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Hello Reader,
From the Persian Gulf to the Caribbean, ruthless tyrants scramble as decades of immunity evaporate. Plus: Gen Z's revolution loses steam, but one critical democracy gets a reprieve.
The Global Fight for Freedom
- "Shoot to Kill and Show No Mercy"
- Nicaragua's "Bolivarian Brotherhood" Shatters
- ISIS Celebrates in Syria
- Another Gen Z Revolution Fizzles
- Taiwan's "Davidson Window" Cracks Open
Country names are followed by their 2025 freedom scores according to Freedom House. Not a ranking.
Travel Note: I'll be out of the country February 1-12. This Friday's episode will be abbreviated. The next global edition returns February 17th.
The USS Abraham Lincoln sliced through the Gulf of Oman this week, flanked by three destroyers bristling with Tomahawk missiles. F-35C stealth fighters lined its deck. Electronic warfare planes stood ready to blind Iranian defenses. Strike Eagles thundered in from England while missile batteries and refueling tankers streamed into theater. Trump’s "massive armada,” now assembled.
Now the question haunting Iranians isn't whether America can destroy the dying regime. It's whether Trump will throw it a lifeline—by negotiating with it.
Behind closed doors, Pentagon officials debate three options. The first: symbolic strikes without wider war. The second: sustained bombardment of Revolutionary Guard infrastructure. The third: decapitation—Tomahawk missiles toward Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
That line was drawn in blood. On January 9th, Khamenei ordered the Supreme National Security Council to "crush the protests by any means necessary." Security forces deployed with "orders to shoot to kill and to show no mercy." The New York Timesverified videos of forces opening fire on protesters in at least 19 cities and six Tehran neighborhoods.
Chilling details of brutality continue to emerge: images from morgues showing executed patients still connected to medical equipment, cardiac monitors attached to chests bearing fresh bullet wounds to the head. Iran International—an opposition-aligned outlet—now reports over 36,500 killed during the January 8-9 crackdown, making it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history. Independent verification remains impossible under Tehran's internet blackout.
Regime insiders expect Khamenei to be gone "within three to twelve months" through missiles or internal collapse. "A line has been crossed," one official admitted. "The status quo is unsustainable."
American F-35s wait within striking distance of the ayatollah who ordered these atrocities. Trump’s decision cannot allow them to keep power.
No negotiation. No mercy.
On January 5th, hours after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, jubilant Nicaraguans flooded social media with celebration. One woman posted a laughing emoji. A teenager shared the news with "finally!" A man simply clicked "like" on a friend's post.
By dawn, Daniel Ortega's security forces had arrested them all—and around 60 others.
The roundup revealed raw panic. For decades, Latin American strongmen operated with strategic immunity. Ortega perfected defiance: he crushed dissent, imprisoned journalists, made his wife co-president, and aligned with Venezuela and Cuba in the "Bolivarian Brotherhood"—Latin America's alliance built on revolutionary solidarity, mutual protection, and virulent anti-Americanism.
Maduro's capture shattered that calculus overnight. Not since December 1989—when George H.W. Bush sent 27,000 troops into Panama to capture dictator Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges—had the U.S. deployed military force against a Latin American leader. 35 years of restraint had ended.
For 48 hours, Ortega—Latin America's most vitriolic anti-American demagogue—said nothing. When he finally spoke, gone were the tirades about Yankee imperialism, replaced by measured appeals to "sovereignty." Revolutionary solidarity had collapsed into self-preservation.
Within days, his surrender became evident. He appointed his foreign minister as chargé d'affaires in Washington—the first serious diplomatic overture in years. Under American pressure, he released dozens of political prisoners in mid-January. A White House official confirmed Nicaragua now "cooperates with us to stop drug trafficking."
Ortega had spent decades as Maduro's ideological twin—eliminating rivals, packing courts, crushing freedom. Now he purchases survival through usefulness.
The Bolivarian Brotherhood, built on decades of mutual defiance, has shattered. One tyrant just got a little friendlier.
For a decade, Syria's Kurdish militia—the Syrian Democratic Forces—fought alongside American troops to crush ISIS, guarded 9,000 jihadist prisoners, and governed an autonomous northeast enclave with a semblance of democracy. President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former jihadist who toppled Assad in December 2024, spent a year negotiating their integration into his government.
Then on January 6th, Syrian forces attacked Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo after talks broke down.
