Chas Freeman discusses the end of US maritime dominance, the Iran war stalemate, and the unraveling of the Western-led international order
Glenn Diesen interviews former US Ambassador and Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Chas Freeman, former US Ambassador and Assistant Secretary of Defense, on the strategic implications of the US-Iran conflict and the broader decline of Anglo-American maritime hegemony. Freeman argues that land-based missile technology has fundamentally ended the era of sea power dominance, with Iran's shore-based arsenal rendering the Strait of Hormuz militarily unopenable — a development he calls a genuine historical turning point. He contends there is no viable military or diplomatic path out of the Iran conflict, predicting the war will subside into low-intensity stalemate rather than resolution. Freeman also addresses the accelerating erosion of NATO cohesion, the fragility of the petrodollar, and what he describes as Israel's deepening international isolation and uncertain long-term survival as a state. The conversation closes with both speakers comparing the current era of civilisational transition to the fall of the Roman Empire, the erosion of Enlightenment values, and the rise of strongman politics in the absence of wise leadership on either side of the Atlantic.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Historical Arc of Anglo-American Maritime Dominance
Glenn Diesen: We are joined again by Ambassador Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defense. Thank you for coming back on the program.
Chas Freeman: Great to be with you, Glenn.
Glenn Diesen: We often see that maritime dominance is tied up to hegemonic power, or at least it has always been a key component of great power rivalry. You can argue that the so-called hegemony of the British in the 19th century and then the American hegemony from the 20th century was largely dependent on controlling the world's seas. Indeed, after World War II, the US Navy having key control over main maritime corridors was a key component — and this can have positive effects as well. If you have one hegemon controlling, they often have an interest in keeping the waterways open, as long as it's under their administration of course. But for the first time in a very long time it appears that this is no longer the case, and nowhere is this more evident than the Strait of Hormuz. We know there has been pushback in other areas as well, but how do you assess what's going on now, given that this is such a difficult war for the US to walk away from? It does appear that the Strait of Hormuz is the main problem — this is what prevents Trump from going home and declaring victory.
Chas Freeman: Let me go back in history a bit. The Columbian Exchange — when Christopher Columbus stumbled onto the beach in the Bahamas and set off a revolution in cuisine among other things — led to a huge set of naval battles over the course of centuries to determine dominance. The Dutch, the French, the Spanish, the English in particular contested, and the Portuguese before them. The Portuguese actually took the Strait of Hormuz briefly and were dislodged by the Iranians.
What has happened is that the Anglo-American hegemony over the seas — "Britannia rules the waves" was the song of the 19th century — is gone. Let me trace that back a bit. In 1763, at the end of the Seven Years' War, Britain decisively defeated French naval power and became the dominant power on the seas, and that lasted through the 19th century. I think we can date with some assurance when global dominance of the seas passed to the United States — and it happens to be my birthday — March 2nd, 1943. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea began on that day, lasted three days, marked the extreme extent of Japanese naval power in the South Pacific, and was the moment at which historians date the transition from British to American dominance of the seas.
What is clear is that evolution since then has progressively reduced the impact and scope of that control of the oceans. In the early 18th century, the range of a cannon was about three miles, and that enabled states to establish a three-mile limit for their territorial waters. As artillery improved, that became essentially meaningless. Finally, in lengthy negotiations for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, there was a political compromise on 12 miles as the limit of the territorial sea — but that had no basis in fact as the three-mile limit had. The range of shore-based artillery, missiles, and the like expanded progressively. Twelve miles was a purely arbitrary figure. We had countries particularly in the eastern Pacific — South America, Peru and others — attempting to establish 200-mile limits, and that figure found its way into the Law of the Sea, but not as a territorial limit, rather as the limit on seabed control.
