A contact in New York mentioned, almost in passing, that the shelves at their local (premium) supermarket were beginning to empty. Not bare, but noticeably thin, the way they go before a blizzard. People panic-buying quietly, without announcement. At LaGuardia, long queues that the local press has barely covered. The official newsflow says nothing. But the supermarket shelves don’t lie.

This is how the consequences of a war 6,000 miles away arrive in the richest city in the world; not with sirens, but with gaps on the grocery shelves and unexplained airport delays that nobody in authority seems in a hurry to explain. The information lag is itself a story. There is roughly a week between what is happening and what is being reported. Don’t believe one’s lying eyes.

BB’s thesis is that military power is ultimately a function of GDP. It is a reasonable working assumption. It is also, we would argue, dangerously wrong in the specific conditions we are now watching play out in real time.

The United States and Israel are the two wealthiest, most technologically sophisticated military powers to have ever jointly prosecuted a war. Their adversary is a sanctioned, inflation-wracked theocracy that has been massacring its own citizens and losing proxy after proxy for two years. And yet here we are, Day 23 of Operation Epic Fury, with Trump issuing a 48-hour ultimatum to obliterate Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened, Iran responding that any such strike will be met with attacks on U.S. and Israeli energy and infrastructure assets, Brent crude at $112 a barrel and Goldman Sachs projecting elevated prices through 2027, and the administration having exhausted every economic lever it possesses. The richer side is losing the economic war. The question is whether they know it yet.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Sociology of Surrender

The pattern is not new. We have watched it twice in living memory, in the same geography, and both times the lesson was the same.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, the professional Iraqi army collapsed with extraordinary speed. Saddam’s soldiers surrendered in their thousands, sometimes in their tens of thousands. The analysts at the time attributed this to superior American firepower and tactical brilliance.

What they underweighted was something sociological: Saddam, for all his brutality, had delivered two decades of relative stability; a functioning bureaucratic state, salaries, pensions, a middle class with something to lose. Iraqi soldiers had families, flats, futures. They calculated the odds and surrendered. That was rational behaviour in the circumstances.

Then the United States moved into Afghanistan. The experience was entirely different. Afghanistan had not known a stable state since 1978. The Soviet invasion, the civil war, the warlord period, the Taliban; generation after generation had grown up knowing nothing but armed conflict. The American military, to its credit, noted this explicitly: Afghans were ferocious fighters not because of superior training or equipment, but because the threshold of pain they were willing to absorb had been calibrated by decades of collective suffering. They had nothing to lose that they had not already lost many times over. Twenty years later, the Americans left. The Taliban were still there.

Iran today is closer to Afghanistan than to Iraq, and the war planners appear to have modelled it the other way around.

The Martyrdom Variable

Despite more than two weeks of relentless airstrikes, U.S. intelligence assessments now conclude that Iran’s regime will likely remain in place; weakened but more hardline, with the IRGC exerting greater control. The Islamic Republic is structured for siege. Its military has a dual architecture: the regular Artesh of 420,000 men, and the ideologically driven IRGC of roughly 190,000, designed to resist both coups and invasions. The decapitation strategy, kill the leadership, watch the system implode, has instead produced the opposite: the election of a new Supreme Leader signals the Islamic Republic projecting stability and endurance, reassuring the security services and consolidating IRGC power at a watershed moment.

This is the martyrdom variable that wealth-based models of military power simply cannot price. When you tell an ideologically driven adversary that your objective is their unconditional surrender and regime elimination, you have not weakened their will to fight. You have removed any incentive to stop. The Islamic Republic’s theology does not regard death as a cost. It regards it as a currency. Iran’s endgame is not victory but survival; restoring deterrence and regaining the power to dictate the terms of what comes after the war. That is a much lower bar than the one the U.S. and Israel set for themselves, and in asymmetric conflicts, the side with the lower bar almost always outlasts the side with the higher one.

Compare this to Israel’s own recent history. Hezbollah was degraded in 2006, forced back from the border. Then it reconstituted. It was degraded again in 2024. It is now, despite a ceasefire that required its disarmament, already rebuilding its military capabilities while Israel conducts near-daily strikes in southern Lebanon and prepares a ground invasion that has already displaced over a million people. The Lebanese Shia community that produces Hezbollah has not become wealthier or more comfortable in the intervening decades. It has become harder. The bombing campaigns that were supposed to break them have instead been their primary instrument of political cohesion.

The wealthier society, paradoxically, is the one with brittle will. Rich people have one or two children and do not want them dying in open-ended wars for ambiguous objectives. Israel called up 20,000 additional reservists at the outset of this war, on top of 50,000 already mobilised, and the domestic pressure to bring them home is already visible in the polling and the protest movements. Trump’s base, the constituency that elected him precisely because he said he would end the endless wars, is watching oil prices climb and asking when it stops. No more than 20% of the American public supported this war at the outset, with Republican support not exceeding 35%. These numbers do not improve as the Hormuz stays closed and the gas pump climbs. Or the supermarket shelves thin.

Karbala as Operating Principle

To understand why Iran fights the way it fights, you have to understand what it believes it is fighting for. And that requires a detour through theology that most Western analysts, to their considerable cost, have refused to take.

One of the most serious Shia scholars alive argues that the highest human right is not life. It is dignity. The question he poses is stark: if you are kept alive but degraded, humiliated, treated as less than human, what is the value of that life? He roots this in the Quranic understanding that the mission of every prophet was justice, and that dignity falls directly under justice. To be just is to treat human beings as deserving of honour. Not life first. Dignity first.

This is how Shia Islam reads Karbala. Imam Hussein knew he could live if he submitted to Yazid. He could have worshipped in peace. But a life of worship without dignity, having surrendered to an oppressor, had no value. Hussein’s formulation is precise: death is better than losing your honour, and losing your honour is better than going to hell. Most people think death is the worst thing that can happen. Hussein is saying it is the lightest of three doors. Losing your dignity is worse than dying. And surrendering to an oppressor, legitimising tyranny, is the kind of spiritual corruption that leads to hellfire. So submission is both the loss of honour and the road to damnation. They collapse into each other. Death becomes the only clean door. Not a tragedy. A choice.

