Prominent contemporary military thinker, John Spencer recently wrote an excellent analysis paper, relating the Clausewitzian method of examining a war to the ongoing US–Israel vs Iran war. He explains that if Clausewitz were alive, he would begin examining this war with a critical examination grounded in facts, traced through causes, and judged against political purpose. He goes on to analyse the war critically and, towards the end, asks several questions. He rightly concludes that Clausewitz would not tell us what to think; he would teach us how to think.

It is also now widely analysed by eminent geopolitical thinkers that this war has brought the world to a historically vital turning point in international affairs. No matter what the outcome, the world we have known since the early 1990s will probably never be the same in a geopolitical sense after this war. How did statesmen and geopolitical thinkers evaluate the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a unipolar world order? In my view, at that time, the best set of deceptively simple principles for navigating global power structures was outlined by Richard Nixon, distilled in works such as Seize the Moment (1992). His analyses read less like doctrine and more like cautionary notes: respect history, distrust conjecture, understand the value of pre-emption, and never underestimate the cost of inaction.

More than three decades later, these principles remain relevant. It can be debated whether they are sufficient in their original form. However, the world that shaped them—a bipolar order defined by relatively stable........

© The Nation