Losing wars is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it can be the best thing possible. The Germans and Japanese governments losing World War II was by far the best thing for the German and Japanese people. Losing these wars discredited German and Japanese leaderships that were murderous and to a large degree strategically incompetent. It forced many of their people to come to terms with the behavior of their nations, and ushered in new periods with very different policies and expectations. Indeed, defeat led to periods of extraordinary wealth, health and stability for the Japanese and (West) German populations as they focussed their minds on economic rebirth and tried to make new societies.

Btw, if you want to read a very engaging academic book on the subject of Japanese and German rebuilding and success after losing World War II, you should take a look at: Ray Stokes, Ruins to Riches: The Economic Resurgence of Germany and Japan after 1945, Cambridge University Press, 2024.

The same could be said about France and the Franco-Prussian War. Defeat to the Prussians, a bitter pill for the French if there ever was one, exposed to the French people the incompetence of the ostentatious and pretentious regime of Napoleon III. Defeat led to the creation of the French Third Republic and ushered in a period of stability and growth which contributed to France being on the victorious side of World War I.

Losing this war with Iran, which the USA is on the cusp of doing, might join this list.

Read more

After sending out two pieces yesterday, the last thing I was expecting to do today was clog up your inboxes further. However, something happened on the evening of June 9 that needs to be understood and, hopefully, deplored by all Americans. The USA seems to have deliberately and with foresight, committed a war crime as an act of policy. If this is right, and all evidence seems to say it is, committing acts of terror is now an acceptable method of war in the judgement of the US government and, by extension, the American people.

I think it might be best to break down what happened here through a series of questions.

What happened?

On the evening of June 9, the USA, with what seems to be intent, attacked two reservoirs and a water treatment facility in southern Iran. Almost immediately afterwards, water was cut off to about 20,000 Iranian civilians who live around the southern Iranian town of Sirik.

Why was this most likely a deliberate attack? Well, there seems to have been nothing nearby of military value and the destruction was precise. The New York Times has already run an investigation on it.

Here is how the story begins.

Strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Around the time of the strikes, the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X that it had conducted attacks near the strait “with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets.”

Iranian state media reported that the U.S. had hit water storage buildings and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

Earlier attacks that hit civilians might have been mistakes, such as the attack on the girls’ school which started the campaign, but it is hard to see this as a mistake. The target was too specialized, too localized and the effect seems calibrated (see the section on why it might have been committed below).

Is It A War Crime?

Without a doubt. Attacking other infrastructure was probably a war crime as well (think bridges or power plants) but there can at least be arguments made that these are dual use facilities. Militaries use bridges, military production uses generated electricity. If the US destroyed all the bridges in Iran or shut off all the power, as Trump has threatened numerous times, I would definitely consider it a war crime. However, lawyers could try and argue that because of military use, these are allowable targets.

However, a reservoir serving a civilian community is unarguably a crime. The military will get its water somehow, the civilians will suffer. And note, this is one of the hottest and driest places on the globe. Academic data for the Sirik region confirms that summer temperatures routinely peak between 45°C and 48.5°C during the warmest months. That is over 115 degrees Fahrenheit. That is comparable to Death Valley in California.

A human being cannot live long in such a climate without water—so either the locals will die of dehydration or, more likely, some will drink contaminated water and die from that.

Either way the US has attacked, seemingly deliberately, a facility vital to the maintenance of human life that has no discernible military utility. So yes, it is a war crime.

Share

Why Was It Committed?

What makes this even more perverse is that this war crime was deliberately committed because Donald Trump is getting frustrated that the Iranian government is not doing what he wants them to do and that the Iranian military attacked a legitimate military target, a US Apache helicopter that was enforcing a blockade (an act of war remember) against Iran.

These reasons are not being hidden, indeed the White House basically laid them out to Axios in a detailed story. Here was how that story started:

The trigger for President Trump's strikes on Iran was the downing of a U.S. helicopter, but behind the scenes Trump had been growing more and more frustrated over nearly two weeks of waiting for an Iranian response to his latest offer that still has not arrived.

This is typical, Trump,/organized crime style behavior. He attacks a small civilian facility as a threat and warning to Iran that he might go on and commit even greater war crimes if they do not do what he wants. As if on cue, a few hours after these attacks, while speaking to Fox News reporters, Trump went ahead and said he might start mass attacks on Iran’s bridges and electricity power generation. He also tweeted out that if Iran did not do what he wants it to do, that it would have to “pay the price” of their defiance.

So it is a historic war crime committed because the President of the USA can think of nothing better to do.

What Will The Impact Be?

It will almost certainly not get Iran to bend the knee. Trump can boast all he wants, as he did above, about the Iranian military being destroyed, but the reality is that he is still very worried about Iranian capacity. How do we know that? Well many of the US strikes against Iran were done on June 9 and then again last night with (fast depleting) stocks of Tomahawk missiles or by aircraft that can fire at safe distances. CNN is stating that preliminary reports from last night were that at least 49 Tomahawks were fired.

In other words, Trump is rapidly running down US stocks in these attacks—they are not sustainable.

So unless Trump actually goes for massive escalation, this is just more of what went on before, with a shorter window for action and more degradation of US strength. It is unlikely to force Iran to back down, more than likely it leads to a hardening of their position.

And, btw, it further leaves China in strategic control of the Western Pacific as it weakens the USA. Pure strategic brilliance.

As for the Iranian people, I am no expert. However the few sources I know of who do have information within Iran are in despair at this kind of war crime. What one wrote was that attacks like this are “pushing Iranians predisposed to the west towards the (IRGC) regime”.

So these are not just strategically stupid and immoral war crimes, they are probably counterproductive.

What Iranian will now say that I really want to side with the USA after they cut off water to 20,000 civilians?

Share

Conclusion

So this very much looks like a deliberate war crime that was made as a threat to commit even more horrible war crimes. It will almost certainly not work, though it might lead to thousands of Iranian civilian deaths.

It is an attack that I fear the USA will regret for a long time. It is no different than an Al-Qaeda style attack, a deliberate targeting of civilians to create terror to get political results. If the USA gets attacked in return, it will only be served what seems to be official American policy on a cold plate.

This is no small matter. The lack of reporting or push back against this operation shows how much the country has been damaged by the present administration and how difficult it will be to recover. War crimes are now an open and deliberate tool of US policy.

Where this is going is pretty bleak.

Before I get to the update, just wanted to remind people that I will be doing a Substack Live with Vladyslav Urubkov of Come Back Alive, today at 1730 Ukraine time, 1530 GMT and 1030 EST. We will have an in-depth discussion about Ukraine’s Mid-range air campaign against the Russian military, in which so many people are interested. If you need one, here is a page link.

Now to the Midweek Update which has developed in shocking but not surprising ways over the last two days. Not “surprising” in that the basic trajectory is exactly what it has been for months. Trump has put the USA in an ever-weakening position, with decreasing leverage and a military performing poorly, as he tries desperately to get a deal with Iran that will let him end this ludicrous war that he started. What is “shocking” is just how bad things have become in this process, as Trump might even be paying off Iran at present, downplaying the shooting down of advanced US helicopters, while Iran and Israel pull him here and there. It has gotten far worse more quickly than I expected.

On Monday, after both Iran and Israel demonstrated how relatively weak the USA had become by their actions over the weekend, I wrote this piece. However things have gone down since then.

The other thing to mention is that the shooting down of an AH-64 Apache helicopter by the Iranians (using a cheap UAV) provides even further evidence of the deterioration of efficiency and effectiveness in the US military.

This is something that I have tried to make people face in these pieces about signs of rot and decline in the US military performance.

This reality must be faced by Americans, who have been conditioned to support their military almost without reservation. The only way for the US to recover from this mess is to admit what is happening.

Share

How Low Can The US Go?

This is definitely a question worth asking as the scale of US decline and strategic flailing becomes clear. What is finally true is that people understand that Trump’s constant claims that Iran is desperate to make a deal with him, that he holds all the cards, that he is strong and forceful are fantasy. He tried it again yesterday (Tuesday June 9) morning. He said a deal could be done in “one or two days from now” and explicitly added, “The Strait [of Hormuz] will open up right away, it’ll open up immediately upon signing, which could be in two or three days.”

This came after both Israel and Iran defied Trump’s express warnings/wishes over the weekend and launched a sequence of strikes against each other. Here was the sequence of events as outlined in the Monday piece.

Btw, Trump’s weakness might be even more extreme than understood on Monday. Yesterday Israel’s public service news agency KAN (which is generally considered reliable) reported that Trump had arranged for $3 billion to be given to Iran as a bribe to try and get them to stop attacking Israel. Here is a report and a quote about the reported move.

Israel’s Kan 11 reported that the arrangement was coordinated through Qatari mediators, who facilitated the exchange of messages between Washington and Tehran during the height of the crisis.

The report claims that, in addition to the release of the funds, Iran received assurances that Israel would restrain its military operations in Lebanon.

Neither the White House nor U.S. officials have publicly confirmed the reported transfer of the frozen assets.

The contrast between how Trump is trying to present the power balance between the USA and Iran and the reality was shown even more starkly yesterday when it was reported that Iran, far from backing down to US military force, had actually shot down an advanced US Apache helicopter, most likely using a cheap, one-way attack UAV. The American crew was thankfully saved.

This was how the New York Times reported the shooting down.

Look, Iran is simply not bending the knee or as desperate for a deal as Trump pretends and I think we can say it never has been. It has always been Trump who has been desperate for a deal, and Iran which is (depressingly and with what looks like some skill) stringing him along. In fact, Trump’s initial response to the attack on the Apache was to try and downplay the attack and say it was no “big deal”, at least according to the Wall Street Journal.

So Trump’s first instinct, triggered by his desperate desire to get out of the war, was to pretend this did not matter. Of course he could not fully get away with that. In the end he authorized what looks like a quite limited military response against a few targets that would not get Iran too angry. Here is a short excerpt from a report that just came out summarizing the US response.

The U.S. conducted three waves of attacks, targeting Iranian air defenses and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz, according to a senior U.S. official. Air Force and Navy jet fighters dropped precision munitions against the targets, which also included ground control stations, Centcom said in the statement.

And we can assume that having done the weakest possible response, Trump will now return to his delusional statements of US strength and Iranian weakness, and pretend that all is well. He has already tried to push the narrative that the US response was “proportional”, which means no new additional attacks need to happen. He tweeted this out right after the US response was reported.

And even with the weak US response, Iran is upping the ante and has launched additional attacks on US partner states Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. Will be interesting to see if Trump mentions these or just takes them in stride.

Btw It is worth noting that VP JD Vance also chimed in last night and admitted that Trump is BSing by providing a much longer timeline for any deal to be reached. Vance spoke about it taking “months” and happening at least before the mid-term elections—are far different reality. Here is what he said.

“Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.” He later added that a deal could "absolutely" come before November’s midterm elections, adding, “I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections.”

Finally, it is also worth reporting that Netanyahu is reportedly considering continuing his war independently of the USA and willing to make that known publicly. Another Israeli reported leaked details of an Israeli Cabinet meeting in which Netanyahu made that explicit. Here was how Netanyahu’s comments were reported.

“It could be that we'll reach a situation where we have to confront the Iranians alone, without backing from the U.S., with all the costs involved—armaments and global isolation. We don't want to get there, but we know we can get there.”

The Israeli rationale is that Trump is so desperate for a deal that they believe he is willing to agree to almost anything with Iran to get out of this war. As the report further stated, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Eyal Zamir supposedly said: “As we see it right now—almost any agreement is a bad agreement.”

Overall, what we are seeing is a strategic mess of the highest order and an undeniable statement of US weakness. In summary, since Israel and Iran both thumbed their noses at Trump this weekend the following has happened.

