The month we’ve just entered is now poised to become one of pivotal change in the history of humankind. Here in the United States, an increasingly deranged and distracted Pres. Trump has veered into launching yet another escalatory phase of the damaging— and quite unwinnable— war on Iran that he and Israel’s PM Netanyahu initiated quite illegally on February 28. The waves of military attacks that Trump resumed launching at the end of August have been met by fierce retaliatory attacks by Iran that have targeted primarily those U.S. bases in Arab Gulf states that were not evacuated back in March and also, once again, U.S. bases in more distant Jordan. In this resumed battle of wills, as in all the earlier exchanges since April, Iran has been demonstrating a degree of escalation dominance. But it seems clear that Iran’s leaders have been methodical in how they are exploiting this. It is very likely they have a keen eye on the electoral calendar here in the United States and hope that their actions will cause the deepest pain for Trump and his party in mid-October or so. (That timing could also help them impact— or even disrupt— Israel’s elections, scheduled for October 27.) War is, as Clausewitz so wisely remarked, an extension of politics by other means. There are a number of other crucial arenas well beyond the battlefields (or battle-seas) of West Asia in which the fortunes of the Trump administration and of the country that he heads are currently taking a severe battering. These include:
It’s always worth remembering that this war of choice has never enjoyed either majority support from the U.S. electorate or the legality of congressional authorization. In today’s FT, Martin Wolf aptly described the current state of the world under Trump in this way:
To no-one’s surprise, the meeting that finance ministers of the “G20” group of sizeable world powers held in North Carolina August 31 - September 1 was marked by clear signs of disagreement between Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his counterparts from numerous countries previously judged to be close allies of Washington. Meanwhile, in Bishkek…On those same exact days, half a world away in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian Pres. Masoud Pezeshkian was conferring with the presidents of China, Russia, and India, and the heads of state and government of six other Asian states, at the 25th anniversary meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO.) The gathered leaders declared their strong opposition to the lethal and illegal campaigns of military and economic coercion that Washington has undertaken against Iran. SCO leaders always emphasize very strongly that it is not a military alliance. (Given that India is a full member alongside China, it would be impossible for it to act as one.) Rather than comparing it with NATO, it is probably more helpful to liken it to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the joint body that grew out of agreements that NATO members and their counterparts of the East-European Warsaw Pact concluded in the 1970s and that later helped midwife a generally peaceable end to the Europe’s long-simmering Cold War. However, the SCO has a subject-matter remit much broader than that of the OSCE— read more about it here. It also has “Dialogue Partners” dotted around the periphery of the core membership, These include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Türkiye. Here’s the map: In Bishkek, Pres. Pezeshkian and the officials accompanying him held several meetings with counterparts from other countries. One of those meetings was with Putin. After it, as TASS reported, Putin was at pains to tell a media gaggle that, “In this difficult time, we are trying to provide you with the necessary assistance. We have discussed this. We are providing you with the necessary things.” To underline that very deliberate messaging, some (almost certainly Russian) sources had also leaked to the FT enough documents to convince the FT’s reporters that,
Pres. Xi in Bishkek— and CairoOther items of interest during the Bishkek gathering included the two sequential speeches that Pres. Xi delivered September 1 to (a) the Council of SCO Heads of State, and (b) the notable broader meeting of the “SCO Plus” group. I counted 25 participants in the latter group. Since the UN General Assembly will be opening in New York in around two weeks’ time, we should assume that all the participants in the Bishkek meetings were conferring on how to optimize the effects of this important UN gathering. (I am also taking a wild guess that Trump and Netanyahu might well be plotting how best they can use the UNGA to continue tearing down the whole UN.) Pres. Xi’s address to the SCO-Plus session was titled “Jointly Advocating an Equal and Orderly Multipolar World and Making Global Governance More Just and Equitable.” Here is a taste of what he said:
Pres. Xi then continued his current travels by flying to Egypt, where today he and his spouse visited the Grand Egyptian Museum, and he held (I assume) some substantive talks with his host, Pres. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. After the museum/pyramids visit he reportedly,
The UN at a crossroadsIn both 2024 and 2025, the annual meetings of the UN General Assembly already had hanging over them the terrible failure of the international community— both the UN as a whole, and its members states— to do anything effective to halt Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and to restore to the people of Palestine and Lebanon the rights to national independence and sovereignty that Israel has been so cruelly stealing from them. The 2025 GA was held, in addition, in the wake of the quite unprovoked assault Israel and the U.S. launched against Iran in June 2025. Since last year’s General Assembly, the world has seen yet another quite unprovoked assault launched by these two miscreants against Iran, this assault being of far great military and geostrategic gravity than its predecessor and also— now, more than six months after its launching— still underway. Since last year’s GA, the world has also seen Israel’s continuation of the genocides in Gaza and South Lebanon “by other means".” In Gaza, these other means have included the tight control Israel has exercised over a body that did not even exist in September 2025: the Trump-fashioned “Board of Peace”, an organization to which, last November, the UN Security Council quite illegitimately in its Resolution 2803 handed over all the effective control over monitoring the end of hostilities and the necessary work of rebuilding in Gaza. In the 81st General Assembly session that will open in New York next week— with the High-Level consultations scheduled for September 22-28— what will this body do to start restoring the gravitas and the integrity of the UN as a whole? Leading UN members are also, concurrently, consulting about who the next Secretary General of the organization will be. The organization PassBlue is a good place to learn what is going on in that contest. You're currently a free subscriber to Helena Cobban. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |