Tag: war

Russia Gets Alaska Back

The decisions of the US presidents in the lead-up and progress of the Special Military Operation have been so uniformly retarded and suboptimal that it won’t surprise me in the least if Putin walks away from the upcoming talks in Alaska with Alaska.

Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow has marked a striking shift in American rhetoric. Just a couple of months ago, in June and July, Donald Trump was threatening the Kremlin with new sanctions and issuing ultimatums. Now the agenda includes a Putin-Trump summit scheduled for August 15 in Alaska. This 180-degree turn has been accompanied by leaks hinting at possible deals and a return to the “thaw” in relations we last saw in the spring.

If the meeting goes ahead, the Russian president will come to it in a far stronger position than he did a few months ago. Back in the spring, Trump’s push for a peace deal looked like a personal whim, and the so-called ‘party of war’ and globalists still had cards to play: Senator Lindsey Graham’s sanctions package, fresh US arms deliveries to Ukraine, and the proposals floated by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer about sending Western troops to Ukraine.

Now it looks as if Trump is the one coming back to Vladimir Putin – driven by the failure of his oil embargo. On top of that, there’s an appearance – an illusion, perhaps – that Putin is backed by a united BRICS front, something Trump’s own moves have helped bring about. Whether that front actually exists, or can survive for long, is another matter. But at this moment, one of Trump’s key pillars of leverage looks shaky, if not entirely knocked out from under him.

The USA is in the process of failing and it’s only a matter of time before it starts actually losing territory. 2025 would be a little ahead of schedule, but at this point, very little would surprise me, no matter how stupid and unlikely.

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Fifth Time’s the Castastrophe

Now this just might be the USA’s Syracuse Expedition:

Today’s White House ceremony that featured the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan signing an agreement to end their conflict, with Armenia coughing up major territorial concessions, is just an extension of the plan the US tried to execute against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy.

While not included in the agreement, Armenia reportedly plans to withdraw from CSTO by early 2026. (The CSTO is the Russian founded military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.) Moreover, the US also reportedly secretly promised NATO membership to Armenia and Azerbaijan for signing on to this deal, which would give NATO access to the Caspian Sea by virtue of the Zangezur corridor.

And here is the kicker (if true): Some telegram channels claim that US troops are set to be deployed in Armenia within the next 48 hours. In other words, rather than ratchet down tensions and reduce the threat of NATO, Trump is signing off on a plan to continue the NATO encirclement of Russia. So yes, Trump is setting the stage for World War 3 if he is serious about adding Armenia and Azerbaijan to NATO.

They tried to add Georgia. Then they tried to add Ukraine. Then they did add Finland and Sweden. And now they’re going to try to add Armenia and Azerbaijan in order to “encircle Russia”?

That sounds like a very good way to ensure that the Russian empire adds a few new oblasts.

Deploying American troops on foreign soil is not the safeguard it once was. After the failed attacks on Iran, I very much doubt that Russia, North Korea, or China regards them as anything but easy and obvious targets.

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Spain Drops F-35

Spain cancelled their order for F-35s:

Spain has abandoned plans to buy dozens of F-35 fighter jets, Spanish newspaper El Pais says, citing unnamed sources in the Spanish government. The preliminary discussions for a potential order have been suspended indefinitely, the newspaper writes. The F-35 is made by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin and a number of suppliers including Italy’s Leonardo, Britain’s BAE Systems and hundreds of other U.K. companies.

Switzerland should follow suit. The F-35 is a junk aircraft anyhow, and the era of conventional airpower is already over. National militaries should be spending their budgets on drones, not manned aircraft.

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Iran Still Has It

The utter lunacy of the USA’s foreign policy pretensions can be seen by the fact that the USA still has no ability to enrich uranium.

America no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium.

Pause. Rewind.

America no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium — I only learned myself this year — which meant it could no longer fuel itself without the help of foreign governments. Mostly, that placed us at the mercy of Europe, which refused to fuel our military bases. But we were also buying enriched uranium from Russia. In fact, we were buying it that very afternoon in November 2023, as war raged in Ukraine. Our government hadn’t included enriched uranium in its initial sanctions against Russia on account of it really couldn’t. Fuel-dependence was not only a risk to our grid, but a risk to our national security.

Nuclear energy, despite its somewhat confusing status in our culture, where battles for its adoption are often waged with great, righteous indignation, as if attempting to persuade some alternative course for our civilization, presently accounts for nearly 20% of American energy production.

In labs across the country, reactors produce critically important medical isotopes for use in cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, and neurology. Then, military applications are obvious, as are their critical importance to our nation’s security, and require significantly greater enrichment than anything used by civilians.

