Right off the bat, let me clear one thing up: my view of the world does not make me a triumphalist, and would make me a most discordant singer in the hallelujah chorus. (I’m referring of course to online commentators whose view of the U.S. government’s official enemies is uniformly positive and optimistic, whom Karim called manufacturers of counter-consent.)
My actual view of the world is that we, as a species, are most likely doomed. The state of the world is horrendous now, for reasons that barely need enumerating, and thanks to the ecological crisis that is only being aggravated rather than mended, will most likely only get worse and worse, at least in the short-to-medium term.1 Now we have some hell breaking loose; we are heading toward all hell breaking loose. This needn’t be the case, but it is.
To show how it needn’t, requires imagination: what Unitedstatesians like me would do if we captured state power tomorrow. And how: with millions of disciplined cadres in our own The Party, who have been spending the past decades reading and discussing important books to inform our worldview, spreading our ideology as widely as possible (including by proselytizing and recruiting while delivering mutual aid), and entering key sectors like the military, media, education, judiciary, etc., thereby developing our power.2 With the signal given, we would all carry out our orders, starting with our members in the military, then taking control of the media and the other three branches of government. With state power, we would end the Gaza genocide, war for greater Israel, war on Iran, and Ukraine war immediately, and start applying U.S. power to end all other wars with less direct U.S. involvement. We would initiate global disarmament negotiations, reducing our own military spending by a small amount as a goodwill gesture, and then make each subsequent round of international armament reductions collective, mandatory, and verified. We would initiate parallel negotiations on redesigning the global economic system for indefinite sustainability, to avert ecological catastrophe, and build a civilized civilization.
Sadly, we do not have a The Party, and the U.S. Left is just a smattering of mostly disconnected individuals with only incipient organization. We are like our Chinese counterparts a century and a quarter ago: no Communist Party, and facing a half century of hell. (Likely more for us.) Hence we, as a species, not just within the U.S., are most probably doomed.
Triumphalism and its discontents
So, you might think that I would have no words of praise for people on the internet who might be called triumphalists, or trumpeters of a multipolar world order just about to replace the U.S. empire, members of a hallelujah chorus with nary an unkind word to say about states the Empire considers enemies, even if they are guilty of real crimes (apart from those fabricated or exaggerated for propaganda purposes).
And I don’t have many words of praise, just these: the trumpeters are far less bad than nearly everyone else sharing their political opinions on the internet in English.
As for words of criticism: while I’m sure I could come up with some if pressed, what would be the point?
Let’s review the upsides and downsides of the triumphalist trumpeters. Karim covered the downsides capably: essentially, that it is immoral for one committed to “self-determination, human dignity, the rights of workers, opposition to state violence, and the moral equality of persons” not to criticize official-enemy governments when they violate these principles – especially when that silence seems to have been influenced by audience capture, flattery, or money. It is infidelity to one’s values.
I have no reason to suspect Karim is wrong in this first-level moral analysis. But first-level morality is outside of my area of expertise. This morality I must leave to everyone else, as a private matter between themselves and their god, gods, priests, imams, pastors, yogis, monks, or other religious leaders/trusted confidants, as applicable. As a personal matter, I agree, and I happily share my views, privately.
Searching for downsides on the second, political level
Is there a second-level moral – that is, political – downside? Assuming that the trumpeters have a wide reach on some platforms, they may be giving an inaccurately rosy picture of official-enemy states. That could be imagined as an individual moral harm, insofar as truth is good, as is having an accurate view of the world. But this is still first-level morality. How would Anglosphere leftists having an inaccurately rosy view of official-enemy states affect real-world political developments negatively? My imagination fails.
But Karim’s does not. He writes that “years of idealized reporting produce disillusionment on a scale proportional to the idealization when the states in question turn out to be something other than what was advertised.”
