Every year at this time, as certain and regular as the Moscow city administration turns off the central hotwater boilers for cleaning, we close the office, postpone the flow of Dances with Bears, suspend the tweets.
But just as surely as Muscovites install electric water heaters for substitutes during the profilaktika (профилактика — профилактические работы), we will continue with occasional podcasts and write a book for Christmas release. We will restart on September 7. Like all ZHEK (Жилищно-эксплуатационная контора) notices, not all official announcements come true exactly on time.
by Editor - Saturday, August 1st, 2026 No Comments »
The appearance this week of an unrecognized man (lead images, top right, bottom 2nd from right) standing next to General Dan Caine and behind Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is a signal that the days of President Donald Trump as peacemaker are over.
The days of Trump as permanent warmaker are now starting.
The unrecognized man’s signal is also that all the warfighting Trump intends against Russia in Europe and Iran in the Middle East must be low-cost in US casualties and in US gas prices at the pump, and ensure the cashflow for Trump’s succession campaign between now and 2028. This man is signalling US permanent war with pauses to earn a priority pass for votes and vote financiers at US election time.
Unidentified in the Ukrainian, US and Israeli press covering the White House meetings on July 28, he is Michael Needham. Axios spotted him eight weeks ago when his appointment as Deputy National Security Advisor was announced. “Why it matters,” the Israeli megaphone in Washington reported: “Needham’s new post as assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser is one of the more important jobs in a Trump administration consumed with foreign policy challenges from Iran to China, Cuba and Venezuela…’Everyone likes Mike. He gets the policy. He gets the politics,’ said a senior administration official.”
In practice, Needham is now the boss of the National Security Council (NSC) while Rubio, the nominal National Security Advisor, moves around the world as Secretary of State and also runs for president as Trump’s successor. This is Needham’s official biography. This is the best Wikipedia has been able to compile for the 45-year old heir to Manhattan banker and broker, George Needham’s not insubstantial fortune.
What is missing from Michael Needham’s preparation for the top of the Trump Administration’s warmaking staff is that he has no foreign area expertise, no foreign language, no intelligence, and no military background at all. Instead, he is East Coast Republican Party operative, with ideological training at the Claremont Institute of California, a money-handling diploma from his father’s alma mater Stanford, and six years as Rubio’s staff man at the US Senate.
War for Needham has been purely a domestic American fight. In this, a rare publication of Needham’s from 2018 entitled “Trumping Reagan”, there is no mention of war or of any foreign policy issue in the campaigns Needham was engaged in to build and then preserve coalitions of Republican voters for Trump.
This inexperience and incapacity make Needham unique in the history of the NSC and of national security advisors.
In the only other episode of White House history when the two jobs of Secretary of State and National Security Advisor were combined in one man and when the US was at war – that was in 1973-75 — Henry Kissinger was the man and the Vietnam War was in its capitulational stage. Then Kissinger’s deputy was Brent Scowcroft. He had been a US Air Force lieutenant-general with fighter pilot training, war plans and operations experience at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a military intelligence posting in Belgrade, and a PhD from Columbia University; “a principal architect of American policy toward post-communist Russia, ”the New York Timescalled him.
Needham’s appearance in the Oval Office, standing between a special operations officer and a presidential election runner, a rookie warfighter himself, reveals what the new White House priorities are, and will continue to be to the end of Trump’s term. View or listen to the discussion in the new podcast with Jamarl Thomas, first aired on Friday morning Washington time.
It doesn’t take much time to compile from the works of John Mearsheimer a file of his mistakes of prediction, miscalculations of US and Ukrainian operations, and strategic misjudgements about the US war against Russia in Europe.
And yet, despite the plainness of this record, Mearsheimer is treated as a valuable asset, if not agent of influence by the Russian state propaganda organs which quote him with approval, and by US podcasters who advertise themselves as pro-Russian and who engage Mearsheimer to that end. Mearsheimer has enjoyed something similarly official in China.
Watch this brief sample of Mearsheimer on the present war.
This ought to be familiar for another American political reason. It’s Joseph Nye’s soft power idea from Harvard revitalized by Mearsheimer as his offensive realism idea at the University of Chicago. Because Nye is now dead (2025); because, before he expired, Nye was recognized by his targets to be just another US warfighter for the same old empire; and because the Trump Administration has replaced soft power, propaganda and USAID tools of policymaking with hard power, US Department of War tools, the political equivalence of Nye and Mearsheimer has not been understood.
