The Court of Gayumars,
attributed to the master painter Sultan Muhammad (c. 1522). This
pinnacle of Persian miniature painting illustrates a vision of
governance rooted in cosmic balance, communal unity, and integration
with the natural world. By Nel Bonilla and FuturEarly
A Note to Readers: Welcome to Part II of our joint dialogue exploring the emerging architecture of the interregnum. If Part I
focused on the interiors of the imperial core—diagnosing the terminal
velocity of the "Bunker State" and its internal collapse—Part II is an
expedition into the geoeconomic battlespace. In this second half, the
roles reverse: I interview FuturEarly to dissect the external clash
between the US-led order and the Global Majority. We explore the
friction between the transatlantic "casino" and the Global Majority's
"factory," the sovereign bleed of industrialized sanctions, the
mechanics of elite capture, and the 21st-century colonial land grab.
Nel Bonilla interviews FuturEarly
Nel Bonilla: The
transatlantic economic model has become deeply entrenched in
financialization, prioritizing asset management over production. In
contrast, the Global Majority countries seem to be choosing
re-industrialization. Are we witnessing a permanent divergence of
economic models, or is the transatlantic elite actively trying to coerce
the Global Majority back into their financialized structures and
super-exploitation? How do you characterize the current friction between
these two paradigms?
FuturEarly: Thank you for the question Nel—it is both diagnostic and directional in understanding how we arrived here.
The
“casino” did not emerge overnight; it was constructed. It opened with
the wave of deregulation that shifted the centre of gravity from
production to financial engineering—when returns increasingly came not
from labour and industry, but from leverage and arbitrage. Offshoring
was not merely about efficiency; it rebalanced economic, environmental,
and social costs outward, while financial gains were internalized within
transatlantic systems. Over time, this logic became embedded—elevated
to orthodoxy—across both markets and statecraft. One telling marker of
this shift is institutional: the corridors of power came to be populated
more by lawyers than engineers, shaping how problems were defined and
solved.
Since
the end of the Cold War, the United States has simultaneously scaled a
different instrument of power—sanctions. Through a layered architecture
of legislation, executive authority, and administrative enforcement,
sanctions have evolved into a system of continuous application. While
only dozens of core laws underpin this framework, successive
administrations have issued well over a hundred executive orders,
enabling the designation of tens of thousands of individuals, firms, and
entities. Sanctions, in effect, have been industrialized into a primary
tool of geopolitical and geoeconomic influence.
In
parallel, a different model has taken shape elsewhere. Over the same
three decades, the United States has industrialized sanctions as a tool
of statecraft, while China has industrialized production. Each reflects a
distinct theory of power.
Since
the reform era under Deng Xiaoping, China’s leadership—from Jiang Zemin
(Electrical Engineer) to Hu Jintao (Hydraulic Engineer) and even Xi
Jinping, who studied chemical engineering—has been shaped by technical
training and systems thinking, reinforcing a focus on infrastructure,
manufacturing, and long-horizon planning. By contrast, the United States
over the same period has produced no engineer-presidents; leaders such
as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden have largely emerged from
legal and political backgrounds. This divergence is not merely
biographical—it is structural.
So how should we characterize the current friction?
Not simply as a divergence, but as a contest between two organizing logics of power:
one financialized, institutional, and increasingly reliant on instruments like sanctions;
the other industrial, systems-driven, and anchored in production capacity.
Whether
this becomes permanent depends less on coercion and more on
performance. The transatlantic model retains enormous financial and
institutional reach, but the Global Majority is increasingly
experimenting with—and in some cases committing to—models that
prioritize sovereignty, industrial depth, and resilience.
The friction, therefore, is not accidental—it is systemic, and likely to persist.
And
if one extends the casino metaphor: gambling is not a game or a gamut,
but a gut-wrenching condition. In that sense, the financialization that
followed deindustrialization resembles a form of structural
osteoporosis—gradual, weakening, and difficult to reverse. A pure
addiction to Wall Street and the market. No amount of faith placed in
technological leaps alone, including AI, will serve as a universal
remedy for these underlying imbalances. Recovery, if it is to occur,
must be endogenous. External pressures—including those that may arise
from strategic dependencies such as rare earth supply chains—may at
times act as moments of forced recalibration, but they cannot substitute
for internal renewal.
Nel Bonilla: The
transatlantic ruling strata are experts at co‑opting leadership through
capture or coercion. Looking at the Global Majority countries today, do
you see a real threat of internal elite fragmentation? Could the
multipolar project be slowed down or derailed from within by domestic
elites who are still ideologically, culturally, or financially tethered
to the West, or who are actively targeted to sow discord and mistrust?
FuturEarly:
I believe one of the major contributors to this pattern is the think
tanks – the very factories of “thought leadership”, where one could
argue their outputs are more “leadership that were thought” how to serve
the establishment.
