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Trump shamelessly plays the Russia/China bogeyman card for Greenland grab

NATO’s civilian head, Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister and abject flunky, appeased Trump at Davos by offering more NATO defenses deployed to Greenland. Rutte, who previously referred to Trump as “daddy”, made the “deal” in private with Trump. No details have been made public nor even shared among other NATO members. How’s that for contempt of underlings?

Since the end of World War Two, the United States paid lip service to global law and order along with its European allies. Under Trump, there is no longer any pretense of lip service. It’s outright imperialist power for naked domination. At one point in his rambling Davos speech, Trump declared such might-is-right land grabbing as normal.

Russia and China, among others, have repeatedly declared the paramount need to abide by international law and the principles of the UN Charter. U.S. imperialist power has no such respect. Trump has openly said so.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/01/23/trump-shamelessly-plays-russia-china-bogeyman-card-for-greenland-grab/

Under Trump, the European appeasers are inviting disaster as they indulge his bogeyman games over Greenland.

The old saying that a week is a long time in politics is especially true under the U.S. Presidency of Donald Trump, given his propensity for unhinged bombast, zig-zags, U-turns, vendettas, and theatrics.

So, last week, he was threatening to take over the Danish Arctic territory of Greenland by military force, if needed. Trump was also gearing up to launch an unprecedented trade war against European states that, with pipsqueak temerity, dared to support Denmark, a move that would have cratered the eight-decade-old transatlantic Western alliance.

This week, in a 70-minute rant at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump, seemingly magnanimously, announced that he was not going to deploy military power to subordinate European NATO “allies”. But he insisted that Greenland must be annexed under U.S. control.

In a telling quip, he said: “I don’t have to use force.” Trump is right on that score. There is no need for military coercion because the European “allies” have been exposed as a bunch of dithering vassals who were pathetically clutching their pearls for the past week out of fear and angst that Uncle Sam was slapping them.

However, when vassals appease, they only end up being abused. The American Don may have softened his contemptuous rhetoric at Davos, but there is little doubt that the expansionist ambitions to grab Greenland will be pursued, and the Europeans will be, in time, further degraded in their submission to the American overlord.

Oddly enough, for a president who boasts about flexing military muscle for imperialist aims, Trump couched his takeover of Greenland as a matter of “national security.” He is claiming that the United States needs to take control of the “big, beautiful piece of ice” to defend it from Russia and China.

He lied that it wasn’t because of Greenland’s vast mineral resources, including oil and rare-earth metals. Trump was claiming that the U.S. is the only NATO member strong enough to keep Russia and China from gaining a foothold. Beijing slammed Trump’s claims as baseless.

In an insulting and absurd remark, he likened Russia and China to how Nazi Germany tried to take Greenland from Denmark during the Second World War, and it was the U.S. that prevented that.

Only a few days before, Trump contradicted himself (not hard for him) by posting a comment deriding how Russia and China are used as “bogeymen”, that is, as false enemies.

Another anomaly was seen with Trump inviting Russia and China to join his dubious Global Board of Peace initiative, which he unveiled with much corny fanfare in Davos. Enemies for peace?

In other words, on Greenland, Trump is cynically playing the Russia and China threat as a pretext for blatantly violating the sovereignty of an ally.

Not that Denmark deserves sympathy. It is questionable how it retains any territorial right to a distant Arctic island whose people have consistently demanded independence from Copenhagen’s colonialist control.

Trump hailed the so-called framework agreement as a “great deal” for the United States and Europe without sharing the details. It’s believed to permit the installation of Trump’s futuristic Golden Dome missile defense system. If that goes ahead, it will heighten strategic tensions with Russia by militarizing the Arctic, not bring peace or stability. Denmark is reportedly wary that its sovereignty is being sold out in a grubby behind-closed-doors private takeover.

Hence, the transatlantic storm may have subsided somewhat for now, but the damage and mistrust that have shattered the alliance are not going to be repaired. It will only get worse because of the thug-vassal relationship unravelling.

The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, in his speech at Davos, made a shocking admission when he said that the “fiction of rules-based order” between the U.S. and its Western allies is dead.

Trump may have been appeased and placated for a while. But it’s like keeping a predator at bay by throwing pieces of meat at it. Sooner or later, the minions will be on the menu.

Only last week, Denmark and the other European states were dismissing Trump’s outlandish claims about defending the free world from Russia and China by taking control of Greenland. They knew it was a brazen land grab. Now, however, Rutte, the European NATO chief, is saying that NATO must accede to Trump’s demands to protect Greenland from the alleged threat from Russia and China.

After saying there is no such threat, now the Europeans will indulge Trump’s fantasy about Greenland, just to restrain him from overtly abusing them.

The trouble for the European and other Western allies of the United States is that they have consorted with decades of American violations of international law. They have played along with the charade of using Russia and China as enemies of convenience. This has hollowed out any claim of upholding international order and norms.

The U.S. and Europe have played the bogeyman card with regard to Ukraine. The Europeans supported Trump’s aggression against Venezuela and Iran, and they have been complicit in the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza.

This week, while French President Emmanuel Macron was admonishing Trump to respect international order concerning Greenland, he ordered French troops to seize a Russian-linked oil tanker in neutral maritime waters. The latter act of piracy on the high seas was probably an effort by France to demonstrate its loyalty to Washington’s policy of hijacking Russian cargo ships.

During the past eight decades of charade and lip service, the U.S. needed the Europeans as a facade of multilateralism for its stealth imperialism. Washington indulged the Europeans, Canadians, and others as “allies”. In reality, they were always vassals.

Now, in the latest historical phase of returning to flagrant imperialism and brazen power, the United States has no use for the pretense of allies. They can be slapped around for the lackeys they are. And we are seeing that with brutality.

Ironically, the European powers have a historic tendency for appeasement. The British and French appeased Nazi Germany in the 1930s with disastrous results. Today, the Europeans are appeasing the United States in its every criminal demand. That is only emboldening the U.S. to expand its outright abuse of international law, or, in other words, its descent into barbarism.

This is not merely about Trump as a maverick megalomaniac. He is but a symptom of the U.S. global empire in desperation mode to maintain its waning power as a new multipolar world potentially emerges. U.S. hegemonic ambitions are untenable, but in a desperate bid to assert itself, the world is being turned upside down and intimidated into submission.

Total domination is the only acceptable end for U.S. imperialism. Russia and China should not have any illusion about it, even if, in the short term, Trump wants to make an expedient withdrawal deal in Ukraine, or if he invites them to join his “Bored of Peace” boondoggle.

History shows us that rampant imperialist violence ends in disaster. Under Trump, the European appeasers are inviting disaster as they indulge his bogeyman games over Greenland.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ARCTIC, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Is Trump a Useful Idiot? Project 2025 Is in Power Now.

January 24, 2026, by Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/24/is-trump-a-useful-idiot-project-2025-is-in-power-now/

With Project 2025 in full effect, Chris Hedges explains that Trump is neither necessary nor a real player. The “death grip” on our society is already in full force—this goes beyond Trump, threatening to destroy the very fabric of our existing ways of resisting it.

