Farah N. Jan, University of Pennsylvania

The United States is seemingly moving toward a potential strike on Iran.

On Jan. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump sharply intensified his threats to the Islamic Republic, suggesting that if Tehran did not agree to a set of demands, he could mount an attack “with speed and violence.” To underline the threat, the Pentagon moved aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln – along with destroyers, bombers and fighter jets – to positions within striking distance of the country.

Foremost among the various demands the U.S. administration has put before Iran’s leader is a permanent end to the country’s uranium enrichment program. It has also called for limits to the development of ballistic missiles and a cutting off of Tehran’s support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Trump apparently sees in this moment an opportunity to squeeze an Iran weakened by a poor economy and massive protests that swept through the country in early January.

But as a scholar of Middle Eastern security politics and proliferation, I have concerns. Any U.S. military action now could have widespread unintended consequences later. And that includes the potential for accelerated global nuclear proliferation – regardless of whether the Iranian government is able to survive its current moment of crisis.

Iran’s threshold lesson

The fall of the Islamic Republic is far from certain, even if the U.S. uses military force. Iran is not a fragile state susceptible to quick collapse. With a population of 93 million and substantial state capacity, it has a layered coercive apparatus and security institutions built to survive crises. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s military wing, is commonly estimated in the low-to-high hundreds of thousands, and it commands or can mobilize auxiliary forces.

After 47 years of rule, the Islamic Republic’s institutions are deeply embedded in Iranian society. Moreover, any change in leadership would not likely produce a clean slate. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged as much, telling lawmakers on Jan. 28 that there was “no simple answer” to what would happen if the government fell. “No one knows who would take over,” he said. The exiled opposition is fragmented, disconnected from domestic realities and lacks the organizational capacity to govern such a large and divided country.

And in this uncertainty lies the danger. Iran is a “threshold state” — a country with the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons but that has not crossed the final line of production.

A destabilized threshold state poses three risks: loss of centralized command over nuclear material and scientists, incentives for factions to monetize or export expertise, and acceleration logic — actors racing to secure deterrence before collapse.

History offers warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s produced near-misses and concern over the whereabouts of missing nuclear material. Meanwhile, the activities of the A.Q. Khan network, centered around the so-called father of Pakistan’s atomic program, proved that expertise travels – in Khan’s case to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

What strikes teach

Whether or not regime change might follow, any U.S. military action carries profound implications for global proliferation.

Iran’s status as a threshold state has been a choice of strategic restraint. But when, in June 2025, Israel and the U.S struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, that attack – and the latest Trump threats – sent a clear message that threshold status provides no reliable security.

The message to other nations with nuclear aspirations is stark and builds on a number of hard nonproliferation lessons over the past three decades. Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 in exchange for normalized relations with the West. Yet just eight years later, NATO airstrikes in support of Libyan rebels led to the capture and killing of longtime strongman Moammar Gaddafi.

Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal in 1994 for security assurances from Russia, the U.S. and Britain. Yet 20 years later, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, before launching an outright invasion in 2022.

Now we can add Iran to the list: The country exercised restraint at the threshold level, and yet it was attacked by U.S. bombs in 2025 and now faces a potential follow-up strike.

The lesson is not lost on Mehdi Mohammadi, a senior Iranian adviser. Speaking on state TV on Jan. 27, he said Washington’s demands “translate into disarming yourself so we could strike you when we want.”

If abandoning a nuclear program leads to regime change, relinquishing weapons results in invasion, and remaining at the threshold invites military strikes, the logic goes, then security is only truly achieved through the possession of nuclear weapons – and not by negotiating them away or halting development before completion.

If Iranian leadership survives any U.S. attack, they will, I believe, almost certainly double down on Iran’s weapons program.

IAEA credibility

U.S. military threats or strikes in the pursuit of destroying a nation’s nuclear program also undermine the international architecture designed to prevent proliferation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency was, until the earlier Israel and U.S. strikes, functioning as designed – detecting, flagging and verifying. Its monitoring of Iran was proof that the inspection regime worked.

Military strikes – or the credible threat of them – remove inspectors, disrupt monitoring continuity and signal that compliance does not guarantee safety.

If following the rules offers no protection, why follow the rules? At stake is the credibility of the IAEA and faith in the whole system of international diplomacy and monitoring to tamp down nuclear concerns.

The domino effect

Every nation weighing its nuclear options is watching to see how this latest standoff between the U.S. and Iran plays out.

Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, has made no secret of its own nuclear ambitions, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declaring that the kingdom would pursue nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Yet a U.S. strike on Iran would not reassure Washington’s Gulf allies. Rather, it could unsettle them. The June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran were conducted to protect Israel, not Saudi Arabia or Iran. Gulf leaders may conclude that American military action flows to preferred partners, not necessarily to them. And if U.S. protection is selective rather than universal, a rational response could be to hedge independently.

Saudi Arabia’s deepening defense cooperation with nuclear power Pakistan, for example, represents a hedge against American unreliability and regional instability. The Gulf kingdom has invested heavily in Pakistani military capabilities and maintains what many analysts believe are understandings regarding Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Turkey, meanwhile, has chafed under NATO’s nuclear arrangements and has periodically signaled interest in an independent capability. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned in 2019 why Turkey should not possess nuclear weapons when others in the region do. An attack on Iran, particularly one that Turkey opposes, could well accelerate Turkish hedging and potentially trigger a serious indigenous weapons program.

And the nuclear cascade would not likely stop at the Middle East. South Korea and Japan have remained non-nuclear largely because of confidence in American extended deterrence. Regional proliferation and the risk of a destabilized Iran exporting its know-how, scientists and technology would raise questions in Seoul and Tokyo about whether American guarantees can be trusted.

An emerging counter-order?

Arab Gulf monarchies certainly understand these risks, which goes some way toward explaining why they have lobbied the Trump administration against military action against Iran – despite Tehran being a major antagonist to Gulf states’ desire to “de-risk” the region.

The American-led regional security architecture is already under strain. It risks fraying further if Gulf partners diversify their security ties and hedge against U.S. unpredictability.

As a result, the Trump administration’s threats and potential strikes against Iran may, conversely, result not in increased American influence, but in diminished relevance as the region divides into competing spheres of influence.

And perhaps most alarming of all, I fear that it could teach every aspiring nuclear state that security is attainable only through the possession of the bomb.

Farah N. Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Pennsylvania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nolan Fahrenkopf, University at Albany, State University of New York

Two years after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, families of the victims filed suit against Binance, a major cryptocurrency platform that has been plagued by scandals.

In a Nov. 24, 2025, filing by representatives of more than 300 victims and family members, Binance and its former CEO – recently pardoned Changpeng Zhao – were accused of willfully ignoring anti-money-laundering and so-called “know your customer” controls that require financial institutions to identify who is engaging in transactions.

In so doing, the suit alleged that Binance and Zhao – who in 2023 pleaded guilty to money laundering violations – allowed U.S.-designated terrorist entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah to launder US$1 billion. Binance has declined to comment on the case but issued a statement saying it complies “fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.”

The problem the Binance lawsuit touches upon goes beyond U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

As an expert in countering the proliferation of weapons technology, I believe the Binance-Hamas allegations could represent the tip of the iceberg in how cryptocurrency is being leveraged to undermine global security and, in some instances, U.S. national security.

Cryptocurrency is aiding countries such as North Korea, Iran and Russia, and various terror- and drug-related groups in funding and purchasing billions of dollars worth of technology for illicit weapons programs.

Though some enforcement actions continue, I believe the Trump administration’s embrace of cryptocurrency might compromise the U.S.’s ability to counter the illicit financing of military technology.

In fact, experts such as professor Yesha Yadav, professor Hilary J. Allen and Graham Steele, anti-corruption advocacy group Transparency International and even the U.S. Treasury itself warn it and other legislative loopholes could further risk American national security.

