Commentaries

Power Transition in the Middle East: The Intersection of US Global Rivalries and Israel’s Regional Ambitions

March 15, 2026

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In this long ECPS commentary, Professor Ibrahim Ozturk examines the 2026 US–Israeli strikes on Iran as part of a broader transformation in global power politics rather than an isolated regional conflict. He argues that the confrontation reflects a strategic intersection of energy security, regional military dynamics, and intensifying great-power rivalry, particularly between the United States and China. The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz—through which a substantial share of global oil flows—demonstrates how military escalation, energy markets, and geopolitical competition are increasingly intertwined. Professor Ozturk suggests that contemporary conflicts are being managed through strategic compartmentalization: limited escalation, selective alliances, and narrative control. In this emerging landscape, regional actors and global powers alike seek to reshape influence within a fragmented and increasingly competitive international order.

By Ibrahim Ozturk

The Israeli-US attack on Iran, at this pivotal moment, is more than just another Middle Eastern conflict or a simple prelude to a new oil shock. It should be seen as part of a broader shift in global power, in which regional conflict, energy security, and great-power rivalry are managed together rather than separately. The aim in this deliberately segmented crisis caused by the last military stand-off with Iran is (i) to weaken Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities to bolster Israel’s regional dominance focused on security; (ii) Washington’s effort to retain strategic control over global energy flows amid rising competition with China; and (iii) in doing so, to keep the conflict politically contained—avoiding the perception of a broader clash of civilizations in the Muslim world, thus preventing them from falling under China’s influence and minimizing the reasons for China’s growing influence in the Global South.

That stance closely aligns with a recent British parliamentary report, which suggests that energy, war, diplomacy, and narrative are no longer separate policy areas. Instead, they are being strategically managed together. The result is a new power dynamic—one that shifts away from crisis management within a liberal international order and toward a more fragmented system characterized by selective coalitions, limited violence, and varying legitimacy.

Beyond Energy and Iran’s Nuclear Capacity

Without any convincing legal justification, UN resolution, or data from American institutions indicating that Iran posed an imminent threat—and launched during ongoing negotiations—these attacks resulted in the “arbitrary” killing of thousands of civilians in Iran, the massacre of schoolchildren, the arbitrary sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship returning from military exercises in India and of a Sri Lankan ship, killing hundreds of soldiers, as well as severe damage to many UNESCO-protected historical monuments in Iran. In such a context, the first and most important task is to correctly situate these attacks by the US–Israel axis.

On February 28, 2026, Israel and the US carried out coordinated strikes on Iran, targeting leadership sites, military forces, and nuclear and ballistic missile infrastructure. The immediate market response was straightforward. After the attacks, global energy markets became extremely volatile, with Brent crude soaring to a peak of $119.50 on March 9, 2026, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatened 20% of global supply. This ‘panic spike’ was followed by a sharp intraday reversal, with prices sliding back toward $90.00 after US officials indicated a quick end to the military operations, ultimately leaving the market stuck in a highly volatile trading range between $85.00 and $105.00 (Figure 1).

The strategic role of the Strait of Hormuz in the global oil supply is beyond discussion. In 2025, nearly 15 million barrels of crude oil per day and about 20 million barrels of total oil transited Hormuz, most of which headed to Asian markets rather than Europe (Figure 2). Any serious disruption, therefore, impacts not just supply but also freight, insurance, and risk premiums across the wider global economy. Therefore, the 2026 assault on Iran has clearly and rightly revived a familiar concern: that the global economy remains vulnerable to disruption at the Strait of Hormuz.

Energy Leverage and the China Factor

The energy dimension gives this compartmentalization broader strategic significance. The IEA reports that China and India together received 44 percent of the crude oil exported through Hormuz in 2025, while Europe accounted for only around 4 percent of those crude flows. The Atlantic Council similarly estimates that roughly 78 percent of Middle Eastern crude exports to China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan passed through the Strait in 2025. A crisis involving Iran and Hormuz is therefore not merely a Middle Eastern problem; it is also a point of pressure on Asian industrial power.

China is particularly vulnerable, though not helpless. The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies estimates that about half of China’s crude imports and roughly one-third of its LNG come from the Middle East. According to comprehensive market monitoring and tanker-tracking data, unofficial Iranian oil flows to China reached an average of approximately 1.38 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2025 (Kpler; Vortexa). While some short-term fluctuations were observed in early 2025, the annual average remained robust, consistently exceeding the 1.3 million marks. Reuters and financial analysts report that China purchased more than 80 percent of Iran’s total shipped crude throughout the year (Reuters; Modern Diplomacy). This volume represents approximately 13.4 percent of China’s total seaborne oil imports, underscoring Iran’s critical, albeit unofficial, role in Beijing’s energy security strategy despite ongoing international sanctions (Energy Policy Research Foundation). In this context, pressure on Iran also indirectly affects a vital part of the Chinese economy. However, the strategic significance should not be overstated. The EIA indicates that China’s crude supply sources are diverse, with Russia and Saudi Arabia remaining its top suppliers in 2024, while the IEA’s Global Energy Review shows China continuing to lead global renewable capacity growth. Blocking Iranian flows can cause friction, uncertainty, and increased costs, but it is unlikely to fundamentally derail China’s rise on its own.

The situation in Venezuela aligns with this perspective. Even before the January 2026 US unilateral and unlawful military strike that led to Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping, Venezuelan crude oil was not a key element of Chinese energy security. Reuters reported that, in the first half of 2019, China imported around 350,000 barrels of Venezuelan crude daily—about 3.5 percent of its total imports. In 2025, Reuters estimated Chinese imports from Venezuela at approximately 470,000 barrels per day, or roughly 4.5 percent of China’s seaborne crude imports. A later Reuters report stated that Venezuelan supply accounted for only about 4 percent of China’s crude imports. The message is clear: Venezuela has been a useful supplier to China due to its discounts and political convenience, but not a vital part of Chinese energy security. Disrupting one sanctioned supplier may be strategically significant; however, it is not automatically a decisive move.

There is also a broader distribution issue. An oil price spike caused by war would hurt not only Asia but also Europe. The IEA has already warned of renewed volatility in the gas market and ongoing pressure on European competitiveness, while its Electricity 2026 report notes that electricity prices for energy-intensive industries in the European Union remained roughly twice US levels in 2025. In contrast, the EIA indicates that the US has been a net petroleum exporter since 2020, and its world oil transit chokepoints analysis shows that US imports from Persian Gulf countries have decreased significantly over time. The energy situation is real and important—but in the larger power struggle, it appears as a meaningful yet still limited factor rather than a decisive tool of containment.

Despite all these facts and figures, it would be inaccurate to view the current crisis as just a repeat of the 1970s. The main issue is not only scarcity but also how conflict is framed, limited, and strategically handled. The war is better understood as a managed crisis within a larger shift in global order: force is used, but not arbitrarily; escalation is tolerated, but only to a certain extent; legitimacy is not universal but gradually built through temporary alliances and selective diplomatic efforts. In this context, energy is more than just a commodity at risk. It is a vital part of a broader strategic struggle.

Israel’s Security Dilemma and the Logic of Securitization

As R. Gilpin puts it, history suggests that moments of major power shifts or systemic transitions do not simply unsettle small and middle powers; they also redistribute opportunity. Some regional actors use great-power rivalry, imperial retreat, or strategic ambiguity to rise above their original weight—as Piedmont-Sardinia did in the wake of the Crimean War, Meiji Japan under the pressure of Western encroachment, and Ibn Saud amid the collapse of Ottoman authority. Some others, for instance, misread the same fluidity and overreach, as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did in 1990, when a bid for regional expansion triggered the first major post–Cold War crisis and ended in rapid military defeat. In this sense, periods of power transition rarely leave the regional tier untouched: they create openings for some states to rise and traps for others to collapse. Israel’s conduct in the present phase of global power transition suggests that it is trying to exploit precisely such a window—not merely reacting to uncertainty but attempting to convert it into a regional hegemonic opportunity.

As US primacy becomes more contested and the Middle East is reorganized by overlapping energy, security, and corridor politics, Israel appears to be pursuing a dual strategy of expansion through both partnership and coercion. Besides, on the side of deterrence, its aggressive stance on war also reflects Israel’s recognizable security calculation. For years, Iranian missile capabilities, proxy networks, and nuclear advances have been cast in Israeli strategic discourse as existential or near-existential threats. From that vantage point, the February 2026 campaign is intelligible even if it is not thereby rendered lawful or strategically prudent. Once a hostile regime is defined as a total strategic danger, the political threshold for extraordinary measures falls: Preemptive force, regime-degrading strikes, regional militarization, and external coalition-building become easier to justify.

That said, deepening structured cooperation with states can help establish a favorable regional order. In that context, Israel is using punitive military actions against adversaries such as Iran, Syria, Hamas, and allied armed groups to weaken hostile capabilities, restore deterrence, and expand its strategic maneuvering space. This suggests that Israel is acting less like a besieged small state and more like an aspiring regional poweraiming to secure regional dominance before the emerging multipolar order becomes less accommodating. This also explains why the current conflict setup is not just about immediate battlefield outcomes but about shaping the future political landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East.

The partnership aspect of this strategy is particularly evident in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel’s trilateral framework with Greece and Cyprus has evolved well beyond ad hoc diplomacy into a more institutionalized framework for security, maritime coordination, energy cooperation, connectivity, and technological partnership, sharply excluding Turkey. The December 2025 joint declaration explicitly linked this cooperation to natural gas development, electricity interconnectors, energy security, the Great Sea Interconnector, and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), The emerging axis is supported by tangible defense ties: Greece has approved the purchase of Israeli PULS rocket systems, and Reuters has reported plans to strengthen joint exercises among Greece, Israel, and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus have solidified their own trilateral format focused on maritime security, natural gas infrastructure, energy diversification, and UNCLOS-based delimitation. The broader framework connecting Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, and Israel is the East Mediterranean Gas Forum, which institutionalizes regional gas cooperation and uses energy as a tool for political unity. Collectively, these arrangements go beyond typical bilateral or trilateral diplomacy; they are forming the backbone of an emerging Eastern Mediterranean order, with Israel playing an increasingly central role.

Rising patterns show that Israel’s Mediterranean strategy is now part of a broader geo-economic vision extending from the Caspian Sea in the Caucasus-Central Asia region to India and Europe. In his February 2026 address to the Knesset, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described India and Israel as sharing “ancient civilizational ties” and called for deeper cooperation through IMEC and I2U2, giving the relationship a geopolitical depth beyond transactional defense ties. This matters because Israel’s partnerships are no longer confined to immediate neighbors; they are increasingly tied to larger corridor projects, technology platforms, and Indo-Middle Eastern alignments. This relationship is anchored in the geopolitical logic of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a proposed multimodal route linking India to Europe via the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, with maritime, rail, energy, and digital components converging on Israel’s Mediterranean gateway, and again excluding Turkey. Promoted by its backers as a faster and more resilient alternative to existing routes—and widely read as part of a broader effort to balance China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—IMEC helps explain why India–Israel ties now extend beyond bilateral cooperation into the strategic architecture of an emerging Indo-Mediterranean order.

At the same time, not every actor moving closer to Israel should be labeled as part of an open pro-Israel bloc. Saudi Arabia still publicly conditionally normalizes relations on Palestinian statehood, yet its strategic interests overlap with Israel’s on issues such as containing Iran, protecting energy supplies, and maintaining a favorable regional balance. The new Syrian leadership’s revived US-mediated security talks with Israel present an even clearer example of pragmatic convergence. These are not full alliances, but they do show that Israel is operating in an environment where former or potential adversaries are increasingly involved in patterns of coordination, deconfliction, or selective accommodation. The broader point is that Israel is trying to transform multipolar disorder into a hierarchical regional order: building networks where possible, managing enemies where necessary, and using both cooperation and calibrated force to expand the sphere within which it can act as the dominant regional power.

Strategic Compartmentalization and the Avoidance of a Civilizational Trap

This is where Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thesis becomes relevant—though not in the crude sense often invoked in moments of war. Huntington argued that post-Cold War conflicts would increasingly follow cultural and religious fault lines. Yet the emerging strategy of Washington and its regional allies is not to embrace such a clash outright, but to instrumentalize its logic selectively while containing its broader consequences.

According to SIPRI, Israel is widely recognized to possess a nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s ongoing presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is illegal, and repeated UN reports under Security Council Resolution 2334 continue to document settlement expansion. At the same time, UN humanitarian reports recorded that, by early December 2025, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reported more than 70,000 Palestinians killed, over 170,000 injured, and mass displacement on a devastating scale. Taken together, these facts make any claim that Israeli actions remain firmly within a stable zone of legal and moral legitimacy highly questionable.

Thus, the US-Israeli challenge has never been limited to threat detection alone. It has also involved managing the political fallout from their responses. From Trump’s and Netanyahu’s perspectives, the operation against Iran needed to be framed in a way that preserved as much international legitimacy as possible, even when a clear legal justification was difficult to establish. At the same time, the conflict had to be prevented from escalating into a civilizational clash that could push Muslim-majority societies toward China and expand Beijing’s strategic influence across the Global South. Here, deeper contradictions become unavoidable.

Iran and Hamas are cast as securitized and containable threats, while Gulf monarchies and other Muslim-majority states are engaged through donor diplomacy, regime-security guarantees, and calibrated alliance management. The objective is not simply to fight an adversary, but to prevent the war from consolidating an anti-Western political identity across the broader Muslim world—especially at a moment when parts of the Global South are drifting toward more China-friendly alignments.

This is precisely where the current war differs from a simple Huntingtonian interpretation. The conflict has not been allowed to evolve into a straightforward “West versus Islam” narrative. Instead, much of the diplomatic framework has sought to confine it to a narrower Iran-Hamas security issue. The Council on Foreign Relations noted that the Board of Peace relied heavily on participation from Gulf Arabs and Central Asians, while excluding direct Palestinian political representation at the highest levels of decision-making. Conversely, the UN Human Rights Office sharply criticized this setup as incompatible with a reparative, rights-based approach to reconstruction. From an analytical perspective, however, the main point is not whether the structure is morally convincing. It is that the structure acts as a mechanism of compartmentalization: some actors are isolated as threats to be disarmed or neutralized, while others are kept within a cooperative framework of reconstruction, stabilization, and donor politics.

The regional response confirms that interpretation. In their extraordinary GCC-EU joint statement, Gulf and European ministers condemned Iran’s attacks on GCC states, emphasized that GCC territories had not been used to launch attacks against Iran, invoked self-defense, and highlighted the importance of protecting maritime routes, supply chains, and energy market stability. Meanwhile, Carnegie noted that Gulf monarchies are caught between Iranian escalation and US recklessness, with their main focus on preserving fragile economic and security systems. This is not the language of a unified civilizational bloc; it is the language of regime survival. Nor did the broader Muslim political field unify into a single anti-Western Front. The OIC’s condemnation of Israeli attacks on Iran coexists with muted and ambivalent official Gulf reactions, while AP reporting emphasized elite anger at the US for exposing Gulf states to retaliation without sufficient warning or protection. As a European Council joint statement states, what emerged was fragmentation rather than bloc unity—and that fragmentation was not accidental but part of the crisis’s strategic outcome.

As a conclusion to this part, Gulf monarchies are neither full participants in an anti-Iran crusade nor members of an anti-Western camp. They are defensive actors seeking to preserve commercial credibility, domestic order, and external security amid a war they did not want. That posture is inherently compartmentalizing. It seeks to prevent regional collapse without fully endorsing the strategic logic that produced the crisis in the first place.

Washington’s Domestic Politics and the Uses of External Crisis

The domestic American context also matters, although it should be approached with analytical caution. While the operational details of the strike on Iran are often examined solely from a kinetic perspective, the decision-making process cannot be separated from the Trump administration’s increasing domestic vulnerabilities. The kinetic action serves as the ultimate “escape forward,” where the smoke of external conflict hides the fire of internal issues. Notably, two factors—the recently disclosed Epstein Scandal and the motivations of Trump’s eschatological cabinet—are significant.

A DOJ/FBI memorandum issued in July 2025 stated that investigators found no evidence of a Jeffrey Epstein “client list.” However, in March 2026, the Associated Press reported that newly disclosed files—previously omitted due to an alleged coding error—contained strong allegations involving Donald Trump. While this may not directly confirm a causal link between scandal exposure and war-making, as the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation note, it nonetheless supports a more defensible argument: a scandal-ridden domestic environment can increase the short-term political value of external escalation by diverting scrutiny, reinforcing partisan discipline, and shifting media focus to security rather than accountability.

Beyond the tactical use of distraction, this pressure is increasingly driven by a fundamentalist-Christian elite that has gained unprecedented influence within the cabinet. The appointment of Christian-Zionist ideologues to key bureaucratic positions in the US and diplomatic roles abroad, especially in Israel and the surrounding region, shows that the administration’s foreign policies are being guided by eschatological beliefs. The recent gathering of prominent pastors to “anoint” the President for a perceived war acts as a strategic response to the Epstein disclosures. By portraying the President as a Cyrus-figure—a flawed vessel chosen for divine geopolitical realignment—this faction provides a moral cover that redefines personal scandal as part of spiritual warfare.

In this context, Epstein’s emergence as a posthumous influence agent suggests that the timing of these disclosures may be less coincidental and more coercive. Trapped between the threat of legal disgrace and the demands of his Dominionist base, the President’s move toward external escalation becomes an expected outcome of survival politics. The combination of these allegations with radical religious rhetoric shows that the administration is being pushed into a policy space where aggression is used as the main tool for maintaining domestic stability and ideological legitimacy.

Europe’s Passive Alignment with Trump’s Vision

Europe now appears less as a strategic leader and more as a sign of Western division. Although it remains an important economic player, its geopolitical influence is diminishing. It is a giant in market size, but surprisingly weak in political unity, strategic direction, and external influence. Its direct reliance on Hormuz crude is lower than Asia’s, but it remains highly vulnerable to energy price shocks, industrial setbacks, and alliance pressures. What is especially notable is that Europe has faced the recent escalation in the Middle East while transatlantic relations are already strained. A recent European Parliament study notes that since early 2025, EU-US relations have been increasingly tense over NATO, Greenland, Ukraine, trade, technology, climate, and China, indicating a deeper split in strategic visions across the Atlantic. A recent ECPS Report concurs, finding that the transatlantic relationship has reached a turning point under Trump-era right-wing populism, with erosion in security, trade, international institutions, and democratic norms. In this context, Europe faces the Iran-Israel crisis not with confidence, but amid broader geopolitical confusion.

Yet this is exactly what reveals Europe’s muted stance on Israel. While Washington has become a source of pressure and unpredictability for Europe, the EU has struggled to develop a clear and independent position on Israel. This silence signifies more a weakness than a deliberate strategy: leadership gaps, the lack of a strong, shared perspective within the Union, and the lingering influence of Cold War-era habits of outsourcing hard security to the US. The ECPS volume is especially useful here because it views the current Atlantic crisis not as isolated turbulence but as a systemic shift that requires greater European agency and strategic independence. Europe’s relative passivity, then, should be seen not just as deference but as a sign of unpreparedness: a wealthy political bloc that has yet to turn economic influence into geopolitical power.

Conclusion

The 2026 war with Iran should be seen as more than just a regional military conflict or a temporary energy crisis. It reveals a broader shift in the global order, in which the lines between war, energy security, alliance politics, and narrative control are increasingly blurred. What is emerging isn’t a return to a stable US-centered system, nor a fully developed multipolar balance, but rather a fragmented and coercive landscape. In this environment, major powers, regional players, and smaller states seek to gain advantages through selective alliances, limited escalation, and compartmentalized crisis management. In this context, Israel has acted with unusual clarity, trying to turn global uncertainty into regional dominance through military deterrence, strategic partnerships, and corridor politics. The Gulf monarchies sit at a crucial middle ground, balancing pressure, exposure, and opportunities. Europe, on the other hand, seems less a driver of outcomes than a reflection of Western fatigue—economically significant, politically hesitant, and strategically unprepared for a world where American leadership has become both less dependable and more disruptive.

The deeper significance of this moment lies specifically here. The crisis isn’t just about Iran, or even about the immediate future of the Middle East. It’s about how power is exercised in an era when the liberal language of rules, institutions, and multilateral restraint persists but increasingly lacks the material cohesion or political authority that once sustained it. Strategic compartmentalization has become the preferred way to manage disorder: adversaries are securitized and targeted, partners are reassured and selectively brought in, and broader civilizational escalation is contained rather than solved. This might bring temporary stability, but it does so by reinforcing a new international logic—one characterized by differentiated legitimacy, asymmetrical coercion, and declining normative consistency. The real lesson of the Iran war, then, isn’t just that energy geopolitics has returned, but that it now functions within a more severe and openly hierarchical struggle over who will shape the regional and global order to come.

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Cargo ship transporting containers of waste to a recycling facility. Conceptual image of global waste trade and environmental pollution. Photo: Evgeniy Parilov | Dreamstime.

Plastic Colonialism and the Politics of Waste: Toward a Theory of Waste Sovereignty in the Global South

March 13, 2026

by ECPS_admin with No Comment Commentaries Editor’s Choice Environment & Climate Home

Plastic waste has become one of the defining environmental crises of the twenty-first century—but its politics extend far beyond questions of recycling and waste management. In his commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines how global plastic trade reflects deep structural inequalities between the Global North and the Global South, where environmental burdens are systematically displaced onto poorer regions. Drawing on insights from political economy and environmental justice scholarship, he introduces the concept of waste sovereignty—the claim that states should exercise political control over transboundary waste flows as part of broader struggles for ecological justice and economic autonomy. By examining global waste markets and emerging regulatory responses, Dr. Solaja highlights how plastic pollution has become a key arena of power, sovereignty, and inequality in global environmental governance.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja*

For decades the plastic waste has been travelling through global trade routes and has ultimately landed on waste pickers and informal sector recyclers in developing countries. Although most of the plastic products are consumed in richer economies, the bulk of waste generated through their consumption processes is handled in countries that lack technical capabilities and facilities to do proper recycling. What seems like a technical issue of dealing with waste is, in fact, tied up to the power politics and global asymmetrical relationship between Global North and South resulting in large transfer of environmental risk and pollution to the poorer world, thereby causing rampant pollution.

The first part of the twenty-first century has undoubtedly been defined by an environmental crisis involving plastics. The production of plastic has rapidly escalated to over 400 million tons of material annually since the late 1970s. Despite this, only countries in the Global South have to manage the overwhelming environmental problems related to the processing of this waste, which is mostly generated by more prosperous countries. The flow of plastic waste to the South is a direct result of the export business where more industrialized countries ship their own plastic waste to developing countries for disposal under the guise of recycling markets. Although these movements often disguise themselves as a technical solution to plastic waste disposal, it’s truly about exporting environmental harms to less equipped regions.

According to many researchers and environmentalists, these movements reflect a “plastic colonialism,” where developing nations bear the burden of ecological unequal exchange. As political economist Dani Rodrik describes “globalization is in conflict with democratic politics. A great tension now exists between deep global economic integration and the conditions of domestic political legitimacy.” Plastic has therefore moved beyond being merely an environmental problem; it has become a symbol of global inequality, giving rise to the emerging political concept of waste sovereignty—the argument that nations should have the right to control the transboundary movement of waste as part of broader struggles for environmental justice and economic autonomy.

The Global Plastic Waste Economy

The world economy of plastic involves intricate networks spanning continents that link production, consumption, and disposal, while producing globally distributed yet inequitable environmental impacts. For a long time, China has been a recipient of bulk quantities of plastic waste exported from the US, Japan, and various European countries; this changed in 2018 when China refused to process contaminated waste products. In turn, the export markets shifted, mainly to Southeast Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.

However, these new arrangements are evidence of weaknesses in our recycling infrastructure. In 2017, research from the journal Science showed that only a mere 9% of all plastic waste has ever been recycled. While the remainder of the waste gets dumped, incinerated, or deposited in natural environments. A study from Nature reveals the sheer amount of plastic pollution in our oceans: “275 million tons of plastic, of 4.8 million tons, are drifting across the world’s seas” (Jambeck et al., 2015). The irony of promoting recycling for plastic waste is clear: the recycling industry relies on disposable structures.

Plastic Colonialism and Environmental Inequality

Political ecology and critical political economy inform the notion of plastic colonialism, illustrating that waste is rarely just a result of technical failures in managing waste disposal; rather it is a consequence of wealth disparities, power imbalances, and weaknesses within governmental infrastructure.

In this light, the flow of global waste represents a process of ecological unequal exchange, where waste generated in richer parts of the world results in environmental degradation predominantly in the poorer regions of the world. Thomas Piketty in his study of political economy confirms the persistence of structural disparities within global politics. Moreover, it has been suggested by scholars like Nancy Fraser that environmental problems frequently entail “expropriation,” where marginalized populations bear the ecological costs of production within a globalized world. Plastic waste is therefore not simply about recycling techniques but a critical political struggle between different parties over an issue of environmental justice and unequal resource distribution.

Waste Sovereignty Theory

In an effort to contextualize these issues, Waste Sovereignty Theory introduces the concept of governing waste as an expression of political and environmental sovereignty. Here, governments seek to reclaim ownership over environmental decision making while rebuffing impositions by international markets which place the burden of ecological costs on them. The theory is best understood through the framework of four interconnected concepts representing how states and communities tackle unequal global waste governance.

Territorial Control: States attempt to regulate and control transboundary movements of waste through bans and regulatory checks, with China’s 2018 plastic waste ban being a prime example.

Economic Transformation: Nations are looking to make waste a resource rather than a burden. The creation of circular economy strategies aims to reintroduce waste as part of the production system.

Environmental Justice: Claims for waste sovereignty are primarily derived from accusations that developing nations bear an unjust ecological burden due to the consumption in wealthier nations. These claims call for a new system of waste trade that prevents the unequal distribution of environmental responsibility.

Political Mobilization: The debate over waste governance is often linked to populist and nationalist narratives, which frame these issues as a struggle against oppressive distant powers and an exploitative system where rich nations offload their environmental burdens.

These four pillars, therefore, show how waste politics has become a political and environmental battlefield.

Global Case Studies

Several of the countries across the world exemplify the increasing power of waste sovereignty politics. In Malaysia, a dramatic increase in exports of plastic waste, recently taking place there, is attracting national concern over pollution. Malaysia’s government is trying to regain control of waste streams via a strategy of inspection and sending of suspect materials back to source countries.

Turkey, along with other European countries, is also now dealing with large shipments of plastic waste from Europe, leading to domestic focus on the issues the trade raises in Turkey, and demands for a more responsible waste trading relationship with European countries.

The management of plastic waste across many African countries, presents a multifaceted problem intimately linked to development, and millions survive by waste picking (Ghana). In Kenya, there is a ban on all single-use plastic bags, and in Nigeria research explores avenues for using waste plastic in sectors like textiles.

They all portray a story of nations attempting to address their domestic plastic pollution concerns, while also attempting to retain some control over imported waste streams.

Waste Politics and Populist Narratives

Waste politics and populist ideas are increasingly interconnected. Waste import debates offer powerful evidence that the world’s powerful global players continue to exploit weaker nations. As demonstrated in Naomi Klein’s analysis of environmental crises, these issues can become a part of a larger critique against neoliberalism; the problem of plastic waste is not just a technological issue but also political as it symbolizes the unequal nature of globalization.

