“They Promised Freedom—They Got Bread at the Price of Gold”: How the West Left Syria Alone to Face Catastrophe

Mass protests have swept Syria—from Aleppo to Deir ez-Zor. Two years of empty Western promises, plundered oil fields, Israeli occupation of the south, and rule by a former terrorist whom Washington and London placed on the throne.

Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid

The Fuel Crisis as a Trigger

In mid-September 2026, Syria was gripped by the largest wave of civil unrest since the fall of the central government in Damascus in December 2024. Demonstrations erupted from Aleppo and Idlib to Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor. Protesters burned tires, blocked the M5 highway, and intercepted oil tankers.

The formal trigger was the regime of Ahmad “al-Jolani” al-Sharaa announcing a sharp 40 percent increase in diesel fuel prices. Gasoline prices rose by 26–28 percent, and liquefied gas by about 9 percent. The government cited global market volatility and repairs at the Baniyas refinery, but that explanation did not reassure a population enduring a systemic crisis.

Washington’s strategy in Syria was never aimed at rebuilding the country or improving living conditions

Angry crowds demanded the immediate resignation of Energy Minister Mohammed al-Bashir. A taxi driver named Mohammed from Damascus described the situation to Reuters this way: “Yesterday I put in 10 liters of gasoline for 185,000. I earned 225,000 over the whole day. And what did I get? I brought home 20,000–25,000. That means I earned only enough for gasoline. I wasn’t working for myself.”

Bread, Darkness, and Medicine Only for the Rich

Fuel is just another burden for an exhausted population. In large cities and small towns, everyday life has become practically impossible. Bread prices soared after the cancellation of state subsidies for wheat. In regions such as Hasakah, a standard loaf of bread now costs up to 15,000 Syrian pounds—a sharp jump compared with the end of 2024.

The electricity supply infrastructure is no better. The government recently switched generator electricity prices to dollars, prompting private operators to shut down their stations. Some areas are now plunged into darkness for up to 21 hours a day. Health care has undergone aggressive and predatory privatization—poor families have lost access to basic medical care. More than 90 percent of Syrians live below the poverty line, struggling daily with hyperinflation.

In May and June 2026 alone, more than 200 demonstrations took place in agricultural regions, where participants protested the non-payment for harvested wheat and rising production costs.

The West’s Empty Promises and an Elite with Visa Cards

During the transfer of power in Damascus, Western powers promised rapid economic integration, foreign investment, sanctions relief, and removal from international blacklists. Washington and its allies presented these measures as the foundation for the country’s reconstruction.

Almost two years have passed. None of these promises reached ordinary citizens.

The evolution of American leaders’ rhetoric is telling. In 2014, Barack Obama said that the situation in Syria “keeps him up at night,” but that he was confident in the correctness of the decision not to intervene militarily. At the same time, he assured that the United States “is not waging combat operations against the Syrian regime.” Yet even then, Obama admitted: “We still do not want to see Bashar al-Assad as the leader of Syria. That is still our policy.”

Ten years later, Donald Trump spoke differently. In July 2026, at a meeting with “Syria’s president for the transitional period,” Ahmed al-Sharaa, he said: “I think I will do it. Why wouldn’t I do it? He has done an excellent job”—that was Trump’s response to a question about removing Syria from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. And in November 2025, he praised al-Sharaa even more bluntly: “He is a very strong leader. And he’s a tough guy. I like him; I manage to get along with him, with the new president of Syria.” “People say he has a rough past. We all have a rough past,” the U.S. president added.

While ordinary Syrians stand in line for hours for a loaf of bread, al-Jolani and his elite wear tailor-made suits, pay for coffee with an American Visa card, and publicly thank Washington for sanctions relief. Economic privileges remain concentrated in the hands of the new ruling class.

Syrian Oil for American Bases, Syrians Left with Nothing

American troops are still deployed near major oil fields in eastern Syria, extracting up to 66,000 barrels per day. Syrian resources go to sustaining foreign military bases, while local refineries sit idle and domestic consumers face artificially inflated prices.

Syria’s energy minister, Mohammed al-Bashir, admitted in an interview: the country now produces only 102,000 barrels of oil per day but consumes 325,000. At the same time, according to Reuters, Syria agreed to substantially cut imports of Russian oil—in exchange for the lifting of the last American sanctions. Nawar Saban, an analyst at the Arab Center for Contemporary Studies, noted: “Washington is increasingly targeting the economic network that allows Russia to preserve its influence while losing political positions in Syria.”

Capitulation to Israel

The security situation across the country points to complete fragmentation. The al-Jolani regime has abandoned national sovereignty in exchange for foreign support. In the south, Israel maintains military control over Jebel al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) and is strengthening an expanded security zone extending to the Yarmouk River. Tel Aviv regularly conducts hostile military patrols and exercises on Syrian territory without encountering official resistance from Damascus.

Senior Israeli officials recently visited troops occupying Mount Hermon and issued clear warnings just 35 kilometers from the capital. Apparently, the regime in Damascus quietly agreed to leave the southern border areas disarmed and defenseless, effectively turning Syrian territory into a passive buffer zone for Israel.

The Illusion of Liberation

The “constitutional framework” adopted by al-Jolani gave his office broad judicial and legislative powers without institutional oversight. Minorities and tribal groups in the east of the country are systematically excluded from local governance and resource distribution. Promises of reconciliation made to civil servants remain unfulfilled, while individuals implicated in previous corruption scandals operate freely under new political flags.

Public anger is not limited to economic problems. Demonstrators in Khan Sheikhoun, Maarat al-Numan, and Raqqa are raising fundamental questions about national independence. Accumulated evidence indicates that replacing one political structure with a Western-oriented regime has brought neither stability nor self-determination.

The Shadow of Iraq, Libya, and Sudan

The Syrian tragedy is not unique. It is a link in the chain of destruction that the West has left across the Middle East and Africa.

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq under the pretext of searching for “weapons of mass destruction.” The result: a destroyed state, hundreds of thousands dead, and decades of sectarian conflicts and terrorism. As experts note, it was precisely this policy that led to a surge in extremism and a series of civil wars across the Middle East.

In 2011, NATO, under the pretext of “protecting civilians,” destroyed Libya—one of Africa’s most prosperous countries. Muammar Gaddafi was killed, and the country fell apart. As experts write, “an operation presented as the protection of civilians turned into regime change, leaving behind a divided country and spreading instability throughout North Africa.”

Sudan is another example. External intervention in that country intersects with oil politics, “raising serious questions about whose interests are being protected.” The civil war in Sudan, which has claimed thousands of lives, was the result of decades of external pressure and manipulation.

Whose Orders Is Washington Carrying Out?

