By Vice Admiral (Retd) Vijay Shankar

Regression to Social Darwinism

The pomaded Secretary of war, on 02 March 2026, took to the dais and declared “…this is not a war for regime change in Iran, but a necessary, long-overdue retribution for decades of Iranian hostility”; Peter Hegseth the US Secretary for War directly referred to the 1979 hostage crisis stating, in grandiloquent words, that their (Iran’s) 47 year war on the American people has become “our retribution”.

The Secretary’s words harked back to eighteenth century bloody competition, reminding the world of an age when war was an act of ‘Social Darwinism’ and a ‘civilizing imperative’ that justified  the right to loot of combat and economic nationalism (later termed mercantilism).  The booty included territorial conquests, markets, monopolies and slaves. Such wars were sanctified by exclusive agreements amongst the ‘elite’ of the period by reprehensible instruments such as the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) by which Britain seized territory in North America and awarded itself the ‘privilege-of-access’ by British slave traders to traffic and sell their human cargoes to Spanish America. But, to pursue ‘privilege-of-access’ under some self-endowed rules-based-order; borders upon geo-political perversion in the extreme, and that too in the in the 21^st century. Whatever became of ‘Just’ war theorists, authorization of the UN Security Council or even endorsement by the recently cobbled “Board of Peace”? (Governance model is explicitly authoritarian). 

Rapine Influence of Elites on Politics; Emergence of the Deep State

 The most corrupt, Robert Clive is no stranger to Indian colonial history nor was his fraudulent ways. In the 18^th Century, the magnitude and extent of British plunder in India can be measured by the impact it had on establishing the East India Company and sustaining Empire. The Company conceived, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British society remained invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Thomas Paine the 18^th Century American revolutionary philosopher and statesman summed up how the riches Robert Clive wrested through “murder and rapine” in India had enveloped him in the “sunshine of sovereign favour” at home, allowing him to enter into further “schemes of war and intrigue” to amass an “unbounded fortune.”

Across four centuries, from India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all a rapacious business enterprise that used armed might to compel trade on its terms. The company was well-suited to overseas expansion not because there was inevitability about its motives, but because like empire itself, it neither carried ethical baggage nor was it answerable to any society; centralised yet diffused, it was a “legal fiction with very real brutal power”, a penchant for intrigues and an immoral self-ordained license to wage war for profit. It was not just as if the Company was the Sovereign’s ‘deep state’ and was simply in search of mercantile monopoly but it, in reality, spearheaded exploitation and conquest of territories. Its legacy was to leave a model for the oligarch and corporate entities of the day, to wield political influence, spin narratives of the greater ‘civilizing mission’ and usurp the very trappings of state power. It is as relevant today as it was four centuries ago (An Era of Darkness, Tharoor, Aleph Book Company and Empire Incorporated, Stern, Harvard University Press).

The Charade of History 

The task of recording geo-politics of the day has become an effort in sieving and stitching together reams of editorial quasi-fiction or, at worst, the product of theoretical academic study shorn of the processes of decisions made and the subtleties of human behaviour. The purveyors of the latter, very often, faux chronicles convince themselves that in memoirs, reports and interviews there lay the underpinning facts needed for the writing of political history. Certainly the, study of memoirs and of current events has its value for discovering what was believed and the ideas which policy makers entertained about circumstances, geography and nations for understanding  settings and eventualities; but they rarely go into the decision making mechanisms and discernments that precipitate action. Historical analysis, as Polybius suggested in 150 BC, is based on a one sided description or narrative posing as credible history. To persuade oneself that the resources of documentary research alone can equip one to write an adequate account of recent events is naive. It is as though “a man who has seen the works of ancient painters fancies himself to be a capable painter and a master of that art merely by virtue of having looked at the works of the past.” (Polybius 12.25e). Tolstoy, in his novel War and Peace even suggested that “events may certainly be caused by the decisions of individuals, but they’re caused by so many individuals that you cannot single anybody out as being particularly important; furthermore, those individuals are not in any meaningful sense planning – they just react, or respond to their emotions. As far as history goes, there’s no free will”.  

