—where the measure of success is a society's asabiyyah, its cohesive strength. This spectrum perfectly complements Carr’s utopian - realist political scale. And again on both, Europe and Iran are stranded at opposite, dysfunctional extremes.
Iran’s religious and civilizational core—the source of its asabiyyah—is precisely what allowed it to survive the recent hybrid assault. Iranians with only a material, secular identity can always flee; those rooted in faith idealize martyrdom and have nowhere else to go and will fight to the death. Yet it was the regime’s sclerotic realism that allowed a minor economic problem to blow up into a full-blown currency crisis. These errors corroded Iran's very asabiyyah and gave external enemies an opening. Its cultural strength was undermined by political / economic brittleness.
Europe suffers the inverse flaw: its high degree of political and normative development is built upon a deracinated, liquefied cultural base. It has form without mass, leaving it vulnerable to any serious compressive pressure. The Bad Orange Man is about the exploit these vulnerabilities to the hilt.
Here again, Russia and China appear as mature synthesizers. Each embraces a state-managed traditionalism—Orthodoxy, Marxism—that provides a solid core of meaning and social cohesion. Yet both remain ruthlessly flexible in their political and economic strategies, adapting to real-world conditions without sacrificing that cultural core. They have calibrated their cultural concrete and political steel into a ratio that allows them to survive the West's sanctions and military pressure.
The political task resembles engineering a reinforced concrete column. The final strength of a society depends on the ratio between the compressive mass of concrete (cultural tradition) and the tensile flexibility of steel (political adaptation). Too much concrete, and the structure fails under tension; too much steel, and it lacks compressive strength and buckles. Iran needs more strategic flexibility to protect its core; Europe needs to recover cultural mass to give its structures purpose. Social survival lies in getting the ratio correct, by not overemphasising or rejecting either element.
Unfortunately for Marx he had zero understanding of human nature , indeed he never even considered it , focusing solely on economics and politics. The idea of a withering away of the state graphically illustrates his intellectual bankruptcy as both in China and the West the state has become and continues to become more powerful by the day. The only states that wither away, are the ones that collapse or are conquered to be replaced by another. Apart from psychology, history wasn’t his strong point either, nor philosophy. Ibn Khaldun, he was not.
The Chinese government may well use the marxist label as a fig leaf and say that by building a centralised capitalist state they are fulfilling Marx pipe dream, but no ordinary Chinese citizen believes this, they are too busy making money, and Chinese like money, a lot. I doubt anyone in the governing class actually believes it either, it is simply a tool of social control and such tools have a long history in China. China is today is probably more Confucian than marxist politically and socially and in terms of its values.
Agree. Marx argued that human nature is shaped by the prevailing mode of production. This is at best partially true. There are baseline instincts and social tendencies—status-seeking, competition, mating behaviour, in-group hierarchy—that exist independently of any economic system. The idea of a genuinely classless society is therefore naïve: even under conditions of material abundance, humans would still compete over status, influence, and reproductive opportunities. The only truly classless society is a community of the dead, which is why communism has always struck me as a secularized vision of heaven.
As for the state “withering away,” especially in the Chinese context, this was never a serious possibility. If anything, China demonstrates the opposite tendency: an immensely powerful state legitimized by socialist mythology. And if there is any people on earth who require the belief that they live in a socialist society, it is the ruthlessly mercenary Chinese.
Yes. One of my son’s has lived in Asia , mainly HK and Singapore for over a decade. My other son is married to a chinese woman here in Australia whose father is an archetypal chinese businessman and quite wealthy. I had a Chinese Taoist teacher for about 10 years. The Chinese way of thinking is not at all like the western way(traditional or “modern”) and in our terms they are very transactional. Still it works for them.
With the decline of western influence and with it the Zionist project, which has been executed through the medium of western power and influence , it will be interesting to see if this is able to adapt to the Chinese world view in which they have no cultural credos as with the “Christian” west.
I am not sure asabiyyah is corroded by some economic mismanagement.
Dissatisfaction with government actions has a long history in Iran. Iranians understand that while their government may make mistakes, their current economic difficulties are due entirely to US and European sanctions intended to destabilise their country.