Conclusion

The worldwide crisis in plastics unveils a significant discrepancy between the circular economy strategies proposed by global institutions and the ongoing replication of inequality in the sharing of environmental problems that exists in the global waste trade. Plastic colonialism isn’t just an inability to deal with waste, but a structured reflection of the inequality found within the globe, a growing challenge that has sparked protest across the Global South. Waste Sovereignty theory provides an understanding of such developments by framing waste governance as a battle for environmental justice, political sovereignty, and economic autonomy. The international debate surrounding waste governance is likely to play an integral role in the future of global environmental politics and the path towards establishing a more equal world.

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.

References

Brooks, A. L.; Wang, S. & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). “The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade.” Science Advances, 4(6), eaat0131. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131

Fraser, N. (2016). Expropriation and exploitation in racialized capitalism: A reply to Michael Dawson. Critical Historical Studies, 3(1), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1086/685779

Geyer, R.; Jambeck, J. R. & Law, K. L. (2017). “Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.” Science, 3(7), e1700782. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700782

Jambeck, J. R.; Geyer, R.; Wilcox, C.; Siegler, T. R.; Perryman, M.; Andrady, A.; Narayan, R.; & Law, K. L. (2015). “Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean.” Nature, 347(6223), 768–771. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1260352

Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Mudde, C. (2004). “The populist zeitgeist.” Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541–563. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x

Piketty, T. (2020). Capital and Ideology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rodrik, D. (2011). The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W.W. Norton.

Gas mask in the aftermath of chemical warfare.

War Beyond the Battlefield: Environmental and Human Security in Iran

March 9, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Editor’s Choice Environment & Climate Home Human Rights

In this commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines the often-overlooked ecological consequences of modern warfare. Moving beyond traditional analyses focused on military strategy and territorial control, he argues that contemporary conflicts produce long-lasting environmental damage that can destabilize societies for decades. From contaminated farmland and polluted water systems to devastated ecosystems and forced migration, war’s environmental fallout directly undermines human security. Drawing on historical examples such as Agent Orange in Vietnam and the Kuwaiti oil fires during the 1991 Gulf War, the commentary highlights how ecological destruction persists long after hostilities end. Dr. Solaja ultimately calls for stronger international environmental governance and greater integration of environmental protection into global security and peacebuilding frameworks.

By Dr. Oludele Solaja*

Thinking About War in an Ecological Framework

When war is finished in terms of battles, water systems remain polluted, nature destroyed, and infrastructure shattered—and continues to shape the ways in which societies survive and exist. Whereas the majority of scholarly focus concerning warfare centers on issues of military victory, deterring enemies, or controlling territory, the environmental consequences of war can often produce effects that can persist over decades (Lawrence & Stohl, 2019; UNEP, 2009). The current confrontation between the United States, Iran, and Israel, for instance, should be understood not merely as a geopolitical conflict, but as an ecological disaster, as well. The bombing and attack on industrial and energy infrastructure result in more than mere destruction of physical property; these incidents produce ecological disarray, which can lead to widespread contamination of landscape, livelihood and inhabitants, even long after the end of hostilities (Foster et al., 2010; Ide, 2021).

Understanding war in relation to ecology and displacement is one way of looking at the long-term consequences of military combat. Destruction to environment can create instability for societies by contaminating farmland, polluting water sources, or even eliminating the natural resource base required to survive. Therefore modern warfare reaches beyond the battlefield to create different forms of insecurity that may exist in the environment for generations (Nixon, 2011). Hence a sociological study of war, examining both strategic and environmental results of battle, should be adopted in understanding conflict in the 21st century. In an age of increasing environmental crises and security concerns, treating war as an ecological affair can become as significant as viewing it as the domain of military actions (Foster et al., 2010).

Environmental Effects of Modern Warfare

Even though destruction of the environment has historically been a factor of warfare, it often goes overlooked in analyses of security. It can create massive ecological devastation, not just exacerbate humanitarian crises within a warzone, but create an environmental crisis for surrounding regions as well (UNEP, 2009; Lawrence & Stohl, 2019). Aerial bombardment of infrastructure can spread poisons into the air, water sources and natural habitat required for sustenance. Industrial buildings and energy sources—refineries, chemical plants, water treatment plants—are sometimes prime targets. When these sites are destroyed, dangerous pollution can linger in land, air and ground water long after fighting has ended, with effects on human security far reaching (Ide, 2021).

Toxic lands may become unfit for farming and public health will be compromised by contaminants and the food supply jeopardized. It can often take decades to repair the environmental damage so that it may become safely habitated again (UNEP, 2009). Attacks on Iranian oil refineries and petrochemical industries, for example, could cause catastrophic environmental degradation over a wide region of the Middle East, compromising public health and damaging natural ecosystems of the area (Lawrence & Stohl, 2019).

Historical Evidence of Environmental Destruction during War

The long-term humanitarian effects have historically been a characteristic of war-induced ecological damage. Between 1961 and 1971, the US deployed large quantities of Agent Orange across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Large portions of farmland and forest became useless while their soils were contaminated with toxins. In addition to long-lasting health problems, communities continue to deal with the aftermath of these chemicals (Vo & Ziegler, 2018).

Also, during the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi troops burned hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells in an attempt to deter advancing forces. Large quantities of pollutants were released into the air, and oil slicks devastated marine life (Al-Dabbous & Kumar, 2014). As in Vietnam, long-lasting human security issues and a devastated ecosystem resulted from environmental disaster during wartime. The widespread destruction of natural and manmade landscapes caused during conflict does not end immediately and the need for their repair is a long-term challenge that often prolongs instability within nations affected by war. Such environmental harm frequently unfolds gradually and invisibly, what Nixon describes as “slow violence,” in which ecological destruction continues to affect communities long after the immediate conflict has ended (Nixon, 2011).

War, Environmental Degradation and Human Security

Seeing war as a source of ecological devastation helps to better understand the link between war and human security. Attacks on water systems, farms or factories can harm societies through ecological harm which causes social consequences. An attack on an ecosystem could destroy farms, harm public health through pollution of water sources and prompt migration as farming has no longer become an option. These elements—war, environment, displacement—can therefore be described as having a circular relationship, where destruction to one aspect of existence directly fuels destruction in another.

Rural communities are particularly susceptible, since their entire way of life is contingent on their surrounding environment. Without the existence of healthy ecosystems, a livelihood becomes unsustainable and this leads to forced migration in order to survive (Ide, 2021). Homer-Dixon has emphasized the importance of the environment as the driver of conflict through its impact on resource availability and human security; with widespread ecological destruction during conflict, this connection is intensified, creating an even more dire situation (Homer-Dixon, 1999).

Implications for International Environmental Governance

The ecological devastation that war leaves in its wake makes clear the need for international action to help govern the conduct of war so that environment is not harmed so severely and, hopefully, at all. Although international laws of armed conflict are already in place to help alleviate the harm inflicted upon the environment during war, their enforceability has not been successfully maintained (UNEP, 2009). The long-lasting results of ecological destruction often are not considered and may never be compensated for or rectified in the absence of stronger governance structures.

The establishment of environmental monitoring systems, strict liability laws for states or parties engaged in warfare that are responsible for ecological damage, and inclusion of environmental restoration within peacebuilding initiatives would all serve to diminish the long-term negative effects of war on ecology (Ide, 2021). Making protection of the environment a component of security strategy will make policies aligned with global security concerns, and address issues of ecological sustainability as well.

Conclusion

The conflict with Iran highlights the vast ecological consequences of modern warfare. It is a process that not only brings conflict to lands and peoples, but can reshape entire landscapes. Its consequences, historically in war zones such as Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, show that it can be a far more destructive phenomenon to ecosystems than merely battlefield action, lasting far into the future of human habitation (Vo & Ziegler, 2018; Al-Dabbous & Kumar, 2014). Considering war an ecological threat has made it easier to grasp its entire meaning, and looking at warfare from a strategic and environmental perspective allows for a far greater understanding of warfare itself. In an age of increasing geopolitical turmoil, it may soon become just as significant as military victories, if not more so, to understand the environmental threat war poses.

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.

References

Al-Dabbous, A. & Kumar, P. (2014). “Environmental impacts of the Gulf War oil fires.” Environmental Pollution, 189, 59–68.

Foster, J. B., Clark, B., & York, R. (2010). The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. Monthly Review Press.

Homer-Dixon, T. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton University Press.

Ide, T. (2021). “Environmental peacebuilding and the impact of war on ecosystems.” Global Environmental Politics, 21(1), 1–12.

Lawrence, M., & Stohl, A. (2019). “The impact of military emissions on climate change and air pollution.” Nature Communications, 10(1), 1–9.

Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press.

UNEP. (2009). Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law. United Nations Environment Programme.

Vo, M., & Ziegler, A. (2018). “Agent Orange and the environmental legacy of the Vietnam War.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 13(2), 1–28.

Energy Geopolitics from Hormuz to Lagos: Commodity Shocks and African Vulnerability

March 5, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Economics Editor’s Choice Foreign Policy Home

In this analysis, Dr. Oludele Solaja examines how geopolitical tensions around the strategic oil chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz transmit economic shocks across the global political economy and disproportionately affect African states. Because many African economies remain highly dependent on commodity exports and imported energy, oil price volatility quickly translates into inflation, fiscal stress, and social pressure. Even oil-exporting countries such as Nigeria face paradoxical effects, benefiting from higher crude revenues while simultaneously suffering from rising domestic fuel costs. These inflationary pressures can fuel economic discontent, weaken government legitimacy, and create fertile ground for populist mobilization. Dr. Solaja argues that recurrent commodity shocks expose deep structural vulnerabilities, underscoring the need for economic diversification, energy transition, and stronger regional integration to build resilience.

By Oludele Solaja*

Geopolitical conflicts rarely stay within their battlefield boundaries. In a world with integrated economy, war in strategic energy corridor would swiftly lead to inflation, political instability and governmental pressures far from conflict. Geopolitical tensions in the strategic energy corridor are central to the functioning of the global political economy. The Strait of Hormuz holds a peculiar important position in the transit routes among all. Some one fifth of the global petroleum liquids passes through the narrow maritime passage in between Iran and Arabian Peninsula (US Energy Information Administration, 2023), hence the perception of armed conflict even if it’s just the rumor of one in the area would lead to an immediate volatility shock in the global oil market.

Not just the physical supply disruptions but the uncertainty itself would create price volatility. Higher cost of insuring the vessels, shifting of the routes and market responses all contribute to the volatility as well. Scholars of energy politics have always acknowledged that oil markets are intrinsically connected with national security and strategic rivalry (Bridge & Le Billon, 2017). As such, conflict occurring in energy producing areas could have economic impact across nations without any boundaries.

The effects on the developing nations would be even worse. World Bank warns that such shocks from the Middle Eastern energy supply chains could push the oil prices beyond $100/barrel, creating inflation pressure and fiscal burden upon developing nations. In an integrated global economy, a geopolitical shock will be transmitted across the commodity supply chain. Energy supply, food production, transportation network and capital flow are all interconnected.

Inflation Transmission and African Political Economy

When energy prices shock happens in African countries, typically there are two related effects: windfall profit to oil exporters, and inflationary pressure to domestic markets.

On one hand, oil exporters like Nigeria, Angola and Algeria could profit from rising crude oil prices through high export revenues and balance of payments surplus. In theory, windfalls can stabilize fiscal conditions and support increase development expenditure. Nevertheless, political economy literature argues that commodity windfalls often reproduce and strengthen existing vulnerabilities of the economies, which fail to transform into sustainable development instead of generating rent-seeking behavior without firm institutions and diversified economies (Auty, 2001; Ross, 2012).

On the other hand, rising global oil prices will transmit inflation through the domestic economies. Transportation costs rise with higher fuel prices, pushing the price up of goods including foods, which need logistics and transportation, as well as costs for manufactured goods and fertilizers for farming. Electricity costs are also higher and so forth.

In Nigeria, this paradox is crystal clear. Despite being one of Africa’s biggest exporters of crude oil, Nigeria needs to import its supply of refined petroleum products as its own refining capacity is insufficient. This creates two divergent effects at the same time: Nigeria has to pay high fuel import costs from imported refined oil, while export revenue is expected to rise with higher crude prices. Informal sector workers who are in the vast majority in Nigerian labor market would experience increasing cost of living.

The consequences for oil-importing African countries are even harsher. Rising costs of fuel import not only leads to greater trade deficit and depreciation of national currency but also increase countries’ exposure to sovereign debt distress.

Commodity Shocks and Politics of Economic Discontent

The macroeconomic impact beyond energy sector can reshape the domestic political landscape by raising costs of living especially in the vulnerable societies. Political scientists have noted that a sudden increase in living costs can cause popular unrest, weaken government legitimacy, and contribute to the emergence of populism (Rodrik, 2018; Kriesi & Pappas, 2015).

In this case, a global economic shock would have translated into domestic political pressure. When confronting with inflation pressures, African governments often are compelled to subsidize the consumption of oil or enforce price caps, which have proven to undermine fiscal positions and postpone necessary structural adjustments. Repeated commodity shocks in institutionally weak economies can reproduce the same vicious cycles of economic discontent and political instability.

Geopolitical conflicts in energy corridors therefore do more than creating turbulence for economies. They challenge domestic political legitimacy by accentuating conflicts between different strata of society about inflation, social welfare, and commodity distribution.

Structural Vulnerability in Commodity-dependent Economies

All of the aforementioned highlights the inherent structural vulnerabilities of commodity-dependent economic systems. Dependency theorists have consistently asserted that countries that depend on exports of primary commodities are exposed to volatility in international commodity markets (Frank, 1967; Amin, 1976). Moreover, the “resource curse” debate emphasizes rent seeking, volatility, and limited industrial development in extracting economies (Ross, 2012).

Energy geopolitical shock can only intensify this vulnerability. Shipping disruptions or higher freight costs resulting from higher insurance fees due to conflict at Persian Gulf can be re-routed around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, further intensifying the costs borne by all importing nations, especially those relying on food imports, manufactured goods and agricultural inputs. In such cases, the impacts of wars fought at energy corridors are redistributed across the commodity markets that link the Strait of Hormuz to consumers across a faraway land.

Policy Implications: Building Resilience

Mitigating vulnerability of geopolitical commodity shocks requires a long-term perspective beyond ad hoc management strategies. The first thing for African countries is to speed up economic diversification (industrialization and value adding in agriculture), because it will lead to sustainable development not only by reducing dependence on the exports of oil. Secondly, investment in infrastructure and on renewable energies will lead to energy sustainability in African countries and reduces the reliance on imported refined goods. Third, strengthen the social safety net (cash transfers, food security program, etc.) can shield the poorest households from inflationary shocks. Fourth, expand intra-African trade using the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will make the region reduce dependence on unstable international commodity market.

Conclusion

Volatility in strategic energy corridors such as the Strait of Hormuz is a manifestation of geopolitical tensions’ spread across the global political economy. For Africa’s commodity-dependent economies, it amplifies the persistent structural vulnerabilities that are embedded in extraction-based development strategies. Short term export gains associated with rising prices rarely outweigh the subsequent inflationary pressures and fiscal instability in the longer run. Unless these development strategies are actively reformed to emphasize diversification, energy transition and resilience, each commodity shock following every conflict will result in the similar outcomes: temporary windfall gains followed by inflation-induced hardship and fragile development. Geopolitical conflicts in energy corridors, hence, are not just regional security issues; they are fundamentally tests of structural resilience in the development agenda of the Global South.

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.

References

Amin, S. (1976). Unequal development: An essay on the social formations of peripheral capitalism. Monthly Review Press.

Auty, R. (2001). Resource abundance and economic development. Oxford University Press.

Bridge, G., & Le Billon, P. (2017). Oil. Polity Press.

Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. Monthly Review Press.

Kriesi, H., & Pappas, T. (2015). European populism in the shadow of the Great Recession. ECPR Press.

Rodrik, D. (2018). “Populism and the economics of globalization.” Journal of International Business Policy, 1(1–2), 12–33.

Ross, M. (2012). The oil curse: How petroleum wealth shapes the development of nations. Princeton University Press.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2023). World oil transit chokepoints. https://www.eia.gov

World Bank. (2023). Commodity markets outlook. World Bank.

“Googling” Patterns during 2026 State of the Union Address – Research Note

March 4, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Digital-populism Editor’s Choice Home Leadership & Persona

This research note introduces high frequency “real-time” Google Trends data as a novel tool for studying public engagement with major political speeches. Unlike traditional dial-testing, which captures emotional reactions, “googling” patterns reveal cognitive engagement—moments when audiences actively seek information about claims, people, or policies mentioned by the speaker. Analyzing the 2026 State of the Union Address by President Donald J. Trump, the study shows that search activity spiked around issues such as TrumpRX, “Trump Accounts,” and D.E.I., as well as narratives tied to culture-war themes like the story of Sage Blair. The findings suggest that policy proposals addressing material needs—combined with culture-war framing—can mobilize significant public attention, echoing strategies seen in contemporary populist politics.

By Kamil Joński*

Summary

This research note introduces high frequency “real time” Google Trends data as a tool for research on the general public’s engagement with high-profile political speeches. Contrary to the well-known dial-testing – providing data on emotional engagement – “googling” patterns offer glimpse into the cognitive engagement – actual efforts to obtain additional information on the issues introduced in the speech.

The 2026 State of the Union (SOTU) Address by President Donald J. Trump offered promising testing ground for such tool, due to its prominence, extraordinary length, diverse content and involvement of extraordinary invitees personifying the key narratives. The results indicate that TrumpRX and “Trump Accounts” – generated substantial interest among audience – as well as D.E.I. (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). Moreover, search data revealed noticeable interest in the history of Sage Blair – an example of engaging framing of the culture war issues. These narratives could be applied in forthcoming campaigns to construct the mix of policies addressing material needs of anti-elitist voters and the culture war narrative – the sort of “bread and circuses” already deployed by Central European illiberals.

Introduction

On 24 February 2026 President Donald J. Trump delivered the first State of the Union (SOTU) address of his second term. The one hour and 47 minutes performance – breaking President Clinton’s 2000 record by over 20 percent (Peters, 2026) – provided unique communication opportunity for president facing tensions among his MAGA fandom as midterm elections approaches.

Staged in the most “presidential” setting imaginable – a joint session of the United States Congress in a year marking 250 years of US independence – President Trump’s spectacle involved proclamation of “the golden age of America,” litany of 47^th President’s achievements and bashing on the “craziness” of his opponents. It also featured appearance of extraordinary invitees, personifying President’s narratives on the past, present and future of the United States. Indeed, as noticed by The Economist, the speech was “light on policy and heavy on theatre” as “more than 60% of it made no reference to specific proposals, far more than any other address in the past 50 year.”^[1]

According to the Nielsen data, SOTU attracted 32.6 million TV viewers.^[2] In a 24 February survey, conducted for CNN via text message using the SSRS Text Message Panel among 482 respondents who watched the speech,^[3] 64% reacted positively (of them 38% very positively) and 36% negatively (of them 20% very negatively). Noteworthy, the sample was noticeably skewed towards the right – only 18% of respondents described themselves as Democrats, 41% as Republicans, and 41% as independents or others.

As put by W. Mead, “Trump does not speak in order to convey information to his hearers” but rather say things and then see how they react.^[4] Undoubtedly SOTU spectacle offered extraordinary occasion for that, with President spending nearly two hours probing wide array of themes and narratives. In that sense the event can be considered an experiment, and the vast amount of collected data will likely be meticulously crunched in order to develop communication strategies for approaching midterm elections.

On top of surveys, such data can be collected using so called dial-testing – technique developed in 1984 to record real-time reactions of the focus group participants (Kirk & Schill, 2011). For example, Fox News enriched its covering of 2026 SOTU address with dial-testing results from panel made up of 29 Democrats, 30 independents and 41 Republicans.^[5]

The goal of this research note is to introduce another data source, that can be applied to elicit real-time reactions audience of such political event – the “real time”^[6] high-frequency Google Trends data.

Contrary to the dial-testing, aimed at recording feelings and attitudes (emotional reaction), Google Trends reflects actual behaviour of millions of people engaging in the effort to obtain additional information on the issues introduced by the speaker. That could involve attempts to fact-check or learn more about the piece of information mentioned as a part of the bigger narrative.

The rest of the note is structured as follows. Section II briefly introduces Google Trends as a data source, Section IIIapplies them to the President Trump’s 2026 SOTU address, focusing on people explicitly mentioned by the President, as well as keywords relevant for his key topics. Section IV concludes.

**2) “Real Time” Google Trends data**

Presented research design is based upon assumption that as of 24 February 2026, “googling” remained sufficiently popular tool for searching factual information in the USA (as compared to alternative search engines or conversations with AI chatbots), that Google Trends data can provide meaningful depiction of this process.

As explained in FAQ about Google Trends data,^[7] its aim is to “display interest in a particular topic from around the globe or down to city-level geography.” Search data is normalized “to the time and location of a query … each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents to compare relative popularity … the resulting numbers are then scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on a topic’s proportion to all searches on all topics.”

Some categories of searches are filtered out, including: (i) searches made by very few people; (ii) repeated searches from the same person over a short period of time; (iii) queries with apostrophes and other special characters as well as (iv) searches made by Google products and services. However, it is admitted that data “can also reflect irregular search activity, such as automated searches or queries that may be associated with attempts to spam our search results.”^[8]

Technically, public Google Trends tool produces data using “largely unfiltered sample^{^[9]} of actual search requests made to Google.” The “real time” data relies on sample spanning seven days only, however it can be accessed in intervals up to one minute – frequency sufficiently high to trace reactions to the political speech. Unfortunately, reliance on sampling and the “rolling” character of the data diminishes replicability of the results.

Summing up, the search data provided by public Google Trends tool have serious limitations from the scientific point of view. Indeed, users are directly reminded that it is “not scientific and might not be a perfect mirror of search activity.”

However, it offers too many opportunities to be simply ignored, as indicated by application to the topics ranging from macroeconomics (Varian & Choi, 2012), electoral politics (Prado-Román et al. 2021) and pandemic dynamics (Saegner & Austys, 2022).

3) The Results

To gain in-depth insight into the search patterns of US general public during the SOTU address, “real time” Google Trends data for the territory of the United States had been collected with highest available frequency – i.e. with one-minute intervals. The data spanned window from 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM Eastern Time, with SOTU address scheduled at 9:00 PM ET (actually started at 9:11 PM ET).

By design, the values of the search volume index ranged from 0 to 100 – which, in this particular sample, denoted the search volume for “Trump” at 9:42 PM, after President discussed “Trump Accounts”.

3.1. Searches related to the individuals mentioned during the 2026 SOTU address

To demonstrate analytical potential of “real time” Google Trends data for analysis high-profile political speeches, search volume for each of the 30 individuals explicitly referred to by the President Trump during 2026 SOTU address (see table 1 for list) had been plotted on figure 1.

Table 1. Summary of individuals mentioned by President Donald J. Trump during 2026 SOTU address
Name	Description based on the President Trump’s address and open sources
Joe Biden	46^th US President
Connor Hellebuyck	Ice-hockey goaltender, gold medalist of Team U.S.A.
Buddy Taggart	World War II veteran
Milly Cate McClymond	Survivor of Texas flood of 4 July 2025
Scott Ruskan	Coast Guard rescue swimmer during Texas flood of 4 July 2025
Megan Hemhauser	Beneficiary of President Trump’s tax cuts
M. and S. Dell	Donors of the $6,250,000,000 to fund the “Trump accounts”
Brad Gerstner	Another donor for “Trump accounts”
Catherine Rayner	Beneficiary of President Trump’s drug discounts, undergoing IVF
Raysall Wiggins	Placed bids on 20 homes but lost to gigantic investment firms
Nancy Pelosi	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
Dalilah Coleman	Victim of a car crash caused by “illegal alien”
Lizbeth Medina	Victim of a murder committed by “illegal alien”
Sage Blair	In 2021 socially transitioned to a new gender
Melania Trump	The First Lady
Charlie Kirk	Assassinated MAGA activist
Anya Zarutska	Ukrainian war refugee, victim of a murder
Sarah Beckstrom	National Guard Specialist killed in the terrorist attack in Washington, DC
Andrew Wolfe	National Guard Staff Sgt., survivor of the terrorist attack in Washington, DC
Steve Witkoff	Special Envoy
Jared Kushner	Special Envoy, Ivanka Trump’s husband
Marco Rubio	U.S. Secretary of State
Suleimani	Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general killed in U.S. attack
Nicolás Maduro	President of Venezuela raided by US forces in 2026
Delcy Rodríguez	Acting president of Venezuela
E. and A. Gonzalez	Venezuelan opposition leader freed from prison and his niece
Eric Slover	U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 5, helicopter pilot during Maduro raid
Royce Williams	World War II, Korean war and Vietnam war veteran
Thomas Jefferson	Founder of the USA, Third US President
Source: Own compilation based on transcript by The New York Times^{^[10]}

As one could expect, celebrity status of C. Hellebuyck and Melania Trump was reflected in the volume of related searches. Other individuals mentioned by President Trump, who attracted highest search volumes involved: (i) Michael and Susan Dell and (ii) Brad Gerstner – “Trump Accounts” donors, (iii) Nancy Pelosi, (iv) Sage Blair – personifying narrative on risks associated with gender transition, (v) Charlie Kirk – assassinated MAGA activist, (vi) Andrew Wolfe – Washington D.C. terrorist attack survivor , (vii) Marco Rubio – US Secretary of State and (viii) Royce Williams – war veteran awarded with Congressional Medal of Honor.

Undoubtedly the exact reasons for “googling” specific individuals in a given time can differ. To use example of Nancy Pelosi, first peak involved President’s quip on Stop Insider Trading Act, and the second coincided with her appearance in Fox broadcast^{^[11]} wearing “Release the Files” button.^[12] Despite that, the search volume for “Epstein” remained unaffected (see fig. 2). One can imagine that peak for Thomas Jefferson reflected the attempts to fact-check date of his death provided by the President.

3..2. Search words related to key issues raised by President Trump during 2026 SOTU address

Figure 2 plots second group of keywords examined in this note – those related to the topics raised by the President Trump, selected on the basis of the transcript of the speech.

The top panel illustrates the most-searched keywords, starting with the President himself, D.E.I. and two Trump-named programs – “Trump accounts” (saving vehicle for American children^[13]) and TrumpRX (website providing access to large discounts on high-priced medicines^[14]). Also, the recent decision of the Supreme Court on tariffs and President’s quip on the renaming of Fort Bragg had been reflected in “googling” data.

The middle panel illustrates primarily keywords referring to the economy and costs of living. Despite President Trump’s references to the inflation data or the remarks on the price of eggs and beef, there is no doubt that “$1.85 a gallon for gasoline” inspired the most factchecking.

Finally, the searches on crime and murder peaked as President Trump urged Congress to pass “tough legislation to make sure violent and dangerous repeat offenders are put behind bars, and importantly, that they stay there” (search volume for murder previously peaked when President proclaimed that the “murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history”). Also, President’s references to the insider trading and voter ID legislation – as well as quips on “Somali pirates who ransacked Minnesota” – had been reflected in the respective keywords search volumes.

