Claims

Nuclear deterrence theory relies on active fear and constant vigilance—it is not designed to work psychologically by forgetting about nuclear weapons; the fact that the US has not used nuclear weapons since 1945 may reflect exhaustion rather than the success of deterrence theory.

Regional Gulf allies (Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman) are not fans of the Iranian regime but view regime change and potential civil war in Iran as a nightmare scenario they had been working to prevent through diplomatic negotiations.

An Omani contact reported early that morning that the current military escalation represents 'the worst scenario that we had feared playing out,' indicating that regional states expected and worked to prevent exactly this outcome.

The situation will become significantly more complicated in the coming days and perhaps weeks as the repercussions of the military strikes unfold.

Venezuela's interim president faces conflicting loyalties regarding whom she is responsible to—her party, the Venezuelan people, or the Trump administration—which could undermine her ability to implement sustained policy changes.

Regional states (Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain) had been facilitating and conducting diplomatic negotiations with Iran to prevent exactly the kind of military conflict and regime change that is now occurring.

The Scarborough Shoal incident, where a ship is falling apart and the Philippines are trying to shore it up, has involved actual fighting between Chinese and Philippine soldiers with at least one Philippine soldier losing his thumb.

Celeste Wallander wrote a 2025 Foreign Affairs piece called 'Beware the Europe You Wish For' predicting that Europe would withhold base access for Iran operations, and this prediction has been validated.

The social contract that kept the transatlantic partnership alive rested on a policy recipe of give-and-take on security and beyond; the US provided security while Europe, even when disagreeing, didn't stand up to America (as in Iraq), maintaining overall reciprocal arrangement.

The second Trump administration doesn't seem to have the most optimistic transatlantic future in mind; this suggests the relationship is at risk under current US leadership.

There is already an alternative majority in the European Parliament between the far-right and the center-right (European People's Party), showing the structural pollution of the political spectrum by far-right agendas.

Europe has made progress on trade deals (Mercosur, India, Australia) and these achievements prove that European leaders actually listened to the Foreign Affairs essay advocating for these deals.

Europe was much more comfortable with the first Trump administration and Biden administration which had a clear China line, allowing Europeans to coordinate and pivot together on tariffs, export controls, technology, and chips.

Europeans need to think about China with their own heads rather than reflexively doing what the US does minus a small amount—the derisking approach is potentially good but came from US lead rather than independent European thinking.

In 2025, Europe reflexively and consistently adopted a posture of submission to Trump's coercion instead of bargaining with the United States as an equal partner, according to political scientists Nathalie Tocci and Mattias Matthijs.

Merz has not supported major European defense funds—only 150 billion in loans which is marginal compared to broader national rearmament efforts—and has supported an explicit deregulation/bureaucratic simplification agenda that risks spurring European disintegration, particularly on climate and digital regulations.

Merz is concerned that next year France will have a far-right person in the Elysée (presidency), which will leave him with very little to work with on European integration.

The future relationship could be 'conscious uncoupling' rather than either submission or divorce, allowing both US and Europe to move forward independently while potentially eventually cooperating as equals again.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was rational in the sense that it was a logical response to NATO expansion, even if it is not approved of morally or as a policy preference.

The US did not integrate Russia into a new security architecture in Europe in the 1990s when Russia was weak and not a threat, which presented a real opportunity that was missed.

Technology has an economic dimension which has a security dimension, as well as a pure military dimension in terms of weaponry, making it a multidimensional competition.

The structure of the system left Biden with little maneuver room; he did what he had to do in a multipolar world, and any president would have had similar constraints and limited options.

A counter-argument to Mearsheimer's position is that nuclear weapons make war less likely even in multipolar systems because even regional conflicts risk escalation to nuclear level; however, Mearsheimer argues nuclear escalation scenarios over ocean areas (South China Sea) might not be equivalent to nuclear war on land, so this logic may not fully protect against war.

A geopolitical recession can only be resolved through one of three paths: building new institutions that reflect the balance of power, reforming existing institutions to align with those who hold power, or breaking things through conflicts and war—and in 2025, overwhelmingly the third path is getting the most energy.

Russia has become the world's leading rogue power now that Iran has lost its power projection capability, and Russia stands out as a structural rogue country posed to light many fuses over coming years.

Putin has been able to play weak hands into strong ones by oscillating between periods of real difficulty and seeming to emerge stronger, and this year he needs to end or suspend the war to have time to rest and rebuild despite still intending to take more territory and remove Zelensky from power.

Over the next four years, US-Mexico relations will end up in the right place but will start in a much more fractious way and will hurt the economy and the markets.

