Iran and Multipolar Transition: A Structural Realist Critique of Regime-Change Paradigms and the January 2026 Crisis

 

Abstract

This paper interrogates prevailing Western strategic narratives concerning the Islamic Republic of Iran, with particular attention to the January 2026 crisis and its interpretation within dominant policy frameworks. Drawing upon structural realist theory, political-economy analysis, and critical scholarship on interventionism, we argue that conventional threat-centric framings of Iranian behavior obscure the mechanisms through which external pressure, economic warfare, and information operations shape both state responses and domestic unrest. The January 2026 events—characterized by contested casualty figures, information blackouts, and competing attribution claims—exemplify the epistemological challenges inherent in assessing hybrid conflict scenarios where conventional protest, armed insurgency, state repression, and external interference converge. This analysis integrates perspectives from Mearsheimer, Sachs, and other scholars who emphasize structural drivers of conflict, the perverse effects of coercive diplomacy, and the risks of conflating geopolitical competition with humanitarian intervention. We conclude that sustainable regional equilibrium requires abandoning maximalist regime-change objectives in favor of frameworks that acknowledge sovereignty constraints, economic interdependence, and the limits of military coercion in shaping domestic political outcomes.

I. Introduction: Analytical Frameworks and the Problem of Threat Inflation

The geopolitical significance of the Islamic Republic of Iran remains central to contemporary debates concerning global security architecture, energy system resilience, and the normative foundations of post-Cold War international order. Iran occupies a critical geostrategic position at the convergence of major power competition, controlling access to approximately 20 percent of global petroleum flows through the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining asymmetric deterrence capabilities through regional network partnerships, and serving as a focal point for contestation over nuclear nonproliferation norms and Middle East regional order.

Yet prevailing discourse in Western policy communities has systematically compressed this multidimensional complexity into reductive binaries: rogue state versus responsible actor, nuclear aspirant versus proliferation threat, regional stabilizer versus disruptive revisionist. Such framings, while politically expedient for coalition-building and threat justification, risk fundamental analytical distortion. They obscure the heterogeneity of Iranian domestic politics, mischaracterize the structural economic determinants of social unrest, and underestimate the adaptive resilience of institutions that have absorbed multiple waves of external pressure since 1979.

The January 2026 crisis—emerging from currency collapse, accelerating inflation, and cascading utility failures—illustrates the dangers of interpretive overreach. Western media and policy discourse rapidly framed escalating protests as evidence of imminent regime collapse, drawing parallels to revolutionary moments in Eastern Europe, the Arab Spring, and recent events in Venezuela. Yet such analogies neglect critical contextual differences: Iran's deep institutional capacity for coercive control, the absence of unified opposition leadership with mass mobilization capacity, the sectarian and ethnic fragmentation that complicates cross-regional coordination, and—crucially—the demonstrable role of external actors in amplifying unrest through economic warfare, information operations, and direct support to armed insurgent groups.

This paper advances an alternative analytical framework grounded in three core propositions:

1. Structural Economic Causality: Domestic unrest in Iran is primarily driven by macroeconomic stress—currency instability, inflation, wage erosion, and service delivery failures—rather than ideological rejection of the political system. External sanctions, financial isolation, and deliberate economic destabilization constitute principal drivers of these material conditions.

2. Hybrid Warfare Dynamics: The January 2026 crisis exhibits characteristics consistent with hybrid conflict scenarios in which genuine popular grievances are systematically instrumentalized through external information operations, logistical support to armed groups, and coordinated diplomatic-military pressure designed to amplify chaos rather than resolve underlying drivers of instability.

3. Epistemological Uncertainty: Contested casualty figures, information blackouts, and competing attribution claims render conclusive assessment of the January 2026 events impossible based on currently available evidence. Claims ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of deaths reflect not merely information scarcity but fundamental disagreements over methodology, source credibility, and the political utility of casualty inflation in justifying external intervention.

In developing these arguments, we engage directly with scholarship from John Mearsheimer on security dilemmas and great power competition, Jeffrey Sachs on economic warfare and political economy, and complementary analyses from Douglas Macgregor, Alastair Crooke, and Scott Ritter concerning the limits of military coercion and the escalation dynamics inherent in maximalist regime-change strategies.

II. Geostrategic Context: Iran in the Emerging Multipolar Order

II.i. Energy Security and Maritime Chokepoints

Iran's strategic significance derives first from its position astride critical energy infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 21 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products transited in 2024, represents the world's most important oil chokepoint. Iranian capabilities to threaten closure—whether through mine deployment, anti-ship missile systems, or asymmetric naval tactics—confer deterrent value disproportionate to conventional military metrics.

