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.

你可以列出一百個不喜歡美國的理由，而且很多都成立。但我會告訴你：過去三十年裡，中共關押後又被迫釋放的大部分民主與人權人士，施壓者都是美國，而最終收留他們的，也是美國。

美國當然不完美。她支持過伊朗國王、皮諾契特，以及拉丁美洲、亞洲、非洲許多殘暴政權。但即使如此，在很長時間裡，世界仍把美國視為法治、程序正義、容忍異議，以及受壓迫者希望的象徵。

當年的美國，與今天不同。面對強敵蘇聯，她不能因為其他國家不夠民主就與之為敵。否則她會輸，而結果只會更糟。因此，她選擇妥協、拉攏盟友。她首先要保住自身的民主制度，再慢慢推進世界上的自由價值。雖然她不斷違背自己的理想，但至少，她仍把那些理想視為理想。這一點很重要。

而今天，我看到的是一個正在急速下墜的國家。速度快到已經無法再被解釋成普通的政治循環。

在國內，政府射殺抗議者，然後稱他們是恐怖分子；執法行動愈來愈像有組織的殘酷，而不是法治；對批評者——甚至老盟友——也以為個人羞辱，並動用國家力量報復。總統與其家族幾乎毫不掩飾地利用權力牟取巨額利益。維持百年獨立性的聯準會，也被公開而粗暴地攻擊。那些曾保護異議與寬容的制度，正在被刻意削弱。

在國際上，那個至少曾「假裝」捍衛自由價值的國家，如今愈來愈赤裸地以利益與威嚇行事。目標已不再是推進民主與人權，而是通過與脅迫來損人利己。

過去的美國，雖然經常辜負理想，但至少總在嘗試。今天不同的是，理想本身已經被放棄。

這不再是面具不小心滑落。這是直接把面具扔掉。

問題在哪裡？

更深層的問題是：為什麼？我認為答案是結構性的，而不是個人的。川普是症狀，不是病因。真正的根源，是社交媒體把敘事權從精英手中奪走，交給了群眾。

在社交媒體出現前，精英透過主流媒體、大學、出版業與新聞體系，掌握公共生活的敘事權。他們決定什麼值得討論、什麼算道德標準、國家應往哪裡走。人民當然有選票，但議題如何被框架、言論邊界如何被定義、輿論如何被長期塑造——這些都掌握在精英手裡。

我並不天真。我知道那些精英並不高尚。他們同樣追逐自身利益。金融鬆綁掏空工人階級的穩定生活；自由貿易加速去工業化；監管俘虜保護既得利益者——這些都出自精英之手，而代價則由下層人民承受。精英從來不是聖人。這點我從不否認。

但真正重要的是比較。自利的精英至少明白：

• 他們的長期利益，建立在國家強盛與繁榮之上。
• 而一個國家若想在國際上強大，就需要盟友的信任。
• 以尊重的方式尋求共同利益，能換來更大的長期利益。
• 在國內，民主、平等與容忍異議，能創造最有活力的經濟。

換句話說，受過良好教育、沒那麼憤怒的精英，至少理解：國家的利益，在很大程度上與自己的利益一致。把會下金蛋的雞殺掉，並不能真正讓自己獲利。

所以精英雖不完美，但過去一百年裡，他們仍讓美國成為自由世界的領導者。

但現在，憤怒的群眾通過社媒掌握了敘事權，讓後把一個破壞性的煽動者送上台。群眾的憤怒即使有理，也不會耐心處理長期問題。憤怒不會產生政策。它只會產生替罪羊。它會催生煽動者——那些為了權力，什麼都敢說的人。他們根本不在乎那些把自己送上台的人。

川普就是最典型的例子。他根本不在乎工人階級——甚至已經親口承認。他從來沒有在乎過。他只是把人民的不滿當成武器。而他的政策——關稅、移民打壓、攻擊制度——並沒有解決支持者真正面對的經濟問題。