Civilisational pride is much deeper than this, nor do I think it applies only to the devoutly religious.
I have worked with a few Iranians , non were that devout (surprisingly one was a relative of the Ayatollah Khomeini) , but all had an evident and great pride in their nation and it’s long history and cultural traditions (including the pre Islamic) which transcended any transient political or economic events. And these were people who had left the country for either economic reasons or due to persecution.
This is what modern westerners do not “get” about Iranians and Shia in general, hardship and suffering has a sacred value for them , it is key part of their identity , they do not flee from it, indeed they welcome it. This was also once part of the Christian tradition , long discarded, except likely in the Orthodox tradition, Russian and others.
I do not understand the reference to Marxism in relation to either China or Russia as it seems to be regarded now as an unfortunate aberration, albeit one that they learned some lessons from. That, and the fact that both were either wholly or partly marxist while defeating the fascist states of Germany and Japan and this gives their marxist eras an aura they would not otherwise possess.
The profound civilizational pride in its past you describe is Iran’s immense source of strength and the bedrock of its identity. This is what makes Iran a ‘civilization-state’ and not just a nation-state. However, Khaldun’s asabiyyah is the specific, active social cohesion that turns that pride in yesterday into today's collective political power and resilience. It’s the difference between loving your family’s history and being able to get all your cousins to work together on a difficult project today.
Khaldun warned that this active cohesion is corroded precisely when the ruling group loses touch with the people’s hardships—when economic misery (zulm) is compounded by a perception of elite corruption or incompetence. The Iranian system, for very good reasons, since it is mostly true, has been successfully blaming any feeling of zulm toward the foreign ‘Little Satan’ and ‘Great Satan,’ thus preserving internal asabiyyah. But as the economic crises multiply, fairly or not, they can be increasingly seen as a failure of the state to protect its people, and risks driving a wedge between the glorious civilizational identity (which endures) and the asabiyyah needed for the state to project power and thrive in the here and now.
Marxism functions as something like a state religion in China: both an ideology and the conceptual glue that legitimates power and gives historical meaning to social life. Crucially, China’s version of Marxism now looks closer to what Marx actually envisioned—albeit with important modifications—than the Soviet model ever did.
The central error of Soviet Marxism was to treat socialism or communism as an alternative to capitalism, rather than its culmination. For Marx, capitalism was not the enemy to be bypassed but the necessary engine of history. Only once capitalism had developed the forces of production to such an extent that material abundance became effectively permanent could socialism or communism emerge as a “happy ending” rather than a forced austerity project. This is why Marx consistently expected revolution to occur in the most advanced capitalist societies.
Ironically, by that criterion, contemporary China fits Marx’s expectations better than any society of the twentieth century. Its productive capacity, industrial scale, and integration into global markets place it among the most dynamically developed capitalist systems in history—even as it remains governed by a communist party.
Where China departs from orthodoxy is that Marx assumed that the transition would require a revolutionary expropriation of the oligarchs who controlled the means of production. What he did not anticipate was that a communist party might instead preside over the development of capitalism itself—guiding, constraining, and partially owning the means of production while allowing market mechanisms to do their historical work.
With respect to Europe, one could summarize it as “the EU mistook virtue and values for actual power”.
I agree with your conclusion of what Europe should do, but sadly I doubt they’ll do the rational thing. They are more likely to offer up Greenland to the USA for the sake of a last ditch effort to keep the relationship and NATO.
There are two things that people hate the most: #1 - change. #2 - the way things are.
I do like how you contrasted that with Iran. Spot on.
As an Iranian-American whose family was adversely and irretrievably affected by the dastardly Khomeinist regime, I would like to posit that the “quest for or sanctity of sovereignty” is a specious bill of goods—tolerating the oppression of millions of people by the so-called independent regimes of Iran simply because they are anti-imperialist and anti-Israel.
As a corollary, when the so-called liberals and leftists in the West bemoan from the top of their lungs the loss of Palestinian lives in the hands of Israel, and conversely the same crowd opt for silence when Iranian women and men are mowed down with machine guns and sniper rifles by anti-imperialist forces, I find this dichotomy no less disgusting and hypocritical.