1. Trump said everything was going well and a deal with Iran could be reached very soon, maybe a day or two.

2. It seems possible/probable that the US had to pay Iran off to the tune of $3 billion to stop its attacks on Israel

3. Iranian forces shot down a US Apache helicopter anyway.

4. Trump tried to pretend it was no big deal

5. Trump in the end did authorized a very limited response which he called “proportional”.

6. Iran responds to the US retaliation by attacking Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan—all US partners.

7. JD Vance admits a deal is much further off than Trump is saying.

8. Israel is saying they might continue the war regardless of whether Trump agrees to a deal with Iran.

This is a rather shocking two days. It leaves us with the question with which I started this out: “How Low Can The US Go?”. We probably have not reached bottom yet.

Note: My harping on US weakness is not a call for an escalation. The US has lost this war—facts must be faced on this. It was ridiculously conceived, shoddily planned, poorly executed and bound to fail. It is also as I argued in April the “most corrupt” war in US history. I think the US needs to get out of this war and actually get its forces out of the region as soon as possible—it needs to stop militarily trying to dictate in the Middle East (yes that piece is coming). However that does not mean we need to avoid the question of the US weakening itself. That needs to be faced to help make the case that the US needs to withdraw.

Share

Another Worrying Sign For The US Military

The Apache that was shot down by the Iranians was a U.S. Army AH-64E Apache Guardian, assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. It is a mainstay system for the US military and this was reportedly the most modern variant. Apaches have been used and upgraded for years, and have become the most famous military helicopter of this era. They are also very expensive. One Apache is normally listed as costing between $35 million and $52 million. This might be low, as US allies who have purchased them say the actual cost of one is closer to $100 million.

Moreover, this one was on operational patrol and should have been at the height of readiness. Regardless it was shot down by a slow-moving Iranian Shahed which costs $30k or so. Being ready for such an attack was a minimum requirement for the US military, as they have been faced with such a threat for months now.

However, for whatever reason, the US military had a major failure yesterday (again), This is just the latest US loss of an advanced air machine. Here was an earlier list which of the shockingly high losses through early April that I referred to in a May piece.

And yet we are told that the Iranian military has been devastated and defeated? Something is not right here. The US military seems internally broken. It continues to fail in basic tasks.

Much of this has to be down to the outright corruption and intellectual degradation being shown in Washington. In the last few weeks there have been more stories of officers denied promotion because they did not meet some white, Christian nationalist ideal, stories of efficient leaders being replaced because they were good at their job and had principles, and, as always, stories of Trump family members basically securing massive Pentagon payoffs.

Maybe the question above needs to be altered in this case to: “How Low Can The US Military Go?”. The answer so far is much lower than I would have expected in such a short period.

The reconstruction from this whole mess is going to be epic.

I realize this is not the most cheery update—but it is reality.

This is an update as two interesting/important realities were revealed yesterday about the state of the US-Iran War and the Russo-Ukraine War—specifically about the state of negotiations going on for a “deal” on each. They were revealing enough that they warrant a short piece, as there is so much speculation about what is happening. In a nutshell, it appears that both Trump and potentially Putin are reaching out for deals from weakened positions.

Israel Defies A Desperate Trump

For the US, the signs of decline mentioned last Wednesday were confirmed in spades on June 7.

Trump has placed the US in a position where he desperately wants to end a war he started, yet Washington's ability to influence external actors is waning substantially by the day.

Read more

I am starting this update with a special announcement. I was going to write more about Ukraine’s mid-range strike campaign today, as it is (finally) getting the coverage it deserves. However, instead of hearing me talk about it, I thought people would like to get the perspective that matters most—the Ukrainian one. So I got in touch with the people at Come Back Alive, and they are going to have two of their best analysts come on a Substack Live here this Wednesday to discuss the mid-range campaign in detail. So do keep free: June 10 at 1730 Ukraine time, 1530 GMT and 1030 EST.

This session will involve not only old friend Mykola Bielieskov (who just did a great video with the Kyiv Independent) but also Vladyslav Urubkov, the Division Lead at CBA’s Military Department. Vlad is a native of Donetsk and was forced out when the Russians invaded and seized the city in 2014. Afterwards he served in the Ukrainian armed forces and now works for CBA.

I cannot think of two better people to discuss the campaign in detail than these two—so please do join if you can.

So, I will not say much new about the mid-range campaign now, but focus instead on the long-range strike campaign as part of a larger main story of the week. That is how the Ukrainians are trying to put pressure directly on Vladimir Putin. There were two fascinating examples of this in the last few days, one military and one diplomatic. The military element was the attack on oil and naval installations not far from St Petersburg, Putin’s home city, just as the St Petersburg International Economic Forum was about to start. The second was the fascinating letter sent directly from Zelensky to Putin expressing a willingness to negotiate directly (in other words without the USA). Both were Ukrainian power plays and deserve comment.

The other major story of the week revolves around the ever closer relationship between the US government and Russia. Though there was a great deal of comment about the vote in the US House on aid to Ukraine, this sadly is a non-event for now. The real story is how the Trump administration is reaching out to Putin more and more.

One quick note before I start the heart of this. I also sent out a piece two days ago about the future of this Substack. If you did not see it, below is a link and it contains information that regular readers might want to know.

Share

Ukraine Reaches Out And Touches Putin--Twice

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), sometimes called the “Russian Davos”, is normally one of the highlights of Putin’s year. While it cannot match the Victory Day Parade for extreme prestige, it really does matter. The forum is held in Putin’s home city and he has used it in the past to host world leaders and announce (partly mythical) great Russian economic and technological advances.

Now this year’s forum was shaping up to be a truly weird one. On the one hand, world leaders were shunning the event. Only two eventually joined Putin on stage, the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania. On the other hand, the Trump administration in its continuing efforts to reach out to Putin, sent a delegation led by Rodney Mims Cook Jr. Cook Jr serves as the Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and might best be described as a cut-price Albert Speer. He is one of the leading supporters of Trump’s hideous architectural plans which are, or threatening to deface Washington DC. This included the ludicrously grandiose new Ballroom and the proposed new victory arch, a favored memorial of empires throughout history.

Which do you like better btw?

Trump’s arch is the gaudier one.

There were other Americans at the SPIEF as well this year, such as fruitcake Candace Owens and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, so Trump was indeed represented officially and unofficially.

However what made SPIEF really memorable this year was how the Ukrainians twice reached out while Putin was vulnerable. First, a few hours before the opening ceremony, the Ukrainians launched a large, well coordinated UAV assault on at least two major targets in the immediate area of St Petersburg. Most obviously for SPIEF delegates, Ukrainian long range systems traveling over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the Ukrainian border, accurately hit the St Petersburg Oil Terminal—one of Russia’s largest oil storage and trans-shipment facilities on the Baltic Sea coast.

This meant that the forum was opened in the shadow of an enormous pillar of black smoke, courtesy of the Ukrainians (see picture above).

That was not all. The Ukrainians also attacked a number of naval targets in the St Petersburg area. These included a major logistics facility at Kronstadt, responsible for ammunition production and storage. Also at Kronstadt the Ukrainians hit a Russian Baltic Fleet Corvette in drydock—showing the kind of accuracy and hitting power that they lacked before this year.

The historians amongst you will also understand the importance of Kronstadt to a regime that likes to fashion itself as a reborn USSR. It is not just strategically important for the present Russian navy as one of its few vital facilities on the Baltic, it is historically resonant.

The meaning of the attacks was obvious. The Ukrainians were saying to Putin (and the rest of the world) that you cannot protect major facilities of strategic importance in Russia’s second city and that you certainly cannot protect public events.

To make sure that these attacks received the greatest possible coverage, President Zelensky personally highlighted the power of both strikes.

Then on June 4th, the Ukrainians made their diplomatic move. Zelensky sent out an open letter directly to Putin, saying that the two should talk and that the war should end. Here is the whole text if you want to read it.

The key thing in the letter, which was not based on the idea that Putin would respond by talking, was to make it clear to the Russian people how Putin had damaged them. Here is maybe the key section. Zelensky is taunting Putin and saying to the Russian people that their dictator is destroying them.

Putin’s response was predictable. At the plenary session of SPIEF he said that he would not meet with Zelensky, adding later that the letter had elements of “rudeness”.

He was right on the second point. The letter was sent not to negotiate but to humiliate. It was a power play. Zelensky was saying that the Ukrainians can do their own negotiating, do not need to rely on the USA, and moreover that Ukrainian weapons and strategy are wresting the initiative from the Russians.

The two events, the long-range attack and the letter, were obviously coordinated to put pressure on Putin. The key to them is the success of Ukrainian long-range strike. It is important to understand what we see here and how things have changed in the last few months.

• Russian air defense cannot protect Russia’s second city and major strategic facilities from Ukrainian long-range strike at a moment of major international engagement. In other words, no place is safe.

• Ukrainian accuracy over distance seems to be getting better. Ukrainian sources released some pictures and videos of the attack, and they seem to have been very accurate, particularly when it came to hitting the corvette.

  

• Ukrainian long-range strike systems seem to be getting larger and more powerful payloads. The above strike carried a greater punch than we have seen before.

Final point that needs to be understood by looking at the effectiveness of these Ukrainian long-range strike attacks is that the Ukrainians could have hit the Victory Day Parade, or at least major strategic targets in Moscow, on May 9. They have that ability now and Putin was wise to have Trump beg the Ukrainians not to attack. If the war is on next year at this time (and I hope it is not) the odds against any parade happening are rather high.

In other words the message of the attack from the Ukrainians to Putin was clear. “Look what we can do now and think about how things will develop over the next few months. They will get worse for Russia.”

To make that point clear, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister came out and said it explicitly yesterday. He referenced the growing power of Ukrainian long-range strike. Below is the first part of the statement, you can read the whole thing here.

Now part of this is signalling also to the Ukrainian people. There is real discussion going on in the country about whether or what kind of deal Ukraine would accept. Opinions are all over the place (will write a piece on that soon). So the Ukrainians were not just reaching out and touching Putin, they were making two statements to their own people at the same time.

However it was an important milestone in the Ukrainian effort to take the initiative from Russia. Militarily they are doing things that they could not have done before and that is allowing them to wage psychological warfare at the same time—with their barbs directed directly at Putin.

That definitely makes it the most important story of the week.

Share

Trump Is Helping Putin As Much As He Can

I know it was gratifying to see the House of Representatives vote to restart giving aid to Ukraine and to toughen sanctions on Russia, but for now enthusiasm needs to be kept in check. Actually, the US government is providing more and more support for Putin—to the degree that its openness is becoming shocking.

However, let’s start with the good news. By a vote of 226-195, the House, using a discharge petition, supported a bill sponsored by Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY), to provide a range of support for Ukraine and more sanctions on Russia. Here are the key elements of the bill.

• Financial & Security Aid: The legislation authorizes $8 billion in military financing loans directly to Ukraine for defense procurement. It also provides an additional $1 billion to $1.3 billion explicitly designated for immediate security and post-war reconstruction needs.

• Extension of USAI: It extends the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) through 2027, allocating $300 million annually for 2026 and 2027. This framework allows the Pentagon to purchase weapons directly from US defense contractors for delivery to Ukraine rather than drawing down existing US stocks.

• Strict Sanctions Mechanism: The bill levies new sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy. Crucially, it includes a mechanism that prevents the White House from lifting or easing these sanctions unless the president formally certifies to Congress that Russia has completely ended its war and is complying fully with peace agreements.

This is a good first step, but the chance in the near term of Ukraine getting more US aid or Russia being hit with harsher sanctions is almost nil. First off, the Republican Party opposed the bill with depressing uniformity. 194 Republicans voted no and 18 voted yes—meaning more than 90 percent of the GOP in the house went on record opposing aid to Ukraine. Even though they came up with some pathetic excuses, the reality is that the GOP will do what Trump wants on this. So even if a bill gets through the Senate, and the two houses agree on a final compromise, Trump can veto and the bill will go nowhere.

