NEO: The Day the World Moved On: Phil Butler: 29-06-2026: ***********

Economy The Day the World Moved On Phil Butler, June 29, 2026 While the West argues over yesterday’s world, much of the Global South is quietly building tomorrow’s. The Day the World Moved On HERAKLION, Crete — The cafe owner here doesn’t watch CNN anymore. He checks Al Jazeera for regional news, follows Chinese state media for economic developments, and laughs when he reads Western predictions about Russia’s collapse. “They’ve been predicting this for three years,” he tells me, as he hands me a cappuccino and a cheese pie. “Maybe they should accept that Russia is not collapsing and move on.” He’s not pro-Putin. He’s not anti-West. He’s just tired of being lectured about democracy by countries that freeze assets, impose unilateral sanctions, and express shock when everyone stops playing along. If Vice President J.D. Vance wonders why everyone seems unimpressed, well, this is the new reality that Washington and Brussels still refuse to acknowledge. The world didn’t end when the unipolar moment died. It just got more interesting. The Sanctions That Backfired For the architects of the postwar order, the rise of a multipolar world represents more than a geopolitical adjustment; it is a profound psychological shock As for Kremlin policy, the narrative was simple: Cripple the Russian economy, force regime change, restore the proper order of things. Three years later, the ruble has stabilized, Russian oil sells at a profit, and Moscow has pivoted east so completely that Western analysts are running out of ways to explain why their predictions keep failing. “I used to buy German cars,” says Evgeny, a TV producer who became a friend over a decade ago. “Now I buy Chinese. The German ones were better, but they’re not available anymore. And you know what? The Chinese ones are fine.” This is the story of sanctions in microcosm. They hurt, yes. But they also force adaptation. And Russia has adapted by becoming more self-sufficient, more integrated with Asia, and less dependent on Western markets that were already closing anyway. The West expected Russia to collapse. Instead, Russia diversified. Expected Moscow to beg for relief. Instead, the Russians built new trade routes, new financial systems, and new partnerships that don’t require SWIFT approval. “The genius of Western strategy,” a Russian economist tells me with a straight face, “is that it taught us we don’t need you.” The Dragon in the Room The leadership in BEIJING, while Washington debates whether China is a “strategic competitor” or an “existential threat,” made moves to quietly become the trading partner of choice for most of the developing world. The numbers tell the story: China is Africa’s largest trading partner. The Belt and Road Initiative has built ports, railways, and highways across three continents. The yuan is being used for more international transactions. Chinese universities are attracting students from the Global South. But it’s not just about economics. It’s about respect. “They don’t lecture us,” says a Kenyan businessman I know who deals with both Chinese and Western companies. The Germans, the Americans, the British — they always have conditions. Human rights this, democracy that, governance standards the other thing. The Chinese just ask, “What do you want to build?” This is the appeal of the Chinese model: No moralizing. No preconditions. Just business. Is it perfect? No. Does it come with its own problems? Absolutely. Debt traps are real. Environmental standards are often lower. Labor practices are questionable sometimes. But for countries tired of being told they must reform before they can develop, China offers an alternative: Develop first, reform later. Or don’t reform at all. Your choice. It’s your country. The Persian Paradox The maximum pressure campaign against Iran has been running for over four decades: sanctions, isolation, covert operations, threats of military action. Every tool in the Western arsenal has been deployed to change the Islamic Republic’s behavior. Result: Iran still exists. More ironic than that: Iran has become more self-sufficient, more integrated with Russia and China, and more capable of projecting power regionally despite the restrictions. “Iranian engineers have learned to build everything ourselves,” says a Tehran University professor. “When you can’t import it, you invent it. When you can’t buy it, you make it.” This is the paradox of maximum pressure. Rather than forcing capitulation, it often accelerates innovation and self-reliance. Iran has built sophisticated drone and missile capabilities, alternative financial mechanisms, and deeper partnerships with Russia and China despite decades of sanctions. Once again, the expectation in Washington was collapse. The reality was adaptation. The African Awakening Focus now on Addis Ababa. The African Union’s admission to the G20 wasn’t just a diplomatic victory; it was a recognition of reality: Africa is no longer a continent to be managed. It’s a continent to be reckoned with. With a population of 1.4 billion and growing, immense critical minerals and an able workforce, and an expanding middle class, African nations were shackled by the West. For decades, Africa was told to wait its turn. Implement structural adjustment programs. Fight corruption. Improve governance. Then, maybe, development