Gustavo de Arístegui: Geopolitical Analysis 27 January

1. Introduction
2. New Russian attack on Kharkiv and other areas of Ukraine
3. Deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran
4. Starmer travels to China and the strategic dispute over Chagos
5. Warning about record debt in advanced economies and its strategic effect
6. Political crisis in the United States over the Pretti case and Trump's tactical shift on immigration
7. Reaffirmation of European dependence on the United States for defence
8. Resurgence of protests in Iran and assessment of the repression
9. Global dimension of the war in Ukraine: attacks on energy infrastructure and power cuts
10. Extreme weather and infrastructure vulnerability in the United States
11. Global echoes of the arrests and operations against Chavismo and the Venezuelan narco-state
12. Media rack
13. Editorial commentary

Introduction

The geopolitical picture of the last 24 hours confirms a triple structural tension: prolonged war in Ukraine, growing tension with the theocratic regime in Tehran, and accelerating systemic competition with China, now also in Europe with Keir Starmer's trip to Beijing and the strategic issue of Chagos.

Added to this is an internal US dimension with a strong external impact: the combination of the political crisis over the death of Alex Pretti at the hands of immigration agents, Trump's tactical shift on immigration and the projection of hard power in the Gulf sends an unequivocal message to allies and adversaries.

Against this backdrop, the public debt overload in the major developed economies limits the room for manoeuvre to simultaneously sustain the defence of Ukraine, deterrence against Iran and the containment of Chinese expansionism.

New Russian attack on Kharkiv and other areas of Ukraine

Facts

In recent hours, Russia has launched a combination of drones and missiles against Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, hitting residential buildings, a school and a kindergarten, with at least two confirmed casualties and massive power cuts that have left tens of thousands of people without power. Drone attacks have also hit the town of Lozova, in the Kharkiv region, damaging an apartment block and a local business. Emergency teams are working in extreme winter temperatures to restore basic services, while local authorities report significant structural damage to civilian infrastructure located far from the active front line.

This pattern of systematic bombing of civilian targets is part of a broader campaign of attrition that Moscow has been waging since the winter of 2022-2023, aimed at breaking the morale of the Ukrainian population and forcing political concessions through aerial terror, in direct violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.

Implications

The pattern of attacks on civilian and educational infrastructure once again highlights Russia's strategy of terror against the Ukrainian rear, which is incompatible with any claim of a ‘limited special military operation’ and more characteristic of an all-out war against Ukrainian society as a whole. The deliberate destruction of schools, hospitals and homes constitutes documented war crimes that reinforce the need for continued international judicial cooperation for future accountability before competent courts.

The message to Europe and NATO is clear: Moscow has no intention of moderating its use of force or renouncing the acquisition of territory by force of arms, which reinforces the need to maintain and increase military support for Kyiv, despite the visible political fatigue in certain European sectors. The continuation of these attacks against the civilian population in the middle of winter shows that the Kremlin considers pressure on critical infrastructure to be a force multiplier that can compensate for its operational difficulties on the ground.

Outlook and scenarios

In the short term, we can expect an intensification of Russian long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities with the aim of breaking social resilience before any round of negotiations, while Ukraine presses its allies to speed up the delivery of state-of-the-art anti-aircraft systems, specialised ammunition and power grid repair equipment.

The window of opportunity until spring will be critical in determining whether Ukraine's energy infrastructure can withstand the winter onslaught.

In the medium term, the combination of Russian offensives and internal political pressures in various EU member states will make the allied commitment to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP more relevant. If this materialises, it would represent a qualitative leap in deterrence capacity against the Kremlin and would make it possible to sustain both aid to Ukraine and the reinforcement of the Alliance's eastern flank.

The Ukrainian experience is likely to accelerate debates on the burial of power lines, redundancies in critical networks and the physical protection of key facilities in Central and Eastern Europe, given the risk that similar tactics could be used in future confrontation scenarios.

Deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran

Facts

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its combat group, which includes three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with advanced ballistic missile capabilities, have arrived in the Middle East region, operating between the northern Indian Ocean and the approaches to the Persian Gulf, as a direct response to both the brutal repression of protests in Iran—with a death toll of several thousand according to human rights organisations—and the escalating rhetoric from Tehran and its allied militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Trump has described the US naval presence as a ‘great armada’ alongside Iran, publicly stating that ‘all options’ remain on the table, in language that deliberately evokes the maximum pressure rhetoric that characterised his first term. Simultaneously, senior State Department officials have signalled that Washington remains open to diplomatic contacts if Tehran is willing to negotiate, in a classic exercise of coercive diplomacy that combines credible threats with a door left open to dialogue, seeking to fragment the Iranian elites between hardliners and more pragmatic sectors.

Implications

The deployment reinforces the credibility of US deterrence following previous threats to intervene if the Iranian regime continued to kill protesters on the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad and other cities. It serves as a warning not only to the theocratic regime but also to its proxies throughout the region — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and what remains of Hamas in Gaza — accustomed to operating with relative impunity provided by the absence of a forceful Western response over the past decade.

From an Atlantic perspective, this move partly rebalances the perception of regional allies—Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain—who feared a lukewarm response from Washington to a regime that combines state terrorism, the export of sectarian militias and barely contained nuclear ambitions. The US naval presence strengthens the regional security architecture and signals to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi that normalisation with Israel will not leave them orphaned in the face of Tehran.