This geographic reality shapes Iranian strategic calculus independent of ideological orientation. Any Iranian government, regardless of political character, would prioritize maintaining credible deterrence against threats to territorial integrity and would leverage chokepoint geography as a component of that deterrence architecture. Western threat assessments that attribute such capabilities exclusively to regime ideology fundamentally mischaracterize structural incentives.

II.ii. Regional Network Architecture and Deterrence-by-Proxy

Iran's regional influence operates through what Tehran terms the "Axis of Resistance"—a network encompassing Hezbollah in Lebanon, various Iraqi Shia militias, Syrian government forces, and Yemeni Houthi forces. Western analysis typically frames these relationships through a principal-agent model emphasizing Iranian control and instrumentalization. This framework, while containing elements of accuracy, obscures the substantial autonomy, local political embeddedness, and indigenous grievance structures that animate these actors.

Hezbollah's institutional capacity reflects decades of social service provision, political representation within Lebanese sectarian governance, and military effectiveness demonstrated in the 2006 Lebanon War. Iraqi Shia militias emerged from sectarian civil war dynamics, Iranian support notwithstanding. Houthi resilience against Saudi-led coalition operations since 2015 reflects Yemeni tribal structures and local governance capacity rather than mere Iranian logistics.

The June 2025 twelve-day war between Israel and Iran, involving direct strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure followed by U.S. attacks on enrichment facilities, fundamentally altered regional deterrence calculations. While Western assessments emphasized Iranian strategic degradation, the survival of core state institutions, continued functioning of government services, and rapid reconstitution efforts suggested greater resilience than anticipated. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's January 2026 claims that "Iran has reconstructed everything that was damaged" may involve strategic exaggeration, yet available evidence indicates substantial recovery of critical capabilities.

II.iii. The Multipolar Transition and Sino-Russian-Iranian Alignment

Iran's strategic orientation has shifted decisively toward deeper integration with China and Russia as Western sanctions tightened and diplomatic pathways narrowed. The March 2021 Iran-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, involving potential $400 billion in Chinese investment over 25 years, signals Beijing's long-term commitment despite implementation delays. Russian-Iranian defense cooperation expanded substantially following Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Iranian drone transfers to Russia demonstrating reversed technology flows from traditional patterns.

This alignment reflects not ideological affinity but structural adaptation to Western exclusion. Chinese energy import requirements, Russian security interests in limiting Western influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, and Iranian imperative to circumvent sanctions create convergent incentives for cooperation. The emerging Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework, inclusion of Iran in BRICS expansion discussions, and development of sanctions-evasion mechanisms through alternative financial architectures collectively represent incremental construction of parallel international systems that reduce Western leverage.

Western strategic planning that fails to account for these structural alignments—treating Iran as isolated and therefore susceptible to coercive pressure—fundamentally misreads contemporary geopolitical realities.

III. The January 2026 Crisis: Contested Narratives and Analytical Challenges

III.i. Economic Antecedents and Triggering Mechanisms

Protests erupted in Tehran's Grand Bazaar on December 28, 2025, initially focused on currency collapse and price inflation. The Iranian rial, trading at approximately 700,000 to the dollar in January 2025, deteriorated to over 1.4 million to the dollar by late December 2025—a decline of 100 percent within twelve months. This currency shock translated directly into purchasing power collapse for wage earners, inventory losses for merchants, and operational impossibility for businesses dependent on imported inputs.

The World Bank's October 2025 projection of economic contraction in both 2025 and 2026, with inflation approaching 60 percent annually, reflected structural economic distress exacerbated by sanctions, oil export restrictions, and financial isolation. The reimposition of UN sanctions in September 2025 following E3 snapback mechanisms further constrained policy space for macroeconomic stabilization.

These material conditions—currency volatility, inflation, declining real wages, utility service failures—constitute the immediate triggers for protest mobilization. As Jeffrey Sachs emphasizes, exchange-rate instability functions not as neutral market adjustment but as a transmission mechanism through which external financial pressure translates into domestic political instability. Sanctions-induced financial isolation exposes Iran to speculative pressures, informal currency market manipulation, and capital flight dynamics that amplify volatility and undermine monetary policy effectiveness.