In my view, Iran once liberated will be a nation exorcised of any Palestine guilt and Israel bashing. It has seen the abyss and decided to climb out of the hole the anti-imperialists of the 70s dug deeply.
I don’t care if America is seen as brazen and Israel as demonic and bloodthirsty. I care how much the anti-US and anti-Israel amen corner opt for silence in the face of mass murder by their champions.
Please visit the morgues of Iran where bodies are stacked up (no pun intended). Men and women whose lives are bereft of one human gift—the gift of hope.
We don’t care what you say or write, we welcome US and Israeli intervention! Leave the people of Iran alone. If you are not helping, at least hold your piece.
Go visit Iran and then write about how bad America is.
Thank you! I found myself laughing at the Tucker-Levin bit and so while perhaps it is slightly unserious, I agree that it captures the essence of the debate. I also pictured them through the trope of an angel - devil pair arguing on Trump's shoulders.
Yes, I made the same exact comment about the Carr dialectic in my comment below, without having seen your comment. Regarding Canada's refreshing pivot, both with the trip to China and Carney's WEF speech, let's see how sincere it really is and whether the Western oligarchy will demand of Carney to pedal back to the standard Western position...
Give it a bit. It took the neocons some 12 years of pleading, cajoling, threat inflation and lies to get the War On Iraq that they so craved, but they got what they wanted and Iraq now is a failed state, at the behest of Israel.
Great article as usual, Kevin! Comments and compliments from me:
The four are “now struggling to re-establish the status-quo”? I wouldn’t put it like that, because it’s more the threat that Bzerzinski highlights that is now materializing, so no willingness from these 4 to re-establish any status quo ; it’s the multipolar world that is struggling to be born, and which will be born, as the US tries to resist in all possible ways. My different articles have explored these points, for instance here:
https://finnandreen.substack.com/p/the-us-is-being-pulled-kicking-and?utm_source=publication-search
I do not think there is any retrenchment at all from the US side actually, the NSS doc also makes it clear; it’s necessary for the US to secure the base for the final confrontation that is coming with China. This is the embargo and the attempt to fully block China’s maritime and possible landbased commerce (BRI). See “Maritime Blockage Against China” from US Naval War College.
The Vnzla stunt was part of this plan, including for the oil to be restricted (8% of China exports). And the future Iran gambit as well : also representing 18% of China’s imports. Then if they can get Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Oran, to stop exporting to China as well, the plan would be that Russia alone won’t be able to fill entirely the tank for China.
Yes, I agree there might be a swing of the pendulum with Trump himself, but not with the Deep State; which is normal since it is a bureaucratic being with its slow and uniform momentum in one direction. So there is no strategic retreat. Btw this mirage of a "clean retreat" that you mention, is probably valid, in my opinion, to Ukraine as well. Even though Washington wants to hand over this hot Kiev potato to Europe, it won't be possible to escape blame - it's just too big.
Brilliant references to the labors of Hercules, that's so true; US strategy for domination has an infantile quality because it's so typically American in its short term notion of time (as per your previous fantastic essay). And funny that we both called the US a “predator” against it own "allies", as I also did independently from you, since I was referring to Todd’s recent work.
Regarding a “multi-course campaign” for “lebensraum”, I would think it more natural for the US to take Canada, not the rest; historically US almost got it in the War of 1812, it is geographical natural once (or if) Greenland is in the bag, and culturally it will also be a nice fit. Trump has even mentioned Canada as 51st state...
Finally, that's really original comparison using Carr's work for Europe vs Iran. Just an addition: when you say “Europe must ingest a bitter dose of realism”, yes but that realism is also the nation state. The European utopian dilemma is that it cannot be just Bruxelles ; these are nation states. So this means: please do not amalgamate Europe and the EU ; these are different things. The EU will never really replace the millennial nations in Europe in terms also of "national" interests. This is also part of that Bruxelles led utopianism.
Thanks Finn. This helps me above all with where I am not being clear since I tend to agree with your comments. I'll start at the end and work my way up.
