The Collapse of Western Hegemony: The US-Israeli Axis and the Crisis in the Strait of Hormuz

by Yunus Emre Özgün

The mainstream narrative treats the current escalation in the Middle East as a localized, manageable crisis. It is not. What we are actually watching in real-time is the rapid, structural overextension of the entire Western bloc. To cut through the daily noise and diplomatic theater, I recently sat down with geopolitical analyst K.J. Noh. We broke down the harsh material realities driving this collapse, exploring exactly how Washington is cannibalizing its own global empire, and why the shift toward a multipolar world is no longer just a theory, but a matter of absolute necessity.

“Fuel, oil, gas -these are the lifebloods of capital, and the Strait of Hormuz is the carotid artery,” Noh explains. The recent targeting of energy infrastructure is not merely a tactical maneuver; it is a systemic shock to the global grid.

Yet, Washington operates under the illusion of escalation dominance -a dominance it simply does not possess over Iran. The geography of the 21-mile-wide Strait makes American control a near impossibility. “It is essentially an amphitheater, which Iran controls completely. It has the best seats in the house,” Noh points out. Any American attempt to forcibly retake the Strait is, in his words, a “suicide run” into a kill zone.

To actually secure that territory, the US would have to wage a Vietnam-scale land war. Despite lacking the industrial capacity and domestic resolve for such a bloodbath, Washington is blindly marching forward, mobilizing the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions.

A Fraudulent Security Umbrella

As the US pours its dwindling magazine depth into the Middle East, it is actively cannibalizing its own Indo-Pacific defenses. The US security umbrella, Noh argues, has revealed itself to be completely fraudulent. “By putting yourself under the US security umbrella, you haven’t gained any security. You’ve essentially placed a target on yourself.”

Why is the US moving THAAD missiles out of South Korea?

Because Washington is bleeding interceptors in the Middle East and lacks the magazine depth to defend both fronts simultaneously. Seoul literally blew a hole in its own constitution, bypassing its legislature and the will of its people, to host the THAAD missile defense system at Washington’s behest—alienating China in the process. Now, the US is quietly packing up THAAD and Patriot batteries from South Korea and shipping them out to protect its Middle Eastern assets.

It brings to mind Henry Kissinger’s infamous dictum: To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be an ally is fatal. Frontline proxies like South Korea -a trapped vassal state whose military is still formally under US wartime operational control – are finding out exactly what that fatal betrayal looks like.

Kakistocracies and the Illusion of European Democracy

While the empire abandons its Pacific perimeter, the internal rot within the European core is accelerating. The EU elite are actively waging an economic war against their own working class. In direct retaliation to two years of grueling farmer protests, Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission arrogantly signed massive agricultural deals with Australia and Mercosur, deliberately flooding the domestic market.

Can sending tractors to Brussels save the European working class from its own leaders? Noh is brutally blunt: No.

“The ‘European democracies’ are really kakistocracies; they’re plutocracies and oligarchies masquerading as democracies,” he asserts. The elite will do whatever they please, and the working class will be forced to suffer the consequences. Just as they ignored the Yellow Vests, Brussels will ignore the farmers. In fact, Noh warns that Europe is entirely capable of reverting to “full fascism” just to enforce the hegemony of its ruling class.

This deep ideological rot is exactly why Europe is paralyzed. They know they are lashed to a sinking empire, yet their deeply ingrained, racist assumptions prevent them from accepting a multipolar world where they must treat the Global South as equals. They would rather cling to a predatory system that unfairly extracts up to $10 trillion a year from the developing world than accept a win-win integration with Eurasia.

What is Required for True National Sovereignty?

If there is a way out of this catastrophic trap, it lies in the framework currently being built by the multipolar world. But as Noh acutely observes, true national liberation requires more than just a flag. It requires three definitive pillars:

• Digital Sovereignty: Breaking free from Washington’s monopoly over the global information sphere and its “digital Wolfowitz doctrine.”
• Energy Sovereignty: Transitioning to renewables. As Noh states, “Nobody controls the sun. Nobody controls the wind.” These are global public goods that free nations from the grip of US-controlled fossil fuel choke points.
• Financial Sovereignty: De-dollarization. Stripping the US of its unlimited credit card -the dollar seigniorage -that allows it to externalize the costs of its endless wars onto the rest of the planet.

We are standing at a highly volatile juncture. The next moves made by the Trump-Netanyahu axis could engulf the entire region in total war. But dialectically, this is also a moment of profound promise. The infrastructure for a genuinely multilateral order is already being laid.

To get there, however, we must do the hardest work of all: We must decolonize our minds from the propaganda of a dying empire.”

[This article was originally published on Yunus Emre Özgün’s Substack]