The range of missiles and so forth has steadily increased. We now have Chinese missiles — terminally guided ballistic missiles — that can apparently strike out to about 2,000 kilometers away from the Chinese shore and kill a carrier battle group. What we've seen in the battle over the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a new enforced limit. The aircraft carriers — the Abraham Lincoln and others — have had to stay at a remove of about 1,000 kilometers, roughly 600 miles, away from Iranian shore batteries. Other ships stay at 200 miles, 300 kilometers away, because that is the range of Iranian cruise missiles and drones.
Land-Based Sea Blockades — A New Strategic Reality
What we have seen is something we had not really seen previously in history — a repetition of what Ansar Allah, the Houthis in Yemen, were able to do: a land-based sea blockade. They managed to blockade the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb into the Red Sea without having a navy of any consequence at all. They did this from the land, and Iran has now done the same with the Strait of Hormuz. We hear accounts of Central Command saying they sank six small Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz, but that is essentially irrelevant, because the control of the strait is not from those small boats — it is from shore installations which the Iranians have spent decades preparing. There is essentially no military manner to open the Strait of Hormuz. Checkmate.
This is a very important change. Traditionally we have thought of war as taking place on the land, but the sea surrounds the land and you can access the land from the sea, so the sea was a superior domain. Before the land began to be able to keep ships at bay, the air over the land and the sea was a superior domain because you can control both the sea and the land from the air. Space, which is above the atmosphere, is a fourth domain now very much contested between nations.
What we have just seen with the blockade of the Red Sea and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a sea change — not to make a pun, but a real sea change. The Anglo-American dominion, which as you indicated had many positive effects — it established a rules-based order, it decreed it, managed it, controlled it, punished those who violated it — is no longer viable. Freedom of navigation operations designed to sustain that order are no longer viable.
This is a really important historical development. Going back to Columbus, we have seen sea power — as Admiral Mahan argued — as a central influence on history. Now land power is back as a dominant factor. I think this is very interesting and worthy of consideration. I am not going to write a book called The Influence of Land Power on History, but thinking about this I am quite struck by the strategic and geopolitical implications of what is happening.
The Petrodollar, Energy Trade, and the Strait of Hormuz
Glenn Diesen: The whole effort of contesting the dominant maritime power has been a key component of geopolitics for well more than a century. Many people, when they want to contrast Mahan, look toward Mackinder — controlling the Eurasian heartland as a land power. Indeed, if you look at some of the infrastructure projects of the Russians and the Chinese over the past years, it is largely about connecting the larger Eurasian landmass by land to deny the maritime powers their dominance. But the technologies — especially with drones — are also minimising the relevance of dominating the seas.
There is another aspect to this though. When you look at the British, their control over the sea was also to deny access to trade routes to rivals, as the Germans would experience in any war — their ports could be blockaded and they would face famines. But in the present era, the control of the seas has also had some benefits for the United States. How do you see this now linked up to the energy trade? The petrodollar is quite central, and you can't really maintain the petrodollar without the Strait of Hormuz. Some of the news coming out over the last few days has been about the US and UAE doing currency swaps. I'm thinking the UAE can't really make dollars anymore, so they might have to start selling their dollar bonds and assets, which is not great for the US. Maybe that is the reason behind the currency swaps — how do you see the larger energy game tied into these transportation corridors?
Chas Freeman: As usual, you've raised a lot of questions. Let me try to disentangle that a bit.
First, it is very interesting that the traditional land power, China — the only country that burned its navy and destroyed it in order to sustain a military based on the land, I'm talking about Admiral Zheng He's fleet in the Ming dynasty and the decision in Beijing to abolish the navy — China is now a major sea power. It has a larger navy than the United States. That doesn't mean, in the new context I described, that China is going to inherit the Anglo-American maritime hegemony. It will not. But it does indicate an alteration.
Second, you are quite right that the connectivity the Chinese in particular pursued — railroads, roads, airports, free trade zones, transit arrangements, in-bond storage at frontiers — has a maritime dimension, but it is mainly land-based. In fact, the Iranians are now reliant on railroads to take some of their oil to China overland. The US and Israel had been bombing rail lines, but it turns out that railroad workers are very good at repairing bombed rail lines. We should have learned that in Vietnam, where there were 300,000 Chinese military engineers who kept the railroads operating for the Vietnamese and defended them during the Indochina War.
