War and Regime Change in Global Governance, The Iran Conflict and the Unravelling of the Rules-Based Order
As the Mightiest Power Attacks Another Sovereign Nation Without Congressional or UN Approval, the Post-1945 Architecture Crumbles
What does war escalation in the Middle East mean for global governance? The Israel-U.S. attacks on Iran since February 28 have profound implications for the global governance order. For the mightiest power to attack another sovereign nation without Congressional nor United Nations approval condemns the rules-based order into the dustbin of history.
Governance is all about checks and balances by rules, self-restraint, or humble appreciation that waging forever wars often ends up destroying oneself. War is such an extreme and costly measure that it should be undertaken only after careful deliberation, securing domestic support and international endorsement (such as a UN resolution), with clearly defined goals, operational costs and benefits, as well as a coherent exit strategy.
Yet here we are. The United States and Israel have launched a war against Iran without the authorisation that international law requires, without the domestic consensus that democratic accountability demands, and without a clear articulation of what victory would look like or how it would be achieved. The rules-based order, already battered by two decades of the “war on terror,” now faces its final blow.
The Clausewitzian Framework Inverted
To paraphrase Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” In this formulation, war is subordinate to politics—it serves political ends, and political leaders retain control over military means. War settles differences through the application of force, but it does so within a framework of political calculation.
This time, President Donald Trump has clearly lost patience with diplomacy and negotiations. War through decapitation of the other side’s leaders changes the rules of engagement fundamentally. Henceforth, it is a no-holds-barred fight until one side accepts unconditional surrender or both sides are so exhausted that they return to ceasefire and negotiations.
But the Clausewitzian framework assumes that politics retains primacy. When war becomes an end in itself, when military action is not serving clearly defined political objectives, when escalation becomes automatic rather than calculated, then the relationship inverts. Politics becomes a continuation of war by other means—a recipe for endless conflict.
The Historical Lessons of Regime Change
Given the murky smog of war, thick with misinformation and disinformation, a few historical insights frame the future within blurry boundaries.
First, regime change using only airpower—without boots on the ground—has rarely succeeded. Neither the strategic bombing campaigns of the Second World War nor the Rolling Thunder campaign in Vietnam achieved their political objectives. You cannot bomb a population into submission; you can only bomb them into resistance.
Experience with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya showed that replacing one autocrat often leads to another chaotic regime, with few chances of well-functioning democratic outcomes. Good governance does not happen overnight. It requires long consultations and far-sighted domestic leaders who can agree on a consensual way forward. It cannot be imposed from above by foreign bombs.
The architects of regime change consistently underestimate the resilience of national identity, the depth of religious and tribal loyalties, and the capacity of local actors to resist foreign imposition. They overestimate the appeal of their own values and institutions, assuming that others will welcome them once the tyrant is removed. They are consistently wrong.
The Energy Dimension
Second, the Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran conflicts are all about power and command over energy resources. No one would have fought there if these countries had no energy resources or strategic geographic value. Iran lies at the heart of the Middle East, where roughly half of the world’s oil and gas resources reside. Europe, India, China, Japan, and South Korea depend critically on Middle East oil and gas to power their economies.
Control over energy translates into control over the global economy. The country that dominates energy supplies can shape the terms of trade, influence the foreign policies of importing nations, and extract rents from the entire global system. This is the real prize in the Middle East, obscured by rhetoric about democracy, human rights, and counter-terrorism.
The United States, ironically, has emerged as both a trade competitor and a borrower from the oil-rich Middle East. As the world’s largest oil and gas exporter, America competes with Gulf producers for market share. Yet it also borrows from them, with Gulf Cooperation Council countries holding $4.56 trillion in net international assets at the end of 2023—22.3 per cent of U.S. net foreign liabilities. Surplus economies quickly realise that holding dollars means financing a predatory hegemon that may have no qualms about waging war against them.