Many
of these domestic elites – as you so eloquently call them – have been
byproducts of Ivy League business schools: Stanford, MIT, Harvard,
Sciences Po, LSE, LBS, or McGill. Their intellectual formative years,
and their identities, have been very much crafted, chiselled and cast in
this Western sociocultural construct.
Through
this lens, if you go back as far as Iran’s 1953 coup – orchestrated by
MI6 and the CIA – you will see the significant role that the Rashidian
brothers played in toppling the democratically elected government of Dr.
Mossadegh. One cannot but be, at best, sceptical about the negative
impact of domestic elites who have a kilt‑like set of allegiances –
allegiances that can be compromised, coerced to collude with the
interests of their collective elite class.
Think
tanks are the engine rooms for policy, posturing and punitive
pronouncement that make their way to the corridors of power. Are these
engines of statecraft fundamentally oriented towards de‑escalation and
diplomacy, or do they default to deterrence and intervention? The
question is foundational to understanding why our world is shaped by
cycles of conflict.
Any
serious assessment of policy advice must begin not with intent, but
with evidence. Before asking what should be done, we must first ask what
has been advocated, by whom, and with what recurring bias. A taxonomy
of ideas is thus a necessary act of strategic self‑awareness for all
sides of the debate.
As
such, the Global Majority finds itself in a precarious position. It has
not yet built the scale and the cohesion to muster the necessary mass –
ideologically (democracy and liberalism), culturally (Hollywood and
mainstream media), and financially (the US dollar and the TINA – “there
is no alternative” – framework) – to untangle itself from what is at
best a passive‑aggressive structure. One that I call the International Ruleless Biased Disorder, where might is right.
In one of my recent articles, titled From Advice to Armaments and Ammunition,
I highlighted the importance of assessing and examining the impact of
internal elites and think tanks on our global discourse. In it, I
proposed a new, fully Global South‑funded tool. Project Athena
– named for the goddess of wisdom, not just warfare – would build this
public utility. It would serve journalists, academics, diplomats,
peace‑builders and concerned global citizens. It would create
accountability through transparency. Most importantly, it would shift
the discourse from “What do these powerful institutions say?” to “What patterns do their recommendations actually reveal?”
Feasibility: The tools are in our hands.
The barriers are not technical, but of will and resource allocation. The methodology is clear:
· Define the spectrum – categorise output across diplomacy, deterrence, intervention and stabilisation.
· Build the corpus – aggregate six decades of policy papers, briefs and task force reports.
· Classify with precision – employ a hybrid model of keyword dictionaries and semantic framing analysis, audited for neutrality.
· Visualise the truth – create an interactive, public dashboard tracking recommendations by institution, era and conflict.
The
computational power required is significant but not prohibitive. The
primary investment lies in the initial expert human annotation needed to
train and audit the model, estimated at $200,000–$500,000. Subsequent
scaling, inference, and dashboard maintenance are comparatively low‑cost
once the methodological foundation is established. This cost profile is
consistent with comparable natural language processing and
policy‑analysis projects in academia and applied research.
For
the global community of peace‑builders, family offices and foundations
who routinely deploy capital for conflict resolution, this is not a
cost. It is a transformative investment in diagnostic clarity – a single
mid‑sized grant for a revelation that could redirect billions in
philanthropic and policy capital.
Nel Bonilla: The
US- and Israel-ruling strata consistently frame their targeting of Iran
in ideological or security terms. But looking beneath the surface, what
is the geoeconomic and geostrategy meaning of Iran? In the grand
chessboard of energy, transit, and multipolar connectivity, why is the
neutralisation of Iran so structurally central to the transatlantic
agenda?
FuturEarly: I find the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality ever more glaring. First, let us put things into context.
•
The United States military budget in the latest round is $1.15
trillion, with a supplemental request for an additional $350 billion and
an Iran war supplemental of $50 billion, leading to a whopping $1.55
trillion.
• Israel’s military budget is $47 billion, and
in the past 24 months it has also received another $21 billion from the
United States, bringing it to $67 billion.
• Iran’s military budget is $8 billion.
That is to say, the US and Israel eclipse Iran’s military budget by a factor of 202 times.
This
does not include the commitments, support and all the auxiliary
“donations in kind” already paid, “contributed by”, or to be charged to
GCC states by the United States for the umbrella that never opened.
Iran’s entire military budget is roughly equal to the value of a single aircraft carrier – the Abraham Lincoln – at an estimated $7 billion. Let that sink in. Before any of these carriers sink.
Iran
is a civilisational state. A nation that does not have its identity
tied to a UN resolution, its creation indebted to a declaration, or its
continuity affected by a decapitation. Its resilience throughout
millennia is not a byproduct of its armies or defence budgets, but the
massive socio-civilisational memory that has been at the centre of its
existence, resistance and relevance to this day. Many may be surprised
to know Iran sits at the intersection of 15 neighbouring states – making
it one of the most geographically and geopolitically encircled
countries in the world.