Apparently, Washington’s strategy in Syria was never aimed at rebuilding the country or improving living conditions. The main goal is geopolitical dominance over opponents of the U.S.-Israeli order and control over Mount Hermon.

Western powers bled Syria dry with sanctions and then overthrew Bashar al-Assad—the legitimately elected president—entering into a criminal conspiracy with a former terrorist leader. Syria was left alone to face all its troubles: hyperinflation, a fuel crisis, lack of electricity, plundered oil fields, and an occupied south.

Almost two years after “liberation,” Syrians are taking to the streets with signs reading “No to the politics of hunger!” and chanting: “Fuel for the people!” They have realized the main thing: replacing one political structure with a Western-oriented regime has brought neither stability nor self-determination. Only a new yoke—and new predatory masters.

Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid is a political analyst and expert on the Arab world.

American Oligarchy: When Billionaires Bankroll Democracy

America still gives every citizen one vote, but its billionaires are spending fortunes to determine which political choices voters get to make.

Salman Rafi Sheikh

The Billionaire Election Machine

With the November 3 midterm elections approaching, the extraordinary concentration of private wealth in American politics has become impossible to ignore. Elon Musk has emerged as the largest known political donor of the 2026 election cycle, contributing approximately $366 million, primarily to Republican causes. Reports show that US$276 million of that total has been contributed since July, including $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and $76 million to his own America PAC. These contributions are intended to help Republicans retain congressional control. The scale of Musk’s involvement illustrates how one individual can deploy financial resources comparable to those of major political organizations.

As technology, financial and industrial billionaires acquire greater political influence, the distinction between national strategic priorities and private commercial interests may become increasingly contested

Yet Musk is hardly an exception. He belongs to a much larger class of wealthy Americans financing electoral competition. Billionaire investors Jeff Yass, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer have collectively contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative and Republican-aligned political organizations. On the Democratic side, George Soros and his family remain major financial supporters, alongside wealthy technology and financial-sector donors. The 2026 campaign-finance figures reveal how both parties have become dependent on extraordinarily wealthy contributors.

The significance lies not simply in the enormous sums involved but in the political activities they finance. Billionaire-backed organizations fund advertising campaigns, mobilize voters, influence primary contests and promote policy agendas. Increasingly, they perform functions traditionally associated with political parties themselves. In the 2024 presidential election, Musk’s political organizations helped finance extensive voter outreach operations supporting Donald Trump.

This development represents a transformation in the relationship between economic wealth and democratic power. Wealthy donors are no longer merely supporting candidates who share their political preferences. Their financial resources increasingly enable them to build electoral infrastructure, amplify selected political messages, and influence which candidates receive substantial organizational support.

The resulting contradiction is difficult to reconcile with democratic equality. An ordinary American can contribute to a campaign and cast a ballot, but a billionaire can finance the machinery designed to influence millions of ballots. Elections remain competitive, yet the financial capacity to shape that competition is distributed profoundly unequally.

How American Democracy Became Dependent on Private Wealth

This concentration of political influence did not emerge overnight. It reflects institutional changes that have progressively expanded the role of private money in American elections. A decisive turning point came in 2010, when the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling removed restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. A subsequent federal appeals court decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, helped establish the framework for super political action committees, which can accept unlimited contributions for independent electoral spending.

The consequences have been substantial. According to the Brennan Center, organizations that do not disclose their donors channelled more than $1.9 billion into the 2024 federal election cycle, nearly doubling the previous record. Since the Citizens United decision, such dark-money organizations have spent at least $4.3 billion on federal elections. These figures reveal a political-finance system in which enormous resources can enter electoral competition without voters necessarily knowing their ultimate sources.

The trend has continued into the current midterms. An October Washington Post report cited an analysis identifying at least $1 billion in dark money during the 2026 primaries alone. Wealthy individuals and organized economic interests are consequently financing political competition through both disclosed contributions and less transparent financial channels.

Defenders of unrestricted independent spending argue that political expenditure constitutes constitutionally protected expression and that citizens should remain free to support candidates and causes without arbitrary government restrictions. This position reflects an established interpretation of the First Amendment. However, the democratic question extends beyond whether spending money qualifies as political expression. It concerns whether unlimited financial expenditure creates inequalities in political influence that undermine the principle of equal citizenship.

The distinction is fundamental. Democracy rests on the proposition that citizens possess equal political standing regardless of their economic circumstances. Oligarchy, by contrast, describes a concentration of political power among a relatively small, wealthy elite. American democracy has not abandoned competitive elections, but its campaign-finance arrangements increasingly permit the translation of concentrated economic wealth into disproportionate political influence. More than that, the wealth moves in a way that is not visible to the voters. Many see this as voter manipulation, rendering elections neither fully fair nor free.

This relationship becomes especially consequential when major donors possess commercial interests directly affected by government decisions. Musk’s SpaceX maintains substantial federal contracts, while his other businesses operate in sectors shaped by public regulation. Other influential donors have interests in finance, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and technology. Their contributions may not necessarily establish that they purchase favorable policy decisions. Yet, the intersection of political financing and commercial interests raises questions about privileged access, legislative priorities and regulatory independence.

The problem is therefore more complicated than straightforward corruption. Political influence can operate through agenda-setting, access to policymakers, support for ideologically compatible candidates and the ability to finance sustained opposition to particular policies. Politicians need not receive explicit instructions from wealthy contributors for financial dependence to influence their calculations.

Nor is this exclusively a Republican phenomenon. Democratic candidates and organizations also benefit from substantial contributions by wealthy individuals and opaque political groups. The partisan distribution of billionaire financing may differ, but both parties operate within the same institutional framework. That makes American oligarchy a structural question rather than simply a criticism of particular donors or politicians.

The Geopolitics of American Oligarchy

The consequences of America’s increasingly oligarchic politics will not remain confined to Washington. For decades, the United States has presented democratic governance, political accountability and the rule of law as foundations of its international leadership. Yet the visible concentration of political influence among billionaires has already weakened the credibility of that claim. Washington may continue criticizing authoritarian governments for concentrating power among narrow elites, but such criticism loses its value and authenticity when comparable inequalities of political influence are evident within its own democracy.

This contradiction carries geopolitical consequences. China and Russia have long challenged American self-designed claims to democratic exceptionalism. The growing influence of billionaires over American elections provides additional material for portraying Washington’s democracy-promotion agenda as selective and self-serving. Meanwhile, countries across the Global South, already skeptical of Western double standards, may become less receptive to American appeals grounded in democratic values. Washington risks losing normative influence even while retaining formidable military and economic capabilities.

