US Retreats. Multipolar War Escalates. | Prof. Saul Takahashi

The recent sequence of strikes, interceptions, and diplomatic ruptures has exposed a disorienting truth: longstanding security umbrellas are now as likely to draw fire as to deter it. The conversation with Prof. Saul Takahashi illuminates how alliances once sold as shields increasingly look like liabilities, how legal categories that once organized states’ choices are fraying, and how ordinary life—whether on a university campus in Abu Dhabi or a neighborhood in Okinawa—suddenly sits under a different kind of risk calculus. What emerges is not merely a chain of isolated errors but a broader structural shift toward a multipolar, contested order in which neutrality, basing, and alliance are being rethought under pressure from war on multiple fronts. ## Saul Takahashi and UAE experience The immediacy of the Gulf moment is easiest to grasp through lived experience. Prof. Takahashi recounts being in the United Arab Emirates when missile alerts became daily interruptions—piercing phone alarms followed by the sound of interceptors in the sky. For him the episode had a bittersweet ordinariness: commercial life continued, upscale hotels sheltered stranded academics, and basic needs were met by a state with deep logistical capacity. Yet the alerts were also a constant reminder that modern warfare reaches into spaces previously considered insulated. That personal account matters because it reframes abstractions about “security” into sensory details—missiles overhead, campus closures, a university moving classes online, sudden evacuation logistics. It also highlights an unvarnished practical effect of the conflict: academic and cultural exchange suffer. Visiting positions evaporate as institutions scale back out of precaution or financial stress. What may appear as “first-world problems” in comparison to the mortal catastrophe next door are nevertheless indicative of a broader disruption in the international fabric—where the ripple effects of a distant war topple careers, travel plans, and institutional commitments. ## Gaza genocide and Gulf fallout The conversation draws a stark, unavoidable contrast between the scale of suffering in Gaza and the relative safety of Gulf metropolises. Two years into what many observers now call a genocide, the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in Gaza reshapes moral and political priorities across the region. At the same time, the US-Israeli strikes and consequential Iranian counterstrikes have produced a cascade of blowback that regional states must absorb. Gulf governments have found themselves acting as shock absorbers—hosting logistics and bases for U.S. power while refusing to participate directly in offensive operations. Public sentiment in the Gulf, as Takahashi notes, is often one of blame toward both sides: resentment at U.S. and Israeli actions combined with suspicion of Iran’s provocations. Importantly, Gulf regimes have publicly balked at being drawn into a war not of their making. The political fallout is not merely rhetorical: it cuts to the heart of sovereignty and legitimacy for states that have sought to keep commerce, connectivity, and diplomatic maneuvering intact in a turbulent neighborhood. ## Neutrality law and legal gray zones One of the most consequential insights in the exchange concerns legal taxonomy. International law historically divides wartime conduct between the law of armed conflict for belligerents and the law of neutrality for non-belligerents. But these categories assume modes of warfare and basing that predate contemporary force projection. As Takahashi and interlocutors point out, the post–Hague concept of neutrality presumes non-hosting or internment of foreign troops. Modern arrangements—where states host foreign bases for “defensive” purposes while permitting logistics, radars, and freedom of movement—sit uneasily in that framework. The problem is both doctrinal and political. On paper, hosting bases without directly launching attacks can keep a state outside the legal definition of co-belligerence; in practice, the presence of infrastructure frees up foreign military resources and can functionally enable distant operations. This gap creates a legal gray zone vulnerable to claims of indirect complicity and political exploitation: an attacked state may argue it was targeted because of its hosting arrangements even if it never fired a shot. The conversation suggests that the existing legal architecture—crafted in a different technological and geopolitical era—may require recalibration to address indirect facilitation, dual-use systems like radar, and the realities of long-range strike capabilities. ## US bases as magnets in Gulf and Japan 00:26: 08 Takaichi Trump and Japan China ties Bases do not sit in strategic vacuums. They attract countermeasures, intelligence efforts, and the targeting calculus of adversaries. The conversation stresses the magnetic quality of