Why have Russians who have been the targets of US warfighting since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 failed to see this equivalence? Why are American university professors credited with theories that are provably wrong on the evidence, believed by the Russian targets of US warfighting? Why doesn’t the Hundred Years’ American War against Russia produce theory and practice of a different kind and a different source?
The answer is that the Russian Army’s advance on the Ukrainian battlefield has not been matched by the advance of Russian ideology against the thrall in which US ideologists and influencers continue to be held in some Russian power centres. This outcome is evidence that Nye’s idea is still succeeding in Moscow. And so long as this is true, Mearsheimer’s idea will also enjoy Russian success, no matter how wrongheaded it is.
A Soviet education in Marxism and mathematics isn’t necessary, though, for this equation to be invariably true: S (Soft power) equals H (hard head) equals W (wronghead).
This recalculation has not yet occurred for Mearsheimer but it is bound to happen. Well, maybe not. As Anton Chekhov once explained to Russians, what ought to happen is not bound to happen. “They say –” Chekhov wrote in his note-book in 1921, “they say ‘In the long run truth will triumph’ but it is untrue.”
Mearsheimer realism turns out to be Mushheimer imperialism. That’s a triumph for him for the moment. It will remain true for long as the empire has its run no matter what can be seen and said from the record.
As tactics for warfighting against Russia go, drones are a new one, and if measured by Russian public opinion, they are more effective for the time being than old tactics like Alexei Navalny-type operations, or Trojan Horses like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or Fifth Columnists like Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and the President’s special negotiator with the US, Kirill Dmitriev.
Combine them altogether, as the escalation promised by the G7 and the NATO declarations of June and July, and you have another of the strategic miscalculations which have defeated the Swedes, Poles, British, French, Germans, and Americans in the past, the long ago and the right now. Russians learn and recover from their mistakes, no matter how great the price in treasure and in blood they pay.
Just so, the mistakes which President Vladimir Putin has made, grave and costly ones, are now being repaired. Not soon and swiftly enough, to be sure, to avoid the price in treasure and blood which has been paid, goes on being paid.
Notwithstanding, the escalation of the drone war in the Russian hinterland, on the near seas and the high seas, is forcing the Kremlin into an acceleration of the successions of the Putin presidency and of the oligarchy which his rule has represented and on which he and his family depend. From guarded conversations with sources over the past month, it is clear these successions are not those which the Anglo-Americans and Europeans are aiming at; nor are they the forecasts of the US podcasters representing what they imagine to be Russia’s best interests.
These successions will not be signalled by the launch of nuclear fireworks of the kind threatened by Moscow think tankers and media celebrities with safe-haven residences in Germany or Italy.
The Russian successions accelerated by war escalation are starting in the oil sector at Rosneft, Gazprom and LUKoil, and in the associated refining, generating, and logistics – pipelines, railways, ports, shipping. The successions are beginning at the sources of debt and credit finance at Sberbank and VTB. They are under way in the military-industrial complex, especially Rostec. The well-known names which are aging, ailing and passing include those of Igor Sechin, Alexei Miller, Vagit Alekperov, German Gref, Andrei Kostin, Sergei Chemezov.
The fight over the successions under way in the 1996-2026 generation of the oligarchs is already visible in the self-promotions of individuals like the half-witted Andrei Melnichenko, and his cleverer peers, Vladimir Potanin and Oleg Deripaska. Between them, there is a fight for the profits of what one faction hopes will be a long war, the privateers and red flaggers; and the other faction of oligarchs who want peace now, the capitulationists and white flaggers. Yes, the Putin oligarchy is cracking up into reds versus whites.
Yes, the war aim of the NATO escalation is to trigger a revolutionary situation inside Russia. But no, the outcome is not theirs to dictate by drones, sanctions, or the assassinations of oligarchs recently agreed between the national security advisors in Athens and Kiev. From the inside, when they are happening, revolutions appear to be confusing, chaotic, unpredictable, incredible. We are on the edge of another one in Russia. View or listen to the discussion with Mike Robinson in the new podcast from London on UK Column News.
