Michael Hudson

Trump repeating the failed 2018 maximum-pressure playbook; next rungs = carpet-bombing or nuclear threat. Now says Iran’s destruction of US bases across West Asia showed Washington to be a "paper dinosaur" in the region, with no capability to bomb Iran into submission.

Says Ukraine is out of missiles and men, so there is already a de facto ceasefire because Ukraine cannot fight, and the outcome will be settled on the battlefield rather than by diplomacy.

China’s rise happened inside the dollar system, an "enabling relationship becoming an obstacle." Now says China has replaced the United States as the world’s industrial supplier, leaving Washington little real leverage over Iran or the wider region. Now says BRICS only has critical mass because of its Russia, China and Iran core, and that forcing US tech monopolies onto Korea over cheaper Chinese alternatives will push more countries toward China.

Financial-war capacity self-destructing via SWIFT weaponization; only force left. Now says the emerging unity of China, Russia and Iran threatens to restore a genuinely multipolar order against the chaos of US and NATO decline. Now says the United States no longer represents the future to the rest of the world, and that countries which once looked to it as a model now organize around resisting its tribute and monopoly demands.

The dollar-centered financial order is ending; China, Russia and Iran are positioning to replace it with credit and trade arrangements, including a new international bank, that don’t force debtor nations into IMF-style austerity. Now describes the US reverting from industrial capitalism to a rentier and tribute model, extracting economic rent rather than producing, citing a hundred-year Venezuelan oil arrangement with a 35% carve-out. Now says Trump’s underlying goal is making Gulf producers and Iran fund the cost of the US occupation of the region, including a floated demand for 20 percent of the value of all oil moving through Hormuz, and that the 350 billion Korean and 650 billion Japanese tribute demands exceed what either country earns on exports to the US, making the strategy unsustainable and driving both allies away.