would come. China didn’t wait. Russia didn’t wait. Now Africa isn’t waiting either. President Paul Kagame of Rwanda has been unapologetically blunt on this front, telling Western diplomats that Africa will not be coerced into adopting Europe’s geopolitical enemies as its own. “We are not going to be dictated to,” Kagame has made clear, pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of a West that demands African alignment on Ukraine while ignoring African priorities on trade, security, and development. For Kagame and a growing chorus of African heads of state, the calculus is brutally simple: the West offers lectures and conditional aid, while Beijing builds railways and Moscow provides security without asking for a lesson in democracy. The Dollar’s Slow Decline The US dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, but look at current trends. There are more countries trading in local currencies, more central banks buying gold, and more nations are diversifying away from dollar-denominated assets. Everyone questions whether it’s safe to keep wealth in an asset that can be frozen with a phone call from Washington. The weaponization of the global financial system has triggered a massive, quiet exodus. Sovereign wealth funds and central banks, particularly in the Global South, are no longer just diversifying their portfolios; they are actively de-risking from the West. They are accelerating their shift toward tangible, politically independent stores of value. Why? Because the freezing of Russian assets proved that holding US Treasuries isn’t a neutral investment; it’s a conditional one. The emerging markets are building a financial lifeboat, hedging against the ultimate risk: a phone call from the US Treasury Department that turns their national savings into digital dust. What the West Missed While Washington obsessed over great-power competition and Brussels lectured the developing world about values, Beijing quietly built ports, railways, power plants, and commercial relationships. While London imposed sanctions, Moscow cultivated new markets across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The West assumed the rest of the world would wait for permission to develop. Instead, it simply built another system. The numbers don’t lie. The BRICS+ now represents a larger share of global GDP (PPP) than the G7, China trades more with the Global South than the US does, and African nations receive more infrastructure investment from China than from Western sources. This isn’t anti-Western ideology. It’s pragmatic diversification. Western democracies claim to uphold sovereignty, and the rules-based order. But when countries exercise their freedom by choosing different partners, the West calls it “authoritarian influence.” When nations follow different rules, the West calls it “undermining the order.” When democracies make independent choices, Washington, Brussels, and London imposes sanctions. The message is clear: You’re free to choose, as long as you choose us. This is why the Global South isn’t buying what the West is selling. Not because they love authoritarianism. Not because they hate democracy. But because they remember what the West did when it had unchecked power. They remember the coups. The invasions. The sanctions that killed civilians. The promises of development that never materialized. The lectures about governance from countries whose own systems are deeply dysfunctional. The Future Rome didn’t fall in a day. It declined over generations, with each generation insisting the empire remained indispensable. America increasingly finds itself in that familiar position: still expecting the world to follow its lead, still surprised when countries politely decline. For the architects of the postwar order, the rise of a multipolar world represents more than a geopolitical adjustment; it is a profound psychological shock. Institutions once assumed to be permanent now face viable alternatives. The monopoly over finance, trade, diplomacy, and even the rules themselves is slowly eroding. Stripped of uncontested dominance, Western governments increasingly rely on sanctions, financial coercion, and geopolitical pressure to preserve an order that much of the world has already begun to outgrow. Yet every new sanction, every frozen reserve, every attempt to weaponize the existing system encourages countries to build another one. The unipolar moment did not simply fade away. It was dismantled by nations that discovered they no longer needed permission to prosper. The West can choose to compete in that new world as one influential power among many, or it can continue insisting that history stopped sometime around 1995. History, however, rarely waits for anyone. Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, and an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books

NEO: The US War on Iran Continues: Brian Berledtic: 03-07-2026: *************

 

The US War on Iran Continues

Brian Berletic, July 03, 2026

The US continues to playact diplomacy with Iran regarding the latest “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) signed, then immediately violated by the US, renegotiated, and supposedly agreed upon again — using the pause in all-out war to carefully shape the battlefield ahead of what will inevitably be another round of large-scale aggression.

In the interim, the US continues striking at Iran and its allies across the region at will.

This process takes place within the context of US policy papers for years, admitting that diplomacy in and of itself would be used against Iran to create a pretext for war rather than be used as a means of preventing it.

The US has implemented precisely this policy through multiple instances of the US deliberately betraying diplomatic processes, including the violation of the so-called “Nuclear Deal” (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) and two back-to-back US decapitation strikes carried out in the middle of US-Iranian “negotiations” between 2025 and 2026.

These most recent chapters of US duplicity follow decades of war aimed at West Asia, imposing US domination over the region and slowly encircling and isolating Iran — both through interference, terrorism, and military aggression aimed at Iran itself, as well as at Iran’s network of allies.

US policy papers have long noted Iran’s regional network of allies as key to its national security policy, even specifically describing it in terms of defensive and retaliatory capabilities.

Only time will tell if the rest of the world is prepared for the effort and energy required for this transition, or if complacency and short-sightedness prevail, allowing the US to persist in its pursuit of power and profit at the cost of not only the world abroad, but also the vast majority of Americans at home

One such paper, the RAND Corporation’s 2009 “Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East,” under a section titled “Iran Pursues a Multifaceted Regional Strategy Marked by Strengths and Limitations,” explains:

“Iran fields a weak conventional force. Iranian leaders have long trumpeted their shift to an asymmetric strategy of homeland defense that would exact intolerable costs from an invader. Much of this rests on notions of “mosaic defense,” partisan warfare, and popular mobilization of Basiji auxiliaries.”

And that:

“Iran has limited leverage over so-called proxy groups. To compensate for its conventional inferiority, Iran has long provided financial and military support to a variety of non-state Islamist groups. According to Revolutionary Guard doctrine, this “peripheral strategy” is intended to give strategic depth to Iran’s homeland defense, taking the fight deep into the enemy’s camp. In the cases of Hamas and Hezbollah, this strategy also buys Iran legitimacy among Arab publics who are frustrated with their regimes’ seemingly status quo approach. In effect, Tehran is being “more Arab than the Arabs” on issues such as Palestine.

In supporting major Shi’ite militant groups in Iraq and Lebanon, Tehran may expect a degree of reciprocity. This is particularly the case in the event of a U.S. strike, in which Iran might expect these groups to act unflinchingly as retaliatory agents.”

Thus, US policymakers are fully aware that Iranian support for organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, or the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq is defensive in nature rather than an irrational, aggressive, expansionist policy of coercion or even “terrorism” as US political theater depicts it amid the process of selling US wars of aggression against Iran to the American and wider global public.

This also means that US policymakers are keenly aware that in order to isolate and undermine Iran itself, it needs to undermine or completely eliminate this strategic depth Iran has created across the region first.

And this is precisely what has driven US policy in the region regarding Iran for at least the past 26 years, including US war, occupation, and proxy war in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq, as well as Syria.

It is also at the heart of continued aggression against Iran—mistaken by many as a “failed regime change” war, is instead the continued chipping away of Iran and its network of alliances in the region, all while advancing US policies far beyond the region.

Throughout the 21st century, the US has either attacked these Iranian allies directly or through its network of proxies in the region, including Israel and extremist groups, via Washington’s Persian Gulf and Turkish proxies. The US-backed war of aggression by Israel against Lebanon in 2006 and the renewed invasion this year bookend the war waged against Yemen with mixed results and the final toppling of Iran’s close ally, Syria, in 2024.