A tool to evade sanctions

For the past 13 years, the Project on International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft, where I serve as a research fellow, has conducted research and led industry and government outreach to help countries counter the proliferation of dangerous weapons technology, including the use of cryptocurrency in weapons fundraising and money laundering.

Over that time, we have seen an increase in cryptocurrency being used to launder and raise funds for weapons programs and as an innovative tool to evade sanctions.

Efforts by state actors in Iran, North Korea and Russia rely on enforcement gaps, loopholes and the nebulous nature of cryptocurrency to launder and raise money for purchasing weapons technology. For example, in 2024 it was thought that around 50% of North Korea’s foreign currency came from crypto raised in cyberattacks.

A digital bank heist

In February 2025, North Korea stole over $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency from Bybit, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the United Arab Emirates. Such attacks can be thought of as a form of digital bank heist. Bybit was executing regular transfers of cryptocurrency from cold offline wallets – like a safe in your home – to “warm wallets” that are online but require human verification for transactions.

North Korean agents duped a developer working at a service used by Bybit to install malware that granted them access to bypass the multifactor authentication. This allowed North Korea to reroute the crypto transfers to itself. The funds were moved to North Korean-controlled wallets but then washed repeatedly through mixers and multiple other crypto currencies and wallets that serve to hide the origin and end location of the funds.

While some funds have been recovered, many have disappeared.

The FBI eventually linked the attack to the North Korean cyber group TraderTraitor, one of many intelligence and cyber units engaging in cyberattacks.

Lagging behind on security

Cryptocurrency is attractive because of the ease with which it can be acquired and transferred between accounts and various digital and government-issued currencies, with little to no requirements to identify oneself.

And as countries such as Russia, Iran and North Korea have become constricted by international sanctions, they have turned to cryptocurrency to both raise funds and purchase materials for weapons programs.

Even stablecoins, promoted by the Trump administration as safer and backed by hard currency such as the U.S. dollar, suffer from extensive misuse linked to funding illicit weapons programs and other activities.

Traditional financial networks, while not immune from money laundering, have well-established safeguards to help prevent money being used to fund illicit weapons programs.

But recent analysis shows that despite enforcement efforts, the cryptocurrency industry continues to lag behind when it comes to enforcing anti-money-laundering safeguards. In at least some cases this is willful, as some crypto firms may attempt to circumvent controls for profit motives, ideological reasons or policy disputes over whether platforms can be held accountable for the actions of individual users.

It isn’t only the raising of these funds by rogue nations and terrorist groups that poses a threat, though that is often what makes headlines. A more pressing concern is the ability to quietly launder funds between front companies. This helps actors avoid the scrutiny of traditional financial networks as they seek to move funds from other fundraising efforts or firms they use to purchase equipment and technology.

The incredible number of crypto transactions, the large number of centralized and decentralized exchanges and brokers, and limited regulatory efforts have made crypto incredibly useful for laundering funds for weapons programs.

This process benefits from a lack of safeguards and “know your customer” controls that banks are required to follow to prevent financial crimes. These should, I believe, and often do apply to entities large and small that help move, store or transfer cryptocurrency known as virtual asset service providers, or VASPs. However, enforcement has proven difficult as there are an incredibly large number of VASPs across numerous jurisdictions. And jurisdictions have fluctuating capacity or willingness to implement controls.

The cryptocurrency industry, though supposedly subject to many of these safeguards, often fails to implement the rules, or it evades detection due to its decentralized nature.

Digital funds, real risk

The rewards for rogue nations and organizations such as North Korea can be great.

Ever the savvy sanctions evader, North Korea has benefited the most from its early vision on the promise of crypto. The reclusive country has established an extensive cyber program to evade sanctions that relies heavily on cryptocurrency. It is not known how much money North Korea has raised or laundered in total for its weapons program using crypto, but in the past 21 months it has stolen at least $2.8 billion in crypto.

Iran has also begun relying on cryptocurrency to aid in the sale of oil linked to weapons programs – both for itself and proxy forces such as the Houthis and Hezbollah. These efforts are fueled in part by Iran’s own crypto exchange, Nobitex.