  A historian’s interests or objectives normally influence the topics or problems he handles or investigates. Some key limitations of history have invariably created a situation in which historians tend to emphasise some aspects of society or of world history to the neglect of others altogether. Closer home is the recording of Indian colonial history through creation of myths such as its civilizing influence, the deceit of free trade and development while all the time draining it of its economic wealth, destroying of its indigenous industry and suggesting that the superimposed laws, infrastructure and education systems were instruments of progress which in reality were tools to brutally subjugate, exploit and generate generations of servile petty Babus.  

In more recent times, wars such as the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, the 20 year Vietnam War 1955-75, the Iraq war of 2003-11 and the on-going US-Iran war of 2026 have comprehensively underscored the inabilities of formidable power to translate military action to positive and sustainable political outcomes, irrespective of ‘first hand’ accounts and proximal history suggesting a “mission accomplished”.  This really is the problem of recorded history; how then to lift the system from being a ‘Charade’ or the work of the Victor influenced often by the hubris of the elites that benefited from the outcome? The key perhaps lies in a balanced review of political events that precede and supplant the event.   

Who are the Elites?

Aristocracies were common in most ancient civilisations. They were characterised by the political power that they wielded and the imperious weight of their social status which, typically, was passed down through family lines. Feudal systems such as existed in India from the 3^rd century CE were based on the idea that controlling land meant holding power. Unlike giving out simple cash payments, rulers started rewarding allegiance and subservience with large tranches of land. This practice, which intensified after the Gupta period, led to the rise of many powerful, local lords, known as “Samantas”. They acted like kings in their dominions. In later years it was the Mansabdari system followed by the Zamindars modelled on the hierarchical societal-structures existent in Central Asia and feudal Europe. These privileged groups formed the “Ruling Elites”, their power was in the land that they were endowed with which they governed sometimes with sagacity while for most, misgoverned more by whim than wisdom.  Succession was dynastic irrespective of the competence or otherwise of the progeny. Membership in the ruling class was an ‘entitlement’ determined by birth and exclusivity.

The power of the Elites began to decline following societal disruption caused by industrialization, education and emergence of republics that introduced land reforms.  Over time, the nimble ones were able to liquidate their land holdings and invest it in resources, skill-development, financial infrastructure and technology adaption to ensure that the ability to influence political power was never lost. Oligarchy is the corrupted form, where Elite rule is driven by avarice and self-interests.  

Oligarchy represents a form of governance focused on preserving the political and economic influence of the Elites by securing the approval of the rest of the population. It suffers from a fundamental delusion; that most of society is ill-qualified to deliberate, legislate or even participate in the democratic process. There is the conviction that extreme wealth is equated to intellectual fitness across all domains, including governance. What truly sets an oligarch apart is the political power that wealth can command. Modern oligarchy operates through persuasion by “enticing rather than commanding citizens and maintaining what seems like egalitarian political authority. Their tools are control of the means of state surveillance and through the media exerting sway over the citizenry.  The strategic irony is the manner in which the oligarch is not only yielded political power but is also given the license to abuse it. The way in which raw power is used to coerce favourable political outcomes, trample over international laws and conventions and brazenly manipulate narratives that serve to win the mind of people almost as if debasement of power has seemingly become the norm.

War of Capricious Aims

On 28 February 2026 the United States of America along with Israel unleashed a massive military strike on Iran. Both the President of America and Israel called it a “pre-emptive strike”; what it was that was being pre-empted and for what reasons has not so far been declared other than that the USA was pre-empting a strike by Israel on Iran  that would provoke an attack on US military installations in the Persian Gulf region (?) But to the world at large there neither is any compelling cause for the rapidly escalating carnage nor is there any apparent motivation for the scale of disruption and devastation being meted out to the entire region. Particularly so considering the size and scale of the joint military exertion that the two are bringing to bear on Iran. Within a matter of a week the inconceivable conflagration spread to the entire West Asian region shutting down the flow of over 20% of the world’s energy demands. The Islamic Republican Guard Corps responded with persistent and massive missile and drone strikes on the hitherto neutral Gulf States; this despite American security guarantees to the Gulf Cooperation Council .