At the same time, Iran has responded by raising the tone of its threats of retaliation, without specifying concrete targets, but hinting at the possibility of attacks against US interests in the region through its proxies, which keeps tensions high and increases the risk of inadvertent escalation due to miscalculation or uncontrolled incidents.

Outlook and scenarios

If Tehran maintains its current level of internal repression and external activism—including transfers of advanced weapons to allied militias and the continuation of its covert nuclear programme— the most likely short-term scenario is a prolonged low-intensity standoff: reinforced sectoral sanctions, covert sabotage operations against nuclear and military infrastructure, limited attacks by Iranian proxies against US or Israeli targets, and recurring naval demonstrations of force, without reaching the open confrontation that neither side desires but which cannot be ruled out.

A sudden deterioration—a major massacre of protesters captured in real time by social media, a lethal attack against US or Israeli assets directly attributable to Tehran, or verified progress towards the manufacture of a nuclear weapon—could push Trump to order selective air strikes against military infrastructure, Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities and command centres of the Iranian repressive apparatus. This scenario would carry a high risk of regional escalation, but it could also significantly weaken the regime's security apparatus and give oxygen to internal protest movements, although there would be no guarantee that the resulting transition would be orderly or favourable to Western interests.

In the medium term, the strategic question is whether the collapse of the regime will be the result of an internal implosion caused by accumulated economic and social pressure, sustained international pressure that erodes the elites to the point of fracture, or a combination of both. Any disorderly transition without an international stabilisation plan would leave a power vacuum that could be filled by even more radical factions within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Sunni jihadist groups seeking sectarian revenge, or external actors such as Russia seeking to preserve their military bases and strategic positions on Iranian territory.

Starmer travels to China and the strategic dispute over Chagos

Facts

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer begins a multi-day visit to China today — the first by a British head of government since 2018 — seeking to rebuild trade relations, attract Chinese investment in infrastructure and clean technology, and stabilise channels of dialogue after years of tensions over Xinjiang, Hong Kong, industrial espionage and the ban on Huawei in British 5G networks. The trip comes at a time of heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, with Trump reimposing tariffs and maintaining pressure on the Taiwan issue, placing London in a delicate position between its main security ally and its second largest global trading partner.

At the same time, the Labour government is moving forward with the controversial agreement to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while maintaining the long-term lease of the strategic Diego Garcia atoll for the joint Anglo-American military base that plays a central role in operations in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East. The operation has drawn intense internal criticism, both from the Conservative opposition and from national security sectors, who fear that the transfer of sovereignty to Mauritius — a country with growing Chinese influence in the form of investment, debt and port infrastructure — will open an indirect door for Beijing to move dangerously close to a critical node of Western military projection in the Indian Ocean.

Implications

London is attempting to square an increasingly difficult circle: rebuilding economic relations with China to guarantee access to its market of 1.4 billion consumers and attract capital to finance infrastructure, without jeopardising the transatlantic alliance or the Indo-Pacific security architecture of which the United Kingdom is a key part through AUKUS and its permanent naval deployment in the region. The underlying problem is that Beijing systematically combines regional aggression – coercion over Taiwan, militarisation of the South China Sea, pressure on the Philippines and Vietnam – with invasive economic diplomacy that uses investment and infrastructure as instruments of political influence and strategic dependence.

The Chagos issue has become a textbook case of the new geopolitics of archipelagos, where control of remote islands takes on disproportionate strategic value due to their position on maritime routes, submarine cables and as platforms for military projection. Rather than a mere post-colonial rectification of historical justice towards the Chagossians displaced in the 1960s, many analysts see the risk of opening the door for China, via Mauritius—where Beijing already controls the strategically important port—or through other intermediary actors, to move dangerously close to Diego Garcia, complicate base operations, or even install surveillance and intelligence capabilities on adjacent islands.

Outlook and scenarios

If Starmer returns from Beijing with tangible economic concessions — trade agreements, commitments to invest in nuclear or renewable energy — without visible political concessions on human rights, Taiwan, or moderation in the South China Sea, an intensification of tensions with the Trump administration and the more Atlanticist wing of Westminster is foreseeable, as they are wary of any gesture that appears to appease Chinese expansionism and erode British credibility as a reliable security partner.

In the medium term, the Chagos precedent may encourage new claims on strategic enclaves in the Indo-Pacific and Indian Ocean, where Beijing will systematically seek to exploit legal loopholes, historical disputes and post-colonial sensitivities to erode Western military presence, complicate freedom of navigation and expand its own network of bases and logistical support facilities. The risk is not only Chagos, but the demonstration effect: if a Western democracy cedes sovereignty over a strategic point due to legal and moral pressure without securing ironclad guarantees of exclusive military use, other coastal or island states will see incentives to renegotiate similar agreements with less scrupulous third parties.

The ultimate test will be whether the UK manages to maintain sufficiently robust security clauses in the Chagos agreement to prevent any direct or indirect Chinese presence in the archipelago, and whether Starmer simultaneously manages to ensure that his trip to Beijing is not interpreted in Washington, Canberra or Tokyo as the beginning of a British strategic distancing from the Indo-Pacific axis of containment of China.