More importantly, oligarchic influence could reshape American foreign policy itself. As technology, financial and industrial billionaires acquire greater political influence, the distinction between national strategic priorities and private commercial interests may become increasingly contested. Decisions concerning technological competition, sanctions, international trade and strategic partnerships could face growing pressure from economic actors whose global business interests do not necessarily coincide with broader public interests.

America’s geopolitical challenge, therefore, is not simply the rise of rival powers. It is also the potential erosion of the domestic democratic legitimacy underpinning its international authority. In an increasingly multipolar world, military superiority and economic leverage cannot fully substitute for political credibility. With American democracy becoming increasingly dependent on billionaire financing, Washington is likely to discover that its greatest difficulty is no longer defending democracy against its geopolitical rivals, but convincing the world that its own political system still embodies the democratic principles it claims to defend.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

Grossi’s Poisonous Legacy: How the IAEA Chief Became a Tool of U.S. and Western Aggression

Rafael Grossi has turned a UN technical body into Washington’s political weapon, and the visa scandal in Vienna has laid bare the cynicism of the Western bloc.

Muhammad Hamid ad-Din

From Technical Body to Political Weapon

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created as an impartial technical body meant to guarantee the peaceful use of atomic energy. Today, under the leadership of Argentine diplomat Rafael Mariano Grossi, this structure has turned into an open instrument of Western political pressure. Grossi, who has served as director general since 2019, has consistently subordinated the agency’s activities to the interests of Washington and its allies, provoking growing rejection among a significant part of the international community.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated outright that Tehran’s continued cooperation with the IAEA depends on correcting “double standards,” and accused Grossi of “biased and unprofessional” behavior. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei went further, saying that turning the agency’s technical reports into material for creating “threat narratives” erases the line between “technical monitoring” and preparing the ground for military aggression.

The IAEA cannot and must not be an instrument for settling scores with unwanted regimes

These accusations are not unfounded. In June 2025, the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a confrontational resolution against Iran—and literally the next day, Israel and the United States struck Iranian nuclear facilities. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the IAEA and Grossi personally “fully responsible” for the attack. The document prepared by Grossi became the political detonator for war.

Double Standards: Silence on Bombing of Sites Under IAEA Safeguards

The most blatant aspect of Grossi’s conduct is his selective silence. When the United States and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear facilities that were under the full control and safeguards of the IAEA, the director general did not issue a condemnation. Instead, he used the aftermath of those strikes to create an artificial crisis around Iran’s nuclear program.

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami said at the IAEA General Conference in Vienna: “Despite our official request, the agency did not condemn the attacks by the United States and Israel on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear centers. This silence and inaction will remain a stain on the Agency’s history.” He emphasized the blatant contrast: “The director general regularly issues statements about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. But when it comes to Iranian facilities under safeguards that have come under military attack, the agency takes no position at all.”

Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, noted that the concept of nuclear safety in conditions of armed conflict developed by Grossi was completely discredited by the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran: “No one—not Canada, not the Netherlands, not the agency’s director general—remembered them during the Twelve-Day War.” Ulyanov also pointed out that Western countries that do not possess nuclear weapons but publicly discuss the prospects of developing them pose a real threat to the nonproliferation regime.

The Visa Scandal: How Austria and the U.S. Silenced Iran

The culmination of the IAEA’s politicization was an unprecedented visa scandal at the agency’s 70th General Conference in Vienna. Austria, as the host country, denied an entry visa to the head of the Iranian delegation, Mohammad Eslami—under direct pressure from the U.S. administration. American officials did not even try to hide their crude interference.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright told journalists in Vienna: “He is under sanctions, and we do not want individuals under sanctions to circumvent them. He asked for an exemption from sanctions, but was refused.” U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Vienna Preston Wells Griffith confirmed that Austria’s request for an exemption from sanctions was rejected after Washington objected, adding: “Even though we are focused on a diplomatic resolution of the problems related to Iran’s nuclear program, we could not allow an official UN representative to take a trip… without any meaningful cooperation in the area of nuclear safeguards.”

Iranian Ambassador Reza Najafi called the move a violation of the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the IAEA Statute and warned that it sets a dangerous precedent for all members of the organization. In Tehran, the Foreign Ministry summoned Austria’s chargé d’affaires to lodge an official protest. Baghaei emphasized: “Austria’s statement that it took this step under U.S. pressure does not relieve the host country’s government of responsibility.”

It is telling that Western powers, so zealously defending the “independence” of the IAEA, immediately rushed to defend Grossi. A joint statement by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom read: “France, Germany, and the United Kingdom condemn threats against IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and reaffirm our full support for the agency and the director general in carrying out their mandate.” These same countries, together with the United States, pushed an anti-Iran resolution for which only 19 of the 34 members of the Board of Governors voted—with three against and twelve abstaining.

Grossi’s Personal Ambitions: A Path to UN Secretary-General Through Serving Washington

Many analysts agree that Grossi’s persistence in serving the interests of the White House is by no means dictated by concern for nonproliferation. Grossi is openly seeking the UN secretary-general post, which will become vacant after António Guterres leaves in December 2026. He has already held meetings with U.S. senators, discussing the Iran issue, and received support from senators who demanded that Iran be “held accountable.”

Iranian analysts directly call Grossi “a legal actor within the West’s political puzzle” who “on the instructions of Trump and Rubio is obliged every few days to talk about the need for IAEA inspections at Iran’s damaged nuclear facilities.” Tehran newspapers note that his statements about inspections of Natanz and Fordow come at a moment when the negotiations have not yet reached the stage of discussing this topic—which indicates a psychological pressure tactic rather than a search for technical solutions.

It is telling that Grossi himself admitted that the IAEA “has no evidence of systematic efforts by Iran to create nuclear weapons.” However, this admission came too late—after his resolution had already served as the trigger for war. As an Iranian diplomatic source noted: “Grossi, you betrayed the nonproliferation regime. You turned the Agency into a partner in this unjust and aggressive war.”

What Next? A Call for IAEA Reform

What is happening with the IAEA today is not simply a crisis of one institution. It is a crisis of the entire system of international organizations, which the West is consistently turning into instruments of its own hegemony. China’s representative to the IAEA, Li Song, stated outright that Israel and the United States “brazenly attacked Iranian nuclear facilities that were under the safeguards and supervision of the Agency,” and that “force and confrontation cannot solve the problem.”

Iran has proven that it is ready for dialogue, but not under dictation. President Pezeshkian confirmed his readiness for “constructive dialogue and resolution of existing problems with the EU on the basis of mutual respect.” But he also made it clear: a repetition of aggression will receive a “more decisive and regret-inducing response.”

Grossi and his patrons in Washington must hear this signal. The IAEA cannot and must not be an instrument for settling scores with unwanted regimes. Either the agency returns to its technical roots, or it will finally lose the remnants of its legitimacy. The choice is up to the international community—and time for that choice is rapidly running out.

