Why war is changing everything

The conflict in the Middle East is not a contained regional war. It is, instead, a geopolitical earthquake that is reshaping the global balance of power in real time. The United States and Israel began this confrontation against Iran, but it is China that will emerge as the dominant winner, without deploying a single soldier.

Iran will claim moral victory simply by surviving as a functioning state, echoing the Viet Cong's defeat of US military power in Vietnam. That shifts the entire power dynamic in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, the USA faces a visible and humiliating strategic loss that will damage its military credibility, destabilise US domestic politics, and accelerate the decline of American global dominance.

The consequences will ripple out far beyond the Middle East.

NATO, the alliance that held Western unity together for 80 years, faces collapse as European nations begin to distance themselves from Washington.

The 80-year USA-Israel alliance is in jeopardy.

The United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF may all need to be rebuilt from scratch, just as they were in 1945.

The UK, clinging to a "special relationship" that is becoming untenable, will be left dangerously exposed without a functioning navy, an air force heavily dependent on the US, and a foreign policy with no clear direction.

Only China benefits. Its economy is insulated, its energy supplies are stable, and its relationship with Iran gives it a strategic foothold at the centre of the new world order. The Chinese curse that "may you live in interesting times" has never felt more appropriate. This is what the end of the American century looks like.