Russia has been documented going beyond the use of crypto as a fundraising and laundering tool and has begun using its own crypto to purchase weapons material and technology that fuel its war against Ukraine.

A threat to national security

Despite these serious and escalating risks, the U.S. government is pulling back enforcement.

The controversial pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao raised eyebrows for the signal it sends regarding U.S. commitment to enforcing sanctions related to the cryptocurrency industry. Other actions such as deregulating the banking industry’s use of crypto and shuttering the Department of Justice’s crypto fraud unit have done serious damage to the U.S.’s ability to interdict and prevent efforts to utilize cryptocurrencies to fund weapons programs.

The U.S. has also committed to ending “regulation by prosecution” and has withdrawn numerous investigations related to failing to enforce regulations meant to prevent tactics used by entities such as North Korea. This includes abandoning an admittedly complicated legal case regarding sanctions against a “mixer” allegedly used by North Korea.

These actions, I believe, send the wrong message. At this very moment, cryptocurrency is being illicitly used to fund weapons programs that threaten American security. It’s a real problem that deserves to be taken seriously.

And while some enforcement actions do continue, failing to implement and enforce safeguards up front means that crypto will continue to be used to fund weapons programs. Cryptocurrency has legitimate uses, but ignoring the laundering and sanctions-evasion risks will damage American national interests and global security.

Nolan Fahrenkopf, Research Fellow at Project on International Security, Commerce and Economic Statecraft, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Maxime Aubert, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University

When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture.

Our research, published today in the journal Nature, reveals people living in what is now eastern Indonesia were producing rock art significantly earlier than previously demonstrated.

These artists were not only among the world’s first image-makers, they were also likely part of the population that would eventually give rise to the ancestors of Indigenous Australians and Papuans.

A hand stencil from deep time

The discovery comes from limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi. Here, faint red hand stencils, created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against the rock, are visible on cave walls beneath layers of mineral deposits.

By analysing very small amounts of uranium in the mineral layers, we could work out when those layers formed. Because the minerals formed on top of the paintings, they tell us the youngest possible age of the art underneath.

In some cases, when paintings were made on top of mineral layers, these can also show the oldest possible age of the images.

One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world.

This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.

This hand stencil is also special because it belongs to a style only found in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them look pointed, as though they were animal claws.

Altering images of human hands in this manner may have had a symbolic meaning, possibly connected to this ancient society’s understanding of human-animal relations.

In earlier research in Sulawesi, we found images of human figures with bird heads and other animal features, dated to at least 48,000 years ago. Together, these discoveries suggest that early peoples in this region had complex ideas about humans, animals and identity far back in time.

Not a one-off moment of creativity

The dating shows these caves were used for painting over an extraordinarily long period. Paintings were produced repeatedly, continuing until around the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago – the peak of the most recent ice age.

After a long gap, the caves were painted again by Indonesia’s first farmers, the Austronesian-speaking peoples, who arrived in the region about 4,000 years ago and added new imagery over the much older ice age paintings.

This long sequence shows that symbolic expression was not a brief or isolated innovation. Instead, it was a durable cultural tradition maintained by generations of people living in Wallacea, the island zone separating mainland Asia from Australia and New Guinea.

What this tells us about the first Australians

The implications go well beyond art history.

Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests modern humans reached the ancient continent of Sahul, the combined landmass of Australia and New Guinea, by around 65,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Getting there required deliberate ocean crossings, representing the earliest known long-distance sea voyages undertaken by our species.

Researchers have proposed two main migration routes into Sahul. A northern route would have taken people from mainland Southeast Asia through Borneo and Sulawesi, before crossing onward to Papua and Australia. A southern route would have passed through Sumatra and Java, then across the Lesser Sunda Islands, including Timor, before reaching north-western Australia.

Until now, there has been a major gap in archaeological evidence along these pathways. The newly dated rock art from Sulawesi lies directly along the northern route, providing the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in this key migration corridor into Sahul.

In other words, the people who made these hand stencils in the caves of Sulawesi were very likely part of the population that would later cross the sea and become the ancestors of Indigenous Australians.