The recorded history of that question began in a New York newspaper in 1885. At the time and ever since, asking the question implied the answer that there is no limit to the string. The answer in the lead images, a Jeff and Mutt cartoon, appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in April 1937.
Today, in the two world wars in which President Donald Trump is directing US empire forces, including the British, Europeans, Israelis, Arab sheikhs, Canadians, Ukrainians, and others – that’s the war for Europe against Russia, the war for the Middle East against Iran – the answer to the string question depends on whether the count starts at the US end or at the Russian and Iranian ends.
In the politics, logistics and economics of these wars, measuring the length of the string starts with who is at the pulling end and who is on the other end.
When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump’s national security advisor, called an urgent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on July 23, his plan was to tell Lavrov that the US had the measure of the string between Moscow and Teheran; and to warn President Vladimir Putin to stop assisting Iran with the means to kill American troops and spies in the Middle East. Lavrov had his answer ready. That was to reverse the string between Washington and Kiev and warn Trump to stop assisting Ukraine with drones to kill Russian civilians at work, on roads, in factories, refineries, port terminals, warehouses.
Read the details of what was said and done at the Manila meeting here.
In the days since then, Lavrov has appeared to deny the Rubio warning. “For no apparent reason, the West, and Washington in particular, are now stoking a narrative that Russia and China are directly supplying Iran with the weapons to attack US targets. Well, you know, it is embarrassing to even hear that.”
Trump himself tweeted what appears to be a similar correction, but attached the same warning to Putin which Rubio had addressed to Lavrov. “President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies. Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President Putin, despite the horrible War going on in Ukraine (The relationship remains, as it does with President Zelenskyy), told me that he would not sell Weapons to Iran. He understands that I do not sell Weapons to Ukraine, but to NATO Countries. They pay full price, and how those Weapons are distributed, I have no idea. Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating. If they did, it would be very bad for them — Certainly not in their best interests.”
The string is obvious; so are the two ends. In between there is war, the escalation of which is violently contested. For that reason, what is being said, written, and broadcast can be true and untrue at the same time, depending on which end of the string is doing the pulling, the counting, and also the cutting.
In the interpretation of Stephen Bryen, the Trump-Zelensky escalation against Russia and Iran simultaneously can be deterred, cut short, stopped, defeated by a combination of retaliatory strikes and supply cutoffs if Russia, Iran and China will agree to act together, swiftly and comprehensively. Bryen has been a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan Administration, a war planner for US and Israel, and an advisor to the US and NATO military-industrial complex.
Bryen’s analysis: “Kiev fields two distinct drone categories: FPV (First-Person View] drones whose role is critical on the battlefield and long range drones aimed at Russian territory and Crimea. FPV drones are typically plastic or composite quadcopters powered by electric motors. In 2025 Ukraine used around 3 million FPV drones. Current reports suggest Ukraine is using 10 to 15 thousand drones daily. In recent months Russia has been targeting drone manufacturing facilities in Ukraine, as well as warehouses and distribution points, but there is not much hard evidence that Russian operations have meaningfully impacted Ukraine’s use of FPV drones. Between 85 to 90 percent of the components powering Ukraine’s FPV drones come from China. These include power systems (such as lithium ion cells, high discharge LiPo [lithium polymer] batteries and power distribution boards), brushless electric motors for propulsion and servos, and electronic speed controllers and flight controller boards, CMOS [Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor] navigation cameras, thermal sensors, fiber optic dispensors and basic RF [radio frequency] transceiver modules.”
“In addition there are some supply issues for factories in Ukraine and in Europe that are supporting Ukraine. Included here are neodymium rare earth magnets for motors, synthetic graphite for battery anodes, and specialized carbon fiber coming exclusively from China.
Similarly Russia depends on China for its drone supplies. Even the Pentagon has given waivers so US drone producers can support US War Department needs. Ukraine buys most of its components from third country intermediaries because China, after protests from Russia, restricted its domestic drone makers from directly exporting to Ukraine. But these so-called restrictions are just a way to jack up the price for parts and to enrich friends of the Chinese regime. China has made no effort to account for the millions of parts it is shipping that fuel the war effort. Should China get beyond its usual corruption and clamp down, Ukraine would be out of business on the battlefield.”