That could very well be – and I fear it is. I can only advise those feeling disillusioned that their only mistake was in turning to internet media, particularly the medium of video, to learn about politics. The only reliable way one can develop an accurate understanding of the complex system that is international politics is by reading books. Sustained attention, over hours, to relevant evidence and reasoning is essential and nearly irreplaceable. One might get very lucky, and happen upon the perfect conversational partners or find just the right videos online to develop an accurate understanding without reading, but even that enormously lucky route is risky; and may result in a superficial understanding that is vulnerable to specious counterarguments. (As, I suspect, happened to AOC.3)
So to anyone who watched videos by trumpeters and got the idea that China is a Maoist revolutionary state a moment away from putting Killmonger’s plan into practice, replacing the U.S.’ empire of capital with a democratic, multipolar world order led by the Global South – I can understand your disappointment. But don’t retreat into the opposite intellectual error! Instead, inform your understanding; read Revolution and Counterrevolution in China, and China and the 21st Century Crisis for serious critiques, Chinese Economic Development, How China Works and The Battle for China’s Past for essential background, How China Escaped Shock Therapy, Red Swan, and China’s New Red Guards for some reasons to be optimistic, reading between the lines; and of course, subscribe to Monthly Review to stay current.
Fanon would likely agree that there is no political downside to triumphalist trumpeting, at least for foreigners; as I understand his implicit argument about criticizing post-colonial governments, beyond the immorality of infidelity to one’s values, if citizens of formerly colonized countries withhold criticism of their new governments when said governments frustrate the class-focused goals of their national liberation struggle, this has the political effect of impeding true national liberation. I doubt Fanon would be much concerned if, for instance, French citizens withheld criticism of Algeria’s post-independence governments, whether to distance themselves from the French Right, or because they saw no practical utility in criticizing the Algerian state from France. Such critique is better left to people in Algeria, at least until they request help from people in France. A French person adding to the chorus of condemnation in France – but non-racist and from a morally superior perspective – probably wouldn’t help much. At most, there would be little upside and a potential downside, if the useless bourgeoisie in Algeria had French leftists to use as a tool to de-legitimize domestic leftists.
Fanon’s explicit argument concerns the uselessness of national bourgeoisies in post-colonial African countries, who fail to play their essential role, and are not even a “genuine bourgeoisie but rather an acquisitive, voracious, and ambitious petty caste, dominated by a small-time racketeer mentality, content with the dividends paid out by the former colonial power. This short-sighted bourgeoisie lacks vision and inventiveness.” (Fanon’s description of what their role should be better matches that of China’s national bourgeoisie, represented by one of the four small stars on the Chinese flag: “The bourgeois phase in the underdeveloped countries is only justified if the national bourgeoisie is sufficiently powerful, economically and technically, to build a bourgeois society, to create the conditions for developing a sizeable proletariat, to mechanize agriculture, and finally pave the way for a genuine national culture.”)
Same with Rosa Luxemburg: her point was that revolutionary movements and parties must strengthen themselves via self-criticism, versus stifling internal debate for the sake of unity. The helpful role of self-criticism was echoed later by Mao, and later still by Xi. But self-criticism differs from other-criticism, particularly when the vast majority of those national-others critiques not to strengthen the target of criticism, but to destroy it. In the information ecosystem of our world, it is this sort of criticism which utterly dominates. Why add to this chorus? There is hardly a shortage of negative views made widely available by the owners of Anglophone media, old and new.
And if, in the process of refusing to add to this imperial chorus, some “manufacture counter-consent” for official-enemy states among Anglosphere leftists, so what? Might another downside be less leverage in ending official-enemy states’ bad policies, or urging them to adopt good policies? This depends on whether one thinks, for instance, that the Chinese government might change its policy in response to criticism from a few leftist individuals in the Anglosphere who haven’t built any significant organization. I think not, but it is funny to imagine someone in the People’s Congress urging a policy change because a few foreign leftists with zero power in their own countries want them to. Or Iranian military leaders ending an argument on strategy with an essay by an Anglosphere leftist.4
Self-criticism here would mean pointing out that Western leftists have been the world’s most consequential losers, successful in pushing their governments into a brief flirtation with civilization (social safety nets, workers’ rights, healthcare – in some countries, for a period of time), but utter failures in their most important task: organizing a revolution to fundamentally change the global political-economic system (by changing the key nodes at the center of the world system). And the purpose of such criticism would not to be to elevate the speaker and abase the target, but to whip everyone into focusing on recruitment, discipline, and organization.