The very idea of elections being free, fair, or even occurring at all is now in question. Far more alarming than Trump’s musings about canceling the midterms was what the president told the New York Times in another Oval Office interview. he admitted that he “regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election.”

One of the central tenets of Project 2025 will be a direct assault on election officials. The Brennan Center warns that Project 2025 “threatens to reverse progress made over the last four years by stripping crucial federal resources from election officials and weaponizing the Department of Justice against officials who make decisions the administration disagrees with.”

With many Americans—and the other useful idiots in the Democratic Party—counting on elections to save us, we are living in a perilous moment that demands action, not hope. Chris Hedges warns that the U.S. has entered an age of authoritarian consolidation, where meaningful resistance must be rebuilt from the ground up. In a fractured society marked by economic precarity, surveillance, and the hollowing out of collective power, traditional movements have been systematically dismantled, leaving dissenters vulnerable. True resistance, Hedges insists, requires disciplined, long-term organizing—starting from zero—because corporate and state power is more entrenched and repressive than ever.

Another crucial step is supporting all independent media, because the New York Times and other media monopolies are not serving our interests. Real resistance requires amplifying voices outside the corporate mainstream.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

The ridiculous 2026 “National Defense Strategy”

As for the National Defense Strategy, it concludes in climactic fashion by declaring that the US must maintain capability to “conduct devastating strikes and operations against targets anywhere in the world.” As if that’s just the most obvious imperative of responsible statecraft that anyone could possibly fathom.

Michael Tracey, Jan 25, 2026, https://www.mtracey.net/p/2026-national-defense-strategy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=303188&post_id=185665591&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The new 2026 “National Defense Strategy,” released yesterday, contains a lot of airy rhetoric about finally transitioning to “hardnosed realism,” and away from the misbegotten “grandiose strategies” of yesteryear, wherein the US had foolishly set out to “solve all the world’s problems.” More tangibly, however, the document doesn’t call for a single discernible reduction to America’s comically-large global military footprint. In fact, it calls for expanding that footprint, rather dramatically.

Among these expansions will be for the US to “erect” new military installations in close proximity to China. Per the jargon of NatSec Speak, this means establishing “strong denial defense” in the “First Island Chain” — which may sound like a modestly-sized region to the unschooled reader, but actually encompasses Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and perhaps a smattering of other places like Vietnam and Malaysia, depending on what the cockamamie Grand Strategists decide to theorize and war-game next.

There will also be unspecified measures to “guarantee US military and commercial access” to what is now described as the “key terrain” of Greenland and Panama. On top of “deepening” US military involvement in the Middle East, so as to “enable integration between Israel and our Arabian Gulf partners.”

The document gestures vaguely at Europe needing to take more responsibility for its own defense, but then talks about US-directed efforts to “expand transatlantic defense” with Europe, and affirms the “vital” role of the US in leading NATO — including to counter “Russian threats to the US Homeland.” No specific adjustments in force posture re: Europe are identified.

Iran is back as an urgent threat, as it’s allegedly in the process of “reconstituting its conventional military forces,” and is again seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon. Even though its nuclear facilities were supposedly “obliterated” last June. Naturally, confronting Iran will require the US to “further empower” Israel — what more “empowerment” could they possibly be given at this point? — in recognition of our profound “shared interests” with this “model ally.”

Even in Africa, the document says the US must “empower allies and partners” to prevent Islamic terrorists from establishing “safe havens” — apparently anywhere throughout that vast continent — and the US is itself prepared to strike where deemed necessary. As we already saw with the random bombing of Nigeria last month. (Whatever happened with that? Did we eliminate the Terrorists?)

The document also calls for accelerating US military-industrial production to levels not seen since the Second World War. Yet another devastating blow to the “military-industrial complex.”

It lambasts ill-fated “regime change” expeditions of the past, but heralds the most recent foray into Venezuela, which was legally designated by the Trump DOJ as an explicit “regime change” operation.

“Nation-building” is predictably derided — mere weeks after Trump unilaterally declared himself the new ruler of Venezuela, the economy and governmental structures of which he now wants to personally “rebuild.” This open-ended endeavor could last “much longer” than people think, he says. That’ll be in addition to his other signature “nation-building” initiative — making good on his landmark pledge to “take over” Gaza, which was widely dismissed as outlandish when he first announced it last February. But then by October, there he was, bestowing himself with ultimate governing authority over Gaza. Jared Kushner just rolled out their innovative new “master plan” for nation-building the hell out of that place — complete with cool little diagrams showing how each quadrant of land will be granularly organized. The deal has apparently been sealed for Gaza as a newly-established US military protectorate: an American General was just named Commander of the “International Stabilization Force,” putting him in charge of “security operations” across the territory. A fun new dialect of Arabic might have to be invented for all the American-originated euphemisms.

Sooooo…. there’s your historic pivot from “grandiose adventures” abroad — which the self-congratulatory document writers hold themselves out as repudiating — and toward a glorious restoration of “practical, hardnosed realism.” Of course, trying to translate the predilections of Trump into some grand strategic treatise is a pretty pointless exercise to begin with — but the intellectual warfighter Pete Hegseth and his underlings evidently felt they should at least give it a whirl. So they “fucked around and found out,” as Pete loves to smugly bluster, and out plopped whatever this is.

True “realism” would necessitate swiftly discarding the document as little more than a collection of meaningless pablum and cliches — just like the differently-named, but weirdly redundant “National Security Strategy” produced in November 2025. Among other silly items, that cousin document contains the assertion that “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over.” And further, when it comes to changing sub-optimal systems of government in that neck of the woods, “we should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without.”

Then within a matter of weeks, right on cue, Trump was boisterously posting that he was “locked and loaded,” and ready to attack Iran again — this time ostensibly in defense of the besieged Iranian protesters. He also announced it’s time for the imposition of “new leadership,” i.e. removal of the Ayatollah. “Freedom” and “human rights” have even been resurrected as viable pretexts for punitive US action. Currently, large-scale US military assets are reassembling in the region.

To comprehend these bewildering developments, perhaps we’ll have to wait in suspense for a revised edition of some supplemental “strategy” document. Which we can then all download together in PDF format, and earnestly ponder, perhaps with coffee and donuts, like a book club brooding over Moby Dick.

Back in some version of “realist” reality, these “strategy” documents are really only notable insofar as they give some morbid insight into how presidential subordinates are required to haphazardly “ideologize” whatever their superior is doing at any given time. A well-worn heuristic would be much simpler, and more instructive: “America First” is still whatever he says it is.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A Note On the 2026 US National Defense Strategy and Extended Deterrence

What does the NDS have to say about nuclear weapons and the nuclear environment facing the United States? Turns out, not much.