U.S. installations: radar arrays, missile-defense systems, and logistics hubs become high-value targets that, if struck, produce cascading dangers for host societies. That logic has been on display in Gulf airports, radar sites, and coastal installations. Japan, as Takahashi insists, offers a revealing parallel and a cautionary tale. Decades of treaty-based security have made U.S. bases in Japan a core assumption of national defense. But that arrangement is no longer a mere guarantee; it now entwines Japan in distant conflicts, including operations aimed at Iran. From deployments launched from Yokosuka to Marine units based in Okinawa sent to forward theaters, Japanese soil and facilities are increasingly implicated. That has practical and political consequences: long-standing narratives of protection can shift into narratives of exposure, and public debate in Japan—once marginal on this point—is slowly inching toward questioning the costs of hosting foreign forces. The risk is compounded by technological blur: systems labeled “defensive” (radars, interception platforms) have offensive implications in a networked battlespace. ## Proxy war risk and old order collapse The current trajectory of strikes and countermoves risks a drift into proxy escalation. Once small powers and regional actors are drawn into tit-for-tat operations, local disputes can amplify into broader confrontations that the old post-1945 order—anchored around U.S. predominance and a web of alliances—no longer reliably contains. The conversation frames this as a collapse not of institutions alone but of expectations: erstwhile assumptions about deterrence, the wisdom of automatic alignment, and the predictability of American reassurance are fraying. Proxy dynamics are dangerous because they lower the threshold for escalation. Non-state actors, regional navies, surface-to-air systems, and cyber tools can create misperceptions or accidents that spin out of control. Meanwhile, the governing logic of the old order—anchored in bilateral guarantees and forward-deployed forces—has proven brittle in the face of multipolar competition and strategic retrenchment. As Takahashi notes, the outcome is not instant disintegration but a slow unmaking: alliances remain, but their meaning, reliability, and costs are in flux. ## Regional security and multipolar shift What replaces the old arrangements? The conversation highlights the early stages of a multipolar rearrangement. Gulf states are hedging—pursuing separate security pacts, diversifying defense partners, and quietly rethinking the balance between hosting foreign forces and asserting independent policies. Japan, too, faces choices about how to maintain energy ties, deter threats, and manage relations with China while tied to an alliance that increasingly engages in distant theaters. Multipolarity brings both risks and opportunities. On one hand, diffusion of power can fragment deterrence and create overlapping spheres of influence that heighten friction. On the other hand, it can empower regional dipl

US Retreats. Multipolar War Escalates. | Prof. Saul Takahashi US alliances now look less like protection and more like danger. Pascal Lottaz speaks with international human rights lawyer Saul Takahashi about living through the UAE missile alerts, the Gaza genocide, US bases turning allies into targets, Japan’s risks, failed deterrence, and the breakdown of the old order. Links: Saul Takahashi Researchmap: https://researchmap.jp /saul_takahashi 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-shop.fourthwall.com Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Saul Takahashi and UAE experience 00:07:36 Gaza genocide and Gulf fallout 00:12:13 Neutrality law and legal gray zones 00:17:40 US bases as magnets in Gulf and Japan 00:26: 08 Takaichi Trump and Japan China ties 00:37:44 Proxy war risk and old order collapse 00:44:18 Regional security and multipolar shift 00:49:14 Colonialism clarity and public pressure #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today I'm joined again by my colleague, the international lawyer and human rights lawyer Saul Takahashi, a U.S.-Japanese dual national who's been practicing international and human rights law for a very, very long time. Saul, welcome. #Saul Takahashi Yes, hi. Thanks, Pascal. It's great to see you again, and thanks very much for having me. #Pascal It's great that we can do this again, because when we first met, you were actually in Japan, but then you changed track and moved to the UAE. You were in the United Arab Emirates until just a couple of days ago, and today we’re speaking on April 3rd. You were actually caught in the UAE when everything happened. Can you maybe give us a very short overview of your background, how you came to work in the UAE, what you did there, and we’ll take it from there? #Saul Takahashi Right. Okay, well, thank you. So, like you mentioned, I'm an international human rights lawyer. That's my specialty—international