And yes, it would also mean chastising ostensible leftists who bloviate in online videos without bothering to educate themselves first by doing the requisite, considerable amount of reading. Nonetheless, they pontificate. Are you someone who doesn’t like reading, or doesn’t have the time, but needs to make a living online? Then make videos about something other than politics, like cooking or sports. I’ll let Mao finish the chastisement:
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? … There are not a few comrades … who like to make political pronouncements the moment they arrive at a place and who strut about, criticizing this and condemning that when they have only seen the surface of things or minor details. Such purely subjective nonsensical talk is indeed detestable. These people are bound to make a mess of things, lose the confidence of the masses and prove incapable of solving any problem at all.5
Indeed.
The trumpeters are not a major problem, maybe a minor plus
So the verdict on the downside of triumphalist trumpeting is that there may be an individual moral violation involved, and no considerable political harm. Even if they disillusion those who learn about politics from them, to be capable of being disillusioned in this manner requires having no solid base of knowledge to start with; these were people bound to be swayed this way and that from the kaleidoscope of information on the internet. Particularly when subject to the peripheral route to persuasion, that is, what video can do to us that reading cannot.
How about the upside? I can’t imagine there is very much, at least because the trumpeters are so few, or so quiet, that I at least haven’t heard much from them.
But politically, the effect of people on the internet disseminating an inaccurately positive view of official-enemy states may be a net positive. That is, some people who would otherwise only imbibe the standard propaganda against official-enemy states might encounter a rare rosy view, and develop a somewhat less negative opinion. Which would come in handy the next time people with actual power, the Right, try to gin up a propaganda campaign justifying mass murder against the official enemy du jour.
The net political position: no concrete downside, minor upside. So ends my praise for the triumphalist trumpeters.
Or, perhaps there is the downside Karim noted, that of potential disillusionment – but disillusionment is the least of concerns with people informing themselves via the internet, particularly the medium of video. For far, far more people, the concern is being misinformed or remaining ignorant, and being manipulated by the owners of internet media companies into adopting a rightwing ideology.
Nonetheless, his section on inverted filters is spot on, a clever updating of the political economy of legacy media to describe a niche within internet media. And those in that niche would do well to consider these structural pressures, and whether they are exerting undue influence on their thinking. More importantly, everyone else should learn to apply a political-economy-of-media lens on their own media diets, to spot deficiencies and excesses.
And of course, we should always consult our WWCIAD bracelets, and ask whether the CIA would want us to focus on criticizing the trumpeters. Since the answer to any question about keeping the Left infighting and disorganized is yes, all the more reason to leave the trumpeters be.
Political imperatives and a concrete example
Having recently visited family, I was reminded of something important. That is, those few of us comprising the U.S. Left should not try to be more Catholic than the Pope, so to speak. And, that we don’t have the time or luxury of bickering with each other. (That is, not 白左/baizuo, but actual leftists: people who oppose imperialism and capitalism.)
I’ll briefly cover one current example, which will likely soon disappear and be replaced with another: is China bad, due to its Iran policy?
To avoid being more Catholic than the Pope, we should start with the Iranian government’s view. In this case, the Iranian government evidently/publicly has nothing but appreciation for the Chinese government, from the Qur’anic verse chosen for China at Khamenei’s funeral, to recent diplomatic statements. (And statements going far further back.)
Why might the Iranian government be more sanguine on China than Anglosphere leftists who want the Chinese government to enter the war more directly?6 Among other reasons – none of which would be trumpeted to the world, out of self-preservation – because China is the only market for Iran’s primary export.
Without which, it’s hard to imagine U.S. primary and secondary sanctions not destroying the country.
And how is China alone able to buck the Empire? By building its national power, that is, playing the (despicable) game imposed by the hegemon and playing it well. I don’t like that game, and you probably don’t either, but China playing it well is why the U.S. government isn’t running Iran right now.
