I have not written an in-depth analysis of the war in Ukraine for two years. It is now time to summarize my previous 43 articles in the series.

• Right up until the day before the war began, every Chinese political commentator said that Putin was merely playing an elaborate strategic game and would not actually invade. Two months before the war, in my December 19, 2021 article, “History Has Pushed Putin Onto the Path Once Taken by Hitler,” I said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was highly probable. That prediction came true.
  
• Twenty-four days before the war, on January 31, 2022, I wrote in “Putin: A Desperado Strapped with Explosives, Storming a Bank to Demand Money”: “Most Chinese political commentators, whether pro- or anti-Communist, worship Putin. In my view, Putin belongs in the same category as Hitler and Hideki Tojo. He is one of the most incompetent strategists in history.” That prediction came true.
  
• Three days before the war, on February 21, 2022, I wrote in “Damned Either Way: The Chinese Communist Party’s Ukrainian Nightmare” that Putin had decided to launch a full-scale invasion. I based this conclusion on the disappearance from public view of all seven members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee following Putin’s attendance at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. That prediction came true.
  
• Just over a month after the war began, I predicted in “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (9): The Future of the Tank,” published on April 1, 2022, that even the world’s most advanced tank, the US military’s M1A2, would be vulnerable to destruction once removed from the American system of combined-arms warfare. The tanks were subsequently destroyed repeatedly in Ukraine and demonstrated no particular advantage. That prediction came true.
  
• After Ukraine launched its so-called “great counteroffensive,” I repeatedly argued in several articles that the Ukrainian military lacked the courage to mount a large-scale offensive. War is like rowing against the current: if you do not advance, you retreat. Russia would exploit Ukraine’s inaction to prepare for another major offensive. Over the following year or two, Ukraine did indeed lose the initiative on the battlefield. Russian forces kept it under pressure and continued taking territory. That prediction came true.
  
• In “An Overview of the War in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait,” published on August 26, 2024, I predicted that regardless of how incompetent the Ukrainian military might be, Russia was incapable of stopping Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil-refining facilities. Because oil and gas exports were Russia’s only source of income capable of sustaining the war, “the outcome of the war in Ukraine has already been decided. There is no longer any uncertainty.” That prediction is now coming true.
  
• Two years ago, in August 2024, I wrote my most recent article in the series, “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (43): Invading Kursk Is Not the Ultimate Objective.” At the time, political commentators everywhere were celebrating what they described as Ukraine’s masterful strategy: a feint in Kherson while its real objective was Kursk. I said Kursk was not Ukraine’s true objective and that the operation was not a good idea. Ukraine eventually lost Kursk completely after paying a terrible price. That prediction came true.

Ukraine’s Breakthrough in Its Conception of Warfare Is Winning It the Initiative

Today, the Ukrainian army is not noticeably different from what it was two years ago. It still lacks the courage and perseverance demonstrated by American troops on the beaches of Normandy and Okinawa—charging repeatedly through concentrated enemy fire and stepping over the overlapping bodies of their comrades. I examined this issue in depth in “In-Depth Analysis of the War in Ukraine (41): How Do You Build a Valiant Army?.”

Over the past two years, however, Ukraine has broken through a limit of imagination that no one else in the world—not even the US military—has overcome. By doing so, it has regained the initiative in the war.

Since the beginning of the Second World War, the US military has led the world in military technology. After the war ended, the technological gap between the United States and every other country grew increasingly wide. In the final major war before the invasion of Ukraine—the 1991 Gulf War—the United States used stealth aircraft, precision-guided weapons, satellite reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and an integrated air-ground combat system to deliver an overwhelming blow against Saddam Hussein’s battle-hardened Republican Guard, part of a total Iraqi force numbering nearly one million. The Iraqi military was completely defeated within a few short weeks. The United States suffered 148 combat deaths, while as many as 35,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed.

From then on, the world’s military strategists—including America’s—could not imagine, even after snorting cocaine, any way of strengthening a military other than continually improving its level of military technology.

This was the limit of imagination that the entire world had failed to overcome during the 70 years since the war.

Ukraine’s military technology is far inferior to Russia’s. Its national strength, industrial scale, and population are also far smaller.

Yet the Ukrainians were the first people in the world to break through this limit of imagination that nobody had overcome since the Second World War. They recognized that there is an extreme asymmetry between the difficulty of striking targets on the ground from the air and the difficulty of defending against those attacks from the ground—the former is a hundred times easier, while the latter is a hundred times harder. They realized that this extreme asymmetry could be used to win the war.

A country with third-rate military technology such as Ukraine cannot manufacture the US military’s hypersonic, ultra-precise ground-attack missiles. It cannot produce ballistic missiles comparable to the American technology of the 1960s, as China and Russia can. Nor can it produce Russia’s S-300 and S-400 air-defense missiles, whose boastful reputation reaches the sky but whose actual capabilities are comparable to American technology from the 1970s.

Nevertheless, Russia cannot easily shoot down the suicide drones that Ukraine manufactures on an enormous scale. These drones cost only a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars each. They cannot fly high or fast, make a great deal of noise, have large heat signatures and radar returns, and are powered by lawnmower engines. Yet Russia’s S-300, S-400, Buk, Tor, and Sosna air-defense missiles—each costing millions of dollars—cannot easily destroy them.

Even if those missiles were capable of shooting down every Ukrainian drone, spending millions of dollars to destroy a drone worth only tens of thousands would still represent a complete victory for Ukraine in terms of cost. Russia cannot manufacture enough of these expensive missiles, while Ukraine can produce drones in virtually unlimited numbers.

It is not merely Russia. Even the US military cannot guarantee that it can shoot down such extremely primitive suicide drones. During the first round of the US-Iran war, most US military bases in the Middle East were destroyed by Iran’s rudimentary suicide drones and ballistic missiles. The equipment destroyed included four or five THAAD missile-radar systems, each costing billions of dollars and requiring four years to manufacture. The US military rapidly exhausted its supply of air-defense and cruise missiles costing millions or tens of millions of dollars each.

Iran depleted America’s stockpile of exorbitantly expensive munitions by absorbing its attacks. It then used bargain-basement drones to strike US forces effectively, seizing complete control of the initiative and trapping the United States in a dead end from which it could not escape. For details, see “The US-Iran War: A Complete American Defeat (II).”

Russia and the United States are now paying a terrible price for their failure to overcome this 70-year limit of imagination.

Ukraine has now created an extremely efficient, comprehensive system for drone research, development, and production, with hundreds or even thousands of independent drone developers and manufacturers. Only six or seven days pass between frontline soldiers identifying a change in battlefield conditions and requesting a new drone capability, and a drone meeting that requirement entering combat. In the United States, this cycle takes months or even years. Meanwhile, Russian corruption has made progress in drone technology painfully slow. A proxy company controlled by politically connected insiders monopolizes drone development, leaving frontline soldiers with unreliable, difficult-to-use drones that frequently malfunction.

By now, Ukrainian drones have destroyed more than 40 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity, and long lines are forming at petrol stations across the country. Selling oil and gas has been virtually Russia’s only source of income since the war began, yet Russia is now seeking to import petrol from India.

Ukrainian drones have cut the roads used to carry fuel and supplies into Crimea. They are methodically destroying the peninsula’s oil-storage and refining facilities and its power plants, rapidly turning Crimea into an isolated island on which survival is impossible.

After achieving significant results in those operations, Ukraine began systematically destroying the enormous logistics and distribution centers belonging to Wildberries. This highly successful and efficient Russian equivalent of Amazon is part of the Russian economy’s circulatory system and provides effective logistical support for Putin’s war. Russia’s deficit in the first quarter of 2026 alone was twice its total deficit for all of 2025.

The Ukrainian army, however, continues to defend fortified positions, while Russia continues feeding batch after batch of fresh troops into the Ukrainian meat grinder. Russia suffers more than 1,300 casualties every day, including more than 1,000 deaths. According to reliable intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency, a Russian soldier sent to the front survives for an average of 23 minutes. By comparison, the average survival time of an American soldier in the European theater during the Second World War was between 420 and 600 days (ChatGPT)!