It will be recalled that the GCC states were not just aligned with Washington in strategic terms, but were bound to it; this illusion has been shattered. All the while the strategic aim of the joint operation remains mystifying. It has fluctuated between “the goal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon (what then is the truth of the June 2025 air strike on their nuclear facilities that was declared to have obliterated the very same programme?); to bring about a regime change; to obliterate ballistic missile capability and more recently to destroy Iran’s war waging capacity” and now, to control of the Strait of Hormuz. The ferocity of the bombing campaign on Iran may be gauged by the stockpile of munitions that had been expended in the first 96 hours of “Operation Epic Fury”. The first casualty of the war was the assassination of Iran’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the lamentable death of 165 girls in an airstrike on a school.  During the first 40 days of hostilities over 14000 air strikes were conducted causing more than 3600 deaths and over 20,000 injuries. The war took a primal turn when on 07 April 2026, President Trump in a genocidal warning, threatened the Iranian people with extermination when he declared that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”. The cost of the war to America and Israel is close to $2 Billion a day, while the world economy has suffered incalculable loss in terms of the energy shock and supply chain disruptions; the hit to global GDP growth is close to 1%.  

Use of Military Power

Indeed, in many ways, Trump’s use of force is the antithesis of the ‘Powell Doctrine’ the American policy extant for use of military power. Developed during the Gulf War (1990–91) by General Colin Powell (later secretary of state), the Doctrine held that force should be employed only as a last resort; after all nonviolent means have been exhausted. If war is necessary, however, it should proceed in pursuit of a clear objective, with a clear exit strategy and with public support. It should employ decisive force to defeat the enemy using every resource—military, economic, political, social—available. Derived from the lessons of Vietnam, the approach was designed to avoid protracted conflicts, high death tolls, financial losses, and domestic divisions. As Powell later wrote, military leaders could not “quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not (half) understand or support.”

Supporters of the doctrine perceived continued interventions such as those undertaken by the Clinton administration in Somalia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia, as a misuse of military power that risked failure or being stranded in a quagmire.  

The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were key tests of the approach. The George W. Bush administration sought to apply the Powell Doctrine in both cases. It declared war only after the Taliban and Iraqi leaders, respectively, ignored U.S. demands and after the President spent considerable political capital to persuade Americans that the decisions to go to war were wise. The administration’s stated objectives were clear: to eliminate the safe haven the Afghan government was providing al-Qaeda and to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, respectively. It also sought and received congressional authorization in both cases. In Afghanistan, U.S. forces combined a lean on-the-ground presence with withering air attacks and support for fighters in the Northern Alliance, which entered Kabul and overthrew the Taliban. In Iraq, 160,000 U.S. troops launched a ground invasion to topple the regime.

In both instances, the strategy expanded in a bizarre way that it not only entertained an unremitting “mission creep” but at its core fake assumptions such as the imminent use of WMD, a lack of resolve, an all-together faulty assessment of the nature of conflict and misreading dynamics within the citizenry ended in a strategic debacle for the occupying US forces. Both campaigns, as it ironically turned out, ended in a bloody quagmire and a hail back to the mortifying flight from Vietnam. The undistinguished yet fatal thread that was shared by these campaigns can be summarised by the truancy of four strategic principles: 

• Lack of understanding of the nature of the war that was to be prosecuted. Specifically the intensity of motivation involved, for the defender the war was existential; while for the invader it was a matter of rapidly diminishing motivation.  
• Absence of clarity in selection and maintenance of an achievable strategic aim.
• The desired end-state of the war or its fallout on the larger global community was given scant consideration.
• Lastly, the inability to arouse world opinion in favour of the strategic effort, which was seen to be more an exertion to benefit an eclectic few rather than in the larger global and indeed, national interest.