Warning about record debt in advanced economies and its strategic effect

Facts

A comprehensive analysis published today documents that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan have reached record or near-record levels of public debt, in several cases exceeding 100% of GDP and approaching thresholds that have historically preceded crises of fiscal sustainability, loss of market confidence and spiralling interest rates that hamper potential growth. This increase in debt coincides with growing political and social demand for defence spending — with NATO commitments to converge towards 5% of GDP by 2030 — continued financial and military support for Ukraine, acceleration of the energy transition to reduce dependence on Russian and Chinese hydrocarbons, and the strengthening of social safety nets under pressure from demographic ageing, stretching national budgets to the limit and reducing the margin for responding to future crises.

The report notes that the combination of interest rates in the process of normalisation after years of ultra-expansionary monetary policy, structural inflationary pressures resulting from the fragmentation of global supply chains, and an ageing population that reduces the tax base while increasing spending on pensions and healthcare, creates a ‘triple constraint’ scenario that will force liberal democracies to make difficult choices between social spending, productive investment and defence capabilities.

Implications

The convergence between ‘war economy’ needs—rearmament, energy resilience, technological autonomy—and welfare state commitments requires a fiscal realism that much of the political spectrum, both the populist left and certain sectors of the nationalist right, continue to evade through mutually incompatible promises. If not addressed with structural reforms that prioritise efficient spending over electoral patronage, this dynamic will simultaneously jeopardise internal social cohesion and external deterrence against Russia, China and Iran, actors who are closely watching Western fiscal vulnerabilities as potential points of pressure.

The over-indebtedness of liberal democracies offers China and sovereign wealth funds of authoritarian regimes—Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, but also Russia through front men—additional leeway to use financial instruments as levers of political influence, acquiring public debt, buying strategic assets in times of budgetary difficulty, or conditioning financial bailouts on foreign policy concessions, especially in states with more fragile institutions in southern Europe, Latin America or Southeast Asia.

The paradox is that the Russian military threat, systemic competition with China and the instability generated by the Iran-militia axis require more spending on defence and intelligence precisely when the fiscal space to finance it is narrowing, forcing a review of the budgetary orthodoxies of recent decades, the elimination of bureaucratic duplication, the cutting of inefficient subsidies and the reform of pension and healthcare systems to make them sustainable in the long term without sacrificing their universal nature.

Outlook and scenarios

A gradual shift in the major Western economies towards selective fiscal consolidation policies is plausible: cutting inefficient public spending or spending captured by interest groups, greater discipline in benefits that are poorly designed or encourage dependency, and explicit prioritisation of defence, technological innovation, energy security and critical infrastructure as non-negotiable pillars of strategic sovereignty, breaking ideological taboos on both the left and right about the untouchability of budget items.

Failure to put public accounts in order and reconcile defence with welfare would open the door to new cycles of anti-system populism —from the radical left, such as Podemos or Mélenchon, or the illiberal right, such as Orbán or Le Pen— that would capitalise on social frustration, weaken the Atlantic axis through sovereignist or pacifist rhetoric, as the case may be, and objectively facilitate the penetration of Russian, Chinese and Iranian narratives that present the West as an exhausted, corrupt model incapable of defending its citizens.

In the very long term, the fundamental question is whether liberal democracies can simultaneously sustain open societies, competitive market economies and sufficient military capabilities to guarantee their security, or whether the combination of ageing, indebtedness and political fragmentation condemns them to relative decline in the face of autocracies that do not bear the cost of democratic legitimacy or universal welfare systems.

Political crisis in the United States over the Pretti case and Trump's tactical shift on immigration

Facts

The death of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 28-year-old US citizen shot dead by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during an arrest operation in Minneapolis last Thursday, has sparked mass protests in at least a dozen US cities, strong media criticism accusing the Trump administration of militarising immigration policy, and a major political storm that threatens to erode support for the campaign to deport undocumented immigrants, which is a central part of the Republican electoral programme.

According to reports still under investigation, Pretti was at home when ICE agents broke in looking for another person with a deportation order; in circumstances that have not yet been fully clarified, a confrontation ensued that ended with fatal shots being fired at Pretti. The family has denounced excessive use of force, the absence of a valid search warrant and violation of identification protocols, while ICE maintains that the agents acted in self-defence in the face of an alleged threat, a version questioned by witnesses.

Faced with pressure from society, the media and important business sectors that fear reputational damage and disruption to supply chains dependent on immigrant labour, Trump has publicly maintained his tough stance on irregular immigration and his general support for the security forces, but he has introduced significant nuances in the practical application of the raid campaign: internal instructions to prioritise violent criminals over immigrants with no criminal record, greater scrutiny of operations in residential areas, and openness to reviewing protocols on the use of force, in an attempt to contain the political cost without abandoning his border control agenda.

Implications

The combination of tough rhetoric and tactical operational correctness fits with the profile of a second-term Trumpism that is more institutionalised and pragmatic than in 2017-2021, whose objective is to maintain the deterrent effectiveness of migration policy —reducing irregular flows, increasing deportations— without fuelling perceptions of a ‘police state’ or ‘authoritarianism’ that could mobilise the progressive electorate en masse and alienate sectors of the business community which, although they share concerns about border security, reject images of police violence against the civilian population.