It
is in this light that one has to take into consideration that besides
the most recent attacks on US assets in the GCC, for the past 200 years
Iran has not attacked or invaded any other country. Considering the
combustive nature of this geography and the fact that the United States
has one of the highest numbers of its 800+ military bases all dotted
around Iran, this is quite a remarkable and unique picture of a country
that has maintained its composure.
One
could argue that Iran is the very buckle of the “Belt and Road
Initiative” for China, and the recent crises and pre‑emptive attacks by
the US and Israel have sharpened the significance of Iran not only from a
geostrategic point of view but also the geopolitical and geoeconomic
importance of Iran. This is not just related to the Strait of Hormuz and
the complications of energy corridors.
To
understand why Iran is such an irresistible target, one must look at
the ledger – not the headlines. Iran holds the world’s third‑largest
proven oil reserves (approximately 208 billion barrels) and the
second‑largest natural gas reserves (over 1,100 trillion cubic feet).
Yet, because of decades of sanctions, it has been systematically
prevented from translating that wealth into national development. For
the second‑largest gas reserves on the planet to account for less than
one per cent of global gas markets is not an accident. It is the
intended outcome of a sustained campaign of “maximum pressure” – a
campaign designed not to change Iranian behaviour, but to cripple
Iranian capacity.
This
geoeconomic strangulation extends beyond energy markets to transit
corridors. The Iran‑Pakistan “Peace Pipeline” – a project that would
bring affordable Iranian gas to energy‑starved Pakistan and onward to
China – has been vetoed or effectively blocked by the United States at
every turn. Washington understands what Beijing knows: that the pipeline
is not merely an energy project, but the terrestrial spine of a
Eurasian connectivity architecture that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz,
the Indian Ocean choke points, and ultimately, the US Navy. To
neutralise Iran is to keep that architecture broken.
So
why is Iran’s neutralisation so structurally central to the
transatlantic agenda? Because Iran is not just a country with oil and
gas. It is the geographical and civilisational keystone of a multipolar
Eurasia. It connects the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus to
the Indian Ocean. Any serious vision of a China‑led connectivity order –
whether the Belt and Road Initiative, the International North‑South
Transport Corridor, or the Asia‑Middle East energy axis – must pass
through Iran. To remove Iran from the map, or to keep it in a state of
perpetual siege, is to keep Eurasia disconnected and the Western naval
empire intact.
And
yet, for all its domestic challenges – corruption, mismanagement, the
weight of its own revolution – Iran has not collapsed. It has absorbed
the blows of the second‑longest sanctions regime in modern history,
second only to Cuba, and emerged not as a failed state but as a
technological and military power in its own right. The infatuation with
breaking up Iran and turning it into a Balkanised model is not a
conspiracy theory; it is a documented policy preference, laid out in
think‑tank papers such as the Brookings Institution’s Which Path to Persia? – papers that treat Iran not as a nation to be engaged, but as a problem to be solved, a structure to be dismantled.
It
is hard to imagine, but perhaps a nuclear Iran would not have been such
a bad idea. If Tehran had already crossed the threshold, the US and
Israel would never have attacked in the first place. The region would
have settled into a cold equilibrium of mutual deterrence – imperfect,
but predictable. Instead, by opening the Pandora’s box of pain
projection, the United States and Israel have overplayed the hand of
hubris, horror and harm. Israel is chasing a unipolar West Asia – drunk
on the fall of Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Tripoli, mimicking America
after 1991. A unipolar world was bad. A unipolar West Asia is worse.
The
greatest tragedy of the past four decades is not that Iran has been
kept poor. It is that Iran has been kept poor while its subsoil wealth –
the third‑largest oil reserves, the second‑largest gas reserves – has
been effectively placed under a foreign veto. The Peace Pipeline, vetoed
time and again, is a monument to that tragedy. And the current war is
not the cause of that tragedy. It is the consequence.
So
the geoeconomic meaning of Iran is this: it is the key that unlocks
Eurasia – or the lock that keeps it sealed. The transatlantic agenda
cannot afford to let that key turn. Hence the decades of pressure, the
successive rounds of sanctions, the pre‑emptive strikes, and now the
full‑scale war. Iran is not being punished for what it has done. It is
being punished for what it represents: a civilisational state that
refuses to accept the role of a resource colony, and a geographical
reality that, if ever connected to the rest of Eurasia, would redraw the
map of global power. That is the bullseye. And it has been there all
along.
Nel Bonilla: Iran
has cultivated immense strategic depth through its Axis of Resistance.
Yet, are the other emerging powers (including BRICS) genuinely
interested in integrating Iran as a civilisational partner, or are they
utilising its geostrategic positioning as a buffer while leaving it to
face the hegemon alone (or is it a measure of both)?