Rethinking where culture began

The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that early human creativity did not emerge in a single place, nor was it confined to ice age Europe.

Instead, symbolic behaviour, including art, storytelling, and the marking of place and identity, was already well established in Southeast Asia as humans spread across the world.

This suggests that the first populations to reach Australia carried with them long-standing cultural traditions, including sophisticated forms of symbolic expression whose deeper roots most probably lie in Africa.

The discovery raises an obvious question. If such ancient art exists in Sulawesi, how much more remains to be found?

Large parts of Indonesia and neighbouring islands remain archaeologically unexplored. If our results are any guide, evidence for equally ancient, or even older, cultural traditions may still be waiting on cave walls across the region.

As we continue to search, one thing is already clear. The story of human creativity is far older, richer and more geographically diverse than we once imagined.

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The research on early rock art in Sulawesi has been featured in a documentary film, Sulawesi l'île des premières images produced by ARTE and released in Europe today.

Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Research Centre of Archeometry, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Paul Bierman, University of Vermont

In 1957, Hollywood released “The Deadly Mantis,” a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it.

The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City.

Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security.

In the late 1940s, Arctic temperatures were warming and the Cold War was heating up. The U.S. military had grown increasingly nervous about a Soviet invasion across the Arctic. It built bases and a line of radar stations. The movie used actual military footage of these polar outposts.

But officials wondered: What if sodden snow and vanishing ice stalled American men and machines and weakened these northern defenses?

In response to those concerns, the military created the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, a research center dedicated to the science and engineering of all things frozen: glacier runways, the behavior of ice, the physics of snow and the climates of the past.

It was the beginning of the military’s understanding that climate change couldn’t be ignored.

As I was writing “When the Ice is Gone,” my recent book about Greenland, climate science and the U.S. military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s showing how the Pentagon poured support into climate and cold-region research to boost the national defense.

Initially, military planners recognized threats to their own ability to protect the nation. Over time, the U.S. military would come to see climate change as both a threat in itself and a threat multiplier for national security.

Ice roads, ice cores and bases inside the ice sheet

The military’s snow and ice engineering in the 1950s made it possible for convoys of tracked vehicles to routinely cross Greenland’s ice sheet, while planes landed and took off from ice and snow runways.

In 1953, the Army even built a pair of secret surveillance sites inside the ice sheet, both equipped with Air Force radar units looking 24/7 for Soviet missiles and aircraft, but also with weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system.

The Army drilled the world’s first deep ice core from a base it built within the Greenland ice sheet, Camp Century. Its goal: to understand how climate had changed in the past so they would know how it might change in the future.

The military wasn’t shy about its climate change research successes. The Army’s chief ice scientist, Dr. Henri Bader, spoke on the Voice of America. He promoted ice coring as a way to investigate climates of the past, provide a new understanding of weather, and understand past climatic patterns to gauge and predict the one we are living in today – all strategically important.

In the 1970s, painstaking laboratory work on the Camp Century ice core extracted minuscule amounts of ancient air trapped in tiny bubbles in the ice. Analyses of that gas revealed that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution. After 1850, carbon dioxide levels crept up slowly at first and then rapidly accelerated. It was direct evidence that people’s actions, including burning coal and oil, were changing the composition of the atmosphere.

Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have spiked and global temperatures have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius). The past 10 years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began, with 2024 now holding the record. Climate change is now affecting the entire Earth – but most especially the Arctic, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet.

Seeing climate change as a threat multiplier

For decades, military leaders have been discussing climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier that could worsen instability and mass migration in already fragile regions of the world.

Climate change can fuel storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk in rising heat and melts sea ice, creating new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can also contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages trigger increasing competition for resources, internal and cross-border tensions, or mass migrations.

The military understands that these threats can’t be ignored. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a conference in September 2024: “Climate resilience is force resilience.”

Consider Naval Station Norfolk. It’s the largest military port facility in the world and sits just above sea level on Virginia’s Atlantic coast. Sea level there rose more than 1.5 feet in the last century, and it’s on track to rise that much again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming ocean water expands.

