Category: Politics

The End of the Long Cold Peace

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On Moral Law, the Golden Rule, and a World Crossing a Threshold

The immediate trigger for this reflection is the rapidly unfolding news of U.S. military action in Venezuela, accompanied by extraordinary claims regarding the removal or capture of that country’s leadership. As of this writing, facts remain incomplete and contested, and prudence demands restraint. Yet even allowing for later clarification, legal reframing, or partial walk-backs, something significant has already occurred at the level of signal.

In international politics, signals often matter as much as facts.

For those who read world affairs through the lens of Sun Tzu, this episode provokes a deeper unease than any single crisis headline. Not because it heralds an imminent world war — it does not — but because it suggests that a moral threshold has been crossed.

Sun Tzu begins The Art of War not with weapons or tactics, but with what he calls the Moral Law: the principle that binds ruler and people, allies and partners, through shared restraint. It is not moralism. It is cohesion.

Across cultures and centuries, this intuition has been captured by what later traditions called the Golden Rule: Do not do to others what you would not wish done to yourself.

Applied to individuals, it governs ethical behavior.
Applied to groups, it underpins trust.
Applied to nations, it becomes the foundation of sovereignty and international law: Do not do to other countries what you would not accept being done to your own.

Since 1945, the international system has lived — imperfectly, inconsistently, often hypocritically — under a version of this principle. Sovereignty was never absolute; international law was never fully enforceable. But there was a broadly shared understanding that force required justification, and that exceptions should not be normalized.

UN mandates, alliance consultations, coalition-building, legal argumentation — these were not guarantees of justice, but rituals of self-binding. Even when violated, they signaled an intent not to universalize the violation. The message was: this is an exception, not a model.

That understanding underpinned what might be called the Long Cold Peace: a period without direct great-power war, sustained less by goodwill than by restraint, legal framing, and moral asymmetry. The strongest actors claimed — and were often granted — a special responsibility to uphold the rules they themselves had helped shape.

What feels different now is not simply the use of force, but the open abandonment of self-binding restraint. When a major power acts unilaterally, publicly, and without multilateral authorization against another sovereign state, it does more than resolve a tactical problem. It sends a systemic signal: We reserve the right to do this — and we accept the logic if others do the same.

This is where the Golden Rule fractures. Because when a system’s primary enforcer no longer acts as if it would object to others doing the same to it, the Golden Rule is replaced by its inverse. Not another moral law, but what might be called a Dark Rule: Do unto others before they do unto you.

This rule does not appeal to reciprocity, but to pre-emption.
Not to restraint, but to demonstration.
Not to law, but to capability.

That is not a moral judgment. It is a strategic diagnosis.

Once this inversion takes hold, moral asymmetry collapses. Arguments that once distinguished enforcement from aggression, or order from destabilization, lose their force. What remains is equivalence. And in international politics, equivalence is corrosive.

From that point onward, it becomes easier — not morally right, but rhetorically easier — for others to justify their own unilateral actions. Russia’s claims to spheres of influence, China’s extraterritorial assertions, Iran’s proxy logic: all gain oxygen once the leading power demonstrates that power itself defines legitimacy.

The question shifts from Is this lawful? to Can this be done?

This does not mean the world is on the brink of World War III. History is rarely that punctual. But it does suggest the end of a phase: the slow erosion of a post-1945 order in which even the powerful felt compelled to narrate their actions in the language of law, reciprocity, and collective authority.

When Moral Law collapses, it does not disappear.
It inverts.

Annex: Three Phases of the Post-1945 Order

Seen through a diplomatic lens, the post-1945 period can probably be read in three overlapping phases — with different dates depending on whether one looks at power, law, or legitimacy.

1. The Cold War Balance (1945–1989)
A bipolar world: dangerous, but paradoxically stable. Moral Law operated through deterrence, alliance discipline, and fear of escalation. Sovereignty was violated, but usually indirectly, through proxies and narrative restraint. The rules mattered because breaking them openly risked systemic collapse.

2. The Unipolar Illusion and the Missed “Warm Peace” (1989–2003)
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the true turning point. The Cold War was won — but no genuine Warm Peace followed. Instead of embedding victory in a strengthened, universally respected legal order, power increasingly substituted itself for consent.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003, without a clear UN mandate, was the moment many diplomats experienced as a moral rupture: the Golden Rule bent sharply, even if the language of law was still invoked.

3. The Age of Open Instrumentalism (2003/2014– )
From Iraq onward, restraint thinned. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 made explicit what had been implicit: law had become a tool, not a boundary. Extraterritoriality — legal, economic, and strategic — normalized. Moral asymmetry faded. Power no longer consistently bound itself.

If we are now fully in this third phase, then the Long Cold Peace is not ending in catastrophe, but in something more subtle and more dangerous: the abandonment of the Golden Rule at the level of states.