FuturEarly: This
is a very good question. When you look at BRICS + you will see a set of
actors and nations that all have very different relationships with
Iran. One could argue that China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa have
the closest set of relationships or perhaps the most coherent
relationships with Iran. Each in their own way. India has been more of a
seasonal actor. As the term “Swing Producer” among OPEC + is well
recognised, in the geopolitical sphere India has acted as a “Swing
Operator”. The merits of this posturing are questioned by many of the
geopolitical sages and also challenged domestically in Delhi and beyond.
So moving beyond the core founding members of BRICS you then have KSA,
United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Egypt and Indonesia. The relationships
with KSA have come to a defrosting after the intervention of China
bringing these two regional players together. Obviously as a result of
the latest pre‑emptive strikes and the policy of eye‑for‑an‑eye by Iran
targeting US bases and the energy infrastructure of KSA, these recent
progresses have taken a backseat. There is no shortage of chatter,
openly and discreetly, that behind the scenes Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have
been quietly lobbying in Washington for “finishing the job” in Iran.
Which brings us to the bilateral relationship with the UAE – one that
has been in itself a completely different level of engagement and nuance
between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. As if these two city states have been part
of a different balance sheet historically.
What your question captures so well is the difference between transactional solidarity and strategic integration.
Iran has invested decades in building the Axis of Resistance – a
network of non‑state actors from Lebanon to Yemen that serves as its
forward defence. But that is not the same as having great powers willing
to bleed for its survival.
China
sees Iran as a node on the Belt and Road, a gas station for its energy
needs, and a geopolitical irritant to the United States – useful, but
not indispensable. Russia views Iran as a partner in the
“caspian‑persian‑caucasus” energy and security architecture, but Moscow
has its own history of abandoning Tehran when convenient (witness the
delays on the INSTC railway, the silence during the 2026 strikes, and
the Kremlin’s careful dance with Israel). South Africa and Brazil are
solid in rhetoric but distant in capacity. Their votes in international
forums matter; their military or economic support, less so.
India’s
“swing operator” posture is perhaps the most revealing. New Delhi wants
Iranian energy, access to Chabahar port as a counterweight to Gwadar,
and influence over Afghanistan. But it also wants close ties with
Israel, the United States, and the Gulf monarchies. When push comes to
shove – as in 2026 – India tilts toward Washington, and Tel Aviv not
Tehran. That is not betrayal; it is the logic of a swing state.
The
defrosting between Riyadh and Tehran, mediated by China, was a genuine
achievement. But it was always shallow: economic and diplomatic, not
strategic or military. The moment Iranian missiles struck Saudi oil
infrastructure in retaliation for US‑Israeli strikes, the old wounds
reopened. The chatter from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi about “finishing the
job” is not just gossip; it reflects a fundamental reality. The Gulf
monarchies fear the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary ideology more than
they fear American withdrawal. They will take US protection over Iranian
partnership any day.
So,
to answer your question directly: the emerging powers are not leaving
Iran entirely alone – but they are also not coming to its rescue. Iran
is a buffer, a shield, a useful distraction for the hegemon. It is not a
civilisational partner in the sense of equal burden‑sharing. The BRICS+
framework provides diplomatic cover, trade corridors, and a narrative
of multipolarity. But when the bombs fall, the phone calls from Beijing,
Moscow, and New Delhi are expressions of concern – not commitments of
force.
Iran
understood this long ago. That is precisely why it built the Axis of
Resistance – because strategic depth cannot be imported. It must be
cultivated at home, with allies who have no choice but to stand or fall
together. The loneliness of strategic depth is not a failure of Iranian
diplomacy; it is a structural condition of a world where every power
guards its own interest first, and Iran’s interest remains, for most, a
distant second. That is why Iran has developed a homegrown,
non‑negotiable ballistic missile doctrine – on a budget of just $7.5
billion, a fraction of what the US and Israel spend annually. The
expenditure is easily eclipsed by their defence budgets, but in
effectiveness and strategic impact, the returns have been undisputable.
Iran is not dependent on any BRICS+ member for its core deterrence. It
has built that itself.
Nel Bonilla: Looking back at influential think‑tank papers like the Brookings Institution’s 2009 Which Path to Persia?, which explicitly outlined
strategies for provocation and regime change in Iran. How relevant are
these legacy blueprints today? What is the meaning of such papers in the
current geopolitical landscape?
FuturEarly: The
official narrative for the past few decades tells us it is about Iran’s
nuclear capacity. The headlines speak of missile arsenals, drone
fleets, and the proxies. But these are alibis, not causes. They are the
pretext draped over a much older, much deeper fixation.
This
is about the fact that Iran – Persia – is a civilisational state. It is
a nation with memory, with poetry, with philosophy, with a sense of
self that predates the American republic by millennia and the modern
state of Israel by thousands of years. And its unforgivable sin? It has
not yet kissed the ring.