In a survey conducted for the CNN,^[15] 45% of respondents claimed that the President focused too little on the economy and costs of living (according to 53% it was the right amount) and 38% claimed that he focused too much on immigration (according to 56% it was the right amount) – assessment that seems consistent with patterns observed in web searches. As of foreign policy 62% claimed the President devoted the right amount.

Given substantial search volumes for D.E.I. and two Trump-named programs, it is interesting to explore their state-level differences. The data indicates that in some states D.E.I. was “googled” much more intensely than both Trump-named programs (like Rhode Island and Vermont). TrumpRX attracted considerably more attention than D.E.I. in several Republican states, as well as District of Columbia and Virginia. “Trump Accounts” did so in Alaska, Montana and D.C., but not in South Dakota.

4) Conclusions

The goal of this note was to introduce high frequency “real time” Google Trends data as a tool for examining the general public’s reactions to the high-profile political speeches. Contrary to the well-known dial-testing – providing data on emotional reactions – “googling” patterns offers glimpse into the cognitive reactions – actual efforts to obtain additional information on the issues introduced in the speech. The 2026 SOTU address by President Trump offered promising testing ground for such tool, due to its prominence, length, range of topics and extraordinary invitees personifying the key narratives.

To illustrate its analytic potential, one can compare obtained results with the conventional wisdom on 2026 SOTU. In particular, relatively scant attention is paid to the issue of TrumpRX or “Trump Accounts” – that actually inspired a lot of information searching.

That could indicate, that as of 2026, programmes directed at the material needs of voters – although with distinct, US characteristics, like reliance on market mechanisms and billionaire donations – could resonate among President Trump’s bases. Thereby, their importance in his political strategy could increase.

Moreover, as judged by “googling” patterns, topics like D.E.I., political correctness (like renaming Fort Bragg) still attract attention of US public. The interest in the history of Sage Blair confirmed that her story offered engaging example of framing culture war issues.

If indeed deployed, the mix of policies addressing material needs of anti-elitist voters coupled with the culture war narrative could provide MAGA with the sort of “bread and circuses” already deployed by Central European illiberals, ending what Timothy Snyder called “sado-populism.”

(*) Kamil Joński, Ph.D. is an assistant in the Department of Tax Law at the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) and an economist by training. He holds a degree from SGH and is currently employed as part of a research project at the institution. Dr. Joński has participated in several research projects funded by the National Science Centre and conducted at the Warsaw School of Economics, the University of Economics in Kraków, and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His research focuses on the functioning of public institutions—particularly common and administrative courts—as well as public policy formulation and implementation, tax policy, and legislative processes.

References

Peters, G. (2026). “Length of State of the Union Addresses in Minutes (from 1966).” The American Presidency Project. Ed. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California. 1999-2026. Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/324136/ (accessed on February 26, 2026).

Choi, H.; Varian, H. (2012). “Predicting the Present with Google Trends (June 2012).” Economic Record, Vol. 88, pp. 2-9, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2012.00809.x

Prado-Román, C.; Gómez-Martínez, R.; Orden-Cruz, C. (2021). “Google Trends as a Predictor of Presidential Elections: The United States Versus Canada.” American Behavioral Scientist. 2021;65(4):666-680. doi:10.1177/0002764220975067

Saegner, T; Austys, D. (2022). “Forecasting and Surveillance of COVID-19 Spread Using Google Trends: Literature Review.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022, Sep 29;19(19):12394. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912394.

Kirk R.; D. Schill. (2011). “CNN’s Dial Testing of the Presidential Debates. Parameters of Discussion in Tech Driven Politics.” In: Hendricks, J.A., & Kaid, L.L. (Eds.), Techno Politics in Presidential Campaigning: New Voices, New Technologies, and New Voters, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203851265

Footnotes

^[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/02/25/our-language-analysis-of-donald-trumps-state-of-the-union-address (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[2] https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/32-6-million-watch-2026-state-of-the-union-address/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[3] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27411442-cnn-poll-conducted-by-ssrs-state-of-the-union-reaction/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[4] LSE public event “American foreign policy in the age of Trump”, 19 February 2026, available at: https://youtu.be/5OhbCXoJ-kM?list=PLK4elntcUEy3kR3B4Ws8PcKndb1g5a68Y&t=779 11584551 (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[5] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/voters-react-trump-touts-signature-tariff-plan-state-union (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[6] https://medium.com/google-news-lab/what-is-google-trends-data-and-what-does-it-mean-b48f07342ee8 (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[7] https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4365533 (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[8] It is explained that “these searches may be retained in Google Trends as a security measure: filtering them from Google Trends would help those issuing such queries to understand we’ve identified them”.

^[9] As explained later: “Providing access to the entire data set would be too large to process quickly. By sampling data, we can look at a dataset representative of all Google searches, while finding insights that can be processed within minutes of an event happening in the real world”.

^[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/state-of-the-union-transcript-trump.html (Accessed 2 March 2026). See also text and video available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/386357 (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[11] Video recording by LiveNOW from FOX, available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF7Vve53z4k (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[12] https://nypost.com/2026/02/24/us-news/democratic-womens-caucus-reps-wear-all-white-attire-epstein-related-pins-to-state-of-the-union-2026-address/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[13] https://www.whitehouse.gov/research/2025/08/trump-accounts-give-the-next-generation-a-jump-start-on-saving/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[14] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-launches-trumprx-gov-to-bring-lower-drug-prices-to-american-patients/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

^[15] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27411442-cnn-poll-conducted-by-ssrs-state-of-the-union-reaction/ (Accessed 2 March 2026).

Makoko fishing settlement in Lagos, Nigeria.

Climate Security from Below: Community Environmental Action and Democratic Gaps in Coastal Nigeria

March 2, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Editor’s Choice Environment & Climate Home

Along Nigeria’s vulnerable coastline, climate change is not a projection but a daily struggle shaping survival, governance, and democracy. In this incisive commentary, Dr. Oludele Solaja reveals how communities—from Lagos to Cross River—are filling critical gaps left by weak institutions, organizing drainage cleanups, mangrove restoration, and informal warning systems to confront flooding, pollution, and shoreline loss. These grassroots practices constitute “climate security from below,” challenging state-centric narratives that equate security with national planning alone. Yet this resilience also exposes deep democratic deficits, as citizens assume responsibilities that should belong to public authorities. The Nigerian case calls for a rethinking of climate security—one that bridges community initiative with accountable governance and recognizes local actors not as substitutes for the state, but as indispensable partners in building sustainable, democratic adaptation.

By Oludele Solaja*

Along the Nigerian coast, climate change is not a distant forecast; it is an everyday reality. Floodwaters inundate homes. Shorelines relentlessly recede. Saltwater contaminates freshwater supplies. Drains choke with plastic refuse, transforming streets into temporary lakes when the rains arrive. For those in the Niger Delta and adjacent coastal areas, climate insecurity is not a concept but a lived experience.

Yet climate security is often discussed in terms of state stability, resource conflicts, or national-level adaptation planning. On the ground, the picture is very different. In many parts of the Nigerian coast, securing the climate is a local endeavor—it is climate security from below.

All along Nigeria’s long coastal belt—from Lagos in the west to Cross River in the east—communities are filling governance gaps caused by weak infrastructure, state absenteeism, and an economy structured around extractive activities. Their everyday efforts to prevent environmental hazards, safeguard livelihoods, and protect daily life from environmental instability constitute a concrete instance of climate security from below.

Climate Risk and Governance Gaps

Among all regions of Nigeria, the coastal zone—characterized by high population density, vital ecosystems, and extensive oil-sector industrial development—is one of the country’s most climate-sensitive areas. Devastating nationwide floods (2012 and 2022) caused massive population displacement (UN OCHA, 2023), while the low-lying areas of the delta region are vulnerable to flooding due to the combined effects of sea-level rise and subsidence. The persistent and serious pollution of marine and coastal areas by oil (UNEP, 2011; World Bank, 2021) is another major challenge to the region’s resilience, in addition to the issue of waste disposal.

However, these climate hazards do not operate independently of existing governance failures: the most basic measures of environmental protection—drainage, waste management systems, shoreline stabilization, and adaptation measures—are still absent from the majority of coastal Nigerian communities even after over half a century of oil production. The institutions responsible for addressing these hazards often exist only on paper rather than being effectively implementable, and are seen by communities as out of reach, lacking sufficient resources, or being overly controlled by industrial corporations (Watts, 2004; Adekola & Mitchell, 2011).

National planning and large infrastructure projects have come to dominate official discourse on climate security. However, daily maintenance tasks—such as unblocking drainage channels and maintaining vegetation cover along coastlines—appear to receive little attention. The resulting governance gaps mean that environmental risks mount even as the ability of institutions to respond to them fails to keep pace. The response? Communities themselves have filled these gaps.

Everyday Climate Security

Across the Nigerian coast, locals organize cleanups of drainage channels in anticipation of the rains. Youth groups remove plastic waste from waterways. Local fishers actively plant mangrove trees that offer protection from storm surges, and some local leaders invest in manually reinforcing shorelines. Informal communication networks are established to disseminate warnings during extreme weather events. These actions perform critical climate-security functions: clearing waterways reduces flooding risks, planting mangroves strengthens coastlines, waste removal enhances public health, and social networks bolster community solidarity during critical moments.

This is climate security lived through everyday practice. It involves the extensive use of local ecological knowledge—the implicit understanding of local tidal systems, sedimentation processes, vegetation cover, and flood dynamics that formal engineering approaches sometimes fail to capture (Berkes, 2018). These efforts are frequently outside state plans, organized through communal labor, volunteers, and community associations (Adger et al., 2005; IPCC, 2022). This form of security has moved from a distant policy objective to a matter of routine—often invisible, often unpaid—maintenance that ensures continued habitation in these communities.

The Politics of Resilience

However, community agency is only one aspect of the story. It reveals deep democratic deficits in Nigeria’s governance landscape. Many communities in Nigeria’s coast have had minimal participation in environmental decision-making and very limited input in planning related to coastal infrastructure (Adekola & Mitchell, 2011). Environmental damage and subsequent exclusion caused by the operations of the oil industry in the Niger Delta continue to fuel local suspicion and resentment of both the state and oil companies (UNEP, 2011).

Dominant narratives about national development tend to focus on megaprojects, especially those involving infrastructure such as new highways and expanding coastal reclamation schemes, instead of the vital work of maintaining drains or planting mangroves. Communities therefore take on tasks that ought to be part of municipal governance. On the one hand, this enhances community resilience; yet, on the other, it may inadvertently normalize state withdrawal and a general lack of commitment from both national and subnational governments. When people do not expect the municipality to respond, self-help becomes the norm, and they may no longer notice the absence of this state function. Climate security from below becomes both a function of and evidence of failed state governance. Understanding this dynamic is critical; the ability of a community to exhibit resilience through its own actions should not serve as justification for abandoning its rights to a participatory state governance structure.

Informality and Legitimacy

A significant proportion of this community-based environmental management along Nigeria’s coast operates informally. There are no municipal plans that document these practices, nor are there official funds allocated to support them, yet they possess strong local legitimacy. The practice of collective labor and a long tradition of shared ownership over local environments continue to be powerful social resources. The application of indigenous ecological knowledge enhances their efficacy, given that local actors may possess more detailed knowledge of flood dynamics than engineers. For instance, locally managed mangrove planting may have higher survival rates than centrally implemented technical solutions that are often not sensitive to local ecology (Berkes, 2018; IPCC, 2022). Nevertheless, informality means that these efforts struggle when faced with widespread industrial pollution or encroaching urban waste. Sustained resilience under such conditions requires not only community initiative but also institutional support and legitimacy.

Rethinking Climate Security

The Nigerian case thus requires a reconsideration of conventional understandings of climate security. Security may not simply entail preventing conflict and safeguarding states but also includes the protection of livelihoods, human health, and natural ecosystems threatened by contemporary climate change processes. In the Global South, resilience is emerging first in informal, grassroots, locally managed communities rather than through national adaptation planning.

To achieve sustainable climate security, bridging grassroots efforts and inclusive state governance institutions must be a priority. Formal acknowledgement of these community-led adaptations within national adaptation frameworks, cooperative frameworks integrating local knowledge and technical capacity, participatory planning mechanisms to overcome democratic gaps, small-scale climate financing to support community projects without over-bureaucratization, as well as the integration of local ecological knowledge into formal assessments are some policy strategies. This reconfigures communities not as a substitute for the state but as legitimate and important partners in governance.

Conclusion

In fact, climate security is already being constructed from below on Nigeria’s coast—with drainage repair, mangrove planting, waste disposal, and vigilant self-policing, communities are managing daily life under accelerating environmental breakdown. This is indicative of both community strength and utter policy collapse simultaneously. The Nigerian case makes clear that strategies for climate security need to consider possibilities beyond the state and engage in discussions around daily security practices if adaptation is to become the practice of democratic, responsive statehood.

(*) Dr. Oludele Solaja is a faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Olabisi Onabanjo University in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, Nigeria.

References

Adger, W. N.; Hughes, T. P.; Folke, C.; Carpenter; S. R. & Rockström, J. (2005). “Social-ecological resilience to coastal disasters.” Science, 309(5737), 1036–1039.

Adekola, O. & Mitchell, G. (2011). “The Niger Delta wetlands: Threats to ecosystem services, their importance to dependent communities and possible management measures.” International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management, 7(1), 50–68.

Berkes, F. (2018). Sacred ecology (4th ed.). Routledge.

IPCC. (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Cambridge University Press.

UNEP. (2011). Environmental assessment of Ogoniland. United Nations Environment Programme.