Strategy, in its broadest sense (grand) is statesmanship. It has to convince and mobilise all elements that make for the comprehensive power of the nation for war; it includes building willing coalitions and persuading neutral entities of the legitimacy of the nation’s cause; it cannot be left to the wisdom or, indeed, the lack of it to an Elitist group whose motivations are dubious, methods visceral and concerns shorn of perspicacity.   

World Order; Concept and Reality

The idea of Order is intrinsic to the edifice of a universal framework to manage global affairs. Where the smallest building block is the ‘nation’, challenges of assuring equitability and abhorring profit-making are foundational if the structure is not to be hollowed out. The essence of Order is the provision of fair, just and unprejudiced governance regardless of size, wealth or power of the individual State. Reality, however, suggests that the concept is illusory. After all avarice, competition, conflict and clutch for resources are factors that are innately interwoven with money-power and the insatiability of human nature.  

 Power in the hands of Economic Elites has, since World War II, built and put in place institutions that primarily promote and nurture strategic self-benefits. This has skewed any notion of a shared future amongst nations. When private businesses get intertwined with political institutions, the profit motif often pushes to the background national interests and as for the concept of international Order, it is consigned to oblivion. Today’s political systems are industries that have incentive to strive for immediate benefits. The question of who the real beneficiaries are remains shrouded in economic theories such as the “trickle-down effect”, “rent seeking theory” or even “deviant globalisation”.  The first posits that “benefits provided to the elites or businesses will eventually trickle-down to the lower classes in the form of job creation, investment, and economic growth” while the latter two principles suggest entities gain added wealth without creating any new value, by manipulating the social, political or military environment or even by gaining access to markets without international oversight allowing rampant and unregulated global trafficking of illicit products. The very same principles were institutionalised in the 18th^th century by the industrial philosophy of “Laissez faire, Laissez passer” that in turn created oversized and elitist colonial free-trade areas. The apprehension that these instruments, in fact, presage and, indeed legitimised the exploitative face of trade relations to this very day, persists.

These theories, in the hands of the politico-industrial cabal, provide it incentive to increase civil spending on massive projects, invest in gigantic dubious commercial enterprises and importantly, build oversized military projects through inflated defence budgets. The awkward irony is, the more the intangibility factor and dysfunction; the more the incentive for spending.  The primary factor for the failure of such theorising is the total belief in the uprightness and fair-play of the Economic Elites. The indubitable reality is that “at the apex when the goblet spills-over then the overrun ought to fill goblets below; but if the size of the goblet at the apex continually expands, then, very little spills over!” This is the truth of an Elitist World Order.  

Insolvent Phantoms of Tomorrow

Surprisingly it was an American President who at his farewell speech in 1961 said “We, you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.” These sage words belong to General Dwight Eisenhower, the 34^th President of the USA. We cannot, today, fail to note a similar situation unfold with the portents of global disaster looming over the Strait of Hormuz; threatening to, so wantonly garrotte an energy lifeline of the world.

America, in the wake of their illegal abduction of President Maduro of Venezuela and the strategic hubris that it engendered, are hoping for an encore and control of the Strait of Hormuz without a serious understanding of the nature of war that they alongside Israel have undertaken against a resilient Iran. The magnitude of incompetence in planning, formulating strategic aims and the cavalier attitude towards the disruptive fallout of war and crack-up of global economics is stunning. Are we to be left with “insolvent phantoms tomorrow”?   

In his quest to find a way out of the on-going war in Iran, the US President’s 07 April apocalyptic fore-cast of “a whole civilization being exterminated”, was read by the world at large as maniacal desperation; words of an unhinged mind, prompting members of the US Congress to demand his removal on grounds of incompetence. A woeful testimony from a nation that once styled itself as a global force for stability, donned the self-ordained mantle of exceptionalism now uprooting the very foundation of the international order that it once steered. Is the world to stand a voiceless spectator to this mindless and distressing disruption? Or as in 1956, are we witness to the reality of the collapse of yet another empire?         