The
very same powers that today are flag bearers of democracy and “rooting”
for a new regime in Iran are the very ones who have aborted that
trajectory in various iterations and corners of Iran’s history, in all
kinds of nefarious forms – from sending Reza Shah into exile, to the
infamous 1953 coup.
I
am glad you brought up the Brookings Institution paper. For those who
wish to truly understand how we arrived here – at a moment of open
confrontation, of strikes on sovereign territory, of children paying the
price for geopolitics – there is a document that offers sobering
clarity.
It
is a 2009 analysis paper from the Brookings Institution’s Saban Centre
for Middle East Policy, published at the height of America’s “forever
wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, while body bags were still coming home.
Its title: Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.
The
paper laid out nine distinct paths – from coercive diplomacy and covert
action to regime change through proxy militias – and openly discussed
the feasibility of an Israeli pre‑emptive strike. Its lead authors later
served in the Obama and Trump administrations, turning blueprints into
policy.
Reading
it seventeen years later in 2026 is an act of excavation. The authors’
allegiances and loyalties speak for themselves, as do the brazen options
laid out in its chapters. This was not a fringe document; it was the
product of one of Washington’s most respected foreign policy
establishments, published at a moment when the United States was bogged
down in two disastrous ground wars.
The
tragic irony is that this fixation has blinded its authors to the
actual consequences. The 2009 report was written while America was mired
in Iraq and Afghanistan – wars of choice that cost trillions and
thousands of lives, wars justified by threats that turned out to be
mirages. The body bags kept coming. And yet, even as the ground
swallowed American soldiers, the Washington policy machine was already
sketching the next target, the next “indispensable” war.
Iran
did not wait. It read the same paper. Its response – a nuclear breakout
capability, a missile arsenal that now reaches Tel Aviv, and a network
of proxies from Beirut to Sana’a – is the direct consequence of those
seventeen years of pressure. Israel, meanwhile, needed no Brookings
permission slip; it had its own red lines. But the paper gave
Washington’s blessing to an Israeli strike – a permission slip that
proved decisive.
Now,
in 2026, the children of that next war have arrived. One hundred and
sixty‑eight little innocent girls, gone on a single day. Their school,
struck not once but twice – a double tap that suggests the first
explosion was not enough. It seems neither was the first coup in 1953,
nor the regime change of 1979.
So
here we are. Seventeen years after one of the most influential
Washington think tanks published a menu of options for “handling” Iran –
options that included encouraging an Israeli strike – that strike has
come.
All
of this goes back to your earlier question and my assessment of the
predominantly nefarious role of think tanks and the elite, who use such
papers as an upstream for policy design, which then find their ways to
the legislative bodies of Congress, the Senate, and the Treasury, only
then to find their implementation through campaigns of maximum pressure,
economic statecraft (crippling sanctions), and ultimately in the
barbaric manifestation of military might in campaigns like Midnight
Hammer or Epic Fury.
Despite
the growing excitement around the Islamabad‑hosted ceasefire talks –
which are very much a Chinese‑led, supported and steered set of
negotiations – I sincerely believe that one has to be more pragmatic
about the entrenched and rather decades‑long planned, cast, and funded
covert and overt efforts that go into these macro geopolitical
strategies. In other words, maybe we are facing a pause, an encore as they say – but the cast, the producers, and the executioners of these scenarios do not give up.
This is a perpetual, decades‑long, coercive coalition of decapitation that has no mercy and is relentless in its endeavour.
The
only thing that could break this cycle is not a ceasefire in Islamabad,
but a genuine reckoning in Washington – that Iran’s sin is not its
behaviour, but its existence. Until that delusion is cured, the papers
will keep being written, and the children will keep falling.
Nel Bonilla: The
current scramble for energy, minerals, and financial control feels
distinctly Machiavellian. Are we witnessing a return to a 19th‑century
style, World War I‑esque colonial land grab from the US‑led crumbling
empire, merely dressed up in 21st‑century technological and financial
language, and orchestrated to secure hard assets before its
financialised system fractures?
FuturEarly:
I am glad you raised this. Because if you remember, just earlier this
year at the Munich Security Conference, Marco Rubio – who wears two hats
in the current administration as both Secretary of State and White
House National Security Advisor, it seems, a nostalgic historian of
empire – openly displayed his longing for the golden age of colonialism.
He said: “The great western empires had entered into
terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by
anti‑colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red
hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”
Those
are not the words of a post‑colonial realist. They are the echoes of a
worldview that never truly accepted decolonisation. And we see that same
instinct in the loud proclamation of “energy dominance” from the White
House. But here is the catch: you can chase energy resources around the
world, but if your own society is as polarised, fragmented and
disoriented as the United States – or many European nations – then
dominance rings hollow. Dominance is not just a posture; it depends on
the theatres where you wish to be a dominant player. Acceptance, in
other words, is a two‑way street.
