The New Dark Age

The US war of aggression launched against Iran on February 28, 2026, is only the most recent US aggression launched to undermine and dismantle the multipolar world.

The US — being energy independent itself — has forced much of the world into an American energy monopoly, having placed sanctions on Russian energy exports and now either seizing, disrupting, or destroying all other potential competitors.

This includes a US invasion of Venezuela just earlier this year, kidnapping the Venezuelan president and holding the remaining government hostage while openly seizing the nation’s natural resources — including oil — for the US itself.

The current US war of aggression against Iran is not only targeting Iranian energy production but has also resulted in regional conflict, damaging or destroying energy production across the Persian Gulf altogether.

Because the US produces nowhere near the amount of oil and LNG required to make up for disrupted or destroyed energy production and exports from the Middle East, this will result in global energy shortages and subsequent collapses in both industry and consumer demand.

The world, which had been collectively rising above and beyond the reach of US primacy, now faces the prospect of being deliberately destabilized and dragged down by the US.

The US itself, incapable of competing within the very world order it created following the World Wars, has decided to use its remaining military, economic, financial, and political strength to demolish it in the hope of emerging from the settling debris once again“strongest.”

Far from an obscure theory, this is an observation made even by Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who in a recent interview would say that, “the events in Latin America and the Middle East directly stem from the West’s attempts to preserve the remnants of its dominance” and that,“the elites of Western countries continue to invest whatever political and economic resources they have left in their confrontation with our country.”

Far from a last-minute plan, the US spent much of the 21st century preparing not only for the now ongoing war with Iran but also its ongoing proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and its growing encirclement of China in the Asia-Pacific region — targeting all of multipolarism’s major pillars and many in between.

On the Path to Persia

To encircle and weaken Iran, the US invaded Afghanistan to its east and Iraq to its west in 2001 and 2003, respectively, under the Bush Jr. administration. During that same administration, the US began preparing armies of extremists to wage proxy war against Iran and its regional allies, including Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the nation of Syria, and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

During the Obama administration, at least as early as 2008, the US began training and equipping opposition groups across the Arab World for the eventual 2011 so-called “Arab Spring.”

Together with the armies of extremists prepared under the previous Bush Jr. administration, the US-engineered protests and ready-made violence served as cover to trigger regional chaos, resulting in US wars and proxy wars against Libya, Yemen, and Syria, leading to the collapse of all three as unified nation-states.

While the same Obama administration signed on to the so-called “Iran Nuclear Deal” in 2012, US policy papers dating back to as early as 2009 sought to use such diplomacy —not to avoid war but to serve as a pretext for war.

One such paper published by the Brookings Institution, titled,“Which Path to Persia?” noted that,“the ideal scenario in this case would be that the United States and the international community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime reject it,” before stating, “Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.”

And that is precisely what happened — come 2018, under the first Trump administration, the deal was unilaterally withdrawn from by the US after baselessly accusing Iran of violating its terms before applying “maximum pressure” on Iran in the lead-up to the war the US is now waging against Iran.

In 2024, with the collapse of the Syrian government under the Biden administration, Syria’s advanced integrated air defense network was destroyed leading to the creation of open-air corridors to Iran and almost immediately to direct US and Israeli strikes spanning 2024-2025 and, of course, this year.

The now ongoing war on Iran is just one piece of a wider global strategy to destabilize and destroy the multipolar world before its otherwise inevitable displacement of American unipolar primacy.

Extending Russia

Russia, another central pillar of emerging multipolarism, has been besieged by US-led NATO expansion since the end of the Cold War.

Throughout the 21st century, the US has systematically destabilized and attempted to politically capture nations along Russia’s periphery, including Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, and failed attempts to capture Belarus and Ukraine in 2001 and 2004, respectively.

Upon Georgia’s capture in 2003, it was immediately militarized by the US and transformed into a battering ram against neighboring Russia, culminating in war in 2008 the European Union’s own investigation concluded was provoked by US-backed Georgia.