Western discourse that attributes unrest primarily to political repression or ideological rejection of the Islamic Republic systematically neglects these structural economic drivers. While governance failures and corruption certainly contribute to public frustration, the immediate catalyst—and the explanatory variable for timing—remains economic rather than purely political.

III.ii. Escalation Dynamics and the January 8-9 Crisis

Protests intensified dramatically on January 8, 2026, coinciding with coordinated calls for demonstrations from various exile opposition groups. The subsequent 48 hours witnessed the most lethal phase of confrontation, with casualty estimates varying by orders of magnitude depending on source credibility and methodological approach.

Iranian authorities imposed near-total internet shutdown beginning January 8, restricting external verification of events and creating what Amnesty International termed "digital darkness" conducive to large-scale violence. Mobile communications were similarly disrupted, preventing coordination among rioters. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged on January 17 that "several thousand" people had been killed, while attributing primary responsibility to rioters and "foreign enemies." 

III.iii. Information Warfare and Attribution Contestation

The fundamental epistemological challenge concerns not merely casualty numbers but attribution of responsibility. Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, maintain that "armed terrorists" operating under external direction—specifically identifying U.S. and Israeli intelligence services—deliberately escalated violence to maximize casualties and justify external intervention. Araghchi's January 14 interview with Fox News characterized events as a transition from "peaceful protests" to "terrorist operations" involving armed groups "shooting at police officers, security forces and also at the people."

Several elements complicate simple dismissal of these claims:

1. Documented Armed Group Activity: Iraqi Shia militia sources confirmed to Iran International and other outlets that approximately 60 buses carrying armed fighters crossed from Iraq into Iran during the crisis period, ostensibly for "pilgrimage" but deployed for protest suppression. However, reports also document Kurdish insurgent groups, including the Kurdistan Freedom Party, attacking IRGC bases in Kermanshah province with claimed significant casualties.

2. Casualty Patterns Among Security Forces: Iranian state media reported over 121 security personnel killed. While this figure is substantially lower than protester casualties in all available estimates, it exceeds typical patterns from previous protest waves and suggests armed confrontation rather than solely unarmed protest.

3. Evidence of External Support: Congressional Research Service reporting notes that during the June 2025 war, U.S. airstrikes "severely damaged" Iranian nuclear sites, degrading deterrence capacity. President Trump's January 2026 statements—"We are locked and loaded" and threats of intervention if protesters were killed—created explicit linkage between internal unrest and external military action. Judge Napolitano and other analysts have documented extensive U.S. and Israeli intelligence activity within Iran, including support to separatist groups.

4. Historical Precedent: Jeffrey Sachs' January 5, 2026 UN Security Council testimony documented U.S. bombing operations in seven countries during 2025 (Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela) without Security Council authorization, establishing pattern of unilateral interventionism that lends credibility to Iranian claims of external orchestration.

5. Disinformation Ecosystem: Erkan Saka's documented analysis of 2022-2026 protest coverage identifies multiple instances where international media "occasionally spread unverified or exaggerated claims about the scale and nature of protests in Iran," including recirculation of old videos as current footage and amplification of exile-linked sources prone to inflation of casualty figures for political purposes.

The competing narratives—popular uprising met with state violence versus externally orchestrated destabilization operation instrumentalizing genuine grievances—likely both contain elements of truth. Genuine economic distress provided the foundation for protest mobilization. External actors—documented in public statements, intelligence reporting, and diplomatic communications—systematically amplified unrest through information operations, material support to armed groups, and diplomatic-military pressure. Iranian security forces employed lethal force at scale, evidenced by verified video documentation and hospital reports. Armed insurgent groups exploited chaos to attack state institutions.

Disentangling these interwoven dynamics requires analytical humility and resistance to premature conclusions that serve predetermined policy preferences.

IV. Structural Realist Perspectives: Mearsheimer on Security Dilemmas and Great Power Competition

John Mearsheimer's January 14, 2026 analysis with Lt. Col. Danny Davis provides crucial theoretical framing. Mearsheimer argues that the central goal of U.S.-Israeli strategy is "not simply regime change, but also to break apart Iran, just as happened in Syria." This assessment situates Iranian events within broader great power competition dynamics rather than as isolated humanitarian crisis.

Mearsheimer's January 15 interview with Judge Napolitano reinforced this structural analysis, emphasizing that Iranian actions constitute responses within a contested security environment shaped by external threats rather than uncaused aggression. The security dilemma framework—where defensive measures by one state are interpreted as offensive preparations by rivals, triggering reciprocal escalation—illuminates how Iranian regional network development, missile programs, and nuclear hedging strategies reflect rational responses to existential threats rather than inherent revisionism.