You are right to point to the fragility of the petrodollar at present, and quite correct to say that the UAE probably told the US Treasury: look, we don't have any revenue in dollars anymore, and if you don't give us dollars to use for our trade, we are going to have to move primarily to the Chinese yuan. This of course would be a direct strike at American global financial hegemony, and it explains the swap arrangement you mentioned.
There is one final element here: the Chinese evidently judge that the United States has caused such confusion internationally in financial markets that instead of passively resisting sanctions on the purchase of Iranian oil, they can actively oppose them. There is now an order — the equivalent of an executive order in the United States — from the central government in China to Chinese banks and oil companies not to respect the newest American sanctions. This is a direct attack on the weaponization of the dollar by the United States. I don't know what the outcome will be. Not all attacks succeed, as we have just seen in the case of Iran — you can attack Iran, but that doesn't mean Iran must capitulate.
No Military and No Diplomatic Path Out
What is going on is a checkmate, or a stalemate. There are no negotiations. There is no military means of opening the Strait of Hormuz at acceptable cost. Ships trying to run that gauntlet would be destroyed. It may be that the cruise missiles the Iranians fired at American ships — which allegedly did no damage, or were shot down or diverted — did not strike those ships, as Central Command declares, contrary to the Iranian claim that they did strike them. But it really doesn't matter. They keep these ships at bay, which is all that is required.
There are two ways to open the strait. One is military, and that won't work. The other is to negotiate with Iran and reach a compromise. And there is no negotiation at all. In fact, Steve Witkoff, the misbegotten envoy of the United States with a perfect record of failure in every international negotiation he has entered, now has a new deputy — I think Nick Stewart — who is from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is a front organisation in Washington. He is on record publicly as opposing all negotiations with Iran. So the negotiations that have taken place have essentially been performative, intended to manipulate capital markets, public opinion, and oil prices to the benefit of somebody — or to corrupt officials in the United States and elsewhere.
This means that, contrary to what you and I have often discussed, there will be no negotiated resolution of this war. It will probably subside into something resembling the previous situation — a low-intensity conflict ongoing between Israel and Iran that went on for decades. Prime Minister Netanyahu has openly stated that he spent 40 years trying to find a president he could talk into joining Israel in attacking Iran in the manner that they have. But I think this has been quite a disillusioning experience for the United States. It was opposed by the US military clearly. Civilians are always more bloodthirsty than the military, who recognise that they could get killed if they get into a war. The warriors are always more enthusiastic about diplomacy than civilians for that reason. But there was no diplomacy. There was only a war. And it hasn't worked out.
The implication is: if we are talking about no resolution, we are talking about a return to a lower level of intensity, perhaps punctuated from time to time by explosions. Israel will not have the United States with it to renew an attack on Iran. That puts Israel in a very different position than it has been, and I think it is something to watch. Will the United States continue to have Israel's back militarily and politically with respect to Iran? I suspect the answer is going to be ambivalent and ambiguous — not clear.
Glenn Diesen: That's right — if there is no diplomatic path and no way of forcing the Strait of Hormuz open by military force, unless the US is able to just pound on the Iranians until they throw their hands up. But that also doesn't seem like a possibility, because for good reasons they consider this to be an existential threat. So they just have to absorb all the pain no matter how horrible it is. There is no peaceful solution, there is no military solution. And as you suggested, just pushing this over a long period of time doesn't seem like an option either, because the US has problems with military equipment — there are limits on how many interceptor missiles it can come up with — and of course this is a key economic choke point, so we are looking at a massive economic crisis.
Given this difficult situation — one of the reasons suggested why other presidents besides Trump refused to go down this path — do you see this essentially explaining what Trump has done over the past two days? He announced he would force open the Strait of Hormuz, and that if Iran dared to do anything he would wipe them off the map. Is this just desperation, or do you see a plan here?