Bryen’s conclusion: “Ukraine probably can ignore peace initiatives that would leave Russian forces on Ukrainian territory, at least for a short while. But the supply crisis is closing in and it will significantly impact Ukraine’s defenses and ability to hold territory and fend off Russian missile and drone attacks. How soon will Ukraine’s situation turn critical? If the fighting resumes in Iran, only a few months for air defenses. If the Chinese crack down on supplies for drones to Ukraine, even sooner.
The day after the Rubio meeting, Lavrov met China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, the chief foreign policy advisor to President Xi Jinping; this was on July 24; the two ministers were still in Manila.
Lavrov acknowledged in the small print of his ministry communiqué that after their talks “covered relations with the United States and the situation surrounding the Ukrainian crisis,” he “noted a convergence or similarity of approaches to the majority of the issues raised.” Wang’s ministry issued no communique, told reporters nothing.
What then were the “minority” of issues on which Lavrov and Wang failed to “converge”? Was one the refusal of the Chinese to finalize the new Russian gas supply project known as Power of Siberia-2? Was it the refusal of the Chinse to stop supplying drone components to the NATO allies and to Ukraine for their attacks on Russian targets?
This is another of the big strings which are being pulled: how long is it?
In the new podcast with Dimitri Lascaris, aired on Tuesday afternoon US ET, we discuss the US-guided Ukrainian drone attack on the Ana, an Iranian flagged cargo ship in the Caspian Sea, off Astrakhan, on July 25. The Russian, Iranian, Ukrainian, and US strings are measured out. Click to view or listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk1mcqaTO_U
In the wartime succession stories now screening in your neighbourhood – that’s President Donald Trump’s and President Vladimir Putin’s — the money does the talking which the special effects on the Imax screen cannot.
At the London BFI Imax cinema, the Odyssey film is booked out through its scheduled run from now until mid-September, which has encouraged the rig bettors like the Trump family to place their money on blockbuster profit after the film recovers its costs of $250 million to make; $125 million to market; $300 million-$400 million in cinema margin; for a break-even of between $625 million to $750 million.
“Despite the reviews, going to a billion or well over may be a bridge too far in terms of forecasting,” reports the retail investor bible Forbes, “but it’s certainly not impossible.”
At Variety, the Hollywood bettors’ book, there’s apprehension that this will be, like Penelope’s suitors in the film, a premature ejaculation.
“The Odyssey added $25.9 million domestically on Friday, and by Sunday it’s expected to make $84.5 million. That figure represents just a 32% drop from its excellent $124 million debut. Through two weekends of release, The Odyssey’s North American total should land around $283 million. Over opening weekend, The Odyssey earned $264.1 million worldwide, an outstanding feat considering it’s an adult-skewing drama that clocks in at almost three hours. That godly haul was Nolan’s best global debut ever, legging out The Dark Knight Rises, which earned $249 million back in 2012. That film also happens to be the director’s highest-grossing film ever, at just over a $1 billion. At this pace, The Odyssey is gunning for that record as well.”
Not in New York City, however, where advance bookings for August have already collapsed.
In actuality – that’s to say, after the money is counted for the blockbuster — the film is a bloc buster. It aims to bust the ideological conventions of the blocs – they are the power elites, ruling classes, and empire warmaking systems as we currently know and belong to in the West. Unless it’s the opposite — a reverse bloc buster to reinforce the ideological conventions of those inside the Trump empire who are making the money and running the wars. A well-known substacker isn’t convinced which it is, claiming the makers of the new Odyssey film “intend[ed it] to act as a continuation of the long Marxist march towards a multicultural west and the end of white history as we know it.”
This author doesn’t know either Homer or Marx; Marx knew his Homer in the original Greek, but even he misquoted the original Odyssey with a book and line reference which are non-existent in order to reinforce what Marx thought of as his own idea about labour, class, markets, and money. In point of fact, as the new archeology of ancient Rome is beginning to reveal, Marx was thoroughly mistaken about each one of those things. And the bourgeois, anti-Marxist classicists also.
So what is to be made of the new film — made in mind, not in money, and in wartime too? What is to be interpreted from the film’s lines like:
“Help me go home.” “This is a household waiting for a master.” “They’re pining for a daddy.” “My dad is coming home bringing vengeance. Bringing it all.” “I need everyone in this party dead.” “You’re a man who needs to control his fate.” “No one could stand between me and and home. Not even the goods.”