Seven hundred thousand Russian soldiers have been killed since the war began. If the war continues for another four years, Russian military deaths will exceed 2.7 million!

Russian frontline officers devote all their energy to extracting their soldiers’ generous allowances and deceiving their superiors. NATO’s intelligence apparatus has discovered that the Russian high command frequently bases its strategic planning on the assumption that Russia has captured areas that, in reality, remain under Ukrainian control.

This happens because Russian company- and battalion-level commanders frequently order soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian-controlled territory, raise a Russian flag on a prominent building, record a video, and then withdraw. The commanders use these videos to claim credit and obtain rewards from their superiors, while the soldiers involved are frequently wiped out.

In this way, every level of the Russian military exploits those below it and deceives those above it. By the time the information reaches Putin, hiding in a bunker protected by layer after layer of defenses, he hears that everything on the front is proceeding according to plan and that victory is just over the horizon.

From the Perspective of Ukraine and NATO, This Situation Could Hardly Be More Perfect

If Putin knew the war’s true condition, he would probably abandon his completely unrealistic demand that Ukraine withdraw from vast areas of territory and agree to a ceasefire along the current front line.

Under pressure from Comrade Vladimir Trump, the FSB’s undercover agent, Ukraine would be forced to accept the ceasefire. Putin could then employ his formidable diplomatic skills and, with Comrade Trump’s cooperation, drag negotiations out for several years while securing a partial lifting of Western sanctions.

After several years, Russia would have restored its national strength and—with China’s cooperation—rebuilt a more advanced military. Putin would then return and attack again. This outcome would be virtually certain.

But today, the deception passed upward through every level of the Russian military has convinced Putin that he is winning. He therefore intends to continue the war.

And what will be the result?

In an article published on July 17, 2024, I wrote:

The inevitable result of this war is that Russia will exhaust itself, be reduced to a third-rate country, and withdraw from the stage of international politics. Only when the Russian people reach the following condition will they, like the Japanese people during the Second World War, realize that they have run headfirst into a brick wall:

Nine homes in ten stand empty; nine households in ten are bereaved.
Nine factories in ten are shuttered; nine shops in ten are stripped bare.
Nine armies in ten are routed; nine ships in ten are laid up.
Nine villages in ten are overgrown; nine cities in ten are desolate.

Unless its suffering reaches this level, the barbaric animal species known as Russia will never accept NATO’s position.

Judging by the current trend—a trend that can only continue to accelerate—the outcome described above is highly probable.

The current state of the war in Ukraine is precisely the state that every good person in the world wants to see.

The Next Stage of the War

The Ukrainian army will not remain indefinitely in its fortified defensive positions.

As Russia’s oil and gas resources are gradually exhausted and its economy continues to deteriorate; as its supply of military recruits steadily dries up; and as the flow of weapons, ammunition, and supplies to the front continues to decline, Russian morale will sink and its combat effectiveness will steadily weaken.

With NATO’s support, Ukraine’s intelligence system has a complete understanding of this process. Once a certain tipping point is reached, even Ukraine’s less-than-valiant army will be capable of launching an overwhelming offensive against Russia’s feeble forces.

The resulting transformation of the battlefield will remind us of the final year of the Chinese Civil War, when the attacking troops could run until their legs gave out and still fail to catch an enemy army that was disintegrating before them.

We are now in the quiet period before the great transformation.

我以往的烏戰預言

我二年沒有寫烏戰深度解析了。現在總結一下我以往的43篇烏戰深度解析：

• 一直到開戰前一天，所有華人政評人都說普京是在下大棋，不會真的入侵。在開戰前二個月，在2021年12月19日的《歷史將普京推上了希特勒曾走的那條路》一文裡我説，普京入侵烏克蘭是一個大概率事件。” 應驗。
  
• 在開戰前24天，2022年1月31日，在《普京：身綁炸藥衝進錢莊要錢的光棍》中我說：“華人政評人，不論親共反共，大多對普京頂禮膜拜。在我看來，普京和希特勒、東條英機一樣。是史上最蹩腳的戰略家。” 應驗。
  
• 在開戰前3天，2022年2月21日，在《橫竪都要倒霉：中共的烏克蘭噩夢》一文中，我根據普京出席北京東奧開幕式后中國七常委神隱判斷普京決定大規模入侵。應驗。
  
• 烏戰開戰後僅一個多月，我在2022年4月1日的《烏克蘭戰況深度解析（9）：坦克的未來》中預言，世界上最先進的美軍M1A2坦克離開了美軍的多兵種協作體系，照樣難逃被摧毀的命運。結果它在烏克蘭一再被擊毀，沒有表現出任何優勢。應驗。
  
• 在烏克蘭發動所謂“大反攻”後，我在我的多篇烏戰深度解析中一再指出，烏軍沒有發動大規模進攻的勇氣，戰爭如逆水行舟，不進則退，俄軍會利用烏軍的無所作為而為下一場大規模進攻做準備。結果，在後面的一二年裏，烏軍果然喪失了戰場主動權，被俄軍壓着打，不斷失地。應驗。
  
• 在2024年8月26日的《縱覽烏戰、中東、臺海》我預言：不論烏軍怎麼無能，因為俄軍無法阻止烏軍無人機對俄國煉油設施的打擊，而俄國油氣出口是維持其戰爭能力的唯一收入，“烏戰的結局也已決定。已經沒有任何懸念可言。” 正在應驗。
  
• 在二年前，2024年8月，我寫了最後一篇烏戰深度解析，《烏戰深度解析（43）：入侵庫爾斯克不是最終目的》。當時所有政評人都在歡呼烏軍用兵如神，在赫爾松佯攻，真正目標是庫爾斯克，我說這不是烏軍的目標，而且這不是好主意，結果烏軍在付出慘重代價後徹底失去庫爾斯克。應驗。

烏克蘭人在戰爭理念上的突破正在贏得戰爭的主動權

現在，烏克蘭陸軍和二年前沒有什麼明顯的改變。它仍然沒有美軍在諾曼底、沖繩的海灘上那種冒着敵人密集的火力，邁過戰友重疊的屍體，前仆後繼地衝鋒的勇氣和毅力。這一點我在《烏戰深度解析（41）：怎樣建立一隻驍勇的軍隊？》裏深入分析了。

但這二年來，烏克蘭突破了全世界包括美軍都沒有突破的一個想象力的侷限性，憑此重新贏得了烏戰的主動權。

自二戰開始，美軍就在軍事技術上領先全球，二戰結束後，美軍技術與其他所有國家之間的差距越來越大。在烏戰爆發前的最後一場大規模戰爭——1991年海湾战争中，美军凭借隐身战机、精确制导武器、卫星侦察、电子战和空地一体化作战体系，对萨达姆政权总兵力接近百万的久經戰陣的共和国卫队实施了压倒性打击，伊军在短短数周内被彻底击溃。美军148人战斗阵亡，而伊军阵亡高達3.5万人。

從此，全世界的軍事戰略家們，包括美國的，吸了白粉後也想像不出，要提升軍力，除了不斷提高軍事技術水平之外，還有任何其他的途徑。

這，就是全世界在戰後70年無法突破的想象力侷限。

烏克蘭的軍事科技水平遠遠低於俄國，國力、工業規模、人口也遠遠低於俄國。

但烏克蘭人在全世界最先突破了這個二戰以來無人突破的想象力侷限。他們意識到，空對地打擊的難度和地對空防守的難度之間有極度的不對稱性——前者比後者容易百倍，後者比前者難百倍。他們意識到，可以利用這個極度不對稱性贏得戰爭。

烏克蘭這樣的三流軍事科技造不出美軍的超高音速、超高精度的對地打擊導彈，造不出中俄的相當於美軍60年代水平的彈道導彈，也造不出俄軍的牛皮比天高但實際上相當於美軍70年代水平的S300、S400防空導彈。

