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5:11 pm, September 13th, 2025 - 23 comments
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Biden, Trump and the leaders of Western Europe have succeeded by their incoherent behaviour in doing what would have been unimaginable 20 years ago: alienating the very nations that they most needed to keep on their side. They are now weeping into their beer (or Diet Coke, in The Donald’s case).
“Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China,” Trump wrote on Friday, Sept 5 on his Truth Social. “May they have a long and prosperous future together!”
Trump was smarting at the sight of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Presidents Xi and Putin together at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, a gathering representing about half the world’s GDP and population. It was, in soccer parlance, an epic own goal.
Western grand strategy in the 1970s, 80s and 90s had as a central tenet the need to keep the Russians and the Chinese apart. Nixon’s opening up to China, the One China policy, and Reagan and HW Bush’s embrace of Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika, all had sound strategic logic behind them: keep your friends close but your potential enemies closer.
Geopolitical thinker Zbigniew Brzeziński, national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, said an even bigger threat to US dominance than a rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing was if Russia, China and, heaven help, Iran formed an alliance. Biden and Trump have achieved just this and – for good measure – Trump may also have (and I emphasise may have) driven India off the fence and into the arms of the other great powers of Eurasia.
Speaking at the SCO summit, President Xi said: “Global governance has reached a new crossroads. We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism.”
Despite the propaganda, the greatest threat Russia poses to Europe is not that it marches west but that it turns its back on the western periphery and builds a brighter future to the east. If Professor Glenn Diesen is right we are witnessing the emergence of a Eurasian World Order.
Hot on the heels of the SCO summit and the parade to mark the 80th anniversary of victory in WWII, the Russia’s gas giant Gazprom announced that Russia and China had signed a memorandum for the construction of Power of Siberia 2, a 2,600-km (1,615 mile) gas pipeline that will run between the two countries. Just a few years ago much of this gas from the vast Yamal fields could have provided cheap fuel to the German and other Western economies – which today are de-industrialising and economically staggering as they suffer under the weight of expensive US LNG used to replace Nord Stream 2.
In another fit of self-harm, Trump alienated India by throwing an extra 25% tariff on India for continuing to buy Russian energy. His economic advisor Peter Navarro poured salt on the wound by saying Ukraine was now “India’s war” because it was funding the Russian war machine. Modi booked his flight to China days later.
Also within days Kaja Kallas, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs gave a masterclass in how not to conduct foreign affairs when she ignorantly dismissed Russia and China’s contributions to victory in WWII, claiming the countries overstated their roles.
British historian of Russia Professor Geoffrey Roberts would demur: “Eighty percent of all World War II combat took place on the Soviet-German front. During four years of war the Red Army destroyed 600 enemy divisions and inflicted ten million casualties on the Wehrmacht (75% of its total wartime losses), including three million dead,” he said in a recent article.
China for its part was responsible for 25% of Japanese casualties and forced Japan to commit a third of their forces to fight them, making US progress in the Pacific easier than it would have otherwise been.
These are just a couple of examples of what has become standard Western behaviour: rude, dismissive and deluded. At its core three things now define Westernism: a rejection of the international laws and norms that the Americans themselves played so vital a role in establishing after WWII, a repudiation of diplomacy in favour of unilateralism and bullying, and a determination to maintain a primacy in world affairs that it has already effectively lost.
Theorists like Professor Richard Sakwa, author of The Lost Peace, How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War, argue that the failure to integrate Russia into a consolidated peace framework after 1990 – instead imposing an increasingly harsh and chaotic settlement – planted the seeds of the conflict we are now living through. Professors John Mearsheimer, Glenn Diesen, Anatol Lieven, Jeffrey Sachs, George Beebe, Ambassadors Jack Matlock and Chas Freeman and a collegium of other distinguished thinkers provide similar analysis that is regrettably largely banned from the mainstream.
The tragedy is that dialogue of a deep and meaningful kind was spurned in favour of posturing and pushing forward with plans to turn Ukraine into a NATO bastion, including turning the great Crimean port of Sevastopol, home to the Russian fleet since the 18th century, into a NATO port. US Ambassador to Moscow in 2008, William Burns, warned that all levels of the Russian political class were resolutely opposed to this. Ukraine, Burns said in famous leaked cables, was “the brightest of red lines” for Russia and that, for the Russians, “Nyet means Nyet.”
“From knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests,” Ambassador Burns cabled back to Washington in 2008.