Europe vs. EU: I agree and I was being ambiguous here as I did first use Brussels to signify the EU but then I said Europe and mentioned sovereign power, which means EU + Nations. My preference obviously is for a De Gaulle-style Europe of Nations, and in any case they do have to work together on some issues but I was not going to get into the exact mix here.
My Lebensraum comments are slightly tongue in cheek. I like to replay past tropes so the appeasement and domino effect are now in play! Once Trump took Greenland, then yes Canada but will he stop there. He may get Arctic fever and start grabbing Iceland Svalbard, Lapland and why not Gotland!! I'm being a bit sarcastic but it is a sort of payback to all the Swedes who were so eager to join NATO.
I did mean to signify that the retrenchment is more rhetorical than reality. We all know who will win the Tucker vs Mark Levin wrestling match in the end!
I'm not so sure that Russia alone cannot fill China's tank and I thought the goal was to drive a wedge between Russia and China? By the US monopolizing global oil stocks like that, you would drive Russia and China even more deeply together. China certainly wants a diversity of sources but as I understand it Venezuela was 4% of Chinese imports and Iran around 15%. These numbers are rough since there could be a decent amount of smuggling. If this Iranian / Venezuelan oil is diverted to say India, then the Russia oil that previously went there can go to China. As I understand it US refineries are set up for Venezuelan heavy crude.
When I say "re-establish the status quo" I am stretching things a bit. China, Russia and all want a rules based order with free trade. Of course the unipolar world preached that but never truly practised it. It is quite natural for China, as the most powerful exporter, to want free trade, although with China its not really a two way street. But from a rough bird's eye view, the US is becoming a rogue state seeking to overturn its own order (at least rhetorically and a portion of the deep state) while I think China would like a steady predictable system.
Yes, indeed. Thanks for these answers.
Kevin, apologies for my remarks. No one can justify the actions of the state of these bastards ruling a nation of 90 million in Iran.
I think where our views diverge is that you see the mullahs and the US/Israelis as binary opposites whereas I see them as locked in a cycle of mutual reinforcement, where each justifies the other's existence and hard-line policies. A close reading of recent regime-change history supports my view. I see a recurring pattern where the strategic calculus of US/Israel often prefers Machiavellian efficiency over ideological alignment. And the last thing they care about is the fate of the people.
This dynamic manifests in predictable ways when regime change is on the agenda, as shown by two clear models from recent history, exemplified by Venezuela and Syria.
In Venezuela, we saw the model of swift decapitation. When the opportunity arose to displace the existing Communist structure, Trump explicitly chose stability over ideology. Despite a formidable and energetic expatriate opposition, the decision was to negotiate a Communist continuity. The existing power structure was kept in place. This model suggests that in the event of a clean decapitation in Iran, external powers would likely choose "moderate" mullahs from within the regime promoted to lead a new government. Since their first priority would be consolidating control, that would logically mean side-lining or repressing the very secular, revolutionary ex-pat elements that agitated for change.
In Syria, we witnessed the tragic model of protracted civil war. If US/Israel cannot achieve a quick decapitation, this is the model they would fall back in. There, Assad’s secular government was targeted for overthrow, but the power vacuum was eventually filled by Al Qaida, rebranded as moderate Jihadis. Now, as we speak, Al Qaida's forces are beheading the men and raping the female soldiers of the very secular Kurdish forces the West once so fiercely championed. The Syrian model suggests that even after a decade of devastating conflict, the ultimate settlement imposed by external powers favours a strong, controlling, and often religiously conservative authority they believe can govern a shattered society. For Iran, both models converge on the same grim conclusion: the perpetuation of a theocratic authority acceptable to external powers.
I share your hope for a free and flourishing Iran. My caution is simply that the better path there may be through Moscow and Beijing, not Tel Aviv and Washington.
Kevin - great article as always. Where do Russian-European relations go from here? If the US does in fact go for Greenland, do you see Europe re-opening up its markets to Russian energy? Perhaps a Common European Home 2.0 may be in the works over the long term?