UN OCHA. (2023). Nigeria floods situation report 2022–2023. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Watts, M. (2004). “Resource curse? Governmentality, oil and power in the Niger Delta.” Geopolitics, 9(1), 50–80.

World Bank. (2021). Climate risk country profile: Nigeria. World Bank Group.

Flags of the Quad countries—Japan, Australia, the United States, and India—symbolizing strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Photo: Sameer Chogale.

Pax Americana to Pax Silica: Strategic Shifts in US Security Policy

January 29, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Editor’s Choice Foreign Policy Home

From Pax Americana to Pax Silica, US grand strategy is undergoing a quiet but consequential transformation. In this timely commentary, Dr. Prerna Chahar argues that recent US security documents—the 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—signal a shift away from global stewardship toward a selective, technology-centered, and leverage-driven order. Rather than underwriting international rules and alliances, Washington is increasingly exercising power through control over strategic technologies, supply chains, and infrastructural chokepoints—a model Dr. Chahar conceptualizes as Pax Silica. This reorientation prioritizes hemispheric consolidation, technological dominance, and transactional partnerships over normative leadership. For partners such as India, the implications are profound: engagement remains valuable but conditional, reinforcing the logic of strategic autonomy, calibrated cooperation, and multi-alignment in a fragmented global order.

By Prerna Chahar*

What is unfolding in US security policy is neither isolationism nor traditional internationalism, but a selective strategy centered on leverage, technology, and regional primacy. American grand strategy is undergoing a quiet yet consequential transformation one that redefines how power is exercised, how partnerships are valued, and how international order is sustained. Recent US strategic documents, the National Security Strategy (NSS), and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) point to a decisive shift away from managing global order toward consolidating national advantage, with far-reaching implications for allies and partners.

The National Security Strategy (NSS), published on December 4, 2025, and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026, signed into law on December 18, 2025, together confirm that the era of Pax Americana characterized by institutional stewardship, alliance management, and normative leadership is giving way to a more selective, technology-centered, and transactional order. This emerging configuration may be described as Pax Silica: an order grounded less in alliances and rules and more in control over technology, supply chains, and strategic chokepoints.

NSS and NDAA: Reframing US Grand Strategy

The framing of the NSS 2025 itself signals a deliberate break from earlier approaches to American grand strategy. Four recurring themes encapsulate this reorientation.

First, the strategy explicitly rejects “old policies,” portraying past commitments to liberal internationalism, open-ended multilateralism, and interventionism as having diluted US sovereignty, weakened economic resilience, and overstretched strategic focus. This narrative of rupture legitimizes a more restrained and interest-driven approach to global engagement.

Second, the NSS defines what America wants with unusual clarity. Rather than emphasizing the maintenance of international order, it articulates bounded national priorities border security, economic nationalism, technological dominance, and hemispheric stability. Global leadership is no longer treated as an intrinsic responsibility but as a derivative of clearly specified national interests.

Third, both the NSS and the NDAA foreground American strength in material rather than normative terms. The NDAA 2026 authorizes over $900 billion in national defense funding, making it one of the largest defense policy bills in recent history. This level of spending underscores a sustained emphasis on military readiness, industrial capacity, and technological superiority. Military capability, innovation ecosystems, industrial depth, and technological leadership take precedence over values-based diplomacy, institutional rule-making, or normative influence.

The NDAA further operationalizes this shift through enhanced cybersecurity authorities, frameworks for the secure development and deployment of artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems and strengthened protections for US Cyber Command and digital infrastructure. It also expands authorities related to airspace security and counter-unmanned aerial systems under provisions such as the Safer Skies Act broadening civil and federal counter-drone capabilities. Together, these measures reflect the logic of Pax Silica, in which control over technology and infrastructure replaces institutional stewardship as the primary currency of influence.

Fourth, the NSS report clarifies the renewed strategic focus on the Western Hemisphere. While global competition remains important, the strategy prioritizes hemispheric stability, border control, migration management, and economic dominance within the Americas. This represents a modernized revival of Monroe Doctrine logic, where securing influence in the immediate neighborhood is treated as foundational to national security. Engagement beyond the hemisphere is increasingly selective and interest-driven, filtered through considerations of domestic security, economic resilience, and technological advantage rather than assumptions of automatic leadership. The NDAA reinforces this orientation by prioritizing resources for homeland protection, maritime domain awareness in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and defense readiness tied to territorial security. Together, these documents signal a shift from global managerial ambitions toward consolidation of power closer to home.

Taken collectively, these elements reflect a fundamental strategic reorientation. Rather than presenting the United States as the custodian of international order, the NSS positions it as a state intent on consolidating advantage, preserving autonomy, and exercising leverage. This underscores the durability of what may be termed the Trump Corollary: the notion that alliances, institutions, and global engagements are instruments to be justified by tangible returns rather than commitments sustained for systemic stability or normative leadership.

US ‘Pax Silica’: Renewed Instrument of Power

Within this hemispheric and technological reorientation, Pax Silica captures the defining feature of the emerging order: power exercised through technological and infrastructural dominance rather than institutional rule-making. Semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, digital platforms, and financial networks now constitute the backbone of strategic competition. Control over access to these systems enables coercion and influence without overt force.

Edward Fishman, in his book Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, demonstrates how American power increasingly operates through the regulation of markets, technology flows, and supply chains, an approach clearly visible in export controls, investment screening, and technology-denial regimes embedded in both the NSS and the NDAA. Unlike Pax Americana, which relied on openness, predictability, and alliance cohesion, Pax Silica is exclusionary and conditional. Cooperation is granted rather than guaranteed; access replaces inclusion as the principal mechanism of influence.

The most consequential aspect of this transition is the decoupling of power from stewardship. The United States remains pre-eminent, but it no longer seeks to underwrite global order as a public good. Instead, it prioritizes regional consolidation, technological control, and transactional leverage. This is not withdrawal, but re-hierarchization: the Western Hemisphere first, strategic technologies second, and global commitments contingent on domestic advantage.

Implications for India

The renewed US focus on the Western Hemisphere carries important implications for India. While the Indo-Pacific remains relevant, it is no longer the singular organizing theatre of US grand strategy. Engagement in Asia is increasingly shaped by cost-benefit calculations and capability contributions rather than long-term commitments to regional order. For India, this creates both opportunity and uncertainty. Reduced ideological pressure allows greater strategic autonomy, but transactional partnerships demand constant negotiation. Cooperation in defense, technology, and supply-chain resilience particularly in semiconductors and critical technologies remains valuable yet inherently conditional. India’s participation in groupings such as the Quad must therefore be understood as calibrated engagement rather than alignment, reinforcing the logic of multi-alignment and diversification.

Conclusion

The shift from Pax Americana to Pax Silica reflects a profound transformation in US statecraft. The renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, combined with technological competition and transactional diplomacy, marks a move away from global stewardship toward selective, leverage-based power. For partners such as India, the challenge is to engage without illusion cooperating where interests converge, hedging where vulnerabilities emerge, and sustaining strategic autonomy in a world where leadership is fragmented and power is increasingly exercised through control rather than consensus.

(*) Dr. Prerna Chahar is a scholar of International Relations with published research on US foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific, regional coalition-building, and India’s foreign policy. She holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Centre for the Study of the Americas (CCUS&LAS), School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Emblem of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Photo: Dreamstime.

From the ‘End of History’ to the ‘End of a Fiction’: What Davos 2026 Really Announced

January 28, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Economics Editor’s Choice Foreign Policy Home

Davos 2026 revealed a global order no longer converging on a single liberal model, but sliding into a harsher era in which power increasingly outweighs rules and “integration” is reframed as vulnerability. The most striking paradox was that this diagnosis came not from critics at the margins, but from the system’s own architects—transforming elite “candor” into a strategy for managing declining legitimacy. In a world shaped by fragmentation and coercive interdependence, China’s state-capitalist model is increasingly perceived as a more effective crisis-response framework, while the United States and Europe drift toward a troubling hybrid: adopting not China’s developmental strengths, but its coercive instruments of control. This dynamic reflects an emerging logic of reverse convergence—the West is no longer guiding the world toward liberalism, but being pulled toward the governance style of its principal rival.

By Ibrahim Ozturk

The Davos platform can be seen as a stage where dominant actors test narratives, identify legitimacy losses, and modify the public vocabulary they use to govern (or justify governing). It rarely makes formal decisions; instead, it indicates what elites believe they can still publicly defend—and what they can no longer convincingly pretend. Davos 2026, in that sense, can be viewed less as a policy summit and more as a diagnosis of the regime.

In this context, Davos 2026 is significant because the words spoken inside the room seemed less like a reaffirmation of the post-1990 liberal-global order and more like an early draft of its obituary. Larry Fink, Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and CEO of BlackRock—one of the world’s largest asset managers—started with a blunt admission that the world trusts Davos and the WEF’s ability to shape the future “far less,” warning that the forum risks seeming “out of step with the moment: elites in an age of populism” (Fink, 2026). Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, took it even further. He suggested that the problem isn’t just declining trust in institutions; it’s the collapse of the narrative foundations of the “rules-based liberal multilateral order” itself. He described “the end of a pleasant fiction… and the beginning of a harsh reality,” emphasizing that “we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition” (Carney, 2026).

If anything was “announced,” then it was not a new treaty or a coordinated policy package. It was an elite confession: the old legitimating story no longer works.

What Exactly Is Ending?

The natural questions—What was declared at Davos? Is it the end of the Western system? Is Chinese-style state capitalism rising? —are the right ones. But they require careful separation of the West as power from the West as ideology, and of neoliberal globalization from liberal democracy. What seems to be ending is not “the West” as a geographical or civilizational fact, but a historically specific settlement—visible in three interlocking dimensions.

The end of the convergence myth: One part of the story traces back to assumptions about nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernization. Classical modernization thinking regarded history as a linear, stage-like process where societies would converge toward a single “advanced” model through diffusion, emulation, and integration—so that cross-civilizational differences would eventually appear as “time lags,” not alternative paths (Apter, 1965; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Rostow, 1960). In that framework, modernity was not just one option among many; it was seen as the expected endpoint of development.

Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis—initially presented as an essay and later expanded into a book—was a late-twentieth-century extension of this modernization perspective (Fukuyama, 1989, 1992). After the fall of Soviet-style planning, liberal capitalism seemed not just victorious but final: no significant systemic challengers remained, and future conflicts were seen as minor issues rather than real alternatives.

Davos 2026, however, seemed to quietly acknowledge that this convergence theory has run its course. After decades of “learning-by-doing” globalization, the idea that marketization, integration, and digitization would inevitably lead to liberal-democratic outcomes has become less convincing. Among many others, Öztürk (2025) calls this a fundamental “liberal fallacy,” revealed by post-2008 stagnation, growing inequality, and the resilience of authoritarian governance under capitalist conditions.

The decline of the authority of the “rules-based order” (as performance): A second aspect involves the public authority of institutional rules. Carney’s remarks illustrated a familiar phenomenon: states show belief in a rules-based order—displaying the “sign” publicly—while privately recognizing how often the rules break down in practice (Carney, 2026). His metaphor strongly mirrors Václav Havel’s assessment of late-socialist legitimacy: the system’s survival relied on ritualistic compliance and public participation in an official fiction, even when no one truly believed it (Havel, 1978).

In modern global politics, this is the credibility crisis of liberal internationalism: the rules exist, but enforcement seems selective; the universal language stays, but power distribution shapes outcomes. This is exactly where realism comes back—sometimes openly, sometimes disguised as “values-based pragmatism.”

The end of elite capitalism’s moral economy: Third, Davos 2026 hosted a legitimacy check on elite-led capitalism itself. Fink’s insistence that prosperity cannot be reduced to total GDP gains or stock-market success implicitly admits what critics have argued for decades: growth narratives do not automatically generate social approval when the distribution of wealth is unfair, public services decline, and opportunities disappear (Fink, 2026; Piketty, 2020).

This line closely mirrors Robert F. Kennedy’s well-known critique of national income accounting, asserting that GDP can measure “everything… except that which makes life worthwhile” (Kennedy, 1968). What once seemed like fresh wisdom at Davos in 2026 now appears as delayed recognition: a long-overdue admission that the legitimacy of capitalism cannot rely solely on aggregate indicators. Taken together, these three dimensions do not imply “the end of the West.” They signify the end of the West’s story about itself—the self-description of a system that universalizes its model as destiny, naturalizes its institutions as neutral rules, and considers legitimacy to be the automatic result of growth. Historically, when a hegemonic story collapses, systems rarely vanish overnight; instead, they change and adapt.

The Crisis of Corporate Capitalism as a Reflection of the System

Öztürk’s (2025) “reverse convergence” hypothesis provides one of the clearest ways to interpret Davos 2026. It avoids two lazy conclusions— (1) “China is replacing the West,” and (2) “nothing changes; it’s only noise”—by arguing that the direction of convergence has reversed. Liberal democracies are increasingly adopting illiberal governance techniques (expanded surveillance, executive discretion, securitized policy frames, controlled pluralism), while authoritarian regimes are adopting capitalist tools (market mechanisms, technological dynamism, corporate scale) without liberalizing. This is not ideological convergence through persuasion. It is functional convergence driven by systemic pressure.

Here, Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “double movement” becomes central: disembedded markets cause social division and political backlash, but the protective countermovement can be seized—redirected into nationalist, exclusionary, or authoritarian forms instead of democratic re-embedding (Polanyi, 1944). Fernand Braudel’s distinction is also important: capitalism is not the same as competitive markets; it is often a structure of lasting domination shielded from democratic accountability (Braudel, 1982, 1984).