Ankit Panda, Jan 25, 2026, https://panda.substack.com/p/a-note-on-the-2026-us-national-defense?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=10286&post_id=185656884&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The Trump administration’s unclassified summary of the National Defense Strategy (notably, they can’t call it a National “War” Strategy, by statute) is here (PDF). It released on a Friday evening, after 5 p.m.. My understanding is that the classified version has been complete for about a couple months now and this unclassified summary was going through reframing after the release of last month’s much-discussed National Security Strategy. Anyway, it’s here now, so let’s talk about it.

Much ink will be spilled elsewhere on what this document tells us about the United States’ defense priorities as the Trump administration continues to take a sledgehammer to longstanding principles of U.S. grand strategy. I want to focus on how nuclear policy-minded readers should approach this document.

If you haven’t heard, this administration is not planning on publishing a Nuclear Posture Review, which is not currently required by law, unlike the NDS. The 2026 NDS itself has very little to say on nuclear weapons. Page 17 contains this bullet, which sums up nearly the totality of what this document has to say about U.S. nuclear forces and policy:

“Modernise and adapt U.S forces: The United States requires a strong, secure and effective nuclear arsenal adapted to the nation’s overall and defense strategies. We will modernise and adapt our nuclear forces accordingly with focussed attention on deterrence and escalation management amidst the changing global nuclear landscape. The United State should never – will never- be left vulnerable to nuclear blackmail.”

Note the lack of any mention of the role of U.S. nuclear weapons or declaratory policy. Insofar as the role of U.S. nuclear forces is discussed, it is done so in a single sentence on page 3: “We will maintain a robust and modern nuclear deterrent capable of addressing the strategic threats to our country…”

There’s also no nod to allies here, either. In many of my conversations in Europe and Asia over the last year, there’s been quite a bit of interest in what the Trump NDS would have to say about alliances and extended deterrence. Silence, I suppose, is not the worst outcome, especially given the spotlighting of active U.S. hostility toward European allies in the last few weeks amid the Greenland imbroglio. Some allies took solace in the fact that the NSS did include a sentence on nuclear weapons that did allude to some role in their defense: “We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies” (emphasis added, NSS, pp. 3).

Close allied readers of the NDS, however, might find that the document does appear to have something to say about how the United States views their security interests. Page 8 of the NDS observes that what makes the Trump administration’s strategy “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies” of the past is that this document is apparently tethered to “Americans’ practical interests.” The document continues:

‘It does not conflate Americans’ interests with those of the rest of the world—that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.”

Part of the very premise of extended deterrence is that the United States would treat threats to allied persons (and nations) halfway around the world the same as those to the U.S. homeland. This, naturally, has been a very difficult premise to render credible—hence much of the history of our alliance management efforts over the last seven-ish decades.

It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me that allies will be willing to believe what the Trump administration is telling them here. There’s actually much in this NDS that I find doesn’t correspond all that well to the president’s views of the world (for starters, I don’t think Trump knows what the first island chain is). This bit, however, does correspond to much of what we know about how this president reasons about allies. Here you have the United States, I think, stating rather openly that, actually, it would not be willing to trade “Paris for New York,” as De Gaulle once famously asked of Kennedy. As I’ve written elsewhere, the ripple effects of this will likely be severe.

So, there’s that on extended deterrence.

Through the rest of the document, there’s very little on nuclear matters. There’s considerable attention on Iran’s program, with the expected commitment to denying Tehran the bomb (this also got a lot of attention in the NSS). North Korea is acknowledged as a country “increasingly capable of threatening to the U.S. Homeland” with its nuclear forces (a view that’s hardly controversial now in the United States). Very little else; even China’s historic nuclear build-up is not discussed head on in any detail.

It’s probably the case that the classified NDS has more to say on some of these questions, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to nuclear matters in the unclassified version. Insofar as this document communicates U.S. priorities, it suggests an administration deeply uninterested in nuclear matters and aloof, at best, toward allies.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Funeral of Hegemony

How America’s Decision to Attack Iran Would Be Strategic Suicide

Ibrahim Majed, Jan 25, 2026, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-funeral-of-hegemony?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=185644623&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

n American attack on Iran would not be a limited military operation, a punitive strike, or a calibrated act of deterrence.

It would represent a strategic rupture, a point at which accumulated American power begins converting itself into cascading liabilities. This is not a moral argument, nor is it a humanitarian one, it is more like a balance-sheet assessment of empire.

The question is not whether the United States can strike Iran. It can, and we’ve seen it. In June 2025, American warplanes joined Israel’s twelve-day campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran struck back at a U.S. base in Qatar. The damage was extensive on both sides.

The question is what the United States loses the moment it does so again, and this time, without a ceasefire to stop the bleeding.

What follows is not ideology, but an autopsy written before the patient is declared dead.

The Liquidation of ‘FOB Israel’

For decades, Washington has not treated Israel merely as an ally, but as a Forward Operating Base, an unsinkable aircraft carrier, an intelligence nerve center, and the technological anchor of U.S. power projection in the Middle East.

A war with Iran inverts this logic.

Iran’s response would not be symbolic or theatrical. It would be functional. Through what Tehran describes as the Unity of Arenas, a coordinated strategy of simultaneous pressure across multiple fronts, retaliation would be applied with a singular objective: rendering Israel operationally unreliable as a base.

This doctrine is not a myth. It was first operationalized in 2021 during the Saif al-Quds war, when a joint command structure coordinated operations between Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-aligned groups. The concept matured through 2023 and 2024, expanding the geography of confrontation to encircle Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

If airports are disrupted, ports degraded, and civilian life in Israel’s economic and technological core placed under persistent stress, the asset ceases to function as an anchor. The United States would no longer project power from Israel, it would divert power into Israel merely to keep it viable.

At the moment of maximum strategic need, Washington loses its most valuable regional platform.

And then the anchor chain is cut.

The Trap of Strategic Overstretch

The U.S. military is built for dominance through speed, precision, and overwhelming force. Iran is built for endurance.

It will not fight where the United States is strongest. It will fight in time, depth, and dispersion, and force escalation without resolution.

The June 2025 strikes exposed this dynamic. Iran acknowledged extensive damage to its nuclear infrastructure. But within months, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was claiming that Iran had “reconstructed everything that was damaged.” Whether true or not, the statement illustrated Iran’s strategy: absorb the blow, reconstitute, and wait.

Once engaged, Washington faces a structural dilemma: it cannot disengage without reputational collapse, yet it cannot remain without accelerating exhaustion. Every escalation deepens commitment. Every deployment degrades readiness. Every month consumes forces needed elsewhere.

The U.S. military currently maintains approximately 50,000 troops across bases in the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has just been diverted from the South China Sea, the very theater where America’s strategic future will be decided, and is now steaming toward the Gulf.

Iran seeks defeat by entropy—the slow erosion of capacity through overuse.

This is how empires bleed.

Economic Hemorrhage

A war with Iran would not be financed through shared sacrifice. It would be financed through monetary expansion and debt.

The consequences are predictable: inflationary pressure, rising energy costs, and the diversion of capital away from domestic resilience. Infrastructure, innovation, and social cohesion would erode as resources are consumed by a conflict offering no strategic return.