It isn’t clear to Emily Wilson, who is credited as translating a new version of Homer’s The Odyssey, that the film is either faithful to her translation, or to anything at all. “I’m interested,” Wilson told a reporter in a Greek taverna for the series, Lunch with the Financial Times, “if the Nolan film is going to be imposing a contemporary idea about what [Odysseus and Penelope’s] marriage is, and suggesting it’s a marriage of equals. Which I think many readers want it to be but I don’t think it’s that at all…“There are so many sides to Odysseus that you can treat him as a Rorschach test. People can latch on to whatever element of Odysseus you want to have…So if the ridiculous gender stuff got you there it’s fine. I am just sick of having it as my primary epithet.”
As for the movie hero for now, and Homer’s hero for his time, she says: “as an imaginative expression of qualities that are very useful in the world he’s an interesting character. And interesting is all you need for a literary creation. You don’t need all characters in books to be nice people.”
Definitely not President Trump, the FT reporter got the classicist to insert. “He [Trump] definitely wants to live for ever, which Achilles chooses not to, as does Odysseus.” For her, there is only one Greek hero with Trump’s qualities: Agamemnon, the proud and petulant supreme leader of the Greeks besieging Troy, who expected his allies to bring tribute at every turn — and lost his temper when they did not. Trump is more of an Agamemnon character. He’s amassing wealth as well as social influence . . . In his mind if he ever makes a mistake it was Zeus’s fault, not his.”
The real reason – that’s to say, the White House election campaign reason – for Marco Rubio’s request to meet Sergei Lavrov in Manila for thirty minutes last week was this.
Click to view or listen to the new podcast with Martin Sieff and Pelle Neroth Taylor, Capitals Uncovered Episode 138.
Ten hours later, President Donald Trump added to the Rubio ultimatum for the Kremlin: “President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies. Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President Putin, despite the horrible War going on in Ukraine (The relationship remains, as it does with President Zelenskyy), told me that he would not sell Weapons to Iran. He understands that I do not sell Weapons to Ukraine, but to NATO Countries. They pay full price, and how those Weapons are distributed, I have no idea. Therefore, two major Countries that people speak of often in terms of Iran are, in my opinion, not participating. If they did, it would be very bad for them — Certainly not in their best interests. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
For details of the Rubio-Lavrov meeting and its meaning in President Putin’s decision-making, click to read this.
The question everyone in their warfighting chairs has been asking President Vladimir Putin, with a follow-up that no one is reporting:
What is Putin going to do to answer the escalation of drone war on the Russian mainland and deter the US and its allies from their war to destroy the Russian economy?
The President’s answer in public (so far) has been “Our responses will always be mirrored, wherever they try to strike at the territory of Russia, we will respond in a mirror, only several times more powerful. The enemy will feel it. He already feels it, I hope, and he will feel it several times more powerfully.”
That was last week (July 13).
Ten days is a long time in politics. On Thursday (July 23), there came this follow-up question: Why did the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio call Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to a meeting and then spend little more than thirty minutes telling Lavrov what he had come to say?
Answer: we cannot say for sure.
Best guess: Rubio gave Lavrov a warning. He told Lavrov he had been instructed by President Donald Trump to say that the US holds Russia responsible for providing precise location intelligence and targeting details to enable Iran’s drone forces to penetrate US air defences and strike at CIA and US troop bases in the Arab territories, killing Americans.
Lavrov replied that Putin had instructed him to say that Russia holds the US responsible for providing precise location intelligence and targeting details to enable Ukrainian drones to strike at Russian civilian targets, oil refineries, oil ports, shipping on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and consumer product warehouses from Moscow to Kazan, and deep into the Russian hinterland, killing Russians.
In short, this is Putin’s mirror. It is telling Trump and the warfighters in the White House that if they continue, with their European allies and the Kiev regime, to strike outside the Ukraine battlefield, killing Russian civilians, the response will be tit-for-tat against Americans. Furthermore, Putin had warned: “He already feels it, I hope, and he will feel it several times more powerfully.”
Lavrov’s communiqué reported afterwards: “The sides held an in-depth exchange of views on a broad range of bilateral and international issues in follow-up to the recent high-level contacts.”