This is the operating principle of Iran right now, and it is what the Pentagon’s targeting models cannot capture. When bombs fall on Iranian soil, the question the Islamic Republic asks is not how do we survive. It is how do we refuse to be humiliated. These are different questions. They produce different answers. The February 28 strikes did not break Iran because you cannot bomb dignity out of a civilisation that has made dignity its reason for being. You can destroy infrastructure. You can kill people. You can decapitate a leadership. But the idea that human beings deserve to be treated as human beings does not have a military solution.

One observer, writing from within the Sunni tradition, put it this way: for the first time since the original schism, Sunnis and Shias across the Muslim world are united in their reading of this conflict. The leaders may be calculating interests. The streets are not calculating anything. They are feeling something older and more durable than policy.

There is also a question that has not yet received the attention it deserves. Did Ali Khamenei, whatever one thinks of him or of the Islamic Republic, consciously choose the Imam Hussein option? Did he choose to die rather than submit, making of his death a statement rather than a defeat? If he did, even the regional press has not fully absorbed what that means for the civilisational stakes of what follows. A martyr’s death in Shia theology does not close a chapter. It opens one.

Iran Turns the Strait Into a Toll Road

Which brings us to the most audacious move of this war so far; one that has received far less attention than the missile salvoes. Iran is not simply blockading the Strait of Hormuz. It is monetising it.

Iranian lawmakers are pursuing a bill under which countries using the strait for shipping, energy transit and food supplies would be required to pay tolls and taxes to the Islamic Republic, framed explicitly as compensation for providing security along the route. This is not a negotiating gesture. An adviser to the Supreme Leader has already signalled that a “new regime for the Strait of Hormuz” will follow the war’s eventual end, one that allows Tehran to apply maritime restrictions on states that have sanctioned it. And it has already begun in practice: an Iranian lawmaker confirmed that Iran has collected $2 million in transit fees from some vessels, describing it as establishing “a new concept of sovereignty” over the strait after 47 years.

Read that carefully. Iran is not asking to be left alone. It is asking to be paid. It is transforming a military confrontation into a permanent revenue stream and a geopolitical sorting mechanism; friendly nations pass, adversaries don’t, and everyone pays for the privilege of knowing which category they fall into. The IRGC has established a controlled shipping lane near Larak Island, prioritising vessels from friendly nations such as China, India and Pakistan, while those linked to the U.S., Israel or their close allies remain effectively barred. This is not a blockade. It is a new customs regime, imposed by force, on the world’s most critical waterway.

The Trump administration’s 48-hour ultimatum on the power plants is, in this light, a response to having lost the economic argument entirely. You do not threaten to obliterate power plants unless you have run out of other options.

Pakistan: The Indispensable Wildcard

No analysis of this war is complete without Pakistan, and most analyses have shortchanged it badly. Pakistan is not a bystander. It is simultaneously one of the most constrained and most strategically pivotal actors in this entire theatre.

Consider the geography. Pakistan shares a 900-kilometre border with Iran, with deep cross-border ties between ethnic Baloch populations on both sides. Gwadar Port, positioned at the mouth of the Arabian Sea, offers China and Pakistan a strategic gateway that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz entirely; and amid current Gulf disruptions, stakeholders have highlighted its role as an alternative transshipment hub. That single fact reshapes the strategic map. While the world watches Hormuz, the alternative corridor runs through Pakistani Balochistan. China, which is coordinating directly with the IRGC to protect its energy supplies, has every incentive to ensure that corridor remains open and functional.

Pakistan’s domestic position is no less complicated. Public sentiment strongly supports Iran, complicating the government’s position. In Karachi, protesters attempted to storm the U.S. Consulate on 1 March; at least 10 people were killed when U.S. Marine guards opened fire. The Pakistan Navy has launched Operation Muhafiz-ul-Bahr to escort its own merchant ships through the Gulf, while the government has announced emergency austerity measures including a four-day workweek and two-week school closures to conserve fuel reserves. Pakistan is, in other words, already on a war footing’ without being at war.

The deeper danger is Balochistan itself. If instability in Iran weakens central authority in its peripheral regions, the Baloch question could acquire renewed significance, Iranian Baloch grievances have historically resonated across the border and could embolden separatist narratives inside Pakistan’s own Balochistan province. The BLA is already active. CPEC infrastructure, billions in Chinese investment running directly through this territory,  is already a target. A destabilised Iranian borderland does not just threaten Tehran. It threatens Islamabad, Beijing, and the entire overland architecture that China has spent a decade building as an alternative to Hormuz dependency.

This is why Pakistan is genuinely indispensable in ways that have nothing to do with troop numbers or GDP. It sits at the intersection of every pressure point in this war: the Iran border, the Baloch insurgency, the GCC’s security needs, the China-Russia axis’s logistical interests, and India’s energy exposure. It cannot afford to join any side fully. It cannot afford to stay neutral entirely. And its choices in the next few weeks will do more to shape the post-war regional order than most of the countries currently firing missiles.

India’s Miscalculation

The Indian dimension is where the civilisational stakes become most visible. GauravL’s post on the Indian RW’s pivot toward Iran has been one of our sharpest recent observations. The Hindutvavadi commentariat that was photographing itself in solidarity with Tel Aviv eighteen months ago is now quietly posting about Iranian sovereignty. This is not ideological inconsistency. It is economics expressing itself through politics, with unusual speed. 90% of India’s LPG imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. LPG prices have risen sharply, with long queues forming at distribution centres across the country. When the gas cylinder price moves, Indian public opinion moves with it.

The government in Delhi has been playing a more sophisticated game, and has still miscalculated. Modi visited Israel just 48 hours before American and Israeli warplanes struck Iranian targets. He subsequently strongly condemned attacks on Gulf nations and expressed solidarity with all measures the UAE deemed necessary, while issuing no comparable statement on Iranian sovereignty or casualties. This asymmetry has stripped India of the mediating position it spent fifty years cultivating. India is now among only a handful of nations, including China, whose ships have been allowed safe passage through the strait, which tells you exactly where Tehran is keeping its doors open, and for whom. China, which brokered the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in 2023, is now the only great power with channels into all parties simultaneously. That is not an accident. It is the fruit of not being in the war.