A look at a map of the region from 2000 to 2026 shows the US slowly enveloping and eliminating Iran’s alliance network and now waging direct war against Iran itself.

This reality is likely why Iran insisted any ceasefire between the US and Iran must also include ceasefires against Iran’s network of allies in the region — specifically Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is also likely why when the US, through Israel, continued waging a war of aggression against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran suspended elements of the MOU.

Anything less would equate to providing the US with a frozen front against Iran — allowing the US to rearm and reorganize its forces and strategies — while continuing to erode Iran’s regional asymmetric defense strategy, ultimately giving the US an additional advantage ahead of what is inevitable, larger-scale hostilities provoked by the US against Iran in the near to intermediate future.

Playacting for Peace While Managing Malicious War

At face value, the notion of the US making demands of Iran in the first place runs contrary to international law. The US — located in North America in the Northern/Western hemispheres — thousands of kilometers from Iran and West Asia (also referred to as the Middle East) — has no legitimate interests or “national security” concerns in West Asia or regarding Iran.

Boasts that the US is “energy independent” only further undermine any claim by the US that West Asia’s affairs somehow translate into legitimate US interests.

Claims that Iran has targeted and killed Americans for “47 years” omit the fact that those Americans were US military forces operating closer to Iran than the US’ own shores amid serial illegal invasions, occupations, and other unprovoked, indefensible military interventions in the region.

As with all US pretexts for launching illegal wars of aggression, the actual “evidence” Iran was responsible for these attacks is threadbare.

Similarly, claims that “Iran” was behind a supposed assassination attempt on US President Donald Trump himself are likewise baseless — predicated on claims by the supposed suspect that Iran directed him to carry out the attempt — but no actual evidence exists suggesting these claims are true.

Mirroring the US sanctioning, undermining, subversion, and eventual invasion and occupation of Iraq, likewise predicated on now admittedly and deliberately false pretexts, the US seeks to expand its unwarranted illegal occupation and control of West Asia — half a world away from America’s own shores — with little effort to mask the true purpose for doing so.

While US politicians and policymakers repeat claims of Iran “killing” Americans and pursuing “nuclear weapons,” there have been increasing public admissions that subordinating or toppling Iran directly serves the US goal of encircling and containing China as well as dismantling the multipolar world order China and its allies propose as an alternative to the current US-dominated unipolar world order.

Beyond Iran and West Asia: Energy Dominance Over Asia

Control of West Asia would allow the US to throttle energy exports to both China and the rest of Asia, placing pressure on China to scramble to replace up to half of its total energy imports and place the rest of Asia under increased energy dependence on the US itself.

Under the teetering MOU, the US has lifted its own blockade of Iranian ports and is supposedly lifting sanctions on Iranian energy exports. While it is tempting to interpret this as a “retreat” from blockading China and the rest of Asia, it should be pointed out that between 18-20% of all energy production in the Persian Gulf has been disrupted or destroyed by the US war of aggression on Iran, requiring weeks, months, and in some cases a year or more to bring back online.

This alone will continue to feed the growing energy crisis precipitated by the February 2026 US war even if all aspects of the current MOU are upheld. At any moment of Washington’s choosing, it itself or through its Israeli proxies can reignite hostilities, striking at and undo any progress made in bringing that 18-20% disrupted or destroyed energy production back online, or incur even greater region-wide disruptions or destruction.

The US — while announcing a drawdown of its own blockade on Iranian ports — continues to disrupt maritime shipping elsewhere around the globe through a blockade on Cuba and continued interdiction operations targeting Russian energy exports via European naval operations as well as maritime drone strikes on Russian ships attributed to Ukraine but admitted by the New York Times to be organized and overseen by the US intelligence community and military.

Again — at any time of Washington’s choosing — Iranian maritime shipping can be targeted and disrupted again, either at similar levels as before or at an even more aggressive level than previously this year.