Sun Tzu would have understood this moment. Moral Law, once lost, is not easily restored. And when it fades, wars do not begin immediately — but they become easier to justify.

That is the danger of thresholds.
You only realize you crossed one when the ground behind you no longer holds.

Post Scriptum: A Preliminary Note on the European Union’s Reaction

As events continue to unfold, it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the European Union’s official position regarding recent U.S. actions in Venezuela. Formal statements from the Council, consolidated EU positions, or explicit UN-related démarches may yet emerge. Prudence requires waiting for those.

Still, even at this early stage, the initial signals coming from Brussels — including reported comments attributed to the EU’s High Representative (reported by Reuters and picked up by sites such as Modern Diplomacy) — already raise a number of structural questions worth noting.

First, there is the striking impression that the European Union was caught unprepared. If U.S. military action of this magnitude took place without prior political coordination with European partners, this suggests that the transatlantic relationship functions less as a partnership in strategic decision-making than as a system of post hoc notification. That asymmetry is not new, but moments like this make it visible — and uncomfortable.

Second, the EU’s early language appears to reflect a familiar difficulty: commenting on rapidly evolving ground reality. European diplomacy excels at carefully calibrated, legally precise statements, but it is institutionally ill-suited to situations where faits accomplis unfold faster than consensus can be built. The result is often a default to general principles — restraint, international law, the UN Charter — without clear positioning on the action that triggered the crisis itself.

Third, and more fundamentally, these early reactions expose the EU’s lack of an autonomous ideological or strategic stance when judging U.S. military action. The Union defines itself as a normative power, committed to international law and multilateralism. Yet when its principal security partner acts unilaterally, Europe seems torn between upholding those norms and preserving political alignment. The outcome is language that is normatively correct, but strategically weightless.

This tension is not unprecedented. The 2003 invasion of Iraq already revealed a similar fracture: moral concern without collective leverage, legal unease without institutional resolve. Two decades later, the underlying dilemma appears unresolved.

None of this implies that the EU should reflexively oppose U.S. action, nor that it should ignore internal legitimacy issues within Venezuela itself. Rather, the question is whether Europe is prepared to do more than react normatively to precedents that shape the international order — especially when those precedents touch the very principles the EU claims to defend.

This annex does not offer conclusions. It merely notes a pattern that may become clearer with time: a widening gap between fact-setting power and norm-commenting authority. Whether the European Union is content to inhabit the latter role — or intends to close that gap — remains an open question.

Note: This annex was written in the awareness that early impressions can be corrected by later facts. But precedents are often set before interpretations catch up — which is precisely why they merit attention, even in provisional form.

Afghanistan After the Fall: Power, Fragmentation, and the Limits of Centralisation

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Why the Taliban victory did not end Afghanistan’s political problem — it merely inverted it.

A personal preface

Recently, I received New Year’s wishes from an Afghan colleague I had worked with many years ago, back when Afghanistan was still the object of large-scale international programmes, donor coordination meetings, and endless PowerPoint decks about “capacity building.” He now lives in the UK. The message was warm, ordinary — and quietly disarming.

It reminded me how long it has been since I last tried to understand what is actually going on in Afghanistan today. Like many others who have served there for a long time in one role or another, I instinctively stopped following the country after the collapse of the internationally supported government in 2021. Not out of indifference, but because it was painful to watch so much money, effort, and human energy apparently evaporate.

This post is an attempt to look again — calmly, structurally, and without nostalgia.

The Taliban were never a monolith

The media still speak of “the Taliban” as if it were a single, unified actor. It never was.

Historically, the Taliban functioned as a loose coalition of regional, tribal, clerical, and militant networks. What bound these networks together was not a shared blueprint for governance, but a narrower set of common denominators:

  • a fundamentalist religious worldview,
  • rejection of foreign domination and foreign ideas,
  • reliance on local legitimacy rather than abstract institutions,
  • and, ultimately, victory.

That victory in 2021 did not resolve internal differences. It simply suspended them.

Insurgent movements tend to fracture after they win, not while they fight. Afghanistan is no exception.

Three fault lines inside Taliban rule

1. Clerical absolutism vs. operational realism

At the core of today’s Emirate lies a clerical leadership that sees the Taliban’s success as a divine mandate. For this group, governance is primarily a moral and religious project. Compromise, pragmatism, or external conditionality are viewed not as tools, but as corruption.

Opposing this outlook — quietly, often indirectly — are Taliban figures responsible for security, administration, borders, and economic survival. They face the everyday reality that a country cannot function on ideology alone. Their concern is not liberal reform, but basic governability.

This tension explains much of the regime’s paralysis: cohesion is prioritized over competence.

2. Security networks vs. traditional authority

A second fault line runs between the old clerical core and powerful security-oriented networks that control intelligence, policing, and internal coercion. These actors are more accustomed to regional bargaining, informal diplomacy, and transactional relationships.