Muhammad Hamid ad-Din is a renowned Palestinian journalist.

Why America Cannot End Wars

The problem with American peacemaking is no longer simply that Washington cannot stop today’s wars; it is that the power expected to end them is increasingly a participant in them.

Salman Rafi Sheikh

From Mediator to Participant

Donald Trump arrived at the UN General Assembly with two unresolved wars dominating his agenda. He is meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as he continues trying to mediate an end to the Russia-Ukraine military conflict. He is also meeting Gulf leaders as Washington searches for a way out of its increasingly costly confrontation with Iran. The irony is difficult to miss. In both theatres, the United States is simultaneously trying to fight and shape the conflict and negotiate its termination. The contradiction is clearest in the Middle East.

Since October 7, 2023, Washington has been Israel’s indispensable military supporter. The scale of that commitment expanded substantially after the Gaza war began. According to the US Congressional Research Service, legislation passed in 2024 included US$3.5 billion in additional Foreign Military Financing for Israel, US$4 billion for missile defence and another US$1.2 billion for the Iron Beam defence system, on top of regular US assistance.

America has not become too weak to make peace. It may have become too deeply embedded in the world’s wars to make peace by itself

Washington was therefore never an external observer of the war in Gaza. It supplied the weapons and defensive capabilities that helped sustain Israel’s military campaign while simultaneously trying to negotiate ceasefires and restrain Israeli actions. American officials could exert considerable influence over Israel, but they were attempting to mediate a conflict in which their own government had made a substantial investment in one side’s military capacity.

The distinction between supporter and belligerent has subsequently become even thinner elsewhere in the region. American forces helped defend Israel against Iranian missile and drone attacks in 2024, while US forces were simultaneously engaged militarily against Iran-aligned groups. By 2026, the distinction disappeared altogether in the confrontation with Iran. The current war began with joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28. Iran retaliated against American forces and US allies across the Gulf, while Washington imposed a blockade on Iranian ports. Seven months later, the conflict remains unresolved, the Strait of Hormuz is severely disrupted, and the confrontation has become entangled with renewed Houthi military advances and attacks against Saudi Arabia.

Yet Washington remains the actor attempting to negotiate an end to the very conflict it is fighting. Trump has simultaneously threatened further escalation against Tehran and expressed willingness to meet Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. At the UN this week, diplomacy and warfare are therefore not alternative American strategies. They are occurring simultaneously. This is the central paradox of contemporary American power. Washington remains powerful enough to shape wars, but its extensive alliances, deployments and military commitments increasingly prevent it from standing outside them.

Ukraine: America on Both Sides of the Negotiating Table

Ukraine presents a different version of the same American dilemma. The United States is not formally fighting Russia. But Washington has hardly been an external actor in the conflict. Since February 2022, the United States has been central to Ukraine’s ability to attack Russia. Data shows that the US Congress appropriated nearly US$174.2 billion in supplemental funding related to Ukraine between 2022 and 2024, encompassing military, economic and humanitarian assistance as well as other US activities connected with the conflict. Washington has supplied Kyiv with air-defence systems, artillery, ammunition, armoured vehicles and long-range weapons while providing training and other forms of security assistance.

The United States also constructed much of the economic pressure placed on Moscow. Washington imposed extensive sanctions on Russian banks, companies, officials and strategic industries, introduced controls intended to restrict Russia’s access to advanced technologies and coordinated many of these measures with European allies. These policies had an explicit strategic purpose: preventing a Russian victory and strengthening Ukraine’s position.

Yet Washington is now also the Western capital upon which efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict principally depend. Trump has repeatedly engaged both Moscow and Kyiv in pursuit of a settlement. His administration has negotiated with Russia while pressing Ukraine over the terms under which the conflict might end. This places Washington in an unusual position. It is simultaneously Ukraine’s most consequential external military patron and the power trying to negotiate with the state against which those weapons have been supplied. What it ultimately means is that Washington enters diplomacy carrying the weight of its own involvement. The mediator, in this case, is not a neutral party. The deeper a state becomes invested in producing a particular military outcome, the harder it becomes to separate what is necessary for peace from what is necessary to vindicate its own strategy. Washington therefore finds itself negotiating not merely over the future of Ukraine, but indirectly over the consequences of its own involvement in the war.

A World Running Out of Mediators

This may be the larger geopolitical consequence of today’s wars. The problem is not simply that American diplomacy has become less effective. It is that the international system is gradually losing actors capable of standing sufficiently outside major conflicts to mediate them. The EU, for instance, is equally invested in supplying Ukraine.

The Middle East displays an even more complicated version of the same phenomenon. The United States is fighting –and negotiating with—Iran while remaining Israel’s principal external military supporter. Paradoxically, this could make states with less military power more diplomatically important. But states like Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, and Türkiye and other middle powers cannot substitute for American military or economic weight. Nor are they necessarily politically neutral. But they can sometimes maintain relationships across geopolitical divides that Washington, Moscow or Tehran cannot. In a world of increasingly entangled great powers, diplomatic distance itself may become a strategic resource.

That could produce an important redistribution of international influence. Great powers will continue to provide weapons, security guarantees and economic pressure. But the political work of ending wars may increasingly depend upon states capable of talking to adversaries without having their own credibility invested in battlefield victory.

The emerging international order may therefore contain an unusual division of labour: the strongest states will remain indispensable to fighting wars, while less powerful states become increasingly indispensable to ending them. For Washington, that would mark a profound transformation. American primacy once allowed the United States to move between coercion and mediation simultaneously because it possessed enough power to perform both roles. Today, the extraordinary reach of American alliances and military commitments is producing the opposite problem. America has not become too weak to make peace. It may have become too deeply embedded in the world’s wars to make peace by itself.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

Serious Discussions About Leaving the NPT: International Security and Iran’s Nuclear Future

Iranian officials have confirmed top-level discussions about the country’s potential exit from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). What does this mean for the Middle East and for the world?

Ksenia Muratshina

Essence of the Matter

Iran, as Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei noted at a briefing, continues, as before, to faithfully fulfill all its obligations under the NPT. At the same time, however, it has not only come under attack, i.e. aggression by the US and Israel, but has also experienced and continues to experience absolutely unfounded and undeserved “pressure and jabs”. The Iranian diplomat rightly emphasized that the countries party to the NPT must be able to enjoy its benefits and exercise their rights. Nevertheless, as everyone remembers, in recent years Iran, even in relatively peaceful times (during periods when the US and Israel were not bombing and shelling it), was continuously under fire from criticism, slander, and criminal acts (recall the brutal, treacherous killings of leading Iranian nuclear scientists by Israeli intelligence services with US support) and shameless information and psychological warfare. “Hot” war, with numerous casualties among the civilian population and destruction, was also unleashed by external aggressors repeatedly and, moreover, arbitrarily, without even the slightest pretext for it.