The Democratic left, particularly the progressive ‘Squad’ led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, as well as Bernie Sanders' socialist wing, is attempting to use the Pretti case to delegitimise Trump's immigration policy as a whole, equating border control with xenophobia and repression, but runs the political risk of appearing disconnected from the majority concern—including in Hispanic and African-American communities—for effective border control, the reduction of crime associated with human and drug trafficking, and internal security.

The outcome of the case will have implications that transcend immigration policy: if the internal investigation and eventual judicial process determine negligence or excessive use of force, Trump's ability to prosecute those responsible without eroding the morale of the security forces will be a test of his commitment to the rule of law. If, on the contrary, the case is dismissed or the officers involved are simply exonerated, it will fuel narratives of impunity that will reinforce progressive mobilisation and complicate governance.

Outlook and scenarios

The judicial and administrative outcome of the Pretti case will be closely watched as a test of the Trump administration's ability to combine institutional accountability with the maintenance of a firm immigration policy, which is key to its credibility both internally and externally. In the short term, we can expect adjustments to ICE's operational protocols, greater supervision of middle management, and probably minor legislative reforms on the use of force in immigration operations, without altering the overall architecture of deportation policy.

Internationally, any perception of deep internal disorder, accelerated erosion of the rule of law, or extreme polarisation paralysing the functioning of the federal government would be exploited propagandistically by Russia, China, and Iran to question the strength and viability of the liberal democratic model, undermine allies' confidence in US leadership, and present their own authoritarian systems as more stable and effective alternatives. Hence Trump's own objective interest in managing the crisis without renouncing his narrative of law and order, demonstrating that firmness in security is compatible with respect for fundamental rights and institutional scrutiny.

Reaffirmation of European dependence on the United States for defence

Facts

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned yesterday that Europe is ‘dreaming’ if it believes it can defend itself without the United States, highlighting the European continent's profound military vulnerability to Russia despite budget increases over the last two years, and the unavoidable need to maintain the US strategic umbrella, which includes nuclear capabilities, anti-missile systems, advanced satellite intelligence, strategic logistics and power projection that no individual European state or the EU as a whole can replicate in the short or medium term.

Rutte has pointed out that European allies have not only formally committed to the classic target of 2% of GDP for defence – already achieved by most following Russia's invasion of Ukraine – but are actively working on scenarios of 5% of GDP spending by the end of the decade, which would more than double current spending in absolute terms and reflect a strategic paradigm shift from the post-1991 “peace dividend” mentality towards a logic of credible deterrence against large-scale conventional and hybrid threats.

This statement comes in the context of an internal European debate on strategic autonomy, paradoxically driven both by Trump's pressure on Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defence and by pro-European sectors seeking greater independence from Washington on security matters. Rutte settles this debate with a realism that makes both extremes uncomfortable: neither can Europe do without the United States, nor is Washington willing to maintain indefinitely disproportionate levels of spending to defend allies who chronically underinvest in their own security.

Implications

Rutte's message reinforces the classic Atlanticist vision and Cold War realism: European strategic autonomy can only be built on close and organic cooperation with Washington, not as an alternative, equidistant project or one that seeks room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the United States, and requires definitively abandoning pacifist fantasies, neutralist reflexes and illusions of ‘civil power’ incompatible with the reality of a deteriorating security environment where Russia acts as a revisionist power, China expands its global military influence, and Iran feeds terrorist proxies on three continents.

This brutal honesty also directly challenges European governments that have used the US security shield for three decades—from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the invasion of Crimea—as an implicit subsidy to maintain defence levels well below what is sustainable, financing instead welfare state models that are generous in benefits but structurally deficient, avoiding difficult choices between social spending and military spending, and postponing indefinitely the modernisation of critical military capabilities.

The debate on 5% of GDP is not rhetoric: for Germany, it would mean moving from the current €75 billion to more than €200 billion, for France from €50 billion to €130 billion, and for Italy from €30 billion to €100 billion. These increases require not only political will but also fiscal reforms, restructuring of budgetary priorities, rebuilding of atrophied defence industrial bases, and recovery of strategic security cultures that have been diluted over two generations of Europeans socialised in the belief that history had ended and war was a thing of the past.

Outlook and scenarios

A gradual but sustained strengthening of industrial cooperation in defence within the transatlantic axis is foreseeable, with the United States as an indispensable provider of critical strategic capabilities — extended nuclear deterrence, ballistic missile defence, space and cyber intelligence, naval power projection — and Europe contributing complementary industrial mass, technological innovation in specific niches, and land capabilities for territorial defence of the eastern flank, in a model of cooperative specialisation that is more efficient than costly duplication of capabilities.

Failure to translate Rutte's words and the formal commitments of the NATO summits into actual national budgets, signed industrial contracts and deployed operational units would dangerously fuel the arguments of sectors in the United States — both isolationist progressives and unilateralist Trumpists — who advocate selective withdrawal, prioritisation of the Indo-Pacific over Europe, and the gradual abandonment of security commitments inherited from 1949, mortally weakening NATO's deterrent credibility and opening up additional revisionist temptations not only in Moscow but also in Beijing with regard to Taiwan and in Tehran with regard to the Gulf.