Add the modern layer of digital political economy. The tools of governance increasingly function through infrastructures of data extraction, algorithmic control, and dependency rather than through persuasion or consent. This is the shared domain of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019), vectoral power and information monopolies (Wark, 2004, 2019), and “techno-feudal” rent extraction via digital platforms and cloud infrastructures (Varoufakis, 2023). In this view, Davos 2026 was not just a geopolitical event; it also revealed that corporate capitalism has created a legitimacy gap that traditional liberal narratives can no longer fill.

When Fink’s speech is analyzed through the perspectives of Polanyi and Braudel, it seems to outline a plan to restore legitimacy. He urged the WEF to “regain trust,” boost participation, and modernize the language used to defend capitalism (Fink, 2026). Even if the diagnosis is sound, the messenger presents a problem. The contradiction is structural: the credibility crisis he describes is closely linked to the financial and corporate structures that BlackRock represents. When the “doctor” is also one of the system’s most powerful beneficiaries, criticism is often seen as mere damage control by elites rather than genuine reformist bravery.

Fink also emphasized that prosperity must become distributive, turning “more people into owners of growth,” not spectators (Fink, 2026). Yet this is where Davos rhetoric regularly stalls: it acknowledges the legitimacy problem but often proposes solutions at the level of communication rather than at the level of reconstruction. The 2026 shift, then, is not the defense of globalization’s moral premise; it is an attempt to rewrite capitalism’s legitimacy contract amid mass distrust.

A key concern running through the Davos discussions about AI is anxiety. The worry is that AI will repeat the distributional betrayal of globalization: early benefits go to owners of data, compute, models, and platforms, while the social costs are spread out to others. Without strong redistribution and governance, AI risks being less of a productivity leap and more of a new enclosure system—worsening dependence instead of expanding opportunities (Zuboff, 2019; Varoufakis, 2023).

From Benign Interdependence to Fortress Logic

Carney’s intervention was more impactful because it explicitly addressed what “trust” rhetoric often overlooks: the geopolitical and geoeconomic rupture of the rules-based order. His speech repeatedly suggested that the liberal promise of mutual interdependence has run its course. Integration can become a source of vulnerability and subjugation, leading states to pursue strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, finance, and supply chains (Carney, 2026).

At one point, Carney invoked a brutally realistic moral: “the strong can do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” The phrase echoes the Melian Dialogue in Thucydides—a canonical statement of power politics rationality (Thucydides, trans. 1972). The significance is not the originality of the reference; it is that Davos discourse now treats such realism as publicly speakable.

This is where “weaponized interdependence” becomes relevant: network power can be transformed into coercion when states or firms control critical chokepoints in finance, infrastructure, trade, and digital platforms (Farrell & Newman, 2019). Carney’s prescription—strategic autonomy or a “world of fortresses”—is therefore less a nationalist shift than an acknowledgment that global integration is no longer seen as harmless.

Seen from the broader perspective of globalization discourse, Davos 2026 signifies a significant reversal of the assumptions that characterized the early 2000s. Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat summarized the era’s belief that digital connectivity and integrated supply chains were “flattening” the world into a more open, opportunity-filled, and ultimately convergent space (Friedman, 2005). Two decades later, David J. Lynch’s The World’s Worst Bet reads like an obituary for that optimism: globalization now seems less like a benign force for shared prosperity and more like a risky gamble that has weakened industrial resilience, increased inequality, empowered strategic competitors, and fueled political backlash in the West (Lynch, 2025). The transition from “flatness” to “worst bet” reflects the same shift Carney now describes in geopolitical terms: integration is no longer assumed to be mutually beneficial; it is increasingly viewed as a potential pathway to dependence, coercion, and subjugation (Carney, 2026; Friedman, 2005; Lynch, 2025).

This closely aligns with Amitav Acharya’s argument that the liberal “rules-based order” was never entirely universal; it functioned as a Western-centered system with selective membership and inconsistent enforcement. What follows, according to Acharya, is not just “multipolarity,” but a decentralized “multiplex” world—more diverse, more contested, and less controlled by a single hegemon (Acharya, 2017; Acharya, 2018). Even defenders sympathetic to the liberal order acknowledge its historically Western core and its expansion after the Cold War (Ikenberry, 2008, 2018).

Davos 2026, therefore, seemed like a moment when elites started speaking more openly than before about a world they can no longer describe as heading toward a single institutional model. However, there is a deeper contradiction at Davos: many of the harshest critiques in 2026 were made not by independent critics but by the system’s own architects—CEOs, senior officials, and high-level political leaders. This doesn’t invalidate their diagnosis, but it should change how we interpret it: what looks like honesty may also be a form of preemptive storytelling, a controlled version of systemic self-criticism aimed at maintaining core power structures while giving rhetorical ground.

The US–EU–China Triangle: Three Paths, One Convergent Pressure

Against this backdrop, the question facing mainstream systems is no longer just whether globalization can be “fixed,” but which governance model is increasingly seen as the better response to a high-stress world full of uncertainty, fragmentation, and coercive interdependence. Under conditions of heightened geopolitical competition, supply-chain insecurity, volatility in energy and food, and rapid technological rivalry, the focus is quietly shifting toward the idea that China’s model—often called socialist state capitalism—may provide faster, more disciplined, and more strategically coordinated solutions than the liberal market approach, mainly because it can mobilize resources, direct finance, and prioritize long-term national goals. In this context, Davos 2026 didn’t just expose a legitimacy crisis; it also pointed to a growing competition over “effective modernity,” where resilience and the ability to command are beginning to matter more than openness and procedural legitimacy.

Indeed, an even more concerning sign is emerging from within the West itself: leading trends in the United States and the European Union increasingly indicate that what they are taking from China is not its potentially positive strengths—such as developmental coordination or strategic industrial policy—but rather its negative governance traits: securitization, surveillance expansion, executive centralization, and the normalization of emergency-style rule. This creates a growing zone of hybridization, where liberal democracies preserve electoral rituals while gradually adopting illiberal techniques of control and exclusion. In other words, the West seems to be entering a phase of reverse convergence—a process where the “center” shifts toward the logic of its challenger, often in its most coercive forms—a dynamic that I will explore in detail.

Öztürk’s (2025) structured comparison across five dimensions—surveillance regimes, populist discourse, regulatory architecture, market concentration, and distributional outcomes—acts like a decoder for Davos 2026. It does not claim that the US, EU, and China are becoming identical. Instead, it argues that all three are responding to the same structural pressures—tech-driven control, oligopolistic concentration, legitimacy erosion—while doing so through different institutional legacies.

China’s large-scale integration of state and capital shows that advanced capitalism can exist without liberal democracy. It combines market activity and corporate growth within one-party control, increasingly extending worldwide through infrastructure, standards, and digital systems (Callahan, 2016; Creemers, 2018; Dai, 2020). Its governance tools—such as data-driven monitoring, biometric systems, and ideological control of platforms—provide an attractive model for regimes dealing with insecurity and social unrest, even though it also poses legitimacy challenges (Greitens, 2020).

The United States’ hybrid drift shows how liberal democracy can weaken internally due to inequality, institutional capture, and polarization, especially after the 2008 crisis delegitimized traditional economic promises and heightened distrust between elites and the public (Öztürk, 2025). Illiberal populism has proved to be a resilient narrative ecosystem (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Mounk, 2018). Meanwhile, corporate surveillance and algorithmic governance operate alongside expanding security measures, leading to convergence driven by technique rather than ideology (Zuboff, 2019).

The European Union’s regulatory ambition, even under legitimacy stress, stands as the strongest counterexample to simple convergence claims because it has built the most ambitious rights-based regulatory framework in the democratic world, especially in the digital area (Floridi, 2020; Véliz, 2021). However, it remains vulnerable to legitimacy stress: far-right normalization, internal rule-of-law conflicts, uneven fiscal capacity, and ongoing reliance on US platform power. Regulation can limit domination, but legitimacy ultimately depends on distributive foundations—not just technocracy (Brown, 2019; Piketty, 2020).

If one sentence embodies the West’s strategic trauma, it is this: China demonstrates that sophisticated capitalism can operate without liberal democracy—and at scale. The Davos concern is not just that China competes, but that China’s model is increasingly serving as a reference point for organizing power in the twenty-first century (Öztürk, 2025).

The Hidden Davos Declaration

If we summarize Davos 2026 into a single implicit statement, it is: The global order based on rules-based multilateralism, benign interdependence, and trickle-down legitimacy has reached a final crisis. What comes next is probably going to be centered around: i) strategic autonomy (energy, supply chains, critical minerals, digital sovereignty) (Carney, 2026), ii) narrative legitimacy repair (“inclusive prosperity,” participation, trust) (Fink, 2026). iii) technological control architectures (AI governance, surveillance trade-offs, platform regulation conflict) (Zuboff, 2019; Varoufakis, 2023), and iv) a reduced faith in universalism, and a greater acceptance of bloc rivalry, vulnerability management, and “value-based realism” (Acharya, 2017; Ikenberry, 2018).

This is why Davos 2026 felt like a turning point: elites are no longer pretending we still live in the 1990s. But the new order being outlined is not automatically democratic. It can just as easily shift toward market authoritarianism—combining capital preservation with control-first governance. A democratic solution is still conceptually possible: re-embedding markets in democratic institutions (Polanyi, 1944), rebuilding a distributive social contract (Piketty, 2020), and limiting both corporate and government power through enforceable rights (Floridi, 2020; Véliz, 2021). Davos 2026, however, raises a brutally practical question: Can democracies re-legitimate themselves quickly enough before surveillance, AI, and strategic autonomy become permanent justifications for executive insulation?

That question, more than any speech, was the true “announcement.”

References

Acharya, A. (2017). After liberal hegemony: The advent of a multiplex world order. Ethics & International Affairs, 31(3), 271–285. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

Acharya, A. (2018). The end of American world order (2nd ed.). Polity. (Wiley)

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Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press. (Columbia University Press).

Callahan, W. A. (2016). China dreams: 20 visions of the future. Oxford University Press.

Carney, M. (2026, January). Special address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos 2026). World Economic Forum.

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Fink, L. (2026). Remarks as Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum at the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos. LinkedIn.

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US President Donald Trump delivers a speech to voters at an event in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Danny Raustadt.

From Farce to Tragedy: The First Year of Trump’s Second Term and the Unmaking of America

January 24, 2026

by ECPS_admin Authoritarianism Commentaries Editor’s Choice Home Leadership & Persona

In “From Farce to Tragedy,” the author traces the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as a turning point in American political life. What once carried elements of chaos and dark comedy has hardened into something more deliberate and consequential. Trump’s return to power, framed by him as total vindication, has brought an unprecedented expansion of executive authority, the systematic weakening of institutions, and the normalization of personal loyalty over law. Drawing on sharp observations from leading journalists and scholars, the piece shows how emergency powers, executive orders, and transactional politics have reshaped governance at home and abroad. The result is not renewed greatness, but a spectacle of democratic erosion—an American tragedy unfolding without the comfort of a happy ending.

By Cemal Tunçdemir*

“What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending,” the American critic William Dean Howells, who was a central figure in Gilded Age American literature, once said. The second coming of Donald J. Trump to the US Presidency was not an accident of fate, nor even absurdity of democracy. It was a sequel demanded by majority of American voters that having once liked the “first season” and asked upon longer run. The real tragedy was not that Trump was Trump, that was obvious from the start, but that so many Americans mistook his loudness for conviction and saw his challenge to the rules as bravery.

“The first time around, there was something almost thrilling about Donald Trump as president,” explains American historian and journalist Thomas Frank, “The respectable world came together against him with a gratifying unanimity: the legacy media, the nonprofits, the universities, the think tanks, the tech sector, the intelligence community. Insulting this imbecile became the most rewarding pastime on earth.” By contrast, according to Frank, for much of 2025, the feeling was darker. “Absolute despair” if you will.

The difference in the second term wasn’t just the lack of the thrilling or accidental comedic elements of the first term. Donald Trump viewed his return to the White House as a profound vindication. In his telling, his four years of exile had proven that he was right about everything. About economy, about “stolen” election, about press, about elites, about universities, about institutions. This absolute conviction liberated him from all doubt, and all rules.

Trump’s unrestrained mind is on full display in a recent letter he sent to the Prime Minister of Norway as he wrote, “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”

“Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality,” observes Anne Applebaum, “one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him.”

“Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 in some ways but on steroids,” compares Peter Baker, New York Times’s chief White House correspondent who have covered six US presidents, including Trump in his first term, “A lot of the things that he talked about doing or exploring in the first term -or tried but failed to do or was dissuaded from doing-he’s now doing and in spades.”

Unlike the first term, in the beginning of his second term, there was less confusion, more intent. And more so preparation. Trump has rolled out many of the Project 2025, 900-page Heritage Foundation-led blueprint, he once claimed he has nothing to do with. Many of Trump’s executive orders reshaping the government were outlined in this right-wing policy plan. From the early days of his tenure, Donald Trump began advancing Project 2025’s primary objective: the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” a term coined by his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. He has expanded the scope of executive power in ways unparalleled in modern history.

By the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees were out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management. This was the largest reduction of the federal workforce in American history. He even fired members and officials from various independent and bipartisan boards, agencies, and commissions, including dozens of inspectors general, key watchdogs for waste, fraud, and abuse across all government.

One of the things Trump learned was that it matters who is around him, Peter Baker observes, “Many of the people he surrounded himself with in his first term viewed their jobs as keeping him from going off the rails, from doing things they thought were reckless -or illegal even. This term, he’s surrounded by people who not only agree with him but are enabling him and empowering him and want to serve his desires.”

One of the Trump’s most daring test the limits of his presidential power was claiming powers that have typically resides with Congress. In his first year, executive orders have eclipsed actual legislation. Trump has signed 147 executive orders, setting a record for the most signed in any president’s first 100 days of office. By contrast, he has signed only five bills into law, a record low for the first 100 days.

