This is as serious as it gets. Let’s survey the chessboard – from micro to macro.

The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Israel’s shock’n awe on Iran – straight from the trademark US playbook – essentially failed, despite the initial combination of speed, meticulous military planning and the element of surprise, including hacking the Iranian electronic communications within the military grid; decapitation of the vertical IRGC nomenklatura; the spiderweb drone attack playbook; and bombing – ultimately ineffectual – of key nodes of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

It took hours for top Iranian technicians to get their grid back. And once that happened, the tide began to turn, to the point that after surgical missile volleys deep in the night on Sunday, the IRGC announced its capability to seriously disrupt Israel’s command and control systems using “enhanced intelligence”, thus breaching Iron – or Paper – Dome.

Absolutely key infrastructure nodes in Tel Aviv and Haifa have been destroyed – from the Rafael weapons complex (specialized in missiles, drones, cyber warfare and Iron Dome components) to the power plant and oil refinery in Haifa. This is historic in more ways than one.

Compound the cries of joy all across the lands of Islam to the massive psychological trauma inflicted on Israel. The myth of Israeli invincibility has been definitely shattered. Unleashing hell from above, killing women and children and spinning like there’s no tomorrow does not win a war against a real opponent.

The tweaked IRGC strategy – applied by an instantly revamped leadership – is being fine-tuned day by day in a calculated, surgical manner. It’s not that hard for the IRGC to totally paralyze Israel’s economy. Israel has only one oil refinery (already bombed); three ports, of which one is already bankrupt (Eilat) and another is on fire (Haifa); and one airport (already in dire straits).

The blowback on Tel Aviv’s desperate, indeed suicidal move – no chess involved – is in effect. Tehran is proving that every Zionist axis calculation that Iran could – and was – bled dry in a matter of hours was, predictably, false.

The POTUS, for his part, fell into a voracious trap. His MAGA base is already fractured – in depth. Non-Zionist MAGA is the overwhelming majority. He admitted in a stunning infantilist post that he knew everything about the Israeli shock’n awe all along.

Less than 10 days ago, in a meeting in New York packed with billionaire usual suspects, Steve Witkoff himself – Trump’s Talleyrand – explicitly noted that Iranian ballistic missiles are “a threat to America”. Considering their performance in the last 48 hours, everything points to Washington de facto entering the Hot War.

Diplomatic sources in Tehran point out that the leadership is working under this scenario. That’s why they are essentially still holding their capabilities – and carefully calibrating the next big steps in the escalatory ladder. Once again: Iranian strategic patience on display.

The question then is, in a scenario of the US de facto at war, what will it take for Russia and China, in concertation, to lose their own strategic patience.

Persian pride – and trust in their own capabilities, as I observed last month in Iran – rules that they consider to have all the necessary resources to outlast the Zionist axis, US included. After all they are only now starting to use their really advanced missiles – from the Kheybar-Shekan 2 and the Fattah-1 to the Haji Qassem.

The Real War: Against BRICS

So, in a nutshell, the Iranian response turned the chessboard completely upside down. The Circus Ringmaster – complete with hosting a pathetic military parade in Washington – is naked. And unmasked.

He now owns not one but two proxy wars: against Russia, and against Iran, with neo-nazis in Kiev and genocidals in Tel Aviv on the frontlines. All part of the Big Picture War: against BRICS.

By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb and blind that this was never about the Iranian nuclear program, or the “effort” to construct a Trump-owned JCPOA 2.0. It is about the lifelong Zionist axis obsession: regime change in Tehran.

That is the Holy Grail, dreamed of since the late 1990s, capable of opening the door for the deeply troubled Empire of Chaos of Iran’s immense wealth in natural resources – from energy to rare earth deposits, thus prolonging the life of the multi-trillion-dollar-indebted Empire.

The extra bonuses are even more seductive: cutting off China from a matter of national security – energy imports – and from crucial New Silk Road connectivity corridors, in tandem with opening a monster abscess in Russia’s underbelly. A definitive trifecta blow, in one swoop, to three top BRICS – Iran, Russia, China; to Eurasia integration; and to the drive towards a multi-nodal (italics mine), multipolar system of international relations.