Key elements of Mearsheimer's analysis relevant to current crisis:

1. Israel as Primary Driver: Israeli strategic objectives center on permanent Iranian strategic degradation, with U.S. policy substantially shaped by Israeli preferences rather than independent American interests.

2. Failure of Coercive Strategy: Continuous projection of military threat hardens rather than moderates Iranian resolve, entrenching defensive nationalism and empowering hardline factions.

3. Underestimation of Regional Complexity: Breaking apart Iran—whether through separatist insurgencies in Kurdish, Arab, or Baloch regions—risks uncontrollable regional fragmentation with spillover effects throughout Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Persian Gulf.

4. Lack of Sustainable Endgame: Neither regime change nor territorial partition offers stable equilibrium. Post-collapse scenarios—whether failed state fragmentation, civil war, or authoritarian reconsolidation under different leadership—all present worse outcomes for regional stability than negotiated accommodation.

Mearsheimer's assessment that "the strategy has failed" reflects evaluation that neither June 2025 military strikes nor January 2026 internal unrest has produced anticipated collapse or capitulation. Iranian state institutions demonstrated resilience, reconstitution capacity exceeded Western estimates, and popular mobilization—while substantial—lacked organizational coherence and cross-regional coordination necessary for revolutionary transformation.

V. Political Economy Analysis: Jeffrey Sachs on Economic Warfare and Hybrid Conflict

Professor Jeffrey Sachs' recent analyses—including his January 5, 2026 UN Security Council testimony and subsequent interviews—provide essential political-economy framing for understanding the January 2026 crisis. Sachs' central argument positions current events within a "well-known, illegal, immoral" regime-change playbook that the U.S. has deployed systematically across multiple theaters.

V.i. Economic Warfare as Primary Weapon

Sachs emphasizes that sanctions function not as diplomatic tools but as instruments of large-scale economic disruption designed to create conditions for political instability. The reimposition of comprehensive sanctions in September 2025, combined with secondary sanctions threatening 25 percent tariffs on any country conducting business with Iran (announced January 12, 2026), represents economic warfare aimed at systemic collapse.

The transmission mechanisms operate through:

1. Currency Destabilization: Financial isolation severs access to international banking, constraining currency inflows and exposing domestic currency to speculative attack and manipulation.

2. Inflation Acceleration: Import restrictions and currency devaluation drive consumer price inflation, eroding real wages and purchasing power.

3. Capital Flight: Uncertainty and anticipated further deterioration incentivize capital outflows, further pressuring currency and reducing domestic investment.

4. Rent-Seeking Empowerment: Sanctions create artificial scarcity that empowers informal networks, black market operators, and security-linked economic actors who profit from arbitrage opportunities, weakening rather than strengthening social forces favoring liberalization.

V.ii. The Hybrid Warfare Playbook

Sachs' analysis identifies a systematic pattern across Venezuela and Iran:

Phase 1 - Economic Strangulation: Comprehensive sanctions targeting oil exports, financial transactions, and international trade.

Phase 2 - Amplification of Grievances: Information operations emphasizing regime corruption, repression, and governance failures while obscuring external role in economic deterioration.

Phase 3 - Support to Opposition: Material support, coordination, and legitimation of opposition groups, including armed insurgents.

Phase 4 - Provocation and Escalation: Public threats of military intervention conditional on regime response to unrest, creating impossible dilemma where both repression and tolerance risk external attack.

Phase 5 - Military Action: Direct strikes framed as humanitarian intervention, protection of civilians, or enforcement of international norms.

This sequence—visible in Venezuela's January 2026 crisis culminating in Maduro's forcible removal—provides template for Iranian scenario. Trump's "locked and loaded" rhetoric, threats of 25 percent tariffs on countries trading with Iran, and explicit linkage between protest casualties and military intervention mirror Venezuelan precedents.

V.iii. Contradictions in Western Strategy

Sachs identifies fundamental contradiction: measures intended to weaken the Iranian state instead degrade economic conditions for the broader population while entrenching non-transparent networks and security-linked economic actors best positioned to operate under sanctions. This dynamic narrows rather than expands the social base for liberalization, strengthening precisely those constituencies most resistant to political opening.