The GCC’s Reckoning

The Gulf states are discovering the price of their own strategic miscalculation. The working assumption in Riyadh was that Iran would be rapidly degraded, the regime would implode or capitulate, and the Gulf’s security architecture could be rebuilt on firmer foundations. Instead, three ballistic missiles were launched toward Riyadh on Saturday, with Saudi Arabia intercepting one while two fell in uninhabited areas, and six drones were simultaneously headed toward the kingdom’s oil-rich eastern province.

The Saudis hired a bodyguard who not only brought the fight to the client’s doorstep but has been systematically killing anyone who might negotiate a ceasefire on the client’s behalf. Israel has assassinated precisely the Iranian officials, Ali Larijani foremost among them, who might have served as diplomatic back-channels for Trump, eliminating the off-ramps before anyone could use them. The question of whether Pakistan or Egypt can fill the resulting security vacuum misses the point entirely. Neither can replace American military capacity. But the relevant question was never military replacement. It was: who now has a channel into Tehran? At present, no one does; by design.

Suez II, or Something Worse

The Suez parallel keeps coming back to us, and it is worth stating clearly why these next 48 to 72 hours matter so much. In 1956, Britain and France launched a military operation they were certain was decisive. The economic and political costs ended their imperial moment within days; but the crucial mechanism was that Washington applied the pressure. Today the aggressor is Washington. There is no external power to apply the pressure. The only check on American escalation is American self-interest, and that brake is slower and less reliable than external coercion.

Two things can happen now. Trump follows through on the power plant threat; and the desalination infrastructure of an entire region goes up alongside it, producing a humanitarian catastrophe that will define his presidency and accelerate every anti-American realignment already underway. Or he backs down, and the ultimatum is revealed as the bluff that the Iranian side has already assessed it to be, Pax Americana formally cedes the Gulf to a new order, and we look back on this week as the hinge.

Either way, what we are watching is a transition. The administration has already exhausted every policy lever, having temporarily lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil; paying the enemy to survive the war being waged against it. That sentence should be read slowly. China, meanwhile, coordinates directly with the IRGC, protects its shipping, keeps its Gwadar corridor open, and says very little. It does not need to say anything. The new order is establishing itself not through declaration but through the patient accumulation of facts on the water.

These are the most dangerous 48 to 72 hours since the transition from Pax Americana to whatever comes next began in earnest. The Whole Foods shelves in New York will tell you more about how it’s going than the official briefings will.

History’s vote is clear. Wealth doesn’t win wars against people who have learned to live without it.

– XTM, from the two Cambridges

India won the T20WC yesterday becoming the first team to

Win it thrice | Win it at home | Win it back to back |

Won 3 ICC trophies back to back to back. I always knew this day was coming.

The Golden Age is not arriving. It has arrived.

Badshah’s structural point is right as far as it goes. A country of 1.4 billion people that loves one sport above all others was never going to stay second once the money came. The BCCI’s TV deal money, the IPL pipeline, the depth of the talent pool no. Bangladesh, Pakistan, the West Indies may genuinely no longer able to compete at the same level. Nothing can deny India, that is Bharat, waking up to her Destiny as a Global hegemon (InshAllah this prefaces greatness in others spheres of National Excellence).

But I want to push back gently on the linear framing. More wealth, more wealth, more wealth; therefore dominance. The model minority version of sport & geopolitics. It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete.

War is what is in your belly

My Urdu teacher told me something interesting: war isn’t just about your technology. It’s what you have inside your heart. Sports exists, in part, as simulated war. And what makes sport compelling, what makes it actually compelling, not just statistically interesting, is that once the conflict starts, you genuinely don’t know what will happen.

Who is David? Who is Goliath?

Usha Vance is probably the better student. JD Vance is Vice President. There are human variables, guile, treachery, timing, the willingness to do what the other side considers beneath them, that don’t show up in the growth charts.

The Rise of a System

This is why India’s cricket dominance is the right metaphor but needs handling carefully. India didn’t win three consecutive ICC trophies because it got richer. It won because it built systems, yes, but also because something shifted in the mentality; the 2007 T20 World Cup generation, the IPL pressure-cooker, a conveyor belt of players who have been in high-stakes situations since they were teenagers. That coldness is cultivated, not purchased.

The Belgium Question

Another counter to the size-equals-dominance assumption in a way that sharpened the argument. Belgium is extraordinary at football. A country of eleven million people that has produced De Bruyne, Hazard, Lukaku, and a generation that reached number one in the FIFA rankings. Size and sporting success don’t correlate the way the linear model assumes. It’s about institutions; the coaching pipelines, the youth academies, the culture of development that a small, serious football nation built deliberately.

Aussie Premium

When India wins at cricket, the narrative in certain quarters is: of course, inevitable, they have the money and the population. When Australia wins, it’s greatness. It’s the Sheffield Shield, the culture, the toughness, the system. The same win, framed entirely differently depending on who achieved it. The reverence is withheld. India’s victories get explained away by demography and BCCI cheques rather than credited to what they actually represent; a system that was built, not inherited. This is the model minority dynamic applied to sport. The assumption that success from a certain kind of country is structural rather than earned, statistical rather than willed. It’s the same condescension. And it’s wrong in the same way.

A Holiday from History

The question for India in the multipolar world is whether that same coldness is being cultivated in the harder domains. China grew in a holiday from history; thirty years of American-guaranteed order, patient accumulation, no serious adversary pressing back. India grows with headwinds live. Pakistan, China, now the entire Shia-Muslim-GS axis consolidating behind Iran as a post-colonial symbol, none of these are pausing while India compounds.

War is the new Sport

BB is right that the inflection point is real. But the game from here isn’t linear. Every rival is incentivised to grow just as fast, to find their own cunning, their own guile. The unknowability that makes sport and perhaps geopolitics, with its attendant consequence, worth watching; that’s the actual condition India is operating in now. The Golden Age is here. Whether it compounds or gets contested is the open question. And open questions, as any cricket fan knows, are exactly where it gets interesting.

The figures circulating privately are severe. Tens of thousands dead, according to some accounts. Whether the numbers are precise is less important than where the pressure is concentrated. This is not confined to Tehran or large cities. It is acute in smaller towns and provincial centres.

The big urban areas remain relatively stable. It often is. But towns in the North and across the interior are absorbing the worst of the economic collapse. Inflation there is not political language. It is daily arithmetic.