他比舊精英更自私。更致命的是，他比那些被他取代的精英更短視。因此，他的破壞力大得多。

這就是我核心的判斷：由自利精英掌控敘事，雖然不完美，但仍遠遠好過由憤怒群眾在煽動者帶領下掌控國家。前者令人失望。後者則是災難。

算法放大最糟糕的聲音

社交媒體不只是讓普通人有了發聲權。這種說法太美化了。

社交媒體真正做的，是讓最憤怒的人獲得最大的擴音器。因為演算法靠憤怒、恐懼與仇恨來提升互動。

它不會放大理性與溫和。它只會放大能刺激情緒的內容。

所以今天我們看到的「人民的聲音」，其實並不是普通公民的平均意見。而是最憤怒那部分人，被演算法無限放大後，錯誤地被當成了整體民意。

這點非常重要。

因為今天西方的民粹浪潮，並不是純粹的民主意志。它是一種被扭曲後的訊號——真實的不滿，被一套以憤怒為燃料的系統加工後，再推到整個社會面前。

精英並不是把敘事權輸給了「人民」。而是輸給了演算法放大的憤怒。

民主黨失敗了，但民主黨不是問題的根源

民粹背後的經濟痛苦是真實的，而且並不是哪一屆政府單獨造成的。美國正經歷一場接近工業革命級別的轉型。過去建立美國中產階級的低技術製造業——服裝、鋼鐵、家電——如今已無法在美國維持高利潤。這不是政治選擇，而是結構現實。而它摧毀了大量依賴這些產業的社區。

我不怪民主黨造成了這場轉型。那就像怪罪天氣一樣荒謬。我責怪的是：他們沒有正視這種痛苦，也沒有妥善處理。他們像經濟一切正常般執政，因為他們自己所在的階層過得很好。他們對那些生活不如父母的一代人，持續輸出 technocratic optimism（技術官僚式樂觀），然後還驚訝人民為何不再信任他們。

川普沒有解決問題。他的政策甚至讓問題更糟。但他至少承認了人民的痛苦。

而政治裡，有一件事受過教育的階層總是低估：人們寧願接受錯誤答案，也不願被告知自己的痛苦不存在。

這種失敗，才真正打開了民粹的大門。

當一場民粹運動出現一個願意「承認痛苦」的領袖後，即使他是假的，建制派也很難再把選民拉回來。因為信任已經破裂。

真正的保守主義是什麼

我自認是一名保守主義者，我想澄清一下我所謂的「保守主義」是什麼，因為今天的川普和共和黨都不是保守主義者。他們是披著保守外衣的激進主義者。

真正意義上的保守主義者承認，社會整體的複雜程度，比人類心智能夠掌握的範圍大上數十億倍。因此，我們只能順應社會自身的自然演化，而不是強行塑造它。我們建造的是能隨潮汐浮沉的船，而不是試圖築起水壩去阻擋潮汐。我們不試圖重新設計社會，然後再用蠻力去強制推行那套設計。

社會就像一個人體。當某種約束使它產生扭曲時——例如十九世紀英國的《穀物法》（Corn Laws），它原本有其合理目的，但後來卻演變成一種令人痛苦的扭曲——正確的做法，是移除這個約束，讓社會自行恢復平衡。廢除《穀物法》就是一種真正意義上的保守改革：辨識出某條法律正在扭曲脊椎，然後把它移除，使身體能夠自然地重新挺直。

川普的關稅政策恰恰相反。它是一把鐵鎚。它企圖用蠻力，把經濟重新敲打回一種它早已經自然演化、並且超越了的形態。這不是保守主義，而是激進主義。用外力強迫一根脊椎彎曲，不會治癒它，只會把它折斷。

如果真正採取保守主義的方式來回應美國的去工業化問題，那就應該耐心地移除那些阻礙人民與社區適應變化的限制：拆除那些讓既有產業藉由監管壟斷而犧牲新興產業的制度；提升教育機會與勞動力流動性；投資於能夠幫助衰退地區重新轉型的基礎建設。這是一項緩慢而平淡的工作。它贏不了選舉，因為它沒有可以怪罪的敵人，也沒有立刻見效的萬靈丹可以承諾。但它卻是唯一真正解決問題、而不會造成更多傷害的方法。