Chas Freeman: No, I don't think there is any plan. There has never been any evidence of a strategy connected with this. But let me make a few points. I think we are in an economic war of attrition — or, as I have put it, it is like two wrestlers each trying to strangle the other, wondering who is going to be choked to death first. I would say the odds are good that Iran can outlast the United States in such a contest. For one thing, they are at home. They are churning out missiles, presumably in their underground factories. They are not weakened. The blockade that the United States has imposed is far from perfect — ships do get through, revenue accrues now at much higher oil prices, and by the way the price is on its way up quite a bit in the near future. Iran does have revenue.
The American blockade is very fatiguing in terms of operational tempo, and as you mentioned, the equipment — but more particularly the sailors aboard these ships who have been at sea for interminable periods. There is some reason to believe that some of the problems that have happened on these ships are the result of sabotage by the crews expressing their anger at being essentially abused and not taken care of in any effective manner. At some point the American blockade becomes unsustainable.
I think Trump is recognising that, which is why he proposed an attempt to open the strait with force or escorts — which doesn't work, and I am sure his own military told him it wouldn't work. But he doesn't seem to take advice very much, so he went ahead. What I am expecting is some kind of violent gesture as he departs the Strait of Hormuz. In other words, he will give Iran the middle finger and leave, muttering imprecations and hurling bombs for a day or two at Iran, claiming that he faced them down, he won the war, and all that. Unfortunately for him, I don't think this will work very well either, because his own legitimacy and authority in American politics is at an all-time low. And I don't think he has any authority or legitimacy anymore internationally.
NATO Fracturing and the Knock-On Effects of the War
The knock-on effects of this war are quite profound — not just the change in sea power I have mentioned, but we see NATO flaking apart, with Trump responding in a petulant manner to criticism from Chancellor Merz, for example, trying to figure out how he can punish Spain, seemingly driving Prime Minister Sánchez into ever more strident opposition to the war. He is clearly at odds with Macron. I think Keir Starmer has pretty much had it. What we are hearing now in Britain, in regard to the 250th anniversary of American independence from Great Britain, is: it is time for Great Britain to declare independence from the United States — an ironic result of all this.
We are seeing countries like Germany and Japan — World War II enemies of the United States — edging toward doubling their defence budgets and acquiring independent capabilities. That has huge implications for European security and the unity of the European Union, and also a lot of implications for people in Asia and Pacific Asia in particular, where Japan is striking out on its own.
Knock-on effects also include the status of the dollar as the universal means of trade settlement and therefore the prime component of currency reserves. All this is taking place while the Russians reap windfall profits from oil and gas and deploy their ability to supply energy to Europe as a weapon again in influencing European politics. It is a huge thing, and it is ongoing. Not only is there no war termination strategy with regard to Iran, there is no strategy for handling these various geopolitical shifts at all, as far as I can see. Perhaps you differ with me on that — can you see a strategy?
Glenn Diesen: No, none. But when it comes to Iran, if I were asked to give advice, I wouldn't know where to start for the United States at this moment, because the US has really locked itself in. As I said, there is no good negotiation path, there is no path to military victory. Trump is struggling — it has a military component, an economic component, domestic issues. There is no good way out of this.
I am thinking that if Trump wanted to do something grand, he might perhaps be able to take advantage of this to carry out what was initially the overarching grand strategy — what we saw in the National Security Strategy of December 2025, which more or less indicated that the US would have to adjust to a multipolar world by making priorities: go to the western hemisphere and go to East Asia. But if you are going to pivot there, you have to pivot out of Europe and out of the Middle East. It looks like this defeat could be an opportunity. If he wanted to go this way, he could argue: the Middle East is not our war, we don't use the Strait of Hormuz, let them worry about it. And also the Europeans betrayed us, so we are going to leave them too — and essentially make a great shift.