Thanks William. Unless Trump quickly TACO's out (Trump Always Chickens Out) Russian-European relations are only going to get better. Chinese-European relations as well. To save pride and to protect itself, Europe will need to go forward with Eurasian integration and perhaps eventually open itself to the BRICS. Canada is showing the way. Ukraine's value is quickly becoming diminished, it has "hit the wall" if you will and is now much more of a liability to be avoided than a potential asset to be exploited. It seems that Oreshnik strike in Lvov has demonstrated to Europe their proper place in the hierarchy of power! So yes, I see Europe going back to Russian energy and even opening up to Chinese EV's. The one dark note will be Eastern Europe / Baltics will not be pleased with any of this, to them Greenland is useless and should simply be sacrificed to Trump.
The comparison or contrast between Iran and Europe I think is flawed from a strategic viewpoint as it fails to acknowledge the vast cultural gap between the two entities.
Europe is in the process of committing cultural seppeku. It has completely abandoned its traditional value system. As a result it’s populations are weak and barely capable of reproducing (hence the influx of people who are more than capable in this regard). Few in their native populations have the will much less the capability of fighting and dying for it.
Iran on the other hand continues to cling to it’s traditional values and it has a civilisational memory which includes centuries of interaction with both Russia and China, interactions within which it has maintained its cultural integrity.
This is still their model and while I am not familiar with Carr’s writings on this , it appears to lack an appreciation of the determining role of what Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah.
The Shiite heritage is very much rooted in conflict and war and their fondness for martyrdom , demonstrated in the war with Iraq , is something westerners do not understand, and haven’t since the crusades. This is one aspect of asabiyyah, which Iran still possesses.
The natural barriers the country enjoys means invasion is by the US is simply impossible (as is the case in Venezuela). The only mechanism the senile and decrepit hegemon and its zionist brain parasite possess then is destabilisation via external pressure(trade restrictions) or internal psyops.
Both have been going on unsuccessfully for a long time and will continue to.Their effectiveness however will likely be increasingly diminished as Iran forges stronger alliances economically via BRICS and politically via alignment with China and Russia.
They have already defeated the zionist parasite, together with its stumbling host recently, and, via their missiles and electronic warfare have the means to do so again. Valuable lessons have been learned, supply lines with Russia, China and North Korea reinforced, electronic defences improved.
They take the long view as a civilisational state of temporary alliances, however critical they may seem a certain point in time (including those with China and Russia). This may appear as weakness to a western political mindset accustomed to what they somewhat shortsightedly term “quick and decisive” actions which are mainly played out in the media.
Your focus on culture powerfully only deepens the analysis. You are right to propose a cultural spectrum—from deracination/liquidity to tradition/rigidity—where the measure of success is a society's asabiyyah, its cohesive strength. This spectrum perfectly complements Carr’s utopian - realist political scale. And again on both, Europe and Iran are stranded at opposite, dysfunctional extremes.
Iran’s religious and civilizational core—the source of its asabiyyah—is precisely what allowed it to survive the recent hybrid assault. Iranians with only a material, secular identity can always flee; those rooted in faith idealize martyrdom and have nowhere else to go and will fight to the death. Yet it was the regime’s sclerotic realism that allowed a minor economic problem to blow up into a full-blown currency crisis. These errors corroded Iran's very asabiyyah and gave external enemies an opening. Its cultural strength was undermined by political / economic brittleness.
Europe suffers the inverse flaw: its high degree of political and normative development is built upon a deracinated, liquefied cultural base. It has form without mass, leaving it vulnerable to any serious compressive pressure. The Bad Orange Man is about the exploit these vulnerabilities to the hilt.
Here again, Russia and China appear as mature synthesizers. Each embraces a state-managed traditionalism—Orthodoxy, Marxism—that provides a solid core of meaning and social cohesion. Yet both remain ruthlessly flexible in their political and economic strategies, adapting to real-world conditions without sacrificing that cultural core. They have calibrated their cultural concrete and political steel into a ratio that allows them to survive the West's sanctions and military pressure.
The political task resembles engineering a reinforced concrete column. The final strength of a society depends on the ratio between the compressive mass of concrete (cultural tradition) and the tensile flexibility of steel (political adaptation). Too much concrete, and the structure fails under tension; too much steel, and it lacks compressive strength and buckles. Iran needs more strategic flexibility to protect its core; Europe needs to recover cultural mass to give its structures purpose. Social survival lies in getting the ratio correct, by not overemphasising or rejecting either element.