The Predatory Hegemon
Stephen Walt argued convincingly in his latest Foreign Affairs article that America as the “predatory hegemon” cannot afford to remain as a benevolent hegemon—Pax Americana—but must tax or coerce the Rest of the World to pay for its rising debt and unsustainable spending. This is “Tax Americana,” and it represents a fundamental shift in how the United States relates to other nations.
Fragmentation is really about friends and foes seeking to avoid being made to pay for American folly. Russia and China woke up to this threat after 2014, but the Europeans emerged from their delusions only after Trump asked for Greenland. The message is clear: no nation is safe from American demands, not even long-standing allies.
The BRICS+ grouping, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and other alternative institutions represent attempts to build a world not dependent on American goodwill. They may not succeed, but their existence reflects a widespread recognition that the old order is dying and something new must take its place.
The China Connection
Third, the Iranian war is ultimately part of the bigger game of U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry. American and European neoconservatives think that the weakest link in the CRIK axis (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) is Iran—the only state without nuclear weapons. Regime change in Iran would mean that after the West fully controls the Middle East, with a standoff in Ukraine, they can fully concentrate on China.
This logic assumes that each of these powers can be isolated and defeated sequentially, that they will not coordinate their responses, and that the global order will remain stable while these wars unfold. All of these assumptions are questionable.
China has already responded by deepening its economic engagement with Iran, by investing in alternative energy routes, and by building military capabilities that complicate American freedom of action in the Pacific. Russia has provided diplomatic cover and military technology. North Korea has tested missiles that could reach American soil. The axis is not as weak as its opponents imagine.
Israel’s Existential Calculus
Fourth, Israel has emerged as the most powerful and dangerous state in the world because it effectively maintains the United States as a political ally through the super-powerful Jewish lobby. Walt and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer noted as early as 2006 that Israel’s interests are not always those of the United States. Unless the United States can control Israel to prevent unimaginable actions—such as deploying nuclear weapons—America is a client state of Israel, not the other way around.
Israel demands existential attention because it understands and practices asymmetric warfare. With a population of only 10 million, it survives surrounded by nearly half a billion Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf states, not to mention Egypt (120 million) and Turkey (80 million). Israel survives through military and technological superiority, the full backing of the United States and Europe, and its undeclared nuclear bomb capability.
The rest of the Middle East is restrained from jihadist war by the responsible pursuit of peaceful development. But the conflicts in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan have taught the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and ISIS fighters that heavily dispersed, spiritually motivated, and lightly armed guerrillas can outlast conscripts or high-value troops who are not committed to long, deadly, and exhausting attrition.
The “short war” doctrine is dead. High-intensity urban combat exhausts troops and depletes munitions at rates Western armed forces are not prepared for. The United States has not fought a prolonged peer-level conflict since 1945; its entire military posture is designed for quick victories followed by rapid disengagement. A protracted war in Iran would test that posture in ways that could break it.
The Dollar’s Dilemma
The structural strength and weakness of America is the U.S. dollar. The mighty dollar enables America to fight global wars on credit, being the largest net debtor in the world. But this strength is also a vulnerability. If surplus economies lose confidence in the dollar, if they begin to diversify their reserves, if they seek alternatives for trade settlement, the entire edifice could crumble.
The Gulf Cooperation Council countries had $4.56 trillion in net international assets at the end of 2023—22.3 per cent of U.S. net foreign liabilities. As the world’s largest oil and gas exporter, America ironically competes with these same nations for market share while borrowing from them to finance its wars. This contradiction cannot persist indefinitely.
Surplus economies quickly realise that holding dollars means financing a predatory hegemon that may have no qualms about waging war against them. The move toward alternative currencies, toward bilateral trade agreements, toward regional financial architectures is a hedge against this risk. It is also a slow-motion rebellion against American dominance.
The Game of Thrones
Are there winners in this crazy Game of Thrones? In the long run, those who have strategic patience, the political and economic resilience to suffer pain, and the willingness to take casualties will at least achieve a stand-off against those who cannot take domestic electoral defeat from rising body bag counts.