The Strait of Hormuz remains the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through its narrow waters. Iran has long threatened to mine or close the strait in the event of war, and this threat grows more credible as conflict intensifies.

Tehran could also target energy infrastructure across Gulf states: pipelines, terminals, refineries. The resulting supply disruptions would send shockwaves through global markets, punishing American allies in Europe and Asia far more than the United States itself.

The empire would stabilize its periphery by hollowing out its core. History is unforgiving to systems that consume their own interior to preserve external dominance.

The China Dividend

The greatest beneficiary of a U.S.–Iran war would not be Iran. It would be China.

While Washington’s strategic nervous system is absorbed by escalation management in the Middle East, Beijing gains freedom of maneuver. The Indo-Pacific becomes secondary. Influence expands. Partnerships deepen. American deterrence thins.

This calculus is openly acknowledged in Beijing. As one prominent Chinese scholar at Renmin University recently observed: “Washington’s deeper involvement in the Middle East is favorable to Beijing, reducing Washington’s ability to place focused attention and pressure on China.”

The arithmetic is brutal. If the United States deploys two carrier strike groups off the coast of Iran, and it can only maintain three on station globally at any given time, that leaves one for the entire Pacific theater. Taiwan. The Philippines. Japan. All left with diminished coverage.

Every missile expended in the Gulf is one unavailable in East Asia. Every carrier tied down is one removed from Pacific balance.

In a zero-sum system, China collects the dividend without firing a shot.

Unconventional Retaliation

Perhaps the most underestimated consequence of attacking Iran is retaliation by actors who are not Iranian at all.

A U.S. strike would not be perceived globally as a bilateral conflict. It would be read as a hegemonic act and a signal that force remains Washington’s primary language. This perception would activate a diffuse ecosystem of anti-hegemony actors: ideological extremists, decentralized cells, and radicalized individuals scattered across continents.

They require no coordination, no command structure, and no attribution. The danger is not scale, but diffusion. American embassies, corporations, logistics nodes, and symbolic targets would face persistent, low-intensity pressure worldwide. Deterrence fails when the enemy is not a state but an environment.

This is the empire’s nightmare: a world where American presence itself becomes the trigger.

The Collapse of Credibility

Power ultimately rests on belief.

If the United States initiates a war it cannot conclude, fails to secure trade routes, exports inflation to allies, and generates instability rather than order, confidence erodes. Allies will hedge, partners will diversify, and rivals will start to probe.

The June 2025 campaign was supposed to demonstrate resolve. Instead, it demonstrated limitations. Six months later, western-backed protests have erupted across all 31 Iranian provinces, and the regime still stands. The strikes did not produce regime change. They did not eliminate the nuclear program. They did not deter reconstruction.

If the most powerful navy in history cannot impose decisive control over critical chokepoints, if it cannot translate kinetic superiority into political outcomes, the myth dissolves.

The emperor is revealed, not as weak, but overextended.

The Self-Inflicted Defeat

The final assessment is brutally simple. The greatest threat to American power is not Iran’s missile program. It is the American decision to attack it.

By doing so, the United States would neutralize its forward base, exhaust its military, hollow out its economy, accelerate China’s rise, and globalize resistance to its presence.

Empires do not collapse only when defeated. They collapse when they choose wars that consume them faster than their rivals.

In the case of Iran, this would not be miscalculation, it would be strategic suicide.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Democrats vote to hand Trump hundreds of billions for immigration crackdown and global war.

Andre Damon, 24 Jan 26, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/24/vmym-j24.html

As the Trump administration proceeds with the military-police occupation of Minnesota in the face of mass resistance, and wages war all over the world, the majority of Democrats have joined with Republicans to pass a record military spending bill.

On Thursday, the House passed the combined defense and consolidated spending bills (H.R. 7148) by a vote of 341-88, with 149 Democrats voting yes and only 64 voting no. A separate bill funding the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (H.R. 7147) passed 220-207, with seven Democrats crossing the aisle to vote yes.

Republicans made no secret of what Democrats were voting for. After the vote Thursday, Representative Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, declared the legislation would “champion American military power, ensuring that our brave warfighters have the tools, weapon systems and capabilities to meet any foe anywhere in the world at any time.” He summarized the bill’s purpose in three words: “America First, Fully Funded.”

Representative Ken Calvert, chairman of the Defense Subcommittee, said the bill “protects the administration’s ‘America first’ defense agenda.”

The House Appropriations Committee issued a statement hailing the “Republican-led funding that puts America First. These bills advance President Trump’s agenda.”

Despite Republicans openly proclaiming that the legislation would fund Trump’s fascistic agenda, nearly two-thirds of House Democrats voted in favor of the defense and consolidated spending bill.

An “opposition” party that votes this way is not in opposition, but an active collaborator. The Democratic Party is an instrument of the same ruling class that stands behind Trump.

The total defense appropriations amount to $839 billion, some $8.4 billion above what even Trump requested. The bill funds $27.2 billion for 17 warships, including a Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine and two Virginia-class fast attack submarines. It allocates $7.6 billion for 47 F-35 stealth fighters, $3 billion for the Air Force’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter, $1.9 billion for the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, and $4.5 billion for hypersonic weapons systems. The legislation fully funds the ongoing “modernization” of the nuclear triad—the B-21, the Columbia-class submarine, and the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile.

The Department of Homeland Security receives $64.4 billion, with approximately $10 billion earmarked for ICE. While the vote totals differed between the two bills, the fundamental intention is the same: the Democratic Party is systematically enabling the Trump administration’s assault on democratic rights and its preparations for global war.

The seven Democrats who voted for the DHS funding bill—Don Davis, Henry Cuellar, Laura Gillen, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Vicente Gonzalez, Jared Golden and Tom Suozzi—voted to fund the military occupation of Minnesota currently terrorizing immigrant communities. More than 2,000 ICE officers have been deployed across the state. Earlier this month, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman and US citizen, was shot dead by a federal immigration agent. A 5-year-old boy was detained by ICE officers. On Wednesday, whistleblowers leaked an internal ICE memo authorizing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.

The passage of the military spending bill comes after the Trump administration invaded Venezuela, overthrew the Maduro government and seized the country’s oil resources as part of Washington’s drive to consolidate its grip over Latin America in preparation for confrontation with China.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that a “massive American fleet” is heading toward Iran, “just in case.” The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has reportedly been redeployed from the South China Sea to the Middle East. This follows Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last year.

January 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

As Trump Uses Military to Threaten Democracy, NYT Declares Military Needs More Resources.

In 2024, the US spent $997 billion on its military—more than the next nine countries’ spending combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a fact the Times (12/10/25) acknowledged. What it didn’t state was that China—the second-biggest military spender—spent only $314 billion in 2024. Why must the US spend even more than three times more on its military than China? The Times never addressed this obvious question.

Drew Favakeh, FAIR, January 23, 2026

The New York Times published a seven-day series of editorials (12/8/25–12/14/25) meant to examine, as the initial piece put it, “what’s gone wrong with the US military” and “how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary.”