In the very long term, the existential question for Europe is whether it can develop sufficient military capabilities to autonomously deter Russian aggression without a US presence—a scenario that would require its own nuclear weapons, which in practice means French nuclear weapons with a credible extended umbrella over the entire EU, something that is politically and technically very complex—or whether it will maturely and permanently accept that its security is structurally dependent on its alliance with the United States, which implies aligning positions on other strategic issues—China, Iran, trade—more consistently with US interests.

Resurgence of protests in Iran and assessment of the repression

Facts

Protests against the Iranian theocratic regime, which began last November with the death in police custody of a young Kurdish woman accused of wearing her hijab improperly, and then spread to a broader political response questioning the very legitimacy of the Islamic Republic system, continue in multiple cities despite extremely fierce repression, including the systematic use of live ammunition against unarmed protesters, mass arrests with documented torture, accelerated public hangings of activists after summary trials, and prolonged internet and social media blackouts to prevent coordination and documentation of abuses.

International human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, now put the death toll at several thousand since the start of the cycle of protests — with estimates ranging from 3,000 according to conservative sources to more than 5,000 according to activist networks inside Iran — stressing that the actual toll is likely to be much higher due to strict censorship, the information blackout imposed by Tehran, the concealment of bodies, and deaths from torture in detention centres that are not officially recognised.

The protests have evolved from initial slogans about women's rights and civil liberties to explicit demands for the fall of the regime, with chants of ‘Death to the Dictator’ referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the burning of images of Khomeini and Khamenei, and attacks on symbols of theocratic power including regime-controlled mosques and offices of the Basij, the paramilitary militias that form the backbone of repression alongside the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Implications

The Iranian regime is once again demonstrating its dual nature as a terrorist state both internally and externally: the same logic, the same methods and often the same commanders and units that feed, train and direct Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, are applied without dilution against the Iranian population itself, which has become an internal enemy simply for demanding basic rights, treated with indiscriminate lethal violence and subjected to an apparatus of repression that does not distinguish between peaceful protesters, political activists and armed combatants.

The unprecedented combination of social pressure from below — with mobilisations that have penetrated neighbourhoods traditionally loyal to the regime and include sectors of the working class impoverished by sanctions and corruption — and military and economic pressure from outside (US aircraft carriers, tougher sanctions, covert sabotage operations against military and nuclear infrastructure) could be slowly eroding the cohesion of the ruling elites, although there are still no clear signs of a terminal fracture or mass desertions in the security forces that sustain the system.

The regime faces a dilemma with no easy solution: if it moderates the repression to appease international pressure and avoid the economic cost of new sanctions, it risks the protests growing until they become uncontrollable; if it maintains or tightens repression, it consolidates its international isolation, reinforces Western sanctions, justifies US and Israeli military pressure, and deepens the hatred of large sectors of its own population, especially educated urban youth and women, who constitute the demographic future of the country.

Outlook and scenarios

In the short term, the priority of Western democracies should be to support Iranian civil society by all available means — ensuring access to accurate information by circumventing censorship, facilitating secure communications through VPNs and anti-censorship technologies, giving an international voice to the diaspora and activists, documenting crimes for future accountability — and simultaneously limiting the operational capacity of the repressive apparatus through selective sanctions that directly target Basij and Revolutionary Guard commanders, freezing the foreign assets of the regime's elites, and technological isolation that prevents access to Western surveillance and digital repression equipment.

In the medium term, the fundamental strategic question is whether the eventual collapse of the theocratic regime will be the result of an internal implosion—a military coup, a fracture among the elites, total economic collapse, a massive popular uprising impossible to repress—of sustained international pressure combining economic strangulation with support for the opposition and credible military threats, or of an explosive combination of both factors triggering an accelerated transition.

The greatest risk is that any disorderly transition, without a coordinated international stabilisation plan between the United States, Europe, the Gulf countries and even Russia, will leave a power vacuum that could be filled by even more radical factions within the Revolutionary Guard itself, Sunni jihadist groups seeking sectarian revenge against the Shia population, or post-Gaddafi Libya-style chaos with fragmentation of the state, proliferation of militias and the risk of military arsenals, including nuclear components, falling into the hands of non-state actors. Hence the importance of the West having not only a pressure strategy, but also a transition strategy for the day after the regime.

Global dimension of the war in Ukraine: attacks on energy infrastructure and power cuts

Facts

Russian attacks in recent hours in Kharkiv have caused widespread power cuts affecting more than 200,000 homes, schools, hospitals and basic services, in line with Moscow's systematic campaign of destruction of energy infrastructure, which it has intensified during the winter months with the explicit aim of breaking the resilience of Ukrainian society through cold, darkness and the collapse of essential services. The attacks are concentrated on electrical substations, thermal power plants, high-voltage lines and distribution centres, using combinations of cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and swarms of drones that overwhelm Ukrainian air defences.

Emergency teams from the national electricity company, reinforced by foreign technicians and support from international organisations, are working around the clock to restore supply amid temperatures that at this time of year typically drop below -10°C in the Kharkiv region, highlighting the structural vulnerability of energy networks in a high-intensity conflict where the enemy has partial air superiority and the ability to strike deep into the territory. -10°C in the Kharkiv region, highlighting the structural vulnerability of energy networks in a high-intensity conflict where the enemy has partial air superiority and the capacity to launch deep strikes against the entire operational rear.

