The Crime of Geography

The recent, devastating US and Israeli strikes on Iran, part of Operation Epic Fury, mark a terrifying escalation that threatens to engulf the entire region (if not beyond). Watching this unfold, alongside the concerning threats from the E3 (France, Germany, and the UK) that do not condemn anybody but the attacked party of Iran, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Germany, whether its citizens want it or not, is already an active participant; the US Air Base at Ramstein provides the critical satellite relay and geolocation data that makes these very US-strikes possible.

The compliance of European leadership is enough to make anyone shake their head in disbelief. But we cannot let despair win. In any case, let’s try to understand some underlying patterns.

The "Threat" of Size

When Pete Hegseth recently (02.03.2026) discussed the strikes on Iran, he made a revealing comment:

"This is a big battle space with a lot of capabilities — that's part of the reason why it's such a threat to us."

To the untrained ear, this sounds like a standard tactical observation. But if we view this through the framework of the Bunker State, Hegseth is actually echoing the foundational and highly cynical doctrine of the post-Cold War American empire.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the ideological battle between capitalism and communism (seemingly) evaporated. Yet, the transatlantic ruling strata did not dismantle their war machine with it. Instead, they shifted their crosshairs to a new, permanent enemy based on nothing else than geographical size and autonomy. The post-Cold War strategic establishment realized that the mere existence of large, resource-rich states was a structural threat to their unipolar world order. We do not have to guess about this; the architects of the 1990s unipolar moment wrote it down in plain English.

Look at how they explicitly framed Russia as a threat simply because of its physical mass:

In 1995, James Morrison of the US National Defense University wrote bluntly: "Russia is too large. Russia is far larger than any other European member of NATO and admitting it to NATO would change the balance."

That same year, former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown stated that Russia "almost surely will never become a NATO member; its size, geography, and history make it unsuitable as part of a transatlantic security organization."

This logic was applied to the entire multipolar world. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1997 that the Eurasian megacontinent is "too large, too populous, culturally too varied... to be compliant." Similarly, a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations Task Force warned that Iran posed a massive geopolitical challenge simply because it possesses "potentially considerable military and economic capabilities and an imperial tradition."

Brzezinski on Iran as "Geopolitical Pivot" (1997)

Brzezinski classified Iran as a "geopolitical pivot" ; a state whose "importance is derived not from their power and motivation but rather from their sensitive location and from the consequences of their potentially vulnerable condition." Iran "dominates the eastern shoreline of the Persian Gulf" and its "independence, irrespective of current Iranian hostility toward the United States, acts as a barrier" in the broader Eurasian competition.​

Note that the threat is not Iranian behavior, it is Iranian geography and independence. Even a friendly Iran would remain a geopolitical pivot whose autonomy affects the global balance. And, therefore, it would be a threat. Just like Russia and China would be and are, no matter if they were hypercapitalist hellscapes. Their size, history, collective memory, all make them potentially non-compliant.

The Global Frontier and Maps of Extraction

To understand this obsession with size, we have to look at the sedimented meta-framework of the American empire (but in even further back, colonial European settlers): the Frontier Myth. Just as the 19th-century American identity was forged by pushing a civilizational line westward against a "savage" outside, the post-Cold War elite simply relocated that frontier to the Persian Gulf, Eurasia, and beyond. The globe became the new "wilderness," and US forces became the global cavalry dispatched to tame it.

In this worldview, classical geopolitics, the grand chessboards of heartlands, rimlands, and choke points, become maps drawn specifically to optimize routes of capitalist extraction, control, and denial.

Any large, autonomous territory like Iran, Russia, or China is instinctively viewed as "Indian country", like a wild space that must be forcefully opened, fragmented, or placed under the permanent armed management of the imperial cavalry.

Scale + Autonomy = A Rival Order

Ultimately, this is a cold, material calculation by a US-led transatlantic capitalist elite desperate to maintain their global status. They cannot tolerate a world where capital, technology, currency, and rule-making flow through anything other than their single imperial center. They cannot tolerate equals.

The core problem for Washington is positional. A large, resourced, and coherent state has the capacity to resist exploitation. When nations like Russia, China, or Iran maintain their autonomy, they withhold vast resources and massive consumer markets from the imperial core. Even worse, they demonstrate to the rest of the Global South that true sovereignty is possible.

This sets a contagious example that actively shrinks the space in which transatlantic elites can extract wealth. Whether it is a neoconservative demanding a "Pax Americana," a liberal internationalist preaching the "rules-based order," or a realist managing the "balance of power," they all share the exact same structural horizon: the absolute denial of peer competitors and the preservation of an open periphery for capital. For the ruling class, Scale + Autonomy = A Structural Rival Order. Large states are a threat simply because they potentially sit outside the circuits of exploitation that keep the transatlantic ruling strata on top.

The European Capture

This geographic reality is exactly why the United States-based functional elites have worked so aggressively to capture the European political class—leading directly to the E3's current, shameful complicity. The ultimate nightmare for Washington in the 1990s was not a military invasion; it was the peaceful economic integration of European industry with the massive, resource-rich Eurasian landmass. To preserve their status, the US elite had to force Europe to sever its ties to the East and lock itself inside the transatlantic bunker as a subordinate vassal.

The drums of war beating today over Iran are not about spreading democracy, halting terror, or responding to unprovoked aggression. They are the desperate, violent spasms of a transatlantic ruling class trying to forcefully break a world that has simply grown too big for them to control. We are watching a deliberate, highly calculated strategy of managed entropy.

It is infuriating and saddening to witness the subservience of so many governments in this destruction. But by seeing the machinery for what it is, by understanding the 1990s roots of this doctrine and the capitalist frontier myths that drive it, we strip away their illusions. We move from confusion to clarity, and clarity is the prerequisite for survival.

I am currently working on a comprehensive essay expanding on this exact topic. It will explore how the post-Cold War functional elite weaponized the "threat of size" to justify a perpetual siege, and how this structural reality perfectly explains the (almost) total transatlantic capture of the European elite.