Note: One Democrat in the House, Rep Ilhan Omar, voted with the Trumpites not to help Ukraine, and then came up with excuses as weak as those of the GOP.

So, it is nice to see the bill pass, but the odds of this leading to a transformation in the US government’s position is nil. Trump is doubling down on crushing dissent in the party at present and this need will only become stronger. I wrote about that in the midweek update on Wednesday.

Another issue I have with all the reporting about the bill is that it obscures what is actually happening, which is that the US government under Trump is doing more and more to help Putin. Indeed the openness of US support for Russia is crossing over into outright brazenness.

Above we have the story of the US participation on the SPIEF conference, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. In just the last few weeks we have seen multiple steps by the US to help Russia. Here is a partial list:

• The US looks set to cancel an earlier order to deliver Tomahawk Missiles to Germany, because it could be seen as a worrying sign of “escalation” in Moscow.

• The US has extended sanctions waivers protecting Russian oil sales. This and other pro-Russian moves are encouraging world shipping lines to do more deals with Putin.

• The Administration is delaying any information being sent to Senate that might lead to Graham-Blumenthal being put to a vote. Remember Graham-Blumenthal, which in 2025 was always two weeks away from a vote? The GOP in the Senate is not even bothering to push it now, another sign of why I have no faith in the Republicans helping Ukraine.

• The USA is making open moves to draw down US forces in Europe, even when such a move will impose heavy financial costs on the USA.

These are tangible steps taken right now. Moreover, the US, is basically cutting off Ukraine from new Patriot anti-air missiles as much as possible, which is causing real headaches in Ukrainian air defense. I was quoted about this in a story in The Guardian this week.

So, the next time you read about a Russian mass attack on Ukrainian civilians, (another one happened this week which killed at least 23), know that the US is helping the Russians in this murderous work.

And it is part of a multi-layered effort by the US government to support Russia diplomatically, economically and militarily.

The House vote is nice but it also obscures about the reality of what the US is doing.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

Adam Kinzinger and I had a great Substack Live session today—discussing US politics, how the country can come back from this, rebuilding the US military and the war in Ukraine. We also discussed Scottish beer.

Cheers, Phil

Get more from Phillips P. OBrien in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Before I get to the heart of the matter I just wanted to say that tomorrow (Friday June 5) at 445pm UK Time and 1145 EST, Adam Kinzinger and I will be doing our latest Substack Live. We will focus, not surprisingly, on the state of US politics and also the Russo-Ukraine War. Here is a link, so please do watch if you want.

Now to the matter at hand. I am sure many of you have noticed that the writing pace of this Substack has picked up noticeably in the last three months. I seem to be producing at least 4, sometimes even 5 pieces a week and lengthy ones at that with the occasional Substack Live, etc.

It has been a great deal of work, though tbh I have found that I have loved the experience of being more committed to the platform. In fact in some ways it is frustrating that I cannot interact more, particularly with those of you who are kind enough to support the Substack by being paying subscribers. I would like to spend more time answering you comments in my pieces and doing Substack lives chats, even podcasts with technical experts, just for you, etc.

I also have come to discover that this Substack has a rather prodigious footprint. Pieces now have a minimum of 80,000 individual readers, and most are getting over 90,000. A few have even crested 100,000. The Substack also has an ability to set discussions which are fascinating. My favorite example recently was when I wrote the Ends-Ways-Means piece about Trump’s strategic deficit on March 2, just after the bombing started. This analytical framework then exploded after that and was widely adopted (and continues to be adopted) in the press and analytical community.

It is amazing to think that this is not only the number 1 Substack in the International category…

…it is at the same time the fastest growing one in the category.

In other words, this Substack has become a thing I never expected. With 118000 subscribers it has the impact of something much more than an academic bashing away messily on his keyboard.

One thing I have also noticed is that a very large (and increasing) number of subscribers are coming from banks, investment companies, international consultants, foreign ministries, defense departments, even political offices. Many of these subscribers are taking the analysis and research they get here and sending it around their offices (sometimes one email address will see more than 100 different devices access a single piece). In some ways I do not blame them. If I can say one thing over the last few years, it is that the state of strategic analysis stretching from war and power, to the politics of foreign policy, is, frankly, exceptionally weak. I would go as far to say that we are witnessing an analytical crisis where leading publications and voices constantly miss important points and approach questions with deeply flawed intellectual frameworks.

Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but my way of approaching such questions seems superior and the extraordinary growth of this Substack supports that hypothesis. In the last few years I have, compared to most of the press and analytical community, argued that:

• The Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine would most likely result in a long war and a strategic disaster for the Russians (in January 2022)

• That cheaper weapons such as drones were reshaping warfare and were pushing large legacy systems dangerously down the road to obsolesence (in May 2022)

• That Ukraine needed to be armed to fight a ranged war and not to be forced into a direct assault on Russian fortified lines (in early 2023)

• That the US was making a major mistake in deferring to Russia and not providing Ukraine with better systems (Patriots, ATACMs, F-16s) earlier.

• That Trump represented a seminal challenge to European security and that European states needed to start preparing for their own defense before the election of 2024.

• That Trump was going to cut Ukraine off from US military aid and that Europeans needed to get ready for that.

• That US military policy under the Trump administration was going to lead to the growth of military inefficiency and underperformance.

• That the course of the war in Ukraine in 2024 and 2025 was being fundamentally misunderstood, that the Russians would not be able to make a breakthrough and people were mistakenly talking Ukrainian prospects down.

• That in focussing on Ukrainian manpower and infantry, people were looking at the war from a flawed perspective and not understanding that Ukraine should be looking to get soldiers off the front line.

• That Ukraine had the ability to use a combined long-range and medium range strike campaign to reverse the trajectory of the war (and should be aided to do this).

• That from the start of the Iran bombing, there were signs of the rot that had entered the US military that people had been wilfully ignoring.

• That the US had made it clear that it can no longer and under Trump will no longer fight for Taiwan.

And this is just some of the areas where I believe my analysis has been different and better than that you can get anywhere else. I have also, as a counterbalance, tried to be explicit in acknowledging my mistakes, most obviously in my annual columns which dissect the biggest errors I made in the year.

I certainly will continue with these columns.

I suppose this is a long winded and self-congratulatory way of saying that I think this Substack has real value, and that is being recognized as such extremely widely. And that has set the stage for what I see as the future, the key points of which are:

• Paying subscribers who are signed up now or who sign up before midnight on July 1, 2026 will NEVER have their subscription prices rise. You are locked in at the present price for as long as you subscribe. That is a promise.

• That I will still produce a weekend update that is free for all—at least as long as the Russo-Ukraine War is going on.

• That podcasts that benefit causes such as Come Back Alive and which aid the Ukrainian war effort in any way will always be free for all. I can never charge for those.

• Prices for new paying subscribers starting on midnight on July 1 will go up to $10 per month/$100 per year. So people who do want to be paying subscribers now have almost a month to lock themselves into the lower rate.

• I will produce more content exclusively for paying subscribers going forward (see note below)

• That I will never accept advertising on written pieces for this Substack. I have found that this Substack works because I write what I want when I want, without any worries about offending any person or institution. That must continue.

So there we have it. The last few months have been amazing and made me want to commit more to this Substack. I am incredibly gratified that so many of you have supported the work and I look forward to the future.

Share

Note For Paying Subscribers

One of the reasons for these changes is that I want to commit more of my

Read more

In discussing the present situation with a knowledgeable US source yesterday I asked how Trump eventually gets out of the Iran War (which as always he remains desperate to do). The response I got was fascinating. I was told: “Right now he cannot get out. It is physics.” What this person meant is that while Trump tries constantly to wriggle away, the unbreakable hold that Iran and Israel have over his power/position always sucks him back him. The US does not control its own destiny at this point in the war, indeed every day the American position is weakening. The US is in a far weaker state than it was when the ceasefire was announced on April 7, and will be in weaker position next week when I write this (unless Trump surrenders).

This story of US weakness certainly is the story of the week, maybe the year.

This weakness ties into what Trump is doing with the GOP and the federal government, which gets comment but I am not sure of the right type. People need to ask themselves why Trump is prizing absolute subservient loyalty over anything. Its not just that he wants to punish his enemies. He has always wanted to do that. No, its far more than that, Trump is setting up a parallel system to protect himself and maintain his power, and that is based on total control of the GOP and executive government. This might actually be the thing that makes US decline unstoppable. He is, as always, willing to destroy the country to save himself. And his Iran war is accelerating that.

How Weak Is The USA?

The strategic catastrophe of Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran gets worse every week, actually every day. Recently we are seeing arguably the greatest example of the growth of American global weakness that Trump has accelerated. Trump has shown that the USA cannot control either Iran or Israel—indeed that he is panicking as those two states are doing what they want regardless of his threats or wishes. The idea of the USA as either the indispensable partner or unstoppable enemy is gone.

It may never come back.

Cast your mind back to almost exactly a year ago. Trump had joined the Israeli bombing of Iran for one night in June 2025 and celebrated it as a great victory. Then, Trump was determined to end that phase of the war asap, and even though the Israelis believed that their campaign needed to go on, he ordered them, publicly and humiliatingly, to stop.

Trump’s public rebuke to Israel was accepted then, and the Israelis did stop the bombing of Iran, even reportedly turning around some aircraft that were already flying. In the last few weeks Trump has tried to do something similar and the Israelis are basically not reacting, but doing what Netanyahu wants to do. This is in Lebanon.

For those who have not been following this, any deal with Iran to be acceptable to Iran has to include protection for Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. Netanyahu, however, has determined that a growing war in Lebanon is in his interest and has been steadily expanding the invasion of that country in the interval. Israel now has established control over a long buffer zone.

At the same time, Israel has been bombing around the south of the country and the Lebanese capital of Beirut. Here is a BBC map of Israeli strikes up until a week ago.

Btw, remember a few years ago when it was said that Hezbollah had been crippled to the point that it might not recover? That was, as these claims always are, nonsense. Indeed, with changes in military tech, it is actually easier and quicker to rebuild a strike capability these days (as the Israelis are figuring out as they struggle fighting Hezbollah drones). Its another sign, for me at least, that the US needs to get out of the Middle East as an active military force. I have been arguing this for years but the evidence now is even more compelling. I will produce a new piece on this next week—maybe as part of the midweek update.

This Israeli military action has been driving Trump nuts. That is not because he cares about the Lebanese people (he could not give a damn about them) but because he cannot get a deal with Iran unless Israel relents. Unlike last year, however, Trump cannot simply order the Israelis to turn around—and as such is getting desperate. He is even losing control over himself when he talks with Netanyahu.

In this Axios story from the day before, it was reported that Trump started screaming, even cursing, at Israeli PM Netanyahu, for defying him over Lebanon.

And yet, over the last few weeks the Israelis have been expanding their military operation, exactly when Trump wants them to do the opposite. Nothing could show US weakness any more dramatically. In the past Israel would have been desperately concerned with not embarrassing or undermining. Now they are doing what they want.

Since Trump’s freak out, for instance, there are reports that Israel is stepping up military action in Lebanon. The FT claims that Israel has expanded its bombing of Beirut in the last 24-48 hours. On the ground, the Israelis have crossed the Litani River in the last week, even seizing the well-known Crusader-built, Beaufort Castle.

Its a remarkable example of US weakness.

And it is not the only one. This week the Iranians seemed to get tired of having to play along with Trump’s public/private farce and stepped back from talks for a while.

Trump’s public/private farce goes like this. Publicly Trump keeps saying that negotiations with Iran are going well, that a deal is close, that Iran indeed wants a deal, and that all this is no big deal. His most recent tweet on the war, released just a few hours ago, was just another example of his desperate need to describe the negotiations as going well and to make it look like he is in control of his own destiny.