Even as top civilization-states are doing somersaults to outlast the Empire of Chaos and its masters’ drive to unleash WWIII, there are no illusions in Moscow and Beijing that to confront this scenario it’s imperative to act asymmetrically – with supreme cunning, instead of merely responding to provocations (which has been the predominant Russian playbook in the proxy war in Ukraine).

Russian intel, meanwhile, has already done the math on the mirror effect of Israel’s own Operation Spiderweb, which employed exactly the same modus operandi of what Ukraine’s SBU – fronting for MI6 and Mossad – unleashed against Russian strategic bombers that are part of the nuclear triad.

Serious questions are being asked about Tel Aviv being directly involved in sabotaging Moscow. Just as serious questions are now popping up regarding the Ukrainian track. Intel information silos in Moscow consider that the Trump “ceasefire” process walks and talks like a crude camouflage to force Russia to back off for a while, as NATO chihuahuas on the beck and call of the deep state prepare a first strike (at least in their warped dreams).

So sooner rather than later, we may see Russia actually expanding on the current Iranian strategy: a massive infrastructural war, plunging Ukraine into complete blackout, metaphorical and otherwise – just like the bombing of a power plant in Haifa plunged the city into a complete blackout.

Why Iran Must Not be Allowed to Fail

Of course the current, insane escalatory ladder would be non-existent if Trump had been mature enough to accept the offer by Ali Shamkhani – later assassinated by Israel: Iran could get rid of its highly enriched uranium and sign a new nuclear deal if sanctions were lifted. Tehran would then only enrich uranium at low levels for its civilian program.

In parallel, Tehran had also even suggested a joint nuclear enrichment project with US investment plus Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi personally outlined it to US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman – before the talks broke down.

The Global South, meanwhile, watches the horrendously deadly ping-pong between Israel and Iran – with increasing awareness that the cornered West is an even more dangerous animal day after day, waging Total War under the mask of peace.

It’s no wonder Washington is all in. This is now the Circus Ringmaster War.

Let’s cut to the chase. The devastating attack on Iran by the psychopathological genocidal “chosen” ethno-supremacist set up in Tel Aviv – a de facto declaration of war – was coordinated in detail with the President of the United States, Circus Ringmaster Donald Trump.

This infantilism-afflicted Narcissus Drowned in the Pool of his Own Image gave away the game, himself, in a rambling post. Selected highlights:

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal”. No “deal”; actually his unilateral demands. After all, he torpedoed the original deal, the JCPOA, because it was not his “deal”.

“I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.” The decision to strike had already been made.

“Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but (…) they are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” Gloating comes with the territory.

“The next already planned attacks being even more brutal.” Total alignment with the trademark Israeli “decapitation” strategy.

“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire”. It was Persian (italics mine) Empire – but after all this is a man who doesn’t read, or study. Notice the Art of Diplomacy: Take my deal, or drop dead.

This – incandescent – decade was launched by an assassination, of Gen. Soleimani in Baghdad, as I emphasized in my 2021 book Raging Twenties. He was on a diplomatic mission. The green light personally came from then President of the United States, Donald Trump.

The mid-Raging Twenties is now hurled to the brink of a devastating war in West Asia, with global repercussions, by the serial assassination of the IRGC leadership, in Tehran, by the psycho-genocidal Zionist entity. After an elaborate kabuki of deception, the green light to Tel Aviv – go ahead and do it – also came from the President of the United States, Trump 2.0 (who claimed he was “aware’’ of the attacks).

A pre-emptive war against the BRICS

The psycho-pathological genocidal masterplan is to force Tehran to capitulate – without even putting up a fight. The preamble kabuki was masterfully executed. The indirect nuclear negotiations in Oman were taken seriously in Tehran, lulling the Iranian leadership, civilian and military, to sleep. They fell into the trap and were caught, literally, in their sleep.

Ayatollah Khamenei – who himself is in physical danger, as Israel is applying the same decapitation model it unleashed on Hezbollah – has a very tough decision to make: capitulation or total war. It will be total war – and with the U.S. as a direct participant.

The Iranian leadership – actually more the Pezeshkian presidency, crammed with proponents of an “accommodation” with the West – was induced into a false sense of security, forgetting that serial killers don’t do diplomacy.