What
the 19th‑century land grab had – and today’s scramble lacks, or rather
tries to counterfeit – is territorial permanence. The old empires seized
land, drew borders, and imposed direct administration. Today’s version
is lighter, more financialised: contracts, debt, equity stakes, supply
chain leverage. It is a land grab by other means. But the underlying
driver is the same: securing hard assets – lithium, cobalt, rare earths,
oil, gas – before the financialised system fractures under its own
weight. What we are witnessing is a form of global resource
securitisation dressed in 21st‑century technology and legal language.
And when that financialised coercion fails, the old methods return: the
snatching of sitting presidents – as in the case of Nicolás Maduro –
reminds us that the empire still knows how to stage a scene of
righteousness while committing the very theft it claims to oppose. The
glare of that hypocrisy is blinding.
But
the hunger – the salivation – for resources remains intact. The means
have changed; the malign intentions have not. Consider Congo and why the
rubber curse is now the cobalt curse. The substance changes; the
structure endures. Between 1890 and 1910, rubber transformed from a
luxury good to an industrial necessity. The Force Publique enforced
production quotas through systematic violence. Villages that failed to
meet their assigned weight of latex were subject to hostage taking and
amputation. Severed hands were collected and counted as proof of
efficiency. That was not an aberration; it was the colonial system
operating as designed. When atrocity statistics became impossible to
suppress, Leopold commissioned an international commission of inquiry.
The commission confirmed the abuses and recommended reforms. The system
continued, marginally less theatrical in its violence but undiminished
in its output.
Today,
Congo remains a site of extraordinary extraction and negligible local
benefit, its subsoil wealth converted into infrastructure elsewhere –
European roads in the 1910s, American nuclear weapons in the 1940s,
Japanese electronics in the 1980s, Chinese batteries in the 2010s, and
now the neural networks of Silicon Valley. Each generation discovers
Congo anew, expresses shock at its conditions, and devises mechanisms to
ensure the flow of ore continues uninterrupted.
The new apparatus of AI‑empowered neo‑colonialism
is distinguished by three features. First, the digitisation of colonial
archives – the Tervuren documents contain geological surveys from when
outcropping ore was visible on the surface, before a century of
artisanal mining obscured the original contours. For a mining company
equipped with machine learning algorithms, these digitised archives
become a competitive advantage of the first order. Second, the
application of artificial intelligence to mineral exploration. KoBold
Metals, a U.S.‑based mining venture backed by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough
Energy Ventures and Jeff Bezos, applies AI and data‑driven modelling to
locate potential deposits of copper, cobalt and lithium. In 2025, KoBold
obtained exploration permits in the Democratic Republic of Congo for
lithium‑rich areas around Manono. The digitised archives are the MRI of
Congo’s mineral wealth, rendering in high resolution the geological
anatomy of one of the most richly endowed territories on earth. KoBold
is not the radiologist; it is the surgical team, reading the scan for
incision points rather than diagnosis. The radiologist should be a
Congolese public institution – independent, technically equipped, and
empowered to interpret the images in the national interest and determine
who, if anyone, is permitted to operate. That institution does not
exist. Its absence is structural, not incidental.
Third,
the formalisation of American strategic interest: in April 2025, the
Biden administration finalised the U.S.–DRC Mineral Partnership
Agreement, negotiated by Amos Hochstein. It offers Congolese authorities
a counterweight to Chinese dominance – American capital, infrastructure
investment and security cooperation – in return for preferential access
to Congolese cobalt, lithium and copper. This is not partnership; it is
a new lease on an old concession.
What China does not have in Congo
is a colonial footprint. It did not carve up the continent at Berlin in
1885. It did not administer the Congo Free State, extract rubber under
Leopold’s atrocities, or preside over the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba. Its presence in Africa is recent, transactional and – crucially
– negotiated with post‑independence African governments that possess,
at least formally, the attributes of sovereignty. This does not immunise
Chinese companies from legitimate criticism – nor should it. But it
does mean that Beijing operates without the historical baggage that
encumbers Brussels, Paris, London and Washington. And in the eyes of
many post‑colonial nations, that absence of baggage is not a minor
detail; it is the difference between a partner and a former overseer.
Beneath all of this is the dollar
– the real weapon. Sanctions, SWIFT exclusion, and secondary penalties
are the silent cavalry of the new land grab. Without the dollar’s role
as the gatekeeper of global finance, the coercive power behind these
resource contracts would be vastly diminished. The empire that controls
the reserve currency controls the terms of extraction.
The
strategic takeaway for policymakers is this: the return of the great
land grab is real, but it is not a replay of the 19th century. It is a
scramble for contracts, corridors, and currency settlements, now
supercharged by artificial intelligence and digitised colonial memory.