The US demonstrated the ability to not only seize ships anywhere between the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Malacca in the Asia-Pacific, but also the ability to target and disable ships using anti-shipping missiles fired by US warships and missiles fired by US warplanes operating across the region, but just beyond the reach of Iran’s anti-air and anti-ship capabilities. Should the US desire to do so, it could simply expand the number of ships it targets and disables even if it lacks the ability to expand the number of ships it seizes with boarding parties.

Managing the level at which the US disrupted or destroyed energy production across the region or maritime shipping of energy out of the region was pivotal in managing market prices and the emerging economic crisis the US deliberately precipitated with its war of aggression. The US created enough disruption to force nations across Asia to sign long-term contracts for US LNG exports otherwise inexplicably built up over recent years for demand that didn’t yet exist.

Some of these projects even cited “contested waterways” as a selling point as recently as 2025, despite the Strait of Hormuz only being threatened and closed as of 2026.

But the US stopped short of creating a catastrophic collapse or crisis that would prompt nations into taking emergency measures that might enable them to protect themselves not only against the disruption of energy exports from West Asia, but also America’s attempts to exploit them.

Thus, the US is conducting a “controlled demolition” of both West Asia’s capacity to supply Asia with energy and the economies of Asia depending on this energy, causing enough damage to gradually shift dependency away from West Asia and toward the US, without triggering a unified front against the US itself and its upending of global stability.

If the US Can’t Rise to Meet the Multipolar World, It will Drag it Down to Its Level

While many analysts point out correctly the US has nowhere near enough energy production capacity to replace West Asia’s energy exports — just as it has nowhere near enough energy to meet all of Europe’s needs — reducing overall access to energy for both Europe and Asia and the subsequent deindustrialization that is following fulfills Washington’s most immediate challenge: how to maintain primacy over a world rapidly outpacing the US in terms of industry, innovation, and military power.

By throttling access to energy for Europe, Asia, and other regions of the world, the US is hoping to create artificial energy scarcity, triggering an inevitable process of economic reversal, deindustrialization, and overall geopolitical anemia worldwide.

The US is incapable of competing with just China alone head-to-head fairly and in open markets, falling behind in virtually all metrics despite aggressive tariffs, sanctions, bans, and information operations all aimed at giving the US an advantage over China. Its ability to compete and maintain dominance over the entire world — all factors being equal — is a fantasy.

Thus, more aggressive means are being pursued — means by which past empires have likewise maintained hegemony over vastly larger geographical regions and populations — through dividing and weakening others, thus avoiding the necessity of competition altogether.

As long as the rising multipolar world continues allowing the US to target and undermine nations one-by-one without creating a unified front against the disruptive, predatory geopolitics of the US, the US will continue to successfully manage the size and power of the multipolar world and eventually isolate and contain the core nations driving its nascent emergence in the first place.

The US depends on the fact that no single nation — except perhaps China — can challenge the US.

As long as the US maintains its subversion, coercion, and aggression just below the threshold of posing a global threat – focusing on individual states while carefully avoiding escalation with others — the nations of the world will fall short of the unified effort required to fully and finally neutralize the threat US pursuit of primacy poses to the world collectively.

It is possible that — just as with empires in previous centuries — the ruling interests of the world’s nations are too short-sighted and self-serving to cooperate sufficiently to displace US dominance — short of the US creating an obvious and omnipresent threat to all of these nations simultaneously.

The result is a US that will continue to enjoy dominance simply because of insufficient action by the collective world.

Only time will tell if the rest of the world is prepared for the effort and energy required for this transition, or if complacency and short-sightedness prevail, allowing the US to persist in its pursuit of power and profit at the cost of not only the world abroad, but also the vast majority of Americans at home. Iran is only one of several metrics indicating the vector sum of this overall struggle — with Iran’s ability to weather US aggression and confound US ambitions in West Asia signalling multipolarism’s expanse — or the persistence of US primacy in West Asia and its ability to disrupt the rest of the world because of it, signalling multipolarism’s current limits.

 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.