If you are having trouble making sense of the deep strategic mess in which Britain finds itself, do read John Bew's brilliant new @spectator essay. Come for the Joyce reference, stay for the geopolitical masterclass. "If the UK is simultaneously more distant from the US and failing adequately to fund defence commitments in our own near neighbourhood, then two of the principal pillars of our enduring national security strategy are in danger."--John Bew

American Suez. A doleful essay for Good Friday.
"There is now a rising probability that Trump’s war backfires on him much as Eden’s did—economically, politically, and geopolitically. Which raises the question: Is this the American Suez?" 1/5 "The crisis begins as an attempt to overthrow an unfriendly regime in the Middle East, in concert with the state of Israel. It is also a struggle for control of a key commercial waterway. Despite lacking a plausible basis in international law and popular support at home, the military operation is nevertheless a success in its own terms. The armed forces of the invaded state are swiftly overwhelmed." 2/5

"A society that has secured abundant energy, industrial production, and physical safety creates the conditions in which political attention can migrate upward into questions of identity, moral positioning, and self-actualization." 1/6 "The pathology arrives when those governing from the upper floors lose the ability to perceive the importance of the foundations beneath them, and begin making decisions that erode that base in the service of ideological commitments the foundations had made affordable." 2/6

My new @TheFP essay asks the ten key questions about U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. 1. How long will this war last?
2. Do we have enough firepower relative to Iran?
3. Can the Iranians keep the Strait of Hormuz closed?
4. Can the Iranians hit Saudi and other Gulf oil infrastructure?
5. At what point does Iranian "regime alteration" happen?
6. How widespread will the war get?
7. Can the U.S. get the oil flowing even if the war drags on?
8. How big a shock would it take to damage the U.S. economy?
9. How long can the Republican Party sustain this domestically in a midterm year?
10. What does the war against Iran mean for other actual or potential conflicts? "According to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, 'You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three.' That’s fair. But wars that last, say, six days have happened in the Middle East. On the other hand, George W. Bush’s war lasted eight years. One report on Thursday said the Pentagon thinks this could go on until September. That would be bad."

Remarkable @spectator piece on Starmer's mishandling of the Iran crisis by @ShippersUnbound. Foreign policy by international law is Operation Epic Fail. Not only has Starmer lost Trump; he has also lost the Gulf states. And he has somehow managed to be out of step with Carney, Merz and Macron -- even Albanese. "The Prime Minister was not able to carry his own cabinet. While he did not want Britain to join the military action, he did think there was a case for allowing Trump to use the bases at Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford to launch the attacks. However, he was blocked by an alliance of Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary."

For the habitual critics of U.S. foreign policy in general and Donald Trump’s in particular, the analogy between today’s air raids against Iran and the invasion of Iraq nearly 23 years ago is too obvious to be resisted. 1/9 However, Iran 2026 is not Iraq 2003. Regime alteration is not regime change. It rules out the deployment of American ground forces other than special forces. It requires a short time frame for military operations. It will disappoint those who want to fast-track Iran (and Venezuela) to democracy. But the lesson of Iraq has not been lost on Trump. 2/9

There is a rapidly forming narrative in the European and liberal media that the Europeans “won Davos”: primarily by getting Trump to “de-escalate” his demand that the United States acquire Greenland from Denmark. 1/8 This is a very wrong take. The reality is that Trump won Davos, hands down. And not only did he win it; he owned it. I have never before seen a single individual so completely dominate this vast bazaar of the powerful, the wealthy, the famous, and the self-important. 2/8

"The ejection of Maduro from Caracas is best understood as an invitation to turn the political clock back just over a century. The more I contemplate the contemporary scene, the more I think we have collectively accepted the invitation." 1/5 "Foreign policy is just one area where we’re attempting to turn back time. Tariffs, the price of groceries, immigration restriction, antisemitism, socialism, corruption, vaccines, arms races: The issues of our time are issues our great-grandfathers debated 120 years ago." 2/5

I have been to Ukraine every year since 2011. I warned that war was coming in late 2021 and early 2021 and when it came I warned that Ukraine could not hope to win a protracted conflict. No doubt busy people cannot read all that I write, but here are the key pieces. 1/10 "Putin’s Ukrainian War Is About Making Vladimir Great Again. Current conditions are ideal for a Russian invasion, but the historical inspiration is more tsarist than soviet." (Jan. 2, 2022) 2/10 bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