These editorials serve as little more than propagandistic, jingoistic and Sinophobic tools that treat war as a game, turning a blind eye to the very real harms that wars have on civilians.

Devoting seven editorials to boosting the US military when the country’s own democracy is under threat—and Trump is using the military so irresponsibly and illegally that high-level officers are resigning—the Times demonstrated that its commitment to militarism knows few bounds.

‘Threaten democracies everywhere’

In total, the New York Times series referenced China 50 times, Russia 26 times and Israel just twice. It fed into an increasing Yellow Peril hysteria in a country that has a long history of hatred towards China and Chinese people, and from a news outlet that has repeatedly expressed anti-China sentiment.

The Times (12/8/25) kicked off the series by citing a Pentagon “classified, multiyear assessment,” called the “Overmatch brief,” which “catalogs China’s ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites, and identifies the US military’s supply chain choke points.” The paper—which didn’t disclose how it obtained the brief, and didn’t publish its contents—called it “consistent and disturbing.”

The editorial opined that a “rising China” will “outlast this administration,” and will “require credible US military power as a backstop to international order and the security of the free world.”

…………………………………….It’s not China, though, that is threatening to annex its neighbors—by force if need be—or declaring it has the right to replace the leaders of any country in its hemisphere it disapproves of.

The US has overthrown at least 31 foreign governments since the late 19th century—with Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro marking only the latest in that long string—and conducted more than 80 election meddling operations from 1946 to 2000 (NPR, 12/22/16). It has caused, conservatively, nearly a million deaths in the post-9/11 wars. By comparison, China has not been directly involved in a major external conflict since its 1979 invasion of Vietnam.

US special operations forces are deployed to 154 countries (Intercept, 3/20/21), and the Pentagon has at least 750 overseas military bases in 80 countries (Al Jazeera, 9/10/21), many of which surround China.

China, meanwhile, has just two overseas military bases, one it opened in 2017 in the East African nation of Djibouti (Reuters, 8/1/17; Foreign Policy, 7/7/21) and another it opened in 2025 in Cambodia (Newsweek, 4/7/25).

Moreover, the US currently has imposed some form of damaging economic sanctions on more than 20 countries, while China has issued no nationwide sanctions.

…………………………………………………………. While the US declares a right to use nuclear weapons first in a war (Council on Foreign Relations, 12/16/25), China has maintained a “no first use policy” since it first developed nuclear weapons in 1964—a position it has repeatedly re-affirmed, including late last year (Arms Control Association, 12/11/25).

The Times also warned about hypersonic missiles: “China in recent years has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons,” compared to the US, which “has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile,” wrote the Times (12/8/25). FAIR (7/12/19) has written before about media attempts to hype a hypersonic missile gap.

In fact, the US has pursued hypersonic weapons since 9/11, and is now among those “leading the pack” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 3/12/24), underscored by Trump’s near $4 billion request in 2026 for hypersonic weapons research. Most US hypersonic weapons are being designed for conventional payloads—making them usable weapons rather than deterrents. This means they will take longer to deploy (Congressional Research Service, 8/27/25), and will be more destabilizing if they are deployed.

………………………………….The Times‘ enthusiasm for defending Taiwan from forcible reunification with China contrasts sharply with its commitment to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to retake breakaway territories. In the Taiwanese case, the right to self-determination is unquestioned, trumping China’s sovereignty; in Ukraine’s case, the sacredness of national borders renders self-determination claims irrelevant.

Though popularity of a war hardly seems to matter to US administrations, intervening to protect Taiwan separatism remains largely unpopular among US citizens (although more are in favor of intervention this year than last).

‘Transformation of the American military’

US politicians often leverage the alarmist message of “imminent military threats” to increase military spending (Defense News, 2/17/21). The New York Times took on that role in these editorials. To achieve this country’s foreign policy goals, it argued (12/8/25), requires not just maintaining current obscene levels of military spending, but increasing them: “In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base.”

While the paper occasionally criticized military spending—calling the 2026 defense budget “loaded with pork for unnecessary programs” (12/11/25)—its issue wasn’t the amount spent, but rather how it was spent—“a stronger US national security depends less on enormous new budgets than on wiser investments” (12/8/25).

Ultimately, the Times (12/11/25) suggested spending $150 billion more on “manufacturing capacity” to rebuild the US naval industrial base, despite noting that the US has already spent nearly $6 billion on the industry over the past decade.

The editorial board didn’t seem to consider what the public wants in our nominal democracy: Only one in ten voters want a bigger military budget (Jacobin, 12/15/25).

Rather than funding an arms race, the US could focus more on diplomacy and turn its investments towards more popular measures like government-subsidized housing, healthcare for all, universal childhood education, infrastructure, clean energy, and/or community college. A 2023 report published by Brown University’s Costs of War project showed reducing military spending and diverting funds to these areas would create 9% to 250% more jobs than the military.

The killer robot gap

Another area where the New York Times wants the US military to spend more money is autonomous weapons systems.

The Times (12/9/25) wrote that “China is testing how to fly drones in sync. Soon such swarms could hunt and kill on their own.” To counter this “growing threat,” the US “must simultaneously win the race to build autonomous weapons and lead the world in controlling them.” To do so, “Congress needs to expand funding for research and development into technologies with military applications” and Trump needs to “bring private industry into the mission.”

The Times wrote that they “join the United Nations secretary general and the International Committee of the Red Cross in their call for a new treaty to be concluded by 2026 on autonomous weapons systems.” The editors then say the treaty should include

limits on the types of targets, such as outlawing their use in situations where civilians or civilian objects are present; and requirements for human-machine interaction, notably to ensure effective human supervision, and timely intervention and deactivation.

But that’s far short of what the secretary general and the Red Cross recommend: a ban on all autonomous weapons used to attack humans. This humanitarian goal doesn’t square with the Times‘ enthusiasm for the US to “win the race to build autonomous weapons,” even if it says it also wants to “win the race to control them.”

Then again, there’s nothing about the Times‘ editorial series that suggests any honest consideration of humanitarian concerns—just adding another notch on its belt of warmongering on behalf of the State. https://fair.org/home/as-trump-uses-military-to-threaten-democracy-nyt-declares-military-needs-more-resources/

January 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump offers states a deal to take nuclear waste

POLITICIPRO, By: Sophia Cai | 01/20/2026

The Trump administration wants to quadruple America’s production of nuclear power over the next 25 years and is hoping to entice states to take the nuclear waste those plants produce by dangling the promise of steering massive investments their way.

President Donald Trump’s big bet on amping up nuclear production is not an easy feat, fraught with NIMBY concerns about safety and waste byproducts. The administration hopes to solve at least one of those issues — what to do with toxic nuclear waste — with a program they plan to roll out this week.