Unfortunately for Marx he had zero understanding of human nature , indeed he never even considered it , focusing solely on economics and politics. The idea of a withering away of the state graphically illustrates his intellectual bankruptcy as both in China and the West the state has become and continues to become more powerful by the day. The only states that wither away, are the ones that collapse or are conquered to be replaced by another. Apart from psychology, history wasn’t his strong point either, nor philosophy. Ibn Khaldun, he was not.
The Chinese government may well use the marxist label as a fig leaf and say that by building a centralised capitalist state they are fulfilling Marx pipe dream, but no ordinary Chinese citizen believes this, they are too busy making money, and Chinese like money, a lot. I doubt anyone in the governing class actually believes it either, it is simply a tool of social control and such tools have a long history in China. China is today is probably more Confucian than marxist politically and socially and in terms of its values.
Agree. Marx argued that human nature is shaped by the prevailing mode of production. This is at best partially true. There are baseline instincts and social tendencies—status-seeking, competition, mating behaviour, in-group hierarchy—that exist independently of any economic system. The idea of a genuinely classless society is therefore naïve: even under conditions of material abundance, humans would still compete over status, influence, and reproductive opportunities. The only truly classless society is a community of the dead, which is why communism has always struck me as a secularized vision of heaven.
As for the state “withering away,” especially in the Chinese context, this was never a serious possibility. If anything, China demonstrates the opposite tendency: an immensely powerful state legitimized by socialist mythology. And if there is any people on earth who require the belief that they live in a socialist society, it is the ruthlessly mercenary Chinese.
Yes. One of my son’s has lived in Asia , mainly HK and Singapore for over a decade. My other son is married to a chinese woman here in Australia whose father is an archetypal chinese businessman and quite wealthy. I had a Chinese Taoist teacher for about 10 years. The Chinese way of thinking is not at all like the western way(traditional or “modern”) and in our terms they are very transactional. Still it works for them.
With the decline of western influence and with it the Zionist project, which has been executed through the medium of western power and influence , it will be interesting to see if this is able to adapt to the Chinese world view in which they have no cultural credos as with the “Christian” west.
I am not sure asabiyyah is corroded by some economic mismanagement.
Dissatisfaction with government actions has a long history in Iran. Iranians understand that while their government may make mistakes, their current economic difficulties are due entirely to US and European sanctions intended to destabilise their country.
Civilisational pride is much deeper than this, nor do I think it applies only to the devoutly religious.
I have worked with a few Iranians , non were that devout (surprisingly one was a relative of the Ayatollah Khomeini) , but all had an evident and great pride in their nation and it’s long history and cultural traditions (including the pre Islamic) which transcended any transient political or economic events. And these were people who had left the country for either economic reasons or due to persecution.
This is what modern westerners do not “get” about Iranians and Shia in general, hardship and suffering has a sacred value for them , it is key part of their identity , they do not flee from it, indeed they welcome it. This was also once part of the Christian tradition , long discarded, except likely in the Orthodox tradition, Russian and others.
I do not understand the reference to Marxism in relation to either China or Russia as it seems to be regarded now as an unfortunate aberration, albeit one that they learned some lessons from. That, and the fact that both were either wholly or partly marxist while defeating the fascist states of Germany and Japan and this gives their marxist eras an aura they would not otherwise possess.
The profound civilizational pride in its past you describe is Iran’s immense source of strength and the bedrock of its identity. This is what makes Iran a ‘civilization-state’ and not just a nation-state. However, Khaldun’s asabiyyah is the specific, active social cohesion that turns that pride in yesterday into today's collective political power and resilience. It’s the difference between loving your family’s history and being able to get all your cousins to work together on a difficult project today.