By 2014, the US had successfully captured Ukraine as well and immediately began to militarize it on a much greater scale than Georgia from 2003-2008. This included not only the reorganization and training of Ukraine’s military but also the capture and control of Ukraine’s security and intelligence agencies by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

By 2017, under the first Trump administration, the US began openly supplying Ukraine with arms — likely the final red line crossed, forcing Russia to preemptively strike before another Georgia 2008-style war was launched against it — but on a much greater and more dangerous scale.

The resulting war occupied tremendous amounts of Russian resources and attention, undermining its ability to sustain Syria’s stability, and is likely a contributing factor to the Syrian government’s collapse in 2024, helping set the stage for the US’ direct war on Iran today.

Both the US-provoked proxy war in Ukraine and additional pressure on Syria were laid out in a 2019 RAND Corporation paper titled “Extending Russia”— both scenarios, together with many other options that have since been implemented against Russia, having sought to extend Russia and eventually precipitate a Soviet-style collapse.

Throughout the ongoing US proxy war on Russia in Ukraine,  the US CIA has coordinated and directed long-range drone strikes on Russian energy production deep inside Russian territory as well as conducted maritime drone strikes on tankers carrying Russian energy exports.

Together with the US invasion of Venezuela, its ongoing war on Iran, and the attack on Russian energy production and exports, it reveals a troubling pattern — the seizure, destruction, or degradation of China’s major energy partners around the globe.

Blockading China

In addition to targeting China’s largest and most important energy partners, the US has also spent years attempting to likewise destabilize, destroy, or deliberately provoke conflict along China’s immediate peripheries and even within Chinese territory itself.

This includes years-spanning terrorism targeting China’s Xinjiang region, US-backed riots in Hong Kong as recently as 2019, and the backing and arming of the separatist administration on the Chinese island province of Taiwan.

Beyond China’s own territory, since the end of World War 2, the US has spent decades attempting to politically capture and pivot nations into battering rams against China along three fronts; Japan-Korea, India-Pakistan, and Southeast Asia. This includes the Philippines, which has abandoned modern infrastructure deals with China and redirected national resources to an expanding US military presence within the former US colony and an expanding confrontation with China in the South China Sea.

Closer to China’s borders in Myanmar and Pakistan, the US has backed terrorists in attacking key components of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including the Myanmar-China pipelines US policy papers, including one from the US Naval War College Review in 2018, had previously proposed bombing during any open conflict with China as part of a wider “maritime oil blockade” on China.

Instead of waiting for open conflict with China, US-backed terrorists have repeatedly attacked the pipelines for years, including last year.

Earlier this year, an American and several Ukrainians were caught smuggling drones into Myanmar in a bid to assist US-backed opposition groups in overthrowing the China-friendly central government.

Taken together, the US has waged wars and proxy wars against China’s key allies as well as waged a dirty war all along China’s own borders and even within them.

The most recent war on Iran, targeting the majority of China’s energy imports from abroad, seeks to damage China’s economic development as much as possible before a 5-10 year window of opportunity closes as China reaches energy independence.

China Has Prepared

China was well aware of US efforts to blockade it for decades and has invested both domestically and internationally in both preparing for it and defending against it.

The distant blockade the US Naval Review College paper proposed imposing at the Malacca Strait in 2018 is now likely no longer possible, as China’s military power has drastically expanded since then. Not only does China have a vastly larger and more capable missile force, but it also has a physically larger navy than the United States does and has concentrated its navy in the Asia-Pacific region.

This is likely why the US has instead imposed the blockade at the Strait of Hormuz — much further from Chinese military capabilities. However, China appears to have prepared for this as well.

China has built up vast strategic crude oil reserves, is rapidly expanding coal-to-liquid fuel production, and has invested in and adopted renewable energy resources on a scale unseen in human history.

While the majority of vehicles on Chinese roads are still dependent on refined oil fuel products, over 50% of all new cars, trucks, and motorcycles are electric. China possesses the largest and fastest passenger rail network on Earth and also possesses the most powerful electric freight locomotives ever built.

While the United States appears to be making a drastic global lunge at China and its network of partners and allies, China has spent decades preparing for exactly this scenario.

What is left to determine is whether the US’ capacity for global death and destruction can outpace China and the multipolar world’s capacity for resilience and economic, technological, and civilizational expansion. Only time will tell for sure.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

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