Judaists and 7th Day Adventists aside, this week’s sabbath came early with the fire & brimstone sermon I featured yesterday by the Reverend Chris Hedges. Read this Sunday post, then, as day two of my weekend break from viewing geostrategically the criminal threat ¹ to Iran.

I need it; we all do. Focusing on geostrategy through SWOT analyses of the key players as they position themselves on a geopolitical chessboard is essential. Without that focus we whistle in the dark but it does not come risk free. To make such analyses we have to step back from what we feel but if we step back too far or for too long we lose our humanity. I mean our capacity as individuated but irreducibly social animals to feel abhorrence as a lawless power, armed to the teeth and from bases encircling  the globe, devastates peoples thousands of miles from its own shores and borders while an equally lawless partner commits genocide on its doorstep even as it demands full spectrum dominance over its neighbours.

The geostrategic chessboard, you see, can be so fascinating we forget who we are.

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Writing at The Floutist yesterday, Patrick Lawrence opens with what I referred to just three days ago as “US Attorney General Pam Bondi playing the Karen ² at the February 11 Senate Hearing on the latest Epstein releases” …

… to pose a simple question:

Is America a failed state? 

20 JANUARY—I have not been able to get Pam Bondi out of my mind since the attorney-general’s astonishing appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week, and I do not think I will any time soon. It wasn’t just her vulgar demeanor start to finish, or her arrogance in the face of constituted authority—an arrogance masking the same crude ignorance Bondi has demonstrated on many previous occasions. ³

Nor her rehearsed insults, prepared beforehand and read from a ring binder as one legislator gave the floor to another: Jamie Raskin was “a washed-up loser lawyer,” Thomas Massie “a failed politician” suffering “Trump derangement syndrome.” If you know a previous occasion when an A–G addressed members of Congress in this fashion, while giving sworn testimony no less, please let us know via the comment thread.

No, it isn’t Bondi’s infra dig conduct under oath that remains lodged in my mind, nor her stream of adolescent abuses as legislators asked her to account for the DoJ’s patently illegal handling of the Epstein files. We must look past all that makes Bondi merely a revolting human being, and ask: how many more have high positions under Trump? We must see, in Bondi’s time before the Oversight Committee, an utter disregard for our crumbling legislature —the first branch, constitutionally, “the People’s House”.

When the nation’s highest law-enforcement official uses a teetering republic’s judiciary to subvert the constitution of that teetering republic, we see lawlessness in the name of law. Corruption in high places is nothing new in America’s political history. Pam Bondi’s use of her power as attorney-general is …

Read in full on The Floutist substack …

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For his part Simplicius takes a break from frontline detail on empire’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine – generously funded by a Europe in the 3-way grip of inflation, ‘austerity’ and leaders owned by Washington ⁴ – to ask whether what America and the non Western world understand by ‘multipolarity’ are at all the same thing.

Multipolarity a “Delusion” In Face of Trump’s New Imperialism?

February 21, 2026

I had intended to publish a difference piece on the evolution of tactics in the Ukrainian war as promised last time, but given the escalating nature of the Iranian theater, it felt more relevant to write on this topic again for now—so the Ukrainian one will be pushed back a little.

The salient jumping-off-point comes this week with a new article from Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. Its thesis, striking chords of particular pertinence to Iran, is that the grand ushering-in of the “multipolar world”, long heralded as the death of Fukuyama’s “End of History” cycle, is not what it seems. Rather, it has freed the US of previous constraints imposed by the idea that the US as sole global superpower should rule in an equitable fashion, like some placid and benevolent king lording over his subjects.

This enables a figure like Trump to strip away such inherited pretenses and move the US to a ‘free-for-all’ focus on self-interest, with no principled consideration for expectations attendant on being the world’s leader and global ‘role model’.

(In a footnote to my February 3 post, From mea culpa to Milosovic, I pined sarcastically for the “halcyon days before hypocrisy itself was abandoned in favour of ‘we are strong, you are weak; suck it up!’” )

The Foreign Affairs article states:

For the Trump administration, acknowledging multipolarity doesn’t mean accepting limits on US power. Instead, it serves as a justification for abandoning the traditional U.S. conception of global leadership and the responsibilities that go with it …

… The idea of multipolarity allows Washington to pursue a narrower, more transactional foreign policy—one focused on extracting advantage rather than underwriting order, unconcerned with the maintenance of institutions or norms that do not serve immediate American interests [whereas] …

For China, Russia, and many developing countries, by contrast, multipolarity is not merely descriptive but aspirational. It is a political project aimed at constraining American dominance, eroding Western-led institutions, and constructing alternative models of governance, development, and security in which the United States is not the only country in charge.

Thus we’re faced with a paradox where a multipolar world simply describes more of the same, but gives the US ideological edge in pursuing its interests unreservedly and with little shame or compunction. Trump is saying: “You wanted multipolar with a weak US? Fine! Now this weak US will do whatever’s necessary to keep its slice of the pie.”