Governors would effectively be invited to compete for what the administration believes is a once-in-a-generation economic development prize in exchange for hosting the nation’s most politically and environmentally toxic byproduct.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has already begun laying groundwork with governors. Over the last two weeks, Wright has met with at least two governors who have expressed interest, according to two officials familiar with the private meetings granted anonymity to discuss them……………………………….(Subscribers only) https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/01/trump-offers-states-a-deal-to-take-nuclear-waste-00738104

January 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Trump Could Offer Deals to U.S. States to Store Nuclear Waste

Oil Price, By Charles Kennedy – Jan 22, 2026,

The Trump Administration plans to offer U.S. states incentives for building nuclear reactors in exchange for agreeing to store nuclear waste, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Energy Department told Reuters that the story was “false” and that “no decisions have been made at this time,” after POLITICO first reported on the plan late on Wednesday.

The POLITICO report said that the Energy Department could invite interest from U.S. states as early as this week.

Handling nuclear waste is a politically and environmentally sensitive issue, and the U.S. may have much more of that in the coming years as it the Trump Administration plans to facilitate the expansion of U.S. nuclear energy capacity from about 100 gigawatts (GW) in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.

The U.S. Administration has bet big on nuclear power, alongside gas, to meet the expected surge in America’s electricity demand driven by AI, data centers, and the onshoring of manufacturing………….

Earlier this month, the Energy Department announced a $2.7 billion investment to strengthen domestic enrichment, in support of President Trump’s commitment to expand U.S. capacity for low-enriched uranium (LEU) and jumpstart new supply chains and innovations for high-assay low-enriched uranium.

Last month, the Energy Department awarded $800 million to TVA and Holtec to advance the deployment of U.S. small modular reactors.

In November, DOE extended a $1-billion loan to help Constellation Energy restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor to add baseload power to the grid and help the AI advancement in the United States. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Trump-Could-Offer-Deals-to-US-States-to-Store-Nuclear-Waste.html

January 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Today in History – January 24: Pure luck stops two nuclear bombs destroying US city

By Nick Pearson, Jan 24, 2026, https://www.9news.com.au/world/today-in-history-january-24-what-happened-on-this-day/67dc0e76-b5a5-4799-8fd0-ef2c401b7812

Two concurrent nuclear explosions over a US town were narrowly averted on January 24, 1961.

A B-52 bomber flying over Goldsboro, North Carolina, started to break up in mid-air after a fuel leak.

The centrifugal forces set off a trigger in the cockpit which would be used to drop the payload in the back of the plane.

That payload was two hydrogen bombs, which dropped out of the plane as it broke up in the sky.

Five of the eight crew were able to bail out safely, but three were killed.

Meanwhile, the two hydrogen bombs fell to the ground.

By pure luck, neither of the weapons exploded.

The first weapon had landed in a field on a farm, landing reasonably softly because of its deployed parachute.

With one of the 24-megaton warheads, there were six interlocking safety mechanisms which needed to be triggered for the bomb to explode.

“When Air Force experts rushed to the North Carolina farm to examine the weapon after the accident, they found that five of the six interlocks had been set off by the fall,” nuclear safety supervisor Parker F. Jones wrote in a 1969 report.

“Only a single switch prevented the 24-megaton bomb from detonating and spreading fire and destruction over a wide area.”

The second bomb landed in a muddy field, leaving a 1.5m hole in the ground.

When it was recovered after a three-day operation, they found the safety switch had been turned to “Armed”.

It created a mystery as to why this bomb did not detonate.

The conclusion from investigators was that the impact from hitting the earth shifted the switch to “Armed”, but that same impact had broken the circuits that would have set the bomb off.

After breaking up on impact and sinking into deep mud, some major components of the bomb have still not been recovered.

If either bomb had detonated, it would have likely wiped out a city of about 30,000 people.

The farmer was paid $100 by the US government for a 61m-radius section of the farm.

They are still allowed to use the land for agricultural purposes but forbidden from digging more than five feet down.

January 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide.

The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, January 22, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/kushner-reveals-dystopic-plan-to-build-data-centers-on-ruins-of-gaza-genocide/

White House Adviser Jared Kushner revealed a neocolonial plan to transform Gaza into a home for luxury tourist resorts and data centers at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.

The plan has been widely condemned by human rights advocates, who say it is an an attempt to erase Palestinians by building a capitalist dystopia on the ruins of Israel’s genocide.

At the signing ceremony for President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Kushner shared a set of slides depicting a colonialist fantasy of the Gaza Strip under a hypothetical “demilitarization” of Hamas — despite the group’s repeated refusal to disarm, saying it would leave them defenseless against further attacks by Israel or otherwise.

The slides show computer-generated photos of high rise buildings along the coast and rows of residential buildings elsewhere.

The presentation includes a blueprint of Gaza divided into sections, which Kushner says is the U.S.’s plan for “catastrophic success” in the event of demilitarization of Hamas. The blueprint, labelled as the “Master Plan,” shows the entirety of the coast — where Palestinians have long fished for sustenance — dedicated to “coastal tourism,” with a sea port and an airport. There are large swaths dedicated to “parks, agriculture, and sports facilities.”

Tellingly, numerous parts of the map located next to residential areas are dedicated to industry and “data centers.” Ruinous technology like AI, reports have said, are slated to be a major part of the White House’s plan for Gaza, with other slides in the pitch deck reported by The Wall Street Journal showing a transformation of the Strip into a “smart city” with “tech driven governance.”

Nowhere is there a designation for cultural sites, nor does the map seem to be built around keeping or restoring any parts of Gaza that retain Palestinian heritage or life. The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s razing of the territory, clear the rubble in which thousands of Palestinians’ bodies are thought to be trapped, and replace it with real estate opportunities for investors.

“Gaza, as President Trump has been saying, has amazing potential,” said Kushner.

At the signing ceremony, Trump said that Gaza, home to millions of Palestinians, is “a great location” that should be viewed as a “big real estate site,” and expressed his interest in the region as a “real estate person at heart.”

“I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property — what it could be for so many people, it’ll be so great, people that are living so poorly are gonna be living so well,” Trump said.

Kushner touted the White House’s goal of applying “free market economy principles” to the razing and redevelopment of Gaza. He also expressed a desire to replace the humanitarian aid system for Palestinians in the region using those principles.

Palestinians have strongly condemned the plan.

“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’” wrote Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa. “Palestinians will be pushed behind walls and gates, retrained in ‘technical schools’ to serve Israel’s supremacists ideology. The indigenous traditions and social fabric of this land will be obliterated utterly.”

“If the goal is truly peace, then the path is simple: end the occupation and help restore the rights that have been taken from Palestinians since 1948,” said Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer from Gaza. “We, the Palestinian people, are the ones who must determine our own future. Peace cannot be imposed while our land is occupied, our lives controlled, and our voices ignored.”

January 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Danish MP Warns US Takeover of Greenland Will Start a War

by Kyle Anzalone , January 21, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/20/danish-mp-warns-us-takeover-of-greenland-will-start-a-war/

Trump has placed tariffs on Europeans nations that oppose the US seizing Greenland

Amid threats from President Donald Trump to take over Greenland, a Danish politician said that if the US seized the colony, a war would break out.

Danish MP Rasmus Jarlov said that if the US military invades Greenland, “it would be a war, and we would be fighting against each other.”