In all of this, we need fuel. American companies used to enrich it. They no longer do. Today, nuclear enrichment is dominated by Russia’s Tenex (Rosatom), Europe’s Urenco, France’s Orano, and China’s CNNC, all of which are state-backed or closely aligned with national governments. Here, a few (foreign operatives) would probably quibble. There is one plant in America. But while Europe’s Urenco operates a facility in New Mexico, it uses European centrifuge tech and security protocols, which means — via braindead policy agreements — while there is technically some capacity to enrich on the U.S. mainland, our government doesn’t control that capacity, and can’t even use it to power our military bases.

But don’t worry, they’re working on it!

General Matter is a nuclear enrichment startup, which means once its enrichment facility is up and running in Paducah it will be producing fuel for nuclear power plants, including the classic giants cooked up in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the sexy sleeker modern microreactors and small modular reactors (SMRs).

In the meantime, I suppose we could just buy some from Iran. It’s a good thing that whole “totally destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure” thing was nothing more than an expensive sound-and-light show.

If it wasn’t already clear to you before, then it should be now that there is absolutely no way the USA is in any position to fight a war with either Russia or China. Free trade theory has entirely hollowed out not only its industrial infrastructure, but its military power as well.

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Who Won the Fake War?

If the USA has to pay Iran just for the privilege of resuming diplomacy, doesn’t that indicate Iran won the first round of the Israel-Iran War?

As reported on July 31, 2025, Iran has set unprecedented preconditions for merely resuming talks with the United States: “US compensation for damage to Iranian facilities; US recognition of Iran’s sovereign right to enrich uranium.”

This isn’t negotiating—this is demanding tribute just to sit at the table.

The brilliance lies in the reversal of traditional diplomatic dynamics. Usually, concessions come during negotiations, not before them. But Iran has learned that American promises made during talks evaporate like morning dew. So why not demand concrete commitments upfront? If America balks at preliminary guarantees, it proves they were never serious about keeping their word anyway.

This approach reflects the strategic calculations I outlined in “The ministry of Silly Wars”: Iran doesn’t need these negotiations as desperately as America thinks. With China purchasing 90% of their oil and Russia providing military technology, Iran has options. The question isn’t whether Iran will negotiate—it’s whether America is willing to pay the entry fee.

The demand for compensation particularly stings American pride. It forces acknowledgment that the June 2025 strikes were aggression, not self-defense. It monetizes the damage, creating a paper trail that can’t be denied in future “misunderstandings.” Most importantly, it establishes the principle: actions have costs, and those costs must be paid before expecting diplomatic rewards.

Recognition of enrichment rights strikes even deeper. For decades, America has treated Iran’s nuclear program as inherently illegitimate, despite NPT rights. Now Iran demands this recognition as a precondition—not a negotiating point, not a concession to be earned, but a basic acknowledgment required just to begin talking. It’s diplomatic jujitsu at its finest.

It’s pretty clear that Israel is negligible militarily if Iran is forcing the USA to pay tribute before even coming to the table. It will certainly be remarkable if the period of American global hegemony fades without there even being an attempt at a Sicilian Expedition. Perhaps the last Clown Worlders in Washington are a little more rational and inclined toward self-preservation than their rhetoric would have us believe.

Although we still can’t rule out one last cavalry charge against the tanks in either the Red Sea or the South China Sea.

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WWIII is Already Underway

If Ron Unz is correct and Vladimir Putin and Xi Xinping have already reduced their international travel due to concerns about assassination by Clown World, I think it’s safe to conclude that peace is not even a remote possibility in the near future:

The Hudson Institute is a leading DC think-tank, quite influential in mainstream political circles, and a report with five co-authors that runs 128 pages must surely carry considerable weight in establishment circles. So when it suggests that the Chinese government is fragile and might soon collapse, those policy makers hostile to China are likely to take such views quite seriously.

Suppose that a leading Chinese think-tank with close ties to the PRC government published a weighty report predicting that America might soon collapse, then went on to argue that Chinese military forces would need to be deployed in our own country to seize our key military and technological assets and also establish a new government organized along Chinese lines. I doubt that most American political leaders or ordinary citizens would view such Chinese proposals with total equanimity, and indeed the blogger quoted a shocked Western pro-China business executive who succinctly summarized some of the striking elements in that Hudson Institute research study:

…which provides detailed operational plans for inducing Chinese regime collapse through systematic information operations, financial warfare, and covert influence campaigns, followed by detailed protocols for U.S. post-collapse management including military occupation, territorial reorganization, and the installation of a political and cultural system vassalized to the U.S.