The state of the Ukraine war today sums up nicely the absurd state of Western elite thinking: the West realises that the war is lost on the battlefield and is therefore demanding there be an immediate ceasefire. Simultaneously it is flirting with escalation (long-range missiles, threats to Kaliningrad, etc). Normally when a war is being lost, the side that is doing better sets the terms. Yet the West is continuing to suggest harsh terms for Russia. It endlessly denigrates Russia and its leadership, continues to insist on massive reparations, says it is planning for Western/NATO troops in Ukraine and keeps the door open to NATO membership (the single biggest reason Russia says it invaded).
Depending on your perspective, that may all be fair enough, but given that Russia’s long-stated positions are resolutely opposite to all this, it borders on delusion to think the Russians will stop fighting, particularly as NATO generals and politicians have made clear they intend to quickly rearm Ukraine.
If the war drags on, as seems likely, the settlement, as long predicted by Professor Mearsheimer and others, will be settled on the battlefield in Russia’s favour, on terms far harsher than was on offer in 2022 or even today. You don’t have to like Russia or Putin to assess this as the all-but certain outcome; yet the West pushes on, sending Ukraine into an economic and demographic death spiral.
Everything above suggests to me that the West has lost the kind of intellectual and strategic firepower at the elite political level that is needed to run a global empire. Today, it is up to its eyeballs in the blood of children, women and men in Gaza whilst it hectors and lectures other countries about human rights. It preaches the nobility of a chimerical rules-based order whilst tossing around tariffs and sanctions like confetti and illegally attacking countries across the planet. Leaders like Macron, Merz, Kallas, von der Leyen and Starmer have abandoned diplomacy, so vital in dealing with your adversaries – even hated ones – and spend their time grandstanding, insulting adversaries, and endlessly hugging each other. How long this can go on for is uncertain because they are simultaneously kicking down the pillars of their own economies and democracies. Where do we think this is leading to?
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
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Eugene Doyle accuses the West of “infantilisation” in its grand strategy. This is a bold charge, particularly from a writer who then proceeds to construct an argument so simplistic, so historically selective, and so morally blind that it resembles a toddler’s finger painting of global politics: lots of mess, zero coherence.
Let us start with his central fantasy: that the West has “lost India” and that Eurasia is coalescing into a mighty new order. This is the kind of wish-casting that populates fringe think pieces, not serious analysis. India, far from being “captured” by China and Russia, continues to pursue its traditional policy of strategic autonomy.
Modi’s government has no interest in becoming Beijing’s junior partner, nor in binding itself to Moscow’s collapsing petrostate. India hedges, bargains, and manoeuvres. To interpret that as “joining” Xi and Putin is not insight: it is delusion.
Worse, it requires a wilful act of historical amnesia. India and China fought a war as recently as the 1960s and remain in a condition that could generously be described as "uneasy." Along their Himalayan border, soldiers clash with sticks, stones, and occasionally firearms. Dozens have died in these brutal skirmishes in the past few years alone.
To claim that India will embrace China as a brother in some shining new Eurasian order is to ignore the fact that, geopolitically, the two are barely capable of sharing a mountain ridge of little no strategic or economic significance without bloodshed.
Equally flimsy is the notion that autocrats and authoritarian-leaning states form stable alliances. They don’t. They form transactional arrangements, dictated by convenience and discarded when interests diverge. Russia resents its growing economic vassalage to China; China distrusts Russia’s recklessness; Iran drags both into the mire of its sectarian adventurism. This is not a bloc of equals building a new order. It is a clutch of fragile regimes clutching at each other for lack of better options.
Then comes the tired refrain: the Ukraine war is “lost.” Lost to whom, exactly? Russia has failed at every strategic objective it declared in February 2022. Kyiv stands. NATO has expanded. Russia, meanwhile, is reduced to flogging discounted oil to Beijing and Tehran while burying tens of thousands of its young men in Ukrainian fields. Ukraine’s struggle is brutal and costly, but to equate hardship with defeat is not analysis: it is wishful thinking dressed up as cynicism.
If this is a Russian “victory,” one shudders to imagine what defeat would look like.
He also attempts to peddle the tired myth that Russia was “rejected” by the West after the Cold War. This is nonsense. Russia was courted, offered partnership councils, even floated as a potential NATO member.
What it rejected was the idea of equality. Moscow’s only interest in joining Western structures was on terms that would allow it to enforce its will on its former satellites — in effect, to smuggle its empire in through the side door.