human rights law and international humanitarian law. I started my career working for Amnesty International in Tokyo, and then I went on to work for Amnesty International’s international secretariat—the international headquarters, if you like—in London. From -- 1 of 18 -- there, it was a natural career progression to the UN, where I held several posts. My last position was as deputy head of office of the UN Human Rights Agency in occupied Palestine. That was from 2009 to mid-2014. I lived in Jerusalem, and my main office was in Ramallah. But of course, we had offices all over the West Bank and also in Gaza, so I traveled quite extensively throughout Palestine. Our main job was to document and report on human rights violations and provide those reports to bodies like the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, and so on. We also did some capacity building for Palestinian civil society and the PA. I left the UN in 2014 and came back to Japan. #Saul Takahashi I went back to NGO work for a little bit, but then from 2019 I was teaching full-time at a very small women’s university in central Osaka. That continued until last August, when I moved to the UAE, like you mentioned, and took up a position as a visiting professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. It was a one-year position, and there was talk of an extension—it looked like it would be extended. Unfortunately, my job has become a victim of the war, I’m afraid. I was just told the other day that, with everything happening, they’re going to have to cut back quite drastically on the visiting positions. So, unfortunately, I’m sort of out of a job. That’s kind of bad news for me, but of course, it’ s really nothing—it’s a first-world problem. And I can’t compare it with what’s going on in Gaza, of course, and Lebanon and the like. But like you mentioned—yes, I was caught, I was caught, if you like, in the UAE when all of this started. I think, like most people, I sort of expected it to end in a few days. And boy, was I wrong. I really do want to stress that I didn’t feel unsafe in the UAE in any way. I mean, people react to these kinds of situations differently. I do feel some people were panicking, but, you know, people react to these situations in different ways. Of course, I was in Palestine; I’ve had these kinds of experiences— missiles flying over my head and having to evacuate. I mean, when you’re in the UN in these kinds of places, this is just part and parcel of the whole thing. So I wasn’t—you know—I certainly didn’t feel unsafe. Every now and then, maybe a couple of times a day, we’d get these deafening alerts on our phones. And then, after a few minutes, there’d be sounds of explosions in the air—those were the missiles being intercepted. So, you know, it was fine. I don’t mean to belittle the tragedies, of course, because if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, the debris from those intercepted missiles comes down, obviously. It falls to the ground, and you can get hit. I think a few—I can’t remember the exact number—but a small number of people have actually been killed because of that. So, you know, that kind of thing can happen if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. But all in all, people were pretty much going about their normal lives. I mean, the shops were all open when I was there. There was plenty of food. You know, we’re talking about a very wealthy country, obviously, and one that has a lot of logistical capacity—making sure there’s a supply of everything -- 2 of 18 -- you need, from water to food to everything. So it was really quite normal. The malls were open, everything was fine. It's just that, you know, NYUAD made the decision relatively early on that classes were going to go online for the rest of the term. And then, a few days later, the campus was closed out of an abundance of caution. I was living on campus, so that meant we had to evacuate. They put us in a hotel. And again—first-world problems—it was a disaster: a five-star hotel in the Gulf. I mean, there was a pool and a gym, and, you know, it was very nice. Again, we weren’t lacking for anything, but it wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to stay for months, doing your classes and that kind of thing. So we made the decision to leave. And that was actually a little bit—again, I don't mean to make a big deal out of it—but there was some stress around that. Within the UAE it was fine, but the airport was very unpredictable. So, you know, leaving was a bit stressful. We weren’t sure what was going to happen. There was a Japanese evacuation flight, but we couldn’t get on it at first. And it was, you know, this kind of every few hours, “What’s going to happen? What’s going to happen?” kind of thing. But we were pretty fortunate in that we already had tickets to Europe that we’d booked way back in December because it was the midterm break. So we had kept those tickets, and by the time our