Moreover, economic coercion can reinforce nationalist solidarity. Populations suffering economic hardship may simultaneously criticize governance performance while rejecting externally driven political transformation, particularly when external pressure is perceived as exacerbating domestic suffering. Large-scale pro-regime demonstrations following protest waves—dismissed by Western media as "artificial" or "coerced"—reflect real constituencies who prioritize sovereignty and stability under external pressure.

VI. Strategic Assessments from Macgregor, Crooke, and Ritter

VI.i. Douglas Macgregor: Questioning Direct Threat Narratives

Colonel Douglas Macgregor challenges the foundational premise that Iran poses direct threat to U.S. national security. Iranian regional activities—support to Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, or Houthi forces—do not constitute direct aggression against the United States. Rather, they represent asymmetric deterrence strategies within a contested regional environment where Iranian interests conflict with Israeli and Saudi objectives.

Macgregor argues that conflating Iranian regional influence with existential threat to the United States serves Israeli strategic objectives rather than independent American interests. This conflation supports policy choices—comprehensive sanctions, military strikes, regime-change operations—that impose substantial costs on the United States (financial expenditure, regional instability, proliferation of armed groups) without corresponding strategic benefits.

The emphasis on military coercion, Macgregor contends, fails to achieve stated objectives while generating perverse consequences: hardening Iranian resolve, empowering hardline factions, justifying military expenditure and nuclear hedging, and foreclosing diplomatic pathways that might achieve sustainable accommodation.

VI.ii. Alastair Crooke: Political Utility of Threat Inflation

Alastair Crooke's analysis emphasizes the domestic political utility of Iranian threat narratives within both U.S. and Israeli political systems. Portraying Iran as existential threat serves multiple functions: justifying military expenditure, mobilizing domestic political constituencies, deflecting attention from internal governance challenges, and maintaining coalition cohesion through external enemy construction.

This political utility, Crooke argues, creates incentive for threat inflation independent of empirical threat assessment. The invocation of Iranian "aggression" becomes ritualistic performance serving domestic mobilization rather than accurate strategic analysis. Such dynamics sacrifice precision in policy for political convenience.

Crooke further emphasizes information warfare dimensions. Western media coverage systematically amplifies narratives emphasizing Iranian aggression, repression, and instability while marginalizing structural economic analysis or contextual factors that might complicate preferred policy conclusions. This asymmetric information environment constrains public debate and narrows perceived policy options.

VI.iii. Scott Ritter: Escalation Traps and Termination Criteria

Scott Ritter's warnings concerning escalation traps prove particularly salient in current context. The spiral wherein each side's defensive measures are interpreted as offensive preparations by rivals creates self-reinforcing escalation dynamics. Iranian military preparations responding to Israeli and U.S. threats are characterized as aggressive posturing justifying further pressure. Western military deployments and economic warfare are portrayed as defensive necessity responding to Iranian aggression.

Critically, Ritter emphasizes absence of clear termination criteria in current U.S. strategy. What specific Iranian actions would constitute acceptable compliance? What outcomes would justify sanctions relief or diplomatic normalization? Absence of articulated, achievable benchmarks suggests objectives extend beyond behavioral modification to regime elimination—a maximalist goal incompatible with negotiated settlement.

Ritter warns that strategies lacking termination criteria risk open-ended conflict with unpredictable escalation potential, particularly given Iranian asymmetric capabilities, regional network architecture, and great power backing from Russia and China.

VII. Policy Implications: Beyond Regime-Change Maximalism

VII.i. Failure of Coercive Strategies

The June 2025 military campaign and January 2026 crisis together demonstrate the limits of coercive approaches. Despite unprecedented military pressure—direct strikes on nuclear facilities, comprehensive sanctions, information operations, support to insurgent groups—Iranian state institutions have not collapsed. Key leadership remains in place, military reconstitution proceeds, and popular mobilization lacks organizational coherence necessary for revolutionary transformation.

Mearsheimer's assessment that "the strategy has failed" reflects this empirical reality. Maximalist objectives—regime elimination, territorial partition, comprehensive strategic degradation—have not been achieved despite deployment of extensive coercive instruments.

VII.ii. Perverse Consequences of Economic Warfare

Sachs' political-economy analysis reveals how economic warfare generates effects opposite to stated intentions. Rather than empowering moderate forces favoring accommodation, sanctions:

• Degrade living conditions for general population while enriching sanctions-evading networks
• Strengthen nationalist solidarity against perceived external aggression
• Empower security-linked economic actors resistant to political opening
• Reduce policy space for stabilization measures
• Create humanitarian suffering without corresponding political transformation

These dynamics suggest economic warfare constitutes strategic liability rather than asset, imposing costs without generating leverage toward stated objectives.