But should the Chinese government have, in addition to not withdrawing oil from its strategic petroleum reserve (but actually adding to it during the war), prohibited its companies from withdrawing oil from their commercial reserves, to help drive up the price of oil, at the cost of bankrupting some of them?
First, those with disposable income who haven’t bought oil futures during the war can hardly criticize the Chinese government for not bidding up oil prices. But for those of us who have, I still wouldn’t – the oil price mechanism is a highly indirect way to help Iran, by putting political pressure on Trump to end the aggression, and of course it harms the global poor. Futures-market manipulation is likely a far bigger factor in keeping benchmark prices low. Plus, the Chinese government’s permitting private firms to tap their commercial reserves allowed it to use refined-product exports as a political tool in their region – that is, playing the Empire-imposed game well, to build power. (Which has spillover benefits, like keeping Iran from collapse, etc.)
Second, the Chinese government doesn’t buy Iranian oil, it gives protection from U.S. sanctions to small “teapot” refiners in China so they can buy it. Recently, Gulf producers undercut Iran’s state vendor by several dollars per barrel. Hence the recent drop in purchases in the Chinese market. It was not the Chinese government stabbing the Iranian government in the back (with the latter somehow not noticing).
So, if we are not to be more Catholic than the Pope, we’d take a similar perspective to that of the Iranian government.
Separately, and far more importantly: we need to focus on increasing our power, which does not come from discourse (speaking truth to the internet algorithms) but from building disciplined organizations with a maximum of members. That means embracing those who we think are wrong on matters that are far from unimportant, so long as they are right on the matters that are clearly most important.
So to any anti-imperialists who feel attacked on this issue, please don’t. We can disagree on all sorts of trivial things, because we agree on what is inestimably more important. A triumphalist trumpeter might not agree 100% with Karim or me, but the .001% we disagree on is irrelevant compared to the 99.999% we agree on.
We have a world to win. We do not have the luxury of infighting.
- Peter
For younger people, take heart – there’s hope in the medium-to-long term, as the ecological crisis intensifies to the point of being impossible to ignore, creating a propitious environment for radical change. Happy to help however I can, including if you decide to do a mass adultocide.
We would also need to strengthen coordination, which requires following orders. I might be ordered to stop writing publicly because I sound like an arrogant prick to normies, scaring them off if not putting them to sleep – so I would have to swallow my pride, ignore my feelings, and comply.
For fun, I guided Deepseek to write a short satirical story to illustrate this:
The Visiting Expert
The conference room in Tehran’s Foreign Ministry was nondescript—beige walls, fluorescent lights, a long table covered in secure tablets. Outside, the city hummed with the tense normality of a nation under perpetual siege: the drone of surveillance aircraft overhead, the quiet fear of the next assassination, the creeping inflation that made every grocery trip a calculation.
General Reza Aramesh, head of the Supreme National Security Council’s nuclear negotiating team, was reviewing the latest draft from the Omani intermediaries when his deputy, Colonel Mousavi, leaned in with a tablet, his face pale.
“Sir, SIGINT just confirmed. Israeli F-35s are airborne over the Mediterranean. They’re conducting a pre-strike rehearsal—we’ve seen this pattern before. Our analysts give them thirty-six hours, maybe forty-eight, before they hit our western missile launch sites. We need to decide now: do we relocate the mobile launchers to the northern valleys, or do we activate the decoy installations—the fake radar arrays and drone mock-ups in the south—to draw their fire? We don’t have enough transport assets to do both at full scale. We have roughly two hours to execute before their satellite coverage shifts. We need a decision.”
The door opened and in walked Dr. Marko Jovanović, a Serbian political theorist. He had been invited—over Aramesh’s private objections—by the Foreign Ministry’s cultural office, as part of an “international solidarity delegation.” Jovanović was a hero to a certain generation: a veteran of the anti-NATO protests of 1999, a fierce critic of every American war since Vietnam, a man whose books on imperial overreach were assigned from Beirut to Buenos Aires. He had also never negotiated a treaty, never calculated a sanctions impact, never sat across from an American intelligence officer and read their tells.