According to data from Ukrainian energy operators, since October 2022, Russian attacks have destroyed or severely damaged approximately 50% of the country's electricity generation capacity, forcing massive electricity imports from neighbouring EU countries, planned rationing at peak times, and critical dependence on diesel generators to keep hospitals, shelters, heating systems and emergency services operational.

Implications

Beyond the immediate human cost — hypothermia, accidents due to darkness, collapse of health services in the midst of war — these attacks are putting intense pressure on the European defence and energy industries to accelerate the production and delivery of short- and medium-range air defence systems, anti-aircraft batteries, anti-missile systems, specialised ammunition, high-capacity emergency generators, rapid repair equipment, spare transformers and critical components for electrical grids, increasingly integrating the military and civilian dimensions of national resilience into a logic of total defence.

The war in Ukraine brutally demonstrates that energy is no longer just an economic vector or an instrument of commercial pressure, as Russian gas was for decades, but a direct weapon of hybrid warfare that adds to the conventional arsenal, with strategic lessons that the European Union and NATO must urgently apply to the protection of their own critical infrastructure against possible coordinated sabotage, cyberattacks against industrial control systems, or attacks with cruise missiles or long-range drones in the event of an escalation with Russia beyond Ukraine's borders.

The Russian campaign against the Ukrainian energy system also has a dimension of ethnic cleansing and slow genocide: making areas under Ukrainian control uninhabitable during the winter, forcing mass population displacement to Western Europe, creating a humanitarian crisis that erodes European political support for Kyiv, and paving the way for future annexations by presenting devastated territories as ‘liberated’ from a government that allegedly cannot guarantee minimum living conditions.

Outlook and scenarios

Ukraine will continue to depend critically on massive and sustained Western aid to keep its energy system operational, forcing European capitals, the European Commission and international financial institutions to plan for equipment supplies, specialised technical support, financing for repairs and the construction of distributed generation capacity not only on a winter-to-winter seasonal basis, but on a multi-year horizon of three to five years, assuming that the war may be prolonged and that each winter will repeat the pattern of massive attacks.

The Ukrainian experience is likely to accelerate long-delayed debates in Europe on the mass burial of high-voltage power lines to protect them from air strikes, the creation of redundancies and decentralised meshes in distribution networks to avoid single points of failure, reinforced physical protection of substations and power stations through bunkers or point anti-missile systems, and the development of distributed generation capacities using renewables and batteries that reduce dependence on large, vulnerable power plants.

In the very long term, the model of energy warfare developed by Russia in Ukraine will be studied and replicated by other actors — China in a possible conflict over Taiwan, Iran against its Gulf neighbours, North Korea against the South — forcing a complete rethink of the architecture of national energy systems based not only on criteria of economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and energy transition, but also on military resilience and the ability to sustain essential services under prolonged high-intensity attack.

Extreme weather and infrastructure vulnerability in the United States

Facts

A powerful winter storm of exceptional characteristics has affected much of the southern and central United States since the weekend, with massive snowfall, ice accumulations of several centimetres, and extremely low temperatures that have dropped to -20°C in normally temperate areas of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, leaving more than 700,000 subscribers without electricity at the peak of the storm, causing the cancellation of more than 5,000 commercial flights, and causing the closure of major interstate highways and schools in multiple states.

The National Weather Service has warned of ‘potentially catastrophic’ ice accumulations in a swath stretching from Texas to the Carolinas, with the risk of power lines collapsing, trees falling on homes and vehicles, and prolonged disruptions to basic supplies, It estimates that more than 100 million people—approximately one-third of the U.S. population—will face sub-freezing temperatures in the next 48 hours, straining heating systems, electrical grids operating at capacity, and overwhelmed emergency services.

This extreme weather event comes just three years after the February 2021 winter storm that left millions of Texans without power for days, caused more than 200 deaths, and exposed the fragility of critical infrastructure designed for a milder climate but now subject to extreme variability due to climate change, with swings between record heat waves in summer and polar cold in winter.

Implications

The increasing recurrence of extreme weather events — more intense hurricanes, prolonged droughts, flash floods, heat waves and cold spells outside historical parameters — highlights the urgent need to modernise critical infrastructure in the United States, the world's leading power, which still operates with electricity grids, water systems, roads and bridges designed in many cases 50 or 70 years ago for more stable and predictable weather conditions, a factor that will inevitably compete for budgetary resources and political attention with growing priorities for defence spending, support for Ukraine and containment of China and Iran, in a context of record public debt that severely limits the scope for fiscal action.

Recurring failures of essential services in already intensely polarised states—Texas, Florida, Arizona—fuel political narratives from those who question the federal government's ability to guarantee basic public goods, creating a breeding ground for populism of various stripes: from the left, which attributes the problems to excessive privatisation and lack of regulation, to the right, which blames a hasty energy transition and the abandonment of reliable fossil fuels, to libertarians who see each state failure as confirmation that government is inherently inefficient.

The visible inability to respond effectively and quickly to domestic natural disasters, especially when images emerge of Americans without power or heating for days on end in the 21st century while the country deploys aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, damages the international image of the United States as a model of effective management and competent government, something that its geopolitical rivals — RT, CGTN, Press TV — shamelessly exploit for propaganda purposes to undermine the confidence of allies and global audiences in US leadership.