This marks a shift. The Islamic Republic rested on a broad social base: provincial populations, lower-income groups, and religious constituencies. That base is now under strain. Discontent is no longer segmented. It is shared.

This matters for how Iran’s external position is interpreted. Iran is often discussed as part of “CRINK”, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, an informal alignment framed as a counterweight to Western power. But alignment does not equal economic stabilisation. China can trade and hedge. It cannot absorb internal economic failure in partner states.

That limitation is now visible. External pressure is increasing not because Iran is expanding, but because it is vulnerable. Internal economic stress reduces strategic depth more effectively than sanctions alone.

Public sentiment inside Iran also defies simple categories. There is no widespread appetite for monarchical restoration. Hostility toward Israel is common. Attitudes toward the United States are more differentiated. America is viewed less as an ideological adversary than as a power capable of transactional engagement. This distinction matters. The prevailing demand is not ideological realignment. It is normalisation.

Whether the current system collapses soon or persists in a degraded form is unclear. Political systems rarely fail on schedule. But something fundamental has shifted. Consensus erosion across class and belief does not produce immediate rupture. It produces long-term incapacity.

Iran’s future will not be decided by pressure campaigns, alliance maps, or regime-change theories. It will be decided internally, by whether a governing structure can still command consent under material stress. For now, the most reliable signal is not commentary or statistics. It is the testimony that emerges, briefly, when the connection opens and someone speaks.

Continuing on, X.T.M says that “India’s post-Independence settlement created structural ambiguity” and cites four factors in particular:

• Upper-caste Hindu political dominance at the center
• Muslim demographic concentrations with limited elite integration
• A constitutional secularism that promised equality while leaving communal structures intact
• No acknowledgment that the Muslim League’s victory posed a legitimacy problem

I think his key insight is this: “The constitution guaranteed rights. It could not guarantee renewed political consent.”

The issue as I see it is that the Indian state took the most half-hearted, wishy-washy approach towards the problem of integration. It allowed Muslims to construct bastions of political power while at the same time dividing Hindus along caste and linguistic lines. It allowed criminal elements, many from a Muslim background, to dominate perhaps its most significant sector — the arts — and spread messages of the innate goodness of Indian Muslims and Pakistanis (which is only being suppressed due to both governments’ actions) and the need for peace between Hindus and Muslims, thereby constructing an illusory palace to beguile secularized urban Hindus, while behind the silver screen they fund terrorist attacks in India. The murder of Gulshan Kumar comes to mind as (seemingly) among the least of these crimes, but that he was killed outside a temple is like having salt poured into the wound and mud slung at one’s face. What to speak of 26/11 which has already been talked about, especially recently.

Again, as I mentioned previously, I don’t think the overwhelming issue is that Muslims were allowed to maintain particular political fiefdoms — it’s that Hindus were stymied from establishing systems of political power based on traditional models. When talking about ‘independence’, Moldbug (2008) in chapter 2 of An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives suggests that:

“One test we can apply for independence, which should be pretty conclusive, is that the structures of government in a genuinely independent country should tend to resemble the structures that existed before it was subjugated—rather than the structures of some other country on which it may happen to be, um, dependent. These structures should be especially unlikely to resemble structures in other newly independent countries, with which it presumably has nothing in common.”

Ignoring that the modern idea of statehood (with which some people seem to be rather obsessed) was attached — sometimes rather hastily — onto folk groups who still inhabited the first or second stages of Deleuzoguattarian social organization (1. the primitive territorial machine, 2. barbarian or imperial representation), if we think of the modern state as a kind of social technology, this renders the rebuttals Moldbug makes to to progressive sentiments in this part of An Open Letter about as logical as a complaint that electricians in the Gulf states don’t wire houses ‘Arabicly’ — sure, there might be differences in plug shape, voltage, wattage, etc. between houses in Dubai and D.C., but the general concept and purpose are the same. Electricians in Oman aren’t going to be spelling out “Allah” in copper anymore than their counterparts in Omaha are going to be connecting wires to say “Christ is King”.

That said, I do think there is some merit to his point in the Indian situation. Moldbug approvingly brings up the example of Botswana as one of only two truly independent post-colonial African countries and how its people elected as their first president Seretse Khama, who had been king of the Tswana people since the age of 4 and, much like the INC elites, was a British-educated lawyer by training. Similarly, his party, the Botswana Democratic Party, had been the predominant political power since their independence. Since Moldbug wrote An Open Letter back in 2008, the BDP’s dominance came to an end in 2024 after the largely left-leaning Umbrella for Democratic Change coalition took power. It could thus be argued that despite being heavily based on British poltical forms, the Botswanan state managed to maintain a particularly Batswanan character in a way that India either couldn’t or didn’t. The Indian republic tried to secure the loyalty of the leaders of the princely states and kingdoms of the subcontinent by replacing Britain as the source from which patronage would flow the form of the ‘privy purse’. Ironically, this is not unlike what Moldbug suggests in his blogpost ‘Method and apparatus for safe and effective regime change’ (September 13, 2007) when he talks about discharging and ‘lustrating’ former officials and employees of the American government — that is to say, forbidding them from taking up any official position in the new government. For the sake of brevity, I will use lustration to mean this forbiddance along with the actual removal from office and dissolution of titles.

In short we can sum up the Moldbuggian process of lustration in four short steps:

1. Repeal & replace all laws, regulations, policies, procedures, and personnel (“including all formally unofficial organizations that may in fact have become quasiofficial”!)
2. Create a public database which notes the identity of every former government employee
3. Offer these former officials a Persilschein — an unconditional amnesty for whatever they may have done earlier
4. Prohibit any former official from holding any position in the new government

Lastly, Moldbug suggests that these lustrated officials should:

“…receive any accrued pension benefits, preferably in a lump sum, so that there is no permanent relationship between them and the new government. If anything, these benefits should be increased, so that former officials—many of whom will be unsuitable for any productive employment—suffer no great or general hardship.”

Why does Moldbug consider these steps important? ‘Rebooting’ the government without total lustration is like only dipping your toe into the Rubicon: you’ve already committed treason against the Roman Republic — death is your due anyways, so you may as well go all the way and become the Divine Caesar. He also notes that by not lustrating you are simply ignoring human nature:

“Once your new government contains any employees of the old government, it’s very likely to end up containing most of them. In which case, why bother?”