Their influence is practical rather than theological. That makes them indispensable — and suspect.

3. Centre vs. periphery: the Afghan constant

Afghanistan has never functioned as a strongly centralized state in the modern sense. Authority has always been negotiated locally.

The internationally backed governments after 2001 tried to impose centralization: ministries, national systems, uniform laws, donor-driven coherence. With hindsight, the failure was predictable.

Ironically, the Taliban succeeded partly because they did not try to out-centralize the state. They tolerated local variation, informal authority, and pragmatic arrangements.

Now, as rulers, they face the same paradox as every Afghan government before them: governing requires central authority — but enforcing it risks fragmentation.

Women’s rights as a proxy battlefield

The harsh restrictions on women and girls are often described as simple ideology. Internally, they serve a second function: they are a mechanism of power.

By enforcing uncompromising social rules, the clerical core asserts dominance over pragmatists and technocrats. Opposition becomes heresy rather than policy disagreement.

The result is a state that signals purity at the cost of functionality — and deepens its own isolation.

The Najibullah comparison: useful, but limited

Some analysts compare today’s Taliban rule with the late Najibullah period of the 1980s: a regime surviving through local deals, external support, and careful balancing.

The comparison is instructive — but inverted.

Najibullah presided over a centralized state trying to buy local compliance. The Taliban preside over a decentralized movement trying to become a state.

The warning from history is not collapse, but dependency: Afghan regimes become fragile when they cannot arbitrate between local power centers or sustain the flows (financial, political, symbolic) that keep those centers aligned.

What slow fragmentation actually looks like

If fragmentation comes, it is unlikely to resemble a dramatic civil war — at least not initially.

More likely scenarios include:

  • An Emirate on paper, provinces in practice: national decrees exist, but enforcement varies widely.
  • Competing centres of gravity: clerical authority and security-administrative power drift apart without a formal split.
  • Warlordisation under a single flag: local strongmen retain Taliban branding while operating autonomously.

This kind of fragmentation is quiet, deniable, and often stable — until it suddenly isn’t.

Why Afghanistan faded from Western attention

Afghanistan did not disappear because it became peaceful, nor because its problems were solved. It faded because it stopped fitting the Western geopolitical narrative.

For two decades, Afghanistan was framed as a test case: of liberal state‑building, of counter‑terrorism doctrine, of the belief that institutions, elections, and aid could rewire political legitimacy. Once that test was lost, attention moved on. There was no rival great power visibly “winning” Afghanistan in 2021 — no Cold War mirror image, no adversary to contain, no geopolitical drama that required sustained explanation.

Unlike Ukraine, the Middle East, or the US–China relationship, Afghanistan no longer offered a stage for strategic signalling. What remained was something Western politics is deeply uncomfortable with: a failure that could not be blamed on an external enemy.

In that sense, Afghanistan became politically inconvenient rather than strategically urgent.

State‑building as geopolitics — and its quiet collapse

The post‑2001 state‑building project in Afghanistan was never ideologically neutral. It was embedded in a broader geopolitical ambition: to demonstrate that Western‑backed governance could succeed where earlier imperial or Soviet efforts had failed.

There is a crucial and uncomfortable difference, however, between the Soviet experience and the later US‑led one.

The Soviet intervention unfolded within a clear geopolitical contest. The Afghan resistance was heavily funded, armed, and sustained through regional and international channels. The collapse of Soviet control can be read — at least in part — as the outcome of external opposition.

The Western project faced no comparable external spoiler.

There was no superpower arming a rival Afghan state, no sustained counter‑intervention designed to bleed NATO forces into withdrawal. What undermined the project was not foreign competition, but internal contradiction: the attempt to impose a centralized, technocratic state on a society whose political logic had never been centralized to begin with.

The Afghan Republic did not fall because it was outgunned by an external enemy. It collapsed because the institutions built in its name were not organically rooted in Afghan legitimacy structures. When external support was reduced, the system did not resist — it evaporated.

That makes the failure bleaker than earlier interventions. It failed under its own assumptions.

A closing thought

The Taliban understood Afghanistan’s political grammar better than their predecessors, which is why they prevailed militarily. But military victory does not resolve the deeper Afghan paradox: authority must be local to be legitimate, yet centralized enough to govern.

Every attempt to rule Afghanistan has eventually collided with that contradiction.

The Taliban have not escaped it. They have merely inherited it.

This post was generated by ChatGPT, based on me playing the devil’s advocate with it, verified news sources, and game‑theoretical analysis patterns. It was moderated and approved by a human editor (me) for clarity, neutrality, ethical framing, and attribution. Responsibility for the views expressed remains entirely my own.

Tags: #Afghanistan #Geopolitics #State-building #Governance #Institutional failure

Sun Tzu again: Ethics-Signaling is Not Strategy !

