US Military Bases Are Being DESTROYED. Iran‘s Greatest Victory | Dr. Arta Moeini

## Radical realism and world politics The conversation foregrounds a simple but disruptive proposition: global politics is not a single, unified system governed by generic laws of power, but a mosaic of rooted regions, cultures, and geographies. This radical realist sensibility pushes back against theories that abstract state behavior into a vacuum of material capabilities and universal incentives. Rather than treating the world as a homogenous arena in which all actors must pursue the same strategy of power maximization, the exchange insists that we return to “roots” — to the elemental realities of place, history, and strategic culture — if we want to understand why states act as they do. Radical realism, as framed in the discussion, is not a rejection of realism wholesale; it is a recalibration. It accepts the core realist insight that states seek security in an anarchic environment, but it rejects the leap from that insight to a blanket claim that every polity will behave like a would-be global hegemon. The critique targets the “globalizing” tendencies of much contemporary realist thought — a tendency to measure everything by GDP, tank counts, and naval tonnage, and then to infer a universal logic of competition. The remedy proposed is modest but profound: analyze politics at the right scale. Regions matter. Civilizations matter. Defensive geographies, historical continuity, and the lived experiences of peoples shape strategic calculation in ways that raw material metrics cannot capture. This perspective explains several puzzles that conventional models struggle with. Why do some states appear content with regional preeminence rather than global dominance? Why do others invest heavily in distributed, asymmetric defense rather than conventional force projection? The answer is not merely a function of relative power, but of the interplay between geography, history, and a strategic culture that conditions what is thinkable and what is not. Radical realism therefore restores context to causal argument: the world is not a chessboard with identical pieces, but a patchwork of boards with different rules. ## China, culture, and global hegemony One of the clearest applications of this approach is the analysis of China. The conversation pushes back against the familiar narrative that rising material capability will inevitably translate into imperial ambition. Instead, it underscores how Chinese history, identity, and strategic culture predispose Beijing toward a different logic. The point is not merely that China is “different” in the abstract, but that important episodes from its past — such as its maritime withdrawal in the early modern era — reflect an enduring valuation of cultural integrity and internal coherence over outward imperial mixing. This cultural-rooted reading suggests that China’s aims will not mirror those of 19th- and 20th-century maritime empires. Where a global hegemon seeks to remake distant regions according to its institutions and norms, China’s priorities may remain closer to the civilizational and continental spheres that are proximate to its core. That does not make China benign; it makes Chinese behavior contingent on a different set of incentives and historical memories. Beijing’s choices will be shaped by how it perceives threats to domestic cohesion, access to critical peripheries, and the stability of contiguous land corridors, not by an abstract drive to repeat American-style global projection. Moreover, this line of thinking problematizes the assumption that rising capability must lead to identical strategies. Rather than assuming a uniform teleology — capability equals expansion — the conversation invites us to examine how different kinds of power are understood. Power understood as “Macht,” the German conception discussed in the exchange, is the ability to get others to do what you want without coercion. Cultures that prize internal order, civilizational continuity, and bounded influence may cultivate forms of power that emphasize influence, economic networks, and regional architectures rather than forward-basing and expeditionary warfare. ## Middle powers and multinodality If the global arena is less singular than many theories assume, the map of influence changes. The participants recast the familiar vocabulary of multipolarity into “multi-nodality” — a conceptual shift that highlights networks of regional nodes rather than a small number of global poles. This is not merely semantic hair-splitting. It reframes how we see the distribution of agency: great powers remain consequential, but their reach is constrained by the resilience of regional nodes — middle powers with strong defensive geographies, deep cultural roots, and technologies that lower the cost of resisting external pressure. Middle powers, in this account, are the linchpins of contemporary world order. They are not minor bystanders but regional architects: Russia, Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, and others anchor distinct political, cultural, and strategic ecologies. Their significance derives not from parity with the United States or China in global metrics, but from their ability to shape outcomes in their immediate neighborhoods consistently. Advances in asymmetric and distributed warfare technologies redistribute the instrumentality of defense, enabling middle powers to deter or complicate the projection of superior conventional forces. Multi-nodality also complicates binary frames of bipolar competition. The post-unipolar order is not merely a return to Cold War-like duality; it is a more layered, historically familiar arrangement in which realms, mandala logics, and spheres of influence reassert themselves. The consequence is that global policymaking must better account for regional logics, local trade-offs, and the political economies that sustain middle powers. For external great powers, the lesson is clear: influence at a distance has diminishing returns when confronted with the embeddedness of regional actors. ## U.S. regional disruptors and alliances The conversation brings this theoretical reorientation to bear on contemporary U.S. strategy. Forward-deployed bases, expeditionary doctrines, and alliance networks have been central instruments of American influence. Yet the discussion challenges the assumption that such instruments always create security for host states. Military bases, when perceived as external impositions or when designed for global power projection rather than regional stability, can become sources of friction and