The fundamental point is that security in any region of the world becomes truly achievable and durable when its countries themselves determine their own agenda, their own boundaries of what is acceptable, their own mutual rights and obligations, rather than following rules imposed from the outside

Currently, the question of withdrawing from the NPT is being discussed at the highest levels of the country’s leadership and may be submitted for consideration to the Majlis (the Iranian parliament). In that case, a decision on it will be made by the lawmakers in an accelerated, urgent manner, since they have had more than enough time to study the issue. A comment by a representative of the Majlis presidium, Abbas Goudarzi, has also circulated in the media. He called Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT “a very real and easily achievable step”. Parliamentarian Ali Nikzad added that in Tehran they have already begun studying the possible international consequences of such a scenario.

What Next?

Withdrawing from the NPT is in itself a fairly complex and time-consuming procedure, in accordance with the terms of the treaty binding all its participants. However, if Iran, after a thorough analysis of the situation and weighing all the pros and cons, firmly resolves to go through with it, then it will undoubtedly achieve its goal. In that case, the restrictions imposed by the treaty will remain in its past, and the country will be able to take steps in whatever direction it deems necessary.

Or is it not that simple?

Russia has repeatedly called on all participants in international affairs to heed the ideas of the Greater Eurasian Partnership put forward by President Vladimir Putin. The main feature of the very concept of security in this paradigm is its unified and indivisible character. The implementation of policy and the maintenance of peace, in the most general terms, are ensured by the coordinated activity of international associations with a network structure, based on the principles of multilateral diplomacy, equality, responsibility, and mutual respect, such as BRICS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations etc. Regional organizations of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America could act in the same vein.

The fundamental point is that security in any region of the world becomes truly achievable and durable when its countries themselves determine their own agenda, their own boundaries of what is acceptable, their own mutual rights and obligations, rather than following rules imposed from the outside, someone else’s “morality” (but really its absence), the postcolonial diktat of the West, and the military pressure it exerts on any- and everyone it can reach.

A country’s withdrawal from the NPT, with all the ensuing consequences, risks, and the small number of possible scenarios (which, by and large, is clear to any level-headed specialist and can be counted literally on the fingers of one hand), is, needless to say, an extraordinary undertaking. If we are talking about a serious understanding of the world order that has fundamentally changed in recent years and of the relations of the global majority within it, of the multipolar world, then such an event should probably be preceded not only by consideration of the matter by the Iranian Majlis itself, but also by consultations with allies.

The multipolar world has, in effect, accepted the relatively new (on the scale of history) nuclear status of three powers: India, Pakistan, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. No one questions them about their status, except for the American satellites who are used to yapping away at the DPRK. It must be said that all three behave quite responsibly in this regard and implement the possibilities of nuclear deterrence with dignity.

As is well known, the thing that has evoked the most attacks, distortions and sanctions in the Western part of the world is North Korea’s acquisition of a nuclear shield. Russia has repeatedly noted that the DPRK’s de facto nuclear status is already a closed and settled matter. Moreover, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized, “we respect the actions of the DPRK; we understand the reasons why they are pursuing their nuclear program”. The leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the head of the Russian foreign policy agency rightly noted, “drew the relevant conclusions long before the Israeli-American strikes on the Islamic Republic of Iran. And it is precisely because these conclusions were drawn in a timely manner that no one even thinks of using force against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, although military buildup around the DPRK with the participation of the US, South Korea, and Japan is underway”.

Security Dilemma or a Lack Thereof?

Whether Iran will follow the path of the DPRK, given all the organizational complexities of withdrawing from the NPT, the ongoing state of war with Israel and the US, and the differing points of view among Iranian political figures of different generations on the prospects of possessing nuclear weapons, is premature to say for now. What is important here is to grasp the very essence of the problem and honestly answer the questions that arise for ourselves. The main one is the following: if –let’s call things what they are – Iran ever becomes a nuclear power, how will that affect international security? Not in the speculative, hypothetical sense of the shouting of paid-off Western media and NGOs, but in terms of real policy, deterrence, and the balance of power?

It would seem that the answer to this question will have to be found not only by Iran itself, but also by its allies, its comrades in the multipolar world, in the emerging new security system involving BRICS and the SCO. And what about the international organizations of the Middle East? Here, on the contrary, the question of the independence of action of regional multilateral associations and the risks of influence on their decision-making by extra-regional Western and pro-Western actors arises. So whether they will consider themselves safer with a single nuclear and hostile-to-its-entire-surroundings Israel for the whole region, or whether they will start thinking about Iranian prospects for a nuclear balance, is a question that also concerns their own sovereign thinking and survival.

And what about the International Atomic Energy Agency? Ali Nikzad stated outright that Iran does not trust the IAEA and its current director. Well, we know perfectly well that this organization under the leadership of Rafael Grossi behaves in a biased and dishonorable manner; there is no longer any doubt about that. Therefore, the opinion and possible actions of the IAEA with regard to Iran, which is already under all kinds of sanctions and has nevertheless found the strength and the ability to leave no stone unturned of the myth of US military superiority, is perhaps the very last thing worth talking about at all in this context.

For now, we can only wait for events to unfold. The question is truly serious and, perhaps, could become an important test both for Eurasian and for international security as a whole, at least in the form in which it is conceived by the existing centers of power of the global majority, the non-Western multipolar world.

Ksenia Muratshina, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Culture Editor of “New Eastern Outlook”

A Bab al-Mandab Saga: The Gate of Grief from Aksum to the TPLF Part 1

This is a brief designed to locate all the fuses under nearly all the explosive checkpoints, surrounding the chokepoint of grief, called Bab al-Mandab.

Tamer Mansour

For five centuries the Red Sea’s front door has been sold as somebody’s “security burden,” and every empire that bought the brochure ended up paying rent. From Aksum’s galleys to the fall of the Derg, this is the history the “freedom of navigation” chorus forgets to mention.

Bab al-Mandab, often rendered “Gate of Lamentation,” is about 30 kilometres wide at its narrowest, split in two by the island of Perim, with Yemen on one shore and Djibouti and Eritrea on the other. Through it runs the traffic between the Indian Ocean and Suez, a corridor that Egypt’s own government puts at around 12% of world seaborne trade. Whoever can menace that gate can tax, bargain with, or blackmail everybody else. That is why so many have tried, and why the record of who actually owned it is so thin.