However my favorite example of Trump’s public farce was this claim, which might go down in history as his “chirping” tweet which he sent out on June 1. Basically everything is fine Americans, relax and let me work my magic!

It follows hot on the heels of the unravelling of his latest claims that a deal was close. Remember, on May 23, almost two weeks ago, Trump was claiming a deal was very close. This was what he said at the time.

“An Agreement has been largely negotiated,…Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly.”

it was being reported that this time, really, really a deal was in the offing. Secretary of State Rubio continued to sound optimistic even yesterday—yes a deal is closer than people realize. All that was left to negotiate are two simple issues—Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz….

Of course those issues are basically not solvable at present unless Trump surrenders to Iran. The Iranians, as they have been doing, are willing to string Trump along on both, offering nothing but demanding lots. The Iranian government even publicly said this week that they are halting serious negotiations with the USA.

Look closely at the power imbalance here. It is the US government that is desperate to keep up the fiction that the negotiations are going well, that Iran is making major concessions and that a deal is close. The Iranians, on the other hand, are happy to project the opposite image; that they can walk away from the talks and are happy to let this string for longer.

So Iran and Israel now share one thing very much in common. They are willing to defy the US, incur US anger in the case of the latter and even dare the USA to restart military operations in the case of the former. In fact the US has started up military strikes this week, and it has made no difference.

This is what I mean about the USA getting weaker every day. On April 7 when the bombing campaign was called off, destruction of Iranian military capabilities was at its high point and Iran was at its weakest. In the last two months the Iranians have rebuilt some capabilities and the US has run down some of its in the region. On the other hand, both the Iranians and Israelis understand that the USA is getting military weaker all the time—and they are acting accordingly.

So how weak is the USA now? Much weaker than on April 7 and getting weaker every day.

Share

Trump Is Creating A Scorched Earth GOP and Executive Branch—Be Afraid

Trump knows that he is in real trouble in the Middle East, which is why privately he is raging and swearing. And he also know that he is politically in trouble because of this and other things such as the rising cost of living (made much worse by his Middle Eastern policy). As he gets politically weaker in the country as a whole, he seems to be acting in a counterintuitive way—opting for MAGA hardcore supporters over those who have a better chance of winning elections.

He did this most famously in the Texas senate race, where he threw his support behind the epically corrupt Ken Paxton over the sitting GOP senator John Cornyn—even though Cornyn was polling much better than Paxton when it came to holding the seat for the GOP in the November election.

When it comes to government employees, Trump is also going for the hard-core loyalists over those who might be more appealing to the Republican Party. His choice made yesterday, for a new Director of National Intelligence, showed how deep he was down this rabbit hole. His selection of Bill Pulte showed that absolute loyalty and willingness to break the law to help protect him is all that matters now. Here was how the New York Times started their report on Pulte.

Mr. Pulte, who leads the federal housing finance agency, has no known background in intelligence, defense or national security, but he has been among the most aggressive advocates for prosecuting Democrats and others perceived by Mr. Trump as having crossed him.

The appointment of Pulte mirrors exactly what Trump has done with his Attorney General. He got rid of Pam Bondi, who had disgraced herself on his behalf, when he felt she needed to debase herself even more. In her place he put Todd Blanche, a man who would do whatever he wanted, when he wanted.

Blanche to show that there are no limits on his loyalty, turned around and set up Trump’s $1,776 billion slush fund to reward January 6th terrorists. Interestingly, Trump seems to be relenting on this precisely because it means that Blanche might not get confirmed as Attorney General. The money matters less than the absolute loyalty in charge of the US government.

Btw, you might have missed this in the reporting, but while Blanche walked back commitment to the slush fund, he reaffirmed that the Justice Department would continue with its pledge to protect the Trump’s from any future investigations. Its about protection—remember that.

Now why is Trump doing what seems to be decisions to make himself less popular and less politically secure going forward? The answer is not because he is stupid (Trump as I have been saying for years is not politically stupid but is actually extremely saavy), it is because he is adopting what could be called a scorched earth strategy to protect himself and his power going forward. He wants absolute and total control of the GOP, even if that means he might lose a seat here or there. And he wants a federal government that will do whatever he wants when he wants, regardless of the slightest scruple.

It sets him up to corrupt either the November vote or its results. People are being too blase about this election. Trump has a party that is completely under his sway and a federal government that is staffed by uber loyalists. It gives him terrible and powerful options to subvert democracy.

It is no mistake.

And it goes back to the Iran war. Trump is so stuck that he might have no option but to let this war continue to play out for weeks/months longer. The longer than happens the wilder this could be economically. He has now has a party and government that will do what he wants if chaos ensues, or indeed if he chooses to start chaos.

It is physics after all.

Note—Adam Kinzinger and I will be doing our latest Substack live on Friday, June 5 at 1700 GMT and Noon EST. Please do join if you can, as always we will delve into issues of war and US politics.

Did you know for the first half of the 20th century, US and British thinking about future military developments moved steadily away from the idea of mass armies and large infantry formations? For both, the mass casualties of World War I played the key role in this transformation. Winston Churchill, for instance, who served on the Western Front for six months at the start of 1916, when he became Minister of Munitions in 1917, started completely re-imagining the British Army as an infantry light, machine dominated force.

Btw, If you want to read more about this, I have a chapter about it in my book The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler, How War Made Them And They Made War. I will include a short excerpt of the book at the end of this piece.

Franklin Roosevelt, who visited the Western Front in 1918, thought identically. It is why both the US and UK armies were kept surprisingly small in World War II (and in both cases they suffered historically low casualties). I have written a few pieces on Franklin Roosevelt’s decision making in this area, the most detailed of which you can read here.

Since then, however, it could be argued that military thinking has regressed and the way western analysts approached the Ukraine War with calls for mass conscription is typical of this. I have been trying to understand this regression, and think now that I have some idea of how this mistake has come about. In a nutshell, not only were the media and analytical community fighting the last war, they were also fighting the wrong version of the last war. In both cases the intellectual and strategic conditions that created this mindset do not apply to the war Ukraine is fighting—but the press and the analytical community seemed unable to grasp that (until just now it must be said).

Fighting The Last And The Wrong War

To understand why they have been fighting both the last and the wrong war, let us start with what might be called the “Boots On The Ground” principle.

Read more

It has been fascinating watching the media catch up with the change of initiative in the war which began many months ago. Until not long ago, much of the media was talking about Ukraine having a manpower crisis compared to Russia and that during the coming period the Russians would maintain the initiative going forward. It was based on a widespread misunderstanding about what was happening (and shows how weak the reporting has been throughout).

Ukraine did not somehow start plucking the initiative in the last few weeks out of thin air. The Ukrainians started planning for this change well over a year ago. In January and February I wrote two pieces on a victory strategy for Ukraine, and laid out what the Ukrainians were doing (and had been doing for a while). Here are the two pieces.

And here is an excerpt from the second one, which shows for just how long this plan was under development by the Ukrainians and how it was a strategy based on strength in both long and medium ranged capabilities.

Look, I did not make this up. It was readily apparent from talking to and most importantly listening to Ukrainians. They could see the war changing in front of them and it was the Ukrainians who decided to adapt to that instead of banging their head against the wall and trying to fight in ways that they had earlier. That was the genesis of the combined long-range/medium range strike campaign we see now, along with the UAV attrition strategy on the battlefield (all three are mentioned in that excerpt above).

More and more there are signs that it is working (though I think people also need to keep expectations in check). As such, I thought I would start this week to talk about how the campaign might effect the Russian Army in the field and what to watch out for.

Two others stories will be mentioned. President Zelensky made a notable trip to Sweden this week, and as part of this one prominent voice started talking about Ukraine as a new-Nordic state. I think a Baltic-North Sea grouping is better, but I get what is being said. Finally, Russia launched what might have been a deliberate attack on a NATO state—and the NATO rhetoric was super in response. The alliance itself, though, is a zombie.

Share

Trying to Collapse the Russian Army from Behind--What to Watch out for.

The Ukrainian claims of losses of Russian material and soldiers have been surprisingly accurate since the start of the Russian full scale invasion. Their claims of losses of Russian soldiers, for instance, seem to be widely confirmed by western intelligence agencies. Just two examples. In May, Dutch intelligence released an estimate of at least 1.2 million Russian casualties (approximately 500k killed). At the end of April a UK source claimed this figure was around 1.3 million. The Ukrainian tally released a few hours ago was just over 1.3 million (see below).

Interestingly, recent claims might even be more accurate because so many of the losses are being filmed by UAV. This makes this war not only the most transparent, it makes it gorily the most “trackable” conflict in human history. The deaths of Russian soldiers and the destruction of Russian equipment are now being filmed regularly.

When it comes to the collapsing of the Russian military from behind, the most immediate thing to pay attention to, as I discussed last week, is the mid-range strike campaign. Looking for evidence from that can be seen in Ukrainian claims. Take a look at this chart of Russian losses from yesterday and see what stands out.

The figure of 1430 personnel is shocking though that is actually not the one I am talking about (more on personnel losses below). No, the one that is even more shocking is the 483 “vehicles and fuel tanks”. That is a daily record for the Ukrainians

And this week the focus on transport attacks has been made much more public by Ukraine. The Ukrainian MOD announced its ‘Logistics Lockdown’ program with an additional UAH 5 billion devoted for middle-strike capabilities. This was how they summarized it—and note how they said that this campaign has been going on (let alone planned for) for many months now.

Over the past several months, Ukraine has increased fourfold the destruction of enemy logistics, warehouses, equipment, vehicles, command posts, and supply routes at operational depth.

Data points to a clear trend: as the destruction of russian logistics increases, the number of assault operations along the line of contact decreases.

The data points that they mention are the interesting ones to track. See if the destruction of Russian trucks remains elevated in this way. You will also see reports (though often not comparative data) the destruction of warehouses and Russian command and control (C2) posts. Two days ago, the Ukrainians released statements about hitting both (see bolded text below).

In the occupied territories, an enemy Tor-M2 anti-aircraft missile system was hit in the area of the village of Berdianske, Zaporizhia region; an enemy command and observation post in the area of the village of Lyman Pershyi, Kharkiv region; an enemy logistics warehouse in the village of Aidar, Luhansk region; as well as enemy UAV command posts in the areas of the village of Tyotkino, Kursk region of Russia, the village of Komar, Donetsk region, and Nesterianka, Zaporizhia region.

Once again the Ukrainians are saying what they are doing. The Ukrainians are going for the trucks, warehouses and C2 posts—and add to that keeping the personnel losses for the Russians above replacement levels. That figure of 1430 personnel losses the other day, along with the truck losses is exactly what the Ukrainians want to see happen. The most important moment in this calculation, however will happen sometime next week when the Ukrainians release their monthly estimate of Russian losses for May and whether these are above new recruitment figures.

If it is, the trend is exactly what the Ukrainians are planning for. It will lead to a constant degradation of the Russian army and fighting power. Supplies will be decreasing, command will be chaotic, losses will be rising and replacements arriving in inadequate numbers. The remaining troops will be in worse shape and be asked to continue attacking. Along the line it will be the Russian military that will be increasingly closer to failure.

This, at least, is what the Ukrainians are saying. Take a Russian army that has to attack and collapse it from behind. The Ukrainians are not hiding their plans—hopefully the western press will not be so slow to understand it this time.

Share

Is Ukrainian Now A “Nordic” State?

President Zelensky had one of his more notable international visits last week. He flew into Sweden, where a fascinating defense agreement was signed. The Swedes donated 16 earlier generation Gripen fighters to the Ukrainians (they should arrive in early 2027) and from that point the Ukrainians will go forward to buy many more. The original purchase order looks to be 20 of the most advanced generation of Gripens—with an eventual order of up to 150 being mooted.