Outlook and scenarios

In the coming months, the federal administration and state governments are likely to push for significant new investment packages in climate resilience, infrastructure adaptation to climate change, modernisation of electricity grids with smart grid technologies, undergrounding of lines in high-risk areas, and strengthening of emergency response capabilities, although the fiscal margin will be very limited by the level of public debt and political battles in Congress will be intense over spending priorities and public-private financing models.

In the medium term, if extreme events multiply as predicted by climate models and the institutional response remains slow, fragmented or inadequate, an already visible trend of internal migration from southern and western states that are more vulnerable to droughts, hurricanes and extreme heat towards states in the north and north-east, with political, economic and demographic consequences that are difficult to predict but potentially destabilising for electoral balances, property markets and social cohesion.

The persistent inability to respond effectively to recurring climate disasters would fuel narratives of national decline, erode public confidence in institutions, and could accelerate the dynamics of practical secession — not formal, but in terms of states increasingly assuming powers unilaterally, ignoring federal regulations or developing completely divergent policies—weakening the country's cohesion precisely when it faces its most competitive and dangerous geopolitical environment since the Cold War.

Global echoes of the arrests and operations against Chavismo and the Venezuelan narco-state

Facts

Recent reports and analyses in media specialising in geopolitics place Venezuela's current political “limbo” following the arrest by US special forces of Nicolás Maduro and several senior officials of his regime in a coordinated operation with allied Latin American governments, reflecting an uncertain and potentially dangerous transition phase in a country where Chavismo has functioned for more than two decades as a hybrid narco-dictatorship, a transnational criminal organisation with state structures, and a platform for the projection of influence by Russia, China, Iran and Cuba in the Western Hemisphere.

The debate in specialised geopolitical analysis forums highlights that the combination of sustained sectoral sanctions, international judicial pressure through drug trafficking charges in US courts, police and intelligence cooperation to track the regime's financial assets hidden in tax havens, and covert operations to destabilise and selectively capture leaders, were key factors in sufficiently weakening the Chavista criminal-state network to allow for its eventual dismantling.

Venezuela now finds itself in a situation of fragile transitional government, with state institutions devastated by decades of corruption and patronage, armed forces partially co-opted by drug trafficking, a collapsed economy with chronic hyperinflation and mass emigration of a third of the population, and oil infrastructure in a state of semi-abandonment that will require tens of billions of dollars in investment to return to production levels comparable to those of the 1990s.

Implications

The Venezuelan experience empirically reinforces the realist thesis that narco-regimes — structures where political, military and criminal elites merge into a single power network with an economy based on drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion and the plundering of natural resources — do not yield to mere diplomatic persuasion, rhetorical pressure, condemnation by international organisations or lukewarm sanctions, but can only be dismantled through a comprehensive strategy of coordinated pressure that combines real financial strangulation, forensic tracking of capital flows, transnational police cooperation and, if necessary, direct surgical action against their leaders when they make the mistake of exposing themselves outside their territorial sanctuaries.

The current power vacuum in Caracas, without a robust and consensual plan for democratic transition, institutional reconstruction, purging of the armed forces infiltrated by drug traffickers, economic reactivation with massive foreign investment, and national reconciliation after 25 years of brutal polarisation, opens dangerous windows of opportunity for hostile external actors such as Russia, Iran, China, or even Cuba to try to preserve or strengthen strategic positions in a country that, due to its massive oil reserves—the largest in the world—its geographical position controlling the southern Caribbean and northern access to South America, and its potential as a platform for intelligence and destabilisation operations against the United States, remains a coveted piece on the global chessboard.

Outlook and scenarios

The success or failure of the Venezuelan transition over the next two to three years will inevitably be a paradigmatic reference point for the future management of other narco-financed authoritarian regimes in Latin America, such as the repressive apparatuses of Cuba —which depends vitally on Venezuelan oil remittances— and Nicaragua under Ortega, which view the Venezuelan precedent with obvious existential concern and are accelerating measures to protect elites and seek new external patrons.

The Atlantic community —the United States, the European Union, Latin American allies such as Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina— should take advantage of this historic window of opportunity to promote an open, diversified market economy diversified beyond oil, with a robust rule of law and consolidated representative democracy in Venezuela, fully integrating the country into Western energy supply chains to reduce dependence on the Middle East, connecting it to hemispheric security architectures, and dramatically reducing its historical vulnerability to penetration by Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, which have used it as a bridgehead in the hemisphere.

Failure to sustain the Venezuelan transition due to lack of resources, scattered attention, or disagreements among Western actors over models of reconstruction would open up dark scenarios: from a new nationalist military dictatorship attempting to restore order through heavy-handed tactics, to territorial fragmentation with areas controlled by cartels, to a failed state like Libya that would export instability, drug trafficking, refugees, and terrorism to the entire region for decades. Given the strategic stakes at play, failing to decisively support Venezuela's reconstruction would be a geopolitical mistake of the first order.

Media rack

In the last 24 hours, the major international media outlets have agreed to highlight a scenario of growing geopolitical and economic fragility. The New York Times highlights Keir Starmer's trip to China and the British dilemma between commercial pragmatism and strategic alignment with the United States, along with concerns about rising debt in advanced economies and European military dependence on the US umbrella.