Chas Freeman: Make a victory out of the defeat. Yes, there are people in the United States who make that argument. I suspect Marco Rubio might agree with that — who knows. But he is absent from anything other than the project to take Cuba somehow.
Yes, that is a thought. You know, this Iran war is our Syracuse expedition. We don't have Alcibiades — apparently a tellingly handsome, marvellous orator and intellectual who could hold his own with Socrates. But we have an equally foolish military adventure that is going very badly.
Or maybe we should think about what you do when you are defeated. It is not as though we haven't been defeated. Think of the Indochina wars. Sometimes you just have to accept humiliation and walk away.
But we also have things going on in the United States which are relevant, and that is that it is very clear that Donald Trump is off his rocker. If you look at the posts he puts on Truth Social in the middle of the night — arrest Barack Obama as a traitor, accuse the Democratic leader in the House of the same, bomb this, bomb that, remove troops from Germany for no particular reason without really understanding the importance of those troops.
The Real Purpose of US Forces in Europe
I think this war has clarified thinking on both sides of the Atlantic about the American presence in Europe. It turns out that both sides understand it is not really to defend Europe — it is to enable the projection of American power into West Asia. If you look at the pattern of American military aid and spending, you will find that Israel dwarfs everyone else by many factors of magnitude. Budgets have something to do with what priorities really are. American priorities in the old world, it turns out, are the defence of Israel — not much else.
As I indicated, that has been gravely compromised by the failure of this war to produce any kind of reasonable outcome. I don't know where we are headed, but I don't like what I am seeing.
Glenn Diesen: I agree. I prefer gradual, incremental changes in the international system. These big shocks are incredibly destabilising. I am watching with some concern even the decline of NATO. I don't think pursuing NATO expansion as a hegemonic model for Europe was ever a good idea — that is, to redivide the continent. In my opinion this is the reason why we have a war in Ukraine. But I would like to see it gradually reduced, ideally reformed into an inclusive security architecture. That is the ideal scenario. But it doesn't look like that is a possibility, so you could have the very quick unravelling of NATO. I would have liked to see slow reforms.
I wanted to ask: as you said, we have the decline of sea power, the fallout from our proxy war against Russia, and we will now probably see the death of NATO — but if the US wants to really walk away from the war against Iran, could that also imply that the US would have to walk away from the relationship with Israel?
The US-Israel Relationship and Israel's Future
Chas Freeman: Yes. I think that is the clear implication. If you look at youth polling in the United States, you find that Israel is extremely unpopular — maybe that is too weak a statement. Many people positively loathe it for what it does. And I am not speaking just of Christian Americans or Muslim Americans. I am talking about Jewish Americans as well. In many Jewish communities in the United States, the younger people don't want anything to do with Israel.
Look at the Democratic Party — you have 6% support for Israel. It is considerably more, a plurality, in the Republican Party, but it is declining. The evidence of what the people around Netanyahu are doing — for example, Ben-Gvir's birthday, where his wife gives him a cake with a gallows on it. We are watching the gasification of southern Lebanon. We are watching Israel commit acts of piracy off Crete, taking a flotilla, beating people up badly, kidnapping some of them, with complete contempt for any decency or rules of law. This is deeply disgusting to those people who have traditionally supported Israel whatever it did, and very offensive to everyone else.
As someone said — it is not my judgment, but someone said — Netanyahu is the single Jew who has done the most to promote antisemitism since the murder of Jesus Christ. He has taken the flag of Israel with its six-pointed star and made it the equivalent in most people's minds of a swastika, replicating the worst crimes of European fascism.
Does this end well for Israel? I can't imagine it does. I don't know how many people have left Israel for other climes. I know there are all kinds of discussions of Jewish colonies here, there, and everywhere. Milei, the rather odd president of Argentina who is an ardent Zionist, has apparently been talking about a colony of 300,000 Israelis in Patagonia — nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it is hardly supportive of the continued existence of the Zionist state in West Asia.
