Arthur Michelino

Great powers rarely lose because an opponent defeats them. They lose because the systems through which they attempt to project power do not respond as expected. The Soviet Union entered Afghanistan with overwhelming military superiority. The United States did the same in Vietnam and Iraq. Russia expected its advantages over Ukraine to deliver a short war.

The dominant reading of Ukraine’s offer to Gulf states facing Iranian drone campaigns casts it as a diplomatic by-product of the conflict, a contingent opportunity that circumstance created and Kyiv was sensible enough to take. That reading does not reach what is analytically most significant about what is occurring. It is difficult not to read what Kyiv is doing as the execution of a strategy built on a structural contradiction that the Iran war has made visible.

Europe hosted two conversations in Paris within the same week. On April 17, more than forty countries gathered to finalize plans for a naval mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Five days later, energy ministers from West Africa and European investors convened at the IAE forum to examine the Atlantic corridor as a likely structural answer to the same crisis. Both meetings were serious.