So the price to pay now, for Iran, will be even more unbearable. Tehran will respond – assuming capabilities are still in place. In this case its oil industry runs the risk of being destroyed. It’s an open question whether two other top BRICS members alongside Iran – Russia and China -, for different reasons, will allow that to happen.

And were we about to enter this particular dangerous territory, Iran can play the ultimate card: shut down the Strait of Hormuz and collapse the global economy.

The attack on Iran, fully endorsed by the Empire of Chaos, is above all a pre-emptive attack on the BRICS energy core. It’s part and parcel of the imperial war against BRICS, especially Russia-China. Moscow and Beijing must be drawing the necessary conclusions in real time.

Iran, China and Russia are linked by interlocked strategic partnerships. Last month, I was in Iran tracking the progress of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links Russia, Iran and India. This is only one among a series of key strategic infrastructure projects that will solidify even more Eurasian economic connectivity. A devastating war in West Asia, and a collapsing Iran, will represent a killer blow to increased Eurasia integration.

That’s exactly what suits the Empire’s designs.

So it’s no wonder Washington is all in. This is now the Circus Ringmaster War.

A devastating response; a nuclear weapon; or capitulation

Tehran’s message is, “We did not start the war, but Iran will determine how it ends.”

The burning question is whether they still retain a significant deterrent – and offensive – capacity.

The genocidals are hitting ballistic missile storage systems at will in Iran’s northwest and even civilian Mehrabad airport in Tehran. Air defenses are nowhere to be seen. It’s immensely painful to watch.

IDF spin – nothing verified so far – claims that some missile silos and mobile complexes were destroyed even before they were placed on combat alert. Yet the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Iran’s vast arsenal of ballistic missiles is stored in deep, deep underground silos and tunnels, capable of withstanding massive air strikes and overloaded air defenses.

For the moment, Tehran is eerily silent. That makes sense, because they need, in record time, to re-establish a unified chain of command which was smashed by the attacks; make sure that missile launchers can be deployed and not be neutralized by Israeli air supremacy; reorganize the True Promise 3 operation, which was ready to go, as some of us learned in Tehran last month, but now adapted to the new situation (losses included); and plan how to deliver painful blows to Israel’s economic infrastructure.

There is no evidence that the attacks destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – which is buried deep underground. As it stands, the leadership in Tehran is learning the hard way that diplomacy – committees, letters to the UN, statements to the IAEA, ministerial meetings – all that is eviscerated when it comes to the law of the jungle.

Iranians were naïve enough to let the IAEA visit their strategic sites, when proverbial spies collected all the info they needed to facilitate Israeli strikes. The DPRK would have never fall into such a trap.

The elimination of a top figure such as Ali Shamkhani, Khamenei’s key advisor, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, with decades of influence across the IRGC and intelligence apparatus, is a serious blow.

Systematically erasing Iran’s military and diplomatic leadership in a matter of hours fits the rationale of smashing Khamenei’s close circle. That has started long ago with the Trump-ordered killing of Soleimani and certainly includes the mysterious death of former President Raisi and FM Abdollahian in that dodgy helicopter “accident”. It’s all about creating the conditions for regime change.

On a rare auspicious note, the IRGC let it be known, before the attacks, that they have been developing a secret technology to intensify the impact of its missiles on Israel.

There are auspicious signs on the other side of dystopia. And right here in Russia.

The Global Digital Forum last week in delightful Nizhny Novgorod represented a landmark in the quest for a more equitable media landscape across the whole Global South.

Pride of place was taken by a new ambitious association, the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN). The last session of the forum was focused essentially on how to fight all the toxic declinations imposed by the post-truth anti-cultural ambiance – as in fact-checking an avalanche of fake news coming in most cases from states and official institutions.

Guest of honor was superstar Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, relaxed, in great spirits, who went full Deng Xiaoping by urging everyone to “fight for the truth and seek out the facts”.

By a twist of fate, the timeline left me with only two minutes to somehow wrap up our quite enlightening discussion. So I went hardcore and quoted Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations”. Later on, I was surprised at how that had struck a nerve especially among African delegates.