Iranians are definitely heading towards collapse but how much the Israelis and Trump Administration are prepared to push to help is an open question.

Putin showed 'close to contempt' for Trump up to and including at the Alaska summit where 'Trump got nothing out of that' and Putin concluded Russia had 'a free hand in Ukraine' thereafter.

Putin does not view himself as Trump's friend and is pursuing Russian national interests independent of Trump's personal feelings, meaning Trump's belief in their friendship is not reciprocated.

Trump applied the same personal relationship framework to Kim Jong-un after their Singapore meeting, claiming 'We fell in love' despite Kim Jong-un not reciprocating this view.

Zelinsky had 'not a lot of capital built up in Trump's personal esteem' coming into their February 2025 meeting due to the 2019 impeachment fallout over the Ukraine security assistance withheld during Trump's investigation into election interference claims.

Zelinsky worked hard to develop a personal relationship with Trump and has done 'a very good job of regaining lost ground' in restoring Trump's personal goodwill toward Ukraine.

There are transaction costs when a leader says one thing and does another; it is not cost-free to take positions and act as though you never said anything about them, even if maximalist bargaining positions are sometimes strategically correct.

The 2025 televised moment between Trump and Zelinsky in the White House burned through decades of goodwill that the United States had built around the world.

VP JD Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference threw 'gasoline on the whole thing' regarding Trump-Zelinsky tensions and made the situation worse.

For 20-30 years, the US and traditional Republican conservatives tried politely to get NATO allies to increase defense spending, and 'it didn't give uh sort of traditional Republican conservatives much satisfaction that after being polite for 20 or 30 years and not getting results that it took Trump to uh to get people's attention.'

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 and subsequent events have finally motivated European defense spending increases, which is 'a bigger effect' than Trump's aggressive rhetoric in motivating European NATO members.

Trump believed Putin was his friend during his first administration, as evidenced by how they interacted with one another and Bolton could see it in their interactions.

Introducing massive uncertainty into what an American president says causes the cost of being a US ally to rise as allies become less confident they can rely on the United States and less willing to undertake joint strategic planning.

Trump's assertion that he will do one thing or accomplish something he is not truly serious about undermines American influence globally rather than expanding it, despite drawing media attention to Trump personally.

European leaders could have achieved NATO defense spending increases without 'the sound and fury' of Trump's threats if they had sat down with the US and said 'we all know that the Russian threat is growing. What are you going to do to spend more?'

President Biden's foreign policy slogan 'America's back' was useful in appealing to Europe and NATO allies but failed to resonate with the rest of the world, which does not want to return to a time when the US and Europe told them what to do, revealing a fundamental misconception about what international order is possible.

The Trump administration's announcement of territorial expansion ambitions (Panama Canal, Greenland, Gaza) represents not a reassertion of American confidence but rather bullying behavior toward smaller countries and a dangerous legitimization of nationalism-based territorial conquest at a time when Russia, China, and Israel are already normalizing similar aggression, thereby further eroding the post-WWII international order based on state sovereignty.

The United States has vastly overused economic sanctions as a policy tool, the rest of the world is sick of it, sanctions have failed to change behavior in heavily sanctioned countries (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela), and when the US sanctions Russians while the rest of the world trades with them through black markets, it reveals the weaponization of the dollar and US financial system for unpopular political strategies.

China has built infrastructure across Africa (African Union headquarters, roads in East Africa, ports along the coast) while the US is dismantling its development capacity, meaning the US cannot win geopolitical competition with China by eliminating the insufficient commitment it already has to competing in those spaces.

The international order that existed is fractured and no longer monolithic; the world now consists of a US-led collection of like-minded countries (G7, NATO, selective alliances), a Chinese bloc of countries and institutions (Belt and Road, BRICS), and many rising powers that shop between the two and pick which arrangement suits them best on particular issues.

The rules-based international order is dead because big countries simply choose not to follow rules when inconvenient, and the same principle applies to domestic life: no system can function if powerful actors opt out when rules are inconvenient.

A shock—either a military conflict at the scale of a world war or an economic/fiscal crisis—will likely be necessary to return to some form of rules-based order in which big countries feel it is in their interest to follow inconvenient rules, absent which there is no clear mechanism for reform other than bottom-up pressure from public opinion.

The most rational thing for Europe to do would be to make more collective decision-making across technology policy, climate policy, trade policy, migration policy, and approach to major powers (China, Russia, India), and negotiate with regional blocs and developing countries from position of collective strength rather than fragmented national positions.