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Sanctions are the West’s favorite placebo. They make politicians feel decisive and moralists feel righteous, but they rarely change the battlefield. From Russia to China and now Israel, Europe is mistaking ethics-signaling for strategy — and paying the price for it.

When I wrote about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I took flak for refusing to reduce a complex war to black-and-white slogans. Let me be clear: I was never a defender of Moscow. In fact, in those early months I joined the Volunteer Legion, put my own life at risk, and saw the folly of that war up close. My critique was — and remains — about strategy, not sympathy.

The same applies today. Hamas’s October attack on Israel was brutal and strange in equal measure. Israel’s initial military response could still be framed as “forward self-defense.” But what followed spiraled far beyond proportionality. If the International Criminal Court believes there are grounds for a genocide case and has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, then it is no longer civil or credible to argue that Israel’s government is “on the right side of history.”

I already wrote in July that Israel’s strategic logic is breaking down in full view of the region. What began as deterrence has curdled into recursive escalation — strikes in Gaza, Syria, even Qatar — that alienate allies and erode Israel’s long-term legitimacy. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the morality of it all, it is bad strategy.

And yet, Europe’s reaction is once again to reach for the sanctions lever.

The Sanctions Reflex

Sanctions sound tough. They signal resolve. They please moralists. But they rarely work. Even the most optimistic studies put their “success rate” below 40%; more skeptical analyses suggest closer to 5%. That is not strategy. That is roulette.

And when the wheel stops against you, you lose twice: once in economic blowback, and again in strategic realignment. Europe’s energy crisis, and Russia’s accelerated pivot to Beijing, are Exhibit A.

Now: Israel

Fast forward to today. The EU is late — very late — in criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Public opinion is finally forcing politicians to “do something.” And what do they reach for? Trade measures. Suspension of preferential tariffs. Targeted listings. The familiar reflex.

It is, once more, ethics-signaling. Politicians get to look righteous. The moralists applaud. But will Netanyahu change course because the EU slaps tariffs on Israeli machinery or chemicals? Hardly. He has already decided his war aims. His calculus does not turn on Brussels.

Meanwhile, Israel is deeply integrated into European supply chains, R&D networks, and technology flows. Broad trade measures risk collateral damage to ourselves — again.

The Bitter Logic

So the chain grows longer:

  • Russia: sanctions, energy pain, Moscow–Beijing axis.
  • China: tariffs, tech “rip-and-replace” policies, and other spirals of retaliation.
  • Israel: now, the same reflex — trade as punishment.

Where does it stop? If tomorrow Europe decides that America is no longer a functioning democracy, do we cut trade with the US too? That sounds absurd — but the logic, once embraced, rolls downhill fast.

Sun Tzu’s Counsel

Sun Tzu told us to weigh five heads of war: the Moral Law, Heaven, Earth, Command, and Method. In 2022, I wrote that Europe scored poorly on all of them. Nothing has changed.

  • Moral Law: shouting “justice!” without a strategy is not moral strength, it is posturing.
  • Heaven and Earth: the conditions are not on our side; we cannot wish them away.
  • Command: our leaders confuse signaling with purpose.
  • Method and Discipline: sanctions are a substitute for action, not disciplined statecraft.

A Better Course

If the EU is serious about law, it should enforce the measures it already has:

  • No settlement goods in our markets.
  • No weapons or dual-use items where there is a risk of IHL violations.
  • Full cooperation with the ICC and ICJ.

That is lawful. That is targeted. That has integrity.

But let us drop the delusion that broad trade sanctions are a lever of strategy. They are not. They are the political sugar rush of the moment: sweet on the tongue, destructive to the body.

Conclusion:
Ethics-signaling is not strategy. It is an abdication of strategy. And Europe, once again, risks paying the price.

This post was generated by ChatGPT, based on me playing the devil’s advocate with it, verified news sources and game-theoretical analysis patterns. However, it was — of course — moderated and approved by a human editor (me) for clarity, neutrality, ethical framing and — yes — legitimacy or attribution (only me bears responsibility for my opinion, isn’t it).

#MiddleEast #Israel #Syria #Geopolitics #SecurityDilemma #StrategicLogic #AICommentary #webeunews

From Tragedy to Trust: Why We Need Bridges, Not Bonfires

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The killing of Charlie Kirk during a campus speaking event shocked many. A rooftop sniper, an unsecured perimeter, and a suspect fleeing with remarkable composure: the details are disturbing. They also expose deep flaws in security and preparedness — flaws that seem astonishing after last year’s near-miss on Donald Trump.

But perhaps just as troubling is the reaction. Figures like Donald Trump and Elon Musk took to X not to calm tensions, but to capitalize on them. Instead of de-escalation, we saw polarization amplified.

That was the starting point for a dialogue I had with an AI system. The question was simple: What can we learn from this, beyond the immediate headlines?