目前，美國兩大政黨都沒有在做這件事。共和黨選擇加徵關稅；民主黨則選擇維護既有的監管體系，並以身分政治的論述取代制度性的改革。兩者都在試圖把自己設計好的解方強加於社會，而不是移除那些阻礙社會自然調整的限制。正因如此，我幾乎看不到今日美國主流政治中還存在任何真正意義上的保守主義。

臨界點

最讓我擔心的是：

一旦社會滑過某個臨界點，衰敗就會開始自我強化，而且很難逆轉。

• 憤怒的群眾會崇拜強人，鄙視那些必須靠民主程序爭取選票的政治人物。
• 他們不理解反對黨與自由媒體是維持制度健康的一部分。他們只把那些人當成敵人。
• 他們也不理解：領袖最重要是基本的誠信與原則。否則，不管他多聰明，只要掌權，就一定先為自己服務。
• 但群眾只想要「自己人」成為無人能制衡的強人。於是，即使對方涉及詐欺、性侵、甚至試圖推翻合法選舉結果，他們也願意接受。
• 於是，強人就在群眾支持下，一步步拆除制衡。先是在個案上突破制度的約束，再摧毀制度本身。
• 接著，他還會在群眾支持下打壓「假新聞」，只留下對自己有利的資訊來源。

當最後一步完成時，就很難回頭了。

我不認為美國或英國已經跨過那條線。但我認為，它們正令人不安地朝那個方向前進。

這才是真正讓我擔心的事。

匈牙利給了我一些希望。在奧班統治下，匈牙利民主明顯倒退。我當時以為它已經越過臨界點，進入不可逆的階段。但我錯了。匈牙利人民仍保有足夠的反抗能力，民主修正最終還是出現了。所以，民主韌性是真實存在的。而那條臨界線，也許比我想像得更遠。

但韌性並不等於無敵。匈牙利的制度比美國與英國年輕得多、也淺得多。這意味著它更容易受損，但也可能更容易修復。而美國一旦真正崩壞，也許反而更難恢復。

美國也許會醒來，但英國更讓我擔心

現在的美國，幾乎所有曾支持川普主義的人口群體，都開始出現流失。他的聯盟正在裂解。期中選舉很可能成為一次重大反撲，讓美國開始慢慢從邊緣退回來。我並不盲目樂觀。川普的支持度，比許多人預期得更頑強。而即使川普本人被否定，催生他的條件仍然存在。

但美國仍有修正的可能。

真正讓我更擔心的，是英國。

英國一直親眼看著美國發生的一切。川普對制度的破壞、外交上的道德墮落、盟友的疏離、對民主規範的攻擊——這些都不是秘密。

但即使如此，英國仍把 Nigel Farage 與 Reform UK 推向接近主導政治的位置。

這才是最讓我害怕的地方。

因為這代表，民粹並不是川普個人的問題。它是結構性的。同樣的力量——經濟失落、精英對工人階級痛苦的漠視、演算法放大憤怒、主流政黨無法提出真正保守的修正方案——正在一個又一個國家複製同樣的結果。

