Today, Foreign Affairs published my new essay, "Iran and the New Rules of Global Power."

If you’ve been following my work here on the Prof. Pape Substack, the central argument will sound familiar. Paid subscribers saw the core of this framework first during our live briefing a month ago, where I argued that the Iran War may mark a turning point comparable to the 1991 Gulf War—not because American power has disappeared, but because the rules governing how power works are changing.

The essay develops that argument in full: how Desert Storm created the strategic assumptions of the post–Cold War era, how globalization helped diffuse precision warfare beyond the great powers, and why conflicts like Hormuz may be revealing a new age in which disruption increasingly rivals domination.

I’m grateful to Foreign Affairs — the flagship journal for international practitioners — for publishing it, and especially grateful to this community for helping me test and sharpen these ideas before they reached a wider audience.

You can read the essay here:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/iran-and-new-rules-global-power

Thank you for being part of this conversation from the beginning!