[Column] Iran war heralds a new age of every country for itself

Illustration by Kim Dae-jung

By Pak Noja (Vladimir Tikhonov), professor of Korean research on the College of Oslo

For me, Qatar and Dubai are acquainted names. Due to my work, I’ve to journey between Europe and East Asia a number of occasions a yr and sometimes transit by means of airports in these two locations on the way in which to or from Korea, China and Japan.

In what may be referred to as the latecomer’s benefit, these two airports had been a lot superior to their European counterparts when it comes to design, facilities and well timed flight schedules. These had been vivid reminders that the 2 cities had been rising hubs of capital accumulation below the worldwide capitalist system.

However over the previous few weeks, the names of those airports within the Gulf area have been invariably linked, at the very least within the information, to wreck from drone and missile assaults, cancelled flights and unhappy tales of stranded passengers. It’s sufficient to assume that Feb. 28, 2026, marked the tip of an period.

That form of declare could lead some to ask what’s so particular in regards to the US bombing one other nation. To make sure, such bombing campaigns may be thought to be an integral a part of the US-led worldwide order.

Depend up all of the US’ extra-territorial army interventions since 1991, and also you’ll get a grand whole of 251, with the rely rising yearly.

Slim your focus to main army interventions, and there have nonetheless been at the very least 30 since 1945. Certainly, American hegemony relies on the periodic train of pressure.

Even so, the assault on Iran is exclusive in ways in which make it a watershed second in world historical past. You’d be hard-pressed to search out any incident of its variety since 1945.

The standard targets of American assaults are these with out an ample technique of protection. That displays the US’ cautious husbanding of its sources, in addition to its need to reduce casualties amongst its troops.

A listing of US army interventions since 1991 consists of small and weak nations, lots of which had been torn by inner strife: Somalia, Serbia, Yemen, Syria and Libya, to call a number of.

When attacking nations, like Iraq, that would battle again, the US has minimized its burden by recruiting junior companions to hitch the marketing campaign. When the US invaded Iraq, for instance, there have been 48 members of the “coalition of the keen” — that’s, vassals supporting their overlord. And when the US invaded Afghanistan, 51 nations had been mobilized below the specific oversight of NATO.

These invasions, in fact, devastated the nations involved and typically brought on vital losses for the US itself.

Throughout the Vietnam Conflict, which is maybe the most effective instance of such a battle, Korea and Japan had been the US’ main consumer states. They profited immensely from the conflict, which paradoxically served to bolster the alliance system that has turn out to be the first device of American hegemony.

As this implies, the US’ typical modus operandi as a hegemonic state has been to pick out helpless opponents for its army adventures in order to keep away from disrupting the movement of capital and items on this planet economic system and, in bigger invasions, to mobilize as many junior companions as potential from an alliance system spanning the world’s main areas.

However the assault on Iran hasn’t adopted these patterns in any respect. For one factor, Iran isn’t any sitting duck. Its inhabitants is 80% larger than that of Korea, and it has 16 occasions the land mass. Globally talking, the Iranian army ranks No. 16.

Iran is definitely no match for the US and might be weaker than Israel, however not like Iraq, it’s not susceptible to a floor invasion. Its formidable army is one challenge, however one other is its capability to disrupt world vitality flows because of its geographical place.

Due to this battle, the Gulf states are being harmed straight whereas nations in Europe and East Asia — together with Korea and Japan — are being harmed not directly. In distinction with invasions of the previous, in different phrases, the present state of affairs threatens world capitalism’s capability to create revenue and widens the chasm between the US suzerain and its regional vassals.

That’s additionally why the US’ consumer states have been so reluctant to hitch the conflict (with the only real exception of Israel, which largely goaded the US into launching the conflict within the first place).

Even earlier than the assault on Iran, the suzerain-vassal relationship had been weakening since Trump got here to workplace. States below the US imperium in each hemispheres have been pummeled by one-sided excessive tariffs, and the US’ junior companions in Europe, dumbfounded by Trump’s territorial greed for Greenland, have needed to ponder the dissolution of NATO.

However the assault on Iran takes issues to the subsequent stage.

Europe, Korea and Japan will see a development slowdown due to excessive oil costs, and many of the Gulf states will now not be seen as “secure investments,” which is able to make it a lot tougher for them to draw international capital.

Because the US, below Trump, endangers its junior companions and erodes their earnings, it’s basically abandoning its place as world hegemon.

The elemental job of a hegemonic state is to systematically handle the worldwide capitalist system as an entire. However the Trump administration is tired of, and certainly incapable of, such systematic administration. Removed from managing something, it’s bent on sowing chaos and destruction.

It stays unclear what precisely Trump hoped to perform with this rash act of aggression that despatched shockwaves throughout the globe. Whereas excessive oil costs could also be a boon for American oil tycoons, skyrocketing fuel costs are certain to harm Trump’s political agenda. 

In the end, all indicators level to the US’ present far-right administration — which gained itself a ticket to the White Home by whipping up these left behind by globalization with deceptions and falsehoods — opting to begin a conflict that went towards its personal long-term pursuits as a result of it cowed to strain from, primarily, Israel, maybe the nation most hostile to Iran on the planet. 

In that case, the US authorities shouldn’t be outfitted to correctly handle its personal international relations and army affairs, to say nothing of the world order. With all that mentioned, how can it count on to maintain maintain of its hegemony? 

The outbreak of World Conflict I in 1914 marked the tip of the 1871-1914 Belle Epoque — a “lovely interval” wherein world commerce and funding flourished through the first wave of capitalist globalization. Whereas Trump’s conflict with Iran could not end in a battle worthy of the identify “world conflict,” it’ll most definitely go down as a similar watershed second in world historical past. 

The America that we as soon as knew because the world’s suzerain now not exists, and it’s in all probability not coming again. As for the world order, all that’s left is a jumble of nations nice and small, every fending for itself. 

It’s time for Korea to knuckle down and take into consideration the way it will go about its economic system, international coverage and safety in a post-America world, and what sort of partnership it will probably construct with that’s primarily based on equal footing relatively than unilateral fealty.

The period wherein having an alliance with the US or internet hosting American troops in your soil meant you had been safe is over. In our new world, safety ties with the US could open us as much as danger relatively than defend us from it. 

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