Patrick Henningsen

Saudi Arabia, not Yemen, is the aggressor in the renewed exchange, and Washington is content to see the kingdom weakened. Ansarallah is routing the Saudi-backed coalition and taking the Red Sea chokepoints, a trend he says neither Riyadh nor Washington can reverse, on the pattern of the Iraqi army's collapse in 2014. Iran holds escalatory dominance: no sanctions package or blockade forces a surrender, and in a defensive war of attrition Iran and the Houthis outlast an overextended United States. He "wouldn't bet against" either of them. Now says Yemen’s success against Saudi Arabia strengthens Iran’s hand in the region massively, even as Washington rules out any negotiated settlement with Iran under Trump.

Ukraine is cannon fodder in a NATO sabotage-style proxy war aimed at European and Russian energy infrastructure. The Witkoff and Kushner peace push is performative and going nowhere, because Russia knows Kiev cannot accept the terms.

Israel uses distraction to take territory and pursues a weak-neighbors Greater Israel strategy through destabilization in the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean, and he calls it the "X factor" that will finally bring down the American empire. Its international standing and conventional military are badly degraded, the United States is rationing its interceptors, and the Netanyahu government heads into an exposed election; he "wouldn't bet on the Israelis being successful." Now says Washington and Israel are running a maximum-pressure campaign, letting Ansarallah off the leash, to force Saudi Arabia back onto the Abraham Accords track, sacrificing Saudi security for a bigger transaction.

China is now the leading economic, technological and manufacturing power, which is why the old Anglo-American "world island" grand strategy no longer functions.

The United States is a declining empire with no grand strategy left, one that has "reverted to piracy, theft, sabotage" and proxy war. After a purge of generals and commanders its military is, in his word, a zombie, unable to back official claims of dominance after heavy drone and aircraft losses to Yemen and Iran and a retreat from 17 bases in the region within months. Israel's capture of American policy is accelerating the collapse from within. Now says Saudi Arabia’s military failure in Yemen and its total dependency on Washington mark the beginning of the end for the Saudi regime and a broader collapse of the US-managed order in West Asia, naming Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq as the dominoes that could follow.

The dollar reserve system is a Ponzi scheme falling to pieces under $40 trillion of debt and faltering bond auctions, with interest payments above trillion a year now the third largest budget line; the United States is, in his phrase, bankrupt and borrowing to run blockades halfway across the world. He reads the coming crash as engineered by Trump-aligned Wall Street insiders, Scott Bessent among them, for their own profit, while oil near 00 shows the strain of the blockade fights. Now says the United States is capitalizing on destroyed Saudi energy supply, using high oil and gas prices and a coming financial bailout to deepen Saudi Arabia’s dollarized dependency, and expects US pump prices to keep rising into Christmas.