Khaldun warned that this active cohesion is corroded precisely when the ruling group loses touch with the people’s hardships—when economic misery (zulm) is compounded by a perception of elite corruption or incompetence. The Iranian system, for very good reasons, since it is mostly true, has been successfully blaming any feeling of zulm toward the foreign ‘Little Satan’ and ‘Great Satan,’ thus preserving internal asabiyyah. But as the economic crises multiply, fairly or not, they can be increasingly seen as a failure of the state to protect its people, and risks driving a wedge between the glorious civilizational identity (which endures) and the asabiyyah needed for the state to project power and thrive in the here and now.
Marxism functions as something like a state religion in China: both an ideology and the conceptual glue that legitimates power and gives historical meaning to social life. Crucially, China’s version of Marxism now looks closer to what Marx actually envisioned—albeit with important modifications—than the Soviet model ever did.
The central error of Soviet Marxism was to treat socialism or communism as an alternative to capitalism, rather than its culmination. For Marx, capitalism was not the enemy to be bypassed but the necessary engine of history. Only once capitalism had developed the forces of production to such an extent that material abundance became effectively permanent could socialism or communism emerge as a “happy ending” rather than a forced austerity project. This is why Marx consistently expected revolution to occur in the most advanced capitalist societies.
Ironically, by that criterion, contemporary China fits Marx’s expectations better than any society of the twentieth century. Its productive capacity, industrial scale, and integration into global markets place it among the most dynamically developed capitalist systems in history—even as it remains governed by a communist party.
Where China departs from orthodoxy is that Marx assumed that the transition would require a revolutionary expropriation of the oligarchs who controlled the means of production. What he did not anticipate was that a communist party might instead preside over the development of capitalism itself—guiding, constraining, and partially owning the means of production while allowing market mechanisms to do their historical work.
Interesting extension of this discussion :
https://open.substack.com/pub/warwickpowell/p/the-centrality-of-nature-in-economic?r=2jojoi&utm_medium=ios
Very good analysis! Happy New Year!
With respect to Europe, one could summarize it as “the EU mistook virtue and values for actual power”.
I agree with your conclusion of what Europe should do, but sadly I doubt they’ll do the rational thing. They are more likely to offer up Greenland to the USA for the sake of a last ditch effort to keep the relationship and NATO.
There are two things that people hate the most: #1 - change. #2 - the way things are.
I do like how you contrasted that with Iran. Spot on.
Thanks and Happy New Year to you!
European leaders certainly know better. Since 1917, their strategy has been to get Americans to do their fighting for them.
As an Iranian-American whose family was adversely and irretrievably affected by the dastardly Khomeinist regime, I would like to posit that the “quest for or sanctity of sovereignty” is a specious bill of goods—tolerating the oppression of millions of people by the so-called independent regimes of Iran simply because they are anti-imperialist and anti-Israel.
As a corollary, when the so-called liberals and leftists in the West bemoan from the top of their lungs the loss of Palestinian lives in the hands of Israel, and conversely the same crowd opt for silence when Iranian women and men are mowed down with machine guns and sniper rifles by anti-imperialist forces, I find this dichotomy no less disgusting and hypocritical.
In my view, Iran once liberated will be a nation exorcised of any Palestine guilt and Israel bashing. It has seen the abyss and decided to climb out of the hole the anti-imperialists of the 70s dug deeply.
I don’t care if America is seen as brazen and Israel as demonic and bloodthirsty. I care how much the anti-US and anti-Israel amen corner opt for silence in the face of mass murder by their champions.
Please visit the morgues of Iran where bodies are stacked up (no pun intended). Men and women whose lives are bereft of one human gift—the gift of hope.
We don’t care what you say or write, we welcome US and Israeli intervention! Leave the people of Iran alone. If you are not helping, at least hold your piece.
Go visit Iran and then write about how bad America is.
Thank you! I found myself laughing at the Tucker-Levin bit and so while perhaps it is slightly unserious, I agree that it captures the essence of the debate. I also pictured them through the trope of an angel - devil pair arguing on Trump's shoulders.
Yes, I made the same exact comment about the Carr dialectic in my comment below, without having seen your comment. Regarding Canada's refreshing pivot, both with the trip to China and Carney's WEF speech, let's see how sincere it really is and whether the Western oligarchy will demand of Carney to pedal back to the standard Western position...