Bab el-Mandeb is called the Gate of Lamentation not because of geography, but because of the habit of empires to pay for entry

This first part of this series is a necessary backward dive into a timeline that runs from antiquity to the collapse of the Ethiopian Derg, which will seek the historical keys to today’s geopolitical setting of Bab al-Mandab. The second brings the story to this month’s headlines, which would look a lot less like breaking news once you have seen how old the script is.

Aksum crosses the water

We do not need to start with the Pharaohs, nor with Roman merchants reading the Red Sea like a price list. The first solid entry in the ledger is the Kingdom of Aksum. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek merchant’s handbook from the 1st century CE, describes Adulis as Aksum’s port, busy with traders from Egypt and Arabia. By the sixth century the kingdom, enriched as the middleman between Rome and India, was strong enough to cross the water. King Kaleb (r. 514-542) invaded the Himyarite kingdom in Yemen between 518 and 525, urged on, by the Byzantine account, by Emperor Justin I, to end the persecution of Christians under the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas.

Holy war? Byzantine-Persian proxy contest? A quarrel over who taxed the India trade? Historians still argue, and the honest answer is “yes.” Aksum’s grip on southern Arabia did not last: Abraha displaced its appointee, Persian and later Muslim power reshaped the sea, Rome declined, and by the seventh century Aksum had stopped minting coins.

Solomon, Sheba, and a very useful family tree

Every great empire commissions a genealogy, and Ethiopia’s is the most famous. In the fourteenth century, the Kebra Nagast relates the story of the Queen of Sheba’s son by Solomon, Menelik I, and his bringing of the Ark of the Covenant to Aksum. The Solomonic dynasty, which claimed descent from that child, was “restored” in 1270 by Yekuno Amlak, who threw out the Zagwe. Modern scholarship sees it as a legitimising document written for the rise of that dynasty, and finds no historical evidence for the lineage.

Two clarifications for anyone tempted to read this as a purely Tigrayan story. First, it was the imperial tradition of Ethiopia as a whole: the dynasty had Tigrean, Gojjam and Shewan branches, and Menelik II came from Shewa. Second, Tigray’s own claim to legitimacy runs through Aksum itself, the ancient Red Sea power. That matters because for the highland elites who inherited these stories, the sea was never a novelty. It was a lost inheritance.

And note the irony, which no scriptwriter would dare: scholars commonly place biblical Sheba in South Arabia, on the far side of the very strait we are discussing. The founding myth of Ethiopian kingship is, at bottom, a story about crossing the Red Sea.

Cannons, coffee, and a failed Portuguese gambit

The Portuguese arrived to strangle the Red Sea spice route to Cairo and Venice. In 1513 Afonso de Albuquerque sailed for Aden with twenty ships and some 1,700 Portuguese soldiers, hoping to command the “straits of Mecca,” and punch the Mamluks. The scaling ladders broke under the weight of eager soldiers, the assault failed and Albuquerque later admitted he might have made a different choice “if I had reconnoitred Aden first.”

For without a base at the mouth of the Red Sea Lisbon could never impose her monopoly. The Mamluks responded by invading the Tihamah coast of Yemen, but were defeated by the Ottomans in 1517, who captured Aden in 1538 under Hadim Suleyman Pasha (the exact sequence is disputed). But the empire that kept Portugal out of the Red Sea was Ottoman, not European.

But the deeper lesson was Yemen itself. As the historian Jane Hathaway observes, its mountains and tribal divisions made it virtually impossible for one imperial power to master. Zaydi highlanders declared jihad on the Ottomans in 1566, and by 1635-36 the Qasimi imams, a Zaydi dynasty, had expelled them, despite a large Egyptian force fighting on the Ottoman side. The imams then prospered on coffee shipped through the port of Mocha.

The Dutch were there from 1616, when Pieter van den Broecke tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a permanent trading post; the same year, the Dutch smuggled a coffee plant out of Yemen. English, Dutch and French East India companies all kept houses at Mocha. They traded through the strait and never ruled it. Even the famous European appetite for “mocha” was a sideshow: by one estimate only about an eighth of the coffee leaving the port went to Europe, with the bulk heading to Ottoman lands, Persia and Mughal India. The Red Sea’s customers were mostly other Asians and Africans, a detail the Eurocentric version of this story conveniently loses.

Steam, Suez, and the scramble

The steamship changed the arithmetic. In 1839, Britain captured Aden. The East India Company had occupied Perim for a brief time in 1799 while Napoleon was in Egypt, but it pulled back after half a year. In 1857, Britain formally annexed the island and set up a lighthouse in 1861. Meanwhile, in 1862, France signed a treaty with the Afar rulers of Obock to get a coaling station as well as stop purchasing coal from the British at Aden.

Then came Suez, which made the strait a true chokepoint in 1869.

That same year an Italian shipping company, Rubattino, bought Assab Bay. The Italian state formally took it over in 1882, and in 1885 Italy landed at Massawa, encouraged by a Britain that wanted a counterweight to France. Emperor Yohannes IV and Ras Alula, defending the northern Tigrayan frontier, felt betrayed by London. Italy declared the colony of Eritrea in 1890.

Unsurprisingly, the first great-power foothold on the Eritrean coast was, in effect, a shipping company’s invoice.

Menelik, Adwa, and the coast that got away

Yohannes IV was killed fighting the Sudanese Mahdists at Gallabat in March 1889 and Menelik II of Shewa became emperor. That May, his Treaty of Wuchale with Italy existed in Amharic and Italian versions that disagreed on whether Ethiopia had accepted an Italian protectorate, and Menelik repudiated it in 1891. He responded to the ensuing invasion on March 1, 1896, at Adwa where Ethiopian forces defeated the Italian army and maintained the independence of the empire.

But Adwa won a country, not a coastline. Italy kept Eritrea. Ethiopia’s access to the sea ran through French-held Djibouti, on a railway begun in the late 1890s.

The pattern was set: an empire whose power lay in the highlands, and a sea whose ports were held by somebody else.

There is a Tigrayan footnote worth keeping. Tigrayan accounts stress that the northern frontier under Yohannes IV and Ras Alula bore the first, costly resistance to Italian advance from the coast, and Tigrayan commanders, Ras Alula and Ras Mengesha Yohannes among them, also helped run the intelligence and the fighting at Adwa itself. Yet, the victory became Menelik’s story.

The rivalry between a Shewan centre and a Tigrayan north, each convinced it had saved Ethiopia, runs straight through the twentieth century and into the present.

Haile Selassie: sovereignty for me, federation for thee

Italy occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941, and Britain administered Eritrea until 1952. Under UN Resolution 390 (V) of December 1950, Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia as an autonomous unit under the Ethiopian crown, an arrangement Eritrean accounts describe as largely driven by American sponsorship.