然而，烏軍超大規模生產的、幾千、幾萬美元一架的、飛不高、飛不快、噪音大、熱特徵大、雷達回波大、割草機引擎驅動的自殺無人機，俄軍的幾百萬美元一枚的S300、S400、山毛櫸、道爾、松樹防空導彈卻無法輕易擊落。而且，即使這些導彈有能力百分百地擊落烏軍的無人機，這種用幾百萬美元擊落幾萬美元的價格交換比，也是烏軍的完全勝利。俄羅斯造不起這麼多昂貴的導彈，而烏軍的無人機要多少有多少。

不要說俄軍，就連美軍都無法保證擊落這種再落後不過的自殺無人機。在第一回合的美伊戰爭中，美軍在中東的大部分軍事基地都被伊朗的再落後不過的自殺無人機和彈道導彈摧毀，包括四五套幾十億美元一套、需要四年才能生產出來的薩德導彈雷達系統。美軍的幾百萬、幾千萬美元一枚的防空和巡航導彈迅速消耗殆盡。伊朗靠挨打耗盡了美國的天價彈藥庫存，然後用白菜價的無人機對美軍進行有效的打擊，完全掌握了戰爭的主動權，美國陷入了無法脫身的死局。詳情見《美伊戰爭：美國完敗（II）》。

俄國、美軍正在爲這個戰後70年裏無法突破的想象力侷限付出慘重代價。

現在，烏克蘭已經形成了一整套無人機研發生產的極其高效的體系，有成百上千的獨立的無人機研發和製造企業。從前線士兵發現戰場形勢變化，提出對無人機的新要求，到滿足新要求的無人機參戰，中間只間隔六七天。在美國，這個週期是幾個月甚至幾年，而俄國的腐敗使得俄軍在無人機技術上步履維艱，一個權貴的白手套公司壟斷了無人機的研發，前線士兵獲得的無人機不好用，故障率高。

到現在，烏軍的無人機已經摧毀了40%以上的俄國煉油能力，俄國各地加油站紛紛排起長隊。賣油氣是開戰以來俄國幾乎唯一的收入來源，但現在俄國已經要求向印度進口汽油。烏軍的無人機切斷了向克里米亞輸入燃料和給養的公路，正在一個個摧毀克里米亞的石油儲存、冶煉設施、發電廠，使克里米亞半島迅速變成一個無法生存的孤島。在上述行動取得顯著成果後，烏軍開始一個個摧毀俄國的野莓公司（Wild Berry）的巨大的物流配送中心。這個非常成功高效的俄國亞馬遜是俄國經濟的供血系統，是普京戰爭的高效的後勤保障系統。2026年第一季度俄國的赤字就是2025年全年赤字的的二倍。

但烏克蘭的陸軍仍然在據險防守，而俄軍仍然不斷向烏克蘭絞肉機裏投入一批批生力軍，每天傷亡1300人以上，其中1000以上人陣亡。根據中央情報局的可靠情報，一個俄軍士兵投入前線後的平均生存時間是23分鐘，而二戰期間美軍士兵在歐洲戰場上的平均生存時間在420天到600天之間（ChatGPT）！

開戰以來，70萬俄軍陣亡。再打四年，俄軍陣亡人數將超過270萬！

俄軍前線軍官的全部精力都用來榨乾基層士兵的高額津貼和欺騙上級。北約情報結構發現，俄軍統帥部的戰略佈局經常建立在俄軍已經佔領了某些實際上仍由烏軍控制的地區的假設上，因爲俄軍連級、營級指揮官經常會讓士兵潛入烏軍控制區，在地標性建築上升起俄國旗，拍個視頻，然後就撤退，以此向上級邀功請賞，而這些士兵經常全軍覆沒。

就這樣，俄軍一級級地向下壓榨，向上欺騙，到了躲在層層防守的地堡裏的普京耳朵裏，就是前線戰況一切按計劃進行，勝利的曙光就在前頭。

這個狀態，在烏克蘭和北約眼裏，實在完美無比

如果普京知道戰爭的實際狀態，那麼他很可能放棄要求烏軍撤出大片領土的完全不切實際的要求，同意在現有戰線上實現停火。在FSB臥底弗拉基米爾·川普同志的施壓之下，烏克蘭將被迫同意停火。然後，普京就可以施展其高超的外交手腕，在川普同志的配合下，將談判拖上好幾年，同時讓西方部分解除制裁。幾年後，俄國恢復了國力，在中國的配合下重建更加先進的軍力，然後普京會捲土重來。這個結局將是板上釘釘的事。

但現在，俄軍的一級級向上欺騙使得普京以爲他在贏，所以他要將戰爭繼續下去。

結果呢？

在2024年7月17日的文章中我說：

這場戰爭的結果，一定是俄國油盡燈枯，降級為一個三流國家，退出國際政治的舞台。俄國老百姓們只有到了下面地步，才會像二戰中的日本人民一樣，認識到自己撞了南墻：

十室九空，十戶九殤。
十廠九閉，十店九光。
十軍九潰，十舟九宕。
十村九蕪，十城九荒。

不慘到這個地步，俄羅斯這隻野蠻的牲口物種絕不會接受北約的這個立場。

按照現在的趨勢——這個趨勢只可能持續加速——上面的結局是大概率事件。

現在的烏戰狀態，是全世界的好人都喜歡的狀態。

烏戰的下一個階段

但烏克蘭陸軍的據險防守不會無限期繼續下去。

隨着俄國油氣資源的逐漸枯竭和俄國經濟不斷惡化，隨着俄軍兵源日漸枯竭，隨着前線武器彈藥和給養供應不斷減少，俄軍的士氣會日漸低落，戰鬥力持續下降。烏克蘭在北約支持下的情報系統對這個變化過程瞭如指掌。到了莫個臨界點，烏克蘭的並不驍勇的陸軍就有能力對弱不禁風的俄軍發起摧枯拉朽的進攻。那時戰局的變化會讓我們想起中國內戰最後一年的戰場態勢——進攻方跑斷了腿都追不上土崩瓦解的敵軍。

現在，是大變之前的安靜期。

The orginal article in Chinese was published on 19th December 2021, two months before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Before Hitler came to power, Germany suffered from a 30 percent unemployment rate, the Great Depression, and political turmoil. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, Germany rapidly emerged as the strongest and wealthiest nation in Europe. Before he embarked on his military adventures, Hitler was a rising star on the world stage. Leaders from around the world, including Britain and the United States, came to Germany seeking to learn from him.

In March 1936, Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by ordering German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland bordering France and Belgium.

In March 1938, German forces marched into Austria, and Austria was annexed into the Third Reich.

Later that year, Hitler threatened war unless Czechoslovakia ceded the Sudetenland, where most of the population was ethnic German. Britain and France yielded at Munich, pressuring Czechoslovakia to surrender the territory.

In March 1939, Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, and turned his territorial demands toward Poland.

Britain and France finally warned him:

“If you invade Poland, we will declare war."

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.

Britain and France declared war on Germany.

From that moment on, Hitler had no way back. He was committed to a path from which there was no return.

Was Hitler unaware that the real power behind Britain and France was the United States? Did he not realize Germany could never ultimately defeat America?

Why, then, did he continue down that road?

On the one hand, Germany believed it urgently needed to expand the living space of the Third Reich. On the other hand, Britain and France had been devastated by the First World War. Their populations were deeply opposed to another war. Every time Hitler took another step, Britain and France issued stern protests but still refused to go to war over that single step. Hitler understood this perfectly, and so he advanced one step after another.

But why didn’t he stop after gaining enough territory? Why didn’t he consolidate his gains, rebuild relations with Britain and France, and avoid a wider war?

There were three reasons.