The empire that fails to offer a partnership free from lecture and
looting – and that refuses to build genuine local institutional capacity
rather than bypass it – will find itself locked out. Not by armies, but
by the quiet choices of sovereign governments. And that is a defeat
that no aircraft carrier, and no algorithm, can reverse.
Nel Bonilla: Sanctions
are the weapon of choice for the transatlantic empire. Beyond the
immediate economic pain, what is the meaning of sanctions for the
targeted countries? How do they fundamentally cripple a nation’s ability
to exercise true sovereignty, care for its populace, and participate
meaningfully in the multipolar transition?
FuturEarly: We
see sanctions as headlines. But they are about headcounts. Headcounts
of students who cannot receive remittances from their parents to pay for
their education. They are the feedstock of brain drain from every
nation in the crosshairs of what Scott Bessent and his class call
“economic statecraft”. Sanctions are the shortages of life‑saving cancer
and oncology drugs. According to reports, Iranian patients have died
waiting for medicines that were legally exempt but blocked by bank
de‑risking – a designed chilling effect, not a bug.
Sanctions
are the impediments that prevent a vibrant auto manufacturing sector –
the largest in West Asia – from upgrading its homegrown combustion
engines supply chain, resulting in thousands of preventable road
accidents. They block the import of unleaded fuel and prevent refineries
from proper maintenance, repair and operations (MRO), leading to an
official death toll from respiratory diseases that should never have
been counted. For 47 years, sanctions have deprived a nation of 93
million people of the ability to acquire a new civilian aircraft fleet.
The result: over 1,800 people have died in aviation accidents directly
linked to fleet sanctions, according to the Civil Aviation Organization
of Iran.
This is only the shortest catalogue of the thousands of scars that sanctions carve into the body of a nation.
Primary
sanctions block direct US‑Iran trade. But secondary sanctions are the
silent noose. They cut Iran off from the global financial system, not
just American markets – forcing even humanitarian transactions into a
paralysed grey zone. The UN and EU maintain humanitarian exemptions, but
fear of US penalties drives banks to deny even food and medicine
transactions.. The result is de‑development – a deliberate strategy to
cripple a nation’s future capacity, not just its present. Sanctions are
not a scalpel; they are a sledgehammer aimed at preventing a new
generation of engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs from emerging.
Yet
what Iran has accomplished under these draconian measures is nothing
short of mind‑boggling. For a nation to stand tall – let alone advance
in aerospace, nanotechnology, and stem cell research – after nearly half
a century of stigmatisation and a global branding machine that has
skilfully inverted every title associated with a civilisational state,
is a feat that deserves sober acknowledgment. Sanctions do not collapse
the target; they harden it. They accelerate indigenous innovation, shift
trade corridors eastward, and create a generation that sees the West
not as a model but as a menace.
Only
North Korea faces a thicker sanctions wall. Yet Iran’s economy, unlike
Pyongyang’s, remains integrated enough to feel every cut – and still
innovate.
Whether
you admire the Iranian government or despise it, one fact remains
stubbornly on the record: a nation cut off from the world, with a
military budget roughly equal to the value of a single US aircraft
carrier – the USS Abraham Lincoln – has endured,
responded to, and actively challenged the two most unforgiving,
merciless, and by any standard savage militaries on the planet for sixty
days in less than one year. That is not a statement of sympathy. It is a
statement of strategic reality. And whether you like it or not, it is
nothing short of impressive.
A
nation whose musicians gather in the rubble of their studios after
Israeli strikes recording tunes of hope, whose professors return to the
demolished classrooms of Sharif University of Technology to deliver
lectures online, and whose families form human chains around power
plants and bridges after Donald Trump’s threats for eradicating a
civilization in the most expletive language – that is not merely
survival. That is something profoundly moving.
Sanctions
are not only external pressure; they are internal ammunition. They
empower the hardline establishment and weaken moderate voices who might
otherwise push for genuine opening. Reformers are discredited as unable
to deliver relief, while hardliners point to sanctions as proof that
negotiation is futile. The very moment a nation is called not a
government but a “regime”, an immediate stigma attaches. The moment it
has to justify its existence after being framed as the “largest sponsor
of terrorism” – while an open and active program to subvert it operates
at every corner – the irony takes on a darker shape.
Sanctions
are not merely about trade. They are about tormenting a population,
defining them as the “Axis of Evil” just after that same nation helped
the United States uproot the Taliban in Afghanistan. That famous speech,
crafted by David Frum, framed a proud nation.
For
senior policymakers, the lesson is this: the multipolar transition will
not wait for Washington to lift its embargo. It is already happening –
through Chinese yuan, Russian energy, and Iranian defiance and trade
corridors or strait dominance. For Iran to join the multipolar order as a
full partner, sanctions relief must be sequenced with verifiable
nuclear and regional confidence‑building measures. But no amount of
diplomacy will succeed if the underlying stigma – “regime”, “terrorist
sponsor” – remains weaponised. The multipolar transition requires not
just new trade routes but a new vocabulary.
