Geopolitics

Game of Drones: The New World Disorder

By Art Berman | April 18, 2026

The U.S. war with Iran may be the last gasp of an old world order fighting with weapons that no longer decide outcomes. Societies evolve like species, only faster, and…

The Right Side of Chaos

By Art Berman | April 7, 2026

It’s hard to separate signal from noise in assessing the Iran war and what it means going forward. War is always confusing, but there’s a growing sense that this one…

What Would Captain Kirk Do About Hormuz?

By Art Berman | March 17, 2026

Control oil, and you control nations, observed Henry Kissinger. Right now, that’s what Iran is doing in a way Kissinger would not have imagined. The prevailing narrative is that Iran…

The Iran War: A World-Changing Event

By Art Berman | March 12, 2026

On February 28, oil tankers stopped moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day—about one-fifth of global supply—suddenly stopped flowing. Oil is the lifeblood…

How the Iran War Ends

By Art Berman | March 7, 2026

Leon Trotsky famously said, “You may not be interested in war, but war may be interested in you.” A variation that fits Trump’s dilemma in the Iran war might be…

Iran: Another Shock to a Fragile System

By Art Berman | March 2, 2026

The Strait of Hormuz is not formally closed, but traffic has effectively stalled. Only four tankers transited on March 1 as crude carriers paused to reassess security conditions. Kpler is…

The Race to the Bottom

By Art Berman | January 15, 2026

Welcome to the twilight of the Industrial Age. Growth is ending. That was the blunt thesis of a recent essay, and the signals are already here—deindustrialization, grid stress, financial instability,…

Beyond Surplus: Rethinking How Civilizations Rose

By Art Berman | September 9, 2025

The surplus story most of us learned is straightforward. Once humans learned to farm, they grew more food than they needed. That extra food freed some people to build, rule,…

Power of Siberia is A Stalking Horse

By Art Berman | September 3, 2025

The Power of Siberia 2 isn’t really about natural gas. It’s about poking Trump in the eye on energy dominance. Moscow and Beijing know he’s obsessed with LNG and talks…

Tariffs vs. Tankers: Why Trump’s Clash with India Misses the Real Energy Battlefield

By Art Berman | August 13, 2025

The headlines say Donald Trump is going after India with tariffs. The deeper story is that this is not just about trade. It is about oil, the lingering grip of…

Saudi Arabia’s Oil Strategy Is About Power

By Art Berman | July 14, 2025

OPEC’s recent decision to start adding supply back to the market has baffled most analysts — though that hasn’t stopped them from offering explanations that are just as confusing as…

The Shattering of Illusions: Iran, Israel, and the End of Strategic Restraint

By Art Berman | June 27, 2025

For years, the threat of open war between Israel and Iran simmered on the margins of global attention—a shadow conflict fought through proxies, assassinations, and ideology. Now it’s out in…