First, when you keep winning while your opponents keep retreating, your own people and your officials begin to worship you. Your confidence inevitably expands into overconfidence, and your contempt for your opponents grows ever deeper. When Britain and France finally declared war, Hitler was genuinely shocked and deeply depressed, because he had never expected them to go to war over Poland.

Second, repeated victories create ever higher expectations among those around you. To preserve your prestige, you feel compelled to seek new victories.

Imagine if Hitler had backed down after Britain and France warned him over Poland.

His supporters would have said:

“Poland is already ours. Britain and France are bluffing. They would never dare fight Germany. The Führer simply lost his nerve!

Imagine the pressure Hitler faced. Continuing to gamble was almost his only option.

Third, every concession made by Britain and France increased, rather than reduced, their hostility toward Germany. With every success Hitler achieved, Britain and France strengthened their military preparations against him.

When you face an increasingly hostile adversary, you do not spend your time imagining sharing a barbecue and a beer together. You worry instead about whether he will strike first. Eventually, you conclude that perhaps you should strike first yourself.

Hitler did not embark upon that irreversible path entirely by choice. In reality, he had very little choice. History, and the circumstances surrounding him, gradually lured—and eventually pushed—him onto that road.

Today, history is pushing Vladimir Putin down the very same road. His circumstances bear remarkable similarities to Hitler’s.

• Putin annexed Crimea. The entire world condemned him, yet no one was willing to go to war with a nuclear power over it.
• He became a national hero inside Russia. Russian confidence soared, and public expectations continued to rise.
• Not only did the United States and Europe fail to stop the annexation of Crimea, but now, with more than 100,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border and virtually everyone expecting a full-scale invasion after the New Year, the United States has explicitly stated that defending Ukraine militarily is not an option.
• Isn’t this exactly the same pattern of concession after concession shown by Britain and France before the Second World War?
• Putin has concluded that the Western powers are paper tigers. He believes they would never dare fight a nuclear power directly, and therefore he still has much more to gain.
• Meanwhile, NATO has strengthened Ukraine’s military and has become increasingly hostile toward Russia. Putin views this as an existential threat.

The United States and Europe continue warning that a Russian invasion would trigger unprecedented economic sanctions. They assume that Russia could never withstand such punishment and therefore will not invade.

Putin sees things differently.

He believes that absorbing Ukraine would be a historic triumph that would restore the Russian Empire and secure his place in history. If sanctions are the price of that achievement, then so be it.

Russia possesses enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, upon which Europe depends. China can also help offset Western pressure. Russia, in Putin’s view, can survive the sanctions.

Besides, no sanctions regime lasts forever. With skillful diplomacy and by exploiting divisions within Europe, easing sanctions after several years is entirely possible.

That is why, even after speaking with President Biden, Putin continued reinforcing Russian forces along Ukraine’s border.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine is therefore highly probable.

Once Russia invades Ukraine, Putin will have stepped onto Hitler’s road of no return.

He will almost certainly be shocked by the severity of Western sanctions and the damage they inflict upon Russia.

At that point Russia will find itself in exactly the same position as Imperial Japan before Pearl Harbor. American sanctions had pushed Japan toward economic collapse. Japan faced only two choices: abandon Manchuria and withdraw from China, or wage war to seize greater strategic space.

Russia will confront the same dilemma.

History tells us that neither Hitler nor Hideki Tojo chose to retreat. The mindset and circumstances of dictators make retreat almost impossible.

Putin will not retreat either.

At that stage, the military will become his last remaining trump card, and he will have little choice but to use military force to compel the West to abandon its sanctions.

If, after occupying Ukraine, Putin further expands his military ambitions, NATO will inevitably respond militarily.

Its patience will have reached its limit.

If NATO still refuses to fight, Putin’s ambitions will grow without restraint, and the security of Europe will collapse. NATO cannot permit that.

Russia’s conventional forces and nuclear arsenal may be formidable, but they are still smaller than those of the former Soviet Union.

If NATO was prepared to confront the Soviet Union directly, why would it tolerate today’s Russia bullying Europe?

Putin is therefore making a grave strategic mistake by underestimating NATO’s determination.

When he finally receives NATO’s ultimatum, he will once again be stunned—just as Hitler was stunned when Britain and France declared war.

But he will refuse to back down.

And then war will follow.

Once Russia invades Ukraine, the Russia–China (and Iran) axis will formally take shape, and the likelihood of China seizing the opportunity to invade Taiwan will increase dramatically.

This world war, however, will not last six years.

It will probably end within one year.

Nor will it conclude with the defeated powers being occupied militarily.

The United States, Japan, and their European allies need only destroy the Chinese and Russian air forces and navies. Once that happens, China and Russia will be willing to sign an armistice.

Of course, Putin and the Chinese Communist Party would both fall from power.

In my article, “A Military Expert Predicts the Entire Course of the Taiwan Strait War," I describe how I believe such a conflict would unfold. I believe my forecast is largely accurate.

Predicting China’s political future after the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party is even more difficult than predicting the course of a war.

The version I have written is the most optimistic one.

If readers would like to see a less optimistic scenario, leave a comment, and I will write that version as well.

I wrote The US-Iran War: America Totally Defeated on April 12, 2026. It remains just as valid today. My articles are best read months or even years after they are published, because when they first appear they are almost always dismissed as extreme. Yet months or years later, people discover that they were simply ahead of their time.

The day before yesterday, the U.S. military halted its twelve consecutive days of airstrikes against Iran on its own accord. It did so because it could no longer find any high-value targets worth bombing, and because its stockpile of munitions had run dangerously low.

And what happened?

Last night, Iran deliberately waited for the US air raid to stop for two days, then took the initiative and launched a surprise ballistic missile strike against U.S. forces.

The message was unmistakable:

“You bombed us for twelve days and spent hundreds of billions of dollars, yet you have put no real pressure on us. Our fighting spirit remains undiminished. We will not yield an inch. You started the war, we will decide when it ends."

This is winner’s mantality.

Iran will soon receive much more advanced Chinese missiles. Worse days for America are still to come. America wants to punishments China? China can shut down its industries especially the military by cutting off rare earth supplies.

America now has only three options.

First: surrender. Accept Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, accept Iran’s right to levy transit fees, and accept that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.

Second: launch a ground invasion.

Third: destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure such as power plants, water plants and bridges, so that its social order starts to collapse.

According to the latest U.S. opinion polls, 70 percent of Americans oppose the war with Iran. Congress has already passed several bills aimed at limiting the President’s war powers. When Trump threatened that a civilization will disappear, there were wide condemnations in the US. A ground invasion or a genocidal attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure would provoke an explosive backlash from both parties at home while costing thousands of American lives and adding another five trillion dollars to the national debt. Republicans would almost certainly suffer a crushing defeat in the November midterm elections. Moreover, a ground invasion would likely unite the Iranian people behind their government. After paying an enormous price in blood and treasure, the U.S. military could still find itself retreating in humiliation—ending, in effect, in surrender anyway.

Never since its founding has the United States found itself in such a desperate and humiliating position with no way out.

Yes, America pulled out of both the Vietnam and Korea wars without achieving an outright military victory. But in both wars it demonstrated its overwhelming firepower so thoroughly that neither North Korea nor Vietnam ever dared to export trouble, thus in a sense America actually achieved its goal—to stem the red tide in Asia. The fall of Vietnam and North Korea did little damage to America’s global strategic position, in which containing Soviet expansion in Europe was the absolute priority.

Unlike North Korea, the Viet Cong, or the Afghan Taliban, whose primary objective was to seize power in their own countries and then start to enjoy, the Iranian theocratic regime’s primary focus extends far beyond its borders. Its goal is to dominate the Middle East and destroy Israel.

Think about the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz, and imagine a nuclear Iran controlling it.

To America, Vietnam and Afghan were irritating sores, while a nuclear Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz is a severed artery.

America has never been so weak and desporate.

Its prestige is finished.