“When talking on the Ukraine issue, Sergei Lavrov informed his American colleague about the real situation on the contact line, highlighting the inadmissibility of the continued supply of weapons to the Kiev regime and the destabilising activities of European countries, which are still seeking to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia. Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed Russia’s readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement in Ukraine and its commitment to the proposals advanced by the United States at the meeting of President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Anchorage, which the Russian leader has accepted. They also talked about regional and international issues, including the situation in the Persian Gulf. Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio welcomed the resumption of full-scale contacts between Roscosmos and NASA, and spoke in favour of resuming interparliamentary exchanges and cultural ties. They also discussed the normalisation of conditions for the functioning of Russian and US diplomatic missions. An agreement was reached to maintain contacts between the two foreign policy agencies, including in the framework of the two countries’ activities at international organisations.”
Thirty minutes isn’t enough time for all of this, let alone an “in-depth exchange” on any of them – except for one. “Lavrov highlight[ed] the inadmissibility of the continued supply of weapons to the Kiev regime and the destabilising activities of European countries, which are still seeking to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia.”
In this guarded fashion, and for the very first time, Putin has told Trump that if he continues to participate in killing Russians on Russian territory, Russia will strike to kill Americans in their bases.
Asked what had been said at the Manila meeting, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov said: “I’d like to reiterate that the Foreign Ministry reiterated our position about preparedness for a peaceful resolution process.” About the attacks on CIA and US troop bases, Peskov also said: “I don’t think that reporting of any suspicions is a reason to comment.”
The inevitability of escalation – that’s the binding strategic requirement for President Vladimir Putin’s decisions on Russia’s warfighting options.
It’s binding on the president because it is Article 12 of the Fundamentals of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence, which Putin signed in December 2024. Here it is: “Nuclear deterrence is aimed to ensure that a potential adversary realizes the inevitability of retaliation in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies.”
Article 11 makes clear who the potential adversary is: “Aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered as their joint attack.”
Since the US putsch in Kiev of February 2014, and not less since the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO, Cyrillic SVO) of February 2022, this means that on the Ukraine battlefield Russia faces the joint war of the US and its allies. What is special about the SVO is that it has suspended and postponed the Article 12 requirement of the inevitability of retaliation, turning it away from strategic nuclear options to tactical tit-for-tat or “mirror” options, as Putin calls them.
Also, what is special is the way in which the “main military risks” to Russia identified in Article 15( c) of the strategic doctrine have escalated without (repeat without) effective retaliation. Article 15( c) reads: “buildup by a potential adversary on the territories contiguous to the Russian Federation and its allies and in adjacent waters of general purpose forces groupings, which include nuclear weapons delivery means, and (or) military infrastructure ensuring the employment of such means.”
Who doesn’t understand there is now nothing potential about the “potential adversary” in this provision? Who fails to conclude that the inevitability of retaliation to operate for strategic deterrence to keep Russia from the destruction intended by the adversary is anything but inevitable right now?
So what is to be done? What is the method for analyzing the options, avoiding the deception operations and red herrings to which Sergei Karaganov and John Mearsheimer have been enthusiastically attaching themselves?
Marshmallow imperialism is that view of American warmaking against Russia, Iran, China and Cuba which tastes sweet at first bite, but then melts in the mouth with nothing to chew on. That’s when the sugar addiction starts – this is wanting to taste more but never getting enough.
Chemical engineers in China reported a year ago that opium is a medically appropriate antidote for this condition. Hopium, I mean.
In hour-long podcasts – that’s more than six thousand words of text — it’s one thing to serve the audience marshmallow; it’s quite another to present something to chew on, like beef. The two cannot be combined because the political podcast is a polarizing medium; it’s for one or the other. Debating between fundamentally opposed viewpoints drives as many audiences away as it attracts, and so that’s not for podcasters.
There can therefore be no debate in podcast format with the twin ideas that the evil US empire is being defeated in war, and that the sweet US empire – that’s the imperialism of American professors, CIA veterans, military experts, and podcasters – is now capable of overcoming the evil empire if they will be listened to in large enough numbers.
There are, however, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that allow the impossible — a debate on the US empire between marshmallow and beef.Here then is John Mearsheimer debating his views with mine on the US war against Iran and against Russia.