And here is where the exercise became revealing. Together we explored:

  • How such security lapses could have been prevented.
  • Why conspiracy theories thrive when trust collapses.
  • How leaders can choose to inflame or to bridge.
  • Why Europe should not feel immune: rising gun incidents show similar risks could surface here.
  • And finally: how AI itself, like social media, embodies a paradox — designed for dialogue, but often fueling division.

In two recent papers, I called this out more explicitly:

The conclusion across these threads is simple: trust is fragile, but repairable. We can design for it — in politics, in security, in technology. And we must, because when trust is absent, suspicion rushes in to fill the void.

That is why this blog — webeu.news — is turning into something different: not just reporting events, but exploring them through AI-assisted reasoning. The goal is not to fuel divisions, but to test whether technology can help us think together again.

Shrinking Stage: Geopolitics at China’s Parade

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ChatGPT-generated commentary on real-time events, moderated and published by a human observer. This post reflects no official stance — only the unfolding facts and patterns visible to those willing to look.

I. A Stage Shrinking, A Parade Expanding

On September 3, 2025, Beijing staged its largest military parade in a decade. Hypersonic missiles, drones, lasers — all designed to project technological supremacy. At Xi Jinping’s side: Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Absent: the West.

The tableau is stark: a global stage with fewer players, harder lines, and increasingly symbolic gestures. A demonstration meant less for tactical deterrence than for narrative positioning.

II. The Logic of Spectacle

Parades serve two audiences at once:

  • Domestic: reassure the public of strength, unity, inevitability.
  • International: signal endurance, alliances, and red lines.

But the same images also betray fragility. The louder the spectacle, the deeper the cracks it tries to conceal — from economic slowdown to fragile coalition politics within China itself.

III. Symbolism as Strategy

The presence of Putin and Kim is less about operational cooperation and more about narrative alignment: an axis of visibility.

  • Russia: isolated, but visibly not alone.
  • North Korea: once peripheral, now staged as a partner.
  • China: at the center, claiming both history and destiny.

The absence of Western leaders is equally strategic. Silence is also a signal.

IV. From Military Power to Narrative War

The weapons on display matter — but the image of those weapons matters more. In an era where operational capacity is opaque, perception itself becomes a battlefield. The question is not whether the hypersonic missile works as advertised. The question is: who believes it, and who recalibrates accordingly?

V. The Risk of Overplaying the Script

Spectacle can backfire:

  • If allies see only theater without substance.
  • If rivals call the bluff.
  • If domestic audiences tire of pageantry without delivery.

China’s challenge is that the bigger the parade, the more pressure to prove reality matches appearance.

VI. Closing Reflection: The Stage of Absence

What the parade revealed most clearly was not the power of China’s arsenal — but the shrinking circle of actors on the world stage. When absence speaks louder than presence, the geometry of global politics is shifting toward a simpler, harsher form.

Those willing to look can already see the pattern: fewer voices, harder lines, higher risks.

This post was generated by ChatGPT, based on verified news reports and geopolitical pattern analysis. It was moderated and approved by a human editor for clarity, neutrality, and ethical framing.

#China #MilitaryParade #Geopolitics #Spectacle #Power #Narrative #AICommentary #webeunews

Israel’s Strategic Logic Is Breaking Down — In Full View of the Region

Posted in Politics1 Comment

ChatGPT-generated commentary on real-time events, moderated and published by a human observer. This post reflects no official stance — only the unfolding facts and patterns visible to those willing to look.

I. The Latest Strike: A New Line Crossed

On July 16, 2025, Israel conducted precision airstrikes on the Syrian Ministry of Defence in Damascus, as well as on targets near the presidential palace. These were not routine operations against Iranian proxies or covert shipments. They were overt hits on the central nervous system of the Syrian state.

Israel justified the move as a defensive response to Syrian military deployments in Suwayda, where clashes between Druze fighters and Bedouin militias have spiraled into civil bloodshed. With over 250 people killed in Suwayda in recent weeks, Israeli leadership claimed a moral imperative to intervene — framing the strikes as part of a protective deterrence strategy for regional minorities.

But the world is not convinced.
And neither, it seems, are many within Israel’s traditional alliance network.

II. From Precision to Pattern: The Logic of Escalation

In less than a month, Israel has struck:

  • Iran (in a surprise operation that even U.S. intelligence was only partially briefed on),
  • Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon (as part of its “perpetual containment doctrine”),
  • and now central Damascus — openly targeting a sovereign state’s most symbolic and institutional assets.

This is no longer the quiet shadow war that Israel has managed for over a decade. It is something else:

  • Visible, not deniable.
  • Reactive, not strategic.
  • And increasingly uncoordinated, even among allies.

The logic appears to be unraveling.

III. Game Theory in Real Time: A Security Dilemma, Accelerated

What’s unfolding is a textbook case of the security dilemma — where every move made in the name of security triggers greater insecurity in return.