Rand and Hudson are two of our leading mainstream think-tanks and the New Yorker is one of our most prestigious media outlets. Taken together those major articles and reports could easily convince the ignorant and suggestible ideologues in our government that the Chinese military was weak and the Chinese government fragile and ripe for collapse.

If delusional beliefs regarding the fragility of the Iranian and Russian governments had already led to American assassination attempts against their top leadership, similar reasoning might easily result in targeting those of China as well, especially President Xi Jinping, widely regarded as the strongest Chinese leader in decades. And given all of the recent American assassination projects, the Chinese government might certainly have itself reached such conclusions.

China and Russia are the two leading members of the BRICS movement, which held its 17th summit last month in Brazil. The media noted that neither Russian President Putin nor Chinese President Xi attended in person, with the latter missing his first BRICS summit since he came to power 13 years ago.

Xi’s surprising absence caused some discussion in the media. I initially paid little attention to this issue, but then some commenter suggested an obvious explanation: Both Xi and Putin were concerned about the possible risk of American assassination.

Brazil is located within the Western Hemisphere, a region under full American military domination. Given the extremely reckless and unpredictable behavior of the American government, with President Trump having publicly threatened to assassinate Iran’s top leader just a couple of weeks earlier, both China and Russia may have believed that some risks should best be avoided.

Over the years, Xi and Putin had both met on numerous occasions with Iranian President Raisi, with whom they had developed an excellent working relationship, and surely his 2024 death in a mysterious helicopter crash while returning from a foreign trip would have concentrated their minds.

It’s been very difficult for Americans to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t aspire to become like them. And while Americans also like to think of the USA as the big dog on the world stage, I don’t think many of them grasp that many countries around the world, including some very powerful ones, are beginning to conclude that the big dog is now rabid.

And what is the point of talking to a rabid dog? What can one possibly hope to accomplish?

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The Russia That Will Say No

Hal Turner contemplates the significance of the US Special Envoy’s trip to Moscow:

What does Witkoff bring to Moscow?

  • Cosmetic concessions, presumably in the area of de facto territorial recognition
  • Hints of economic cooperation
  • Classic threats of sanctions – if Moscow doesn’t “give in”

What Witkoff won’t do:

Accept the Russian minimum demands which are . . .

  • Recognition of the new regions (Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhe) as part of Russia.
  • Demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine.

He won’t accept them because that would mean: The West would have lost. And the world would have seen it.

Scenario: A Russian “no” to Witkoff’s offer would most likely not simply lead to a new low in negotiations – but to Phase II of a global systemic conflict. Then the world would no longer be in the shadow of a unipolar center, but in a new bipolar confrontation.

On the one side: The expanded West – that is, the NATO states, the EU, plus Australia, Japan, South Korea, and some dependent partners in the Global South.

On the other side: An emerging counterweight – with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and possibly other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

In this scenario, it is only a matter of time before the previously “frozen” conflict over Taiwan also actively emerges – as the next geopolitical leverage in the struggle for influence, sovereignty, and system dominance.

Conclusion: Witkoff’s trip is not a diplomatic exchange – It is an attempt to delay the end of the unipolar world order.

This smacks of a desperate Hail Mary thrown by the Short Fake Trump fake administration, and I see absolutely no sign that Russia is inclined to accept anything short of its core demands because it is winning both the economic war and the military war. Everyone, and especially the Russians, has learned that accepting Clown World’s shiny beads and trinkets comes at a steep price and is never, ever worth it over time.

And I think Hal Turner is right to believe that the Clown Worlders running the USA, the UK, and the EU will try to fight a war they know they can’t win rather than accept the inevitable end of “the unipolar world order” that they ruled for nearly 40 years. To do so would be foolish and stupid, but then, they are foolish, stupid, and evil.

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Report: Russia Captured British Officers

Hal Turner and others are reporting that Russian special forces operators have captured three British officers

Special forces of the Russian Federation have captured several NATO officers in Ukraine. This is the first real-life proof that NATO itself is actively waging war against Russia.

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Carroll, and Colonel Edward Blake, both active-duty officers of the British Army, along with as as-yet unidentified Agent of British MI-6 (Intelligence) were captured during a daring raid by Russian Special Forces, in the city of Ohakiv. Lt. Col. Carroll is detailed to the British Ministry of Defense.

The third individual taken in the raid is referred-to only as “A member of MI-6 Intelligence.”

