The Age of Paranoid Power: Why Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Jerusalem No Longer Trust Reality

 

Today’s greatest threat isn’t one aggressive nation, but a world of terrified leaders who distrust reality, overreact to shadows, and govern as if disaster is always seconds away.

I watch the world like a man standing in a room full of twitchy strangers, fingers hovering over triggers, eyes darting at shadows. This is modern geopolitics. Not the chessboard of calm grandmasters we were promised in textbooks, but a cracked mirror where every state sees an enemy staring back. Strategy used to be about patience and planning. Now it’s about fear management, about who panics first and who panics louder. Governments don’t act like sober adults weighing costs and benefits anymore. They act like traumatized survivors, convinced betrayal is always one step away and catastrophe is already late.

In the United States, fear wears a suit and calls itself vigilance. Every election is treated like a crime scene before the votes are even counted. Foreign interference is no longer a risk to be assessed; it’s an assumption baked into the system. Since the 2016 election, investigations, intelligence briefings, and congressional hearings have kept the country locked in a permanent posture of suspicion. Cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns, and influence operations are real, but the response has turned existential. Washington behaves like a house that’s been robbed once and now hears footsteps in every creak of the floor. The result is a foreign policy that often treats ambiguity as aggression and uncertainty as intent. When you expect sabotage everywhere, restraint starts to look like weakness. A scared guard shoots first and asks questions at the morgue.

China operates from a deeper wound. Its leaders don’t just remember humiliation; they institutionalize it. The century of foreign domination is not ancient history in Beijing. It is curriculum, propaganda, and political oxygen. Every naval patrol in the South China Sea, every semiconductor restriction, every alliance meeting in Asia is read through the same lens: containment is coming, betrayal is inevitable, and survival requires control. The ruling party governs as if losing grip for even a second means national collapse. Internal dissent is treated as foreign manipulation. Economic pressure is framed as siege warfare. When a government believes history is out to get it, paranoia becomes policy. Pre-emption feels rational. Waiting feels suicidal.

Russia is fear forged into muscle memory. Decades of NATO expansion, real or perceived, fused with the collapse of the Soviet Union to create a state that sees encirclement in every neighbor’s handshake. Protests are not grievances; they are Western plots. Sanctions are not punishment; they are acts of war. Even peaceful alliances are treated like loaded guns pointed at Moscow’s door. This mindset did not begin with the invasion of Ukraine, but it found its most violent expression there. The Kremlin acted not because invasion made strategic sense in the long run, but because delay felt dangerous. When leaders convince themselves that tomorrow will be worse than today, they choose escalation and call it defense. A cornered bear doesn’t negotiate; it lashes out.

In Iran and Israel, fear is not abstract. It is lived, rehearsed, and passed down. Iran’s leadership governs with the memory of coups, invasions, and sanctions that crippled its economy and legitimacy. Israel governs with the memory of annihilation narrowly avoided and violence constantly returning. In both cases, survival psychology dominates. Pre-emption feels safer than patience. A missile not launched today is imagined landing tomorrow. This logic turns intelligence estimates into self-fulfilling prophecies. When both sides assume the other is minutes away from catastrophe, diplomacy shrinks and trigger fingers grow restless. The past does not merely inform policy; it haunts it.

The numbers tell the same ugly story. Global military spending surpassed $2 trillion in the early 2020s, the highest level ever recorded. That is not the behavior of a confident world. That is the behavior of a nervous one. Arms races thrive on distrust. Missile defense systems, hypersonic weapons, cyber commands, and space forces are sold as stabilizers, but they often do the opposite. They shorten decision windows and magnify worst-case thinking. When leaders believe an enemy can strike faster than ever, they feel pressured to strike first. When the clock runs faster, mistakes multiply.

Information warfare pours gasoline on this fire. Social media floods leaders and citizens alike with rumors, leaks, and half-truths moving at the speed of outrage. Reality becomes slippery. Every video might be fake, every silence suspicious, every denial proof of guilt. Governing in that environment is like steering through fog while being screamed at from all sides. Trust collapses not just between nations, but between leaders and facts themselves. When reality is doubted, paranoia fills the gap. Decisions get made on vibes, instincts, and worst nightmares.

I hear diplomats talk about de-escalation, but their voices sound small in rooms dominated by security hawks. Fear has better talking points. Fear is easier to sell to voters than patience. Fear wins elections. Leaders learn quickly that calming people down is risky, but scaring them straight is profitable. So they inflate threats, dramatize intelligence, and frame every compromise as surrender. Over time, this performance becomes belief. The mask sticks. Leaders start trusting their own propaganda. If you lie to yourself long enough, the lie starts giving orders.

This is how misjudgment becomes inevitable. When everyone assumes hostile intent, every move confirms it. A military exercise becomes a rehearsal for invasion. A sanction becomes proof of aggression. A defensive alliance becomes a noose. Diplomacy weakens not because it fails, but because no one believes in it anymore. Talking looks naive in a world addicted to suspicion. And so conflict stops being an accident. It becomes the expected outcome of a system designed around fear.

The greatest danger we face is not one rogue state or one mad leader. It is a global mindset that treats catastrophe as normal and paranoia as wisdom. A world where leaders no longer trust reality itself is a world that governs in permanent emergency mode. Emergency mode shortcuts judgment. It rewards speed over accuracy and force over understanding. History shows where this leads. In 1914, nations sleepwalked into war believing mobilization was defense and delay was death. Millions paid for that paranoia with their lives.

I don’t pretend fear will disappear. It is human, and states are run by humans with scars. But when fear becomes the primary driver of policy, it stops protecting and starts destroying. We are living in an age where nations flinch first and think later, where overreaction is praised as strength and restraint is mocked as weakness. When everyone lives like the sky is falling, someone eventually pulls it down.

If this system doesn’t relearn how to breathe, to pause, to trust something other than its own nightmares, then conflict will keep writing itself. Not because war is inevitable, but because paranoia makes it so. And that, more than any missile or tank, is the real weapon pointed at the future.

 

An update for those who follow my work: “China’s Military Mirage: The Overestimated Power of the People's Liberation Army” is now available on Google Play Books. Read it here on Google Play: China’s Military Mirage.