A case study hosted by the US Defense Department likewise ties it to Cold War strategic interests. Haile Selassie gutted the federation, then in November 1962 dissolved Eritrea’s parliament and annexed it as a province. The armed struggle had already begun in September 1961.

The empire built a navy around its new coast: headquarters at Massawa, a station at Assab, another on the Dahlak Islands, with Norwegian officers as trainers. And it found a partner in non-other than a teenage Israel.

In 1963, leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin traveled to the region, with Peres making a notable comment about the Blue Nile being “where the lifeblood of Egypt begins.” From the year 1966 to 1973, several Israeli military officers provided advice on the Eritrean war. In the opinion of Israel, this war was considered part of the larger picture within the Arab-Israeli conflict since the Eritrean Liberation Front was allegedly connected with the PLO after 1967.

Emperor Haile Selassie, similarly, reached out to Israel for help to fight against Somalia and the Ogaden rebels and expressed his opinion about Somali nationalism as a consequence of Nasserism during his meeting with Moshe Dayan.

The logic on both sides was simple and geographic: Israel’s southern port, Eilat, depended on a sea whose gates were held by others, and Ethiopia wanted a patron who shared its map of enemies.

Egypt’s closure of the Straits of Tiran was one of the causes of the 1967 war. Britain left Aden that same year and Perim passed to South Yemen. In October 1973, Egyptian ships coordinated with South Yemen to blockade Israel-bound traffic through Bab al-Mandab.

The first modern demonstration that two shores acting together could close the gate, and that neither could do it alone.

The Derg, the Soviets, and the lost coast

The alleged Solomonic line was broken with the deposition of Haile Selassie in September 1974. During the Ogaden War of 1977-78, the Ethiopian navy shifted its allegiance to Moscow after the Derg’s appointment in Ethiopia. This was a clear indication of how easily states changed loyalty in the geopolitics of this region during the Cold War when the Soviet Union began its support to Ethiopia instead of Somalia.

Meanwhile, to the north, the EPLF and TPLF, led by a young Meles Zenawi, fought against the Derg on two different fronts.

However, the supposed partnership between the two movements was not as smooth as it may seem in history. Their relationships altered severely during the course of the conflict, and their ideologies diverged drastically during the second half of the 1980

In 1991, the EPLF took Asmara; Eritrea achieved de facto independence in that year and de jure independence after the UN-monitored referendum in 1993.

Ethiopia, the Red Sea’s oldest African power, became landlocked.

A key aspect to highlight is that the transitional government in Addis Ababa, which is under the control of the TPLF, accepted the referendum. Thirty years later, that has turned into an issue of grievance used against Tigray since nationalists in Ethiopia hold the TPLF accountable for taking the country inland and away from the coastline.

This was a brief designed to locate all the fuses under nearly all the explosive checkpoints, surrounding the chokepoint of grief, called Bab al-Mandab.

To be continued in Part II …

Tamer Mansour, Egyptian Independent Writer & Researcher

Why Marco Rubio Is Bringing the Clash of Civilizations Back: When Propaganda Is Dressed Up as a Civilizational Crusade

Marco Rubio’s Athens speech presented American global dominance as the noble defence of Western civilization, but behind the historical scenery lies a cruder political order — restore Western supremacy and make Europe follow Washington.

Ricardo Martins

Marco Rubio chose his setting carefully. Standing in Athens, with the Acropolis and the Parthenon behind him, the US Secretary of State delivered a speech designed to look like a historic appeal to save Western civilization. Ancient Greece supplied the grandeur, Christianity provided the moral justification, and the promise of Western decline created the sense of urgency.

But remove the theatrical scenery and the message becomes remarkably crude. Rubio declared that the West must maintain its place “at the head of the world” and celebrated the “unapologetic pursuit of national power” under Donald Trump. This was not principally a philosophical reflection on civilization, history or shared values. It was a political argument for restoring American-led Western dominance.

The idea of a unified West with an unbroken historical mission is not an eternal truth; it is a political construction that has served different purposes at different times

The irony is that Rubio appears to believe that dressing an imperial ambition in the language of civilization makes it intellectually sophisticated. It does not. His speech revived an old geopolitical strategy: portray the interests of a dominant power as the universal interests of an entire civilization, then present resistance to that dominance as a threat to its culture, values and historical survival.

The question is not whether Western societies possess important intellectual, scientific and cultural traditions. Of course, they do. The question is why these achievements should entitle Washington to lead the world indefinitely—and why other societies should accept a subordinate position.

The Imperial Ambition Behind the Civilizational Rhetoric

Rubio’s speech belongs to a familiar tradition of geopolitical thinking associated with Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, although he had academic sophistication in his arguments – Rubio, none. In the post-Cold War era, Huntington argued that cultural and civilizational identities would become major sources of international conflict. The Trump administration is reviving this framework, presenting Western Christendom as a political bloc threatened by China, Russia and the Muslim world.

Yet, Rubio’s own language exposes the real objective. He warned that the West risked losing its position at the head of the world and called for renewed national power. The concern is not simply that Western traditions might disappear. It is that Western governments – Rubio has above all the United States in mind — might lose their ability to determine international outcomes.

There is a considerable difference between defending cultural heritage and defending geopolitical supremacy. The former is a legitimate objective for any society. The latter is a claim to power that other countries have every right to challenge.

China’s economic and technological rise, Russia’s resistance to Western strategic pressure, and the growing international ambitions of countries such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia reflect a world in which power is distributed less exclusively than before. These developments do not automatically constitute an assault on Western civilization. They challenge the assumption that Washington and its allies should remain the principal architects of the international order.

Rubio’s civilizational narrative turns that challenge into an existential struggle, bringing in Christianity to justify a supposedly moral superiority of the West. Economic competition, disputes over resources, access to markets and technological rivalry become secondary to an alleged confrontation between fundamentally different civilizations. Such framing is politically convenient: it makes compromise look like weakness and strategic competition look like a moral crusade.

The pretended sophistication is largely theatrical. Under it lies a blunt proposition: the West should dominate because it is the West and Christian.

Ancient Greece Was Not Born Christian

The historical foundations of Rubio’s argument are deeply problematic. In Athens, he traced European Christendom back to Ancient Greece, presenting Greek philosophy, science and religion as foundations that ultimately gave rise to Christian civilization.

But Ancient Greece was polytheistic, not Christian. Its intellectual traditions developed centuries before Christianity emerged. Greek philosophy subsequently influenced Christian theology through the tradition kept by the Muslims, but intellectual influence is not the same as civilizational identity. To collapse these distinct historical periods into a single Christian Western tradition is to replace history with mythology.