Capture by the Elites

Great economic powers in their time exerted disproportionate sway, if not control, over their respective geography of influence. This was true of the Persian, Indic, Sinic, Greco-Roman and indeed Western Civilizations. But the heart of control to this day is captive to a dominant minority that hold the strings of power and purse, these comprise: Sovereigns, media Moghuls, bankers. Technocrats and power-brokers.

While the former four entities majorly manipulate public perception and use financial- clout to seduce decision making processes; the last comprise individuals or vested interest groups that leverage connections, resources and information sub-rosa to achieve the same purpose staying, guardedly, out of public view. Henry Kissinger was long considered a political power broker who used his access to presidents and foreign leaders long after he demitted his formal administrative role. His continued influence in world politics was apparent in the Helsinki accord of 1975 and his nuclear non-proliferation efforts (some suggest selectively) to hinder the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons across the globe. His preferred instruments included instigating sanctions to be imposed, contriving the offer of incentives as inducements and engineering threats to remove U.S. military protective treaties.  Notwithstanding his earlier posture on nuclear proliferation during Kissinger’s days in office, in later years he emphasised the danger posed by nuclear weapons and that they must not be “integrated into strategy as simply another, more efficient, explosive”. After he left government service in 1977 he founded Kissinger Associated, a geopolitical consulting firm; his new model of foreign policy advised accommodation of interests and actions of powers like Russia and China; values of democracy and human rights had no role in an international system driven by Elites and economics he stressed.    

The Case against Elite Control

Statistically the accumulated world GDP from the turn of the 20^thcentury to 2022 increased 56 fold from $1.7Tr in 1900 to $100Tr in 2022. This dramatic rate of world economic growth in an environment of uncertainty, inequity, predatory economic practices, wars, and market forces controlled by a few is the dilemma that faces nations today; how best to strike a balance between power and profit and yet sustain the levels of growth? Confounding this problem are four contradictory challenges that militate against Elite control:

• Firstly, to raise a fifth of the world population out of poverty and to establish an alternative to the global financial system biased towards the dollar as the primary reserve currency (despite not being pegged to the gold standard) while dominating global banking holding nearly 45% of all assets giving it world-wide reach to impose sanctions suggesting the development of an Alternate Financial System (AFS).
• Emerging powers and groupings like the BRICS pursue AFS to assert control over financial flows and reduce the potential of the Dollar to cause financial disruptions. Direct fall-out is increasing number of nations who settle bi-lateral trade in common currency 
•  Lastly, to accelerate the spread of technology without environmental degradation, depletion of non-renewable resources or control by a few

A broader transformation in the structure of world order is apparent today. In an era where global capital is mobile but political loyalty is coerced, power lies not in markets alone but in the ability to navigate, subvert, or capture the legal and institutional structures that enable subjugation of global wealth. This may mark the future of global governance; one not defined by cooperative rulemaking, but by establishing self-interest driven linkages between state power and Elite control. This would imply that top leaders in the military, corporate, and political sectors are so linked that they not only share interests but, institutionally, discharge public and private roles. The case of the current US administration is particularly significant where not only is the President’s cabinet staffed by a caucus of Elites, but he announced that he and his sons would enter the crypto currency marketplace with a new venture called “World Liberty Financial (WLF)”. One of his chief financiers, a Justin Sun a crypto tycoon, sued the Trump family’s venture, accusing WLF of “criminal extortion” for freezing valuable digital tokens over his refusal to invest more money with the company. In the meantime in January 2026, Pakistan led by their Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir signed an agreement with WLF to incorporate crypto currency into Pakistan’s financial system.