In asymmetric warfare, small players win if they do not lose. Big powers lose if they cannot decisively win. This is the paradox that has haunted every great power intervention in the post-colonial era. The United States did not lose the Vietnam War in a conventional sense—it won every major battle. But it lost politically because it could not translate military victory into sustainable political outcomes.
The same dynamic applies in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and now potentially in Iran. The United States can destroy Iranian infrastructure, assassinate Iranian leaders, and degrade Iranian military capabilities. But it cannot destroy Iranian nationalism, cannot eliminate the desire for self-determination, cannot impose a stable political order by force.
Conclusion: The Path Forward
You cannot bomb your way to peace. Whatever the defects of the existing institutional arrangements, they remain the best available means to address unending wars and conflict. The United Nations, for all its flaws, provides a forum for diplomacy, a framework for collective action, and a set of norms that constrain the worst excesses of state behaviour. Dismantling this architecture without building something better in its place is not reform; it is vandalism.
The predatory hegemon is at an important crossroads. You cannot stop Russia, China, India, and other middle powers from growing in technology and military prowess. However much it tries to exercise control over allies and adversaries alike, the world is fragmenting into regional and local nodes of uneven network alliances, as articulated by Canadian Prime Minister Carney.
Inevitably, the world will be split between those committed to universal aims of well-being through peace and harmony, and those who want to fight to secure dominance over others. The choice is not abstract; it is being made every day, in every conflict, in every diplomatic engagement.
We all pray that someone does not press the nuclear option. But prayer is not a strategy. The only real strategy is to rebuild the institutions and norms that make nuclear use unthinkable, to restore the habits of diplomacy and compromise that the current conflict has abandoned, and to remember that in the end, we all share the same planet and the same vulnerability.
Q&A: Unpacking the Geopolitics of the Iran War
Q1: What does the Iran war signify for global governance?
A: The U.S.-Israel attack on Iran without Congressional or UN approval represents a fundamental blow to the rules-based international order established after 1945. When the world’s mightiest power disregards legal constraints and multilateral institutions, it signals that might makes right is the operative principle. This undermines the checks and balances that were designed to prevent exactly this kind of unilateral military action, potentially triggering a cascade of similar behaviour from other powers.
Q2: Why has regime change through airpower rarely succeeded historically?
A: Historical experience from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq and Libya shows that bombing alone cannot achieve political objectives. You cannot bomb a population into submission; you can only bomb them into resistance. Removing an autocrat often leads not to democracy but to chaos, as seen in Iraq and Libya. Good governance requires domestic consensus and capable local leaders—it cannot be imposed from outside. Regime change advocates consistently underestimate national identity, religious loyalties, and the capacity for resistance.
Q3: What role do energy resources play in these conflicts?
A: Energy is central to all the current conflicts—Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran. Iran sits atop roughly half the world’s oil and gas reserves. Europe, India, China, Japan, and Korea depend critically on Middle East energy. Control over energy translates into control over the global economy. The United States, ironically, has become both a trade competitor (as a major oil and gas exporter) and a borrower from oil-rich Gulf states, which hold $4.56 trillion in net international assets—22.3% of U.S. net foreign liabilities.
Q4: How does the Iran war connect to U.S.-China rivalry?
A: Neoconservatives view Iran as the weakest link in the CRIK axis (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea)—the only state without nuclear weapons. The strategic logic is that after securing regime change in Iran and stabilising Ukraine, the West could fully concentrate on containing China. However, this assumes these powers can be isolated sequentially and will not coordinate their responses—assumptions that are increasingly questionable as China deepens economic ties with Iran and Russia provides diplomatic cover.
Q5: What is Israel’s role in this conflict, and what makes it uniquely powerful?
A: Israel has emerged as arguably the most powerful and dangerous state in the region, maintaining U.S. support through the influential Jewish lobby. With a population of only 10 million surrounded by nearly half a billion Muslims, Israel survives through military and technological superiority, full Western backing, and undeclared nuclear capability. Some analysts argue that Israel’s interests do not always align with America’s, and that unless the U.S. can control Israeli actions, America effectively functions as a client state of Israel rather than the reverse.