“There’s no threat, there’s no hostility. There’s no need, because the Americans already have access to Greenland, both militarily and in all other ways.” He continued, “There are no drug routes. There is no illegitimate government in Greenland. There is absolutely no justification for it– no historical ownership, no broken treaties, nothing can justify it.”

In recent weeks, President Trump said the US will take control of Greenland. The President argues it is a matter of national security, as Russia or China will seize Greenland from Denmark if the US does not gain control first.
In response to Trump’s threats, Denmark has begun increasing its military presence in Greenland.

Trump’s plan to take Greenland has met stiff opposition in Europe. The President has slapped 10% tariffs on eight European countries. Trump said the tariffs would increase if those nations did not change policy and support the US seizure of Greenland.

An executive at Deutsche Bank suggested that European countries could pressure the US to back away from Greenland by refusing to buy US bonds. George Saravelos, head of FX research, explained, “For all its military and economic strength, the US has one key weakness: it relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits.”

Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the risk of a currency war with Europe. “The media has latched on to this. I think it is a completely false narrative. It defies any logic,” he said Tuesday.

“If you look, the US Treasury market was the best-performing market in the world, or the best G7-performing bond market, and we had the best performance since 2020. It is the most liquid market.” Bessent continued,” It is the basis for all financial transactions, and I am sure that the European governments will continue holding it.”

The President said he did not expect Europe to push back too much if he annexed Greenland. “I don’t think they are going to push back too much,” he said, adding, “We have to have it.”

January 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Denmark, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

It wasn’t Trump’s mind or morality that stopped his Iran attack.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, 21 Jan 26

A week ago President Trump was posturing about an imminent attack to overthrow the Iranian regime embroiled in massive protests. His declared motive was to save the Iranian protesters seeking internal regime change who were being slaughtered by the regime.

Then Trump pivoted, declaring since the regime was no longer planning to execute protesters, he wouldn’t attack.

But it wasn’t Iranian government benevolence that persuaded Trump to stand down. The two reasons Trump’s explanation was covering up were reality on the ground and a phone call.

The massive but failed protests were not solely a spontaneous internal revolt. They were fomented and supported by both the US and Israel to complete their long sought dream of regime change to destabilize Iran, Israel’s last hegemonic rival in the region. Israel’s Mossad was definitely on the ground and likely the CIA as well. Trump was cheering on the protests from the sidelines.

Trump was poised to attack to complete the regime change operation when protest success appeared imminent. But Iran’s government quickly and decisively snuffed out the protests, ending Trump’s dream of adding more thousands to his massive, murderous death toll bombing 7 countries in his first year of term two.

Trump also got a call from the real boss of US Middle East policy….Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He told Trump that with the regime intact, Israel would be decimated by thousands of Iranian missiles once Trump attacked.

Iran’s government may be secure for now but Israeli, US dream of Iranian regime change will never cease.

Trump lied to the New York Times when he said the only thing that can stop him from foreign intervention is “my own mind, my own morality.” What stopped Trump from attacking Iran again, as he did in June, is what stopped him then… failure on the ground and a call from the guy giving Trump his orders on Middle East foreign policy.

January 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Zionist Billionaires Openly Acknowledge Manipulating The US Government.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 19, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/zionist-billionaires-openly-acknowledge?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185023681&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Speaking together at the Israeli-American Council Summit on Saturday, billionaire Zionist megadonors Miriam Adelson and Haim Saban strongly implied that they are engaged in some extremely shady activities to manipulate the US government in advancement of Israeli interests.

There’s a guy I follow on Twitter named Chris Menahan who’s always posting clips from Zionist events which might otherwise go unnoticed, frequently turning up jarring admissions from pro-Israel operatives who tend to loosen their lips a bit when addressing an audience of like-minded individuals. I recently cited a clip he spotted featuring former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz decrying the way social media has allowed the public to view evidence of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Menahan has spotlighted some very revealing moments from Adelson and Saban, both of whom are dual US-Israeli citizens, and both of whom have provided funding to the Israeli-American Council (IAC). In 2014, The Nation’s MJ Rosenberg wrote that Saban and Miriam Adelson’s late husband Sheldon were using influence operations like the IAC to become “the Koch brothers on Israel.”

Here’s a transcript of a very revealing interaction between Adelson and event host Shawn Evenhaim:

Evenhaim: Miri, you and Sheldon created a lot of relationships over the years with politicians, at the state level, and especially at the federal level. I want you to share with everyone why is it so important and how you do it, and again, writing cheques is a part of it, but there is more than writing just cheques so, how do you do it?

Adelson: Shawn, can you allow me not to answer?

Evenhaim (shrugs): You choose!

Adelson: I want to be truthful and there are so many things that I don’t want to talk about.

Evenhaim: Yeah, I mean we don’t want specifics but that’s okay.

Miriam Adelson is here admitting that in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars that she and Sheldon are known to have poured into the political campaigns of Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, they have also been manipulating US politics behind the scenes in ways that she would prefer to keep secret from the public. Presumably because it would cause a significant scandal if the public ever found out.

Trump, for the record, has repeatedly admitted that he provided political favors to Israel at the urging of the Adelsons during his first term, saying he moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and legitimized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in order to please them.

And please them he did. He must have, because Miriam Adelson donated another $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign to help him become president again. And now he’s spent the first year of his administration bombing Iran and Yemen, working to take control of Gaza, and aggressively stomping out criticism of Israel in the United States.

Back in 2020, before all these blatant admissions, musician Roger Waters was smeared as an antisemite by the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist groups for saying that Sheldon Adelson was using his wealth to exert influence over US politics.

Saban was even more guarded about his political operations than Adelson in his response to the same question from Evenhaim:

“I want to be cautious how I’m saying… (Pause) It’s a system that we did not create. It’s a system that’s in place. It’s a legal system and we just play within the system. And that’s it! I mean it’s really quite simple. If you support a politician, you, under normal circumstances, should have access to be able to share opinions and try to help them see your point of view. That’s what access grants you, and the contribution and the financial support grants you the access, sooooo… I mean…. (shrugs) those that give more have more access and those that give less have less access. It’s a simple math. Trust me.”

Haim Saban, whose campaign donations focus on the other side of the aisle with Democratic Party funding, has famously said “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” In 2022 AIPAC’s superpac cited Saban’s financial clout to argue that deviating from support for Israel would cost the Democrats critical funding, saying “Our activist donors, who include one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, are focused on ensuring that we have a U.S. Congress that, like President Biden, supports a vibrant and robust relationship with our democratic ally, Israel.”

As with Adelson, we can surmise that Saban said he wanted to be “cautious” how he described his influence operations because it would cause a major scandal if the American people understood what he’s been up to.

Some people will look at these clips and claim it’s antisemitic to even share them. Others will look at them and cite them as evidence that the world is ruled by Jews. For me they’re just evidence that the world is ruled by wealthy sociopaths, and that western democracy is an illusion.

