October 17, 2025 – When Syria fell, Russia began to lose influence in Western Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, while US imperialism gained influence in the region. This was undoubtedly a blow to the global balance of power of the Russian-Chinese alliance.
We are now beginning to see the significance of that loss.
NATO’s war in Ukraine has probably prevented Russia from coming to the defense of its allies in Western Asia, as it was able to do in the past decade. We must not forget that Russia is under combined attack from the entire NATO alliance, with strikes, sabotage, and attacks on its own territory.
Its absence clears the way for the Zionist entity to become a regional power, which has always been the dream of the Western Empire. With the Palestinian front treacherously paralyzed for the moment, the Empire’s armed wing in Asia is now turning its attention back to Lebanon, which it continues to bomb (apparently testing new brutal weapons of mass destruction), once again violating all the peace agreements that have been reached. But it also has its sights set on Yemen (with the collaboration of the British intelligence services, the United Arab Emirates, and even, once again, Saudi Arabia. These are intermediate pieces that the Zionist entity and the Western Empire need to get rid of before their (definitive?) attack on Iran.
The main obstacles to the Zionist entity’s expansion as a regional power do not now come from the Axis of Resistance, which has been hit hard in the last year and a half, but from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which have their own projects for regional domination and expansion. Particularly dangerous is Turkey’s project in Central Asia and the Caucasus, with its grand Pan-Turkic project, which could end up surrounding Iran and cutting off the connection between the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), from China to the Russian Baltic, with the Zangezur corridor as a source of tension between Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. This is fertile ground for further destabilization and possible aggression against Russia.
In any case, this state of affairs corresponds to the increase in US influence in the region and a weakening of China’s rise, whose initiative to create a peace-making axis between Iran and Saudi Arabia, with the incorporation of Egypt into the BRICS, seems to have been thwarted, at least for the moment. The same is true of its flagship New Silk Road project, as this “road” has been full of potholes from the outset (and even more so with the recent coups in Bangladesh and Nepal, compounded now by the provocation of an armed conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan – the latter country being even more subject to destabilization) until its end (Syria is already in the hands of the Empire’s jihadists). It seems that the policy of keeping a low profile, not upsetting anyone, and not seriously helping potential allies is no longer bearing fruit for the Asian giant (not collaborating with the Syrian government on an infrastructure and social investment program has been part of the omissions that have led to the point where we are now; others include Russian military “gaps,” which always allowed the Zionist entity to bomb Syria as if throwing streamers in a circus, among other incomprehensible failures to provide protection).
The Chinese-Russian duo’s purely defensive, containment-based “strategy”—for lack of a better word—in the face of constant military and economic attacks by the Western Empire is beginning to take too heavy a toll (they have not even stopped trading with the Zionist entity or developing projects with it in the occupied territories, nor have they called for its international condemnation for war crimes). Without a real alternative strategic project that can overcome the barbarism of degenerative capitalism, their “multipolar” potential is likely to be ruined before long.
In short, everything points to a new geopolitical configuration in Western and Central Asia that favors the US and its proxies in the region (the Zionist entity, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia above all). Who would have thought this just four years ago, when the US army was hastily leaving Afghanistan, and the Axis of Resistance (Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran—states or influential organizations within them) seemed stronger than ever, supported by Chinese infrastructure projects and the Russian military presence.
In just four years, the Empire and its Zionist arm have struck cruelly, accurately, and forcefully, to the point of reversing the situation.
Today, thanks to its nuclear power, the Zionist entity can impose itself permanently and increasingly, genocide after genocide, throughout the region. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is probably preparing its own nuclear weapon so as not to be left too far behind. The US is also establishing itself in the region and will send new troops there. Iran, for its part, is losing almost all its chances of aspiring to be a key power in Central Asia and will soon see its own survival as a state at stake (we will see if the Chinese-Russian duo is once again content to supply it with weapons and, if necessary, let it fall: that would probably be the beginning of the end for them as “emerging powers”).
The Shiite religious movement is losing ground in its confrontation with the Sunnis, which is another manifestation of Russia’s loss of influence on its southern border, thereby also weakening China in its strategic Silk Road project.
In other words, the possible correlation of forces towards socialism is weakening, at the expense of the outcome of the new war front that the US is opening in the Caribbean and the progression of the war in Ukraine, which Europe wants to be endless.
Both are decisive steps for the US to launch its long-awaited confrontation with China in the Pacific.
We are, therefore, still in the first phase of Total War, with signs of already beginning to move into a second, even more deadly phase.
The extent or intensity of this confrontation (between the “West” and the ‘East’—Huntington’s beloved “clash of civilizations,” which for years has been leaning toward the aggressor side, as can be seen in the state of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc.) will be based on the capacity shown by the economies on both sides.
The capacity for global surplus extraction that can be concentrated by the “West” on the one hand and the “East” on the other, and what it will be used for.
We know that the Chinese-Russian duo represents the energy and the most productive part of capitalism that remains, while the central powers of the System seek, almost desperately, speculative-parasitic and military gains to stay afloat, pay off their growing debt, and consume their arms production on the war fronts (which others pay for) in order to renew or rearm themselves, causing increasing impoverishment of their populations, who are also subjected to unprecedented media alienation.
(how else can millions of people be convinced that, despite being on the side of the aggressors, NATO, they are the ones being attacked or in danger of being attacked?; disconnecting, moreover, some battlefronts from others, so that no one can understand why things are happening – what is happening in Palestine with what is happening on the Russian-Ukrainian front or what is coming in Venezuela, for example).
Part of the key to this whole war process is, therefore, how much the “Western” populations will accept the Lie (in the face of the undeniable evidence of Barbarism, with Palestine they have not been able to deceive them as much, no matter how hard they try with their mantras of “two states,” “Israel has the right to defend itself” or “the war in Gaza” and “Hamas terrorist attacks,” etc.). And how long will they put up with being given cannons instead of bread and shelter (and, incidentally, the odd quality social service)?
From and for my friend Pepe Torres