When those terms were not granted, it chose estrangement.
This was not Western arrogance. It was Russian revanchism. The tragedy is not that Russia was excluded, but that it refused to participate in a system where it could not dominate. That refusal: not NATO expansion, not Brussels bureaucrats, not Washington think tanks ; is what set Russia on its current course.
Doyle attempts to ground his case in history, reminding us (with the solemnity of a first-year undergraduate discovering Wikipedia) that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of Hitler’s defeat. Quite so. And yet the conclusion he draws, that this legacy entitles Russia in perpetuity to redraw the borders of Europe by force, is breathtaking in its absurdity.
The Red Army’s sacrifice does not sanctify Putin’s aggression. Invoking 1945 as justification for 2022 is not historical literacy. It is historical abuse.
And what of the West’s supposed hypocrisy? Doyle sneers at the “rules-based order,” as if imperfection invalidates principle. Yes, the United States and Europe are flawed. They make mistakes. They contradict themselves. But unlike Moscow and Beijing, they do not operate on the principle that might makes right. Democracies bicker, posture, and sometimes blunder. Autocracies invade, annex, and repress. If one cannot discern the difference, one has ceased to be an analyst and become an apologist.
The real infantilisation here is not of Western strategy, but of Doyle’s worldview: the wide-eyed belief that Eurasia is offering the globe a bright new dawn. What it offers instead is repression, corruption, and coercion. A bloc built on censorship, tanks, and pipelines is no alternative to a West that, for all its flaws, still leaves space for dissent, debate, and self-correction.
Eugene Doyle laments the decline of Western intellectual firepower. In this, he finally says something I agree with. Though my lament begins slightly closer to home. His essay is not the cool-headed analysis he imagines, but a cascade of uncritical citations from the usual suspects of grievance politics: Mearsheimer, Diesen, Sakwa.
In short, the West has not infantilised its grand strategy. What has been infantilised is the kind of “analysis” offered up by Tankies and self-styled leftist contrarians across the world. This genre of commentary dresses up grievance as insight, swaps moral clarity for equivocation, and confuses the romance of authoritarian “strength” with actual strategic thought.
Doyle’s worldview is emblematic: it mistakes autocracy for strength, cynicism for wisdom, and defeatism for realism. That may be many things: provocative, contrarian, even superficially clever.
But in reality, it is, at best, a performance of intellectualism for those desperate to believe the West is always the villain, and at worst, a propaganda echo bouncing obediently off the Kremlin wall.
Serious geopolitics it is not.
The tragedy is not that Russia was excluded, but that it refused to participate in a system where it could not dominate.
You're thinking of the USA are you not. They are the ones who refuse to participate in any arrangement that they cannot dominate. That's OK, it's an easy mistake to make.
One accepts that it is not really necessary, or even possible, to provide factual evidence when one is offering an interpretation of events, but you must accept that others might find your interpretations unconvincing.
Ok, let’s look at some facts then.
Interpretations are fine. But if your “interpretation” requires ignoring basic facts, it isn’t analysis. It’s apologism.
The EU and NATO are not countries. Some of the countries within the EU and NATO have been doing their fair share of invading, the US in particular, but also Britain and France.Don't try to bamboozle us with irrelevant claims about the EU and NATO not invading anybody.
All those in the West (Europe) have asked for is for Russia to respect territorial borders. If they did, how would an alliance with China and or India be a threat to anyone?
The idea that Russia needs to be appeased to see off some (even worse outcome for Europe) a Eurasian World Order is based on what?
The USA is itself withdrawing from the 1945 order.
Of that President Xi says this
He knows the real adventurism is coming from Russia. It's growing economic dependence on China is what it is.
Perhaps ..to demonstrate their even handed respect for territorial borders… Europe could treat Israel in the same way it treats Russia for its transgressions
Otherwise, for the rest of the world, Europes self professed claims of upholding democracy and human rights are looking pretty threadbare
But .. but .. just imperfections!
As awful and morally reprehensible as Israel’s actions in Gaza are, they are not the only issues facing the world. In fact, set against Russian revanchism and China’s growing assertiveness, Gaza is geopolitically small potatoes. A tawdry regional conflict in a part of the world already oversupplied with them. It may dominate headlines and hashtags, but it does not define the future of the international order.