Israel believes it is acting rationally:

  • Pre-empt threats.
  • Signal strength.
  • Protect vulnerable communities (e.g., the Druze).

But in game-theoretical terms, it is moving into a high-risk tit-for-tat sequence, where actions meant to reduce long-term threats only amplify short-term volatility. This is no longer deterrence. It is recursive escalation.

The regional players are watching closely — and adjusting their posture:

  • Syria, though institutionally weakened post-Assad, is now being recast in international discourse as a target rather than an actor.
  • Iran, already hit earlier this month, now has a broader diplomatic justification for retaliation — or at least narrative leverage.
  • The United States, Israel’s most consistent backer, is publicly urging restraint. The Biden administration reportedly warned that such moves could jeopardize wider regional normalization efforts.
  • Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar — normally divergent in rhetoric — have converged in their condemnation of Israel’s “destabilizing behavior.”

The message: This is not a local matter anymore.

IV. Strategic Blindness? Or Strategic Exhaustion?

It is tempting to search for a coherent doctrine behind Israel’s moves:
A new perimeter? A preventive containment of collapsing Arab states? A domestic show of strength?

But perhaps what we’re witnessing is not doctrine at all — but strategic fatigue:

  • A democracy stretched between multiple frontlines.
  • A leadership under increasing internal and external pressure.
  • An army accustomed to dominance but less attuned to narrative warfare, where images of destruction can undo years of legitimacy-building.

Israel remains the region’s most capable military actor — but it is now playing without clear lines of restraint, and without the consent of the geopolitical arena it once dominated.

V. The Coming Reframing: From Protector to Provoker?

The Suwayda argument — that Israel is protecting minorities in lawless zones — may hold moral appeal. But geopolitics isn’t built on moral appeal alone. It is built on:

  • Predictability,
  • Credibility, and
  • Coalition tolerance.

If Israel loses all three, it risks being seen not as the strategic adult in the room — but as a rogue actor with a nuclear arsenal and no endgame.

The shift is already happening:

  • Western editorial boards are more cautious in their support.
  • Neutral states are treating Israeli moves as destabilizing, not stabilizing.
  • The international legal discourse is slowly creeping toward language of proportionality and sovereignty — with Syria, of all countries, gaining rhetorical ground.

VI. Closing Reflection: Strategic Moves, Emotional Traps

From a purely strategic standpoint, Israel may be playing against itself. Every successful strike now adds weight to a narrative that delegitimizes Israel’s position long-term, even if it wins the tactical exchange.

This is not a question of right or wrong. It is a question of outcomes.

What outcome is now achievable?
Who remains willing to share the burden of escalation?
How many moves ahead is anyone really thinking?

As one observer put it:

“After the surprise strikes on Iran, Israel is further escalating in some kind of logic that no one understands — not even its allies.”

That sentence may turn out to be the most honest intelligence brief of the week.

This post was generated by ChatGPT, based on verified news sources and game-theoretical analysis patterns. It was moderated and approved by a human editor for clarity, neutrality, and ethical framing.

#MiddleEast #Israel #Syria #Geopolitics #SecurityDilemma #StrategicLogic #AICommentary #webeunews

From Emergency to Exception: How the EU Risks Hollowing Out Its Own Democracy

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In The Art of War, Sun Tzu reminds us that the greatest victories are those achieved without fighting. The wise general, he writes, knows that awareness is more valuable than aggression, and that the worst position to be in is one of reactive chaos — when decisions are made out of urgency rather than clarity.

That teaching is being tested in Brussels today.

In a move that has gone largely unnoticed outside policy circles, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has invoked an emergency clause in the EU treaties to push through a €150 billion defense loan scheme — bypassing the European Parliament entirely. Known as SAFE (Strategic Autonomy for European Armaments), the initiative aims to finance joint procurement of weapons by EU member states.

The urgency is real. The war in Ukraine drags on. Strategic dependencies on U.S. military support remain. But so is the danger: what begins as an exception can quickly become the rule.

🧠 A Familiar Pattern: Crisis Justifies Centralization

Von der Leyen argues the move is “fully justified” by Europe’s “existential” geopolitical challenges. And yet, what does it say about the state of European democracy if a €150 billion decision can be waved through without parliamentary oversight?

  • The European Parliament — the Union’s only directly elected institution — was sidelined.
  • National governments nodded the plan through in Council.
  • Criticism came not from public debate, but from internal letters between Roberta Metsola and the Commission.

This is governance by executive exception. It echoes a worrying trend we examined in our recent papers:

📄 From Echoes to Reason: Can AI Reinvigorate Democracy?

📄 An Epilogue to Fukuyama, and a Prologue to What Comes Next

There, we warned that:

“Democracy does not collapse in silence. It collapses in protocol — in procedures that slowly lose their connection to legitimacy, while still formally functioning.”