The key point is that in the artificially fabricated post-truth environment, not only facts are only facts if we say so; most of all, only one interpretation is allowed – be it from the Empire of Chaos, whoever may be in power, or from a Kafkaesque mechanism such as the European Union (EU)/European Commission (EC).

If you deviate from the official interpretation, they will come after you. That has led, for instance, in Europe, to journalists/EU citizens being prevented even from traveling to their own nation-states, and having their accounts frozen, or EU citizens being prevented from covering a supposedly democratic election (in Romania), and immediately deported (outside of the EU).

A startling essay on Nietzsche amplifies the diagnostic of Europe’s current cultural suicide. Nietzsche was an “untimely” outsider, a steppenwolf, pledging allegiance to no one and nothing, silently grappling with “the flat exhaustion of bourgeois modernity”, and searching, in vain, for “silhouettes among shadows”.

Nietzsche, in the late 19^th century, was already a symbol of Resistance. Resistance as we see it today – from the Axis of Resistance in West Asia to Orthodox Christian military batallions fighting for the freedom of Novorossiya. No ceremony ever greeted Nitzsche: he was always alone. He shattered illusion after illusion as his solitude “became liturgy” and “his body turned into protest.” He impersonated “the ghost of nobility”. A species in extinction – indeed.

Tech visionaries want it all

That crystal clear Nietzsche intuition – arguably the best definition of truth in the history of philosophy – may be our guide in the labyrinth of post-truth where, to quote post-modernist masterpiece Twin Peaks, “the owls are not what they seem”.

Errol Musk, Elon’s father, showed up early this week in Moscow for the Future 2050 forum. Daddy Musk effusively showered praise on Russia as Ancient Rome 2.0 and Moscow itself as the “capital of the world”. Quite on point – in both cases.

But what really matters is why Daddy Musk is in Russia. That may align with a strategy of luring powerful sectors of Silicon Valley into doing business with Russia. Main actors/participants would be tech visionaries which used to be part of the notorious PayPal Mafia: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

That may pose a series of serious problems. Martin Armstrong has been instrumental in portraying this band of tech visionaries as a ubiquitous new oligarchy: active in social media, biotech, space, the surveillance industry, engineering policies and influencing monetary systems with their hardcore brand of venture capitalism, and not to mention shaping worldwide-interfering narratives.

The new tech elite shines brightly via the Trump-Musk love affair turned staged catfight. But its tentacles reach much further. J.D. Vance is Peter Thiel’s perfectly positioned candidate to become the next POTUS. Palantir, controlled by Thiel and totalitarian Alex Karp, have been awarded a massive contract to design a U.S. federally centralized database using very sophisticated AI models.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is heavy on AI – including a 10-year moratorium during which any U.S. state and local government cannot regulate AI. This will allow free reign for deepfakes and Big Tech doing whatever they feel like to manipulate unsuspecting consumers.

So that’s the key question. How to fact-check the tech elite? How to counterpunch multiple instances of techno-feudalism – when tech companies feed intel to governments, commit unlimited funds to political operations, and set up censorship platforms disguised as “democracy”, drenched in AI-generated fake news?

Go East, to Siberia, young man

At least there are auspicious signs on the other side of dystopia. And right here in Russia. This is a mesmerizing interview by Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan with legendary Prof. Sergey Karaganov, Honorary Chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy (Russia’s leading public foreign policy organisation) and academic supervisor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

Welcome to a magic carpet ride through the really deep origins of Russia’s heritage. Starting with the Scythians: “Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unites us with the peoples of Eurasia.”

All the way to Byzantium: “The Russian princes, who baptized Russia, chose Byzantium ― at that time the richest, the most developed and intellectually flourishing country in Central Eurasia, much more developed than Europe was (…) The Russian princes’ astute choice of Byzantium largely predetermined Russian culture, Russian architecture, and, of course, Russian religion, that is, our Orthodoxy.”

And then reaching Pax Mongolica: “The Mongol Empire left a deep mark on Russian history also, because it was multicultural and very tolerant religiously, and this is where I think (although there is no complete agreement amongst historians on this matter) the Russians ― the dominant people in the former Russian Empire and the USSR ― inherited their unique cultural, religious, and national openness.”