He points to Poland as a good example of this principle:

“Poland is in the midst of a lustration controversy right now—many people who were successful and influential in Communist Poland have, perhaps unsurprisingly, become successful and influential again.”

In hindsight, we can see that the Indian state, and specifically the heirs of the INC failed on every single one of these fronts to lustrate the Indian government from the officials of the British era.

First, they never even removed all previous personnel (in the form of the Indian royals), much less all laws, regulations, policies, or procedures right from the start. Instead of a one-time payment and the severance of any future relationship, the Indian government offered the aristocrats of the principalities certain continuous privileges and allowances, among which was the privy purse. Then, instead of keeping this vow, the government in 1971 under Indira Gandhi abolished the already gradually shrinking privy purse and their titles as “Ruler”.

Second, as Moldbug pointed out, elites tend to recover from setbacks and rise back to their former status. In China, for example, Mao’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ led to the seizure and redistribution of land and other resources from wealthy landowners — along with a good deal of murder and slaughter. But, this ressentiment-fueled degringolade (to use a Moldbuggian word) seems not to have the permanent effects Mao and the other bandits seem to have desired. Rather:

“…a group of scholars based in America, Britain and China find that Mao’s social re-engineering had a less lasting impact than might be supposed. The grandchildren of the pre-Communist elite have largely regained the status their families once enjoyed. They are a lot more educated and wealthy than other households. Their values and attitudes also differ from the descendants of those who had lower social standing before 1949. They are less bothered by inequality, more entrepreneurial, more pro-market, and more inclined toward individualism and a belief in success through hard work.

…They found that by 2010 the incomes of descendants of the pre-Communist elite were 16-17% higher than those born into families that were underprivileged before 1949. They were also more likely to have completed secondary and tertiary education. They performed significantly better in maths tests.”

– ‘The families of China’s pre-Communist elite remain privileged’, The Economist, September 17, 2020

Instead of either eliminating the institution of Indian royalty in one fell swoop (through total lustration and lump sum remuneration) or formally enshrining them as ceremonial figureheads in the English way, the Indian republic instead the path of half-measures, letting them sup at the teat of state patronage for decades before trying to wean them off by strength.

Of course, we should not be taken aback to learn that the old aristocracy did not exactly let this go without raising a finger. While the republic’s judiciary were of the mind to reject the same initiative brought forth by it’s president one year earlier, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, got it passed through the the legislature thus enshrining it into law as the 26th amendment to the republic’s constitution. This too-late republican overreach led to a score of former nobles taking up in politics, and while some might have failed their bids for election, others, like the Scindias, seem to have found success on both the Congressi and conservative-reactionary sides of Indian politics.

I’m interested to hear what the commentariat thinks of this moment. India’s foreign policy is already locking it into superpower status. Pakistan remains reactive, borrowing survival from whoever will lend it.

The analogy that strikes me: India–Pakistan resembles Russia–Ukraine, except if Ukraine had kept nuclear weapons. The parallels are strong:

• Ukraine, like Pakistan, is a breakaway sibling — the “other half” of a civilizational whole.

• Ukraine, like Pakistan, survives by appealing to larger patrons.

• And interestingly, the GDP ratio gap between Russia and Ukraine is almost exactly the same as between India and Pakistan (please fact check me).

Just as Ukraine is considered the homeland of the Russian Empire (Kievan Rus’), Pakistan carries the legacy of Partition as the “Indus homeland.” That symmetry makes the analogy more than superficial.

On Kabir: I understand his consistent emphasis on Muslim rights and Muslim nationalism. Readers should be aware of that lens. I’m not moderating him out, but I would caution the commentariat against being gaslit into endless provocations by Kabir. The question here is not identity politics, but the direction of Indian and Pakistani foreign policy in a critical moment in global history (decades are happening in weeks).

It was acute with the SCO summit; not just through the headlines, but the atmospherics. The handshakes, the body language, the ease. It’s the kind of thing that barely registered in Western media, but Modi’s presence, standing shoulder to shoulder with Xi, Putin, and Pezeshkian, felt like the curtain rising on a new geopolitical epoch.

And at the center of it all? Donald J. Trump. Not by design, of course. But by consequence.

🔥 The Modi Factor

Let’s go back. Trump has repeatedly humiliated Narendra Modi and India (dead economy?), which needless to say has been silly

But Modi is not reacting emotionally. People misunderstand him if they think this is about pride or vanity. Modi represents Bharat, and he has embodied the Indian state in a way no U.S. president has embodied theirs. Certainly not Trump; who, let’s be clear, represents a dynasty, not a republic.

India’s response is cold, calculated, and strategic. Just like China’s response to U.S. tariffs; not dramatic, but exacting. What you’re seeing is Indian foreign policy in action: no more playing second fiddle, no more being pushed around.

And where does India go to send that message?

To the SCO; a Eurasian forum that now rivals the G7, the G20, and even the UN in symbolic power. A group previously seen as a Chinese pet project now hosts four ancient civilizational cores:

• China, with its Confucian-rooted technocracy.

• India, representing the vibrancy of the Indic world.

• Russia, the ever-restless Orthodox power tired of playing junior partner to Europe.

• The Islamic world, through the Persianate axis (the Stans) and others; heirs to centuries of Islamic governance from Andalusia to Delhi.

This is not the Global South. This is Eurasia; a civilizational axis with spiritual, historical, and strategic ballast.

⚙️ Trump as the Unwitting Architect

Trump doesn’t care for the so-called “liberal international order.” As Steve Bannon once said, America’s future lies in hemispheric dominance — that is, North and South America, not Europe or Asia. Trump’s America First policy is in fact America Alone.

By retreating from Asia and deriding traditional allies, Trump has unshackled Eurasia.

Europe, ravaged by two world wars and saved only by U.S. military might, now finds itself increasingly irrelevant. It cannot counterbalance China. It cannot contain Russia. And most damaging of all, Asia remembers.

Every major Asian civilization has tasted European humiliation:

• India under British scientific colonialism.

• China under opium and unequal treaties.

• The Islamic world carved into mandates and protectorates.

These weren’t just occupations; they were ideologically justified rational subjugations, executed in the name of “progress,” “civilization,” or “science.” Western imperialism was unique in that it was rational; it claimed moral superiority even while enslaving.