如果這個判斷是對的，那麼「等美國修正後，浪潮就會過去」——這種想法就是錯的。

這股潮流不是美國獨有。美國只是第一波。英國是下一波。之後還會有更多。

而每一個跨過臨界點的國家，都會讓整個國際秩序變得更加危險。

最後，我是什麼樣的人

我是保守派。我相信民主、程序正義、緩慢而自然的調整；我相信移除扭曲，而不是強加答案。

我對西方未來十年並不樂觀，但也還沒有絕望。匈牙利讓我知道：民主韌性是真實存在的。

美國仍有運作中的法院、雖然碎片化但仍自由的媒體，以及尚未被完全操控的選舉制度。

英國的制度根基甚至更深。

臨界點是真實存在的，但我不認為它們已經跨過。

我真正希望的，是這些國家的精英階層，重新學會民主黨忘記的那個基本事實：你不能一邊否定人民的痛苦，一邊治理人民。

經濟轉型是真實的，而且大致不可避免。它帶來的痛苦，也是真實的，而且必須被承認。

真正的保守主義——耐心、結構性、專注於移除阻礙適應的扭曲——才是唯一誠實的回應。

關稅不是。替罪羊不是。煽動者不是。高高在上的技術官僚式傲慢，也不是。

我同時抱有希望，也感到憂慮。

Vladimir Trump’s visit to China may have two very different outcomes. Which outcome it will be depends on how the CCP positions Trump. Note this is not how the CCP positions the US — it is certainly an enemy, and this has not changed over the past decades — but its position toward Trump himself may be completely different.

If the CCP treatsTrump as an enemy

Since Trump took office, he has already destroyed every card tha the US can play.

On “Liberation Day” he imposed crazy tariffs on China, believing China would not dare retaliate. China’s rare earth blockade brought theUS to the brink of paralysis. Trump completely gave up confronting China, and since then has acted with great caution.

His series of hostile and insulting actions against Canada and European allies caused them to seek to improve relations with China. The anti-China encirclement carefully constructed by Biden and his predecessors starts to fall apart. China’s new energy and high-tech products are selling well throughout the world outside the US.

Because the adoption of new energy is far ahead, China’s dependence on imported energy is lower than that of most of the countries.

In short, China now has no critical dependence on the US.

America’s national debt has now exceeded GDP, almost reaching the level of U.S. debt after World War II. But bare in mind that the US debt only slightly exceeded GDP after fighting two world wars in Europe and Asia. Now its debt has already exceeded GDP, while not a single shot has yet been fired in the next world war with China! As I said in “The Consequences of Trump’s Reckless War: The Fall of Taiwan is Almost Inevitable,” the US merely possesses the military technology to easily win this war, but it no longer has the money to win it. Taiwan’s fall is almost a foregone conclusion.

Therefore, in the struggle between China and the US, the initiative is in the CCP’s hands.

Then Vladimir made exactly the same mistake again in Iran. Ignoring the strong warnings of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he himself appointed and the U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee, he believed Iran would not dare blockade the Strait of Hormuz and launched attacks against Iran aimed at regime change. As a result, Iran’s blockade caused enormous losses to the entire world including the US. The war faced strong opposition in the U.S. Congress and among former allies, so although Iran continues blocking the strait and continuously attacking Gulf states, Trump does not dare use force again. The CIA judged that Iran could hold out for four months. However, because Russia’s route through the Caspian Sea for transporting food, ammunition, and military industrial equipment to Iran remains unobstructed, and the US is powerless to interfere, Iran’s ability to bypass the American blockade will only grow.

Therefore, in the struggle between the US and Iran, the initiative is in Iran’s hands.

Isn’t Vladimir Trump guaranteed to receive a large collection of “Hero of Russia” medals?

So, why would CCP give up anything to Vladimir?

Therefore, if China positions Trump as an enemy, not only will he return empty-handed from this visit to China, he will be humiliated.

If the CCP positions Trump as an ally

However, the CCP is not stupid enough to fail to see that, in the little more than a year since Vladimir took office, he has caused losses to the US greater than what ten more World War IIs could have caused, while providing opportunities to the CCP and Russia that they previously would not even have dared dream of. It cannot fail to see that Vladimir is an ally beyond their wildest dreams. If the Republican Party suffers a crushing defeat in the November midterm elections and loses two-thirds of the seats in both houses — a possibility that cannot be ignored — then Vladimir will certainly be impeached, and American foreign policy will inevitably return to its previous normal state. Then the good days for the CCP and Putin will be over.

Therefore, although the US has been humilated in the Middle East, although Trump holds no cards at all and Iran and the CCP possess the initiative, you will see that the CCP will still give Trump gifts sufficient to preserve at least some face for him, to help the Republican Party avoid losing two-thirds of the seats in the midterm elections.

You will see that, in the eyes of the CCP, Vladimir is a friend, not an enemy.