That would be a major growth in Ukrainian fixed wing capabilities—and just as important it will be European based. The Gripens were engineered by the Swedes specifically to fight the Russians, something that the Swedish PM referred to rather coyly—saying that they were built “for one thing”

Btw, as part of that tweet, Kristersson released a video you can access here.

This is only the latest of what has been a series of strong commitments to Ukrainian defense by the Nordic states (which include Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland). These states have gone far beyond most in their financial and military backing of Ukraine and, moreover, are more comfortable discussing Ukraine winning the war (and Russia losing). For reasons of history and location they are less squeamish on the subject than many others.

Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba even mused about whether this kind of connection (and the overall support Ukraine has received from Nordic countries) meant that Ukraine was becoming one of the Nordic states—strategically at least.

Its an interesting idea—but I would say misses a slightly larger point. It is not the Nordics who are the new driving force in European power, it could be said to be the Baltic-North sea states. The Nordics, Baltics, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK at this point are the key ones in determining whether Europe will both aid Ukraine to win the war and whether Europe will actually free itself from US strategic dominance. Here is a map of the region I am talking about.

Note that Ukraine actually fits geographically into this with its long border with Poland.

These states combined have the money, technology and military capabilities to both help Ukraine and establish a new Europe. Indeed if they can get their act together, the rest of the continent will probably have to fall into line. So I am not sure I would call Ukraine a new “Nordic” state—however if it can act as part of a larger Baltic-North Sea grouping, that should be enough.

Share

Russia Attacks Romania

The Russians attacked NATO this week. But do not worry, NATO will do nothing in response beyond issue meaningless statements. The attack happened in Rumania, when a Russian drone that was originally part of an attack on Ukraine seemed to deliberately alter course and attack the NATO country. This Russian drone hit an apartment building in the Romanian city of Galati sometime on the evening of May 28-29.

The rhetorical response by NATO was, of course, swift and decisive. It was loudly proclaimed from the top of NATO that this cannot stand.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte affirmed “that NATO stands ready to defend every inch of Allied territory.”

The US ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, sounded just as bellicose, claiming, “We will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Ah, you might think, NATO is girding its loins and about to step up.

You would be wrong. All of this is lies, at least from the US perspective. The US is not committed to defending every inch of NATO territory and is openly now saying that it might not fight for the Baltics (and notably Whitaker could not even bring himself to mention Russia as the attacker in this affair). Moreover, the US is accelerating plans to pull forces out of Europe.

To show how weak the response really was, NATO has gone very quiet after the initial squawking and I am sure that fingers are being desperately crossed in the hope that the Russians do not test the alliance again.

NATO as a US-led institution is a zombie-alliance at present. It talks wonderfully, but it is a strategic disaster waiting to happen as it is led by a country that does not care about the security of its most threatened members.

This week just made that clear (again).

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

The Pentagon, actually the Trump Administration, is in the process of asking for the largest increase in defense spending in US/world history. The ask for this coming Fiscal Year (2027) is for a total budget of $1.5 trillion—an increase of $500 billion over the year before. It is being justified as a once in a generation request, to prepare the US military for the future by expanding its capabilities across the board, from front-line fighting to the supercharging of the US industrial base.

And if it is approved, and this Pentagon gets an additional $500 billion, I can assure you that it is far more likely that the exact opposite will happen than the supporters of this increase are saying. This administration, and I include the Pentagon and, sadly, the US military in this description, is know controlled by corruption and incompetence, with flattery not skill a key ability to rise up (in uniform and out). Such a culture will not only waste or steal any extra funding money, what is spends it will almost certainly do so improperly. It will in all likelihood make the US weaker not stronger.

There is a terribly mistaken notion that more defense spending equates to a better military. That is simply not true historically and in the US today. A military is not some end in and of itself, it is a creation of a system and it reflects that systems values and practices. A creative, honest and reflective system can create a military of great effectiveness with much less money than you think. A dishonest, stupid and unctuous system waste much of its funding. We have had countless examples of the latter in the last century, and let me start with two—Putin’s Russia and Mussolini’s Italy (both states to which Trump’s America bears an uncomfortable resemblance).

Share

Read more

The last few days have been particularly painful for those who are worried about US decline. Particularly, but not exclusively, the US flailing around desperately as it tries to extricate itself from a war that it started by choice only three months ago, makes it apparent how diminished and friendless the USA is in the world these days. Moreover, it is made worse because much/most of the reason for this decline is by choice. The USA did not have to find itself so weakened so soon, but it has.

I do not celebrate US decline and I certainly take no pleasure in it. The world that it emerging out of US self-inflicted failure is likely to be even more unstable and warlike, and less interested in norms of behavior, than the one being left behind. It holds out the prospect of being much more dangerous. Yet here we are and the reality cannot be avoided.

Moreover, US decline could have been much less quick. Some decline was always going to happen as the US lost its economic dominance. However, the US still retains some important economic strength. Why US decline is so stark now is down to other factors, from its alienation of allies, its growing and open corruption, its unreliability and its military degradation. Much of this is down to US choice, done willingly and with public support.

It certainly was on display this week.

US Decline And The Iran War

Donald Trump is desperate to get out of this war, but as has been the case for almost two months now, he does not yet know exactly how. He seems to be close to agreeing a deal that accedes to most of Iran’s strategic requirements, but he cannot yet pull the trigger. As I wrote on Monday, the only question left is: How Badly Has The US Lost This War.

One issue that will answer this question, at least stylistically, is whether Trump can get some form of words from Iran about a nuclear deal that he can sell to the US population as better than that negotiated by President Obama under the JCPOA. The problem is that nothing he is getting so far, as he seems to grasp, is as good as the JCPOA. As such, it seems to be dawning on him that he might have to accept a deal that leaves Iran in control of its nuclear destiny. He even tweeted about it late on Monday in what looks like a clear attempt to prepare his supporters for this eventuality.

Anything “destroyed in place or, an another acceptable location” means out of US control—nothing more or nothing less.

Maybe Putin’s Russia will do? It certainly would qualify under Trump’s criterion.

Btw, one real problem for the US is that the president does not understand nuclear technologies (what the hell is “ Nuclear dust”) or the international bodies that are supposed to regulate nuclear power (the Atomic Energy Commission was a US-government body that was disestablished in the 1970s). Trump might very well agree to something and not understand what he is doing.

So here we are and the US president is left fighting for a nuclear fig leaf to try and hide his failure. That alone would be a remarkable sign of decline.

However that might not have been the most poignant moment which highlighted US decline. It was this call by Trump a few hours before his nuclear tweet, calling on almost all the Arab states in the region to agree to join the Abraham Accords and recognize Israel. Trump did this in a long and weirdly elaborate message. Apologies for the size, but you might want to read the whole thing.

Now my guess (reinforced from what I am hearing) is that Trump is doing this to try and appease Netanyahu and other pro-Israeli or harder-line GOP voices who are expressing dismay at the prospect of him agreeing a deal with Iran. As he is on the cusp of disappointing both groups, he decided to make this gambit.

However it was the reaction, or lack thereof, that was really illuminating of US decline. Trump did not just tweet this, he was very serious about it and mentioned it in a conference call to the leaders of key Islamic states. The response of those leaders was stunned silence, so much so that Trump was worried that the call had been dropped. As one story said:

“There was silence on the line and Trump joked and asked if they are still there”

Since then not a single state has agreed to Trump’s request and no one even seems to be taking it seriously. The truth is that the states Trump was trying to cajole into joining the Abraham Accords are now more than acquainted with US weakness and unreliability. The last thing they are going to do is jump to the tune of a declining US that is being out-maneuvered by Iran. It used to be that when the US president suggested a major foreign policy move, people would at least respond.

The US is being defied by its enemies and dismissed by its friends and it is all happening in front of our eyes.

Share

The Military Strikes Do Not Hide The Fact That The US Has No Good Military Options

On Tuesday morning the US struck some Iranian vessels that it says were in the process of deploying mines in the Strait of Hormuz (so much for Iranian incoming pledges to make the waterway free and open to all as the administration keeps telling us). This resulted in an Iranian response and then US attacking what it said were Iranian missile sites.

All this shows is that, at present, the Iranians retain the military ability to threaten shipping in the Strait, which is all they need to keep the waterway closed. Moreover, reports this week, including most prominently this one by CNN which was based on multiple sources, claim that Iran is reconstituting its military capabilities and industries much faster than anticipated. Here was how the story began.

Iran has already restarted some of its drone production during the six-week ceasefire that began in early April, one sign it is rapidly rebuilding certain military capabilities degraded by US-Israeli strikes, according to two sources familiar with US intelligence assessments. Four sources told CNN that US intelligence indicates Iran’s military is reconstituting much faster than initially estimated.

The reality seems to be that in continuing to prevaricate, what the US is doing is showing it has no good military options left if it wants to restart hostilities. Indeed, the longer it waits, the worse the situation becomes as it is the Iranians who are reconstituting force more rapidly than expected.

If that is not all, the Iranians are also getting support from those who the US has tried to cultivate. It turns out that China and Russia, aware of US weakness, have been and are doing considerably more to help Iran than has been publicly understood.

The behavior of the Chinese shows just how weak the US has become. This is happening right after the Trump-Xi summit during which the US asked for Chinese support to help pressure Iran. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. In terms of military support, reports are that China has recently sent missile components to Iran. These shipments are intended to replace complex machinery and systems destroyed or damaged during the initial phases of the conflict. China is helping Iran become militarily stronger.

Diplomatically, the Chinese seem to be going to significant lengths to make it clear that they are in touch with the Iranian regime and support Iran’s positions on the ceasefire. This is exactly what the Chinese response was to the US attack yesterday.

So much for Trump’s request.

This open and quiet disregard for US power by the Chinese also heralds US decline. What is particularly notable in that regard is the one-sided nature of the relationship. While the Chinese are refusing to do what was asked of them, the Trump administration seems desperate to curry favor with the Chinese. This is the case even it means abandoning a staunch friend of the USA.

Share

China Backs Iran But Taiwan Is A “Chip”

Maybe the starkest example of US decline is how the US is speaking and acting about Taiwan while China supports Iran. While the Chinese are helping the Iranian military in its fight against the USA, the US seems to be on the cusp of abandoning democratic Taiwan as it looks to protect itself. The key issue now is the fate of a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan that the administration had previously approved, but which the Chinese government has put pressure on Trump to withdraw.

Just over a week ago, President Trump made his feelings about Taiwan obvious when he spoke about this military sale to Taiwan being a great “bargaining chip”. His exact quote about the arms sale was:

"I'm holding that in abeyance and it depends on China…It's a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly. It's a lot of weapons."

To further destabilize the Taiwanese, the acting US Navy secretary Hung Cao, speaking to Congress, said that the arms sale to Taiwan had been paused because of the armaments requirements of the war with Iran. Admitting that this had not been discussed with the Taiwanese, Cao also made no pledge that the arms sale would go through once the war with Iran was settled.

In other words, democratic Taiwan is being left twisting in the wind by the USA, while China supports its friend Iran.

Decline indeed.

Well after having completely obliterated Iran, having forced its unconditional surrender, having destroyed its navy, its army and its missile forces (multiple times each), it seems that Donald Trump is on the verge of agreeing a ceasefire extension with Iran written mostly to fit Iranian strategic needs. Of course this was all rather predictable, as Trump has been twisting in the wind for weeks.

Trump himself tweeted out news of the impending agreement late on Saturday, complete with his obligatory list of other governments that definitely, absolutely, are delighted with his policies.

How did we get here? Well, other than giving in to Iran, Trump’s only options were, first, to either wait a long time for the US blockade to do so much damage to the Iranian economy that the Iranian government would soften its demands or, second, to escalate dramatically by returning to the direct use of military force.