Washington stayed silent. "We fought ISIS for America. Now Trump has abandoned us," lamented one Kurdish fighter.
Arab tribal militias—who'd allied with the Kurds against ISIS—switched sides en masse to support al-Sharaa's government. Within days, statues of Kurdish female fighters toppled along the Euphrates. American-supplied Humvees lay abandoned roadside. By January 18th, al-Sharaa controlled the region.
The SDF's fatal flaw was governing Arab-majority cities through increasingly autocratic rule. Celebrating al-Sharaa or waving Syria's revolutionary flag became grounds for arrest.
Amid the fighting, al-Sharaa issued a decree recognizing Kurdish cultural rights. I hailed it as an Islamist breakthrough. But does he seek genuine incorporation or crushing conquest? Syrian government fighters approaching Kurdish Qamishli described it as a city of "wealthy people" where they could "steal cars"—a bad omen.
Over 100 ISIS prisoners have now escaped. U.S. forces rush to transfer 7,000 detainees to Iraq. At Al-Hol camp, ISIS-linked women—many who raised their children in detention—celebrated, warning Kurdish guards "We won't leave one of you alive."
Al-Sharaa's aims remain unclear: pluralist unity or authoritarian consolidation? Either way, Syria's Kurds earned their seat through blood. America must ensure they get it.
On October 11th, Nomena Ratsirarisoa shuffled through Antananarivo's tear-gassed streets, barely eating or sleeping for two weeks. The 26 -year-old psychology student refreshed his Facebook feed as police fired smoking canisters at thousands of protesters. Then—a grainy livestream: Colonel Michael Randrianirina, stony-faced head of Madagascar's elite CAPSAT unit, declared security forces should "refuse to be paid to shoot our friends, our brothers, and our sisters."
Within an hour, CAPSAT armored vehicles joined the protesters. Police stepped aside. Young people streamed past upturned barriers, chanting "Merci, Colonel!" as they cheered troops like rockstars. President Andry Rajoelina—the corrupt media mogul whose French-built cable car symbolized his vanity while 80% of Malagasy survived on less than three dollars daily—fled to Dubai.
Gen Z had won. Or had they?
By November, Nomena felt deflated. The new military government filled its cabinet with recycled politicians from previous regimes. Wily operators recruited fake Gen Zs to meetings with officials. “It feels like they are playing with us," one Gen Z leader lamented.
From Kathmandu to Antananarivo, a pattern emerges: Gen Z topples the autocrat, but lacks institutional leverage to control what comes next. Wins the revolution, but loses the aftermath.
The Soda Pop revolution continues to fizzle.
In 2021, Admiral Philip Davidson warned Congress that Xi Jinping had ordered the People's Liberation Army ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. The clock on the ominous "Davidson Window" is running out.
But if Xi’s purge continues, he may have nobody left to execute it.
On Saturday, China announced an investigation into Zhang Youxia—Xi's senior-most general, his childhood friend, and his most trusted military confidant.
The accusations are explosive. According to WSJ sources, Zhang stands accused of leaking nuclear weapons secrets to the U.S., accepting massive bribes, and building political networks that undermined Party control. Investigators are scrutinizing his oversight of China's vast military procurement apparatus, where he allegedly traded promotions for enormous sums within the weapons development system.
Since Xi took power, every uniformed officer he appointed to the seven-member Central Military Commission in 2022 has been purged—leaving only Xi himself and Zhang Shengmin, an anti-corruption enforcer, to command the world's largest military.
One analyst captured the scale: "This move is unprecedented in the history of the Chinese military…and represents the total annihilation of the high command."
Yet some suspect Zhang's real sin wasn't corruption—it was power. Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst, believes Zhang's faction prevailed over rivals, granting him "unprecedented authority" that made him a threat. "He is a tough, profane old goat," Wilder told The Economist, " while he had allied with Xi, he was never his subordinate."
Xi's opacity makes his precise motivations unknowable, but the message blazes clear—by decapitating command structures, Xi signals that corruption, patronage networks, and compromised state secrets threaten his Taiwan ambitions.
Taiwan produces roughly 60% of global semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced chips—powering artificial intelligence, weapons systems, secure communications, and high-end computing. No short-term substitute exists. Disruption would cripple U.S. defense production and slash nearly 10% off world GDP.
But the Davidson Window just got an extension.
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