🧭 Europe Is Not Immune

It’s tempting to look across the Atlantic and think the problem is uniquely American. Donald Trump’s return to power, his flippant military gestures, and U.S. senators tweeting memes about political murder — all seem surreal. But Europe is not immune.

Our institutions may be quieter, more technocratic. But that makes the drift toward post-democratic governance all the more dangerous — because it’s harder to see, harder to resist.

We are entering what systems thinkers would call a bifurcation point — a critical threshold beyond which our political structures may evolve, fragment, or harden. Strategic clarity is needed now more than ever.

🕊 Sun Tzu’s Wisdom, Europe’s Choice

Sun Tzu tells us that victory belongs to the side that knows itself and its adversary. But what if Europe is starting to forget itself — its principles, its process, its people?

Strategic autonomy cannot be built on procedural shortcuts. A fortress without legitimacy is a prison waiting to fall.

Let us not confuse preparedness with panic. Let us not trade transparency for speed. And let us remember that the defense of Europe begins not with weapons, but with integrity.

From the End of History to the Edge of Chaos: Geopolitics After 1989

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In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The Cold War ended. And for a moment, the world seemed to tilt toward peace, cooperation, and democratic convergence. But thirty-five years later, we find ourselves facing nuclear tension, multipolar fragmentation, and creeping authoritarianism. What happened?

In this article, I reflect on the trajectory of global politics since 1989—not from a place of cynicism, but of sober realism. This is a personal exploration, co-generated with AI, driven by a concern for where the world may be heading if we fail to understand how we got here.

🌍 The “Unipolar Moment” (1989–2001): Euphoria and Expansion

The 1990s were defined by a sense of Western triumph. Liberal democracy had “won.” NATO expanded eastward. The EU integrated former communist states. The U.S. stood alone as the global hegemon. Francis Fukuyama called it The End of History.

But even then, cracks were visible. Russia struggled under economic collapse and perceived humiliation. China quietly watched and learned. And Western interventions—from the Balkans to Iraq—began to show the limits of power without legitimacy.

🔥 Blowback and Breakdown (2001–2014): The Illusion Shatters

The attacks of 9/11 ended the post-Cold War honeymoon. The War on Terror dragged the West into endless, destabilizing conflicts. The 2008 financial crash revealed systemic flaws in the neoliberal model.

Russia reasserted itself with the Georgia war in 2008. China grew stronger and more confident, especially after 2008. And the Arab Spring—briefly a beacon of hope—devolved into civil war and authoritarian retrenchment.

By 2014, with the annexation of Crimea and the rise of populism in Europe and the U.S., the global order had shifted. A more chaotic, multipolar world was emerging.

🌐 2014–2025: Fragmentation, Realignment, and a New Cold War

The last decade has been a period of intense disorientation:

  • Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and now sees the West not as a partner, but an existential threat. Its doctrine is no longer just defensive—it is revisionist, even civilizational.
  • China has become more assertive under Xi Jinping. From the Belt and Road Initiative to tensions over Taiwan, it is challenging Western dominance without overt confrontation—yet.
  • Europe, meanwhile, is caught in between. Dependent on U.S. security guarantees that are increasingly uncertain—especially under Trump—it faces hard choices. Strategic autonomy remains more aspiration than reality.
  • The United States has shifted away from predictable deterrence doctrines. The re-election of Trump in 2024 has only deepened concerns that the post-WWII alliance system may no longer hold in the face of nuclear escalation or conflict.

🧭 Understanding the Rational and the Irrational

The world is not descending into chaos by accident. Certain patterns are visible:

  1. Unipolarity was never sustainable. Rivals adapted. The U.S. overreached.
  2. Democracy lost its halo. Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan damaged its legitimacy as an exportable model.
  3. Global institutions weakened. Multilateralism gave way to great power competition.
  4. Technological change outpaced diplomacy. Cyberwarfare, disinformation, and AI blurred lines of war and peace.

And yet, there’s something weird, too—a sense that despite global knowledge, connectivity, and technological mastery, we are less capable of coordinated, rational action than ever before. We know the risks. We talk about them. But we don’t act.

🚧 Europe at the Crossroads

For Europe, the stakes are existential. If the U.S. no longer guarantees nuclear deterrence—and if Russia sees the Ukraine war as a struggle it cannot afford to lose—then supporting Ukraine without a credible peace strategy becomes perilous.

This doesn’t mean capitulating to aggression. But it does mean recognizing that the West’s post-1989 assumptions—about deterrence, alliances, and historical progress—may no longer hold. In a nuclear world with uncertain doctrines and shifting alliances, diplomacy cannot be an afterthought.

🔚 Conclusion: The Edge of Chaos

The post-1989 order was built on hope. What comes next may be shaped more by restraint, clarity, and the courage to rethink. It is time to move beyond nostalgia for a unipolar world that never truly was—and begin designing a multipolar order that is at least survivable.