I mean, you really couldn’t ask for a better illustration of the sham of American democracy than this. Two billionaires from supposedly opposite political parties publicly admitting that they use their obscene wealth to manipulate US politics to advance the military and geopolitical agendas of a foreign state on the other side of the planet.

And as Saban said, it’s all legal. Corruption is legal in the United States of America. Plutocrats are allowed to leverage their fortunes to manipulate the US government using campaign funding and lobbying for the advancement of their personal, financial, and ideological agendas. If you have a few million dollars to spare you can use them to make criminal charges go away, to roll back environmental regulations or worker protections which hurt the profit margins of your business, or even to get military explosives shipped to a foreign government for use in an ongoing genocide.

And it’s all being done with complete disregard for the will of the electorate. The American people have no control over what their government does under the current political system. They vote for one oligarchic puppet, then they vote for the oligarchic puppet in the other party when that doesn’t work out, going back and forth without realizing that at no point are they changing the actual power structure under which they live.

That power structure is called plutocracy. That’s only real political system the United States has.

January 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US aggression, UK support: The ‘special relationship’

From Iran to Libya, from Panama to Venezuela, there is a history of the UK supporting illegal US military interventions

MARK CURTIS, 12 January 2026, https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-aggression-uk-support-the-special-relationship/

Forty years ago, US warplanes bombed Libya, attempting to assassinate its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Failing in that task, they managed to kill dozens of civilians in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.

The attacks, which were in response to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub blamed on Gaddafi, were strongly supported by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Indeed, she allowed some of the US jets to take off from bases in Britain.

In the face of widespread public opposition to the US raid, a defiant Thatcher told parliament it was “a necessary and proportionate response to a clear pattern of Libyan terrorism” and to “uphold international law”.

However, the UN General Assembly, and most world opinion, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.

But for the British prime minister: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”

Fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves in a not dissimilar situation over US attacks on Venezuela.

UK ministers give their backing to the kidnapping of a foreign head of state amidst a military intervention, condemned in the wider world but supported in Whitehall because of the so-called “special relationship”.

‘Our full support’

It was always thus. Three years after the attack on Libya, the US invaded Panama in December 1989. US aggression killed up to 3,000 people in this instance, and overthrew President Manuel Noriega, who had been on the CIA’s payroll for decades.

The invasion was widely considered to be illegal and in violation of the charters of both the UN and the Organization of American States.

A Foreign Office legal adviser wrote on the day of the invasion that “it is not possible to conclude that the American action was justified in international law”.

This didn’t matter in the British corridors of power. In a private phone call, Thatcher assured US president George W Bush that the intervention “was a very courageous decision which would have our full support”.

In the days that followed, Britain even vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which “strongly deplores” the invasion.

Clinton/Blair double act

A change in leadership in London and Washington made little difference to this pattern in the 1990s when the double act became Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

In August 1998, Clinton launched a wave of cruise missile attacks on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier that month.

Al Qaeda’s bombings were horrific, killing over 300 people. But while the US retaliation struck terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, its target in Sudan was a pharmaceuticals factory that produced medicines for the country’s population.

The US claimed the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons but no strong evidence ever emerged for this.

Amid the controversy, Bill Clinton blocked proposals for a UN investigation into the matter while Tony Blair strongly backed his ally’s attacks — against the advice of some British diplomats reportedly being appalled at them.

‘Proper legal authority’

It was only a few months later, in December 1998, that Bill and Tony worked even more closely together in a new bombing campaign.

They authorised four days of air strikes on Iraq, ostensibly to degrade dictator Saddam Hussein’s ability to store and produce weapons of mass destruction (which, of course, never materialised).

The declassified files show that Blair and his closest advisers were consistently informed by UK legal advisers that attacking Iraq would not be lawful.

The only exception would be if a new UN Security Council resolution were to be passed saying Saddam was in “material breach” of Iraq’s previous commitments – which London and Washington never secured.

In a sign of Blair’s attitude towards legal requirements, he privately wrote at the time that he found his law officers’ legal advice “unconvincing”.

When he announced military action to parliament in November 1998, Blair misled the house by saying: “I have no doubt that we have the proper legal authority, as it is contained in successive Security Council resolution documents”.

‘Act of war’

Over 20 years later, it was the turn of Boris Johnson to acquiesce to Donald Trump in an overtly illegal US act of aggression.

In January 2020, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which the US had designated a terrorist organisation.

Washington tried to justify the killing by claiming it had intelligence that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on US interests across the Middle East.

But a UN report found that the assassination was illegal. Indeed, the then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, said it marked a watershed in international law.

“It is hard to imagine that a similar strike against a Western military leader would not be considered as an act of war, potentially leading to intense action, political, military and otherwise, against the State launching the strike”, she wrote.

By contrast, Johnson defended the US action and said that “we will not lament” Soleimani’s death. He added that “the strict issue of legality is not for the UK to determine since it was not our operation” — precisely what Keir Starmer has just said about Venezuela.

London’s support for Washington also came in the form of Johnson’s equally belligerent foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, who added that the US “had a right to exercise self-defence”.

Bombing Iran

Trump attacked Iran again after Keir Starmer had been in office for nearly a year. In June last year, the US launched air strikes on nuclear-related sites in the country, ostensibly to prevent Tehran developing a nuclear arms programme.

A group of UN experts condemned the intervention, stating: “These attacks violate the most fundamental rules of world order since 1945 – the prohibition on the aggressive use of military force and the duties to respect sovereignty and not to coercively intervene in another country.”

Yet Starmer’s response was a rehearsal of his reaction to Trump’s recent kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. The British prime minister failed to condemn the US intervention, instead going along with it by saying it was “clear Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

Similarly, foreign secretary David Lammy was repeatedly asked whether the US attacks were illegal, and refused to say.

Backing the law by violating it

By the time the US under Trump overthrew the Venezuelan government earlier this month, the UK response was utterly predictable.

Starmer and other ministers welcomed Maduro’s overthrow, failed to identify it as an obvious violation of international law and even had the audacity to claim they remained strong supporters of that law.

Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said in a parliamentary debate on Venezuela that “we will always argue for the upholding of international law”, precisely at a time she was supporting an obvious violation of it.

It was the same with her deputy. A day after telling parliament she welcomed the illegal US removal of Maduro, foreign minister Jenny Chapman told parliament the UK’s “support for international law… is unwavering”.

Maduro’s kidnapping was strongly condemned by UN experts while its human rights chief, Volker Turk, said it “violates the country’s sovereignty and the UN charter”.

This failed to deter the UK immediately proceeding with military collaboration with Trump’s rogue state. Four days after the kidnapping, the UK provided military support to Washington to help it seize a Russian-flagged oil tanker near the northwest waters of the UK.

Declassified asked legal experts to comment on Trump’s latest military intervention and many are concluding it is yet another violation.

The decades-long cycle goes on. The US and UK have long been repeatedly undermining what exists of a rules-based international order – while claiming to uphold it.

Who knows where it will lead us in terms of future wars and what price will be paid by ordinary people for the world’s leading states creating a global law of the jungle.

January 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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