What is truly worrying is that his blatant misuse of emergency powers, which are meant to temporarily increase executive authority only during urgent and rapidly developing situations. The Brennan Center has identified 123 different laws could be triggered by a presidential emergency declaration. Because these powers are extensive, strong safeguards are needed to prevent misuse. Since The National Emergencies Act lacks safeguards, a president can declare an emergency by executive order and renew it every year indefinitely. Congress may vote to terminate an emergency, but only with a veto-proof majority. This flaw was exposed when Trump declared a fake emergency to fund a border wall Congress had rejected.

As a striking example, instead of traditional tariff statutes (such as Section 301 or Section 232) he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which is not a general trade statute, to impose sweeping import taxes. To justify invoking the IEEPA, Trump Administration declared “trade deficits” a national emergency. And this audacity has led to a legal drama that has now reached the Supreme Court.

The question is why the White House team ever invoked IEEPA at all, instead of traditional trade laws? The answer is not only that IEEPA provides the President broad authority to respond to a declaration of national emergency. The real answer probably lies in “political anthropology rather than jurisprudence,” writes Gillian Tett, “Trump’s team has a power structure more akin to a royal court than anything that adheres to 21st-century norms.” He always wants to have king-like powers, and his team is looking for loopholes that would allow him to acquire those powers.

This is the posture of a man who has looked at the institutions meant to restrain him -the courts, the lawmakers, the prosecutors- have done nothing and he concluded they are toothless. After the surviving of the fallout of January 6, five years ago, he now moves with the confidence of someone who believes he is beyond the reach of the old rules. He wants a power that is feared and given whatever it wants. For this reason, some critics are no longer debating policy; they are discussing a change in the American regime. But a change to what?

“There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.” Jonathan Rauch answered the question in his now famous article. “Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing,” he wrote, “It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones.”

The Art of the Deal-Making Presidency

“Nice woman but she does not listen.”

After a reportedly tense phone call in early August, President Trump publicly criticized Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter with this condescending remark and quickly raised tariffs on Swiss imports to a punishing 39 percent. Couple of days later when two Swiss federal ministers and several government executives flew over to DC, but they got nowhere near Trump. Following months all the effort of traditional statecraft couldn’t resolved months of standoff. What ultimately break the deadlock was not diplomacy or policy talks. It was something shinier.

In early November, small delegation of Swiss titans -all male and, all billionaires- sidestepped the usual diplomatic channels, arriving at the Oval Office with a gold-plated Rolex desk clock and a 1-kilogram engraved gold bar. Before the guests had even leaved the White House, Trump shared a social media post announcing progress. Within the days, the previously urgent “national emergency” posed by Swiss trade deficit seemed to lose its urgency, and tariffs were trimmed to a comparatively modest 15 percent.

As that meeting so strikingly demonstrated, access to the American leader is no longer earned through shared values or sound policy. It is now won through the language of the deal and, above all, the weight of gold.

Trump received gold coated replica of a royal crown from the Silla Kingdom from South Korea President, a golden pager from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a gold-plated golf club from Japan, a golden boxing belt from Ukraine. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook presented Trump with a special glass disc on a 24-karat gold base in August 2025 and secured an exemption from 100% tariff on imported semiconductors. Apple gift was a favorite for Trump in the Oval Office until the Swiss came to town. “It was tough to beat Apple, but the Swiss did it,” one administration official told Axios.

Trump even kept original 24-karat gold Club World Cup Trophy for himself so FIFA had to give the winner team, Chelsea, a replica. Not only did he receive the trophy, but he was also awarded a gold medal, which FIFA presents to the players of the winning team.

“The golden age” that Trump promised in his second inaguration speech, has never seemed more literal. He wasn’t only for his trademark “Midas touch” flow, he seeks profit in every policy decision he makes. As Jonathan Rauch explained, in patrimonialism, every policy the president values is considered his own personal property. Some experts call it ‘pay-to-play,’ where foreign governments, businesses, and wealthy donors gaining political and financial advantages such as relaxed regulations and federal contracts by investing in the Trump Organization, supporting MAGA causes or by engaging in excessive flattery.

Trump Towers have been proposed from Damascus to Belgrade. Trump hotels or Trump Resorts are being built in many major cities around the world, primarily in Asia and Africa. As Amy Sorkin puts it Trump has made it clear that no gift is too much for him -even, and maybe especially, someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Even presidential pardon power has become big business. In his first-year Trump has pardoned an unusually high numberof wealthy people accused of financial crimes, including money laundering, bank fraud and wire fraud. Wealthy individuals pay millions to lobbying and consulting firms to bring their cases to Trump’s attention.

Trump pardoned cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao, months after Zhao’s company has struck a $2 billions deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s new crypto venture. In another revealing example, executives of Wells Fargo Bank, instead of paying the $8.5 million fine imposed for fraudulent transactions, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January, and two months later, their fine was reduced to a mere $150,000.

In Trump’s World, Europe Is the Villain

“The foreign policy of President Donald Trump combines the worst of isolationism with the worst of interventionism in a uniquely disastrous way,” says Thomas Reese. He began his presidency as a firm isolationist, but “America First” quickly turned into a wrecking ball -a license to upend America’s role in the world, discarding rules and norms with little restraint.

“I never thought I’d feel nostalgia for the Iraq War,” said Nesrine Malik in The Guardian, but it turns out that the runup to that war, when American Administration did at least strive to convince the Congress and the world of the righteousness of its cause, was the “good old days.” The US removed Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro based solely on national interest, bypassing all domestic, international authorization or public consent. Trump didn’t just break the rules it showed there aren’t any.

“No autocrat likes to see one of their own seized, shackled and renditioned,” wrote Adrian Blomfield in The Daily Telegraph. However, China and Russia are unlikely to be troubled by Maduro’s removal. They may see it as evidence of the US stepping back globally and focusing on regional dominance. A world divided into spheres of influence, where powerful states act freely, could benefit Moscow and Beijing, as noted by Gideon Rachman in the FT.

Even Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) plan within its 33-page framework argues that Russia and China are US peers or potential friends. Instead, it points the finger at a surprising villain: Europe. NSS argues that the real danger isn’t Russian tanks or Chinese factories, but rather the “erasure” of European culture caused by mass immigration and the power of the European Union bureaucracy. The liberal international order, already fragile, found itself mocked not only by adversaries but by its former custodian.

New Civil War and End of Forth Republic?

“Trump isn’t interested in fighting a new Cold War. He wants a new civilizational war,” wrote Thomas Friedman. Trump’s National Security Strategy language unlike any previous surveys, he observes, “It reveals a deep truth about this second Trump administration: how much it came to Washington to fight America’s third civil war, not to fight the West’s new cold war.” According to Friedman, after the Civil War of the 1860s and the second major civil struggle of the 1960s civil rights movement, America is now experiencing its third civil war. “This one, like the first two, is over the question ‘Whose country is this anyway?’ This civil war has been less violent than the first two—but it is early.”

Although the United States has operated under a single constitution, each civil war has produced a new political order, a new republic in all but name. For that reason, a “third civil war” would not just be another crisis; it would signal the end of what some analysts call the “Fourth American Republic.”

As Jamelle Bouie pointed, the Civil War and its aftermath constituted the Second Republic. The Third Republic came into this world through the overwhelming victory of the Democrats in the election of early 1930’s. The legacies of the Third Republic had lived on when the fourth republic began with the achievements of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement, which included a newly open door to the world. “This was an American republic built on multiracial pluralism. A nation of natives and of immigrants from around the world. Of political parties that strove to represent a diverse cross-section of society,” wrote Bouie, “It’s this America that they’re fighting to destroy with their attacks on immigration, civil rights laws, higher education and the very notion of a pluralistic society of equals.”

A Year of Revelation

The first year of Trump’s second term offered Americans not greatness, but clarity. It showed what happens when empty and noisy demagogic rhetoric substitutes for vision and when power outruns principles. His return to power did not resolve the contradictions of Trumpism; it intensified them. Nationalism that depended on global markets. Capitalism claims to be self-regulating, yet in reality it is owned by the state. Law invoked as rhetoric and rejected as restraint. Freedom of speech demanded abroad and denied at home. Declared himself ‘Peace President’ and change the Department of the Defense name to Department of War.

His supporters too—with their enduring appetite for loud certainty over quiet competence, find themselves caught in a season of paradox. Cheering the dismantling of the very institutions that once established the order they now claim to want again. They back tariffs, immigration, and social spending policies that heavily impact rural America, the backbone of their movement. And most ironically, this coalition of white Christians is led by one of the least religious presidents ever.

And yet, for all the noise he and his administration generate, the first year of his second term also revealed limits. Courts still blocked some actions. States resisted others. Markets reacted unpredictably. Bureaucracies slowed what they could not stop. Polls indicate declining support for him as the Congressional elections approach. Trump raged against these constraints, calling them sabotage, yet their persistence revealed an uncomfortable truth: even an “unbound president” cannot easily escape the structure of a constitutional federal system.

Even in the face of repeated failures to “make America great again,” Trump succeeded at making one thing undeniably great again. It was not the greatness of law, restraint, economy, international leadership or wisdom, but the greatness of spectacle. A spectacle of American tragedy, one that may not have a happy ending this time.

(*) Cemal Tunçdemir is a New York–based veteran journalist with extensive experience covering US politics and international affairs.

Protest against ICE following the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman fatally shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a federal operation, in Foley Square, Manhattan, NYC, USA on January 8, 2026. The fatal encounter has sparked national outrage and protests demanding accountability and reform of ICE use-of-force policies. Photo: Dreamstime.

Law, Order and the Lives in Between

January 10, 2026

by ECPS_admin Commentaries Editor’s Choice Home Human Rights Migration Voice of Youth

In this Voice of Youth (VoY) article, Emmanouela Papapavlou delivers a powerful reflection on state violence, immigration enforcement, and the fragile boundaries of democratic accountability. The article critically examines the fatal shooting of a civilian woman by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. Moving beyond official narratives of “self-defense,” Papapavlou situates the incident within broader patterns of institutional violence, racialized enforcement, and the erosion of human rights under the banner of security. By drawing historical parallels to the killing of George Floyd and interrogating the politics of “law and order,” the piece challenges readers to reconsider whose lives are protected—and whose are rendered expendable—in contemporary democracies.

By Emmanouela Papapavlou*

In a world where the concept of “security” weighs increasingly heavily on public policy, the use of state violence remains one of the most contentious and polarizing issues. In recent days, news that an agent of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed a 37 year-old woman in Minneapolis has reignited the debate over the limits of state power, institutional impunity, and human rights in one of the world’s most developed democracies.

The incident took place on January 7, 2026, during a large-scale operation aimed at enforcing immigration law in the city. Official statements from government authorities described the shooting as an act of self-defense, claiming that the woman attempted to “strike officers” with her vehicle. At the same time, however, video footage and eyewitness accounts contradict this version of events, suggesting that the gunshot was fired as the driver was attempting to leave the scene, without an evident and immediate threat to the officers’ lives.

The government’s effort to justify the action, even employing language such as “domestic terrorism operation,” has sparked outrage and skepticism among local officials, human rights organizations, and ordinary citizens. The mayor of Minneapolis openly stated that the self-defense arguments were “false” and called for ICE to withdraw from the city altogether. Many have described the killing as a clear example of excessive use of force by state authorities, particularly within the context of a large enforcement mission that disproportionately targets vulnerable communities.

But can this case truly be treated as an isolated incident? Or does it represent yet another link in a growing chain of violent encounters that follow a disturbingly familiar pattern? The Minneapolis killing is already being described as at least the fifth fatal outcome of similar federal operations over the past two years, suggesting that law enforcement strategy has evolved into an aggressive and dangerous form of violence, often exercised without meaningful accountability or transparency.

Social scientists and activists point out that the use of force by state authorities, whether in immigration enforcement or neighborhood policing, frequently activates deeper structures of social inequality. When the rhetoric of “law and order” is prioritized over human safety, trust between state institutions and the communities they serve erodes rapidly. And this raises a fundamental question: is the principle of “legality” applied equally to everyone, or is it selectively deployed as a tool of control and discipline over specific social groups?

This case cannot be examined outside its broader historical context. In 2020, in the same city of Minneapolis, George Floyd was killed as a police officer pressed a knee into his neck, turning a routine arrest into a public execution witnessed by the world. That moment became a global symbol of systemic police violence and racial injustice, igniting mass protests and exposing how deeply embedded power, race, and state violence are within modern societies.

And yet, how much has truly changed since then? Even today, the way state violence is addressed, whether through policing or immigration enforcement, continues to be shaped by the same logic that transforms people into threats and human lives into acceptable risks. The stories of those killed become symbols not only of injustice, but of a persistent institutional indifference toward the protection of life and dignity.

The Minneapolis case therefore serves as a reminder that violence exercised by institutions is not merely a “tragic mistake” or an “unfortunate exception.” It is part of a broader relationship between power and vulnerability that tests the very foundations of democracy and human rights. And just as in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, a new generation is once again refusing to accept narratives that normalize violence in the name of security. A generation that insists on asking the same uncomfortable question: what does security really mean, when preserving it requires the loss of human life?

(*) Emmanouela Papapavlou is a high school student from Thessaloniki, Greece, deeply passionate about social and political issues. She has actively participated in Model United Nations and other youth forums, serving as a chairperson in multiple conferences and winning awards in Greek debate competitions. Writing is her greatest passion, and she loves using it to explore democracy, civic engagement, and human rights. Her dream is to share her ideas, inspire action, and amplify the voices of young people who want to make a difference. Email: emmanpapapavlou@gmail.com

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