Two months before Putin’s invation of Ukraine, in my article of December 19, 2021, “History Has Placed Putin on the Same Road Once Taken by Hitler," I argued that dictators possess an irresistible impulse toward military expansion. Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran springs from exactly the same mindset as Hitler’s and Putin’s.

MAGA: Make Adversaries Great Again.

我在2026年4月12日寫了《 美伊戰爭：美國完敗》，到今天仍然有效。我的文章最適合幾個月甚至幾年後才去看，因爲剛發表時幾乎肯定被認爲是偏激，但幾個月或幾年後你會發現它不過是先知先覺而已。

前天，美軍自行停止了對伊朗連續12天的空襲，因爲它再也找不到值得空襲的高價值目標，更因爲它的彈藥庫存見底了。

結果呢？

昨晚，伊朗特地等美國停止進攻二天以後，主動對美軍發起了彈道導彈的突襲。

意思是：“你白打了12天，又花了幾百億美元，對我毫無壓力。我仍然鬥志昂揚，寸步不讓。你發起了戰爭，但戰爭什麼時候結束，由我說了算。”

這是贏者的心態。

不久，伊朗将收到中国的更加先进的导弹。美军的噩梦还未到来。报复中国？它的稀土命门捏在中国手中。

美國現在只有三個選項。

第一：投降。接受伊朗對霍爾木茲海峽的控制權、收費權，並接受伊朗發展核武器。

第二：地面入侵。

第三：摧毀伊朗的民用基礎設施，例如發電廠、自來水廠和橋樑，使其社會秩序開始崩潰。

根據美國最新民調，70%的美國人反對對伊朗戰爭。國會已經通過數個限制總統戰爭權力的法案。當川普揚言要讓一個文明消失時，美國國內也引起了廣泛譴責。無論是地面入侵，還是對伊朗民用基礎設施發動近乎種族滅絕式的攻擊，都將在國內引發兩黨的強烈反彈，同時造成成千上萬美國人的傷亡，並使美國國債再增加五萬億美元。共和黨幾乎肯定會在11月的中期選舉中遭遇慘敗。此外，地面入侵幾乎必然會使伊朗人民更加團結在現政權周圍。美軍即使付出巨大的生命與財政代價，最終仍可能夾著尾巴撤退，而結果實際上仍然等同於投降。

美國建國以來從來沒有陷入到如此絕望窘迫的境地。

不錯，美國在越戰和韓戰中都沒有取得徹底的軍事勝利。但在這兩場戰爭中，美國都充分展示了其壓倒性的軍事力量，以致北韓和越南此後都不敢對外輸出動亂。從這個意義上說，美國其實達到了自己的戰略目標——遏止了共產主義在亞洲的進一步傳播。越南和北韓的淪陷，對美國的全球戰略地位幾乎沒有造成什麼損害，因為美國當時的最高戰略優先事項始終是遏制蘇聯在歐洲的擴張。

北韓、越共或阿富汗塔利班的目標都是奪取本國政權，然後享受勝利果實；而伊朗神棍政權的主要目標卻遠遠超出其國界。它的目標是主宰整個中東，並摧毀以色列。

想想霍爾木茲海峽的戰略重要性，再想像一個擁有核武器並控制霍爾木茲海峽的伊朗。

对美国来说，越南和阿富汗不過是個討厭的膿瘡，而一個控制霍爾木茲海峽的核武伊朗，卻是一條被切斷的動脈。

美國從來沒有像今天這樣虛弱、這樣絕望。

它的國際威望已經終結。

在普京入侵烏克蘭前二個月，在2021年12月19日的《 歷史將普京推上了希特勒曾走的那條路》一文中，我揭示了獨裁者窮兵黷武的無法避免的衝動。

川普發動伊朗戰爭的心態和希特勒、普京一模一樣。

自12年前拿起筆，我已經寫了350篇政評文章。我的讀者們可以證明，我從來沒有叫任何人“傻逼”。希特勒不是，毛澤東不是，斯大林不是，波爾布特（屠殺了柬埔寨一半人口）不是，姆拉迪奇（在波斯尼亞內戰中屠殺了整整一個城市的人口）不是，普京也不是。

他們都不傻，都很能幹，只是根本信念不對。

上下5000年，古今中外的領導人中只有一個徹頭徹尾的傻逼，那就是川普。

MAGA: Make Adversaries Great Again.

Dear XXX,

As a staunch left, I am writing to you with great trepidation in the rise of the far-right One Nation.

1. Who I am

My wife and I via hard work all our lives acquired three investment properties. Labour’s policy had reduced their values by $100K, and more to go by forecast.

And yet, I support this policy, with the hope that it can really make young people’s dreams to own their own homes more reachable.

I am also a Vic SES volunteer actively on call every week especially on public holidays.

By telling you this, I hope you understand what kind of mindset I have – I am a staunch left.

2. Tony Burke’s response was disgusting

Yet, a few weeks ago when I heard your immigration minister Tony Burke’s conversation on TV with a journalist, I felt disgusted.

The journalist asked him about the Sydney Bondi Beach terrorist attack. He replied:

“Naveed Akram was born here. He was home-grown."

What he obviously implied was this:

“… therefore it is not a matter of immigration."

But to me, it doesn’t pass the pub test, because any patron in a pub who are not completely drunk would have asked the follow-on question:

“How many home-grown terrorists are there in the world who are from Muslim background? How many from non-Muslim backgrounds?"

The next question:

“Wasn’t his father a migrant?"

What Burke did was disgusting – he was treating Australian voters like me as idiots.

3. ChatGPT’s response was disgusting too

In preparation for this letter, I told ChatGPT what this letter was about, then asked it to do a Google search of the top 100 terrorist attacks in the last 20 years, and tell me how many innocent civilians were killed by Islamic terrorists, and how many by non-Islamic terrorists.

It refused, saying “I don’t have the data". I repeatedly stressed that what I asked it to prepare are pure facts and easily available, that pure facts do not carry labels of right or wrong, but it repeatedly responded with “I don’t have the data". That was it.

Can you see the connection between ChatGPT’s response and Burke’s response?  ChatGPT’s response represented the attitude of its creator – that truth can be harmful.

“You can’t handle the truth!"

To you, the elites in the western society, truth is no longer important. Political correctness is. For that, you are prepared to refuse access to truth and deliberately mislead the public like what Burke did.

In China, people are accused of sedition and thrown into jail by simply stating the truth; On this issue, how is suppressing uncomfortable facts through misleading and avoidance different from suppressing them through state power?

4. You may lose next election to One Nation

I am utterly disgusted by Trump and his cult. That is why I am carrying such a heavy trepidation on the rise of One Nation. With the liberals falling apart, you, Labour, is the only hope to stem the tide.

However, I am seriously considering voting in the next election for One Nation. Everything they stands for abhors me, but, if their coming into power can shatter the illusion in which you the elite class were intoxicated – that political correctness trumps truth, that we the voters cannot handle the truth, then I am willing to let One Nation tear down everything I cherish to achieve this.