insecurity. The presence of external military hubs can distort local politics, invite asymmetric response, and, crucially, misread the defensive advantages conferred by geography and culture. This critique is not an argument for American retrenchment alone; it is a plea for strategic humility. External actors must calibrate policies to regional realities and avoid forcing local actors into binary alignments that erase indigenous strategic choices. The conversation highlights how elite networks, ideological scripts, and institutional path dependencies in the U.S. foreign policy establishment can perpetuate interventionist habits that are costly and counterproductive. When policymakers assume that bases and alliances are unalloyed goods, they discount the agency of regional powers and underestimate the frictions produced by external military footprints. Alliances can remain valuable, but their design matters. The conversation suggests shifting from arrangements premised on global policing toward partnerships that respect regional nodal dynamics, support local resilience, and prioritize conflict avoidance over shaping outcomes at any cost. Smart alliances in a multi-nodal world are those that help strengthen the defensive geometries and political economies of middle powers rather than attempting to remake them. ## Europe, NATO, and American influence The implications for Europe and NATO are especially acute. E

US Military Bases Make Countries LESS Safe | Dr. Arta Moeini Dr. Arta Moeini, Managing Director of U.S. Operations and Research Director at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, discusses radical realism, regional power, and the limits of global hegemony. The conversation covers China, Iran, neutrality, middle powers, Ukraine, Israel, U.S. strategy, Europe’ s dependence on America, and why a post-unipolar world may be shaped more by regions, cultures, and civilizations than by one global system. Links: Institute for Peace and Diplomacy: https://peacediplomacy.org Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic) Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00: 00:00 Introduction to Arta Moeini and IPD 00:01:35 Radical realism and world politics 00:03:59 Why radical realism differs from neorealism 00:08:34 China, culture, and global hegemony 00:14:52 Power beyond tanks and GDP 00:18:10 Middle powers and multinodality 00:22:34 Neutrality at the edge of empires 00:30:34 U.S. regional disruptors and alliances 00:36:24 Elite networks and bad state choices 00:40:06 Europe, NATO, and American influence 00:45:41 The coming post-unipolar world #Pascal Welcome to the show. #Arta Moeini Hello. Good to be back, this time in person with drinks in our hands. #Pascal This time in person, so cheers to that. Arta, you are working at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, a North American think tank. Can you tell us just very briefly what it’s about and what you do there? #Arta Moeini So the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy is a realist think tank based in Washington and Toronto. We are a North American outlet trying to see the world through the perspective of the continent and through the perspective of, you know, North America. And that focuses on the regions and mostly on what the role of regions and geography is in world politics. We are also focused on sort of challenging the interventionism of U.S. foreign policy, the role of ideology in U.S. foreign policy. So -- 1 of 16 -- we're very focused on U.S. grand strategy and U.S. politics and what sort of keeps America involved in various parts of the world. And then we are also trying to change the conversation about what the international system is like, how it works, and, you know, connect various issues on that note. So we are an academic institute, a research institute that does policy work—that's how we put it. And our approach, as I mentioned, is very realist-focused. So, yeah. #Pascal So tell me, on a grand scale, how do you think international relations works? #Arta Moeini Because we all try to understand why world politics is the way it is and how states function. #Pascal What is your approach to making sense out of the chaos we are seeing? #Arta Moeini So I think a lot of the problem that we have had is just path dependency. People have been learning the world a certain way. They've worked a certain job. They're part of a certain network. And they do the same thing over and over again, even if it doesn't work. And so I think instead of focusing on sort of the ideological reasons of why, you know, we have to know this ideology behind a lot of the action that has driven U.S. foreign policy and driven, you know, our actions towards the world, I think instead we've got to focus on what has always been there—the role of actual, sort of concrete things: geography, culture, history. International relations as a discipline was created in the 20th century, effectively. So it has a lot of baggage from the 20th century and the biases of the 20th century—positivism, utilitarianism later. I mean, there's a lot of that. And I think more than that, we've got to think about just the fundamentals. There is a world of multiple systems, multiple countries, multiple states, but also multiple civilizations that anchor the world. These are tied to geographies and cultures. They have always interacted. Sometimes they have fought great wars. Sometimes they've made great peace. The question is, how do they interact and how can they share this world? How can they have a modus vivendi? And a lot of our theories today, I think, fail to understand those rudimentary elements of how these multiple networks of systems and countries and nations and peoples interact, and instead create or project, rather, our version of things onto the world. #Pascal -- 2 of 16 -- You call yourself a radical realist, right? Yeah. How is radical realism different from, let's say, the Mearsheimerian type of offensive realism? #Arta Moeini Well, so first of all, radical realism—our focus on the word “radical”—that comes from the Latin root meaning roots, the root causes. So, realism that looks at the root causes of things and the way that things function is at the rudimentary, elementary level, which is, uh, we have to go back to what's important, which is the regions, the peoples, the cultures, and how they interact. You can't do realism based on a vacuum or in a vacuum, where it's just some metrics and there are only a couple of players engaging in a vacuum. And then we call it the great power competition, and we just say, okay, well, now this is how the international system is