Now the tables are turning. In the late-stage decadence of the West, moral certainty has given way to emotional spasms. Its elites oscillate between performative outrage and hollow virtue-signaling. Even Elon Musk’s erratic tantrums feel like the empire’s dying breaths.

Meanwhile, the East, China, India, Russia (?), Iran, has gone cold, calculating, and unemotional. Transactional, not evangelical. They don’t preach; they trade.

🧭 India Chooses Asia

For the last decade, India played both fields. It flirted with the Quad, spoke of the Indo-Pacific, nodded toward NATO-lite partnerships. But the insults have piled up. The hypocrisy has become harder to ignore. And with the SCO, a line has quietly been crossed.

India isn’t Western.

And increasingly, it doesn’t want to be.

It wants to be Asian; and to be treated as a hegemonic power (Pakistan dances around like a bee and stings like a butterfly).

Modi’s embrace of the SCO is not just a snub to Washington. It is a declaration that Asia will no longer be junior. And unlike Western-led forums, the SCO doesn’t come with lectures on human rights, carbon targets, or gender parity. China makes no pretenses; its diplomacy is pragmatic, non-judgmental, and brutally self-interested. For most of Asia, that’s refreshingly honest.

🧨 The Eurasian Century Begins

So what now?

If the 19th century belonged to Europe, and the 20th to America, then the 21st may well belong to Eurasia; not just as a region, but as a civilizational idea (Russia has already made that decision to be a first rate Eurasian rather than a second rate European power). A web of ancient powers, reconnecting, reconfiguring, and finally rising together.

And the man who inadvertently brought this about?

Donald Trump; the unlikely midwife of a Eurasian century!

What does it say that even after spending nearly half a billion dollars on a wedding for his son, India’s wealthiest man doesn’t merit a spellcheck? It says a lot.

🧠 The Chimera of Respect via Capital

There’s a pathology, particularly among upper-caste Indians, that material success will eventually buy the West’s respect. That more Ambanis, more unicorns, more opulence will earn India a seat at the table—not just economically, but civilizationally. But the spelling mistake is the tell.

Respect is not purchased. It is either structurally granted or strategically extracted. The former rarely applies to brown nations.

🧮 The Brahmin–Baniya Compact

Upper-caste Hindu society operates on a twin dynamic:

• The Brahmin, who claims knowledge and legitimacy.
• The Baniya, who accumulates capital as insulation from precarity.

Together, they create a high-caste compact that mocks Pakistan for poverty, idealizes China’s success, and attempts to mirror Western hegemony—without challenging its architecture. But that’s not sovereignty. That’s simulation.

🇨🇳 The Real Winner: China in the Cleft

While South Asia has been obsessively cleaving itself—India vs. Pakistan, Hindu vs. Muslim, upper caste vs. Other—China has mastered the art of sitting in the clefts. It rarely extends unnecessarily. It moves tactically. And it sits wherever the colonial powers once withdrew—whether in Africa, Central Asia, or, more recently, the Russia–Ukraine cleft. Wherever empire exits, China settles.

🧭 South Asia’s Hardening Horizon

As borders calcify and imagination shrinks, we are left with a subcontinent fragmenting by design and by habit.

The great poet Kabir wrote: Do not ask the caste of the saint; ask of his wisdom. Value the sword, not the scabbard.

But caste is now stylized. Wealth is confused for wisdom. And respect—when granted—is misspelled. The soft border of South Asia (the Great Punjab) is hardening (the Sikhs remain a bridge). The thread won’t stitch itself. And China, once again, is watching the seam unravel—silently preparing to fill the cleft. And what will remain? Perhaps only brown billionaires trying to outdo each other in wedding budgets, chasing Western approval, while their names are still mispronounced in policy rooms that matter.

Hamid

Fateful Triangle – China-United States & Taiwan

By Hamid Hussain

November 10, 2022

“Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world”.       Napoleon 1817

In the last two decades, United States and China have emerged as competitors for political and economic influence especially in the Indo-Pacific region. This has invariably influenced the military posture of both countries to secure economic gains. Most strategists are of the view that Taiwan will be the most likely cause of military conflict between China and United States.

China

“Strategic confrontation with the US had entered a period in which containment and counter containment will be the main theme of bilateral ties in the long run.”           Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe

Chinese leadership is of the view that it is right time that United States accept China’s dominant role in the region. China has overcome the ‘century of humiliation’ and views itself as a leader of a new order that will compete with the post World War order established by the West under the leadership of the United States. Chinese strategic community has concluded that United States is in decline in view of the events of the last two decades wasting blood and treasure in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq, earning general hostility from a large swath of the globe and economic meltdown of 2008. This allowed China to gradually enhance its role building relations with its near neighbors using economic clout and then expanding its influence globally.

Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took a fresh look at the collapse of the Soviet Union and learned their own lessons. The party is to be the foundation of stability headed by a strong leader. This meant reversal of many safeguards put in place in 1980s to prevent rise of a single leader like Mao. All economic, internal security and military apparatus has been brought under the control of the party under Xi. CCP has identified ‘five poisons’ that can infect the body politic and cause internal disruption. The list includes democracy, Taiwanese independence movement, Uyghur separatism, Tibetan activism and followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. It systematically tackled each threat to eliminate the risks. Only after domestic pacification and economic measures, Xi embarked on assertiveness in the foreign policy arena.

China’s modus operandi is to gradually increase economic, and military levers to force retreat of the United States from the Indo-Pacific region without resorting to the use of force. This assertiveness rattled the neighborhood and in addition to traditional American allies, others are also now looking at United States to balance the rising power of China. They do not want to get entangled in the new Cold War between two powers but want to secure their own independence of action while securing economic gains. This requires a delicate balancing act and avoiding fixed position on any given economic, political, or military question.