High tides already cause delays in repair work, and major storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy has built sea walls and worked to restore coastal dunes and marshlands to protect its Virginia properties, but the risks continue to increase.

Planning for the future, the Navy incorporates scientists’ projections of sea level rise and increasing hurricane strength to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the U.S. Navy will avoid the fate of another famous marine power: the Norse, forced to abandon their flooded Greenland settlements when sea level there rose about 600 years ago.

Climate change is costly to ignore

As the impacts of climate change grow in both frequency and magnitude, the costs of inaction are increasing. Most economists agree that it’s cheaper to act now than deal with the consequences. Yet, in the past 20 years, the political discourse around addressing the cause and effects of climate change has become increasingly politicized and partisan, stymieing effective action.

In my view, the military’s approach to problem-solving and threat reduction has provided a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to inevitable climate change impacts.

The U.S. military emits more planet warming carbon than Sweden and spent more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of energy used by the federal government.

In that context, its embrace of alternative energy, including solar generation, microgrids and wind power, has made economic and environmental sense. The U.S. military has been moving away from fossil fuels, not because of any political agenda, but because of the cost-savings, reliability and energy independence alternatives provide.

As sea ice melts and temperatures rise, the polar region has again become a strategic priority. Russia and China are expanding Arctic shipping routes and eyeing critical mineral deposits as they become accessible. The military knows climate change affects national security, which is why it needs to continue to address the threats a changing climate presents, despite the rhetoric out of Washington.

This article has been updated with links to Pete Hegseth’s comments.

Paul Bierman, Fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Vermont

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Juan Luis Manfredi, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

On the back of every dollar bill, the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum (“New order of the ages”) hints at the principle guiding the US’ new security strategy.

The attack on Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro herald the decoupling of Trump’s United States from the rules-based international order, and the end of liberal order as a whole. A new international order is now emerging, based on the use of force, revisionism and security on the American continent.

Here are five keys to understanding the outcomes of the military intervention, and the new order it ushers in.

1. Expanded presidential power

The attack cements the new doctrine of an imperious president, one who executes orders without waiting for congressional approval, legal validation or media opinion.

With checks and balances weakened, the second Trump administration is free to present the new order as a question of urgent security: with the US at war against drug trafficking (or migration) and threatened by “new powers” (a euphemism for China), it has no need to respect proper procedures or timelines.

Trump identifies himself with historic, founding American presidents like Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt. All three were charismatic leaders, and with the 250th anniversary of the US republic approaching such comparisons feed into Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric.

Erosion of the US political and legal system is undeniable. The president has approved an extensive package of regulations that promote emergency powers, a permanent state of crisis, and suppression of political opposition and the judicial system. The attack on Venezuela is yet another milestone in the reconfiguration of the presidency’s relations to the legislative and judicial branches of power, in line with the Hamiltonian tradition of a strong and unifying executive branch.

2. (Latin) America for the (US) Americans

On the international stage, the attack on Venezuela advances a diplomatic agenda that is rooted in the defence of national interests. The concept of “America for the Americans” has made a strong comeback: Panama, Mexico and Canada have all been made to bow to Trump’s will, while the administration continues to push for control of Greenland.

In Latin America, Brazil and Colombia’s left-wing governments lead regional opposition to the US, while Chile’s newly elected José Antonio Kast and Argentina’s Javier Milei are Trump’s ideological allies. The continent as a whole is witnessing a broad shift towards nationalist, right-wing parties that oppose migration.

If Venezuela’s post-Maduro transition aligns with these values, any hope for national unity and a peaceful transition to full democracy will disappear.

3. Control of resources

Once again, it’s all about oil, but for different reasons than in Iraq. In a world where globalisation has shifted to geoeconomics, the United States wants to project its power in international energy markets and regulation. Venezuela’s infrastructure, ports and minerals are key to making this happen.

The US therefore doesn’t just want Venezuelan oil to supply its domestic market – it also wants to impose international prices and dominate supply. Its new vision aims to align energy sovereignty and technological development with trade and security.