The problem is that neither of these options were likely to achieve anything better. The Iranian government seemed more than set to outlast the blockade, knowing that upcoming US elections were going to force Trump’s hand and as for the military option—that had already failed had revealed how desperate Trump was not to use ground troops.

As such, if an agreement along the lines of what is being reported is actually worked out and put into operation, the only question that really remains is how badly the US has lost the war? This really is a historic moment. Its the quickest and might be the most decisive US military defeat in the history of the USA. The US started this war by choice, and here we are fewer than three months later, after the US threw much of its most modern weaponry and used up masses of its existing stockpiles, wondering how much Iran is going to get.

To understand how bad it could get, it makes sense to start with a list of areas in which there seems to be US-Iran agreement, areas where there seems to be no clarity and, finally, areas where the US has just given up.

Share

Read more

I know many of you are following the US-Iran War closely and are hearing the news about Trump possibly throwing in the towel and accepting defeat. Certainly looks like that. However, this update will stay on the Russo-Ukraine War. If Trump is indeed folding, it will not be a big shock to readers here.

This was a week when Ukraine continued to step up its game in both long- and medium/mid-range strike, and talked publicly about both. Btw, for the sake of ease, from now on I will just say medium-range strike. I know that these concepts will be old news for long-time readers of this Substack, however there have been lots of new readers in the last few months and I thought it would be useful to provide a primer on the difference between them. Its not just about distance, its actually more about concepts, and understanding what matters in the use of air power.

I will then follow up with examples of each, as this week Ukraine demonstrated its growing ability in both domains. If they continue to expand their capacity at the present trajectory and Russia cannot come up with a counter, the Russian military is in real trouble.

Also, this week was interesting for the Trump administration, which is clearly trying to row back on its earlier support for Putin and its hostility towards Ukraine. How they did it is ultimately less important than why, but both will be discussed.

Finally, my latest piece just appeared in The Atlantic. Here is a gift link. It builds on this Substack published last week, so it might not be terribly new for many of you, but at least the right narrative is getting out.

I hope you enjoy it.

A Primer On The Difference Between Long and Medium/Mid Range Strike

That sound you hear might be an burning Russian oil refinery near the Ural Mountains or it might be an exploding logistics convoy travelling along the M14 Highway (the Ukrainian highway from the Russian border to Mariupol and on to Odesa, much of which is under Russian occupation). These examples of both successful Ukrainian long and medium range strike, are something which the Ukrainians are trying to communicate to the rest of the world. Zelensky even mentioned both in this recent tweet.

Long-time readers of this Substack will probably not be surprised by these different concepts, but there are many newer readers who might find some background on them useful. To begin with, if you want to read why these changes are so important, and why people who believed Russia had the upper hand in the ranged war were so wrong, here is a piece from October 2025 which tried to educate people on what to watch out for at that point in the war.

The Difference Between Long-Range and Medium/Mid-Range Strike:

To preface this discussion I will admit that there is no one definition for long-range and medium-range strike that is universally accepted. For this war it is best to think of the difference between them in conceptual terms more than just a range differential, with a proviso that technology and capability also play a major role.

Long-range strike could best be compared to strategic bombing in World War II. It is an attempt to strike deep into Russia to try and damage the strategic industries that underpin the Russian war machine. This involves most famously the campaign against Russian oil refineries, but do not overlook strikes on Russian military production such as drones, both in the component producing and final assembly phase. The strikes around St Petersburg and Moscow and now increasingly into the Urals are all part of this long-range strike campaign, but it also includes strikes in Southern Russia such as around the Caspian. So think of long-range strike as trying to limit/damage the ability of the Russians to generate new military force.

Ukrainian medium-range strike is conceptually different though in certain cases there have been medium-range strikes that have been on targets almost as far away as those being done for long-range strike. Medium-range strikes can occur in quite a large area, as close as 25-30 kilometres from the front line and stretching for say 300 kilometres further. What holds these strikes together is their purpose as much as their distance. These strikes are aimed primarily at logistic disruption, stopping the deployment of produced Russian force to the front to fight Ukraine. These are aimed at road, rail, sea/bridge traffic which is bringing supplies or reinforcements to the front.

If you want a one sentence summary it would be this:

“Long-range strike is aimed at limiting/destroying the ability of Russia to generate new military force and medium-range strike is aimed at disrupting/destroying the ability of Russia to deploy already generated force into the fight.”

Beyond the conceptual difference, one of the reasons the Ukrainians differentiate between the two is that their systems up to 300 kilometres or so are becoming more numerous and effective a little faster than their long-range systems. That is not to say that their long-range systems are not getting better, they are. Its just that in 2025 the Ukrainians understood that they were on the cusp of great improvements in the medium-range area, and started to think conceptually more about it.

Now, a really powerful air campaign needs to conceptually address both of these issues, which is what the Ukrainians are doing. This week had great examples that will illustrate the difference further.

Share

Medium-Range Strike—The M-14 Highway

When it comes to medium-range strike, the Ukrainians seem to have the ability to hit road traffic pretty regularly along the M14 highway, which is the main overland route that the Russians have been using through southern Ukraine. Here is is highlighted on google maps, you can follow it as it runs from thre Russian border, to Mariupol, to Melitopol and onto Nova Kakhovka. Also note that at Melitopol the road branches and it becomes a key road to get supplies into and out of Crimea.

The Ukrainians have been able to hit traffic so regularly along the M-14, that the Russian occupation government has had to issue an order forbidding all civilian traffic (except food and vital supplies) on the road. Only military supplies and things that sustain life will be allowed through.

The reason for this is that trucking is coming under sustained attack on the road, which is reportedly littered with destroyed vehicles.

There has been some discussion of whether Ukraine has established “fire control” along the road. I am still reluctant to say that fully. If Ukraine had fire control I would expect to be able to say that they can control traffic whenever and wherever they want. It is not clear that the campaign has reached that stage of control yet. It is probably more accurate to say that the Ukrainians can exercise road denial at times. It cannot stop all traffic, but it can strongly affect it while destroying a good deal of it.

The future of this fight will determine what happens at the front. If Ukraine can actually control and permanently interdict all road traffic along the M-14, it will be a massive problem for Russian forces in western Ukraine (think Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts). If supply on this road is stopped and rail traffic as well, the Russian’s only way to get supplies in will be through Crimea itself. That traffic has already been reduced.

Note: As this is being written there are uncomfirmed reports of Russian supply problems in Zaporizhzhia—all I can say is watch this closely.

The Ukrainian plan through medium-range strike is to starve the Russian army in Ukraine of reinforcement and resupply. That can cripple a force that fights in the rather basic way the Russians do.

Note: one final thing to say which actually helps the Russians. They do not have to get so much supply through in the first place as they did in 2022-2024 for instance, because they are not fighting with as many vehicles As their forces are “lighter” infantry or light vehicle based, their supply needs are less extensive. I might have to right a piece on this, but it is one way in which drone warfare provides a second order advantage to the Russians.

Long-Range Strike: Refineries And More

These Ukrainian long-range strikes have been going on for a while and people usually associate them with attacks on Russian oil production, particularly refineries. The Ukrainians themselves have made it a key part of their public discussion, with graphics such as this released this week.

Here are Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries in just the past week and some of their reported effects.

Timeline of Strikes (May 17– May 23, 2026)

• May 17: The Moscow Oil Refinery suspended crude processing following the major drone attack last weekend.

• May 18 & 20: The Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez (NORSI) refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, was struck twice with the May 20 strike successfully targeted the all important crude distillation unit.

• May 21: The Rosneft-owned Syzran Oil Refinery in Samara Oblast, situated over 800 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, was hit. The strike resulted in a significant fire. The facility has an annual processing capacity of approximately 9 million tons.

• May 22: The Yaroslavl Oil Refinery (YANOS), one of Russia’s largest, was attacked. This facility is located roughly 700 kilometers from the border and is a primary fuel node for military logistics.

• May 23: Operations expanded to the Black Sea coast with strikes on the Sheskharis oil terminal—a major export hub operated by Transneft—and the adjacent Grushova oil depot in Novorossiysk. Ukrainian sources also reported a strike on a tanker vessel, the Chrysalis, in the Black Sea.

So many attacks in one week, so far apart distance wise, is the key development. Russian air defense is already struggling, if they are presented with attacks in such different areas every week, it is difficult to see them do anything but get worse. Ukraine has been going after refineries for a while, but they are picking up the pace and going further than ever before.

What these strikes are doing is trying to deprive the Putin regime of desperately needed money (and if possible deprive the Russian economy of oil). Russia is facing a financial black hole in the future as it has spent down its sovereign wealth fund. Had Trump not stepped in to help with his Iran war, these financial problems would be terrible now. As it is, the higher price of world oil is really helping Russia, though Ukraine is using long-range strike to limit the improvement. Here are some developments of note.

• Refining Capacity Reductions: Attacks between March and May 2026 disabled between 16% and 25% of Russia’s domestic oil refining capacity, representing a loss of approximately 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in processing throughput.

• Export Decline: Consequently, Russia’s refined oil product exports fell by 13.6% month-over-month in April 2026, reaching a historic low of 2.2 million bpd.

Note: These are just refinery attacks. This week Ukraine attacked a number of other strategic industries with long-range strike, including a large chemical making plant (think explosives) in Perm.

Add it together, the Ukrainians are getting better in both long- and medium-range strike, and that makes it the big story of the week.

Share

The Trump Administration Pivots, The Reason Why Is The Important Thing

Over the past week, the Trump administration made a number of noticeable pivots when it came towards its policy and public stance towards Ukraine. Basically, they tried to start de-Putinizing themselves. Both JD Vance and Marco Rubio, Trump’s two most likely successors, were part of this pivot and what they said was in many ways less important than why they said it.

Vice President JD Vance on May 21, decided he needed to stress how helpful Trump had been for Ukaine. He claimed that “No US president has done more to save Ukraine than Trump.” Now, remember, Vance might be the most pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine member of the administration, and man who boasted that one of his “proudest achievements” was cutting all aid to Ukraine. He has previously been viscerally anti-Ukraine, talking down Ukrainian prospects and saying how the US has no interest in the war—and now he wants to convince people that Trump was actually pro-Ukraine?

Btw, what Vance was referring to was the Trump Administration’s first term decision to send anti-tank weaponry to Ukraine. It conveniently overlooks the entirety of the end of aid in the second term, all the help for Putin, etc.

Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, a day later, said something arguably more revealing, though on the surface it was rather bland. He basically said that US efforts to negotiate the end of the Russo-Ukraine War were coming to an end for now, and then added a series of strange points.

Amongst these was that the parties in the talks (the Russians and Ukrainians) were not doing what the administration wanted.

“So, we’re more than happy to do that if the opportunity presents itself to have constructive and productive talks. We’re also not interested in getting involved in an endless cycle of meetings that lead to nothing.”

However maybe more interesting, was that Rubio lied outright and said that the US had not been trying to bully the Ukrainians before into taking a bad deal.

“Despite leaks that are not true, despite stories out there about us forcing the Ukrainians to take this position or that position, which are not true. If we see an opportunity to pull together talks that are productive, not counterproductive, and that have the chance to be fruitful, we’re prepared to play that role.”

This is an outright lie by Rubio as I said. The claim is not based on “leaks” as he tries to say. Zelensky in November 2025 came out and in a televised address said that Ukraine was being pressured by the USA (the “major partner” to take a terrible deal. Here is Zelensky’s exact quote.

“Now is one of the most difficult moments of our history. Now, the pressure on Ukraine is one of the heaviest….Ukraine can face a very difficult choice – either losing dignity or risk losing a major partner.”