Australia, Japan, and India were not enthusiastic to join the U.S. confrontational position against China. However, increasing assertiveness of China and punitive measures to dissuade them from joining the U.S. alliance had the opposite effect. They now viewed China as a bullying power that was determined to dominate the region and demanding subservience from its neighbors. Japan has been increasing its defense spending for over a decade. In 2021, Japan declared that a Chinese attack on Taiwan will constitute a threat to survival of Japan. In the last several years, United States and Japan have increased defense cooperation. In 2016, US deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea to counter North Korean missile threat but it also had impact on any threat coming from China. Vietnam is acquiring mobile shore based anti-ship missiles, advanced Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) and submarines. It also increased cooperation with U.S. and hosted U.S. ships. Singapore is hosting American surveillance planes and littoral combat ships. Indonesia is strengthening its defense capabilities and Philippines under its new president is revitalizing defense relations with the U.S. and planning to acquire Brahmos cruise missiles from India. In the next few months, we will see if President Xi builds bridges with the neighbors to lessen their fears or escalate after securing an unprecedented third term in the office.

United States

“Our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be collaboration when it can be, and adversarial when it must be”.     U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken

In 2011, Washington announced its ‘Pivot to Asia’ plan. The three main pillars of the strategy including shifting of most U.S. air force, naval and marine assets to the Pacific theatre, strengthening military alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and India and a regional free trade agreement under Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were all aimed at containment of China in military and economic spheres. By 2017, three key strategic documents including National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy and a report by US Trade Representative all labelled China as a ‘rival’ that is working to displace US from its current position. In 2019, China was number one on the list of top ten objectives of the Department of Defense (DoD) and a China Strategy Management Group was created at Pentagon.

Initially the US hoped that economic integration of China in the global capital system will ultimately lead to political liberalization in China. This proved to be another ‘China Mirage’ reminiscent of the policy under President Theodore Roosevelt where China was imagined what it ought to be rather than looking at the facts on the ground. China has lost almost all friends inside the US; strategic community, business and academia are turning anti-China and there is now bipartisan support for confronting China. The US position will likely harden in the coming years and we will need more saner voices in the room.

Taiwan

“Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg”.     Dwight Eisenhower.

Taiwan is a small island with population of 24 million is barely 100 miles away from mainland China. It is not recognized by almost all the world countries and considered as part of China. It has no political, military, diplomatic or economic clout. However, the younger generation now has a distinct Taiwanese identity and there is no evidence that majority of Taiwanese want to be absorbed in China. Crackdowns in Hong Kong has shattered the concept of ‘one country, two systems’ that China wants to project to Taiwan for a peaceful absorption. Taiwan understands its vulnerability to China and wants continuation of status quo.

In the last two years, China has increased its military activity around Taiwan to test the defense capabilities of the tiny island. Chinese fighter jets repeatedly breach Taiwan’s air defense identification zone to test response time. Taiwan must scramble its small air force in response to these incursions putting strain on the pilots and aircrafts. Naval ships routinely cross the median line of the Taiwan Strait. In most recent military exercises, naval and air assets circumvented Taiwan simulating a naval and air blockage. These activities in the context of statement by President Xi that ‘task of Taiwan unification with China cannot be handed over to the next generation’ and recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia are a daily reminder to Taiwanese about their vulnerability.

Taiwan’s only hope for maintenance of status quo is to have the US in its corner. Taiwan acquired some advanced platforms like F-16 fighter jets, attack helicopters. and has planned for acquisition of M1 Abram tanks. However, recent advances of Chinese navy, air force and missile forces and lessons from Ukraine experience has brought the question of asymmetric response to a powerful aggressor on the forefront. The ‘porcupine strategy’ to make Chinese invasion of Taiwan a painful and long drawn conflict rather than a swift victory has opened discussion about Taiwan defense posture.

Taiwan has increased its defense expenditure. It has indigenously developed surface to surface and anti-ship missiles, mine laying capability and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In 2019, Washington sold $15 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, but the pandemic caused a major backlog. Focus is on early warning systems like advanced surveillance radars and drones and asymmetric weapon systems like coastal defense and anti-ship mines, Patriot missile system, Paladin howitzers, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), torpedoes, surface launched Harpoon and air launched Standoff Land Attack Missile – Extended Response (SLAM-ER) missiles, Stinger man portable, anti-aircraft missiles and TOW and Javelin anti-armor rockets.

Taiwan has a little known but a more powerful non-military instrument that guarantees that interests of both US and China ensure a commitment to status quo rather than risking a military conflict. It is Taiwan’s monopoly on Advanced Semi-Conductor (ASC) industry that is now essential component of every technological and military system. Taiwan Semiconductor manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) is supplier of more than ninety percent of global advanced semiconductors (< 10 nm) and largest supplier to both China and US. Any disruption in this supply can have serious economic consequences not only for both countries but a global impact. Taiwanese call it their ‘silicon shield’.

Conclusion

Both China and US want to show their assertiveness but don’t want any military conflict. However, measures that both sides may think as not provocative and cause for conflict can create circumstances where an accident or misstep can start a conflict that neither side wants. In case of conflict, both China and US would like to limit the conflict to Taiwan. However, if history has any lesson about war, it is that war plans don’t survive the first shot and events take a course of their own with unpredictable and usually devastating consequences.

Calculations and perceptions of the strategic communities and leadership of both countries will determine whether status quo will remain, or we will see a military conflict in Taiwan Strait in the next decade. China may conclude that its window of opportunity is in the next 3-5 years where US has not yet fully developed defensive and offensive capability in the South China Sea, solidified alliances in the neighborhood and Taiwan has not fully incorporated its asymmetric advantages in the overall defense. US may take a different lesson from the Ukraine conflict on how to entangle a rival without direct involvement in the conflict. It may conclude that a limited conflict using Taiwan as bait will test China’s political will and military capacity without serious damage to US interests. It can also be used to diplomatically isolate China and degrade its military in a protracted conflict.

The human endeavor will be the determination of Taiwanese to preserve their independence and resist forceful absorption into China. US and China are fully aware about their dependence on Taiwan for ASCs and both countries are investing heavily for indigenous manufacturing of ASCs. In 2020, China spent $20 billion on this initiative and is planning to spend $150 billion for high tech independence. In the US, CHIPS Act authorized $52 billion for ASC industry. Intel will spend $20 to build a facility in Ohio, Samsung $17 billion in Texas and TSMC $12 billion for a facility in Arizona. Once, both China and US become independent in ASC manufacturing then Taiwan’s ‘Silicon Shield’ will not be as effective. TSMC is also aware of it, and they are planning to invest $100 billion in the next three years to specialize in < 5 nm ASCs to stay ahead in the game. This is not only for economic advantage but also to enhance its defensive ‘Silicon Shield’.

