Hello, Jim.

Personalities are not a problem. You can’t expect any nation to be led by a nobody. Except Switzerland: ask 100 Swiss who the president of Switzerland is, and if you get 10 correct answers, I owe you. So, what does that tell you about Switzerland? Well, on one view, Switzerland runs like a … Swiss watch, and doesn’t need a “personality” as its head of state. And, in the case of Iran, that poses an interesting question: who is Iran’s head of state? The Supreme Leader? The President? The head of the army? Ironically, I think we could all answer who the head of state of the US is. But, then again, who precisely is in charge; that’s a different question.

There is a certain transparency to how Iran is governed (please, let’s call it a government and not a régime); but the White House does display a certain opacity. I see personalities in terms of Iran less by comparison with classic western nations and more in terms of the Vatican City. Leo XIV is a great personality, but his message extends far beyond any national interest, it supersedes the man himself. Iran is not devoid of national interest, but its government is conducted on a far higher philosophical plane than, say, Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskyy has marked himself out as a remarkable wartime leader. Nobody would take that away from him. But I find it odd that he started out as an actor playing a president, and then, in a country where outside manipulation of elections is seen as commonplace, alakazam! he gets elected as president, under exactly the same party name as in the TV series. Well, I never. Politics is no stranger to the acting profession: Schwarzenegger, Reagan, Glenda Jackson. The huge problem is not personalities. It is why the personalities are where they are and what they are doing with their personality. Many of our governmental systems in the west rely entirely for their efficacy on the officeholder being a "decent chap". That's the ultimate safeguard: decency. And, if you get a leader who is not decent, then you get roguishness as a standard character trait, and indecency as the norm. And, under democracy, it's then too late to do anything about it. In the west, it's too easy to lie your way into ending the world.

One contributory factor to World War I was the inferiority complex of Kaiser Wilhelm II: he suffered from a disability, and that is said to have induced him to assert himself beyond his stature. I personally don’t regard Napoleon as a huge problem, on the other hand. I actually regard the fact he lost at Waterloo to be the bigger problem. But that’s all in the past.

As for how the Middle East would have looked without the State of Israel, I really can’t conjecture, beyond saying, “Calmer, I think.”

A few years back, I wrote a piece that circles around Raymond Washington and Stanley Williams (endlesschain.substack.c…). They were the founding members of the gang known as the Cripps. Washington died aged 25, Williams was 51 - the same age as Napoleon Bonaparte, as it happens. Williams killed 4 men. I’m not sure how many deaths Napoleon was responsible for, but I think it probably topped 4 (it was 50,000 at Waterloo alone).

The piece asks: what is life expectancy? In the case of your average Cripps member today, it is pretty much the age at which Washington was killed: 25. You need to let that sink in. By the time you are conscious of your age (about 3 or 4) you know you will die when you’re 25. That is East Los Angeles gang-member life expectancy.

Your own life expectancy, Jim, is, biblically, 70 years. Your doctor can probably squeeze another ten or 20 years out for you. But if you have grandchildren, your life expectancy - the duration of time for which your life will have meaning - is until the deaths of your grandchildren, giving you a life expectancy of around 140 years.

If Napoleon had won Waterloo, what do you think his life expectancy would have been? Let me tell you: at least 1,000 years. La Gloire de France would have lived on far beyond Napoleon’s natural lifetime, for eons to come. And that is, in no small measure, the life expectancy of people like Mr Putin, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump. Trump is so afeared that people will forget him that he is racing around naming things after himself now, so at least he gets those few years, if it comes to the worst.

Guy Parmelin. He’s the president of Switzerland, and no one cares. I doubt there is a street or a corner shop named for him. Not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because Switzerland doesn’t need those sorts of things.