19th Century Thinking and Butterflies

One thing the war with Iran has made clear is that 19th-century political thinking doesn’t work in the 21st century.

Actually, that way of thinking died in 1945. World War II was the last conflict where you could bomb an opponent into submission—and even then, it required devastation on a scale the world has never seen: roughly 75 million dead, including 50 million civilians, and the use of atomic weapons.

Since then, the pattern has been unmistakable. In Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and most recently in Ukraine, overwhelming military superiority has failed to produce decisive victory. Again and again, stronger powers have found themselves bogged down, stalemated, or strategically defeated by weaker adversaries.

The lesson is hard but clear: the capacity to “completely obliterate” an enemy—language used by trump and hegseth—by conventional force no longer translates into strategic victory.

At the same time, when a butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world it can dramatically impact the opposite side. In this case the butterfly is a Shahed drone. The other side of the world is the Strait of Hormuz, and the dramatic impact is North American gas prices, food supplies, inflation and even employment.  

In the past 75 years of global integration have made countries economically and politically inseparable. What happens in one region now reverberates everywhere. Power today is not just military—it’s systemic.

The paradigm has shifted. There is no returning to spheres of influence or clean geopolitical separation. Efforts at de-globalization—whether through trade barriers or political ruptures like Brexit—run up against a reality that is already too interconnected to unwind without enormous cost, especially to those attempting it.

The global system the United States helped build has become so deeply embedded that even it cannot dismantle it without harming itself. In that context, large-scale war is not just destructive—it is self-sabotage.

And that, ultimately, is the paradoxical good news.

Even the most powerful nations are constrained. “Might makes right” is no longer a workable doctrine. Durable outcomes require negotiation, coordination, and restraint.

Which is why the shortcomings of the United Nations feel so frustrating. Because in a world like this, its role is not optional—it is essential.

The most critical problems are no longer local. Poverty, conflict, and instability in one region spill across borders as migration crises. Disease spreads globally, as the COVID-19 made unmistakably clear. And then there's climate change.

There is no going back, and trump and his accolytes ultimately won't be able to do anything about it.