devised. That approach has an inherent globalism, an inherent universalism that actually sort of pretends that because the world is anarchic and the situation is anarchic, all countries need to maximize power. And therefore, that means they have to control the entire world or at least prevent other countries from being powerful even in their own regions, right? Yeah. So from my perspective—and I respect the work of John Mearsheimer a lot—it has a lot of explanatory power if you focus and zoom in on specific regions. But I think it loses its power if you look at it at a global level. Because I do not believe—and this is the provocative statement here—that there is a global system. There is not a global system. We don't live in a global system. We don't even live in the world. We live in places in the world and mostly are not as connected to one another as we think. So we live in various continents, various locations, and inhabit various civilizations and cultural forms that inform our worldview. So our perception of reality is altered depending on where we are and how we see our first principles and have that worldview, what kind of norms and values we have. Those things matter. And in time, because we're different people, we also develop different types of strategic culture, right? And the problem with new realism as such— this is not just about offensive realism—but I think realism as such is highly, especially new realism, is highly utilitarian and looks at just the material conditions. How many tanks do you have? What's your GDP look like? Those are the measures of power. And then, if you are powerful enough, if you're deemed powerful enough within the confines of the theory, then you're bound to go to war because you can't share this world, because you're always insecure. Or bound to do security competition. Security competition, exactly. And the security competition, to be fair, is supposed to prevent war from happening in a way because it becomes deterrence on both sides. But the fundamental principle is that the world is something to be conquered by one or the other. It's very Hobbesian in the sense that it's just... there is no ultimate hegemon. -- 3 of 16 -- There is no ultimate authority. We are in an anarchic situation. And the result of that anarchic situation is kind of a chaos. And so, all men for themselves kind of world. And I think that view is fundamentally mistaken for a few reasons. One is that it doesn't allow you to understand that China, for example, one of the major security competitors of our century today, is not going to act anywhere remotely like what America did in the 20th century. China is a fundamentally different country with a fundamentally different strategic culture and a fundamentally different orientation about the world. It does not want to be a global hegemon. It doesn't see itself as a global hegemon. #Pascal Hard power realists, or offensive realists, would argue, of course, like, no, no, no, that's just what they pretend because they're too weak. But once they're strong enough, they'll do exactly the same. That's going to be the clip. #Arta Moeini Exactly. And history shows us that China had the opportunity to go around the world and be the first colonial empire, the maritime colonial empire. What did it do? It burned all its ships down because it wanted to stay. Because the Chinese culture in this case—I'm not an expert on Chinese culture, I'm talking more at the level of cultures as such—but the Chinese culture in this case understood something that I think only now maybe some conservatives in America and Europe are understanding, which is when you become a global empire, you inevitably interact with others and you dilute yourself, and you have to mix and match and do all sorts of things. So you basically end up becoming multicultural. The Chinese didn't want to become, in that sense, a multicultural society. They thought that they were better than everyone in that sense. And so why would you go and lose the core of who you are? It was an identity question. So I think the fundamental orientation of a maritime power like America, but also of the likes of Great Britain, is very different from landlocked powers, as we know through the differences between the Eurasian power, heartland power, and maritime powers. But also, culturally, the civilizational forms, the kinds of philosophies that you've had, make a very big difference as to how you conceive of the world. So that's just one thing. That's just one small reason why I don't think it's at all likely that China is going to follow the path of America. But more so than that, the other reason is that if you see the world in those utilitarian terms, you are pretending again that you have the ability. Or if you have the ability, you are always going to try to dominate the globe. Whereas I think that's what gives you security. In fact, doing so, first of all, makes you highly insecure because you're going to hollow out your core. You're going to do all sorts of stupid things and make all sorts of stupid decisions. And you're going to go fight stupid wars. And -- 4 of 16 -- you're going to have a weak care at home. And once you're weak at home, it's harder for you to actually even maintain your status as a regional power, let alone a globally projecting power. But also, it's hard for me to see how divorced we are from history. Because if we see how regions actually work, we have all this information about empires and how they have worked in the past. Balancing, which is this important theory of realism, as you know, is something that happens naturally, right? It's not even irrational, of course. It happens naturally because old empires, which map onto old civilizations, balance each other out because the realm of the civilizational realm stops. And then you have various civilizations that are sharing these spaces, and they come into contact. And you have, for example, the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire always in lockstep, in a way balancing each other. So as long as you have both of them at a relative degree of strength, the system is stable. That's just the political side. The geographic side. We just saw in the Iran war how difficult it is to go and topple the Iranian government. Why? They did prepare for this conflict for 47 years, but ultimately they leveraged their geography — the coasts and the mountains. Iran is a fortress. But that's not because of the Islamic Republic. That's why Iran is a civilizational state over thousands of years, because it has been able to, whichever empire, whatever kind of ethnic makeup or ideolog