travel dates came around, the airport was more or less functioning okay. There were some scares until the very last minute, but we did manage to get on. And, you know, again, I don't mean to over-dramatize any of this. I don't mean to act like we were refugees with just the shirts on our backs, fleeing from Beirut. I mean, I spent a week in Paris living it up, and then I had the resources to come back to Japan. So, you know, I'm very lucky, and everything was fine. #Pascal Hey, very brief intermission because I was recently banned from YouTube. And although I'm back, this could happen again anytime. So please consider subscribing not only here but also to my mailing list on Substack. That’s pascallottaz.substack.com. The link’s going to be in the description below. And now, back to the video. So, luckily, things worked out. And luckily, I mean also for the people still living in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and so on—it’s not a humanitarian catastrophe. And as you said, the level of destruction and even the level of threat is infinitely smaller than what people in the genocide in Gaza are going through, right? The first time we spoke online was actually when the genocide was in its third or fourth month. We’re now two years in, and we know that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza. I mean, nobody who still has any kind of sense left would dispute that it’s a genocide at this point. And if you then compare this to the level of warfare we’re seeing right now—on the one hand, you have the US-Israeli attack on Iran; on the other hand, you have Iran striking back at targets in these allied nations, right? Yeah. They themselves host these US bases, they help the United States -- 3 of 18 -- logistically, but they don’t send their own army or missiles into Iran. So we have this weird situation where the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain are basically acting as shock absorbers for the war the United States started. I mean, what was the sense on the ground from the people you talked to? Are they blaming Iran for what’s happening, or are they blaming the United States for pushing the region over the brink? #Saul Takahashi Well, I think the general sense in the region—and I’m talking about the Gulf—is basically blaming both sides. I mean, that’s certainly my impression of it. You know, getting into the international law aspect of this, the Gulf nations have stated repeatedly that they’ve prohibited the U.S. from launching attacks from bases in their countries. So their argument from the beginning has been that, yes, there are U.S. bases, but they serve different functions—they’re defensive bases or whatever. So, you know, they’re saying, “We, the Gulf nations, are not complicit in these attacks.” And for sure, they’re unhappy with the attacks on the Gulf. I mean, excuse me—the attacks on Iran. And, you know, they tried to forge a diplomatic way forward, and they tried to discourage the U.S., and perhaps indirectly in many cases Israel, from launching these attacks. But the U.S. and Israel just went ahead without, it seems, even telling them. So they’re very unhappy about that, for sure. But getting back to the international legal aspect, it’s true that the international definition of aggression doesn’t include just hosting bases. So as long as the U.S. isn’t launching attacks from those bases, the Gulf nations certainly do have a point—that, legally speaking, they’re not complicit in the attacks on Iran. Now, I, as an international lawyer, you know, just sort of taking one step back from the situation in the Gulf—but as a lawyer, I have to say I’m a little bit uncomfortable with this. Because, you know, it is true when you look at the General Assembly resolution on the international definition of aggression, and you see that it was basically copied and pasted into the work of the ICC and all that. So when you look at those, it’s true: hosting bases, in and of itself, is not an act of aggression. But, you know, you are freeing up resources from the country that hosts the bases. You know, you’re basically hosting American bases. You’re freeing up American military resources that they might otherwise have spent. So I would certainly argue there’s a certain element of indirect complicity. And, you know, I’m a little bit unhappy with this definition as we have it now. I mean, the Gulf nations—legally, they’re correct. This is the definition we have. But I think this is something the Gulf nations are certainly rethinking in terms of their hosting of the bases. And I think we have to rethink this whole thing. #Pascal Yeah, this is a very, very theoretical point I wanted to make, but I still want to make it, because this situation opens up a new kind of challenge in international law. What happens when war breaks out? -- 4 of 18 -- Historically, the way international law—especially before ’45—was crafted is that when war is a fact, the warring parties, the belli