A long-time Intelligence-Community colleague of mine from my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task, Force (JTTF), whom I trust implicitly, told me Russian special forces disembarked from several ships and penetrated a command center of the Ukrainian armed forces. They captured British soldiers who coordinated the use of British missiles and drones against Russian forces and against civilian targets.

He went on to say the operation lasted about 15 minutes. Hours after the operation, diplomatic relations between London and Moscow deteriorated sharply. The British have been caught, red-handed, and the implications for Britain, and NATO as a whole, are now E X T R E M E L Y bad.

Representatives of the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the Russian Ministry of Defense to return the British officers ‘lost’ in Ukraine. The official London version is: the arrested officers traveled to Ukraine as tourists and “accidentally” ended up in Ochakiv. The British had the gall to tell the Russians that the men “were interested in naval history and wanted to visit the coast where battles were fought during the Second World War.”

Clown World is going to clown. But either Clown World really wants Russia to attack the EU and the UK or NATO, NATO is getting careless about keeping its officers out of harm’s way, or the Russian advance has picked up the pace to the point that the NATO “military advisors” can’t retreat fast enough to avoid getting captured.

At this point, the only thing protecting the civilians of Great Britain and Europe is the restraint of the very man they’ve spent the last three years demonizing, Vladimir Putin. But there are only so many stupid provocations that even the most patient and intelligent man can accept.

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Sea Power vs Land Power

Sea power tends to be more aggressive and expansive, but land power tends to last longer:

For over a century, two dead advisors have shaped the way great powers view the world.

On one side, we have Alfred Thayer Mahan—the American naval officer who believed sea power determined global supremacy. According to Mahan, controlling the oceans means controlling trade. If you control trade, you control wealth. If you control wealth… well, you get the picture.

On the other side is Halford Mackinder, the British geographer who argued the exact opposite. Forget the seas, he said. Whoever controls the “World Island”—Eurasia—controls the world. Railways, rivers, pipelines, and land empires are what count. Not frigates and aircraft carriers.

Mahan and Mackinder are no longer with us, but their ideas continue to influence the world today.

And we’re watching it unfold.

The United States and the United Kingdom—Mahan’s spiritual children—have long benefited from an ocean-based order. Ruling the waves built their prosperity and power. The British Empire’s reach was maritime. The U.S. Navy now patrols every major sea lane. The dollar reigns supreme because oil, commodities, and trade settle in greenbacks. That world—the Mahan world—is why Americans live like kings while land powers like Russia and China have spent decades playing catch-up.

But Mahan’s world has limits. Especially when you try to keep your rivals bottled up in theirs.

That’s precisely what the U.S. has tried to do with China.

If you look at ancient history, the rivalries between Athens and Sparta, and between Carthage and Rome, all ended the same way; with the land power eventually defeating the sea power. This is because sea power is intrinsically offensive, which means that it doesn’t have much in the way of defense in depth once its advantages are counteracted in one way or another.

It’s already apparent that either China or Russia can defeat the USA in a war. Which means that the US is an empire in decline, and the only real question is how fast it will collapse and how far.

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12 Days and Counting Down

Donald Trump made another move in his feckless game of global checkers today in Scotland, with the announcement that he is giving Russia a new, much shorter deadline—10 to 12 days from now—to end the war in Ukraine. Trump warned that if President Vladimir Putin does not reach a deal by around August 7–9, the US will impose new sanctions and “severe tariffs” on Russia and countries supporting its war effort. Trump’s new deadline elicited a collective yawn in Moscow.

Trump’s threat of new sanctions is just a blowhard bloviating… Ending shipments of fertilizers and precious metals is not going to hurt the Russian economy one bit. Thanks to the sanctions Biden levied in 2022, Russia’s economy grew to be the fourth largest in the world as measured by purchasing power parity. Western propaganda that the Russian economy is failing–citing current growth of 1.4%–ignores the fiscal policies that the Russian central bank put in place in 2024 to cool inflation. But those measures were only temporary, with the central bank announcing a two percent cut in interest rates late last week.

That means that Trump, if he is serious, will impose bone-crunching tariffs on China and India. Both countries appear unfazed by Trump’s bullying bluster. China in particular holds some very strong cards… Rare-earth minerals desperately needed by the US military industrial complex. I think this will be another Trump nothing-burger.

It’s obvious that more sanctions aren’t going to hurt Russia. Which raises the obvious question? Why the reduction of 38 days from the original deadline? Whatever the reason, it doesn’t smack of confidence, to the contrary, it reeks of desperation.

And when Putin ignores the deadline, what then? Threaten another one?

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