Karaganov forcefully proposes that everything positive about Pax Mongolica should be re-examined to “substantiate the unity of Eurasia.” And “we must rely just as much on the heritage of the Scythians, who were the forefathers of so many peoples in Greater Central Eurasia.”

This is the essence of a true multipolar Russia in action – leading to the fascinating concept of “Siberianization”: a “spiritual, cultural, political, and economic development of Russia in the eastern direction to the Urals and Siberia. The western direction of our policy and economic ties has bleak prospects.”

This was the mood in informed Moscow – only a few hours before the renewed Istanbul kabuki on Russia-Ukraine “negotiations”. Three key points.

1. The attack on Russian strategic bombers – part of the nuclear triad – was a US-UK joint operation. Especially MI6. The overall tech investment and strategy was provided by this intel combo.
2. It’s patently unclear whether Trump is really in charge – or not. This was confirmed to me at night by a top intel source; he added that the Kremlin and the security services were actively investigating all possibilities, especially who issued the final green light.
3. Near universal popular consensus: Release the Oreshniks. Plus waves of ballistic missiles.

Predictably, the Istanbul kabuki came and went like a tawdry spectacle, complete with the Ukrainian delegation in military fatigues and Defense Minister Umarov incapable of speaking even mediocre English at a messy press conference after the brief 1h15 meeting. The Turkish Foreign Ministry epically described the kabuki as concluding “not negatively”.

Nothing strategic or politically substantial was discussed: only prisoner exchanges. The mood in Moscow, additionally, was that top Russian negotiator Medinsky should have presented an ultimatum, not a memorandum. It was, predictably, interpreted as an ultimatum by the Beggar of Banderastan; but what Medinsky actually handed out to the Ukrainians was a de facto road map memorandum, in 3 sections, with 2 options for the conditions for a ceasefire, and 31 points, a great deal of them expressed in detail by Moscow for months.

Examples: first option for a ceasefire should be a complete UAF withdrawal from DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporizhia, within 30 days; international recognition of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya as part of Russia; Ukraine neutrality; Ukraine holding elections and then signing a peace treaty – approved by a legally binding UN Security Council resolution (italics mine); and a ban on the receipt and deployment of nuclear weapons.

None of that, of course, will ever be accepted by the terror-infused set up in Kiev, the neo-nazi outfits that control it, and assorted, fragmented collective West warmongering backers. So the SMO will go on. Possibly all the way to 2026. Along with extra versions of the Istanbul kabuki: the next one should be held by late June.

The current kabuki, incidentally, composes the Last Chance Saloon for Kiev to retain some measure of – fractious – “sovereignty”. As Foreign Minister Lavrov has been reiterating, everything will be really decided in the battlefield.

How to destroy the New START Treaty

Now to the attack on a branch of Russia’s strategic triad – which mired Western propaganda media in layers and layers of stratospheric hysteria.

The point has been made over and over again on why Russia left its strategic bombers unprotected in the tarmac. Because that’s a New START Treaty requirement – signed in 2010 and extended until February next year (when it may go six feet under, considering what just happened).

The New START Treaty stipulates that strategic bombers should be visible to “national technical means (NTM) of verification, such as satellite imagery, to allow monitoring by the other party.” So their status – nuclear-armed or converted to conventional use – should be always verifiable. No chance of a “surprise” first strike.

This operation single-handedly blew up what was, up to now, a decent Cold War relic preventing the start of WWIII via a simple mechanism. The recklessness involved is off the charts. So there’s no surprise that the highest echelons of power in Russia – from the Kremlin to the security apparatus – are feverishly working to ascertain whether Trump was in the loop or not. And if he was not, who gave the final green light?

No wonder the highest echelon, so far, is mum.

A security source told me that it was US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that called Lavrov – and not the other way around, to offer condolences for the bridge-on-train terror attack in Bryansk. No word whatsoever about the strategic bombers. In parallel, the former platoon commander in Iraq then Fox News talking head turned head of the Pentagon followed the drone attacks on the Russian bases in real-time.