So both Vance and Rubio are being dishonest in their own way, which in and of itself is no shock. However the interesting thing is that they are being dishonest to try and convince the American public that the administration was and is more pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin than in reality it has been.

The reason why can only be because the intelligence that the administration is receiving is that Russia is struggling and Ukraine is doing much better than the administration both publicly and privately was saying. Remember this is the administration that not only said Ukraine had “no cards” it also built into its national security estimates that Russia had the upper hand in the war and was going to get a peace deal on its terms. The place to see this best is the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on March 25, 2025. The report argued that ending the war on Putin’s terms was also in US interest. Here is the start of the section on the war (page 18).

And now the administration is boasting about helping Ukraine? That does not happen by accident—it is because they are understanding that everything they said in 2025 was wrong. They would not do it otherwise. You know why? Because Trump himself remains wedded enough to Putin not to join the chorus. The administration does not want Ukraine to do well. Its fundamental outlook remains unchanged.

However it is being forced to try and pretend it is more pro-Ukraine than it has been, and that is important.

So take that as a good sign, just do not let these fraudsters get away with it.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

Certain things I find frustrating and other things I find stunning (in a depressing way). The inability of Americans to face the reality that the US military is showing signs of rot in its operational execution is definitely the latter. Americans like to boast about their military and often put it on a pedestal. Criticizing the military is therefore something that Americans are loathe to do—but in this case it is also dangerous and possibly destructive to the future of the country.

As argued in other places, there is evidence that the profound corruption and intellectual and organizational poverty of the Trump administration has percolated down to the military. It would certainly be surprising if it had not.

There have been numerous additional signs of this since I wrote this first piece in The Atlantic on this, a piece followed up here with this Substack.

Since then the evidence of rot has become far more compelling. US forces were dispatched without the right protection, did not have the right systems to protect themselves and, when it comes to equipment, has suffered losses worth many many billions of $’s.

Share

Here are just a short list of some of the examples of poor planning, logistics and overall war fighting.

Read more

This was actually an interesting week because, supposedly, Trump almost did return to the air attack on Iran. He remains as he has been for months stuck. His blockade is not having the quick effect that he first hoped/thought and the Iranian regime is showing no flexibility in the negotiations. In some ways, of course, that means nothing has changed (as always). However that is not entirely true as Trump is getting so desperate and that is making him more erratic. As he twists in the wind like this, he could lash out, though waiting as he is makes that even more risky. Its a really dangerous dynamic.

Other stories that are worth noting this week are that the excuses Trump gave this time not to restart the bombing (other countries asked and the negotiations are going really well) are the exact same ones he has used now for almost two months. They are almost certainly making things worse as in his desire to project strength he is only underlining how weak his position really is. The final story is a quick one that just came out. We have some evidence of whom the US and Israel expected to play Delcy Rodriguez for Iran, and its a doozy.

Trump Is Twisting In The Wind

Trump really did try to convince others, and indeed maybe himself, that he was going to restart the bombing of Iran this week. The White House was spreading the story far and wide (many people at the security conference in Tallinn who have strong Washington connections said an attack was imminent). I also heard from someone else in Washington that it was going to happen that “there is nothing more dangerous than an old king”.

So this was a concerted White House effort that changed some people’s minds. I tried to pass on that news, with a little skepticism, in this tweet from Sunday May 17.

The timing was said to be right this time. Trump had finished his summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping and it was clear that the US blockade was not going to get the quick reaction that Trump had hoped. This was different than Trump just making empty threats on his version of twitter. As Trump himself stated boldly, the “Clock is Ticking” for another attack in Iran.

And then on Monday evening, having talked up the prospects of the attack, Trump tweeted out that military action would once again be delayed, giving the excuse that he had been asked by US allies in the region not to do this, part of his regular pattern of lies (see below).

The reality is that Trump got cold feet. He was trying to work up the courage/craziness to go back to direct military attacks and in the end he (once again) blinked.

I suppose it is a good thing that Trump has not lost all sense. The problem is, that his desire to restart military action and then his last minute backing off shows a few things that are very worrying for the USA. I would list them as:

• The US Government does now understand that the blockade will take much longer to work than Trump originally claimed. As far as I know, no Iranian oil wells have exploded because of the blockade. Yes, the Iranian government will undoubtedly be faced by an economic problem, but that is not going to have them immediately bend the knee and Trump seems to get that.

• The US Government seems to understand that restarting bombing will stand only a very small chance of achieving any of Trump’s strategic aims—especially his big one which is to get a concession on the nuclear question enough to say he got a better deal than Obama under the JCPOA. If Trump believed that there would be any reasonable chance to achieve anything by bombing, he would take that risk. Clearly the odds are judged to be not high.

• The markets no longer react to the President’s claims of possible success. For once the oil markets took Trump’s claims for the BS that they are. The price of oil (here is Brent Crude) had a tiny fall on May 18 when Trump tweeted, but immediately rose back to the level it was before he spoke. The fall did not last long enough for insider traders to cash in.

  

There we have it. Trump threatened military action, blinked again, and we are exactly where we have been for 7 weeks, with now the administration’s ability to impact the markets having eroded. While the Iranian government is probably suffering economically, the Iranian military has had more time to regroup and reorganize, which means it could do more damage if the US eventually restarts action.

It is a mess.

Share

By Trying To Seem Strong, Trump Is Projecting Weakness

The Iranians and I hope most of the American people have figured out that when Trump threatens military action and backs down, that he must, for the sake of his own ego, say he backed down because either another nation begged him or that negotiations were going so well with Iran that a deal is just around the corner. It certainly is worth marvelling at how often Trump has lied about a deal being close. Here is only a partial list.

• April 7–8: Validation of Iran’s Initial Framework

  When announcing the initial two-week, ceasefire on April 7, Trump indicated that a diplomatic resolution was imminent. He publicly characterized a 10-point peace plan submitted by Tehran as a “workable basis on which to negotiate.”

• April 11: Alignment on Non-Nuclear Points

  Following the first round of ceasefire talks in Islamabad, Trump acknowledged significant alignment between the two sides. He stated that “most points were agreed to,” though he caveated this progress by noting that the central US objective—curtailing Iran’s nuclear program—remained unresolved.

• Mid-April: Claims of (non-existent) Nuclear Concessions

  In mid April, Trump publicly claimed a major breakthrough regarding the primary US strategic objective. He stated that Iran had agreed to cease uranium enrichment and that the US would be permitted to recover and remove past nuclear material from the country. This assertion of progress was subsequently contradicted by the Iranian government.

• April 24: Anticipation of a Compliant Offer

  As Trump’s bagmen extraordinaire, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner prepared to travel to Islamabad to resume talks in late April, Trump projected an optimistic view of Tehran’s negotiating posture. In a phone interview with Reuters, he claimed that Iran was preparing a revised proposal designed to satisfy American conditions, stating: “They’re making an offer and we’ll have to see.” Later he was forced to admit that no deal was close and the bagmen stayed home.

• May 6: Axios reports that a one-page memorandum to end the war is close. This is a real fool me one shame on you, fool me repeatedly shame on me, story. There was absolutely no evidence for this claim beyond a White House leak, but it was reported and insider trading done to great effect of course.

Trump’s other tactic, which he repeated two days ago is to claim that he did not return to bombing because of the pleas of other parties. Maybe the best example before May 18 was a few days earlier when, on May 15, Trump said he only agreed to the cease fire because the Pakistani government pleaded with him. The quote at the time was:

“We did the ceasefire as a request from another nation. I would have really benefited from it, but we did it as a favor to Pakistan. They are terrific people…”

The notable thing about the last back down was that Trump did both. Not only did he claim as above that he stopped military action because of other states pleading with him, he also said a deal with Iran is close, as there has been movement on the nuclear question. Speaking with reporters he said:

“There seems to be a very good chance that they can work something out. If we can do that without bombing the hell out of them, I would be very happy.”

Of course that was a lie to. Not surprisingly, after his claim Monday that negotiations are going well, just a few hours ago Trump went back to threatening military action. Trump said Iran’s leaders were “begging” to strike an agreement with him but if they did not, he would deliver a “a big hit” in as little as two more days.

“Well, I mean, I’m saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something, maybe early next week, a limited period of time, because we can’t let them have a new nuclear weapon,”

The pattern of repeating the same claims/lies while nothing changes is almost certainly making things worse. The Iranians do not seem to be reacting to these statements at all, but clinging entirely to the same basic negotiating position that they have had since the ceasefire was announced. It is mystifying. Trump can no longer convince anyone that his claims are true, and yet he keeps making them. He is incentivizing the Iranians to call his bluff.

Madness.

Share

Iran’s Delcy Rodriguez Is Known And It Is A Doozy

Certain stories bring the loudest of mirthless chuckles and this was one. For those who are new readers, it has been apparent from the outset that what Trump was hoping to achieve in Iran was some re-run of his Venezuela operation. He was planning to depose/kill one dictator as he did to Nicolas Maduro, and put in his place a crony of the old regime who if anything has made the Venezuelan government more oppressive. That is the present Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez.

This is what I wrote when the bombing of Iran started on February 28, acknowledging that the Venezuela operation was what Trump was trying to repeat.

• Have they identified and started collaborating with forces in Iran? Trump in his announcement called for Iranian forces to “lay down their weapons” but in exchange offered them “total immunity”. So clearly the administration is hoping that forces within Iran will go along with them. They were able to identify and work with forces in Venezuela when they went and seized Maduro, though this will be more challenging. Still, they should have had time to prepare something.

Well, according to this story published a few hours ago in The New York Times, Iran’s Delcy Rodriguez was supposed to be non other than the former, super hard-line Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Note, Ahmadinejad was responsible for an increased wave of executions when he first became President of Iran and ruled with extreme oppression. He is the perfect kind of dictator wannabe crony for Trump. One thing he is not is someone who would bring freedom to Iran.

Those who have been arguing that the USA wanted to help the Iranian people with this operation, should once again hang their heads in shame.

Not that they will.

I spent the last few days at the Lennart Meri Conference in Estonia. It was a brilliant affair (btw the Old Town of Talinn is wonderful, you should go if you can).

I spoke at the last session, which was entitled: The Master Plan: Europe’s Grand Strategy and had written out an article length piece on the ideas shared. My plan was to release that today. However, what has happened in Moscow over the last few days seems a more immediate priority, so that other piece will have to wait a few days. If you want to watch the conference session, here is a link.

Hope that is ok.

Has Putin Met His Marianas Moment?

In June 1944, the Japanese came face to face with a strategic and propaganda catastrophe. US forces isolated and then seized the Marianas Island in the Central Pacific theater, in particular Saipan, Guam and Tinian. The Japanese had known for a while that the Americans might go for the islands, and had built up the largest forces that they could to try and hold them. When the Americans appeared, the Japanese sent everything they could spare into the fight, including almost all of their surviving aircraft carriers (see picture above),

It did not matter. The US has such total air-sea dominance around the Marianas, that there was nothing the Japanese could do. The Americans first isolated the Marianas from any Japanese support and then landed Marines and Army soldiers who ruthlessly worked their way through the island until they were in US hands.

I go into this campaign in detail in How The War Was Won: Air-Sea Power In World War II (Cambridge University Press 2015) if you want to read more.

The catastrophe for the Japanese was not just strategic. As the Japanese leadership very well knew, the fall of the Marianas destroyed the entire fantasy that they had been selling repeatedly to the Japanese people. Since Pearl Harbor they had described the Pacific War to the Japanese public as a series of smashing victories against the Americans, claiming to have inflicted so many losses on US forces that the Japanese home islands were safe and secure.

In this way even disastrous losses were reimagined to the Japanese people as great victories. For instance, the Japanese defeat at Midway, which saw the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) lose four large aircraft carriers to one for the USA, was actually presented to the Japanese public as a clear Japanese victory. The official report of the battle said that the Japanese had sunk two US aircraft carriers and only lost one themselves.