【本文我先寫的英文，然後由AI翻譯成中文】

【我很久沒有評論政治了，因爲我在2026年4月12日寫的《 美伊戰爭：美國完敗》到今天仍然有效。我的文章最適合幾個月甚至幾年後才去看，因爲剛發表時幾乎肯定被認爲是偏激，但幾個月或幾年後你會發現它不過是先知先覺而已。】

親愛的XXX：

作為一名堅定的左派，我懷著極大的憂慮寫信給您，極右派 One Nation （一族黨）的崛起令我深感不安。

1. 我是誰

我和我的妻子憑藉一生的努力工作，擁有了三套投資房產。工黨的政策已使它們的價值減少了 10 萬澳元，根據預測，未來還會進一步下跌。

然而，我支持這項政策，希望它真的能幫助年輕人實現擁有自己的家的夢想。

我也是一名維州 SES（緊急救援服務）志願者，每週都參與救援，尤其是在公眾假期期間。

告訴您這些，是希望您能了解我是什麼樣的心態——我是一名堅定的左派。

2. Tony Burke 的回應令人作嘔

然而，幾週前，當我在電視上聽到你們的移民部長 Tony Burke 與一名記者的對話時，我感到十分噁心。

記者問他有關悉尼 Bondi Beach 恐怖襲擊事件（一對父子穆斯林屠殺了15個猶太移民）。

他回答：

「Naveed Akram 出生於這裡。他是在這裡長大的（home-grown）。」

他所明顯暗示的是：

「……因此，這不是一個移民問題。」

但在我看來，這根本無法通過常理的考驗，因為任何一位在酒吧裡沒有喝得爛醉的人，都會接著問：

「全世界有多少本土成長（home-grown）的恐怖分子是穆斯林背景？又有多少是非穆斯林背景？」

下一個問題是：

「他的父親不是移民嗎？」

Burke 所做的令人作嘔——他把像我這樣的澳洲選民當成白癡。

3. ChatGPT 的回應同樣令人作嘔

為了準備這封信，我告訴 ChatGPT 這封信的內容，然後要求它用 Google 搜尋過去二十年排名前一百宗恐怖襲擊事件，並告訴我有多少無辜平民死於伊斯蘭恐怖分子之手，又有多少死於非伊斯蘭恐怖分子之手。

它拒絕了，只回答：「我沒有這些資料。」我一再強調，我要求它整理的是純粹的事實，而且這些資料很容易取得，純粹的事實並沒有對錯的標籤，但它一再回答：「我沒有這些資料。」

您看得出 ChatGPT 的回應與 Burke 的回應之間的關聯嗎？ChatGPT 的回應代表了其創造者的態度——真相可能是有害的。

「你承受不了真相！」

對你們這些西方社會的菁英而言，真相已經不再重要，政治正確才是重要的。為了政治正確，你們寧願拒絕人民接觸真相，並像 Burke 那樣刻意誤導公眾。

在中國，人們只要陳述真相，就可能被控煽動顛覆並遭到監禁；在這個議題上，透過誤導與迴避來壓制令人不舒服的事實，與透過國家權力來壓制它們，有什麼不同？

4. 你們可能會在下一次選舉中輸給 One Nation

我對 Trump 及其追隨者感到極度厭惡。正因如此，我對 One Nation 的崛起感到如此沉重的不安。隨著自由黨日漸瓦解，你們工黨是唯一有希望阻止這股潮流的力量。

然而，我正認真考慮在下一次選舉中投票給 One Nation。他們所代表的一切都令我深惡痛絕。但如果他們的上台能夠打破你們這些菁英階層所沉醉其中的幻象——政治正確凌駕於真相之上、選民無法承受真相——那麼，為了達成這個目的，我願意讓 One Nation 摧毀我所珍視的一切。

The Iraq war was justified

Everyone now agrees the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake — left and right, hawk and dove. Dodgy intelligence, no weapons of mass destruction, a botched occupation, trillions spent, and above all the birth of ISIS.

I don’t dispute any of those facts. I dispute the verdict drawn from them, because that verdict is a snapshot mistaken for a conclusion. Run the clock from 2003 to today and judge the whole span of 23 years as a single event, and the net effect is very positive in comparison with the alternative: Saddam’s son Uday ruling Iraq today.

Start with the choice America actually faced, because critics always smuggle in a fantasy version of 2003 in which doing nothing was free and safe. It was neither.

Saddam had already invaded Kuwait. And after he was driven out, he did not become a quiet neighbour. He kept the Republican Guard massed along the Kuwaiti and Saudi borders. The US had to station roughly a hundred thousand troops in the region indefinitely, alongside no-fly zones that demanded a permanent air presence sustained by six thousand airmen. That is not peace. It is a siege with no end date and a vast standing cost. So the US had to end it.

It was never America’s plan — but the shattering of the Iraqi state opened a vacuum, and that vacuum acted as a magnet. It drew the hardline jihadist vanguard, from across the region and the wider world, into one place, in the open, where they were fought and destroyed — rather than left to fester in a hundred ungoverned corners. The caliphate was built, declared to the world as the great hope, and then ground into rubble in front of everyone.

Consequently, outside the irreducible fringe of fanatics, ordinary Muslims today look at violent extremism and see no future in it. That is a safer world. That is the huge benefit we are enjoying today.

The fall of Saddam in 2003 was the first move in a long unwinding. It removed an anchor of the region’s authoritarian bloc, and it opened two decades in which the strongmen and the theocrats steadily lost ground. Assad’s Syria did not survive that long arc. Iran reached the end of it isolated and alone — exposed enough that Israel and the United States could strike it more or less at will.

I am not claiming the Iraq War alone caused all of this; the Arab Spring and Syria’s own collapse had engines of their own. But Iraq was the enabling first domino. With Uday still standing today, it is not a stretch to think that Iraq and Iran — two old foes facing a common enemy in the US and Israel — might have closed ranks into some kind of alliance. With that bloc in place, it is very hard to see the chain ever beginning.

The reason America won this long war was due to two characteristics she used to possess: she was ideologically stubborn — she believed in the ideals she advocated — and she was rich and powerful enough to absorb a colossal error and come back to finish the job.

So yes — the cost in lives across these 23 years was enormous, and I won’t wave it away. But “it was costly" is not the same sentence as “it was a mistake." For the same reason, we don’t blame the UK and France for the massive loss of life in WWII simply because they declared war on Hitler.

The Iran war is not

Now, can you see why one could argue the Iraq War was justified, yet not be able to say the same of the current war with Iran?

Because the US no longer possesses either of the two characteristics that let her pull off a final victory through the many battles of that prolonged Iraq War over the last 20 years.

When it fought Saddam and ISIS, the US had unequivocal backing from all her allies — moral at the very least, and in many cases financial and military as well.

Today, America has abandoned all of her lofty ideals. She has lost all moral scruple — willing to backstab her most loyal, oldest friends for financial gain. None of her erstwhile allies wants anything to do with her war on Iran. I say erstwhile because I would argue that, even if many of them will not say it aloud, all her old allies despise her and have lost faith in her — not just because of a vile demagogue, but even more because of the majority of Americans who put him in office. I know the moron put up a brave face and said America doesn’t need any allies. Such immaturity is not worth rebuking.

Today the US’s debt is around 120% of GDP. It has sat above the size of the entire economy for more than a decade now, and is closing on — by some measures already past — the record she set winning two massive wars in Europe and Asia. And she has let it climb that high without yet firing a single shot in the war now looming over the Taiwan Strait.

Unlike the last time the US went to war in Iraq, this time everybody warned the administration that it would not work — including the Joint Chiefs of Staff he had hand-picked — but he went for the thrill ride anyway.

The result: Iran’s military strength is recovering fast, and her gain is enormous — control of the Strait of Hormuz.

America did not just fail to learn anything over the last 23 years — populism is making her a great deal dumber.