A military conflict in Taiwan straits will not be localized and will cause enormous damage to the world economy. The real lesson of Ukraine crisis is economic damage to the European economy causing severe strain on the societies. Economic hardship is causing political instability with clear and present danger of internal upheaval.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia, Czar Nicholas of Russia, Habsburg of Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Sultan entered in a conflict to strengthen their positions and enhance their empires. Four years later, when the first industrial scale slaughter of mankind ended, all four had lost their empires. If a problem is viewed through the military lens, there is either victory or defeat. Win-win scenario is not in military lexicon. One must use a different medium to manage competition among powerful countries. The test of leadership is to lead one’s people to a better future and not to let mistrust, fear, hatred, and insatiable thirst for dominance lead them on the path of death and destruction.

“If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse”.       Cory Booker

Acknowledgements: Author thanks many with in depth knowledge about the subject.

Selected Readings:

Hal Brands & Michael Beckley. Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (New York: W. W. Norton), 2022

Kevin Rudd. The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (New York: Public Affairs), 2022

Graham Allison. Destined For War (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2017

James Bradley. The China Mirage (New York: Little Brown & Co.), 2015

James Steinberg & Michael E. O’Hanlon. Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 2014

Hamid Hussain

Dr. Hamid Hussain is an independent analyst based in New York. For comments & critique coeusconsultant@optonline.net

Defence Journal, November 2022

While Apple is big, a more telling example of India’s potential is at the end of this post. But before that, how did India, a country that struggled to feed itself in the 1950s, get into the running for ‘factory of the world’ ?

In 1950, less than 1% of Indian college students studied science and engineering. By 2022, this number had risen to more than 30%. In fact, science and engineering have become so popular in India today, that a counter culture has arisen in the form of movies like 3 Idiots. Back in 1950, India’s best students were focused on subjects like law and social sciences, primed to manage the Empire. In fact, some have remarked that the independence movement was a result of the British producing too many lawyers in India.

Since independence, a concerted effort has been made by the Indian state to popularize science and engineering. This was done under the aegis of spreading a ‘scientific temper’, starting with the establishment of Vigyan Mandir in 1953. Subsequently, following in the legacy of medieval India’s Jantar Mantars, Nehru planetariums were established in major Indian cities. Further, the establishment of the IIT system gave a formal structure and high standard to engineering education. In 1976, the cultivation of scientific temper was included as a fundamental duty in the Constitution.

By the late 1970s, India’s growing pool of scientists and engineers had attracted attention from abroad, specifically Japanese automakers. This resulted in a dramatic increase in India’s automobile production, more than doubling from 700,000 to 2 million in the 1980s.An entire ecosystem of vendors producing automobile components came up around Suzuki’s Gurgaon factory. It is perhaps surprising that the Indian government did not think about replicating this success in the electronics sector. This oversight turned out to be an enormous missed opportunity.

The post 1990 period saw an acceleration in India’s economic growth, with the software and IT sector taking a prime position both in the export numbers and the economic narrative. However, India was a manufacturing star as well, particularly its pharma, petrochemical and automobile industries.

However, its potential in the wider manufacturing arena remained unrealized and indeed unrecognized. The late 2010s produced new exigencies in the global order, with Western countries trying to pivot away from their dependence on China. In this process, India has emerged as the only real alternative to achieve the technical complexity and economies of scale demanded by modern industry.

An equally important turn of events has been the precipitous decline in India-China relations. If Chinese support for Pakistan had made Indians wary of the CCP, its direct clashes with India on the border have made China enemy number one in the Indian public’s eye. There is a determination at the political and public level to not depend on Chinese manufacturing imports. This mark has already been achieved for toys, cell phones and PPE. Make no mistake, India wants to bring Chinese imports down to zero. This is what ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ (self reliant India) really means.

On the other hand, Western business seems keen to move out of China. The LA Times describes the experience of one European manufacturer to move away from China,

In 2019, he began assessing the possibility of moving some manufacturing capabilities to Vietnam. But he abandoned the plan eight months later after price increases for about half of the company’s projects upset his customers. Product development also took longer — one prototype that would have been completed in three weeks in China required six months in Vietnam.

A review of other countries in Southeast Asia proved even less fruitful, he said.

By late 2020, Gaussorgues turned farther afield — to India. The local electronics and automotive ecosystem offered lower manufacturing costs and easy access to parts. With five employees so far, he aims to start assembly work next year, and hopes to host the majority of manufacturing there after five years.

What is important to note here is that India being able provide an alternative to China is not about the population. SE Asia, where the person in the article first when to has enormously populated countries, all with fantastic port access. India is able to provide an alternative because of the consistent emphasis on science and technology education over the past 70 years.

If you build it, they will come. Eventually.

This author writes sweeping sagas about particular places (London, New York) and clearly researches a lot before he writes. This one covers China from the first opium war to the end of the Qing dynasty. As usual, he has created characters (a British opium trader, a missionary, a Chinese mandarin, a Chinese rebel, a eunuch in the Manchu court, etc) that cover all important events (opium wars, Taiping rebellion, court intrigues, empress Cixi, etc). The book is a fun read and the history is well researched. While you can read many books about the history of the era, this one fills in the social mores, family dynamics etc in ways that a history text cannot. Well worth a read.

And happened to finish the overly long serial “Ruyi, Royal Love in the Palace” on Amazon Prime at the same time. This is a (very fictional) account of Ruyi, the Ula Nara empress in the reign of the Qianlong emperor. The details are ALL fictional, but the serial is lavishly produced and seems to capture the atmosphere of the harem (or what i imagine to be the atmosphere of the harem) very well. The novelist seems to have had some moral purpose in view, so the evil nature of the whole arrangement is perhaps a bit overdone (but it is also possible that in actual practice it was even more evil than this), and the serial is TOO long, going on for 87 episodes where 20 would have been more than enough. And some of the plot devices are also unrealistic (everyone is plotting, plots get discovered all the time, but the emperor never seems to take precautions against them; on the other hand, he too may be constrained the nature of the institution). But slowly but surely it does capture the terrible nature of this institution. Worth skimming through if you don’t have the time for a long soap opera.