This reflection is just a beginning. I invite readers to respond, critique, and build on it. We need serious, informed, and open debate—because history is not over. It’s being written now.

Originally published on webeu.news. Co-generated with ChatGPT (OpenAI).
Header image suggestion: A split screen of the Berlin Wall falling in 1989 and modern-day Kyiv under fire—symbolizing the bookends of the post-Cold War dream.

Tech Wars and the Logic of Cooperation: Lessons from a Divided World

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Disclaimer:

This post was generated by ChatGPT-4o based on my prompts and GPT going through previous posts and the history of our chats.

Introduction:

As we celebrated the New Year with awe-inspiring drone-powered light shows, the undercurrents of global technology and commerce revealed a stark reality: the world is witnessing a rapid escalation of the tech war between major powers. Beneath the surface, strategic decisions are shaping the future of technology in ways that may have profound consequences for innovation and international relations.

The Battle for Semiconductor Sovereignty:

The semiconductor industry sits at the heart of this conflict. Recent reports and analyses highlight that Russia and China are doubling down on their efforts to develop homegrown lithography equipment and advanced chip-making capabilities. These moves come as a direct response to US-led sanctions and export restrictions targeting critical technologies.

While claims of surpassing Western technology may be overstated, the underlying trend is clear: sanctions are driving targeted nations to achieve greater self-reliance, potentially reshaping the balance of power in the global tech ecosystem.

The Unintended Consequences of Sanctions:

Sanctions often serve as tools of economic and technological containment, but their long-term effectiveness is debatable. Historically, isolation has sometimes spurred innovation among targeted nations, enabling them to leapfrog technological barriers. The current strategy risks triggering a race that results not in dominance but in deeper global division.

Isolating key players like China and Russia may ultimately weaken the collaborative fabric that underpins global technological progress. For decades, innovation has thrived on shared knowledge, multinational partnerships, and open markets. In the absence of such dynamics, the costs of duplication and inefficiency could weigh heavily on all sides.

A Pragmatic View of Geopolitical Strategy:

A call for “joining forces” might seem naive in today’s polarized world, but ignoring the potential of rival nations is equally shortsighted. With their vast engineering talent pools and state-backed initiatives, countries like China and Russia are well-positioned to disrupt existing technological hierarchies. Geopolitical strategists in the US and EU should approach these dynamics with caution and realism, recognizing that cooperation may sometimes yield better outcomes than confrontation.

The Road Ahead:

The current trajectory suggests a long-term game of competition, where each side vies for supremacy in emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, and space exploration. While collaboration may not be immediately feasible given current geopolitical realities, it’s worth asking whether the continued escalation of tech wars is sustainable—or even desirable.

Even amid rivalry, there are opportunities for selective cooperation in areas of mutual concern, such as climate change or cybersecurity. These small steps may not resolve the broader conflicts but could pave the way for future dialogue.

Conclusion:

The global tech war reflects deeper tensions that won’t be easily resolved. Yet, acknowledging these complexities can lead to more thoughtful and balanced strategies. While the ideal of full cooperation remains distant, a pragmatic approach—one that blends competition with carefully chosen collaboration—may offer a more realistic path forward. As nations chart their courses, they must consider not just how to gain the upper hand but also how to avoid undermining the very system of innovation that has driven progress for decades.

Trump won: what’s next?

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I guess we are all digesting the result of the US elections now. I did not stay up all night but was I up quite early in the morning yesterday to see what was happening. A quick appraisal can be found on my LinkedIn page. It may be summarized like this: Trump’s victory is, perhaps, not great for the US but it may be good news for the world. Why am I saying that? He talked tough on Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – countries which the US perceives to be part of a new Axis of Evil, didn’t he?

My answer to that is: yes. Trump talks tough. But he usually talks about trade and economics rather than about war. I also think he wants to Make America Great Again by not dragging the US into ever larger conflict. That is why I think Trump will be good for world peace and prosperity.

There is another point I want to raise here. This morning, I watched parts of the speech during which Kamala Harris accepted defeat. It reminded me of why I do not like US politics. Let me use stronger words here: why I am afraid of the US and of all that its politicians and military might do or might not do on the world scene over the coming decades. It is this: this constant invocation of American exceptionalism.

Yes. I am talking about the “God Bless America” stuff and everything that comes with it. It reminds me too much of why the Israeli Army is doing what it is doing to Palestinians and other people and countries in the Middle East: some kind of erroneous belief that they are the Chosen Ones. The only people who are entitled to call themselves not ordinary human beings but Children of God. The US, its leaders, and its citizens are not exceptional. They should accept to be part of, and live in, a multipolar world with many challenges that can be solved only by “peaceful coexistence.”

Wow ! That’s a term used by Xi Jinping, isn’t it? It is. I truly hope Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi Jinping will be able to peacefully coexist and solve a few rather urgent crises together. Just a few. I do not expect any miracles.