伊拉克戰爭是正確的決定

如今，無論左派右派、鷹派鴿派都同意，2003 年入侵伊拉克是個錯誤。情報靠不住、根本沒有大規模毀滅性武器、佔領搞得一團糟、花掉數以兆計的美元，而最重要的是，催生了伊斯蘭國（ISIS）。

這些事實我一概不否認。我要質疑的，是由這些事實推導出來的結論。把時鐘從 2003 年一路撥到今天，把這整整 23 年當作單一事件來評斷，那麼相較於另一種結局——海珊之子烏代如今仍統治著伊拉克，這23年的戰爭的淨效果其實非常正面。

先從美國當年真正面對的選擇談起，因為批評者總是拿出一個幻想版本的 2003 年，彷彿什麼都不做既沒有代價、又很安全。事實上兩者皆非。

海珊早已入侵過科威特。被趕出去之後，他並沒有就此變成一個安分的鄰居。他依舊把共和國衛隊重兵屯駐在科威特與沙烏地的邊境上。美國因此不得不在該地區無限期駐紮約十萬大軍，並維持禁飛區——而這需要六千名空軍人員長期支撐起一支常駐空中武力。這不是和平，而是一場沒有終點、且需付出龐大常態成本的圍困。美國必須結束這場對峙。

雖然不是美國的本意——但伊拉克國家機器的崩解打開了一個權力真空，而那個真空就像一塊磁鐵。它把來自整個地區乃至全世界的激進聖戰急先鋒，全都吸引到同一個地方，在那裡被迎頭痛擊、徹底殲滅——而不是任由他們在無數無人管理的角落裡潰爛蔓延。激進伊斯蘭主義作為一種群眾性的理想，已被掏空。哈里發國被建立起來、向全世界宣告為偉大的希望，然後當著眾人的面被碾成瓦礫。於是，除了那一小撮無論如何都消除不掉的狂熱份子之外，今天的普通穆斯林在暴力極端主義上已看不到任何前途。

這是一個更安全的世界。

這正是我們今天所享有的巨大紅利。

2003 年海珊的垮台，是一場漫長鬆動的第一步：它拔掉了該地區威權陣營的一根定錨，並開啟了往後二十年——在這二十年裡，強人與神權統治者節節敗退。阿薩德的敘利亞沒能撐過這道漫長的弧線。伊朗則走到這道弧線的盡頭，孤立無援——脆弱到以色列與美國幾乎可以隨時對它出手。

我並不是說這一切全由伊拉克戰爭一手造成；阿拉伯之春與敘利亞本身的崩潰，各有其自身的動力。但伊拉克是那塊啟動連鎖反應的第一張骨牌。倘若烏代今天依然屹立，那麼不難想像：伊拉克與伊朗這兩個宿敵，在面對美國與以色列這個共同敵人時，很可能會捐棄前嫌、結成某種同盟。一旦這樣的集團成形，那整條連鎖反應幾乎不可能啟動。

不錯，這 23 年間付出的人命代價極其慘重，我不會把它輕描淡寫地揮開。但「代價高昂」並不等於「這是個錯誤」。同樣道理，我們並不會因為英國與法國向希特勒宣戰，就把二戰中那慘重的傷亡歸咎於它們。

場23年的戰爭之所以勝利，靠的是美國昔日曾經具備的兩項特質：她在意識形態上極為執拗——她真心相信自己所鼓吹的理念；而且她足夠富強，足以承受一個天大的錯誤，再回過頭來把事情做完。

伊朗戰爭不是正確的決定

那麼，你現在能看出來，為什麼我們主張伊拉克戰爭打得有理，卻無法替當前這場對伊朗的戰爭說同樣的話嗎？

因為美國已不再具備那兩項特質中的任何一項。

當年對付海珊與伊斯蘭國時，美國得到所有盟友毫不含糊的支持——至少是道義上的支持，許多時候更包括財政與軍事上的支援。

如今，她已經完全拋棄了她昔日的所有高尚的理想。她現在是一個唯利是圖、不擇手段的賭徒。昔日的盟友沒有一個願意沾上她這場對伊朗的戰爭。我之所以說「昔日」，是因為即便他們當中許多人不願把話挑明，她所有的老盟友其實都鄙視她、對她失去了信任——這不僅僅是因為一個卑劣的煽動家，更是因為那些把他送進白宮的多數美國人。我知道那個蠢貨擺出一副無所謂的姿態，說什麼美國根本不需要盟友。如此幼稚，根本不值得我去反駁。

今天，美國的債務約為 GDP 的 120%。它已經連續十幾年高過整個經濟體的規模，如今正逼近——以某些口徑來算甚至已經超越——她當年打贏歐亞兩場大戰時所創下的紀錄。而現在她是在那場正籠罩台灣海峽的即將到來的世界大戰中一槍未放，就把債務推到了這麼高的水位。

與上一次美國出兵伊拉克時不同，這一回，所有人都警告過政府這行不通——連他親自欽點的參謀首長聯席會議都在內——但他還是執意去享受這場刺激的冒險。

結果呢：伊朗的軍事實力正在迅速恢復，而她的收穫極為龐大——掌控了荷莫茲海峽。

美國在過去 23 年裡，不只是什麼都沒學到——它變得越來越蠢。

You can tell me 100 reasons why you do not like the United States, and they can all be legitimate. But then I will tell you that, in the past 30 years, most if not all democracy and human rights advocates whom the CCP jailed and then was pressured to free — the pressure came from the US, and they were given asylum in the US.

With all her controversies and impurities — she supported the Shah of Iran, the dictator and murderer Pinochet, and many other brutal regimes across Latin America, Asia, and Africa — it is still not a far stretch to say that the US was often viewed by the rest of the world as a model of governmental moral standards, due process, tolerance of dissent, and hope for the oppressed.

The intent of the US in those days was different from today. She was facing off against a gigantic opponent, the Soviet Union; she could not afford to alienate every country that was not democratic — she would lose that fight, and the end result would be 100 times worse than her compromise. By gaining as many allies as possible via the compromises, her intent was first to protect democracy within her borders, then to advance it in the rest of the world. She fell short of those ideals constantly, but she held them as ideals — and that was no small thing.

What I see today is a country in a downward spiral so steep and so visible that it is impossible to dismiss as cyclical politics.

Internally, the administration shoots dead innocent protesters then claims they are terrorists, conducts raids that resemble organised cruelty more than law enforcement, and treats criticism — including from longtime allies — as personal insult to be revenged at all costs. The president and his family do not even hide the fact that they are raking in billions in all kinds of shady power-money deals. The Fed, which had remained independent for more than a hundred years, is being brutally and shamelessly attacked. The institutions that protected tolerance and dissent are being deliberately weakened.

Externally, the country that once at least pretended to champion liberal values now openly murders alleged drug traffickers on the high seas, without trial and without evidence. The goal is no longer to advance democracy and human rights, but pure transactional and selfish power wielded via coercion in zero-sum games.

In the past, the US fell short of the lofty ideals constantly, but she was trying. What is different now is that the ideals themselves have been abandoned.

This is not the mask slipping. This is the mask being thrown away.

What broke

The deeper question is why. And here I think the answer is structural, not personal. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. The root cause is that social media wrestled control of the narrative away from the elite class and gave it to the masses.

Before social media, the elite — through mainstream media, universities, publishing, broadcast journalism — owned the narration of public life. They decided what was discussed, what the moral standard was, what direction the country was heading. The masses had votes, but the framing of choices, the boundaries of acceptable discourse, the slow shaping of public opinion — those were elite functions.

But now, the angry mob controls the narrative, and they put a destructive demagogue in office.

I am not naive about who the elite were. They were self-interested. They made decisions that benefited themselves disproportionately. The financial deregulation that hollowed out working-class stability, the trade policies that accelerated deindustrialisation, the regulatory capture that protected incumbents — all of that was elite work, and the cost was carried by people far below them. Elites were never saints. That much I take as given.

But here is the comparative point that matters. The self-interested elites know that

• Their interest is maximized in the long term if their country is strong and prosperous.

• Their country is strong internationally when its allies trust it.

• Seeking common ground and mutual benefits in a respectful manner wins trust and achieves bigger long-term self-interest.

• Domestically, democracy, equality, and tolerance of dissent produce the most vibrant economy.

In other words, a well-educated and less angry elite class understand that, to a large extent, the nation’s interest is aligned with their own, that killing the chicken that lay gold eggs is not how they advance their own interest.

So, the elites are not perfect, but they kept the US the leader of the free world in the last hundred years.

Compare that to what happens when the angry mob takes the wheel. The masses, given control of the narrative, do not patiently work through long-term solutions. They are angry, often legitimately so, but anger does not produce policy. It produces scapegoating. It produces the search for someone to blame and punish. And it produces demagogues — figures who say anything to ride the anger to power, who do not give a damn about the people whose pain elected them.