The loss of the Marianas, however, could not be bluffed away.

Read more

It really was a week of contrasts. Ukrainian civilians were pummeled through the air by Russia, with a mass drone/missile attack which was designed at least partly to terrorize Ukrainians. Of course this is nothing new, but the timing, after Ukraine had agreed to a ceasefire to allow Putin to have his ridiculous parade, was notable. No one could have blamed Ukraine if they had lashed out in return, but once again Ukraine took a different path. In the next few days they hammered Russian strategic economic targets and spared civilian ones (as always).

While the Ukrainians were showing the superiority to the Russians in the fighting of the war, they were making it clear that they are far more willing to try and tackle corruption/conflict of interest than Donald Trump’s America. This was a week during which the deep corruption of the administration was displayed like never before. Not only were Trump family members involved deeply in Pentagon contracts, there was clear evidence that the President himself was buying and selling defense stocks and even tweeting about them after purchase to try and raise the price. Ukraine, on the other hand, continued its prosecution for corruption of Andriy Yermak, who had been Zelensky’s right hand man and many people thought a real power behind the throne. While both states have corruption problems, in one it is being allowed to function unhindered and in the other there is an attempt to fight it.

The contrasts in both cases are clear, perhaps surprising, and I would argue revealing about how things have developed as they have in all three countries.

Russia Slaughters Civilians

In the end, Putin seems to have been embarrassed by the spectacle (or lack thereof) surrounding his May 9 Victory Parade. Not only was the short event, with no large military equipment, itself a damp squib, Putin also had to beg Trump to intercede on his behalf with Zelensky to even let the parade go ahead. Probably humiliated, Putin lashed out with one of the largest, most demonstrative, and most terroristic attacks of the war against Ukraine.

In a 48-hour period stretching from May 13-15, the Russians sent 1567 attack drones into Ukraine, primarily to attack Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. This included large numbers of newer jet powered Shaheds, which the Ukrainians have been preparing for for a while. As this mass drone attack was going on, the Russians mixed in salvos of much faster and more destructive missiles, around 56 was the Ukrainian count.

note—it is a good job that the Ukrainians were preparing for these jet-powered Shaheds. When I was in Ukraine in January, I heard that they were a little worried about them. So far, they seem to be able to intercept them.

On the one hand, the Ukrainians did a very solid job of defending themselves, claiming to have shot down about 95% of the drones that were used in the Russian mass assault. When it came to the missiles, the Ukrainians claimed to have shot down 41 of 56. Of course even this interception rate meant that a large number of drones and too many missiles would have hit their target and done real and deadly damage.

Much of that damage was intended to happen and did happen, to civilian targets. In one case there was a direct hit on an apartment building in Kyiv, which killed at least some people in their beds.

Across Ukraine 24 people were killed (three of them children) with more than 150 wounded, making it one of the bloodiest and most criminal nights of the war. Even in a country that, sadly, views air attacks as part of normal life, this kind of attack and this kind of toll was sobering. Zelensky made a point of visiting the apartment building in Kyiv where most of the people had died, and released some pictures.

Zelensky even promised retribution for the strikes. In a meeting with the Ukrainian military he was quoted as saying: “Ukraine will not allow any of the aggressor’s strikes that take the lives of our people to go unpunished”.

However by retribution Zelensky did not mean a crime for a crime, he meant a strategic strike in retaliation for an atrocity. That means alot.

Share

Ukraine Slaughters Strategic Industries

Ukrainian production of drones and cruise missiles is now at the level where they can launch large strikes at regular intervals. Almost immediately after the Russian mass attacks were over, the Ukrainians readied and launched a response. Over the subsequent days they hit a number of strategic economic targets, targets designed to damage the Russian war economy in a number of different ways.

The first major target was the Russian oil refinery at Ryazan, which is only about 180 kilometers from Moscow. It also has the ability to refine “upwards of 17.1 million tons of oil per year” making it one of the largest Russian refineries. The hits were accurate enough the large fires were instantly ignited, pictures of which were quickly circulating on Russian social media.

Oil refining was not the only strategic industry attacked. One attack, that has not received the coverage it deserves, was the Ukrainian attack on the Russian Azot chemical plant in Stavropol Krai. Azot is the largest chemical enterprise in southern Russia. It annually produces up to one million tons of ammonia and over one million tons of ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate is a key element in the manufacture of explosives—and needless to say, explosives are a key manufacturing part of the Russian war economy.

Finally there was a series of Ukrainian attacks on Russian military targets, including airfields, military logistics and even a naval vessel.

The scope of all these different attacks was impressive. However one thing that was not on the list was Russian apartment buildings. There was no atrocity in return, just effective strategic operations.

The contrast could not have been more obvious. And when it comes to effect, I still argue as I have for a while that the Ukrainian attacks will be more important in shaping the course of the war. Russian civilian crime attacks do not seem to be cracking Ukrainian resistance, indeed they might be strengthening it. However, Ukrainian attacks on Russian strategic industries continue to reduce Russian fuel exports—which is doubly important now as the US has made sure oil prices are abnormally high.

I am sure there are those in Ukraine who feel so angry with the Russians deliberately killing civilians that they would believe it justified if Ukraine struck back similarly. And at this point, if the Ukrainians did, they might receive little condemnation. However, the Ukrainians are still refusing to make criminal attacks in favor of effective strategic ones.

This contrast helps explain why the war has developed as it has and why Ukraine is starting to take the initiative.

Fighting smart is usually better than fighting brutally.

Share

Corruption Is Practiced Openly In The USA

Over the last few weeks, President Trump’s sons have been openly celebrating agreeing deals with the Pentagon that pay hundreds of millions of dollars. Just to give you some idea of what has been reported recently.

• Donald Trump Jr. has a $4 million stake in, and sits on the board of Unusual Machines, a drone parts startup. In December, it secured a $620 million DoD loan — the largest loan in the history of the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital — to make drone parts.

• Eric Trump serves as Chief Strategy Advisor of Foundation Future Industries. In April 2026, the Department of Defense awarded a $24 million contract to this robotics startup to test android technology with the U.S. Marine Corps.

• Powerus, linked to Eric and Donald Jr., has been awarded a contract for an undisclosed number of interceptor drones for the US Air Force. This was reported by Bloomberg, citing a statement by the company’s co-founder.

• On May 13, 2026, Cove Kaz Capital, which has received significant investment by both Trump sons, formally requested an additional $400 million from the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital (OSC). If approved, the funding would designate the project as an official U.S. defense priority. The project previously secured nonbinding letters of interest for up to $1.6 billion in project financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank ($900 million) and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation ($700 million).

While the Trump sons were hoovering up hundreds of millions from the Pentagon, their father, the president, was investing hundreds of millions in defense related stocks, even tweeting in such a way that he was directly supporting price rises in stocks he owned. The most extraordinary examples of this happened in his investments in Palantir. Here is a quick summary from Trump’s just released ethics disclosures.

• The disclosures show that Trump’s accounts executed multiple six- and seven-figure trades in Palantir. This included purchasing between $247,000 and $630,000 in shares early in the quarter, alongside a substantial divestment of up to $5 million of Palantir stock in February 2026.

• Subsequent Policy and Endorsements: The timing of these transactions you might be surprised to learn (or not) coincided with major administrative actions and public statements that directly impacted Palantir’s market valuation:

  • Public Praise: In early April 2026, shortly after the close of the disclosed trading window, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies.”

  • Defense Budget Expansion: The administration subsequently proposed a $1.5 trillion Department of Defense budget for fiscal year 2027 (up from approximately $1 trillion in 2026). This budget request explicitly seeks $2.3 billion over five years to transition Palantir’s Maven Smart System—an AI targeting and battlefield analysis platform heavily utilized in the U.S.–Iran conflict—into an official military “program of record,” securing long-term federal funding.

  • DHS Contract: Separately, the Department of Homeland Security finalized a five-year, $1 billion blanket purchase agreement with Palantir in February 2026.

    

Conflict of interest anyone?

The scale of how the Trump family is involved with US military contracts and stock prices is mind-boggling. And this involvement is going on in broad daylight without any shame. Indeed, the Trump’s have been boasting about it.

The reality is not that the US system has corruption in it these days, it is that corruption is the whole point of the system.

Share

Ukraine Follows Corruption To The Top

This week in Ukraine, corruption investigations against Andriy Yermak, the former Head of the Zelensky’s Presidential Office, a Zelensky intimate and at one point the second most powerful man in Ukraine, reached a critical stage. On May 11, 2026, NABU, the Ukrainian governmental agency charged with routing out corruption, and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) officially served Yermak with a notice of suspicion. They charged him with money laundering alleging that 460 million hryvnias (approximately $10.5 million and chump-change to the Trump sons) derived from illicit state contracts was laundered to finance the construction of the luxury "Dynasty" residential complex outside Kyiv.

more on that complex below.

Yermak was ordered to be held in pretrial detention for 60 days and his bail was set at 140 million hryvnias. Most worrying for Yermak, it seems that there were lots of wiretaps of his phone calls, which, exotically, involved fortune tellers as well as potentially corrupt businessmen.

And Zelensky himself might end up being involved in this story. The “Dynasty” complex referenced above involves a set of mansions being built just outside of Kyiv, one of which may have been intended for the Ukrainian president. Here is a picture reportedly of the complex.

Needless to say, in Trump’s America, such a corruption trial would never reach this stage. In Ukraine, now however, corruption investigations can and are reaching the top.

And it is good for the Ukrainian war effort. Yermak was widely seen as a drag on Ukraine fighting the war. His successor, Kirill Budanov, the famous spy chief, has purged many of Yermak’s cronies. As of now, the Ukrainian state seems to be functioning more efficiently and effectively.

The contrast between the chaos and sloppiness of how the US has waged its war against Iran and how Ukraine is taking the initiative, is almost certainly being helped by this accountability.

Another contrast if you needed one.

Add it up and you can say Ukraine is fighting more effectively and humanely than Russia while trying to combat corruption at the top more forcefully than the USA. It explains a great deal.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

Share

To understand this, lets go back to 2022, the last time the American president, Joe Biden in this case, met the Chinese president, the same Xi Jinping who rules today. During that meeting, Xi pressed Biden on the issue of American support for Taiwan. In this instance, Biden pressed back strongly, publicly telling Xi that the use of Chinese military force against Taiwan would be a major mistake. Biden was very direct.

“I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War. I have met many times with Xi Jinping and we were candid and clear with one another across the board. I do not think there is any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan,” he said.

“I made it clear we want to see cross-strait issues to be peacefully resolved and so it never has to come to that. And I’m convinced that he understood what I was saying, I understood what he was saying.”

Over the last few hours the Chinese president repeated is close to identical words the warning he gave Biden over Taiwan in 2022. Here was how Chinese warnings about Taiwan were expressed.

Xi warned Trump during their meeting that the issue of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory, could bring the two countries into conflict, according to a readout from Xinhua, China’s official news agency. “Handled well, the two countries can maintain stability. If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” he said.

What was Donald Trump’s response? That would be nothing. When asked publicly by the press about Taiwan, Trump looked away and refused to say anything at all, even though he had just answered another question. This raised eyebrows instantly in Taiwan, where Trump’s silence has been reported on ominously.

US President Donald Trump today told Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing that “it’s an honor to be your friend,” even as his Chinese counterpart offered warnings about avoiding a possible clash between the two nations during their meeting.

Asked how the talks with Xi went, Trump said: “Great.”

However, that is about all he said.

Trump’s silence spoke volumes about US decline, how the US is going into this summit as a supplicant needing Chinese help. It also confirms how little the US cares and can do anything to protect key democratic allies. The whole story of the summit is making this story even more clear.

Share

First, we have the US

Read more