As FDR said about Nicaragua's Somoza, "he's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

Aggrieved ancient legacy continental empires such as Russia, China and Iran can join the modern upstart Anglo-American maritime empire capitalist party and prosper. Or they can stew in their resentment about this youthful upstart child of perfidious Albion running the world. "West" is not a geography or an ethno-racial-religious category. It's an institutional matrix. Ask the South Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Singapore. They've understood that the Dutch invented the modern world, the English copied them and the Americans copied the copy. Everyone else adapts or stays poor. The Arab states who signed the Abraham Accords understand this. They need Israel Startup Nation to join and prosper in the modern maritime capitalist party and resolve the clash between Islam and modernity that Bernard Lewis wrote about.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stephen+kotkin+2024&sp=EgIIBA%253D%253D

Sarah Payne, US Naval War College lecture on maritime vs continental empires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8