He took a seat without greeting.
“General,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of thirty years of moral certainty, “I have been briefed on the draft. You are offering to cap your enrichment at 3.67 percent. To accept intrusive inspections. To freeze your centrifuge program. In exchange for permission to access your own money. This is not negotiation. This is tribute. You are legitimizing the assassins who kill your scientists. You are handing them a victory they have not earned on the battlefield.”
Aramesh looked up. His eyes were tired but steady. “Colonel, hold that thought.”
He turned to Jovanović.
“Doctor, you call it tribute. I call it the cost of breathing. The Americans are assassinating our scientists, threatening our facilities, and strangling our economy—I don’t need a lecture on their character. The question is not whether they are evil. The question is whether we can survive their evil long enough to outlast it. What is your alternative?”
Jovanović leaned forward, animated. This was his element—diagnosing the pathology, prescribing the cure.
“My alternative is refusal. Total, absolute, unyielding refusal. You walk away from the table. You announce that you will enrich to whatever level your energy needs require—twenty percent, sixty percent, ninety percent—and that no foreign power will dictate your sovereign scientific development. You dare them to strike. The war planners in Washington and Tel Aviv understand that public skepticism has reached dangerous levels. They understand that millions now see clearly what was once obscured. The moment you show absolute defiance—the moment you refuse to legitimize their blackmail—their entire framework collapses. They have no move. They can bomb, yes—but bombing a nation that has already declared its nuclear independence just makes them look like the aggressors they are. It unites your population. It forces the Europeans to choose. The Americans blink. They always blink. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Iraq—”
“Sir,” Colonel Mousavi interrupted quietly, “the Israeli F-35s are confirmed. We have ninety minutes to move the launchers or deploy the decoys. If we wait, their satellite passes, and they’ll have fixed our positions. We need to decide—”
“One moment, Colonel,” Aramesh said, holding up a hand. “Doctor, please continue. You were saying the Americans blink.”
Jovanović, momentarily thrown but recovering his rhythm, pressed on. “Yes, they blink. They always blink. Vietnam—they withdrew. Afghanistan—they withdrew. Iraq—they left, didn’t they? Not because they were defeated militarily in the conventional sense, but because the cost became unbearable. Because the resistance made it politically impossible to stay. The same logic applies here. If you show them that you will not be intimidated—that you will not trade your sovereignty for their permission—they will eventually conclude that the price of attacking you is too high. And here is the critical point: this refusal forces China and Russia to act. Right now, they can hide behind your negotiations. They say: ‘Iran is talking to the Americans, why should we risk a rupture?’ But if you refuse—if you make a principled stand—they have no cover. They cannot allow you to be crushed, because if you are crushed, they are next. China, Russia, the entire Global South—they will have no choice but to break the sanctions unilaterally, to establish alternative payment systems, to send military advisors, to confront the empire directly. You are not isolating yourself. You are mobilizing the world. You are creating a crisis that forces everyone to pick a side. That is how you win. That is the lesson of history—”
“General,” Mousavi said, his voice now urgent, “if we don’t move the launchers, they’ll be destroyed on the ground. If we don’t deploy the decoys, we waste our only chance to make them waste their expensive munitions on concrete and canvas. We have transport for one full operation and a half-measure for the other. We need authorization now.”
Aramesh nodded. “Tell transport we’re still deliberating. Doctor, please continue. You were discussing the lesson of history.”
Jovanović paused, gathering his thoughts, then resumed with renewed fervor. “The lesson of history is that empires do not fall because of diplomatic agreements. They fall because of resistance. Because of refusal. Because of the refusal to legitimate their power. This is what I have written about for thirty years. The Americans are a death cult, General. They are a sick society, its pathologies visible to any observer with a clinical sensibility. All empires are sicknesses. What I am saying is not controversial—it is simply a statement of fact. The American empire is in its death throes, and the correct response is to accelerate its demise, not to negotiate with its symptoms. The West cannot see itself. That is the root of the pathology. The average American is so profoundly entrenched in their own worldview, so seemingly incapable of self-reflection, that they cannot begin to fathom what they have become. You are treating the symptoms of a dying empire with diplomacy. You are sitting across from a psychopath and persuading yourself that this time, with this language, the psychopath will be a different entity than he has been throughout history. That is not strategy. That is Stockholm syndrome. The negotiation is not the means to the outcome. The negotiation is the outcome. Every moment you sit at that table, you legitimize the empire. You tell the world that America has the right to dictate your nuclear program. That is not survival. That is surrender dressed in diplomatic language.”
The secure phone on the table buzzed. Mousavi answered, listened for three seconds, and his face went white.
“Sir,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “the cyber defense team reports an intrusion attempt at the Natanz centrifuge control systems. It’s sophisticated—they think it’s Israeli. They need authorization to implement the emergency isolation protocol. If we isolate the system, we lose remote monitoring for seventy-two hours. If we don’t, they may already be inside. We need a decision—”
Aramesh held up a hand. “Tell cyber I’m aware. Doctor, please continue. You were discussing Stockholm syndrome and the nature of the negotiation.”
Jovanović, visibly flustered but refusing to yield, pressed on. “Yes, Stockholm syndrome. The captive who begins to identify with the captor. The victim who persuades himself that if he is cooperative enough, the abuse will stop. That is what you are doing here. You are not fooling anyone, General—least of all the Americans. They understand that every concession you make, every cap you accept, every inspection you allow, is a validation of their right to dictate terms. And once you have validated that right, you have lost. Not because they have out-negotiated you. Because you have conceded the fundamental premise—that they have the authority to negotiate at all. The Americans understand this on a visceral level. They do not negotiate from weakness. They negotiate from power. And power, as you well know, is not something you negotiate away. It is something you confront. This is why I argue for refusal. Not as a gesture, not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a strategic necessity. Because only refusal—total, absolute, unyielding refusal—forces them to reckon with the fact that you are not a supplicant. You are a sovereign nation. You are not asking for permission. You are declaring your independence. And a declaration of independence, properly understood, is not a bargaining chip. It is a fact. It is a fact that they must either accept or try to destroy. And if they try to destroy it, they reveal themselves for what they are. And that revelation—that exposure of their true nature—is itself a weapon. It splits their coalition. It alienates their allies. It emboldens their enemies. It accelerates their decline. That is how you win, General. Not by negotiating. By refusing.”
The phone buzzed again. Mousavi answered, listened, and turned to Aramesh with the look of a man delivering news of a death.
“Sir,” he said, his voice now strained, “the Quds Force reports that a senior IRGC commander was just assassinated in Beirut—car bombing, Israeli intelligence almost certainly. His deputy is requesting immediate authorization for retaliatory drone strikes on the Golan. They need a target package authorized within the hour or the window closes. They also need to know—do we escalate now, or do we hold for a coordinated response with Hezbollah? If we wait, we risk losing the element of surprise. If we strike now, we risk triggering a wider confrontation before the missile relocation is complete. We need a decision on all three—launchers, cyber isolation, and retaliation—simultaneously.”
Aramesh’s jaw tightened. He looked at Jovanović, who was still waiting to continue his lecture.
“Doctor,” Aramesh said, his voice now carrying an edge of steel, “you were about to tell me about the nature of refusal as a strategic weapon, I believe. Please continue.”
Jovanović, oblivious to the weight of the moment, continued. “Yes, refusal as a weapon. It is the only weapon the weak have that the strong cannot counter. Because the strong understand force. They understand leverage. They understand coercion. But they do not understand refusal—not when it is absolute, not when it is principled, not when it is backed by the moral clarity of a people who know they are right. That is what you have, General. You have moral clarity. You have the knowledge that you are in the right. And that knowledge is not a luxury. It is a resource. It is a resource that, properly deployed, can break the will of the enemy—”
“Mousavi,” Aramesh cut in, turning to his colonel, “authorize the following: relocate sixty percent of the launchers to the northern valleys, deploy the full decoy set in the south. Activate the emergency isolation protocol at Natanz—seventy-two hours without remote monitoring is acceptable if it keeps them out. And tell the Quds Force to hold for the moment. We wait for Hezbollah coordination. We do not escalate until the launchers are in place. That gives us forty-eight hours. We’ll strike then, together.”
