January 2026 – Globalities

U.S. sanctions are terrorism on an industrial scale

Helena CobbanJanuary 22, 2026January 23, 2026Global economy, Iran, Sanctions, U.S. policy

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blurted out an important truth at the Davos conference, January 20. He described the way Washington has wielded the weapon of economic sanctions against Iran as “economic statecraft” crowing that:

It’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is a dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports, and this is why the people took to the streets… Things are moving in a very positive way here.

Journalism prof Azadeh Moaveni gave a detailed account in this powerful piece in the Financial Times January 17, of how Bessent and the rest of Trump’s team had tightened the screws on the Iranian economy starting back last March:

Trump’s Iran backdown

Helena CobbanJanuary 16, 2026January 17, 2026Iran, Israel, Persian Gulf, U.S. policy2 Comments

There was Trump, on Tuesday, shouting all over the internet, “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! … HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.” And there was Trump just a day later saying, “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping — it’s stopped — it’s stopping… And there’s no plan for executions, or an execution, or execution — so I’ve been told that on good authority.”

He was racing backward from the incendiary regime-change rhetoric of the previous day.

This was– for now, anyway– a clear case of “TACO, Iran-style”, to borrow the FT’s great acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Read on to see where I think this leaves us all now. But first, a bit of essential background.

Back in late June, in the aftermath of the “12-day War” that the U.S.-Israeli axis launched jointly against Iran June 13, I made a number of judgments, and shared some of them here and here. In the first of those essays, I judged that the reason that war ended so (relatively) swiftly and cleanly was that by June 24-25 both Israel and Iran found themselves locked in a “mutually hurting stalemate.” It was most certainly not any kind of “cakewalk” for the U.S.-Israel axis, and it certainly did not result in the unassailable U.S. win that Pres. Trump hurried to present it as.

Why a set of treaties from 1648 CE is more important than ever

Helena CobbanJanuary 5, 2026January 6, 2026Diplomacy, Europe, Global governance, U.S. policy, United Nations

If you’ve never learned about the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, then now is an excellent time to do so. This set of treaties, agreed to by the leaders of more 100 little European statelets and dukedoms in an era in which the modern-style “nation state” was only just emerging, laid the ground rules for the international state system that has existed until today. Its core principle was the sovereign independence and equal standing of all states in the system.

That principle, as extended to and embraced by all the 193 states in today’s international system, lies at the heart of the Charter of the United Nations, as adopted in San Francisco in 1945. In Article 2, the UN Charter states clearly that:

(1) The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members…

(4) All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

As we know, in the 80 years since 1945 many states have violated these principles of the Charter (and many others.) But the action the U.S. government took on January 3, sending military forces to violently blast their way into the home of the head of another sovereign state and to snatch him and his wife and take them to U.S. territory on a flimsy judicial pretext, has been among the most egregious and the most threatening to today’s whole system of international law.