On the efficacy of such attacks – beyond the gleefully spun to death fog of war. Several conflicting estimates point to possibly three Tu-95MS strategic bombers – known as “The Bears” – hit at the Belaya base in Irkutsk, plus one of them partially damaged, and three other T-22M3s hit, with two of them irreparably. Of the three Tu-95MS, fires seem to have been localized, so they may be repaired.

At the Olenya base in Murmansk, other four Tu-95MS may have been hit, plus one An-12.

As it stands, Russia had 58 Tu-95MS up to this weekend. Even if five of them have been lost for good, that’s less than 10% of their fleet. And that does not count 19 Tu-160 and 55 Tu-22M3M. Of the five bases that were supposed to be attacked, success happened in only two.

These losses, as painful as they may be, simply will not affect further strikes by Russian aero-spatial forces.

Example: the standard weapon carried by a T-95MSM is the X-101 cruise missile. A maximum of 8 for each mission. In recent strikes, not more than 40 missiles have been launched simultaneously. That implies only 6 Tu-95s in action. So Russia in fact only needs 6 Tu-95MSM ready to fly to conduct strikes as intense as in the previous days and weeks. Tu-160s, moreover, are not even being used for the latest strikes.

Evaluating Maximum Strategy

At the time of writing, Russia’s inevitably devastating response has still not been green-lighted. This is as serious as it gets. Even if it’s true that POTUS was not informed – and that’s what the Kremlin and the security services want to be absolutely sure of before unleashing Hell from Above on Kiev – still the contours will be clear of a NATO op – US/UK – directly conducted by the CIA/MI6 intel combo, with Trump being offered plausible deniability and Ukraine breaking the START protocol big time.

Were Trump to have authorized these strikes, this would constitute no less than a declaration of war by the United States on Russia. So the most probable scenario remains Trump blindsided by the neo-cons embedded in privileged silos scattered across the Beltway.

As much as the attack on the Voronezh-M early warning radar system last May, an attack on Russia’s strategic bombers fits the scenario of increasingly prodding the Russian system to enable disabling it ahead of a nuclear first strike. Aspiring Dr. Strangeloves do entertain this scenario in their wildest dreams for decades.

As sources carefully confirmed, the prevailing interpretation among the high echelons of power in Russia is that of a P.R. operation forcing a harsh – possibly nuclear – Russian response, coupled with Moscow’s withdrawal from the Istanbul kabuki.

So far, the Russian reaction is quite methodical: total silence, a wide-ranging investigation, plus going through the motions in Istanbul.

Yet there’s no question the – inevitable – response will require Maximum Strategy. If the response is in tune with Russia’s own updated nuclear doctrine, Moscow risks losing the Global South’s nearly unanimous support.

If the response is lukewarm, domestic blowback will be massive. There’s a near universal consensus on “Release the Oreshniks”. Russian public opinion is becoming seriously fed up with being the target of serial terror attacks. The hour of fateful decision is getting late.

The first ever ASEAN-China-GCC trilateral summit was a de facto celebration of the New Silk Road spirit.

The first ever ASEAN-China-GCC trilateral summit earlier this week in Malaysia – with 17 Global South nations at the table – was a de facto celebration of the New Silk Road spirit.

Malaysian Prime Minister and current ASEAN chair Anwar Ibrahim summed it all up: “From the ancient Silk Road to the vibrant maritime networks of Southeast Asia to modern trade corridors, our peoples have long connected through commerce, culture, and the sharing of ideas.”

That inspires a lot of reflection. Let’s try a first, succint approach matching East and West – and what divides them – guided by an extraordinary study, La Mediterranee Asiatique: XVI-XXI Siecle, by CNRS research director Francois Gipouloux, also a specialist in the Chinese economy.

The European tradition is far from monolithic – and it’s only part of the picture – when it comes to global perceptions about political philosophy and the conception of the State. There are stark differences even when referred to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

The heart of the matter used to be the land/sea opposition. For Carl Schmitt, land/sea relates to friend/enemy – the matrix of politics – providing a key interpretation of world history, yet one among many.

It’s on “continental” Europe – to borrow the Anglo terminology –, mostly in France and Prussia, and not in England, that the Hobbesian concept of the State materialized. Britain became a world power thanks to its navy and trade, eschewing the characteristic institutions of the state such as a written constitution and a legislative codification of law.

