Pick a side
(there are no good ones)
A thesis is circulating. It’s 8,000 words long, which - in the world of geopolitical essays - means it must be true. The argument as far as I understood goes like this: the Iran war was never about Iran. It was a surgical strike against China. The US holds all the cards. China is collapsing. The dollar is irreplaceable. The Gulf has realigned. NATO’s refusal to help is actually leverage. Europe will comply. Everything is going according to plan.
I’ve spent the past month covering this war in real time.
I have some notes.
The centrepiece claim is that Operation Epic Fury “eliminated” Iran as a Chinese proxy. In a single 72-hour window. Overnight. Decapitated in an afternoon.
The thesis uses the past tense throughout, the way you’d describe a completed renovation.
[I am/was writing this on day thirty of the renovation.]
Iran hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan today. The world’s largest LNG export facility. “Extensive damage,” said QatarEnergy, with the understated calm of someone whose house is on fire. The IRGC then published a list of Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati energy facilities it intends to strike next. With addresses. Like a restaurant menu, except everything is flammable.
If you’ve been reading my war diary, you know the daily score. Iran’s launch capability is increasing - Israeli Channel 14 admitted that on day eight, which must have been a fun editorial meeting. The continuous strikes doctrine is active. The war costs ~$1.43 billion per day. Of which Congress has authorised exactly zero. And Trump’s own counterterror official resigned today saying the war was started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Grand strategy against China. Obviously.
The thesis then explains that China’s “silence” proves it’s overextended. No military response. No escalation. Just press conferences. Beijing offered “nothing but press conferences, emergency summits that were not convened, and military repositioning that was absent”.
Let me check my notes on what China actually did.
BeiDou satellite guidance for Iranian missiles. Chinese reconnaissance satellites feeding real-time targeting data. The Liaowang-1 intelligence vessel parked off Oman sharing every US and Israeli naval movement with Tehran. Seventy-seven ships transiting Hormuz in yuan. Diesel and gasoline exports halted. Rare earth exports banned. Yttrium - which goes into every radar the US manufactures - up 140 times in price.
Some silence.
China is doing what any competent strategist does when their opponent is punching himself in the face. Standing back. Watching. Occasionally handing him a heavier glove.
The petrodollar is being replaced at the point of sale. Allies are negotiating with the enemy independently. The radar network is destroyed and the materials to rebuild it come from the country that was supposedly cornered by the operation. Every week this war continues, it compounds the damage to the aggressor more than the target.
Why would China interrupt that? If your opponent is drowning, you don’t throw him a rope. You throw him an anchor and call it humanitarian aid.
The structural asymmetry section is where things get properly creative.
Seven domains of Chinese dependence on the US. In the other direction, we’re told, America depends on China for “exactly two things: rare earth mineral processing and low-margin legacy manufacturing”.
Two things.
Let me tell you about those two things.
Heavy rare earths - dysprosium, terbium, yttrium - China controls 99-100% of global supply. No commercial production anywhere else on earth. The GAO estimated fifteen years to rebuild those supply chains. Fifteen years is the optimistic number. The refining process involves radioactive thorium waste, toxic acid baths, and poisoning entire river systems. China did it because they could quietly sacrifice a few provinces. Try permitting that in California. Try permitting it anywhere with a functional environmental law and citizens who vote. Twenty to twenty-five years is more realistic. If it can even be done at all.
Now: 78% of Department of Defense weapons systems contain rare earth components. Navy: 91.6%. Air Force: 85.1%.
Antimony for ammunition primers? Forty-two days in the national stockpile. Congress sold off $6 billion in strategic reserves since 1992 because “global markets will always provide”. Global markets are now providing a 400% price increase.
And then there’s magnesium. Nobody talks about magnesium. Roughly 85% of global production. Essential for every aluminium alloy in existence. Cars. Planes. Construction. If China bans magnesium exports, industrial production everywhere on earth stops in weeks.
Not months. Weeks.
The thesis celebrates MP Materials and a $12 billion stockpile as evidence America is “closing the vulnerability”. The full critical mineral shortfall is $14 billion and climbing. Current investments cover roughly 3% of the problem. On a timeline measured in decades. Against weapons China can deploy before lunch.
“Exactly two things.” (checking notes) (rechecking notes) (putting notes down and staring at the ceiling)
“China’s trapped capital is a vulnerability,” the thesis continues. $2.5-2.8 trillion in US assets that the president can freeze with a signature.
I remember when they froze Russia’s $300 billion. Everyone applauded. Justified. Necessary. The villain deserved it.
What nobody wanted to discuss was what happened next. Every central bank on earth quietly opened a spreadsheet and started calculating how much of their wealth was sitting in a jurisdiction that had just demonstrated it would seize sovereign assets when politically convenient. Gold’s share of global reserves climbed to 22%. Highest since the mid-1990s. Not because central bankers developed an aesthetic appreciation for shiny metal, but because gold doesn’t have a president.