The best is the enemy of the good. Contrary to recent press speculation, the draft 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine is in fact a reasonable basis for negotiations. Journalists can gripe about it as they griped about the 20-point Gaza plan. But wars are not ended by op-eds. 1/5 Wars are ended either by victory or by compromise. This plan affirms Ukraine's sovereignty. It provides Ukraine with a US-backed security guarantee. It envisages Ukrainian reconstruction. Of course, the territorial terms and the amnesty for war crimes are hard to swallow. 2/5

"Two things can be true at the same time: a) the data centers to power AI could be as economically worthwhile an investment as railroads, and b) we could still experience at least one stock market crash along the way to its general adoption." 1/10 "OpenAI is not quite 10 years old. Its flagship product, ChatGPT, is only three years old, and its burn rate (the amount of money it loses each quarter) may be the highest in history. How does Altman propose to pay for 250 gigawatts of new computing capacity?" 2/10

The war of the future is already here—and you are not sufficiently scared of it. Unless, that is, you are Ukrainian. 1/9 Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is now in its fourth year. Since February 2022, the country has cycled through three wars. First it was a tank war. Then it became an artillery war. Now, however, it’s almost entirely a drone war. The question is how well Europeans understand this. 2/9

With the passage of two and a half decades, it is startling just how unambiguous bin Laden was about his religious motive. “Under no circumstances,” he declared, “should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed. . . . It is a question of faith, not a war against terrorism.” 1/8 Over the past 24 years, I have valiantly tried to see 9/11 differently—not as a civilizational clash between Islam and “the West” but as something that fit better into my own secular frame of reference. Raised an atheist, trained as an economic historian, I felt obliged to look behind what I took to be the facade of religious zealotry. 2/8

Inside @JMilei's radical plan to make Argentina “the world’s freest country.” The @JMilei I met was not what I had expected. On social media, he presents himself as a rock star. In the presidential office, he is soberly attired, a little formal. Only when Milei begins to answer my questions does it become clear that he is no ordinary president.

'The phrase “luxury beliefs” was coined by the brilliant @robkhenderson to sum up the more preposterous ideas that progressives can afford to hold — “Defund the police!” “Open borders!” “Men can become women!” — because they are largely sheltered from the consequences when such ideas are put into practice.' 1/8 'Accusing Israel of genocide and recognising a non-existent state are the luxury beliefs of western foreign policy, elicited in response to misleading photographs on front pages and fake fatality statistics, and utterly divorced from strategic reality.' 2/8

"While the world fixates on Donald Trump’s populist cocktail of reciprocal tariffs and big, beautiful deficits, @JMilei is delivering a man-made miracle that should gladden the heart of every classical economist and quicken the pulse of all political libertarians." 1/5 "@JMilei has brought monthly inflation down from 13% to 2%. The economy is now growing at an annual rate of 7%. Investors no longer shun Argentine bonds and stocks—indeed, they were among the best investments you could have made over the past two years. After a brief upward jump, the poverty rate has fallen from 42%, when Milei was elected, to 31%" 2/5

"Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance." However worried you were about the impact of AI on education, you weren't worried enough. Here is the new and disturbing @MIT paper: media.mit.edu/publications/y…

That scraping sound you hear is @RachelReevesMP moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic. What’s that big white thing we’re sailing towards? The answer is an unsustainably high national debt. 1/13 On the eve of the financial crisis in 2007-08 the gross national debt was 42 per cent of gross domestic product. Twenty years on, according to the OBR, it will have more than doubled to 105 per cent. The worst part is the rising cost of interest payments on the debt: adjusted for inflation, rates are likely to exceed growth in the next five years. 2/13

"There’s realpolitik. And then there’s reality TV politik. There’s foreign policy realism, of the kind associated with Henry Kissinger. And then there’s Donald Trump’s twist: real estate-ism." 1/11 "That week in February when Trump hosted—and, to varying degrees, humiliated—the French president, the British prime minister, and the Ukrainian president introduced to great-power politics the unmistakable style of The Apprentice." 2/11

@realDonaldTrump returned to power with the most consequential to-do list in American history. And, in his first 100 days back in the White House, Trump has crushed that list. 1/8 You are entitled to criticize President Trump—and I do, regularly. But you cannot accuse him of overpromising and underdelivering. 2/8

"The reality is that the agreement that didn’t get signed on Friday is more a matter of symbolism than economics. The mineral rights Ukraine would give the United States are worth not very much; the security guarantees America would give Ukraine are worth even less." @nkumleben and I take a close look at the much misunderstood U.S.-Ukraine deal on minerals (the one that didn't get signed last Friday). Yes, it's a material world, but rare earths aren't all that rare, and some minerals are a lot more critical than others.