VII.iii. Escalation Risks in Multipolar Context

Unlike Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), or Syria (2011-present), Iran operates within substantially different strategic context:

1. Great Power Backing: Chinese economic integration and Russian security cooperation provide diplomatic cover, sanctions-evasion mechanisms, and potential military support.

2. Asymmetric Deterrence: Regional network architecture, anti-ship capabilities, and cyber warfare capacity enable costly retaliation against U.S. and allied interests.

3. Nuclear Threshold Proximity: Degradation of conventional deterrence may accelerate nuclear hedging, increasing rather than decreasing proliferation risk.

4. Regional Fragmentation Risks: Iranian state collapse could unleash sectarian civil war, refugee flows, and power vacuums exploited by ISIS-like formations, destabilizing Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia.

These factors create escalation potential exceeding previous interventions, with outcomes potentially including direct great power confrontation.

VII.iv. Alternative Framework: Structural Accommodation

An alternative approach would acknowledge structural realities rather than pursuing unachievable maximalist objectives:

1. Articulate Clear, Achievable Benchmarks: Replace vague demands for "behavioral change" with specific, verifiable commitments on nuclear enrichment limits, regional activities, and human rights that Iran could plausibly accept.

2. Link Sanctions Relief to Mutual Compliance: Offer phased sanctions removal tied to Iranian performance on articulated benchmarks, creating positive incentives rather than solely punitive measures.

3. Regional Security Architecture: Pursue inclusive frameworks incorporating Iran, Gulf Cooperation Council states, Turkey, and other stakeholders in confidence-building measures addressing maritime security, nuclear non-proliferation, and terrorism.

4. Economic Stabilization Support: Recognize that Iranian economic crisis exacerbates rather than resolves security challenges. Targeted humanitarian exceptions, reconstruction support, and infrastructure investment could reduce desperation driving regional policies.

5. Great Power Coordination: Engage China and Russia in multilateral frameworks rather than attempting unilateral coercion certain to trigger great power resistance.

6. Acknowledgment of Sovereignty Constraints: Accept that external actors cannot reliably engineer internal political outcomes through coercion. Iranian political evolution will reflect internal dynamics rather than external pressure.

This framework abandons regime-change maximalism in favor of sustainable equilibrium acknowledging sovereignty constraints, great power realities, and limits of coercive instruments. It prioritizes risk mitigation over transformative objectives, stability over ideological satisfaction.

VIII. Conclusion: Strategic Humility in an Age of Contested Information

The January 2026 crisis exemplifies the challenges confronting strategic analysis in an era of hybrid warfare, contested information, and multipolar power distribution. Simple narratives—whether framing events as popular revolution crushed by tyranny or as externally orchestrated destabilization operation—fail to capture the complex interaction of genuine grievances, economic stress, external interference, state repression, and armed insurgency that characterizes contemporary conflict.

Responsible analysis requires epistemic humility: acknowledging uncertainty, resisting premature conclusions, and distinguishing between verified facts and politically motivated claims. It requires structural thinking that examines how external pressure shapes domestic dynamics, how economic warfare generates perverse consequences, and how security dilemmas drive escalatory spirals.

The scholarly perspectives examined here—Mearsheimer on great power competition and security dilemmas, Sachs on economic warfare and hybrid conflict, Macgregor on threat inflation, Crooke on information warfare, Ritter on escalation dynamics—collectively provide alternative framework emphasizing structural drivers, unintended consequences, and limits of coercive power.

For policymakers, the implications are clear: maximalist regime-change objectives, comprehensive economic warfare, and military coercion have failed to achieve stated goals while generating substantial costs and risks. Sustainable regional equilibrium requires abandoning these approaches in favor of frameworks acknowledging sovereignty constraints, great power realities, economic interdependence, and the limits of external actors to engineer domestic political outcomes.

This reorientation should not be construed as appeasement or moral relativism. Rather, it represents rigorous strategic analysis in service of sustainable peace and stability—recognizing that policies generating chaos, humanitarian suffering, and escalation risks without corresponding achievement of objectives constitute strategic failure regardless of moral righteousness claims.

The challenge for the G7 and broader international community is whether to persist with demonstrably failing approaches or to undertake fundamental strategic reorientation toward risk mitigation, diplomatic accommodation, and acknowledgment of multipolarity's structural constraints. The January 2026 crisis demonstrates the urgent necessity of this choice.