Mousavi nodded and began issuing orders into the phone.
Aramesh turned back to Jovanović, who was still sitting with his mouth half-open, his lecture interrupted mid-sentence.
“Now, Doctor,” Aramesh said, his voice calm but cold, “you were saying something about refusal as a resource, and moral clarity, and the weakness of the strong. Please continue. I have a few minutes before the next crisis.”
Jovanović, thoroughly unsettled but unwilling to abandon his argument, attempted to regain his composure. “Yes, refusal as a resource. The Americans are a death cult. They are a sick society. They understand force, but they do not understand refusal. And because they do not understand it, they cannot counter it. That is why every successful anti-colonial struggle—”
Aramesh held up a hand.
“Doctor, let me stop you there. You have just described a beautiful strategy. I agree with every word of it—in principle. But let me ask you a question. You say China will choose us because they have no alternative. But what is the actual choice you are asking China to make?”
He leaned forward, his voice still calm but now carrying an edge of impatience.
“You are asking China to break completely with the American financial system. To risk the seizure of their dollar reserves. To risk a naval blockade of their maritime trade routes. But that is only the beginning. Do you know what China cannot make for itself? Advanced lithography machines for semiconductors—only the Dutch and Japanese make them. Precision bearings for jet engines—only the Germans and Japanese. Specialty chemicals for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and advanced manufacturing—the Americans, Germans, and South Koreans. High-end medical imaging equipment—the Germans and Japanese. If the United States imposes a total embargo on all allied exports—Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands—China’s factories grind to a halt within months. Not years. Months.”
He paused, letting that sink in.
“And the short term is all the Americans need. They do not need to defeat China in a long war. They need only to cripple China’s industry for six months—long enough to win a regional conflict, long enough to shift the global balance permanently, long enough to demonstrate that the empire still commands the world’s essential supply chains. You are asking China to risk industrial paralysis, economic collapse, and potential internal destabilization—all for our nuclear enrichment. That is not a failure of revolutionary will, Doctor. That is a failure of geography and material reality. China is our friend. But they are also a sovereign nation with their own survival to calculate. They will not sacrifice their own existence for our convenience—no matter how just our cause.”
Jovanović opened his mouth to respond.
“Let me finish,” Aramesh continued. “Russia. You say they will confront the empire directly. Russia is already fighting a war in Ukraine. Their economy is under sanctions. Their military is stretched. What do you expect them to do—open a second front in the Persian Gulf? They will help us—up to a point. They will sell us weapons. They will give us diplomatic cover. But they will not start a world war over our enrichment levels. They cannot. Their survival is also at stake.”
He picked up the draft.
“You speak of the Global South. They have issued hundreds of statements condemning the sanctions. They have marched in solidarity. They have written essays—beautiful essays—about imperial overreach. And then they go home and continue to trade with the Americans because their own economies depend on it. Not because they are cowards. Because they are weak. Weak in the material sense. They cannot afford the rupture. Neither can we—unless we want to watch our hospitals run out of insulin and our soldiers run out of drone and missile parts. That is not defeatism. That is accounting.”
Jovanović shook his head, his face reddening. “You are reducing revolutionary strategy to bookkeeping. You are ignoring the dialectic—the way absolute defiance creates its own material conditions. The Americans are afraid of a unified resistance. They are afraid of a crisis that forces everyone to choose. If we show weakness—if we negotiate—we give them exactly what they want: time. Time to consolidate. Time to isolate us further. Time to prepare their strike. Defiance is strategically superior precisely because it refuses to play their game. It forces them into a corner where every option is bad. That is not fantasy. That is the history of every successful anti-colonial struggle.”
Aramesh smiled thinly—a smile with no warmth.