The Financial Times analyses Donald Trump's tactical shift in immigration policy as a reflection of the economic and political costs of internal uncertainty, while the Washington Post maintains its focus on Asia, denouncing the repression in Myanmar and the deterioration of human rights in authoritarian regimes.

Reuters continues its factual coverage of the war in Ukraine, focusing on Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, and Al Jazeera combines its coverage of the conflict with the protests and repression in Iran, providing a broader, regional perspective.

On the military front, CNN and Military Times emphasise the deployment of the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off Iran, while European media highlight trade tensions with the United States and the search for greater strategic autonomy. Think tanks, for their part, point to a global realignment marked by the expansion of BRICS Plus and the intensification of systemic competition.

Editorial commentary

The day confirms an uncomfortable truth that large sectors of ‘right-thinking’ people in old Europe, entrenched in ritual pacifism and a moral equidistance that does not distinguish between the attacked and the attackers, still refuse to admit: history has returned with all its tragic harshness and intends to collect, with compound interest, the dividends accumulated from three decades of strategic naivety, budgetary irresponsibility in defence, and fantasies about the end of history.

When Russian missiles strike schools and kindergartens in Kharkiv, leaving Ukrainian children without light or heating in the middle of winter, when the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln manoeuvres in front of an Iranian regime that shamelessly fires on its own unarmed citizens, accumulating thousands of deaths, when a British Prime Minister travels to Beijing seeking trade agreements while simultaneously opening the door to revising the architecture of sovereignty in Chagos, risking a vital strategic enclave, and when the major Western economies accumulate levels of debt that threaten their ability to simultaneously sustain the welfare state and a credible defence, what is truly at stake is not an academic abstraction for university seminars, but the very continuity of the liberal order that has given Europe and the West its longest period of prosperity, freedom and peace in its entire millennial history.

Faced with this picture of converging threats and limited resources, the response cannot be either the ritual pacifism that confuses peace with capitulation to the aggressor, or the irresponsible populism of talk shows that simultaneously promise more social spending, lower taxes and effortless magical security. What is needed is a calm but absolutely firm reaffirmation of the Atlantic alliance as the ultimate guarantee of our collective security, a decisive and sustained investment in defence — not against peoples but against regimes that have made violence their raison d'être — and a clear foreign policy, without ambiguity or cowardly equidistance, towards narco-states, terrorist theocracies and revisionist empires that, from Caracas to Tehran, via Moscow and Beijing, openly challenge the rules-based international order we built after 1945.

This is not about demonising entire peoples or falling into xenophobia or chauvinism, but about calling each regime by its proper name and abandoning once and for all the childish fetishism of equidistance that morally equates imperfect liberal democracies, with all their contradictions and historical errors, with narco-dictatorships that use the state as a criminal enterprise, theocracies that stone women and hang homosexuals, or imperial regimes that annex the territories of sovereign neighbours by brute force. This moral and political distinction is not optional: it is the very foundation of any foreign policy consistent with our values and compatible with our survival as free societies.

In this complex context, the figure of Donald Trump — with all his personal contradictions, his often abrasive rhetoric, and his unconventional methods—is today objectively closer to Reagan's realism of strength with purpose than to the grotesque caricatures systematically produced by certain European progressive circles trapped in obsolete ideological orthodoxies: he maintains an unequivocal line of firmness towards the Venezuelan narco-state, toughens the message towards the Iranian theocracy by backing it up with a credible projection of military power, rightly reminds Europeans that collective defence is not a free public good but requires proportionate contributions from all allies, and at the same time tactically rectifies when the application of its own policies, as in the tragic Pretti case, threatens to erode the internal social contract or fuel perceptions of authoritarianism incompatible with the rule of law.

This does not mean blind adherence or an absence of criticism—all policies must be scrutinised and all authorities must be held accountable in a democracy—but rather a realistic recognition that, on the current geopolitical chessboard, characterised by ruthless competition between incompatible systems, firmness combined with pragmatism is more effective than moralising posturing without practical consequences. At the same time, this external firmness must necessarily be accompanied by an unequivocal and unwavering commitment to civil liberties, political pluralism, the separation of powers and the rule of law at home, because only from this institutional coherence can we oppose global jihadism, continental Chavism and the neo-totalitarian imperial projects of Moscow and Beijing with sustainable moral authority.

In short, the ten news items of the day point in the same structural direction: either liberal democracies collectively accept the logic of the world that really exists — competitive, tough, without kid gloves or neutral arbitration — and act accordingly by investing in military power, internal cohesion and strategic clarity, or other actors, less scrupulous and more determined, who will write the rules of the future order, distribute strategic raw materials, control critical trade routes and dictate the conditions of our collective security and even our individual freedoms.

Political wisdom today, at this historic moment of definition, does not consist of cowardly taking refuge in a lukewarm centrism that avoids all confrontation and compromise, but rather in defending a firm centre, rooted in clear principles: unapologetically Atlanticist, pro-European without premature federalist illusions, liberal in economics and values, and deeply aware that without sufficient military power, without moral clarity in distinguishing between friends and enemies, and without the will to use that power when circumstances demand it, the beautiful word ‘West’ runs the very real risk of becoming a footnote in 22nd-century history books, probably written in Mandarin or Farsi.