Trump is the textbook example. He does not care about the working class – he just openly admitted that. He never has. He weaponises their grievances, but his actual policies — tariffs, immigration crackdowns, attacks on institutions — do nothing to address the underlying economic dislocation his voters are experiencing. He is more selfish than the elites, but more fatally, he is more shortsighted than the elites he displaced. That makes him hundred times more destructive.

This is the comparative judgement at the core of my view: a self-interested elite class controlling the narrative is the lesser evil — by a wide margin — compared to an angry mob being led by destructive demagogues. The former is imperfect and frustrating. The latter is catastrophic.

The algorithm amplifies the worst voices

Social media did not merely give ordinary people a voice. That framing is too generous. Social media gave the angriest voices the loudest megaphone, because algorithmic engagement is driven by rage, fear, and outrage. The system does not surface the thoughtful or the moderate. It surfaces what provokes reaction. So what we see when “the masses speak" is not the average citizen. It is the most enraged tail of the distribution, amplified far beyond its actual share of public opinion, and then mistaken for the public itself.

This matters because it means the populist energy driving Western politics today is not a clean signal of democratic preference. It is a distorted signal — real grievances filtered through an outrage machine that rewards extremity and punishes nuance. The elite did not lose the narrative to “the people" in any romantic democratic sense. The elite lost the narrative to an algorithmic amplification of the angriest fraction of the people.

Democrats failed, but they did not cause this

The economic pain underlying populism is real, and it is not the fault of any particular administration. The US is going through a transition comparable to the industrial revolution. Low-tech manufacturing — clothing, steel, washing machines — built the American middle class in the twentieth century. That manufacturing no longer makes money in the US. This is not a political choice. It is a structural reality, and it has produced enormous pain in the communities that depended on it.

So I do not blame Democrats for the underlying transition. That would be like blaming the weather. What I do blame them for is failing in their duty to acknowledge and manage that pain. They governed as if the economy were fine because the parts of it they inhabited were fine. They offered technocratic optimism to people whose lives were materially worse than their parents’ lives, and they wondered why those people stopped trusting them.

Trump did not solve the problem. His policies make it worse. But he at least validated the pain — and validation matters in politics in a way the educated class consistently underestimates. People will tolerate being lied to about solutions before they will tolerate being told their suffering is imaginary.

That failure created the opening. Once a populist movement finds a leader who acknowledges the pain — even falsely — the establishment cannot easily win those voters back, because the trust is broken.

What real conservatism looks like

I call myself a conservative, and I want to be precise about what I mean by that, because Trump and the Republican Party today are not conservative in any meaningful sense. They are radicals dressed in conservative clothing.

A conservative, in the proper sense, admits that the collective complexity of a society is a billion times greater than the human mind can grasp. Therefore, we can only move with society’s natural evolution. We build ships that stay afloat on the tide, but we don’t build dams to stem the tide. We don’t try to redesign society and enforce that design with brute force.

Society is like a body. When a constraint is warping it — like the Corn Laws in nineteenth-century Britain, which originally had a good purpose but had become a painful distortion — the right response is to remove the constraint and let the society adjust naturally. Repealing the Corn Laws was a conservative change in the proper sense: identifying that a law was bending the spine and removing it, so the body could straighten itself.

Trump’s tariffs are the opposite. They are a hammer. They are an attempt to use brute force to bend the economy back into a shape it has already grown out of. That is not conservatism. That is radicalism. Forcing a spine to bend by external pressure does not heal it. It breaks it.

A genuinely conservative response to the deindustrialisation of America would be the patient work of removing the constraints that prevent people and communities from adapting: dismantling regulatory capture that protects incumbent industries at the expense of new ones, opening up education and labour mobility, investing in the kind of infrastructure that lets struggling regions retool. That is slow and undramatic work. It does not win elections, because it offers no enemy to blame and no quick fix to promise. But it is the only response that actually addresses the problem without doing more damage.

Neither major American party is currently doing this work. The Republicans are imposing tariffs. The Democrats are protecting incumbent regulatory structures and offering identity-driven messaging instead of structural reform. Both are choosing to impose solutions rather than remove constraints. That is why I see almost no genuine conservatism in mainstream American politics today.

The threshold

Here is the part that worries me most. Once the downward spiral passes a certain threshold, the cycle becomes self-reinforcing and very difficult to reverse:

• The angry mob tends to adore strong man and despise weak-looking politicians that chase democratic ballots.

• They do not understand that the opposition party and free media criticism exist to keep the system healthy; instead, they view them as enemies.

• They do not understand that their leader first has to have basic integrity and conviction. Otherwise, no matter how smart and capable he is, as soon as he is in power, he will pursue his own interest at the expense of the people. Instead, the mob always want “their man” to be a strong man without opposition, and they can tolerate him to commit fraud, rape, and coup against legitimate election result.

• Thus, their strongman will work with their blessing to remove the checks and balances, first from individual endeavors, then from the institution.

• He will also immediately work, again with the mob’s blessing, on suppression of the “fake news”, so that his mob can be fed with what he wants to feed them, and there is no more independent media which tells the truth.

Once the last step is achieved, there is no going back.

I do not think the US or the United Kingdom have crossed it. But I think both are uncomfortably going down that path, and that is the heart of my worry.

Hungary gives me some hope. Under Orbán, Hungarian democracy backslid significantly. I assumed at the time that Hungary had passed the threshold and entered the self-reinforcing phase. I was wrong. The Hungarian people retained enough capacity to push back, and the democratic correction came. So the threshold is real, but it is further away than I sometimes fear, and democratic resilience is robust enough.

Still, resilience is not invincibility. Hungary’s institutions were younger and shallower than America’s or Britain’s. That cuts both ways: it took less to damage them, but perhaps also less to restore. The American case may be different — once broken – it is already in a very bad shape – it may be more difficult to revert.

America may wake up. Britain worries me more.

Looking at the current moment, I see America bleeding support for Trumpism across nearly every demographic that previously sustained it. His coalition is fraying. There is a real chance the midterm elections deliver a serious rebuke and that the country begins the slow work of pulling back from the edge. I am not blindly optimistic — Trump’s support has been more durable than pundits keep expecting, and even if he personally is rejected, the conditions that produced him are still there.

But the possibility of correction in the US is real.

The United Kingdom worries me more. Britain has watched the American experience unfold in real time. The damage Trump has done to American institutions, the moral degradation of American foreign policy, the alienation of allies, the assault on basic democratic norms — none of this has been hidden from British observers. And yet, against this backdrop, Britain has elevated Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to arguably the most powerful political force in the country.

This is the part that genuinely frightens me.  The fact that Britain is choosing its own Trump suggests that the populist dynamic is not Trump-specific. It is structural. The same forces — economic dislocation, elite dismissal of working-class pain, algorithmic amplification of anger, the failure of mainstream parties to offer genuine conservative correction — are producing the same outcome in country after country, regardless of whether the previous example ended well.

If this is right, then “wait for America to course-correct and the wave will pass" is the wrong frame.

The tide is not American. America was simply the first wave. Britain is the next. There will be others. And each country that crosses the threshold makes the international order more dangerous for the ones that have not.

What I am, in the end

I am a conservative who believes in democracy, in due process, in patient organic adjustment, in the removal of distortions rather than the imposition of solutions. I am not optimistic about the next decade in the West, but I am not yet despairing. Hungary taught me that democratic resilience is real. America still has functioning courts, a free if fragmented press, and electoral competition that has not yet been captured. Britain has even deeper institutions. The threshold is real, but neither country has crossed it.

What I want, more than anything, is for the elite classes of these countries to relearn the basic lesson Democrats failed: that you cannot govern a country by dismissing the pain of the people you govern. The economic transition is real and largely unavoidable. The pain it produces is real and demands acknowledgement. A genuine conservatism — patient, structural, focused on removing the constraints that prevent adaptation — is the only honest response. Tariffs are not it. Scapegoats are not it. Demagogues are not it. And dismissive technocracy is not it either.

I am hopeful and worried at the same time.