I think Israel's future is now very dubious, and the same thing seems to be happening to it that happened to the Christian Crusader kingdoms established in the same locale 700 or 800 years ago. They didn't last a century. Israel is getting up there, but I think it is looking very dubious that it will survive, given its status as an international pariah and its loss of support among the people in the United States and some European countries that have heavily supported it.
Glenn Diesen: The collapse of Israel's reputation is quite extraordinary in international affairs — almost as shocking as the improvement in the image of Iran. When I grew up, the way one would look at Israel was always in the context of the Second World War — what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust in Europe, the horror of it — and the idea that the Jews would have their own homeland back in Israel was a very appealing idea. The fact that it was also quite a liberal, secular Israel made it much easier to accept. Yes, we know that the new homeland was at the cost of displacing the Palestinians, but because of the appeal of it, I think it was easy to look the other way as long as it didn't take on too grotesque forms. I don't like to say it, but I think many people like myself did maybe look a little bit the other way. But now that it has been taken to these extremes, it is —
Chas Freeman: The distaste for what Israel has become — you see it even inside Israel, and as you said among the Jewish population in the United States. It is quite a horrible mistake that Netanyahu has made.
I am a certified antique — you get to be that when you cross 50 years in this business, I guess. I remember the 1950s very well. I was a great admirer of what I thought Israel was. We just didn't know about, didn't think about, and it wasn't reported, that 750,000 Palestinians had been driven from their homes to create this pioneer state. We took it all for granted and admired it, and this was aided by very skilful propaganda from Israel. I think of Leon Uris and the book Exodus, then a film with Paul Newman — a very handsome fellow playing a key figure in the establishment of Israel. You are right, and even though I don't know what the basis for American guilt about the Holocaust is — we joined the Soviet Union in liberating the death camps, and we had antisemitism in a much milder form than Europeans did — we supported Israel emotionally.
That has all been stripped away by behaviour that can only be described as evil. Killing babies, bombing hospitals, striking and destroying churches and mosques, murdering people who are trying to get food, sniping at them, killing kids with shots in the head and in the belly, shooting people in the knee rather than arresting them, kidnapping, piracy, torture, sodomy in the jails. We have seen every horror you can imagine.
I spent a lot of time in my early retirement basically trying to see what Israel was becoming and trying to save it from itself by speaking out against the evolution it was undergoing. Of course that had no effect except to win ostracism for me. I am on blacklists and so forth, which I now take as a badge of honour, but I was rather annoyed at it at the time.
It is not just Netanyahu, by the way. He is certainly guilty of many things, and his insistence on staying in power because he is a wartime prime minister is enormously destructive to Israeli interests. But you have 80% of Israelis apparently supporting the war with Iran according to polls. So this is not just an individual — it is a society that is sociopathic, not mentally healthy. And I don't know who wants Israelis who have been committing war crimes. There is an issue in Britain now with a dozen dual nationals who are known to have committed war crimes, and the British establishment is just leaving them alone, but the public is energised against them.
You can foresee a future in which to be Israeli is to be unable to travel, unable to gain entry to any country, because of the reputation that what used to call itself the world's most moral army has established for itself. We have things like the photo of a soldier in Lebanon chopping off the head of a statue of Christ. I come from a Protestant background and I don't like statues of Christ particularly, but I find that truly sacrilegious. I can't imagine beating up a nun in Jerusalem — another video that is out recently. Spitting on Christians. This is not wise if you are dependent on foreign support.
Trump, the Epstein Files, and Political Constraints
And of course, as you indicated, Donald Trump is in a dilemma between the horns of the Epstein files and what they contain — I should not use the subjunctive, they obviously do contain very damaging evidence against him — and on the other side his Zionist donor base, which could cut off support. And he has the example of Charlie Kirk, whose death has never been really explained, but who was assassinated — by whom, for what? There is a lot of reason to suspect it was because he was turning against his Zionist sponsors. This is not a joke. This is pretty serious stuff, and there is no easy exit from it. Sometimes you just have to take the blow to the solar plexus, double over in pain, and walk away. I am afraid that is where we are with the war in Iran.
