The June 2025 and February 2026 attacks on Iran, first by Israel and then the United States of America, has confirmed the transformation of the US republic from unipolar hegemon into a neuralgic global tyrant. The Trump administration has completed the post 9/11 transformation of the US into a fiscal military state dedicated to the subordination of the Western hemisphere, Western Asia, Western Pacific, and beyond. Alarmingly, the so-called ‘West,’ under the banner ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ has directly supported the Trump administrations turn to global violence. This quote from US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, March 2026 illustrates the dangerous Hollywood movie script banality of US ambitions. “If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation and we will kill you” As the most profound source of aggression and instability in the world the US has not only exposed its state of heightened neuralgia, caused by the rise of China and the Global South, but also its inability to foster diplomatic solutions to global challenges through the global multilateral framework including the United Nations. The US withdrawal from international organisations is a calculated strategy to deflect global abhorrence inspired by its naked aggression and stated objective to regain global hegemony. After president Biden’s failed attempt to collapse the economy and government of Russia, the Trump administration embarked on a grand strategy of global energy domination via the weaponisation of direct and secondary sanctions and unconstitutional tariffs on both allies and adversaries alike and, destructive military interventions in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. These economic and military attacks compound the regional instability caused by previous US/NATO campaigns against Libya, occupation of Iraq, attempted colour revolutions in the Caucuses and, dénouement of its proxy war in Ukraine. In its campaign to disarm and suborn Iran, the US has adopted Israels tactics of pre-emptive attacks and assassinations and thereby set a historic precedent for the deceptive use of diplomatic negotiations to cover military preparation, conduct capture and assassination operations against foreign leaders and officials, and to ensure Israeli hegemony, via military superiority underwritten by the US, over the region stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, including Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and now Iran. While questions remain over the ability of Iran to withstand the US/Israeli assaults and maintain national and social stability, the Iranian strategy is to use its advanced missile and drone capabilities to disrupt regional air and sea transport and global energy supply chains by attacking US military bases, closing the Strait of Hormuz and demonstrating its ability to attack oil and gas infrastructure. By overstretching the US’ ability to provide missile interceptors to all bases and regional allies, hold naval forces beyond airstrike distance, force evacuation of US military personnel and increase the economic, political, and social costs of a potential region-wide conflict, Iran seeks to inflict maximum financial, logistical and social damage upon the US and its allies. However, the predatory tactics and strategies of Israel and the US are accelerating not only the political fragmentation of West Asia, including Türkiye, and Europe, but also US domestic politics. While the EU, especially Germany and the UK, struggle to reindustrialise after the energy shock caused by their failed NATO campaign to topple Vladimir Putin, a second Iran energy shock is likely to further diminish the political, economic and social cohesion of ‘Western’ states, including France, Japan and, most importantly, the United States itself. The Trump administration faces serious economic challenges over and above the surge in energy, and precious and critical mineral prices caused by its cynical aggression toward Iran. With an already unsustainable national debt of $38 trillion, a declining dollar and treasury values, all-time highs in equities and probable financial bubbles in AI and semiconductor production, sticky inflation, falling living standards, continuing de-industrialisation, the fallout from the Epstein files, and strained relations with nearly all its neighbours and allies, the Trump administration has chosen to double down on territorial expansion, and/or controlling influence, in an attempt to balance its national accounts with resource acquisition and global supply chain control. Looking deeper, the Trump administration’s disengagement from Europe, imposition of the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ in the western hemisphere and aggression against Iran is not only the desire to dominate global energy and finance markets, but a tyrannical fervour to leverage its new territorial and resource acquisitions, or proxy control thereof, to weaken Russia before returning to its ultimate objective of undermining the security of East and Southeast Asia to contain China. For the BRICS+ and the Global South, a sustained campaign of de-Americanisation, including limiting US social media and software generally, cultural and religious activities and expulsion of activist NGO’s are as necessary as de-dollarisation and reduced purchases of US goods and services, disposal of US treasuries, and the imposition of carefully crafted sanctions and tariffs - designed to weaken the US military’s ability to operate and sustain expeditionary violence against sovereign states. Meanwhile, the very fabric of the post-WWII global order has effectively unravelled as the Trump administration attempts to sabotage the global transition to multipolarity, which it sees as the cause of its economic and diplomatic decline, by imposing a new form of global tyranny. Donald Trump’s foreign policy of naked aggression and disregard for sovereignty and international (and domestic) law is generating a wave of “global adversity,” that inadvertently creates the very conditions and motives for further US [Western] decline and Donald Trump’s own downfall - “sic semper tyrannis – thus always to tyrants”. NB: Dr. Digby James Wren is the Chair of BRCP Geopolitical Risk Advisors (Beijing, Melbourne, Paris, Phnom Penh), Visiting Professor at ICES, France, and publisher of Small State Diplomacy Substack. Get full access to The Chair at theaseanchair.substack.com/subscribe