China noticed too. They’ve been reducing Treasury holdings for years. Diversifying food supply chains. Insulating, methodically, the way someone fireproofs their house when they can see the neighbour waving matches.
But my favourite part of the thesis is where it suggests the Fed could simply “buy back every Treasury China holds and barely notice”. This is presented as a strength. The ability to print money to buy back your own debt.
I believe there’s a technical term for this.
Zimbabwe used it. Weimar used it. Every currency that ever died used it. But sure. This time it’s a feature, not a bug.
The dollar section is the most intellectually interesting part of the thesis and simultaneously the most detached from observable reality.
China has no independent judiciary. True. Therefore the RMB is structurally untrustworthy. Also true. Therefore de-dollarisation is just narrative.
That last step is where the logic falls off a cliff.
The dollar’s reserve status was never just about courts. It was about trust. The sense that the rules would stay roughly the same regardless of who lived in the White House. Then Venezuela’s gold got seized in London. Then Russia’s billions got frozen. Then tariffs on allies. Then threats to annex Greenland. Then IEEPA weaponised against trading partners. Then the US National Security Strategy literally called Brussels a threat to European civilisation.
Each one justified, I’m sure. In aggregate, a trust demolition project that would make a controlled demolition expert weep with admiration.
The RMB doesn’t need to replace the dollar. It never needed to replace the dollar. It just needs to exist as an option at specific pressure points. Like the Strait of Hormuz. Seventy-seven ships. In yuan. That’s not 3% of global reserves. That’s a proof of concept.
Central banks aren’t moving to the yuan. They’re moving to things that can’t be frozen by anyone. Gold. Physical commodities. Bilateral settlement in local currencies. The world isn’t replacing the dollar with a better dollar. It’s building plumbing that routes around the dollar entirely. Because the dollar has become a weapon its custodian fires at everyone within range, allies included.
“The Gulf has realigned firmly to the United States.”
I had to put my coffee down for this one.
Today. The day this thesis was published. Iranian missiles hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan. The world’s largest LNG export terminal. A country that hosts the US 5th Fleet. QatarEnergy: “extensive damage”. The IRGC then published a menu of Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati energy facilities it intends to hit next. Saudi Aramco evacuated the Samref refinery.
“Firmly under the American security umbrella.”
Half the THAAD batteries in the Middle East are confirmed destroyed. The radar network is permanent scrap. The Qatar radar alone takes five to eight years to rebuild. And the materials don’t exist, because the country that was supposedly cornered by this operation banned exporting them.
CENTCOM evacuated its own headquarters to a hotel in Qatar. A hotel. The command centre of Operation Epic Fury is operating out of what I can only assume is a Marriott with a really aggressive minibar policy.
The security umbrella has no interceptors. No radar. And the countries underneath it are getting hit because they’re underneath it. This isn’t an umbrella. It’s a lightning rod being marketed as weather protection.
Richard Werner - the economist who coined the term “quantitative easing”, so not exactly a fringe voice - put it plainly: “The military protection turned out to be an empty promise. The petrodollar is dying.”
NATO. The thesis argues that Trump asked allies to send warships knowing they’d refuse, and the refusal becomes “documented leverage” for renegotiating the transatlantic bargain.
I’m going to type that again because I need to make sure I’m reading it correctly. The thesis claims that being told no by every ally simultaneously is a strategic win.
Germany: “This has nothing to do with NATO. This is not our war.” UK: no. France: no. Italy: no. Spain: no. Greece: no. Australia: no. Japan: no. Everyone: no.
And then, having said no, France and Italy opened direct negotiations with Iran for safe passage through Hormuz. Spain refused US basing rights and got free transit through the Strait as a reward. The lesson being: saying no to America currently has better terms than saying yes.
That’s not allies waiting to be brought into line. That’s allies finding the exits. You can’t renegotiate a bargain with people who’ve already left the building. And you definitely can’t threaten to withdraw protection from people you desperately need while spending billions a day in a war you can’t finish alone.
But sure. Leverage.
Europe “has no choice but to align with the US,” we’re told.
Europe’s leaders are, by and large, not impressive. I’ve been writing about this for a while. Brussels has spent years alienating everyone within regulatory distance. The political courage to make bold moves doesn’t exist among leaders polling at approval ratings you’d usually associate with airline food.
But even airline food has limits.
The US blew up Nord Stream. Imposed tariffs on allies. Called Brussels a civilisational threat in an official strategy document. Started a war that doubled European energy bills for the second time in four years. Asked Europe to send warships to clean up the mess. Europe said no. And instead of accepting that, threatened to withdraw the security guarantee.