The
real sovereign bleed is not Iran’s. It is the slow, self‑inflicted
erosion of the empire’s own credibility. Sanctions have become a habit,
not a strategy. And habits that outlive their purpose become addictions –
costly, self‑defeating, and ultimately ungovernable.
FuturEarly:
I often ask my friends: what is the most dangerous threat – napalm
bombs, nerve gas or nuclear weapons? Before they answer, I remind them
that none of the above is as dangerous as the narrative. The narrative
that justified napalm in Vietnam. The narrative that supplied nerve gas
to Saddam Hussein, paid for by Western capital, to be used against young
Iranian men. The narrative that paints a country which signed the
Non‑Proliferation Treaty as a target, to be attacked by two nuclear
powers that have acted as rogue states for a century without
consequence, still destroying, demeaning and devouring others at will.
This is not a competition for the upper hand in a war of stories.
We
stand at a crossroads. The Axis of Occupation (Israeli and United
States) – militarily, physically, geographically, financially through
the dollar, morally through the quadruple tap on civilian infrastructure
– must be called out. Not out of pity or pluralism, but out of sheer
realism. What yesterday seemed like an unassailable advantage in drones
and air dominance is now enhanced and advancing in the hands of Iran and
Russia. For Western capitals to remain delusional about the closing gap
in creativity and ingenuity is the greatest threat to the very mirage
they are trying to preserve.
The
world’s biggest emission today is not the carbon dioxide of forever
wars and wanton aggression. It is the emission of ego and greed that
propels those wars.
America
must learn to live at peace within itself before it can chase peace
beyond its borders. On its current trajectory, the greatest threat to
the United States does not reside in Tehran or Beijing. It resides in
the fractured body of a nation, separated by two mighty oceans, that has
plundered its own endowment for the intoxication of a unipolar moment.
Failing to champion a multipolar world is America’s lost opportunity of
the 20th century. One could argue that the United States needs therapy –
a national healing at home.
Consider this: 93% of its history. Eight trillion dollars.
Since
its founding in 1776, the United States has been at war for roughly 93%
of its existence – just sixteen years of peace in nearly two and a half
centuries. Since the September 11 attacks alone, the bill for America’s
forever wars has climbed past $8 trillion, an amount larger than the
annual GDP of Germany and Britain combined. The doors would shake.
The phones would melt. The quiet career of plausible deniability would finally face its overdue arraignment.
Not because the facts are hidden, but because the scale of the knowing was always the crime.
The
American administrations, congress and the senate knew the taxes would
go to wars, not bridges. They knew homelessness would rise while arms
budgets never fell. They knew the infrastructure would rust and the
economic well‑being of the masses would be treated as an externality.
They knew the few would profit, the many would pay, and the ledger would
never balance. And still they briefed. Still they approved. Still they
called it national security while the nation crumbled.
So
yes: if the American people knew what the American deep state knew –
not just the secrets, but the choice – there would be a riot. Not of
anger, but of recognition. That the only currency they could not print,
the only invoice that never got paid, was their own children.
Nel Bonilla: As FuturEarly so powerfully points out, the scale of the knowing
is the crime we must reckon with. The interregnum is a shift in trade
routes and supply chains but it is also a moral and structural
reckoning. Surviving this transition requires us to look past the
managed consensus and confront the architecture of the crumbling empire
head-on.
If
this framework holds, if the transatlantic elite is actively using
industrialized sanctions and an AI-empowered colonial land grab to
coerce the Global Majority back into a system of super-exploitation,
then we have to look at how this impacts our own societies and regions.
Do
you see the consequences of the “casino” logic and structural
osteoporosis playing out in your own economies? Have you witnessed the
“sovereign bleed” of sanctions, where economic statecraft is deployed as
a sledgehammer to enforce de-development? Have you encountered the
elite capture we discussed—the point where Western think tanks, unipolar
narratives, and transatlantic institutions converge to co-opt domestic
leadership and derail genuine multipolar independence? The crumbling
empire’s coercive machinery is built locally in every unequal resource
contract, every blocked trade corridor, and every attempt to keep
Eurasia disconnected.
Where
do you see this transmission belt of coercion breaking down? Are you
witnessing the “factory” outpace the “casino”—whether through local
re-industrialization, the building of new multipolar architectures, or
genuine sovereign resilience—taking root around you? Where do you see
resistance? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
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map the architecture of the Bunker State and the geoeconomic
battlegrounds we’ve explored in this dialogue, one must be able to
operate outside of institutional path-dependencies. As FuturEearly and I
discussed regarding the “intellectual supply chain” of Western think
tanks, the “casino” economy, and the new colonial land grab, this kind
of analysis relies entirely on the freedom to research without the
filters of the transatlantic establishment or the military-industrial
complex.
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Nel