Pax Silica – the international US-led alliance signed at the end of 2025 to secure supply chains for critical technologies such as semiconductors and AI – ushers in an era of transactional diplomacy: computer chips in exchange for minerals. For the “new” Venezuela, its oil reserves will allow it to participate in this new power dynamic.

4. Geopolitical realignment

The American view of territory fuels a revisionist foreign policy based on sovereignty – similar to those of China, Israel, or Russia – which is rooted in the concept of “nomos”, as defined by mid-20th century German philosopher Carl Schmitt. This is a worldview where the division of nations into “friend or foe” prevails over a liberal worldview governed by cooperation, international law, democracy and the free market.

Under this logic, spheres of influence emerge, resources are distributed, and power blocs are balanced, as the above examples demonstrate: without opposition, China would dominate Southeast Asia, Russia would scale back its war in exchange for 20% of Ukraine and control over its material resources and energy, and Israel would redraw the map of the Middle East and strike trade agreements with neighbouring countries.

5. Europe, democracy and Hobbes

Ideals like democracy, the rule of law and free trade are fading fast, and without effective capacity, things don’t end well for the European Union. As we have seen with Gaza, the EU often has strong ideological disagreement with other major powers but doesn’t command enough respect to do anything. The US’ military intervention revives Hobbesian political realism, where freedom is ceded to an absolute sovereign in exchange for peace and security.

In Trump’s new order, it is presidential authority – not truth, laws or democratic values – that has the final say.

US domestic politics

2026 is an election year in the US, with 39 gubernatorial elections and a raft of state and local elections to be contested between March and November.

Through its actions in Venezuela, the Trump administration is effectively debating its model for succession. One faction, led by JD Vance, wants to avoid problems abroad and to renew the industrial economic model. The other, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is committed to rebuilding the international order with a strong and dominant US. The outcome of the Venezuelan operation may tip the balance, and could determine Trump’s successor in the 2028 presidential elections.

The attack on Venezuela is not just an intervention in the region: it also reflects the changing times in which we live. While international Trumpism was previously confined to disjointed slogans, it has now taken its first step into military strategy. Gone are the days of soft power, transatlantic relations and peace in Ibero-America. A new order is being born.

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Juan Luis Manfredi, Prince of Asturias Distinguished Professor @Georgetown, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gemma Ware, The Conversation

In the summer of 1959, a group of American soldiers began carving trenches in the Greenland ice sheet. Those trenches would become the snow-covered tunnels of Camp Century, a secret Arctic research base powered by a nuclear reactor.

It was located about 150 miles inland from Thule, now Pituffik, a large American military base set up in north-western Greenland after a military agreement with Denmark during world war two.

Camp Century operated for six years, during which time the scientists based there managed to drill a mile down to collect a unique set of ice cores. But by 1966, Camp Century had been abandoned, deemed too expensive and difficult to maintain.

Today, Donald Trump’s territorial ambitions for Greenland continue to cause concern and confusion in Europe, particularly for Denmark and Greenlanders themselves, who insist their island is not for sale.

One of the attractions of Greenland is the gleam of its rich mineral wealth, particularly rare earth minerals. Now that Greenland’s ice sheet is melting due to global warming, will this make the mineral riches easier to get at?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to Paul Bierman, a geologist and expert on Greenland’s ice at the University of Vermont in the US. He explains why the history of what happened to Camp Century – and the secrets of its ice cores, misplaced for decades, but now back under the microscope – help us to understand why it’s not that simple.

Listen to the interview with Paul Bierman on The Conversation Weekly podcast. You can also read article by him about the history of US involvement in Greenland and the difficulty of mining on the island.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

Newsclips in this episode from New York Times Podcasts, the BBC and NBC News.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Johan Linåker, Lund University

Imagine the internet suddenly stops working. Payment systems in your local food store go down. Healthcare systems in the regional hospital flatline. Your work software tools, and all the information they contain, disappear.

You reach out for information but struggle to communicate with family and friends, or to get the latest updates on what is happening, as social media platforms are all down. Just as someone can pull the plug on your computer, it’s possible to shut down the system it connects to.

