So here we are again. For the second consecutive day, the United States and Iran exchange strikes across the Middle East, and Downing Street summons an emergency Cobra meeting. The spectacle is grimly familiar: cruise missiles, deniable proxies, and solemn-faced officials warning of 'further escalation.' One cannot help but feel a weary sense of déjà vu. We have seen this movie before. It is called the collapse of the post-Cold War order, and it is playing in real time.
The comparison to the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century is not as hyperbolic as it sounds. That conflict began as a religious civil war within the Holy Roman Empire but metastasised into a continent-wide conflagration that consumed millions of lives and left central Europe a charnel house. The modern version? A sectarian cold war between Sunni Gulf monarchies and Shia Iran, with the Great Powers increasingly sucked into the vortex. America, Russia, China, Britain: all have proxies in the region. All are losing control.
Let us examine the intellectual decadence at play here. Our leaders speak of 'measured responses' and 'calibrated strikes.' This is the language of a ruling class that has lost the capacity for grand strategy. They are not thinking in terms of victory or even a stable peace. They are thinking in terms of crisis management. The fall of Rome was preceded by a similar inability to conceive of a future beyond the next barbarian raid. The late Roman emperors were not stupid; they were trapped in a reactive mindset that mistook survival for statecraft.
What is the underlying driver? It is the collapse of American hegemony without a viable successor. For 30 years after the Cold War, the United States acted as the global policeman. It was imperfect, costly, and often disastrous, but it provided a kind of order. Now Washington is weary, divided, and strategically confused. It wants to withdraw from the Middle East but cannot bear the consequences. So it limps along, half in, half out, provoking and retreating in equal measure. The Iranian regime, by contrast, is perfectly clear-sighted. It is playing the long game, probing for weakness, and accepting casualties as the price of imperial expansion. It is the difference between a decadent empire nearing the end of its lifespan and a revolutionary state in its prime.
And where does this leave Britain? Summoning Cobra. The gesture is almost touching in its futility. We are a middle-ranking power with a military that has been hollowed out by decades of cuts. We can provide diplomatic cover for Washington, perhaps a few cruise missiles of our own, but we cannot shape the outcome. The Victorian era, when Britain could dispatch a gunboat and impose order, is a distant memory. Now we are reduced to being a glorified first aider, applying bandages while the patient bleeds out.
What is to be done? The liberal internationalists will call for renewed diplomacy. The realists will counsel restraint and acceptance of spheres of influence. Neither answer is adequate. The truth is that the region is undergoing a transformation that no external power can control. The nation state system itself is eroding, with militias, tribes, and religious movements proving more resilient than the borders drawn by Sykes-Picot a century ago. We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new order, and they will be bloody.
Perhaps the only honest response is a kind of tragic humility. We should stop pretending we can fix the Middle East. The best we can hope for is to manage the borders of our own societies and preserve what remains of the liberal order at home. That may sound defeatist. So be it. The British establishment, from Whitehall to the BBC, needs to realise that the era of their moral certainty is over. We are not bringing civilisation to benighted lands. We are clinging to the wreckage of our own.
The Cobra meeting will produce a statement. The Americans will promise to defend their allies. The Iranians will boast of resistance. The world will move on to the next crisis. But in the quiet moments, historians will note the date and the pattern. They will compare it to 1914, to 1939, to the slow rot that preceded the fall of empires. And they will wonder why no one saw the cliff edge until the cart went over.