Anglo-Saxon international law in fact voided the continental conception of the State and also war. According to Schmitt, it developed its own concepts of “war” and “enemy” out of maritime and trade conflicts which did not make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants (when it comes to its lasting legacy, think “the war on terror”).

My war is Just, because I said so

The opposition then solidified between the right to wage war on land – war is “just” if it happens between sovereign states, via regular armies, and sparing civilians – and waging war on sea, which does not imply a state-to-state relation. What mattered was attacking the trade and the economy of the enemy. And methods of total war were directed against either combatants or non-combatants.

That led to a new Western concept of “Just War” and international law: when the enemy is turned into a criminal, juridical and moral equality between belligerents is shattered. That’s the perverse logic behind psycho-pathological genocidals legitimizing the destruction of Palestine.

These differences in the formulation of law came out of two different conceptions of space: closed, overland – featuring sovereign states, territorially delimitated – and open, over the seas – a unique space, unlimited, free of every state control, where primacy is about securing communication links. The British did not think about space in terms of territory, but of routes of communication, just like the Portuguese and the Dutch before them.

Schmitt identifies in the State an entity linked to land and territory. So, as startling as it seems, it’s Behemoth, the terrestrial animal of the Old Testament, and not the marine monster Leviathan that should have been chosen by Hobbes as a symbol of the State.

In the development of the West, three institutional forms – equally viable – were in competition: Leagues of Cities – like the Hanseatic Legue; City-States – especially in Italy; and the Nation-State, especially in France.

Few across the West may remember that the Hanseatic League and the powerful Italian city-states, for at least two centuries, were viable alternatives to the territorial state. Two top researchers, Douglass North and Robert Paul Thomas, in The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History, argue that the modern state was imposed on Western Europe because it was the best equipped to fulfill two key tasks: to efficiently guarantee property rights and the physical security of people and goods.

If we go back to Europe in the 14^th century, before the Renaissance, there were at least a thousand states, of all sizes. That means no concentration of power – and some sort of creative competition in store. There was a reasonable amount of choice for those who wanted to find better places to exercise their freedom.

We had for instance Germany, with its three main actors constituted as the Emperor, the nobility and cities; Italy, with its main actors as the Papacy, the Emperor and cities. And France with its three main actors as the King, nobility and cities. In each case, different alliances proliferated.

In Germany, the Emperor allied with the nobility against the cities. In Italy, nobility was urbanized, and cities profited from endless squabbles. In France, nobility was very suspicious of the bourgeoisie, and the King allied himself with the cities against nobility. England chose a completely different path. Even before France, the Brits created a centralized state, but under a quite original political set up.

Asia and the Mandala State

Asia is a completely different story. Here we cannot use the terminology of “state” to designate the political constructions of Southeast Asia before decolonization. In Southeast Asia, the borders were arbitrary between the tribe, so-called “primitive” political formations (from a Western perspective) and the State.

Springing up from political concepts prevailing in India, Islam and the West, states showed up in the Insulindia (maritime Southeast Asia) archipelago, for instance, as courtly bureaucracies, based on a network of complex alliances. Whatever the degree of institutionalization, the distinction between The King, The Vassal and The Bandit was tenuous at best.

Vietnamese researcher Nguyen The-Anh has remarked how “political fragmentation is generally the preliminary conclusion of the first Europeans who made contact with Southeast Asia. Marco Polo saw in the north of Sumatra ‘eight kingdoms and eight crowned Kings…each kingdom possesses its own language.”

China, on the other hand, featured a unitary state imposing – via a quite efficient administration – social order over a vast territory. There was no competition against the centralized state issuing from a landed aristocracy; no urban bourgeoisie; and no military contesting the imperial order, as in Europe. That’s the major difference between China and the West.

Thomas Aquinas decreed that if the power of the king belongs to a multitude, it’s not unjust that the king is deposed or sees his power restrained by this very own multitude if he turns into a tyrant and abuses royal power.

This distinction is completely alien to the Chinese tradition. What happened over the past century or so in China is that the peculiar configuration – and competition – between local actors and central power led to what could be defined as an unstructured empire, whose force comes from its shape-shifting borders and the diffused character of transnational networks.