This isn’t an outlandish scenario. Technical failures, cyber-attacks and natural disasters can all bring down key parts of the internet. And as the US government makes increasing demands of European leaders, it is possible to imagine Europe losing access to the digital infrastructure provided by US firms as part of the geopolitical bargaining process.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, has highlighted the “structural imperative” for Europe to “build a new form of independence” – including in its technological capacity and security. And, in fact, moves are already being made across the continent to start regaining some independence from US technology.

A small number of US-headquartered big tech companies now control a large proportion of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure, that is the global network of remote servers that store, manage and process all our apps and data. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are reported to hold about 70% of the European market, while European cloud providers have only 15%.

My research supports the idea that relying on a few global providers increases vulnerabilty for Europe’s private and public sectors – including the risk of cloud computing disruption, whether caused by technical issues, geopolitical disputes or malicious activity.

Two recent examples – both the result of apparent technical failures – were the hours‑long AWS incident in October 2025, which disrupted thousands of services such as banking apps across the world, and the major Cloudflare incident two months later, which took LinkedIn, Zoom and other communication platforms offline.

The impact of a major power disruption on cloud computing services was also demonstrated when Spain, Portugal and some of south-west France endured a massive power cut in April 2025.

What happens in a digital blackout?

There are signs that Europe is starting to take the need for greater digital independence more seriously. In the Swedish coastal city of Helsingborg, for example, a one-year project is testing how various public services would function in the scenario of a digital blackout.

Would elderly people still receive their medical prescriptions? Can social services continue to provide care and benefits to all the city’s residents?

This pioneering project seeks to quantify the full range of human, technical and legal challenges that a collapse of technical services would create, and to understand what level of risk is acceptable in each sector. The aim is to build a model of crisis preparedness that can be shared with other municipalities and regions later this year.

Elsewhere in Europe, other forerunners are taking action to strengthen their digital sovereignty by weaning themselves off reliance on global big tech companies – in part through collaboration and adoption of open source software. This technology is treated as a digital public good that can be moved between different clouds and operated under sovereign conditions.

In northern Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein has made perhaps the clearest break with digital dependency. The state government has replaced most of its Microsoft-powered computer systems with open-source alternatives, cancelling nearly 70% of its licenses. Its target is to use big tech services only in exceptional cases by the end of the decade.

Across France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, governments are investing both nationally and transnationally in the development of digital open-source platforms and tools for chat, video and document management – akin to digital Lego bricks that administrations can host on their own terms.

In Sweden, a similar system for chat, video and online collaboration, developed by the National Insurance Agency, runs in domestic data centres rather than foreign clouds. It is being offered as a service for Swedish public authorities looking for sovereign digital alternatives.

Your choices matter

For Europe – and any nation – to meaningfully address the risks posed by digital blackout and cloud collapse, digital infrastructure needs to be treated with the same seriousness as physical infrastructure such as ports, roads and power grids.

Control, maintenance and crisis preparedness of digital infrastructure should be seen as core public responsibilities, rather than something to be outsourced to global big tech firms, open for foreign influence.

To encourage greater focus on digital resilience among its member states, the EU has developed a cloud sovereignty framework to guide procurement of cloud services – with the intention of keeping European data under European control. The upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act is expected to bring more focus and resources to this area.

Governments and private companies should be encouraged to demand security, openness and interoperability when seeking bids for provision of their cloud services – not merely low prices. But in the same way, as individuals, we can all make a difference with the choices we make.

Just as it’s advisable to ensure your own access to food, water and medicine in a time of crisis, be mindful of what services you use personally and professionally. Consider where your emails, personal photos and conversations are stored. Who can access and use your data, and under what conditions? How easily can everything be backed up, retrieved and transferred to another service?

No country, let alone continent, will ever be completely digitally independent, and nor should they be. But by pulling together, Europe can ensure its digital systems remain accessible even in a crisis – just as is expected from its physical infrastructure.

Johan Linåker, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Computer Science, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.