Glenn Diesen: I have seen interviews with Joe Kent, the former counterterrorism director under Trump who resigned, and he was making this point — that they wanted to investigate what happened to Charlie Kirk and it was essentially shut down, told not to. Which is kind of remarkable.
Chas Freeman: There are questions to be asked about many assassinations where a lone gunman is involved. Probably he is not alone. Anyway, another good moment in the history of the Euro-Atlantic community.
The Transition to Multipolarity and the Death of NATO
Glenn Diesen: Definitely not. But there will be more of these massive changes coming our way. We can't really go from an international order with essentially one central power — this hegemonic system ruled by a maritime power based on 500 years of Western maritime dominance — and then switch this on its head and have an actual global multipolar or multi-nodal system in which sea powers will no longer have the same competitive advantage, without massive changes. The death of NATO — I personally wouldn't mind it, but I would like to see it replaced with something, not anarchy. Ideally we would have Gorbachev's common European home to replace it.
Chas Freeman: I think that is the ideal. That has been my concern really all along. I have favoured the Europeanisation of NATO — the United States moving into the background as a resource but not attempting to direct European affairs. But that had to happen in an evolutionary manner. My main concern about Donald Trump and his disdain for NATO is the obvious implication that he did not understand how to make a transition and would instead deliver a death blow to the alliance.
But anyway, you are Norwegian, which means you are in one of the happiest countries in the world. Only the Finns outdo you, I think. So what are you worried about?
Glenn Diesen: Well, Scandinavia doesn't look the way it used to anymore. It has become a difficult region. I don't see a very bright future, but we can save that for another time.
I always thought it would be a good idea for Europe to assert more autonomy. However, I am also aware that the US has acted as a key pacifier, and when I look at who is going to represent this new autonomous Europe — when it is Starmer, Macron, Merz — I am kind of horrified. Maybe the US shouldn't leave so fast after all. But it is going to be a very painful transition. As you said, it should have been incremental, managed. Ideally this would have been done 35 years ago, but here we are.
Chas Freeman: Here we are.
Glenn Diesen: Final thoughts?
Chas Freeman: I wish I had answers. I mean, I would like to have answers to these conundrums, but I don't. And the sad thing is I don't see anyone else who has answers. Europe is led by intellectual and political pygmies at the moment. You need to grow some adults. Wise people — we used to have them. But where are they hiding? In caves in the south of France, perhaps? I don't know.
Glenn Diesen: Well, that is another argument for incremental change — we still have a political class that was raised in the Fukuyama era. They think they are living at the end of history, or that the collective hegemony of the West, the liberal hegemon, would somehow transcend the power politics of the past and deliver a new utopia. Their dominance was essentially benign. They were a force for good. And now they find out that not only are they not part of this hegemonic system, they are not even a pole of power. So there is a lot of desperation, fanaticism, authoritarianism, and warmongering — essentially all the things they thought they were not going to be. But again, this is the problem: the international system would usually have a better time doing incremental change, but it feels more like a pre-revolutionary era. They are holding on to power, and only crazies like Trump are able to push them off the throne, which introduces a whole new set of problems as the Americans have shown us.
Chas Freeman: You can actually analogise a lot of what is happening to the final collapse of the Roman Empire. Many elements. One that deeply disturbs me is the assault on science — the reversion to faith-based analysis which rejects empirical evidence, fosters denial rather than the direct addressing of problems, and empowers strong men to do things that are probably unwise. Feudalism was essentially born from the collapse of the Roman Empire because strong men had to protect communities. I think we are headed back in some ways into an analogous era in which there is no overarching theme and no respect for the values of the Enlightenment, which I continue to believe were wise.
Anyway, you should enjoy Norway while you can.
Glenn Diesen: We might be on our way out though. But again, we should save that for another time. It is always great to see you, my friend.
Chas Freeman: Thank you. You too.