Even global financial markets have, allegedly, been manipulated for profits through insider information of politico-military decisions that could have been known to very few in the White House during the peak of US ‘Operation Epic Fury’ the 2026 U.S-Iran conflict. Significant concerns emerged regarding oil futures, wagering platforms and insider trading by well-positioned individuals within or, at least, close to the US War Cabinet within minutes of the decisions being made public. Over 150 entities placed bets totalling millions on the night of February 27/28, just five minutes before Trump’s announcement of commencement of bombing, 500 futures worth $1.5 billion were bought, while oil futures worth $192 million were sold; approximately $760 million in Brent crude oil futures were traded 20 minutes before a major announcement regarding the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on April 17, 2026. Bankers have seen their profits boosted by the war,  JP Morgan Chase and Co an American banking institution which provides critical financial infrastructure to the US Government and is even considered the Banker to the US Administration made a record $11.6bn of revenue in the first three months of 2026, helping the bank overall to its second biggest ever quarterly profit. All suggesting the extent to which Political, Economic and Military Elites have not only held captive state policy to favour their own financial interests and profited enormously but have established control of the media as a co-conspirator of how people perceive issues that dominate war, politics, finances, justice and humanity itself. The current wars in Iran and Ukraine will remain case studies of how Oligarchic influences can, not just disrupt Global Order through wars-on-call; but also mock, amass profits and beggar it to a state of primal anarchy.  

A Conclusion

No structure of international stability, which emerged in the wake of the Second World War that provided the world with a sense of Order, Justice and Humanity, has been spared by the covetousness of the Elite. The writ of the UN has been trampled over every so often, whether it was the Israel-Palestine conflict 2023-25 that exposed the wanton genocide of people, the continuing carnage of the Russia-Ukraine war of 2022 that has caused the death or maiming of over a million casualties for the benefit of energy tycoons, military-industrial complexes and Technocrats. The on-going civil war in Sudan against the RSF (2023) has displaced over 11 million refugees within and outside the country; casualties figures are not known, but it has only benefited the arms lobby operating from UAE, mining Czars who now control the gold fields and other minerals of Darfur and logistic conduit and power broker such as Wagner Group  that provide discreet control and profit from the war. While China exposed the lack of resolve in the Security Council as it upheld its own claim to most of the South China Sea rubbishing the arbitration of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). An earlier US administration had even converted a sovereign nation, the Honduras into a primary base for the conduct of global counter-terrorism though the instruments of “worthy terrorism” (Reagan Doctrine 1984); despite condemnation by the ICJ.

Contemporary wars are being waged against a geopolitical backdrop of a world withdrawing from globalisation, disregard of humanitarian laws and the appalling impotence of the UN. As has been noted, leadership of dominant groups have dismissed international laws and treaties with disdain. Frequency and spread of such short sightedness in the interest of hegemony and profit is justified on grounds of geopolitical leverage and an abstract urge for control. The on-going war in the Persian Gulf region typifies just such a logic; and as Noam Chomsky suggests calculations of this nature become rational on “the assumption that human survival is not particularly significant in comparison with short-term power and wealth”(!)

Since the curtains came down on the Second World War, America moved into the role of global hegemon. It not only transcended circumscription, but also sought control of world order conjointly with the wheels that moved global economics. Post the collapse of the USSR in 1992, whatever checks the Kremlin represented no longer existed. Now with neither accountability for outcomes nor any legal restraint on America’s use of military force, Washington unabashedly donned the mantle of self-ordained exceptionalism; the concept has not been seriously challenged over the last half-a-century. However, experience gained from wars of the 21^st Century have exposed the weakness and vulnerability of the notion particularly  when the USA left stranded nations that had entrusted it with  their security.

The war in Ukraine and the persistent threats by Russia to escalate to the nuclear dimension has left NATO allies to re-evaluate their dependence on the US “extended nuclear deterrence” since the response from Washington to formulating a winning military strategy has been far from reassuring. While it can hardly be comforting for Japan and Taiwan to note America’s anaemic stand on the nuclear postures of Russia, China and North Korea. Leaving little choice to Middle Powers other than to devise strategies of their own, form new arrangements for order and cooperative defence. In this new vicissitude that the world finds itself in, the need is to withhold acknowledgement of any form of exceptionalism on grounds of its malfeasance and its inability to embrace a world of diverse power dynamics that will be dominated by an Elite-driven hegemon.