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, that “slice” is generally the entire pie …

I’ve ended without my customary repeat link. For one thing Simplicius labours an important but easily grasped point before moving to geopolitical aspects I’m meant to be taking a break from. For another you have to be a paid subscriber to read the rest.

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I like that Simplicius speaks of “a figure like Trump”, rather than just “Trump”. Here’s what I said in a footnote to my February 17 post, Was Navalny frog-poisoned?

Both Trump’s admirers and  detractors overstate the novelty of the 47th POTUS. I’m not blind to America’s lurch to the right but see it as driven more by a US ruling class in varying degrees of alarm and disarray than by a man showing signs of dementia – yes, two in a row! – and assuredly not steering the ship. If we pay attention … we find, in Ukraine as in West Asia and Pacific, beneath a constant circus babble mistaken for democracy, a deep continuity of imperial policy.

Team Trump does break with an era when bipartisan hypocrisy was still useful. But in the blue corner – of a de facto  oligarchy posing as a de jure  democracy – the cant lives on. Hence my next choice, a Drop Site News piece two days ago: Trump Privately Dreams of Iran Regime Change Glory as Democrats Cynically Weigh Political Benefits of War.

Let’s for now set aside the likelihood of Israel having Epstein dirt on Trump. Let’s confine his motives – this is no either/or – to those of a man in Drop Site’s words “emboldened by what he sees as a phenomenal success in his Venezuela strategy [and wanting] to go down in history as the president who ‘changed the Iranian regime'”. A president, nonetheless, whose insecurities had caused him to “press war planners for assurances that chaos produced by any U.S. military action would calm down in time for the midterm election season to kick into high gear”.

Cue for the Drop Site authors to introduce the Democrats’ calculations:

The potential for fallout from a regime change war is at the heart of the meek response from Democrats, who see Trump walking into a trap of his own making. The Democratic political calculation was laid bare in an unusually frank conversation last June between a senior policy aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and a top official in an organization opposing Iran strikes.

In June 2025, while floating the possibility of a strike against Iran, Trump spoke positively about encouraging progress in ongoing nuclear talks, suggesting that if a deal was met those strikes would be off.

(Leave aside the fact Trump was making an ultimatum offer it would, for reasons set out many times on this site, be national suicide for Iran to accept. At issue here is not the substance of any ‘deal’, but what his political opponents could leverage from its packaging as such. ⁵ )

Schumer responded by mocking the president as TACO Trump – using an acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” a phrase describing Trump’s propensity to make major threats and then back away. For opponents of war with Iran, Schumer’s taunt was counterproductive. More than two dozen organizations sent a joint letter urging him to delete the video and give Trump the political space to reach a diplomatic solution.

But that’s not the most revealing aspect. For the Democrat aristocracy, Schumer’s sin was not that of subverting peace. Rather, it was his crude and needlessly transparent tactics:

The letter led to a call between one of its organizers and the top foreign policy aide to Schumer, who laid out the thinking of many Democrats in the Senate. The organizer who took the call agreed to share details of the conversation in exchange for anonymity. (A congressional source briefed afterward confirmed those details.) The anonymous aide said many Senate Democrats think Iran ultimately needs to be dealt with militarily. But those Democrats, the aide explained, also understood that going to war again in the Middle East would be a political catastrophe. That’s precisely why they wanted Trump to be the one to do it. The hope was that Iran would take a blow and so would Trump—a win-win for Democrats.

The aide claimed that Schumer did not share those views and opposed war with Iran. Schumer’s own rhetoric, however, including his TACO taunt, suggested the aide’s attempt to distance Schumer from the notion an Iran war would be politically advantageous for Democrats was perfunctory.

According to congressional records, the aide who offered the denials on behalf of Schumer has taken at least two trips to Israel in the past few years, paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s education arm …

Read the full and unedited piece here.

Reports in Washington of hypocrisy’s death are greatly exaggerated.

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1. A point not to lose sight of is that for a state to threaten ‘bad consequences’, on another which has neither harmed it nor broken international law, is of itself a war crime.
2. I’ve known wonderful people named Karen and note, from YouTube ‘Karen moments’ more staged than a WWE wrestling match, the term’s more recent expansion to allow in entitled men. And while I’m on the subject of lawless states and Karens, check out this Guardian account yesterday of a Briton, Karen Newton, jailed for six weeks in an ICE detention centre despite having a valid visa.
3. Extracts from the three pieces cited in this post have all been edited for brevity. I have no reason to misconstrue, but in all three a link to the original text is given at least once.
4. Five days ago, in Was Navalny frog-poisoned, I wrote:

   Europe’s political elites, captured and groomed decades ago by Washington, have been allotted the task of continuing to bog down Russia in Ukraine to free up the US to pursue its overarching goal of encircling China. As their citizens face ever greater impoverishment, selling increased arms-spend will not be easy. We can expect more vilification of Russia …

5. There’s a parallel here with Argentina’s seizure of the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982. Leader of the Labour Opposition Michael Foot – something of a Bernie Sanders figure – tried to out-hawk prime minister Thatcher as TACO. Her response was to send a beautiful armada eight thousand miles south westward. You know the rest.