And it certainly does not erase the need to defend Ukraine, the Baltics, Taiwan, or any other democracy threatened with extinction.
And one could ask: where is this same outrage at the ethnic cleansing of Uyghurs in Xinjiang? At the treatment of Armenians in Azerbaijan? At the civil war in Sudan (again)? At the persecution of minorities inside Russia itself?
And what, exactly, do you want Europe to do? Declare war on Israel? Airlift weapons to Hamas the way it arms Ukraine? Of course not!
And if it did, you’d be the first to call it madness. Which shows this isn’t really a demand for consistency. It’s a demand for paralysis. Because the West doesn’t act everywhere, it should act nowhere.
If Gaza is the only lens through which you can discuss geopolitical strategy, then it’s not principle driving you, it’s fashion.
Maybe "it's fashion" that's driving (some) multilateral and individual concerns about the consequences of Israel's sustained 'assertiveness' in the occupied Palestinian territories – ‘fashions’, and their followers, come and ‘go’.
A peaceful “March for Humanity”, but might, not ‘fashionable’ humanity, makes right.
"Of course not!" – this land is Israel’s land.
set against Russian revanchism
You call it "revanchism". Putin thinks of it as defense.
And? So does every tinpot warlord, dictator, and authoritarian thug from Moscow to Mogadishu.
If labels were enough to change reality, we could just rebrand Israel’s actions in Gaza as “free hugs” and then demand to know why you’re against it.
[If labels were enough to change reality, we could just rebrand Israel’s actions in Gaza as “free hugs” and then demand to know why you’re against it.]
Then when label it "revanchism". Why do you imply that Putin is not simply trying to defend Russia.
In 1962 the world was almost plunged into a nuclear war when Kruschev tried to get nuclear warheads into Cuba. Afterwards, however, it turned out to be tit-for-tat: The US had previously installed Nuclear weapons in Turkey, aimed at Russia. So why do you insist that Russia has no reason to fear NATO's move Eastward, even into Ukraine.
We live in a country without land borders, so perhaps our thinking in these sorts of situations is somewhat insular. We tend not to see that border disputes do not always have clear cut solutions, so we tend to pontificate about our own imagined "solutions".
I actually agree with you up to a point. Yes, New Zealand is isolated from immediate geopolitical threats.
But that very insulation has bred an entire class of pompous, morally smug “thinkers” who treat complex, bloody conflicts as if they were Marvel movies: good guys and bad guys, simple plots, and a satisfying ending if only everyone would follow their script.
Reality isn’t that neat, and pretending it is doesn’t make you insightful. It simply marks you as unserious.
Reality isn’t that neat, and pretending it is doesn’t make you insightful
Finally, you agree with me.
But that very insulation has bred an entire class of pompous, morally smug “thinkers” who treat complex, bloody conflicts as if they were Marvel movies: good guys and bad guys, simple plots,
Heaven forbid that anyone think that you might be one of them. What a preposterous idea.
[Don’t personalise comments that might be construed as attempted flaming and personal attacks. Stick to arguing the essence of comments and the substantive parts – Incognito]
Mod note
Every one of your claims is lies.
NATO is more united, armed, financed, and bigger, than ever. Western strategy is as strong as ever.
The "Eurasian Order" was a military parade.
The EU energy system is exceptionally strong. It has dropped its Russian gas use from 45% to about 10% this year.. The whole of Europe has an average of 46% renewable energy. Electric vehicles are 57% of the new car market in the EU. EU Plane use is decreasing under 12% and train use to 8% and rising.
"Insulting friends" hasn't been a problem for the US economy which overall is strong, dynamic and innovative. And the Indian economy is the strongest growing in the world.
Ukraine's allies are doing the right thing defending Ukraine, and have remained remarkably united. Russia has killed 1,000,000 of its own men in the war. In 1994 it had 149 million people and now has 145 million and declining fast.
Sometimes you have to fight and pay higher taxes to defend your way of live and those of your friends. You don't have to like it, but Eugene you should stop lying.
Sometimes you have to fight and pay higher taxes to defend your way of live and those of your friends. You don't have to like it,
How is the Europeans' way of life threatened?
Why don't you ask someone in Poland, or Romania?
Why don't you ask someone in Poland, or Romania?
It was a rhetorical question. The answer: the US, with its 15% tariffs, and its demand that they pay the cost of a non existent threat from Russia, for the benefit of US arms manufactureres.
Even if it means imposing austerity on their own populations.