“Every successful anti-colonial struggle,” he repeated. “Name one—one—that succeeded without external supply lines. Vietnam had China and the Soviet Union supplying them overland. Algeria had the Tunisian border. Cuba had the Soviet Union. Afghanistan had Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. We have a coastline under blockade, a land border with countries that are either hostile or too weak to defy the Americans, and a sky full of drones. There is no overland supply route. There is no friendly neighbor. There is only the sea—and the sea is controlled by the American navy.”
He stood.
“You argue that defiance creates its own material conditions. I agree—in the long term. But in the short term, defiance creates deprivation. And deprivation kills. Not in theory. In practice. It kills children with thalassemia who cannot get enzymes. It kills soldiers who cannot get drone and missile parts. It kills the elderly who cannot get heart medication. Those deaths are not abstract. They are real. They are countable. And they are the direct result of refusing a deal that gives us our own money back.”
He sat back down.
“Now, Doctor. You have presented a strategic argument. It is coherent. It is elegant. It is morally pristine. I have read your books—I know you are a serious thinker. But you have not presented a logistics argument. You have not told me where the insulin will come from. You have not told me how the refineries will keep running. You have not told me how the drone and missile parts will reach the front. You have not given me tonnage. You have given me hope. Hope is beautiful. Hope is necessary. But hope does not cross a blockade. Steel crosses a blockade. Medicine crosses a blockade. Drone components cross a blockade. Missile guidance systems cross a blockade. And to get these things past the American navy, we need their permission—because we cannot sink their ships. Not yet.”
He pointed to the draft.
“This agreement gives us permission. Permission to access our own money. Permission to import our own medicine. Permission to import the drone and missile parts we need to keep our air defense operational. Permission to keep our nation breathing. It is not surrender. It is survival. And survival is the precondition for eventual victory. You cannot win a war if you are already dead.”
Jovanović was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke, his voice quieter now.
“And when the Americans use this time to prepare their strike? When they use your compliance to build their case for military action? What then?”
Aramesh nodded slowly.
“Then we fight. With the medicine we imported. With the spare parts we bought. With the refineries we kept running. With the launchers we relocated. With the decoys we deployed. With the cyber defenses we isolated. With the coordinated retaliation we delayed. We fight with everything we have—and we have more because we negotiated and made the right tactical choices in the moment. That is the choice, Doctor. Not defiance or surrender. Defiance with supplies, or defiance without supplies. I choose the former. Because I have buried too many soldiers to pretend that principles alone can stop a JDAM.”
He turned to Mousavi.
“Colonel. Confirm those orders. And tell the Quds Force to prepare their target package for forty-eight hours from now. We strike together, or we don’t strike at all.”
Mousavi nodded and left the room.
Jovanović gathered his notes, his hands trembling.
He walked out.
He wrote a brilliant essay afterward—about the tragedy of necessity, about the corrosion of principle, about the moral compromises empires force upon the weak. He argued that General Aramesh had been co-opted by imperial logic, that a true revolutionary would have refused the deal and trusted the masses, that history would vindicate those who chose purity over pragmatism.
It was much admired in academic circles.
It changed nothing.
The agreement went through. The sanctions relief came—partial, humiliating, but sufficient. The medicine arrived—tons of it, packed in containers, cleared through the Swiss channels. The drone and missile parts arrived. The refineries kept running. The hospitals stayed open. The soldiers stayed fed. The drones had guidance systems. The missiles had components.
The Israeli strike came—as predicted. The decoys worked. The launchers survived. The cyber isolation held. The retaliation, coordinated with Hezbollah, struck exactly forty-eight hours later.
And General Aramesh, when asked about the essay at a press conference, said only: “He was right about the empire. And he was useless to us. Both things are true. Both things can coexist.”
Then he went back to work—calculating tonnage, tracking shipments, keeping the country alive.
The country survived.
Not because of principles.
Because of logistics.
And the irony is that this essay was about opposing book worship! At least the cadres Mao was criticizing here read books, even if they didn’t engage in problem-specific investigations. Seems the problem today is too many people doing neither.
Or something less than entering the war – “less”, at least from the view of Anglosphere leftists – whether it would be so viewed by the U.S. government is another question entirely.
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