Europe could win this game of chicken tomorrow. Stop buying US Treasuries. Not sell. Just stop buying. Buy gold instead. Buy silver. Buy literally anything that isn’t a dollar-denominated asset controlled by a government that just threatened you with economic sanctions for not sending warships to their elective war.
They won’t do it. Their banks are short silver. Their economies are dollarised. Their leaders couldn’t find courage with a map and a torch.
But the option exists. And every time Washington pushes harder, someone in Brussels gets one step closer to doing the arithmetic.
Meanwhile, €700 billion in annual trade with China is not a footnote. The thesis acknowledges this number and then waves it away like an inconvenient waiter. You can’t wave away €700 billion. €700 billion waves away you.
“China’s internal crisis makes it structurally weak.” The property collapse. The bad loans. The trillion-dollar drain.
Sure. China has a property problem. I’m not here to write a puff piece for Beijing. They built too many apartments for people who don’t exist yet - if they ever will - and now the bill is arriving. That’s real.
But the thesis presents this as though America’s financial system is a picture of health. Allow me to run the other side of the ledger.
BlackRock’s $26 billion private credit fund limiting withdrawals. Blue Owl permanently gating redemptions. $9.2 trillion in Treasuries maturing. Interest payments cresting $1 trillion per year. The Fed injecting $74.6 billion in emergency liquidity on New Year’s Eve because “ample reserves” apparently means “please God let this hold until January”. One in five Russell 3000 companies unable to service their debt. $846 trillion in OTC derivatives priced on a world that stays roughly stable.
The Strait of Hormuz was not in the model.
I wrote about this convergence in my previous article “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once”. Five times the oil disruption of 1980, landing on four times the debt load, with a demographic reversal underway. The boomers who inflated every asset class for forty years through sheer numerical gravity are somewhere around the point where they flip from net buyers to net sellers. That’s not a trading event. That’s a civilisational tide change.
China’s mess is real. America’s mess is real. The difference is China manufactures things. When the financial architecture cracks - and it will, on both sides - the country that makes things has options the country that prints things does not.
Neither empire is healthy. The question isn’t who wins. It’s who collapses last. Two patients in the same ICU arguing about who looks healthier. The nurse is worried about both.
The “danger window 2027-2030” assumes one side is strong and the other is weakening. The US just needs to hold on. Close the vulnerabilities. Bring Europe into line. Build the deterrence architecture.
But both sides are weakening.
China’s demographics are dire. America’s finances are dire.
China can’t generate enough young workers. America can’t generate enough Treasury buyers.
Different diseases, same prognosis.
There is no danger window. There are two declining powers, each with structural problems the other can’t solve and neither can fix. The race isn’t to close vulnerabilities. The race is to see who can stay standing longest while the floor tilts.
The thesis concludes that “chaos benefits the stronger player”.
This is the most dangerous sentence in the entire piece. Not because it’s wrong - it might be right in some theoretical game-theory framework - but because someone in a position of authority might read it and nod.
Chaos doesn’t benefit anyone predictably. Chaos is chaos. It’s non-linear, uncontrollable, and historically unkind to the arsonist.
The US started this war on the same day a deal was within reach. The Omani Foreign Minister had briefed Vance the day before. Iran had agreed to downgrade enriched uranium and accept full verification. Someone didn’t want a deal.
Nineteen days later, Ras Laffan is burning. Oil past $111. Brent up over 40% since the war began. The coalition is splintering. The dollar’s role at the world’s most important chokepoint has been replaced by the currency of the country this operation was supposedly designed to corner. The stated casus belli was nuclear weapons. Putin offered to take the uranium. It was declined.
This is not a surgical strategic operation. This is a man who lit a match in a room full of gasoline and is now explaining that the fire was always part of the plan.
The thesis says “pick a side, there is no middle”.
I’d say look harder at the sides on offer.
And maybe check the exits.
I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement "chaos benefits the stronger player." I suppose this idea could be asserted with the thought that the stronger player has more options at hand for dealing with the unexpected.
But I remembered something from my chess-playing days, which was that when a player finds himself in a game where all the forcing moves can be clearly calculated to lead to an eventual advantage for his opponent, it is to his benefit to "complicate" the position--playing a move where the eventual outcomes cannot be clearly seen. In other words, introducing chaos. It may still not be good for him, but it creates more opportunities for his opponent to go wrong. Of course, HE could go wrong, too, but he's already in a disadvantageous position, and so has less to lose.
When Mel Brooks was looking for work he helped write one of my favorite TV shows as a kid - Get Smart. No1’s hilarious piece reminds me of “Control vs Chaos” I do think Our leaders have hid so long under the “Dome of Silence” they can no longer listen to common sense