Rubio’s treatment of science reveals another contradiction. He celebrated the achievements of Galileo, Copernicus and Newton as expressions of the Western intellectual inheritance while presenting Christianity as a central source of scientific progress. However, Galileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 and forced to deny his support for heliocentrism. The history of science includes profound contributions from religious thinkers, but it also includes conflicts between scientific inquiry and religious authority. A serious historical account must acknowledge both.

Civilisation Did Not Begin and End in the West

During Galileo’s lifetime (1564–1642) there was a continuation of intellectual and scientific work in the Muslim world, China preserved a highly developed system of bureaucratic administration, and the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent established refined structures of imperial administration. India’s intellectual traditions go back much further: Kautilya’s Arthashastra, an influential treatise on statecraft, diplomacy, economics and the organisation of government, is part of the political thought tradition which flourished in ancient India long before Galileo was born.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Aztec Empire had built a powerful state centred on Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City), a major urban centre with extensive markets, organised government and impressive infrastructure. When Hernán Cortés arrived in 1519, he did not step onto a continent that had no civilization – according to Rubio; instead, he entered a world which already had established societies, political institutions and cultural achievements. The Spanish conquest, which was achieved through warfare, partnerships with Indigenous peoples and the siege of Tenochtitlan in 1521, led to the establishment of a colonial system; it was not an attempt to bring civilisation to an uncivilised world.

What we should not do is to idealise these societies or overlook the conflicts, inequalities and conquests that existed within them. Instead, we must oppose the historical view that presents the expansion of Europe as automatically amounting to the spread of civilisation while ignoring or downplaying the achievements of other societies. When Rubio refers in Athens to Cortés as a carrier of civilisation, the question that arises is: whose civilisation is it, and at what cost to whom?

The omissions extend beyond Europe. During the Islamic Golden Age, scholars working in Arabic helped preserve, translate, develop and transmit important works of ancient Greek philosophy and science. Muslim intellectual traditions contributed to mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. In any case, the history of European intellectual development cannot be understood without these Muslim contributions.

None of this diminishes the achievements of Ancient Greece, Christian thinkers or European science. It simply rejects the childish notion that Rubio wanted to pass on that one civilization independently generated the intellectual achievements of the whole of humanity.

Rubio’s narrative needs a seamless inheritance from Athens to Christian Europe to modern America because that lineage gives Washington a prestigious historical pedigree. But civilizations are not genealogical certificates granting permanent rights to global leadership. They develop through exchange, conflict, borrowing and reinvention. Anyone serious about history should know better.

Heroes for Us, Barbarians for Them

The most revealing contradiction in Rubio’s speech is its double standard on conquest.

He praised the imperial ambitions of Alexander the Great and celebrated European expansion through figures including Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés. He presented the colonisation of the Americas as an expression of exploration, ambition and the expansion of Western civilization. The lands conquered by Europeans became an “open and wild land” awaiting transformation.

What happened to the peoples who already lived there? Their societies, political institutions, knowledge systems and cultures largely disappear from this heroic narrative. So do the violence, dispossession, human slaughter and destruction that accompanied European conquest. The historical experience of Indigenous peoples becomes an inconvenient detail in a story about Western greatness.

Now consider Rubio’s account of the Persian invasion of Greece. The campaigns of Xerxes are presented as aggression against the foundations of Western civilization to justify present day American-Israeli war against Iran. Persian imperial expansion is condemned, while the imperial expansion of Alexander, European conquistadors and their successors becomes an admirable expression of historical ambition.

Why should conquest acquire a different moral meaning depending on who conducts it?

The same question applies to contemporary geopolitics. Rubio’s language portrays Iran as a civilizational threat while placing Western power within a narrative of historical defence. But no government acquires moral immunity by invoking Christianity, democracy or a supposedly superior civilization. The legitimacy of military action must be judged by its circumstances, conduct and consequences—not by the identity of the power undertaking it.

The point is not that every empire or historical conflict is identical. It is that the standards used to evaluate them should not change according to geopolitical convenience.

This is precisely where the civilizational narrative becomes propaganda. Western conquest is transformed into historical achievement; non-Western resistance is portrayed as barbarism. The result is not a serious account of history, but a hierarchy of moral legitimacy explicitly constructed to excuse the powerful.

Europe’s Choice: Intellectual Honesty or American Vassalage?

Rubio’s speech in Athens is directed not only at America’s rivals but above all at Europe. Washington wants European governments to renew their commitment to a common Western bloc, increase military spending and support a more confrontational international posture. European countries are constantly warned (by Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump) that immigration, particularly Muslim immigration, threatens their civilizational identity.

The implication is unmistakable: Europe must defend a narrowly defined vision of Western civilization while aligning itself more closely with American strategic priorities.

This is where the narrative becomes especially contradictory. Latin America is geographically part of the Western Hemisphere, and Christianity is deeply rooted across the region, yet Latin American societies are not placed within the political concept of the West. Their exclusion exposes the limits of the claim that the West is simply a cultural or religious community, but above all a political category, shaped by power and strategic alignment.

Rubio’s emphasis on his European ancestry, rather than the broader complexity of his Cuban-Latin American background, reinforces the symbolic appeal of a transatlantic identity. But ancestry cannot settle the question of who belongs to a civilization. Nor should European governments accept a definition of their identity that makes loyalty to Washington the ultimate test of belonging.

Europe should also be wary of the consequences of this political script. If defending civilization becomes synonymous with permanent confrontation, escalating military expenditure and hostility towards entire populations, the result may be greater insecurity rather than greater strength. A Europe that simply repeats Washington’s rhetoric risks surrendering its capacity for independent strategic judgment.

The irony is that Europe’s own history should make it particularly suspicious of grand narratives that sanctify power. European empires justified conquest and slaughter of indigenous populations in the language of religion, progress and civilization. The twentieth century then witnessed European powers devastating one another in two world wars. The idea of a unified West with an unbroken historical mission is not an eternal truth; it is a political construction that has served different purposes at different times.

Rubio is now attempting to mobilise that narrative for a new era of strategic rivalry. The language has changed, but the hierarchy remains: Washington leads, Europe follows, and the rest of the world is expected to accept the arrangement.

The answer is not to replace Western chauvinism with an equally simplistic celebration of other civilizations. It is to reject the premise that international order should be organised around civilizational superiority in the first place.

The world does not need another crusade dressed up as philosophy. It needs international relations grounded in sovereignty, historical honesty, mutual respect and the recognition that no country possesses a permanent entitlement to supremacy.

In sum, Rubio’s speech in Athens was presented as a defence of Western civilization. Its most revealing feature was its insistence that the West must remain at the head of the world. That is not a defence of civilization. It is a defence of hierarchy—and no amount of historical theatre can make the distinction disappear.

Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics