mark
Responsible State Craft
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[l] at 10/12/26 10:05pm
In August, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) publicly took credit for shaping “multiple provisions” now in this year’s defense policy bill, stating that many were “impacted by prior JINSA policy recommendations,” including “proposals to strengthen U.S.-Israel defense industrial base integration” and “renew pre-existing joint U.S.-Israel programs.”Among the provisions JINSA takes credit for is the controversial Section 219. In the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), this section mandates the creation of a single executive agent tasked with “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the U.S. and Israel across nine basket categories, including AI, quantum technology, biotechnology, and virtually every category of weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that such provisions would transition the U.S.-Israel security relationship from aid to partnership. But pro-Israel advocates have emphasized the leverage it would provide over Washington’s military policy.Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies, appeared to reference this provision in an article arguing that the U.S. and Israel must “deepen their military, technological, intelligence and economic integration to such an extent that inflicting financial harm on Israel would also carry a significant cost for Washington.” Other initiatives JINSA has advocated for likewise read like an Israeli government wishlist. They include a pending provision to “extend the existing War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel,” which provides a secretive and high-speed pathway for funneling weapons to Israel, as well as Abraham Accords provisions including “Improvements to Air and Missile Defense Acquisition” and a “United States-Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Initiative.”The policy wins JINSA is trumpeting are a result of its strong foothold within the military-industrial complex, and are perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of the pro-Israel lobby. The group says it achieves these goals “by conducting both educational programs that build ties among American, Israeli and other Middle Eastern partner military leaders, along with in-depth research and actionable recommendations to influence U.S. policy.” JINSA’s “Our People” webpage includes a long roster of retired U.S. military officials.One of JINSA’s most important programs, which has existed for more than four decades, is its “Generals and Admirals Program.” The initiative involves flying recently retired U.S. military officials to Israel. Many of the trip’s participants were already sitting on defense-industry boards when they went, while others joined soon afterward. At least 55 of the 83 alumni from the 2019–2026 G&A program cohorts (about 66%) have held or currently hold positions in the defense industry spanning board seats, executive jobs or advisory roles at defense contractors and defense-tech firms, or posts at defense-focused investment funds, consultancies and lobbying shops.JINSA hopes that, when these former military officials return from Israel, they will use their credentials and defense industry power to become Israel’s advocates.JINSA describes the program, founded in 1981, as “designed to ensure that the delegation is well briefed on the security concerns of Israel, as well as the key role Israel plays as a friend and ally of the United States.” The Helmsley Charitable Trust, which provided a 13 month grant for the program in 2017 worth $237,846, similarly says the purpose of the program is in part for participants to “return home to share publicly what they learned.”The itinerary for the Generals and Admirals program includes meetings with Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, IDF chief of staff and the Director of Mossad. According to JINSA, after completing the program, “participants often engage on important policy initiatives through JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy that strengthen…the U.S.-Israel security relationship.” JINSA CEO Michael Makovsky highlighted the program’s influence in 2014, calling U.S. generals and admirals “America’s most admired leaders, who remain very influential even after retirement.” The JINSA program trains retired military leaders, many of whom go on to work in the defense industry, to be advocates for Israeli interests, both in their public writing and in their work behind the scenes.A 2023 Quincy Institute report found that 80% of four-star officers who retired between June 2018 and July 2023 went on to work for the defense industry. Of the 32 officers tracked in the report, nine appear on JINSA’s participant lists, and seven of those nine retired officers hold industry lobbying or defense-tech roles. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Lockheed Martin’s board five months after leaving the military and went on JINSA’s Israel junket the following year, 2021. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, retired in 2018, became a senior adviser at the lobbying and public relations firm Brunswick Group in 2019 and went on the JINSA trip in 2021. Gen. Hawk Carlisle participated in the 2019 delegation while serving as president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, the war lobby’s leading trade group, and has served on the board of the U.S. subsidiary of Israel’s largest defense contractor, Elbit Systems of America, which was renamed Twenty-Six Defense in September. Some participants, such as retired Gen. Robert Magnus and Gen. Duncan McNabb, joined the board of Elbit America after their JINSA trips. Embedded within the highest levels of the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, JINSA’s roster of retired generals and admirals often use their credentials to advocate for pro-Israel policy in Washington. In 2010, when then-head of U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israel-Palestine conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” which is used to “mobilize support” for various militant groups in the region, JINSA’s G&A participants rushed to Israel’s defense. Responding to Petraeus, 30 ex-military leaders associated with the program put out an ad claiming that “a strong, secure Israel is an asset,” labeling the country, which has been deemed an apartheid state by numerous human rights groups, as “a democracy” that “shares our commitment to freedom, personal liberty and rule of law.” In May 2018, a JINSA task force of retired senior officers chaired by Adm. James Stavridis released “Atlas Supported,” urging Washington to elevate Israel to “a top-tier ally” and invest jointly in next-generation military technology — the latter now a central purpose of Section 219. JINSA says the report was also the first to recommend moving Israel from the U.S. European Command to U.S. Central Command, which Trump then ordered on January 15, 2021. JINSA celebrated the fifth anniversary of Israel’s shift into CENTCOM this January by noting that the “Wall Street Journal recognized” it as “the only organization promoting this move,” and by featuring glowing tributes from JINSA G&A participants.JINSA’s roster of retired military officials was once again mobilized in October 2026 to deny the findings of a trifecta of human rights groups and the U.N. that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, praising what it called a “pattern of law-abiding IDF conduct in Gaza.” JINSA’s delegates routinely appear on cable news, often without disclosures of their affiliation with the pro-Israel lobby group: Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who commanded CENTCOM from 2019 to 2022 and traveled with JINSA’s 2023 delegation, and became a “distinguished fellow” at JINSA in 2024, is now a CBS News contributor. In July, McKenzie appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, who introduced McKenzie as a retired CENTCOM commander but omitted his fellowship with JINSA. In that appearance, McKenzie recommended Washington consider seizing Kharg Island. Ret. Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a member of JINSA’s “Iran Policy Project,” frequently appears on Fox News too, though his affiliation is generally disclosed.One of the group’s most consequential efforts was to push the Trump administration to start a war with Iran, with a group of JINSA-aligned military leaders writing a March 2025 letter arguing that “U.S. support for Israeli action to prevent a nuclear Iran should be a top priority,” adding that “time is running out to stop its march to the bomb.” Sixty-six of the 79 signers of that letter appear on JINSA’s Generals and Admirals participant lists. Members of JINSA’s roster of retired military officials subsequently wrote open letters of support for the 12-Day War and the current months-long Iran War.

[Category: Israel, Iran-war, Think-tanks, Jinsa, Section-219, Ndaa, U-s-military, Israel-lobby]

[*] [+] [-] [x] [A+] [a-]  
[l] at 10/12/26 10:05pm
In August, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) publicly took credit for shaping “multiple provisions” now in this year’s defense policy bill, stating that many were “impacted by prior JINSA policy recommendations,” including “proposals to strengthen U.S.-Israel defense industrial base integration” and “renew pre-existing joint U.S.-Israel programs.”Among the provisions JINSA takes credit for is the controversial Section 219. In the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), this section mandates the creation of a single executive agent tasked with “synchronizing cooperative efforts” between the U.S. and Israel across nine basket categories, including AI, quantum technology, biotechnology, and virtually every category of weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that such provisions would transition the U.S.-Israel security relationship from aid to partnership. But pro-Israel advocates have emphasized the leverage it would provide over Washington’s military policy.Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies, appeared to reference this provision in an article arguing that the U.S. and Israel must “deepen their military, technological, intelligence and economic integration to such an extent that inflicting financial harm on Israel would also carry a significant cost for Washington.” Other initiatives JINSA has advocated for likewise read like an Israeli government wishlist. They include a pending provision to “extend the existing War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel,” which provides a secretive and high-speed pathway for funneling weapons to Israel, as well as Abraham Accords provisions including “Improvements to Air and Missile Defense Acquisition” and a “United States-Abraham Accords Defense Cooperation Initiative.”The policy wins JINSA is trumpeting are a result of its strong foothold within the military-industrial complex, and are perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of the pro-Israel lobby. The group says it achieves these goals “by conducting both educational programs that build ties among American, Israeli and other Middle Eastern partner military leaders, along with in-depth research and actionable recommendations to influence U.S. policy.” JINSA’s “Our People” webpage includes a long roster of retired U.S. military officials.One of JINSA’s most important programs, which has existed for more than four decades, is its “Generals and Admirals Program.” The initiative involves flying recently retired U.S. military officials to Israel. Many of the trip’s participants were already sitting on defense-industry boards when they went, while others joined soon afterward. At least 55 of the 83 alumni from the 2019–2026 G&A program cohorts (about 66%) have held or currently hold positions in the defense industry spanning board seats, executive jobs or advisory roles at defense contractors and defense-tech firms, or posts at defense-focused investment funds, consultancies and lobbying shops.JINSA hopes that, when these former military officials return from Israel, they will use their credentials and defense industry power to become Israel’s advocates.JINSA describes the program, founded in 1981, as “designed to ensure that the delegation is well briefed on the security concerns of Israel, as well as the key role Israel plays as a friend and ally of the United States.” The Helmsley Charitable Trust, which provided a 13 month grant for the program in 2017 worth $237,846, similarly says the purpose of the program is in part for participants to “return home to share publicly what they learned.”The itinerary for the Generals and Admirals program includes meetings with Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, IDF chief of staff and the Director of Mossad. According to JINSA, after completing the program, “participants often engage on important policy initiatives through JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy that strengthen…the U.S.-Israel security relationship.” JINSA CEO Michael Makovsky highlighted the program’s influence in 2014, calling U.S. generals and admirals “America’s most admired leaders, who remain very influential even after retirement.” The JINSA program trains retired military leaders, many of whom go on to work in the defense industry, to be advocates for Israeli interests, both in their public writing and in their work behind the scenes.A 2023 Quincy Institute report found that 80% of four-star officers who retired between June 2018 and July 2023 went on to work for the defense industry. Of the 32 officers tracked in the report, nine appear on JINSA’s participant lists, and seven of those nine retired officers hold industry lobbying or defense-tech roles. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Lockheed Martin’s board five months after leaving the military and went on JINSA’s Israel junket the following year, 2021. Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the former NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, retired in 2018, became a senior adviser at the lobbying and public relations firm Brunswick Group in 2019 and went on the JINSA trip in 2021. Gen. Hawk Carlisle participated in the 2019 delegation while serving as president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, the war lobby’s leading trade group, and has served on the board of the U.S. subsidiary of Israel’s largest defense contractor, Elbit Systems of America, which was renamed Twenty-Six Defense in September. Some participants, such as retired Gen. Robert Magnus and Gen. Duncan McNabb, joined the board of Elbit America after their JINSA trips. Embedded within the highest levels of the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, JINSA’s roster of retired generals and admirals often use their credentials to advocate for pro-Israel policy in Washington. In 2010, when then-head of U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israel-Palestine conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” which is used to “mobilize support” for various militant groups in the region, JINSA’s G&A participants rushed to Israel’s defense. Responding to Petraeus, 30 ex-military leaders associated with the program put out an ad claiming that “a strong, secure Israel is an asset,” labeling the country, which has been deemed an apartheid state by numerous human rights groups, as “a democracy” that “shares our commitment to freedom, personal liberty and rule of law.” In May 2018, a JINSA task force of retired senior officers chaired by Adm. James Stavridis released “Atlas Supported,” urging Washington to elevate Israel to “a top-tier ally” and invest jointly in next-generation military technology — the latter now a central purpose of Section 219. JINSA says the report was also the first to recommend moving Israel from the U.S. European Command to U.S. Central Command, which Trump then ordered on January 15, 2021. JINSA celebrated the fifth anniversary of Israel’s shift into CENTCOM this January by noting that the “Wall Street Journal recognized” it as “the only organization promoting this move,” and by featuring glowing tributes from JINSA G&A participants.JINSA’s roster of retired military officials was once again mobilized in October 2026 to deny the findings of a trifecta of human rights groups and the U.N. that Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, praising what it called a “pattern of law-abiding IDF conduct in Gaza.” JINSA’s delegates routinely appear on cable news, often without disclosures of their affiliation with the pro-Israel lobby group: Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who commanded CENTCOM from 2019 to 2022 and traveled with JINSA’s 2023 delegation, and became a “distinguished fellow” at JINSA in 2024, is now a CBS News contributor. In July, McKenzie appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, who introduced McKenzie as a retired CENTCOM commander but omitted his fellowship with JINSA. In that appearance, McKenzie recommended Washington consider seizing Kharg Island. Ret. Vice Admiral Robert Harward, a member of JINSA’s “Iran Policy Project,” frequently appears on Fox News too, though his affiliation is generally disclosed.One of the group’s most consequential efforts was to push the Trump administration to start a war with Iran, with a group of JINSA-aligned military leaders writing a March 2025 letter arguing that “U.S. support for Israeli action to prevent a nuclear Iran should be a top priority,” adding that “time is running out to stop its march to the bomb.” Sixty-six of the 79 signers of that letter appear on JINSA’s Generals and Admirals participant lists. Members of JINSA’s roster of retired military officials subsequently wrote open letters of support for the 12-Day War and the current months-long Iran War.

[Category: Israel, Iran-war, Think-tanks, Jinsa, Section-219, Ndaa, U-s-military, Israel-lobby]

[*] [+] [-] [x] [A+] [a-]  
[l] at 10/12/26 10:05pm
Republicans could be looking at a major wipeout in the midterm elections. Their tiny House majority was always going to be difficult to maintain, but the Senate should not be in play at all. Yet it surely is, with Democrats leading in nearly all the toss-up races, including in the reddest states, and competitive in at least a dozen of the contests that will determine which party controls the upper chamber.The Iran war is a big reason this has come to pass. It has demoralized the least indefatigably partisan part of President Donald Trump’s coalition by abandoning his promise to avoid new forever wars in the Middle East. The conflict has not only distracted from the affordability focus that many voters were expecting when they threw out the Democrats in 2024, but also directly cuts against it by spiking energy prices and increasing inflation overall at a time when it might have otherwise continued to come down.Among voters, this war has virtually no Democratic support. It is overwhelmingly opposed by independents. A critical mass of Republicans never were in favor of the war, and many of its GOP supporters wanted it to be over quickly, as Trump repeatedly promised. Trump himself was seemingly ready to end the war by June, but has been unable to restore the Strait of Hormuz to the pre-war status quo despite attempting a series of escalations, ceasefires, and negotiations, including the failed memorandum of understanding signed by both Iran and the United States on June 17.Trump never really tried to persuade the general public to support the war, at least not in any sustained way. He ignored Iran in a pre-Christmas primetime address last year that was supposed to represent his pivot to the economy. He barely mentioned the Islamic Republic in his State of the Union address. He delivered his first primetime address on the war more than a month after it started. And he never sought congressional authorization for the use of force, even though Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Republicans were probably always going to lose congressional seats this year. History since 1938 favors the party that doesn’t hold the White House in these elections, and elements of Trump’s coalition are low-propensity voters, especially when he isn’t on the ballot himself, while Never Trumpers will turn out to cast anti-Trump protest votes against Republicans no matter what.Yet before the war there was still a good chance that the actual election-day result for Democrats would be underwhelming, just as it was for Republicans in President Joe Biden’s midterm election in 2022. The blue wave, like the red wave before it, could have been limited to a trickle. Eighty-six percent of House Republicans represent districts that went for Trump by at least 10 points, a structural advantage they sought to buttress through mid-decade redistricting in red states. The path to control of the Senate similarly ran through states Trump had won in 2024, often by double digits.But thanks to the Iran war and its fallout, there is a potential for a midterm election more like 2006. Twenty years ago, as Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter pointed out earlier this year, we had an unpopular president waging an unpopular war while Republican congressional incumbents were beset by assorted scandals. Today, the public has even less patience for the current war than in 2006.Just look how quickly Republicans in tight races have equivocated in their support for the Iran war compared to Iraq 20 years ago. And Iraq had been going on longer with more American casualties by the time of the 2006 midterm elections. Hawkish Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, the sort of candidate who held onto the fiction that victory was always around the corner in Iraq two decades ago, is already singing a different tune. “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers, who is running in one of the country’s most competitive races, said in an ad back in September. “Michigan families can’t afford to wait.”The economic costs of the war are undeniable even to its remaining supporters, and are being inflicted on an electorate that has been angry about the high cost of living for at least five years. It took the combination of Iraq and the 2007-08 economic meltdown for Bush’s popularity to finally wane among congressional Republicans late in his second term. Thanks to the preexisting economic conditions, as well as Trump’s fraught relationship with the remnants of the old GOP establishment, we are running ahead of schedule with Iran.But if the worst happens to Republicans in November, many will be eager to blame the tariffs rather than the war. The tariffs can be more squarely pinned on Trump and MAGA, and the people and policy assumptions behind them can be more easily excised from the party than the long-entrenched interventionism that Trump was supposed to excise and didn’t.The tariffs, and their haphazard implementation, are surely a big part of the equation. But the war raised prices beyond imported goods, illustrated Trump’s lack of interest in domestic issues during his second term, and made the tariffs’ bite worse. The war has also complicated things for Vice President JD Vance, who by many accounts was the senior administration official most skeptical of starting the war in the first place. Trump was able to unite Republicans with disparate foreign-policy views because he seemed to appreciate the futility of much of what the U.S. has attempted to accomplish in the Middle East over the past quarter-century without appearing hostile to Israel or fearful of potential adversaries in the region. After Iran, less interventionist Republicans may want to hear Vance make stronger criticisms of neoconservatives or Israel that could divide the party. Hawks will still take aim at Vance, sensing he is not one of them. Doves may be reluctant to come to his aid, fearing he is not one of them either. There is also an opening for one of two Republican Kentuckians, Sen. Rand Paul or soon-to-be-former Congressman Thomas Massie, to run an antiwar primary campaign, though probably not both. Paul and Massie both owe their congressional careers to the movement-building GOP presidential candidacies of former Congressman Ron Paul, the senator’s father. Massie in particular would have little chance of winning the nomination for the same reasons he lost his congressional primary earlier this year, but one of them could conceivably help rebuild the libertarian wing of the party, currently in disrepair.It’s possible that being attacked by neoconservatives as too dovish and by libertarians as too hawkish will help Vance convince ordinary Republicans that he is just right. He has shown great political skill in managing his relationship with Trump. His most touted potential rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is just as closely associated with the administration and much more associated with the assumptions behind the Iran war, if not the decision to go to war itself.There’s a chance that the war will be over by 2028 and seen as a chastening experience by Republicans. They might have reached their limit with the party’s pro-war posture after Trump and George W. Bush threw away their tremendous political opportunities to wage wars in the Middle East that ended up costing the party its congressional majorities. But there is no guarantee on either front. And the Republicans' structural electoral advantages could still mitigate the electoral reckoning that appears to be headed their way this year.

[Category: Iran-war, Elections, Gop, Republicans, Congress, Midterm-elections]

[*] [+] [-] [x] [A+] [a-]  
[l] at 10/12/26 10:05pm
Britain is clamping down even harder on critics who consider Western foreign policy to have been a catastrophic failure. We are fast approaching the point where expressing an alternative opinion can land you in jail. On the night of October 2, while exiting a flight from Moscow via Istanbul, I was detained by UK counter-terrorism police for three hours under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2026. I had no right to remain silent, my person and possessions were thoroughly searched, I provided fingerprints and a DNA sample, and was required to give up my electronic devices and provide my passwords or face arrest. This was a “suspicionless” detention. I was not suspected of anything, yet police officers were empowered to subject me to an intrusive examination to assess whether I was planning a “hostile act” against the United Kingdom. An officer approached me and immediately took me into custody after I informed him that I had been to a conference in Russia to discuss geopolitics. I was not told why I was being detained, except that he wanted to ask me “a few questions.” Bizarrely, he pointed out that the “counter-terrorism” powers he was using “aren’t as scary as they sound.” I had attended the International Valdai Discussion Club Conference in Moscow Region from September 27 to October 1, including attending President Vladimir Putin’s keynote address. I participated at the invitation of the Valdai Club, which provided my flight and accommodations, as is standard practice for foreign guest attendees at such international conferences.The Valdai Club, founded in 2004, is primarily a meeting of academics from all over the world. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was attended by a former Head of MI6, former British Ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton, and Fiona Hill.Valdai has found itself in the British government’s crosshairs. Throughout September, a host of journalists and academics have received letters from the UK Home Office inviting them to register with the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, if they are “being directed to carry out relevant activities in the UK as part of an arrangement with a foreign power.”’ Non-compliance with the scheme is considered a criminal offense. British journalist Mary Dejevsky, who was The Times Bureau Chief in Moscow in the 1990s, is the latest to receive such a letter as a publicly listed contributor to the Valdai Discussion Club, though she has not attended since the war began. The idea that if you attend an academic conference you are being directed by a foreign power is patently absurd. Nevertheless, and given the obvious risks, I wrestled with the dilemma of whether I should accept the invitation from Valdai and make my first visit to Russia since I drove out of that country in February 2019 at the end of my four-and-a-half year diplomatic posting there. My primary role then was as the Economic Counsellor responsible among other things for sanctions policy. After my return to the UK, I authorized around 1000 sanctions against Russians, including after the war broke out. I had some concerns that my role in sanctions may cause me problems once inside Russia (indeed, I was subjected to an extremely stressful four-and-a-half-hour detention and interrogation by the FSB upon arrival in Moscow).Sir Tony Brenton, with whom I had consulted, suggested that I should attend, saying that Valdai was an “excellent event.” Upon his advice, I notified the UK Foreign Office, underscoring my commitment to abide by my obligations under the Official Secrets Act before I left for Moscow. This included confirmation that while Valdai had paid for my flights, I had not received any payment for my attendance.I served as a British diplomat for 24 years and I take seriously my ongoing commitments to preserve the secrets that I had access to during that time. The suggestion that I might plan a hostile act against Britain is offensive and wrong. However, since my retirement in 2023, I have been an outspoken critic of the direction of UK foreign policy towards Russia, notably the departure from diplomacy in favor of war. The important and necessary precautions that I had taken were insufficient to prevent me from being detained with fewer rights than had I been formally arrested and cautioned. I am of the view that security figures in London had authorized the action against me ahead of time. Indeed, Russia commentator Mark Galeotti suggested on his podcast that the system was “making a statement” by acting in this way. (Editor’s Note: A request by RS to the UK’s Counter Terrorism Policing for comment about the author’s detention — for which he provided RS with documentation – went unanswered as of this writing.) My detention marks the latest escalation in the British state’s war on free speech. Increasingly, people who speak out publicly against forever wars — not only in Ukraine, but also in the Middle East and elsewhere — are seen as a threat to national security that must be quashed.Airport detentions are one step short of full-blown imprisonment, of course, but this pattern of intimidation has been spreading over the past four years. British conservative academic and author John Laughland was detained at an airport for one hour in 2022. The late Robert Skidelsky, a member of the House of Lords and esteemed British economist, and investigative reporter Kit Klarenberg were subject to more lengthy and rigorous detentions in 2023. Klarenberg still has not received back an SD memory card that was confiscated at the time. Professor Richard Sakwa, Emeritus at Kent University, was detained for three hours at Heathrow in 2025; he has only been able to return to Russia since that time following an intervention by his lawyer. George Szamuely, a Hungarian-born British political analyst, said he was detained in March 2026. In 2023, Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was detained for an hour at Glasgow Airport under the tougher provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000, which is concerned with activity related to the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism. His phone was not returned to him afterwards. Investigative journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested for making statements in support of a proscribed pro-Palestine organization and held for 24 hours before his release. His home and office in Austria were subsequently raided in February 2025 and he was accused of membership of Hamas. To date, no charges have been laid against him. More broadly, in Britain, the group Palestine Action has been proscribed as a terrorist organization following widespread protests against the gross violations of international humanitarian law by the Israeli state in Gaza. Elderly people, including Holocaust survivors, have been arrested at Palestine Action protests for the crime of holding cardboard placards. The practice of suspicionless airport detention is uncommon in European states, although alternative, more insidious forms of repression of free speech are employed. Former Swiss military intelligence officer and author Jacques Baud remains in Brussels, de-banked and unable to travel home, having been sanctioned by the European Union for “pro-Russian propaganda.” This past week, Russian-born journalist and former BBC reporter Leonid Ragozin was declared persona non grata by Latvia, where he has lived since the onset of the Ukraine crisis. Having criticized the direction of Western foreign policy toward the war in Ukraine, he has also been a regular Putin critic and described the 2022 invasion of Ukraine as “criminal and irrational.”This pattern of repressing free speech in Britain and more broadly in Europe is growing. I fear that the more obvious it becomes that the war in Ukraine cannot be won by the West and that Israel cannot remain insulated from international censure over its actions in Palestine, actions by the British state may become even harsher. We are reaching the point where offering an opinion on the perilous state of Western foreign wars can land you in prison.I thought I had been careful in notifying the British government before my sole visit to Russia since 2019. If the UK is at the point where former diplomats can be detained and have their property temporarily confiscated, then no one is safe from the long arm of lawfare. Upon my return from Valdai, I wrote again to the Foreign Office, offering to brief them in full on the insights I gained while I was in Russia. To date, they have not replied.

[Category: Ukraine, Russia, Great-britain, Free-speech]

[*] [+] [-] [x] [A+] [a-]  
[l] at 10/11/26 10:05pm
In his recent “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a 20% reduction to the number of general and flag officers, affecting an estimated 800 positions scheduled for January 1, 2027. His sharpest critics see this as ranging from sycophantic revenge on the general officer class to simply misguided personnel policy. Hegseth defined it in his speech as “accountability and long overdue.” That accountability he’s referring to speaks to a symptom of a much larger problem within the general officer class, a feeling that our nation’s military leaders at times get over their skis. An element of this is when generals drift into decision-making that happens off the battlefield. Generals wading into matters of policy and politics happens more than one might think. This is, however, in conflict with the choice made by America’s founders to subordinate the military to civilian control, leaving policy and politics to those duly elected or appointed by the people. Where the civilian-military balance is most out of control today is in the regional combatant commands (COCOMs). Regional COCOM leadership have become accustomed to ruling over their own fiefdoms of U.S. forces positioned across every major area of the world while also waging significant influence in the halls of power at home. Secretary Hegseth could be onto something in terms of accountability, but only if the structure and criteria of his mandated reduction aims significant scrutiny at the power wielded by the regional COCOMs.These commanders often play the role of grand strategists, diplomats, political operators, and PR machines — duties far beyond the intent for military leadership in America. These blatant invasions of the civilian space feels routine because regional COCOMs maintain their own legislative affairs and public affairs staff — despite the Pentagon performing these same functions in Washington. While certainly there is a degree of coordination, it is evident to anyone who has worked with the regional COCOMs that they run largely independent operations and at most in parallel to the civilian side. Let’s look at some recent examples. Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, Admiral Brad Cooper, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander, has engaged in numerous meetings with high-ranking government officials in the Middle East, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. In these meetings, Admiral Cooper was the highest-ranking U.S. official present, and CENTCOM public releases did not indicate that a civilian counterpart of equal rank was present. Meetings with foreign leaders at these levels are the responsibility of the President or his Cabinet. Regional commanders should, at most, be invited as participants at the discretion of the President or the Defense Secretary, but should not be leading or deputized to lead such engagements without civilian leadership present. This isn’t just a CENTCOM dynamic. In 2023, when the U.S. remained heavily engaged in providing proxy support to Ukraine, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) Commander General Chris Cavoli conducted similar engagements, including with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Military to military engagements, with both allies and adversaries alike, are critical points of connectivity and regional COCOM commanders should be central in fostering those relationships. However, that is where their role should end. Civilian leadership at appropriate seniority levels should not only be present in engagements with foreign government leaders, but should always be in the driver’s seat of those conversations. Beyond breaching the civilian-military balance abroad, regional COCOM commanders also distinguish themselves as public figures at home, building their own profiles amongst the halls of Capitol Hill and the media. Regional COCOM commanders often engage and maintain relationships with Senators and Representatives independently without civilian counterparts present. It is also noteworthy that, despite the Senate Armed Services Committee’s responsibility for vetting and confirming both civilian appointees and promotions to regional combatant command leadership posts, the SASC only calls for military leadership to testify at annual posture hearings. The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), to its credit, hears from both civilian and military leadership for their annual hearings.Regional COCOM commanders are also active in the media. The risk of overstatement, understatement, or contradiction on politically charged issues is high-risk for them, particularly with a press-centric administration and the level of media engagement the Commander-in-Chief himself conducts. Just look at how CENTCOM and U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) injected into the media space in the midst of the Iran war and you can see the danger. In mid-September, Admiral Cooper boldly claimed “I am not concerned at all,” when asked in a 60 Minutes interview about widely reported shortages of U.S. critical munitions stockpiles as a result of the Iran war. The depletion of the stockpiles, and long lead times for replenishment, have seriously affected U.S. plans to deter China from invading Taiwan, given the overlap in weapons required to ensure a U.S. deterrent is credible. Just one week after Admiral Cooper’s 60 Minutes interview, Time Magazine ran an exclusive profile on USPACOM Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo. The main topic of the conversation? Why prioritization of deterrence in the Pacific is essential to avoiding war between the U.S. and China. The authors of the piece did not hesitate to point out discrepancies in Paparo’s public versus reported private commentary about how resource expenditure in the Middle East is harming the central mission of deterrence in the Pacific. Not only did these interviews result in a bad PR cycle for the Pentagon, but it illustrates the dysfunction and factionalism that exists when military leaders decide to play policymakers. The blurring of civilian and military lines from unrestrained regional COCOMs is an underreported issue. But Secretary Hegseth’s effort to reduce the general and flag officer class presents a prime opportunity to address it. The Secretary and his team should consider how a reduction in rank and resourcing for the regional COCOMs could properly bring them back into alignment with appropriate civilian leadership, overseeing and directing their engagement outside of explicitly military functions and responsibilities. Stars and medals are certainly symbols of sacrifice and bravery but should not elevate or communicate a status of authority above civilian leadership. Civilian control of the military is an essential component of the American republic and we should take this opportunity now to preserve it.

[Category: Enewsletter, Centcom, Brad-cooper, Pentagon, Pete-hegseth, Pacom, Us-military]

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[l] at 10/11/26 10:05pm
In his recent “State of the Force” address, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a 20% reduction to the number of general and flag officers, affecting an estimated 800 positions scheduled for January 1, 2027. His sharpest critics see this as ranging from sycophantic revenge on the general officer class to simply misguided personnel policy. Hegseth defined it in his speech as “accountability and long overdue.” That accountability he’s referring to speaks to a symptom of a much larger problem within the general officer class, a feeling that our nation’s military leaders at times get over their skis. An element of this is when generals drift into decision-making that happens off the battlefield. Generals wading into matters of policy and politics happens more than one might think. This is, however, in conflict with the choice made by America’s founders to subordinate the military to civilian control, leaving policy and politics to those duly elected or appointed by the people. Where the civilian-military balance is most out of control today is in the regional combatant commands (COCOMs). Regional COCOM leadership have become accustomed to ruling over their own fiefdoms of U.S. forces positioned across every major area of the world while also waging significant influence in the halls of power at home. Secretary Hegseth could be onto something in terms of accountability, but only if the structure and criteria of his mandated reduction aims significant scrutiny at the power wielded by the regional COCOMs.These commanders often play the role of grand strategists, diplomats, political operators, and PR machines — duties far beyond the intent for military leadership in America. These blatant invasions of the civilian space feels routine because regional COCOMs maintain their own legislative affairs and public affairs staff — despite the Pentagon performing these same functions in Washington. While certainly there is a degree of coordination, it is evident to anyone who has worked with the regional COCOMs that they run largely independent operations and at most in parallel to the civilian side. Let’s look at some recent examples. Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, Admiral Brad Cooper, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander, has engaged in numerous meetings with high-ranking government officials in the Middle East, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. In these meetings, Admiral Cooper was the highest-ranking U.S. official present, and CENTCOM public releases did not indicate that a civilian counterpart of equal rank was present. Meetings with foreign leaders at these levels are the responsibility of the President or his Cabinet. Regional commanders should, at most, be invited as participants at the discretion of the President or the Defense Secretary, but should not be leading or deputized to lead such engagements without civilian leadership present. This isn’t just a CENTCOM dynamic. In 2023, when the U.S. remained heavily engaged in providing proxy support to Ukraine, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) Commander General Chris Cavoli conducted similar engagements, including with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Military to military engagements, with both allies and adversaries alike, are critical points of connectivity and regional COCOM commanders should be central in fostering those relationships. However, that is where their role should end. Civilian leadership at appropriate seniority levels should not only be present in engagements with foreign government leaders, but should always be in the driver’s seat of those conversations. Beyond breaching the civilian-military balance abroad, regional COCOM commanders also distinguish themselves as public figures at home, building their own profiles amongst the halls of Capitol Hill and the media. Regional COCOM commanders often engage and maintain relationships with Senators and Representatives independently without civilian counterparts present. It is also noteworthy that, despite the Senate Armed Services Committee’s responsibility for vetting and confirming both civilian appointees and promotions to regional combatant command leadership posts, the SASC only calls for military leadership to testify at annual posture hearings. The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), to its credit, hears from both civilian and military leadership for their annual hearings.Regional COCOM commanders are also active in the media. The risk of overstatement, understatement, or contradiction on politically charged issues is high-risk for them, particularly with a press-centric administration and the level of media engagement the Commander-in-Chief himself conducts. Just look at how CENTCOM and U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) injected into the media space in the midst of the Iran war and you can see the danger. In mid-September, Admiral Cooper boldly claimed “I am not concerned at all,” when asked in a 60 Minutes interview about widely reported shortages of U.S. critical munitions stockpiles as a result of the Iran war. The depletion of the stockpiles, and long lead times for replenishment, have seriously affected U.S. plans to deter China from invading Taiwan, given the overlap in weapons required to ensure a U.S. deterrent is credible. Just one week after Admiral Cooper’s 60 Minutes interview, Time Magazine ran an exclusive profile on USPACOM Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo. The main topic of the conversation? Why prioritization of deterrence in the Pacific is essential to avoiding war between the U.S. and China. The authors of the piece did not hesitate to point out discrepancies in Paparo’s public versus reported private commentary about how resource expenditure in the Middle East is harming the central mission of deterrence in the Pacific. Not only did these interviews result in a bad PR cycle for the Pentagon, but it illustrates the dysfunction and factionalism that exists when military leaders decide to play policymakers. The blurring of civilian and military lines from unrestrained regional COCOMs is an underreported issue. But Secretary Hegseth’s effort to reduce the general and flag officer class presents a prime opportunity to address it. The Secretary and his team should consider how a reduction in rank and resourcing for the regional COCOMs could properly bring them back into alignment with appropriate civilian leadership, overseeing and directing their engagement outside of explicitly military functions and responsibilities. Stars and medals are certainly symbols of sacrifice and bravery but should not elevate or communicate a status of authority above civilian leadership. Civilian control of the military is an essential component of the American republic and we should take this opportunity now to preserve it.

[Category: Enewsletter, Centcom, Brad-cooper, Pentagon, Pete-hegseth, Pacom, Us-military]

[*] [+] [-] [x] [A+] [a-]  
[l] at 10/11/26 10:05pm
When Ansar Allah—commonly referred to as the Houthis—seized Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and strategic islands in the Bab al-Mandab Strait on September 10, 2026, they appeared to gain the upper hand in Yemen’s long-running conflict. However, in early October Saudi-backed government forces began to retake some of the captured territory and Saudi Arabia launched a punishing assault on Houthi positions from the air. France, Pakistan, and the United States have all sent personnel to help the kingdom counter the Houthi offensive.Outside the region, some have portrayed the Houthi offensive as another theater within the broader US-Israeli war on Iran. However, this broader regional war is separate from the war in Yemen, which can be traced back to the Houthi takeover of Yemen’s capital Sanaa in September 2014 and the decision by neighboring Saudi Arabia to launch a coalition to oust them in March 2015.While the Houthis are certainly allied with Iran and benefit from the weapons and support that Tehran has covertly provided them since at least 2009, they have their own agenda: to consolidate their control over Yemen. They would pursue this political objective even if Washington and Tehran somehow agreed to end the war that Trump rashly launched. Still, their recent decision to escalate does reflect the sense of momentum produced by Iran’s success in withstanding American and Israeli attacks. Thus, even as these two conflicts are distinct, the Iran war is both exacerbating and heightening the effects of the violence in Yemen.The Houthis’ Red Sea offensiveThe catalyst for the latest round of violence came on July 13, 2026, when an Iranian civilian plane—carrying a Houthi delegation that had attended the funeral of Iran’s assassinated Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—returned to Yemen. When the plane attempted to land at Sanaa International Airport, the runway was bombed. Yemen’s internationally recognized government—under the leadership of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC)—took responsibility for the attack, while the Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia, which supports the PLC. As a result of the attack, the plane was forced to land in Houthi-controlled Hodeidah. On July 20, the Houthis announced a blockade on Saudi Arabia, targeting oil exports through the Bab al-Mandab Strait in retaliation for its attacks and ongoing restrictions on Houthi-controlled territory. The Houthis subsequently targeted Saudi petroleum facilities and oil tankers in the Red Sea.The attack on Sanaa Airport officially ended the truce that had largely held between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis since April 2022.The attack on Sanaa Airport officially ended the truce that had largely held between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis since April 2022. Even before this incident, however, the Houthis appeared to have already been preparing for a return to conflict, mobilizing their fighters and moving materiel into position. In a June 16, 2026, speech, the Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi announced that the group was ready for combat and called for official and grassroots action to end what he described as more than 11 years of Saudi aggression and blockade.The speech shifted the Houthis’ narrative away from their support for Palestinians, which had become central to the group’s domestic legitimacy in the context of Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza since October 7, 2023. In subsequent months, as the Houthis began striking Israeli ships in the Red Sea in retaliation for their violence against Palestinians, their credibility at home substantially increased, helping paper over their repression and failure to improve the daily lives of Yemenis under their control. The Houthis’ support for Palestine also drove recruitment and raised their international profile. Yet the group also paid for its solidarity with Palestinians, with the United States and Israel hitting Houthi areas with deadly air strikes. In August 2025, Israel assassinated several Houthi cabinet ministers, including the prime minister. Following Netanyahu’s stated commitment to a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2025, the Houthis signaled a pause in their campaign against Israel. Despite Israel’s daily violations of said ceasefire, the Houthis have limited their attacks on Israel, an indication that the group may wish to avoid returning to open conflict with Tel Aviv. Instead, the Houthis shifted focus to Riyadh’s restrictions on their airspace and seaports, as well as Saudi support for the various competing groups that oppose Houthi rule.The Houthi resurgenceOver the past four years, the Houthis have improved their military capabilities. Increasingly, they can manufacture weapons inside Yemen, although a network of providers, including Iran, continues to provide the raw materials and other components they need. Analysts have claimed that the Houthis have been bringing in large shipments of military material, equipment, and weapons. There are also reports that they have used Claude, Anthropic’s AI tool, to develop guided weapons. As early as 2017, the Houthis experimented with the use of a drone boat, and in the years since have remained at the cutting edge in terms of their use of emerging technologies to threaten adversaries with far more resources and firepower.The Houthis’ ability to swiftly seize the Red Sea coast from forces loyal to the PLC was further facilitated by the withdrawal of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Yemen in January 2026 under pressure from Saudi Arabia. Until early 2026, the UAE provided significant assistance to Yemen’s southern secessionist movement, led by the Southern Transitional Council (STC). The chairman of the STC, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, was also a member of the PLC. However, in December 2025, STC forces suddenly took large swathes of territory in eastern Yemen, which included areas along the Saudi border in the provinces of Hadramawt and al-Mahra. Saudi Arabia responded quickly, bombing Emirati ships transporting weapons to the STC and insisting that the UAE fully withdraw from Yemen. Under Saudi pressure, the STC leadership announced the dissolution of the group, while al-Zubaidi fled to the UAE. The PLC rescinded al-Zubaidi’s membership of the council along with another STC ally, the former governor of Hadramawt, replacing them with two new figures. Yet Saudi Arabia’s attempt to quash the STC hardly quelled demands for southern independence. Instead, it appeared to alienate separatists who previously supported the PLC in the hopes that by doing so, it would lead to an independent southern Yemen.The PLC’s initial inability to repel the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast in the current conflict—even with Saudi backing—was seen as a sign of the ruling government’s overall ineffectiveness.The PLC, in turn, owes much of its own rise to power to Saudi Arabia. After the Arab Spring protests forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down and end his more than 33-year rule over Yemen in 2012, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi led the internationally recognized government that replaced him, initially with Saudi support. What was meant to be a two-year interim position for Hadi, however, turned into ten. His rule finally ended when Saudi Arabia withdrew its backing and transferred authority to the PLC. The PLC initially comprised eight men, four aligned primarily with Saudi Arabia and four with the UAE.These dynamics created deep internal divisions in the PLC, which has also been accused of corruption and an inability to improve the quality of life for the population under its authority. Some Yemeni critics have called for reforms to make the PLC more accountable and representative of all Yemenis. In response to such criticisms, in January 2025, PLC chairman Rashad al-Alimi announced a crackdown on corruption. Nevertheless, the PLC’s initial inability to repel the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast in the current conflict—even with Saudi backing—was seen as a sign of the ruling government’s overall ineffectiveness.Riyadh and the Houthis: What do they want?Over the course of the Houthis’ war with Saudi-backed forces from 2015 until 2022, the group advanced its military capabilities, largely through covert Iranian support. The turning point in this war came in March 2022, when the Houthis hit Saudi Arabia during the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah. The attack showed the Houthis were capable of not only deterring tourists and investors from coming to Saudi Arabia but also threatening the success of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 plan to transform the kingdom’s economy and society. Only after the attack did Saudi Arabia agree to a two-month United Nations (UN)-brokered truce in April 2022.By March 2023, Saudis were reportedly eager to find a longer-term agreement to end their costly and ultimately futile involvement in Yemen. Over the next few months, Riyadh engaged in direct talks with the Houthis, mediated by Oman, in pursuit of that goal, resulting in a broader UN-brokered roadmap agreement in December 2023. Under the terms of this agreement, Saudi Arabia would reportedly pay public sector salaries, including in Houthi-held territory, and would ease restrictions on air and seaports. The deal would have also enabled the resumption of oil exports and initiated an inclusive, Yemeni-led political settlement under UN auspices. In effect, the deal would have disempowered the PLC, which depends largely on Saudi support. When the Houthis initiated hostilities against Israel in late 2023—which prompted the US to launch Operation Prosperity Guardian against them in response—the Saudis were notably absent, unwilling to risk a resumption of transborder attacks.The Houthis’ flight back and forth from Tehran in July 2026 appears to have crossed a red line for the Saudis.However, the Houthis’ flight back and forth from Tehran in July 2026 appears to have crossed a red line for the Saudis, and Riyadh feared that showing restraint in this case would merely embolden the Houthis further. In the context of the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia relied more heavily on exporting oil through the Red Sea. When the Houthis began targeting Saudi oil infrastructure, Mohammed bin Salman likely believed that the US would intervene to deliver Saudi oil to the global market. However, Trump’s refusal to directly aid the Saudis in their conflict with the Houthis appears to show Washington’s reluctance to reopen a sustained Yemen campaign while heavily committed elsewhere in the region.Riyadh’s strategic optionsAt present, Riyadh faces three options: 1) attempt to reverse Houthi gains militarily through continued partnership with the PLC; 2) shift support to the southern separatists in the STC; or 3) renew negotiations with the Houthis in preparation to withdraw from Yemen. Currently, the Saudis appear to be pursuing the first option. Although the US has declined to resume air strikes on Houthi positions, the United Kingdom is refueling Saudi planes over Yemen. France has also announced that it will send troops to the Saudi city of Yanbu to help secure energy sites. Pakistan began sending troops last year, with between 30,000 and 40,000 reportedly deployed to Saudi Arabia, although not to the front lines in Yemen.Still, the longer-term viability of the PLC remains in question. The fecklessness of the PLC, in contrast to the relative effectiveness of the STC, has prompted some analysts to suggest that Saudi Arabia should switch its support to groups supporting southern secession. Given Saudi concerns about the implications of an independent southern Yemen for its own security, this option seems unlikely, although with the expulsion of the UAE, Saudi Arabia might try to repair relations with the southerners.That leaves the possibility of the third option. If the current conflict becomes too costly, or if Saudi Arabia feels that it has improved its bargaining position by adequately damaging the Houthis, Riyadh may return to the negotiating table. Saudi Arabia had previously exhibited willingness to negotiate with the Houthis under the UN-brokered agreements. If they decide to do so again, they may agree to a similar deal, wherein they withdraw support for anti-Houthi forces and allow the Houthis to consolidate control. Yet for many inside Yemen who have fled Houthi rule, this option would be a catastrophe. For example, while the UN has reported that all sides in the conflict have used child soldiers, the Houthis do so in significantly higher numbers. They have also detained hundreds of people, targeting those active in Yemen’s once vibrant civil society. The Houthis’ systematic diversion of humanitarian aid is also well documented by human rights groups. In fact, the Houthis’ practice of kidnapping or attacking UN personnel and aid workers—accusing them of serving as spies for Washington or Tel Aviv—has led several humanitarian organizations to stop operating inside Houthi-controlled territory, to devastating effect for the local population.Nevertheless, the Houthis have demonstrated themselves to be the most capable security force inside Yemen. Despite attacks on them by the central government in the 2000s, seven years of war with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and an air campaign by Israel and the United States, the Houthis appear to have grown stronger. The resumption of attacks against them by foreign countries only reinforces their narrative that they are the sole defenders of Yemen’s sovereignty.If foreign powers continue to pour fuel onto Yemen’s conflict, it will continue to rage.From 2015 to 2022, Saudi Arabia tried unsuccessfully to oust the Houthis from Yemen at a high human cost, as their crippling blockade on the country contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of children. As such, the Saudis could decide to make a deal with the Houthis and withdraw from Yemen. By building a relationship with the Houthis, the Saudis could also gradually make them less dependent on Iran. In this scenario, the Houthis, southern separatists, and other local actors would be left to determine the balance of power within Yemen. Without the excuse of a foreign aggressor, the Houthis would have no one to blame for their inability to provide for the Yemeni people. But if foreign powers continue to pour fuel onto Yemen’s conflict, it will continue to rage. Although UN mediation in Yemen needs an overhaul, the UN could plausibly play a productive role in helping to facilitate dialogue among the Yemeni factions to finally end the conflict.Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia, with international support, has resumed its futile assault on Yemen. Riyadh apparently believes that diplomacy has failed and previous efforts to appease the Houthis have merely caused their ambitions to expand. The Yemeni population, many of whom are already on the edge of survival, are paying the price.This article was republished with permission from the Arab Center Washington DC.

[Category: Saudi-arabia, Houthis, Iran-war, Yemen]

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[l] at 10/8/26 10:05pm
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.The U.S. ended its military campaign in Iraq on September 30, as the final American combat troops based there left the country. Their departure ended 23 years of fitful fighting. They found no weapons of mass destruction, which was the battering ram President George W. Bush and his combative coterie used to scaremonger the U.S to invade in 2003. We captured Saddam Hussein, and the Iraqis hanged him in 2006. We toppled his Ba’athist regime, only to see it replaced with a government that today is riven with next-door Iran’s influence.It’s important to remember how this war looks from the other end of the telescope. Two weeks before it began, The Bunker asked Air Force General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, how the Pentagon’s ballyhooed “shock and awe” campaign would unfold. “If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you’d like to do is have it be a short conflict,” he responded. “The best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable.”Well, you know what they say about assume. In fact, a fellow Air Force officer, Colonel Clarence Lollar, spelled it out in 1964, 39 years before Myers used the word to explain why the Iraq war would be short:"Mister, when you have an important job to do, never assume. When you look at the word, you can see it is made up of three parts — 'ass,' 'u,' and 'me.' When you rely on assumptions, sooner or later it will make an ass of both of us."Turns out toppling Saddam was only the beginning of a generation-long campaign that cost 4,418 U.S. troops their lives. It will end up costing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $2.9 trillion through 2050, including veterans’ care yet unbilled.The Bunker spent years reporting on the war, and its spasmodic successes like toppling Baghdad, hunting down Saddam in his “spider hole,” and the jittery calm wrought by “the surge” of U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007. But he also told the stories of those killed, as well as those who killed themselves (and their family). He wrote about the more than 30,000 physically wounded, as well as the roughly 15% of the 1.5 million U.S. troops who served in Iraq who came home mentally maimed. He covered the military’s inadequate, and sometimes fatal, efforts to render aid, even among those trying to deliver it. He reported on the war’s deadly impact on recruiters back home. He wrote about those captured, dead or alive, as they used to say in the Westerns. Not to mention the 3,600 contractors, and perhaps 200,000 Iraqi civilians, killed in the war.The stories were tough to report, tough to write, and they remain tough to read.But in the hurly-burly of today’s world, the heroes at the heart of these stories must never be forgotten.We must remember and honor their sacrifice, even as we ponder its wisdom, given its paltry prize.Otherwise, it might happen again.Long overdue, but it must be done rightThe same day the U.S. military pulled out of Iraq, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged to continue his campaign to shrink the Pentagon’s nearly 1,000-strong corps of generals and admirals by 20% (he’s currently about halfway there). “The media calls that a purge,” he said. “I call it accountability, and long overdue.”Accountability, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. We here at the Project On Government Oversight have long fought to cut the U.S. military’s senior ranks. “We have more officers than we need — and we're running the risk of creating a military force of bureaucrats rather than warriors,” Executive Director Danielle Brian said … in 1998. The numbers don’t lie: The ranks of generals and admirals, as their share of the entire U.S. military, has grown by 40% since Vietnam.But the cutting has to be smart. Based on the results of the Iran war — so far — it’s plain that neither Hegseth nor his military high command knows how to wage war smartly. Promoting the right military personnel is just as challenging. Bazookaing brass that displease the boss doesn’t automatically lead to a lighter and, to coin a phrase, lethaler fighting force. Based on Hegseth’s track record, his thinning of the herd is likely to be more about politics and partisanship than proficiency and prowess.“This is just a less personal version of the purge he’s already been executing since taking office,” Virginia Burger, a Marine veteran now here at POGO’s Center for Defense Information, says. “By announcing he’s cutting the generals by 20%, he has justification for refusing to promote scores of officers without even having to pull their names from [promotion] lists. This just lets him continue to remove senior leaders who are in the strongest positions to oppose him and his actions.”Air Force 1, Navy 0The Bunker is leery of drawing bottom-line conclusions from complicated issues. But every once in a while two things happen simultaneously in the national-security space that support such simplicity. While we were away, the Navy awarded Boeing a $20 billion contract to develop a sixth-generation fighter for its aircraft carriers. (Fighter “generations” share technological innovations; sixth-gen fighters will fly further and more stealthily than their predecessors and be able to command drones from their cockpits.)But this F/A-XX Strike Fighter represents a doubling-down on yesterday’s technology. Bluntly speaking, it means putting planes flown by humans aboard huge sitting ducks that will be prime targets for any future U.S. foe (whether those planes will be launched by steam or electromagnetic catapults, a separate war now underway between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. president, is irrelevant, albeit amusing).Meanwhile, seven companies are seeking to build a cheaper MQ-9 Reaper. That’s the Air Force drone its top officer calls the “most valuable player” in the U.S. war against Iran. Unfortunately, the service has lost about 25% of its Reapers in the fight. You probably didn’t know that because drones don’t carry pilots and therefore no U.S. troops died in the drones’ destruction. One of the companies wants to produce Reaper replacements for about one-third the cost of the $30 million Reaper.This striking contrast needs to be kept in perspective. After all, the Navy is buying drones, and the Air Force is buying its own fleet of sixth-generation fighters. In fact, it’s buying them from Boeing. Letting Boeing build the Navy’s newest fighter, as well as the Air Force’s F-47 (its designation honoring you-know-who, if not strictly speaking, in a “Let’s go, Brandon” kind of way) gives some military-aviation geeks the heebie-jeebies. “Incredulity was the main public reaction, for understandable reasons,” veteran defense-aerospace scribe Bill Sweetman noted. That’s because it means “most unattractively, putting all the Pentagon’s fighter-development eggs in one basket.” Others fear the Navy contract award gives Boeing a “monopoly” and “stranglehold” on U.S. fighter development and production for the next generation, or more.That lack of competition should make taxpayers nervous. After all, Lockheed is the only company producing the troubled fifth-generation F-35 for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines.But for the moment, let’s simply cheer the Air Force’s fledgling push to fly and fight more cheaply.Pentagon mum on Iran war’s costThe Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan bean-counting shop that has spent more than a half-century double-checking the sometimes dubious arithmetic of the Executive Branch. It works, as its name makes clear, for Congress. Congress, in turn, works for us — the American people who pay taxes to fund this government. So it’s beyond disconcerting that the Pentagon recently stiff-armed the CBO after the agency asked the U.S. military about the cost of the war in Iran (the CBO estimated that the war cost U.S. taxpayers $38 billion through August 1).“To estimate DoD's costs, CBO relied on government databases and public reports because DoD did not respond to CBO's requests for information,” the CBO said in a September 15 report. “As a result, CBO's estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty.”Gobsmacking.Here we have a war unilaterally launched by President Donald Trump and waged by a Pentagon that has rarely briefed what’s left of the Defense Department press corps on its progress. Now they’re declining to tell the CBO how much they’re spending on it.Back in the good ol’ days MIA meant “missing in action.” In the current environment it means “mission isn’t auditable.”Here’s what has caught The Bunker's eye recently→ Not so fast, admirals… Mystery drones have been spotted over the key U.S. military base on Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean, The War Zone’s Howard Altman reported August 10.→ Where there’s a will, there’s a weighThe Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency is using new analytical tools to try to measure a foreign military’s will to fight, Breaking Defense’s Lee Ferran reported September 30.→ The non-Archie BunkerTrump administration officials said they were unaware of plans to convert the president’s proposed triumphal arch into a military complex, after Trump announced plans to put snipers, drones, and ammunition at the site, the Washington Post’s Dan Diamond reported September 29.

[Category: The-bunker, Pete-hegseth, U-s-military, Air-force, Us-navy, Iran-war, Military-spending, Iraq-war]

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[l] at 10/8/26 10:05pm
Let’s imagine a bit of “future history” in Ukraine. It is February 2027. The Ukrainian winter has been unusually cold, and Russian air strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, transportation grid, and communications networks have been increasingly destructive. Ukraine has no effective defenses against massive barrages of Russian missiles, glide bombs, and jet-powered drones, as Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks both to cripple Ukraine’s ability to field an effective military and to break its will to continue fighting. Lacking heat, water, and electricity, millions of Ukrainians are fleeing Kyiv and other major cities. Western embassies are temporarily relocating from the capital to safer environs. Russian attacks on data centers and Starlink terminals begin to erode Ukraine’s battlefield targeting and communications, jeopardizing its prospects for holding the last two “fortress cities” in the Donbas region once warmer weather allows ground combat to intensify. Amid growing fears of starvation and hypothermia, international aid organizations declare a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Western media accuse Putin of perpetrating crimes against humanity, and NATO allies press Washington for action, worried that their vision of Ukraine as an enduring “steel porcupine,” armed to the teeth against Russian aggression for decades to come, looks increasingly illusory. The U.S. Congress – now controlled by Democrats following their resounding victories in mid-term elections – demands that Trump stop Russian attacks and rally the NATO alliance around defense of Ukraine. Trump’s menu of diplomatic options to halt or deter Russia looks disturbingly thin, however. Neither the threat of new economic sanctions nor the lure of new business deals has dented Putin’s opposition to a provisional ceasefire arrangement. Moscow continues to insist that no ceasefire is possible absent a broader peace settlement that addresses key political and security issues in Ukraine and ends NATO enlargement. But there is little appetite in Washington or Europe for negotiating with Russia over such matters, particularly in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. The military menu looks similarly unappetizing. Western stockpiles of Patriot air defense missiles have all but disappeared, depleted by years of war in Ukraine and many months of intense missile combat with Iran. New production will take years to meet Ukraine’s needs. Ukraine’s small fleet of F-16 fighter aircraft – perhaps its most effective defense against jet-powered drones – has been largely grounded by maintenance woes, and Europe worries that large-scale transfers of additional fighter aircraft to Ukraine could leave NATO uncomfortably vulnerable should war erupt with Russia. Given the paucity of alternatives, Western planners gravitate toward a high-risk “escalate to de-escalate” strategy. Some call for imposing a “no- fly zone,” using NATO combat air patrols over Ukrainian airspace to shoot down Russian jet-powered drones and cruise missiles. Not wanting to risk direct combat in Ukraine, however, NATO ultimately decides to position ground and naval forces around the land and maritime borders of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, warning Moscow that continuing its efforts to deprive Ukraine of heat, electricity, and other vital supplies will produce a corresponding squeeze of Kaliningrad’s population. Russia and the West soon find themselves in a genuine military crisis. Moscow reiterates its warning that it will respond to a blockade of Kaliningrad with its full arsenal of armaments, including nuclear weapons. In turn, the United States and NATO effectively dare Russia to fire the first shot against Western forces threatening Russia’s access to Kaliningrad through Lithuania and the Baltic Sea. Such a scenario is far from inevitable. Lamentably, however, it is becoming not only imaginable but increasingly likely, as U.S.-mediated peace talks stall and Russia becomes convinced that the Trump administration has no ability – and Europe has no desire – to orchestrate a settlement that addresses Russia’s core concerns anytime soon. What might Team Trump do to reduce the odds of such dangerous developments? The most effective approach would also be the most unlikely under present circumstances: to broaden the scope of its negotiations with Moscow to include talks on European security issues beyond Ukraine. Such talks would consider new mechanisms for crisis management and risk reduction with Russia, confidence- and security-building measures, and conventional and nuclear arms control. The prospect of new accords on matters critical to Russian security would provide Putin with a significant incentive to soften his demands over Ukraine. Nonetheless, U.S. officials have so far not pursued this course, and key European leaders have ruled it out. Short of formal talks, Trump could take two steps that might reduce the risks of a future crisis. The first would be to recognize that the “escalate to de-escalate” strategy – which the West has pursued in various forms since early in this war – has consistently led to Russian counter-escalation rather than concessions. Moscow insists that its increasingly brutal air campaign is a response to Ukraine’s campaign of long-range drone attacks on Russian energy and commercial targets, and it has hardened its negotiating demands as Ukrainian attacks have continued. Given that Kyiv has not achieved its goals (witness the meager impact of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proclaimed “Forty-Day Influence Campaign” on Russian decision-making), while providing Putin with a ready justification for intensifying Russian air strikes, it makes little sense for the United States to continue enabling Ukrainian long-range strikes with critical targeting data. The second would be to open what is often termed a “back channel” with Moscow: a private, informal dialogue between a trusted Trump envoy and a Kremlin designee aimed at clarifying each side’s redlines and discussing in advance how to avoid or manage the kinds of crises that might emerge between Washington and Moscow in the coming months and years. In view of the robust media attention that White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner attract every time they meet with Putin or their Russian counterpart, Kirill Dmitriev, they are ill-suited to play such a discreet role. The publicity surrounding CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent visit to Moscow underscores how difficult it is for prominent American officials to conduct such talks in secret. However, Trump certainly has access to experienced but lower-profile American experts well suited to perform this role. Sooner or later, Washington and Moscow will have to discuss these matters, whether the Ukraine war ends at the negotiating table or escalates into a larger crisis. The time to start discussing them is now. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.

[Category: Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr-zelensky, Vladimir-putin, Nato, Enewsletter, Ukraine-war]

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[l] at 10/8/26 10:05pm
President Donald Trump traveled to Baltimore this week to announce a $7 billion deal with the defense tech firm Anduril to build autonomous submarines as well as components for the Navy’s Virginia-class attack submarines. When fully implemented, the plan is expected to revitalize the Sparrows Point area of the city that once employed nearly 30,000 people at a steel mill and shipyard run by Bethlehem Steel.The announcement has been met with mixed reactions. A major point of concern seems to be Anduril’s expansion into traditional defense contracts. The company was established in 2017 and has focused on building autonomous drones and sea vehicles and developing AI-enabled software to operate them. American submarines are currently built by General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries.The announcement has raised some eyebrows considering Anduril’s founder Palmer Lucky’s recent appointment as a co-lead, along with Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich, on a Pentagon study about AI-powered weapons and the future of warfare. It remains to be seen how Anduril, a company that has so far specialized in small drones will fare building components like torpedo tubes for crewed vessels, to say nothing of scaling up to eventually build hull sections. The company will undoubtedly face a steep learning curve as it expands into more traditional defense contracts.One of the biggest challenges the company will face will be the same workforce issues plaguing its existing counterparts. The Government Accountability Office reported last year that the shipbuilding industrial base needs 174,000 new workers in the next decade to keep pace with the Navy’s needs. Anduril’s expansion will only add to those workforce demands.But such concerns should be tempered a bit considering the current state of American shipbuilding and years of ineffective defense policies.The U.S. Navy has floundered in nearly every effort to develop a major new shipbuilding program in this century. The Zumwalt-class destroyer, Littoral Combat Ship, and the Constellation-class program are all complete failures. The USS Ford entered active service years behind schedule and billions over budget and now the sailors serving aboard the aircraft carrier can’t even rely on the ship’s toilets to flush.Politicians and Navy officials have decried the woeful state of the submarine industrial base for years. Calls for greater investment to increase the production rate of submarines have become a regular feature of defense budget debates. In 2015, Navy leaders discussed the possibility of expanding attack submarine production from two to three boats each year. Members of Congress added $250 million to strengthen the submarine industrial base in 2018. By 2024, $3.3 billion in “critical” investments were made for the same purpose.For all of those investments, the production rate for attack submarines has gone from two per year in 2015 to 1.3 in 2026. Falling submarine production rates are particularly problematic at the moment because demand is increasing. The AUKUS deal between the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia would see the latter country receive three Virginia-class submarines in the coming years.Concerns about crony capitalism and potential conflicts of interest when it comes to Anduril’s Baltimore deal are real, but so is the fact that, despite investing billions of dollars to improve the submarine construction problem, it has only gotten worse. To judge from some of the breathless coverage of the deal, a casual reader would think this is the first time a politician has ever steered a defense contract to a campaign donor. In this particular case, it should be noted that the Trump administration inked a deal where the principal economic beneficiary is a state that voted for Kamala Harris by nearly 30 points in 2024.In an ideal world, the American people would not need things like a submarine. In a better world, national security policymakers would make every decision with military effectiveness as their primary concern. But in the real world of 2026, this plan might just be the best option to meet America’s future security needs.

[Category: Defense-industry, Submarines, Anduril, Palmer-luckey, Enewsletter]

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[l] at 10/7/26 10:05pm
Nationalists came out on top in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)’s October 4 election. Allies of Milorad Dodik, the de facto leader of the country’s Bosnian Serb entity, won decisively in Republika Srpska despite Dodik himself being barred from office, while nationalist Bosniak and Croat parties dominated in the country’s other political entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.This election offered no real sign of change in a Balkan country long constrained by weak institutions, corruption, and deeply divided ethnic groups. Although BiH’s complex demographics and history necessitate some form of decentralized power-sharing, its political system has also become a vehicle for interests that benefit from continued dysfunction — including some with growing ties to President Donald Trump’s inner circle.Dodik’s power outlasts the pressure against himThat dysfunction unfolds in a particular international context. U.S. pressure on Dodik has eased, with the Trump administration removing sanctions imposed by the Biden and Obama administrations. Russia continues cultivating its close ties with Republika Srpska, and Brussels struggles to use the prospect of European Union membership to drive reform. The result is a fraying political order against the backdrop of an increasingly uncertain international environment.The election also highlighted Dodik’s enduring influence. Although Dodik was prohibited from running, his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) secured a decisive victory.Leila Bičakčić, the CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting, explained that Dodik has emerged from the period of U.S. sanctions politically stronger than before, demonstrating his ability to maintain relationships with the U.S., Russia, Israel, and nationalist movements elsewhere in Europe. Therefore, Dodik’s resurgence is illustrative of how much political authority in BiH can reside outside the institutions through which that authority is supposed to be formally exercised.That informal power has coincided with a fundamental shift in Dodik’s relationship with Washington, including Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Dodik and his allies, which the U.S. had previously imposed in response to his separatist ambitions and alleged corruption.Dejan Sajinovic, a Bosnian journalist from Republika Srpska, interprets the new relationship as an example of a more transactional American foreign policy. Indeed, Republika Srpska’s spending on Trump-linked lobbyists and surrogates — spending that has exceeded $4 million since the beginning of 2025 — appears to have played an important role in the Bosnian Serb leader’s efforts to win the White House’s support.“It is a quid pro quo,” he told RS, arguing that Washington appears willing to support Dodik politically if he can help advance U.S. strategic and commercial interests in the Western Balkans. The precise terms of any understanding between the Trump administration and Dodik remain unclear, though a controversial energy deal is central to it. The deal involves the proposed Southern Interconnection pipeline, which would connect BiH to Croatia’s gas network and the Krk LNG terminal, allowing BiH to reduce dependence on Russian gas. It is controversial because Bosnian legislation has designated AAFS Infrastructure and Energy (a recently formed Wyoming-based company fronted by Trump allies Jesse Binnall and Joe Flynn) as the project’s lead investor and operator without a competitive tender. Critics have raised concerns about transparency and AAFS’s lack of a relevant track record. Two of Trump’s political advisers, James Blair and Chris LaCivita, were in Republika Srpska to advise the Bosnian Serb entity’s government shortly before this month’s election. Both received hundreds of thousands of dollars via a DC law firm retained by the government of Republika Srpska to promote Dodik and the SNSD. After news of their travel to Republika Srpska fueled some controversy, Trump vowed to terminate Blair and LaCivita as his consultants if their political work in the Balkans conflicts with the White House’s interests.Rewarding dysfunctionThis election further exposed the limits of BiH’s political system, which dates back to the 1995 Dayton Accords. The agreement ended BiH’s war by creating an elaborate system of power-sharing between Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. But 31 years later, that architecture has become a vehicle for political paralysis, even if it has prevented the country from sliding back into war.Tanja Topic, a political analyst based in Banja Luka (Republika Srpska’s administrative center), told RS that the Dayton framework has become “too narrow for the normal functioning of BiH,” pointing to years of blockades at the state level and constitutional provisions that discriminate against citizens who do not identify with one of the country’s three constituent peoples. Yet Sajinovic cautions against treating Dayton as the sole source of the problem. Bosnia’s multiple identities, he argues, make some form of decentralized power-sharing unavoidable. The deeper problem is that political elites have learned to exploit the system’s complexity and veto points to protect their own influence. The election offered little evidence that those incentives are changing.For the EU, the result tests whether enlargement can still drive political reform. Although BiH gained candidate status in 2022 and approval to open accession negotiations in 2024, talks have stalled over unmet reforms, including judicial oversight and curbing corruption. The EU agenda has faded from political debate, replaced by fears of renewed conflict. The deeper problem, Bičakčić argues, is that political elites lack interest in the rule-of-law reforms, stronger institutions, and rights that EU integration requires. If membership no longer provides a credible incentive for change, the EU risks retaining influence only on paper.Enter RussiaDysfunctionality in BiH creates space for Russia, which has long maintained close ties with Republika Srpska. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a close ally of Dodik, who has rejected Western sanctions on Russia and hails the Russian president as “one of the most peace-loving leaders of our time.” Dodik has met with Putin 11 times since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with his latest visit to Moscow only days before the October 4 vote.Russia’s influence stems from Western failures. “Russia profits without investing any effort” by watching a state created through U.S. policy struggle to function and the EU fail to manage its own neighborhood, said Vuk Vuksanović, a lecturer at King’s College London.Nonetheless, Moscow’s role in BiH should not be overstated. Igor Novaković, a senior associate at the International and Security Affairs Centre – ISAC Fund, sees Russia as too bogged down in Ukraine to achieve much in BiH. He believes Moscow lacks any real strategy for the Western Balkans.“My impression is that [the Russians] are focusing on maintaining the current position, supporting, mostly verbally, some of the leaders in the Balkans,” Novaković said. “But in essence they will not go as far as to directly intervene or to do more than, let’s say, disinformation to an extent — maybe using the Western Balkans for some hybrid operations against Western Europe — but not more than that.”The international consensus behind Dayton is erodingUltimately, the election highlights the erosion of the international consensus underpinning Bosnia’s fragile post-1995 order. As Sajinovic notes, BiH has functioned best when major external powers agreed on its direction and struggled when that consensus fractured. Today, divisions within Europe and between Washington and Brussels have created a vacuum that gives BiH’s political actors greater freedom to advance their own agendas. This does not mean BiH is inevitably headed back to war. But it gives ample cause for concern.At the same time, one must not read the election as a verdict for deeper ethnic division. Turnout fell eight points from 2022, while economic problems, emigration, and political stagnation remain pressing concerns, and many voters appear increasingly frustrated with a system that encourages ethnic competition rather than effective government or economic opportunity. Bosnia is therefore left with familiar political forces, but a more unsettled international environment marked by Dodik’s continued influence, weaker Western leverage, and Russia’s potential to exploit those divisions.Whether BiH can move beyond this cycle will depend on whether its political leaders can find a new domestic compromise, and whether the United States and Europe can once again agree on what that compromise should achieve.

[Category: Dayton-accords, Balkans, European-union, Milorad-dodik, Russia, Bosnia]

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[l] at 10/7/26 10:05pm
In September, as the media focused its attention on the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz and the debates at the U.N. General Assembly, some internal developments in Iran went all but unnoticed. On September 28, 32 Iranian conservatives published an open letter calling for Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a matter of urgency.Since the “snapback” of U.N. sanctions on Iran in September 2025, ultraconservative Iranian lawmakers have regularly pushed for pulling out of the NPT, under which the vast majority of states have committed to not develop nuclear weapons. The Majles — Iran’s parliament — drafted a law that would have initiated the move in 2025, but it has yet to move forward. In September, some lawmakers submitted new “triple-urgency” legislation to the Majles’ president, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, who is also currently Iran’s chief negotiatorThese continuous calls by ultraconservatives to withdraw from the NPT have yet to produce an actual withdrawal because of a lack of political consensus. Iran has remained in the treaty despite the war, unprecedented economic pressure, and the return of U.N. sanctions. But is continued NPT membership still an asset for Iran?BackgroundOn September 28, 32 prominent Iranians, many of whom served in conservative administrations, published a declaration arguing that membership in the NPT no longer serves Iranian interests. They asked President Masoud Pezeshkian, the Majles, and the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), which oversees the country’s key national-security and foreign-policy issues, to halt all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the treaty and immediately initiate the withdrawal process.Of course, a law demanding a withdrawal from the NPT would not by itself force the hand of the executive. As shown when the SNSC suspended the “Chastity and Hijab Law” in August 2024, it is the SNSC that decides any questions it considers crucial to national security, and particularly those related to the nuclear file.The debate over NPT withdrawal: the end of the ultraconservative monopolyThe open letter’s signatories belong to the conservative camp. Historically, this camp has opposed negotiations with the U.S. and denounced the 2015 Iran deal, even though some of them had embraced the idea of normalization in 2012. Since 2022, amid the stalemate of U.S.-Iran negotiations, the most radical of them, the ultraconservatives, have publicly pressed for leaving the NPT. Among them are Saeed Jalili, who led the country’s nuclear negotiating team from 2007 to 2013 and ran unsuccessfully against Pezeshkian in 2024, as well as Hamid Rasaee, a lawmaker member of the “Stability Front”, a far right sub-group of the conservative camp. In any case, the 2025 U.S.-Iran war ended the conservative monopoly on the question. Ever since, some figures in the “moderate” camp, comprised of reformists and centrists who traditionally supported normalization with the West, have changed their mind. Journalist Ali Nazari, known as a moderate, is one. More than simply leaving the NPT, Nazari now supports developing a nuclear weapon.Withdrawal from the NPT as negotiating leverageOf course, the Iranian political elite has long used the threat of withdrawing from the NPT as leverage in negotiations with the West, whatever political camp the negotiators have identified with. According to his memoir, for example, former President Hassan Rouhani, a fervent backer of negotiations with the West, threatened to withdraw from the treaty while he was secretary of the SNSC and negotiating bilaterally with the Russians in May 2005, if the IAEA Board of Governors voted to refer the Iranian nuclear file to the Security Council. (Iran did not follow through on that threat when the board made the referral in February 2006.)What has changed?The current context, however, is different from the pre-war situation. While the idea of withdrawing from the NPT was long confined to ultraconservative deputies, some recent declarations by Mohsen Rezaei, the SNSC secretary, indicate a certain evolution.In a post on X following the IAEA’s recent adoption of Resolution GOV/2026/61, Rezaei accused the IAEA of politicizing the Iranian nuclear issue, warning that such actions could lead states to leave the treaty. Yet this resolution, which reiterated concerns about Iran’s limited cooperation with the IAEA, did not introduce any new elements in comparison to the previous one, indicating Rezaei used it as a pretext to signal a new posture. While this comment could be understood as part of Iran’s negotiation strategy with the U.S., no previous SNSC secretary has ever made such a threat. Given the critical role the SNSC plays in nuclear policymaking, the threat must necessarily be taken more seriously. Previous events indicate the possibility of a convergence of views between an ultraconservative Majles and the SNSC. For example, such an alignment emerged in the lead-up to the suspension of negotiations with the IAEA in September 2025. The question remains whether a similar rapprochement could occur between the two bodies on the possibility of withdrawing from the NPT.Leave the NPT or build a bombLeaving the NPT should not be confused with developing a nuclear weapon. In fact, in an interview with Al Jazeera published on September 19, Rezaei reaffirmed his commitment to the fatwa promulgated by the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 1995 prohibiting the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Rezaei seems to prefer a diplomatic solution for the conflict, arguing that Washington should accept Iran’s conditions for ending the war. During last month’s U.N. General Assembly, Iran proposed (and U.S. President Donald Trump rejected) to end hostilities on all fronts, unfreeze Iranian assets, and lift the blockade of Iranian ports, consistent with the MoU agreed by both parties in June.It is difficult to assess whether Rezaei’s most recent withdrawal threat indicates a firm intention to follow through or the latest in a long history of bluffs. As far as the fatwa goes, some would argue its normative force was already weakened by the new Iranian nuclear posture articulated in 2024, breaking the ultimate linguistic taboo of the Islamic Republic.Some Iranian experts now argue that a withdrawal from the NPT should only happen after Iran acquires a nuclear weapon; otherwise, the country would be unnecessarily punished as the withdrawal would inevitably be perceived as a move toward weaponization.Deterioration of relations with the IAEAIt is worth emphasizing that Iran’s relations with the IAEA have deteriorated considerably. Tehran’s hostility toward its director-general, Rafael Grossi, has intensified dramatically. Holding it partially responsible for the 12-day War, Tehran also blames the agency for failing to explicitly condemn Israel and the U.S. for attacking Iranian nuclear sites. In addition, the appearance of Resolution GOV/2026/61 and the de facto exclusion of Iran’s leading nuclear official, Mohammad Eslami, from the 69th general conference of the IAEA in September have reinforced the view that the IAEA has become politicized.What prevents Iran from leaving the NPTThe main obstacle to leaving the NPT remains Iran’s diplomatic dependence on Russia and China. Since the U.S. left the JCPOA in 2018, Tehran has doubled down on its cooperation with the two Eastern powers, and China has absorbed nearly all of Iran’s oil exports since. In internal debates, the possible negative effects on relations with Russia and China of withdrawing from the treaty are clearly an important factor. Yet one could interpret Rezaei’s comments as a warning to Moscow and Beijing, with the goal of pushing them to use their veto against any additional anti-Iran actions at the U.N. Security Council. The fear of abandonment is understandable; after all, the two powers voted to refer the Iranian nuclear file to the U.N. Security Council and supported multilateral sanctions against Iran in the past. In Iran, the debate over a possible withdrawal from the NPT remains unsettled. Most reformists and centrists still appear to oppose the idea, and the SNSC has not yet reached a consensus on the question. Ghalibaf’s looming decision over whether to advance the anti-NPT law will demonstrate political dynamics, even if it may not determine Iran’s future actions. In the uncertainty of the moment, one can still draw a few conclusions: Russia and China have once more become essential to maintaining Iran’s NPT membership, and debates on the subject in Iran are intensifying in an unprecedented way.

[Category: Iran-war, Nuclear-non-proliferation, Nuclear-weapons, Jcpoa, Iran]

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[l] at 10/7/26 10:05pm
Last week, after nearly two decades of fighting, the U.S. finally pulled the plug on its seemingly endless war in Iraq.Like our exit from Afghanistan just a few years ago, the end of fighting in Iraq was met with an eerie quiet. It doesn’t take much to figure out why so little attention is paid to the end of these wars: they mark yet another loss for America and the people in Washington who insist our military power can solve every problem, everywhere. Both conflicts are examples of American hubris — strategically incoherent wars fought with American lives at the expense of too many Iraqis and Afghans lives.But, of course, we refuse to learn our lesson. The week before Americans finally vacated Iraq, President Donald Trump took to his proverbial pulpit at the U.N. to brag about his exploitation of Venezuela for oil, declaring “to the victor goes the spoils.” It was a stark expression of how America’s domination of the global order — it’s imperialism, if you will — really works. And it came in a place where Washington usually goes to great lengths to disguise this reality.As we extend our fingers around the globe — Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Somalia, and more — we are moved to ask: is it easier for Americans to imagine the end of the world than the end of the U.S. empire?This is precisely the question motivating Daniel Bessner in his latest book, “Imperialist Realism.” Drawing on Mark Fisher’s earlier “Capitalist Realism,” which uses cultural touchstones to show how deeply embedded we are in capitalism, Bessner proposes that we are embedded in imperialism that structures our world, experiences, and culture.We spoke with Bessner about his new book for our latest episode of Always at War.As Bessner explains, "Imperialist Realism” comprises three main features: cynicism (few people actually believe the U.S. effectively “spreads democracy”); missionism (despite this cynicism, Americans believe they need to continue to act); and tragic guilt (the emotion that results from the tension between cynicism and missionism).Bessner points to former Secretary of State Antony Blinken as one example of tragic guilt in action. During his tenure, Blinken repeatedly stressed America's solemn duty to lead the world, to "put our hand on the rudder of history and chart a path forward," because "in the absence of us" leading, "someone else will do it." Blinken, Bessner suggests, understands that the United States "isn't necessarily spreading its ideals. It's really acting in the realm of power politics and he feels bad about that."But the “structure of feeling” that is Imperialist Realism doesn’t just affect our leaders, it infects our culture. Take for example, the superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Captain America: Civil War, there is a civil war between superheroes who will accept being regulated and superheroes who won’t. When the superheroes who won’t go on the lamb, the pro-regulation team allows them to escape, as if to say: sometimes you need to exist outside the law. That’s imperialist realism in a nutshell.What would it take to change this grim reality that we’ve resigned ourselves to, where America is always at war? A lot of work, no doubt. Bessner suggests meaningfully reforming the national security state would be an enormous undertaking that would require extraordinary expenditures of political capital, credibility and courage. If what we really need to change American foreign policy is a brave, selfless politician…it’s no wonder Americans are so sure things will never change.

[Category: Always-at-war, War, Us-empire, Imperialism, Videos, Us-foreign-policy]

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[l] at 10/6/26 10:05pm
Three years after the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is presenting Israel’s response as a story of resilience and overwhelming military success. Speaking at the United Nations last month, Netanyahu said that, confronted by a “seven-front war,” Israel had, “instead of collapsing,” delivered “crippling blows” to each of its enemies.“Thanks to the bravery of our fighters, we turned the tables,” the prime minister said at a Monday memorial for the Israelis killed during the October 7 attack and its aftermath. “We have removed from above us a clear and immediate danger of the annihilation of millions of our citizens.”Netanyahu is on the ballot to extend his unprecedented 19 years in office later this month. But, as he asks Israeli voters to remember his response, his opponents are focused on the role the incumbent prime minister may have played in the lead-up to the attacks. A series of recent news stories report that the Emirati and Egyptian governments warned Netanyahu of a looming threat from Hamas in advance of the attacks, but that the prime minister failed to pass the message on to Israeli security officials.In September 2023, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mohamed bin Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates, told Netanyahu that Hamas leadership was planning a major military operation. “Bin Zayed urged Netanyahu to take the situation seriously. To his surprise, however, the prime minister reacted with relative calm,” according to the report. “Netanyahu said that, in his assessment, Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area, and he reassured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario.”The report, drawn from a book by Haaretz journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, says the attack was, in part, the result of a building frustration within the Palestinian militant group regarding Israel’s slow-walking of talks that would have led to an easing of the blockade of Gaza and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners. Shortly before the attacks, Yahya Sinwar, then the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, reportedly told a Fatah official that if Israel did not make progress on the negotiations, he was “preparing a huge surprise for them" and that they should be ready for “expect a 'zilzal,' an earthquake" — a term that people familiar with Sinwar interpreted to mean a war. This threat eventually made its way to the Israeli prime minister. According to the Haaretz investigation, the Israeli defense establishment knew there was a growing threat from Hamas, but believed it to be smaller in scale. Netanyahu, according to the report, did not share with the security chiefs that he had received additional, more explicit warnings from bin Zayed. Netanyahu has called the Haaretz report an "absolute lie." The prime minister’s office told the newspaper that he “didn't speak to the president of the UAE during the period in question and received no warning from him.”Netanyahu took a trip to Abu Dhabi last month in which, multiple news outlets report, he asked bin Zayed to deny reports of their 2023 phone call. The Emiratis have so far refused to comment on the conversation between the two leaders. Netanyahu’s trip to the UAE was initially a secret, but the Israeli government and the official Emirate news agency eventually confirmed it took place. Haaretz also reported that the Israeli government turned down diplomatic overtures from Hamas in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, in which the Palestinian group offered to release all hostages below the age of 18 or older than 50, “without anything in return,” except for a guarantee of immediate start of negotiations on other issues. The unofficial response from the Israelis, according to a Palestinian intermediary, was “Netanyahu doesn't want to talk about anything. He only wants war and the elimination of Hamas,” after which they would free the hostages “by force.” Moreover, in late September, The Atlantic reported that, in addition to the warning from the UAE (the magazine says it independently confirmed that a call between the two leaders did occur), an Egyptian security official had also told the Israeli government that they risked an attack from Hamas if they did not change course and offer economic concessions to Gaza.While it is unclear from the reporting whether Abbas Kamel, the Egyptian intelligence director, met with Netanyahu, one former Israeli official told The Atlantic that there was “no world” in which Kamel would travel to Israel to deliver such a message “and Bibi is not aware.” Kamel repeated his warning to Israel shortly thereafter, just days before Oct. 7, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Israeli prime minister’s office has denied these reports. As the Oct. 27 elections nears, Netanyahu’s political opponents have criticized him for the security lapses three years ago. Gadi Eisenkot, an Israeli general who is seen as the leading contender to unseat Netanyahu, said on X following the Haaretz story that “more and more signs point to the same conclusion: Netanyahu led Israel blindly into the October 7 disaster.” Eisenkot has called for the formation of a commission to investigate the security failures, a move Netanyahu opposes. Former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who have merged parties for the upcoming elections have also blasted Netanyahu. Bennett said “Netanyahu bears personal and direct responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis on his watch,” Lapid added that if the prime minister had done his job “the massacre would have been prevented,” The incumbent prime minister has deflected blame for the attacks, saying that the slow response was a failure on the part of security chiefs who had failed to wake him. Had they done so, Netanyahu says “everything would have been different.”“That’s the story of October 7,” he said.

[Category: Benjamin-netanyahu, United-arab-emirates, Intelligence, Hamas, Gaza-war, Mohammed-bin-zayed, October-7, Israel]

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[l] at 10/6/26 10:05pm
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference — or NatCon — in Israel on Tuesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told his audience that Israel “can and must bear a growing responsibility for its own security,” however, “I can and must show why the alliance with Israel is in America’s interests too.” He seemed to hint at the Israeli government’s support for proposed U.S.-Israeli integration at the Pentagon, which would forge new contractual arrangements inside the military bureaucracy to accompany a phaseout of more controversial direct aid from Congress. “Israel recognizes the American friendship and support it received over the years but it’s precisely because of that the time has come to deepen the alliance, to move from dependence to partnership between two independent nations.”In “rare cases,” he added, the two nations may have to “fight shoulder to shoulder” against a “common enemy, as we saw this year in Iran.” But in contrast to other nation-states defending their sovereignty, Smotrich said “Palestinian nationalism is a fiction, invented at the beginning of the last century” to prevent Jews from returning to their homeland. “Therefore there are not and cannot be any rights in the land of Israel for a people that do not exist, for a people invented for the sole purpose of erasing the real people for whom this land belongs.” As for the Gazans, they should be with their own kind and encouraged to “voluntarily migrate” to Muslim states because, as Smotrich has said before, the strip will be completely destroyed before Hamas is eliminated anyway.The National Conservatism Conference certainly has come full circle. The project, launched in 2019 by an American-Israeli nationalist in Washington to herald the “New Right” movement in the United States, has increasingly become global in nature and is now, as critics charge, an unvarnished promotion of Israeli ethno-religious nationalism with American buy-in. In Jerusalem no less. And at a time when Americans, according to every available poll, are turning against Israel over its catastrophic war on Gaza, which has killed over 74,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and has buried its once congested cities in 61 million tons of rubble. Israel’s Likud government and its hardline leaders have been accused of genocide and in public comments advocating for the slaughter, starvation, and the exile of the Palestinian people from Gaza. They are accused of executing a similar agenda of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and pushing for a devastating “mow” or “burn the lawn” strategy in Lebanon. And like Smotrich, current and former government officials and other ultra-conservative figures are speaking at NatCon 6, which is taking place in Jerusalem during the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The speakers list and schedule, far from the individuals and themes present in the 2019 debut event, are largely focused on the maintenance and sanctity of Israel as a Jewish state, its security after Oct. 7, Judeo-Christian-conservative unity across the West, and maintaining Israel’s alliance with the United States. Critics say no matter how the project began, NatCon this week appears to be a direct reaction to slippage in American support for Israel and an attempt to underscore that American conservative nationalism is just like Israeli conservative nationalism — that the U.S and Israel share values that cannot be undermined by war or a wavering American public. Looking at the speakers list, “I just see a tranche of Israelis — granted it is in Israel — and some of the most fanatical members of the U.S. (establishment) in terms of pursuing Israeli interests,” said Curt Mills, Executive Director of the American Conservative, speaking with Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday. Mills engaged in a now famous debate with pro-Israel partisan Max Abrahms at NatCon 5 in Washington last year. “I think wrapping it into October 7 removes any subtext for what they are trying to do,” which is continuing to pressure Washington into “underwriting” Israeli policies in the Middle East, he added.To be fair, this is not the first international NatCon. Smaller conferences have been held in London (twice), Brussels, and Italy, typically invoking the preservation of the nation state against supranational institutions (the EU, not necessarily NATO), migration, and the inviolability of western civilization. In the meantime, there have been five American events. The first spanned the gamut of American conservatism, joining traditional hawks, neoconservatives, and even restrainers; “New Right” voices like Oren Cass and keynote speaker Tucker Carlson; elected officials including Sen. Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.), and MAGA sentinels ranging from Selena Zito to Michael Anton and J.D. Vance. They were brought together by Yoram Hazony, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen, who is the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and author of the book, The Virtue of Nationalism. He started NatCon via the Edmund Burke Foundation (of which pro-Iran war influencer Will Chamberlain is listed as Vice President for External Affairs). According to the website, it is “a movement of public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation.”Critics like Mills say NatCon was ostensibly launched as a platform for a post-fusionist conservatism in the era of Trump or the “New Right.” Its early events dealt little with foreign policy but grappled with emerging positions on nationalist-populist economic policy, immigration, and the culture war. Future Trump administration officials like Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Vought, and Elbridge Colby have all spoken before earlier NatCon audiences.But it slowly took on a more internationalist flavor, with issues specific to nationalist movements in Israel, India, and Europe crowding the agenda. And in 2024 and especially last year, more neoconservatives employing “America First” language about foreign policy started to pop up, mostly talking about threats from Islamofascists and Iran. No more “nation-building,” but breaking things and getting out was in order. Months after the U.S. bombed Iran in June 2025, Hazony hosted the Abrahms-Mills debate at NatCon 5, but was no doubt surprised by the attention from younger attendees, especially in favor of Mills’ views, which questioned whether U.S. support for Israel’s wars was actually “America First.”In Jerusalem today, there are no such debates. The few Americans invited to NatCon 6 appear locked in to reaffirm the alliance as though the fierce split on the right is not happening (though the Claremont Institute's Matt Peterson acknowledged it on Wednesday, saying he is skeptical of the Iran war and that it was natural for U.S. and Israeli interests to diverge at times). Kevin Roberts, still apologizing for a 2025 video he recorded supporting Tucker Carlson against anti-semitism charges, spoke on Tuesday. He is the president of the Heritage Foundation, which gained a new board member — Yoram Hazony — after the flap. According to a recent profile in the New Yorker about “The Battle for the Trump Right,” Hazony said people at Heritage have come to “understand what their role is, which is to hold together and build out the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish alliance at the center of the (Republican) Party.”Quoting the bible on Tuesday, Roberts said "Jerusalem... this is the city of unity, that links this world to the kingdom of heaven… (it) is the first of five formative cities, preceding Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, that unite the great civilization of freedom and human flourishing that we call the West,” adding, “Jerusalem is the perfect place for conservatives across the west to gather this week so that we can unite.”Rusty Reno, editor of the Christian conservative magazine First Things, was also on hand for reaffirmation on Tuesday. “If the American or English or French patriot can achieve just one-tenth of what has been achieved, built, celebrated, and defended in this place (Israel), I would submit that the future of Western civilization will be the brighter for it."The conference is expected to be rounded out Thursday night with a VIP address from Heritage’s Victoria Coates, author of The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel — And America — Can Win. Her speech is entitled, “Anti Semitism and Socialism Are the End of Democracy.”Mills said it looks like the idea of NatCon as a vehicle for America First conservatism is now “window dressing for the Israel ultranationalist hardline project.”“If Israel wants to pursue that, that's fine from their perspective, but the reality is that they want the United States to endlessly underwrite it, which is what this is about, which is why they're having Americans at what is an Israeli conference,” he said. “It’s not something I would support.”Hazony did not return a request for comment for this story.

[Category: National-conservatism, Natcon, Yoram-hazony, America-first, Israel, Oct-7, Enewsletter, Us-israel]

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[l] at 10/5/26 10:05pm
Just three weeks after American hip-hop artist Macklemore was kicked off megastar Ed Sheeran’s tour over the rapper’s “Free Palestine” messaging, it looks increasingly obvious that Sheeran overestimated the power of pro-Israel cancel culture and underestimated the American fanbase. Last week, country superstar Zach Bryan wore a “Free Palestine” t-shirt during his concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. His band wore similar attire. Robert Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium and was primarily responsible for pressuring Sheeran to ditch Macklemore last month from the tour, was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, Sheeran’s back-up band and all of his opening acts on the tour dropped out to support Macklemore, who went on to launch his own Free Palestine Tour this fall as his own popularity is experiencing a resurgence. The three-date European leg of the tour sold out immediately. In fact, the backlash against Sheeran in favor of Macklemore was so intense that Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and a billionaire AIPAC donor, was forced to issue a statement, insisting his humanitarian donations to the region also went to help Palestinians. Meanwhile the distraught Sheeran lost a half million social media followers, and ended up performing without support in front of a significantly smaller audience at his next show.And Bryan? He wore a “Free Palestine” shirt again the second night at Gillette Stadium (yes, there was a return performance because there was no Kraft intervention to stop it), where he broke the venue’s all-time attendance record, a number also boasted by the stadium’s X account.The former record holder? Ed Sheeran in 2023. And as with Macklemore, older Zach Bryan songs began surging back into the Top 10 in Apple streaming over the weekend.Of course there are critics, mostly doing what they always do: trying to fuel a mass boycott/cancellation by the right. Pro-Israel Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) compared Bryan’s act to the 2023 transgender Dylan Mulvaney-Bud Light ad controversy that reportedly cost Anheuser-Busch over a billion dollars. So did rightwing site Gateway Pundit, which ran the headline "Zach Bryan ‘Bud Lights’ Himself — U.S. Navy Vet and His Band Members Wear T-shirts With Unpopular Woke Messages On-Stage."“Will never go to a Zach Bryan show again," vowed former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen.“I’m done giving him a dollar," declared conservative influencer Gunther Eagleman, who also told his 1.7 million followers, "I’m not buying the tickets, I’m not buying the merch, and I’m not streaming the music.” “He can have the politics,” Eagleman added. “I’ll keep my money."Bryan and others appear to have watched the Sheeran-Macklemore debacle and are making a calculated decision to shrug off the critics’ threats. Aside from moral and ethical considerations, sticking to one’s guns on the issue of Gaza seems to have become good business. Bryan is one of the biggest country stars in the world right now, and this controversy hasn’t seemed to damage his brand at all — it may have even helped it.This is what largely happened when more and more artists committed to never “playing Sun City” in solidarity with the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa in the 80's. It eventually became an imperative. There was political risk to not joining the movement.Three weeks ago, I speculated in these pages that Sheeran could find himself in his own "Sun City moment" comparing his dilemma to that of the rock band Queen in 1984. Queen elected to perform at the Sun City casino in Apartheid South Africa despite widespread opposition, particularly from fellow artists. It hurt the band professionally for years.Robert Kraft thought he had not only fellow billionaires and the lobby to back him up, but popular culture too. He, like others, has been ignoring or dismissing polls of young Americans who are turning against Israel for the government’s treatment of civilians in Gaza. They don’t take seriously the surveys that say Americans want no more taxpayer dollars going to bombs and technology that surveil, target, and kill innocent people in Gaza, the West Bank, or Lebanon.Ed Sheeran, who did not stand up to Kraft, may have miscalculated too. After Bryan, it is unlikely that many more, if any, will make the same mistake.

[Category: Israel-palestine, Gaza, Israel-lobby, Free-speech, Macklemore, Ed-sheeran, Zach-bryan, Enewsletter]

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[l] at 10/5/26 10:05pm
On September 30, the U.S. completed the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. Heralding this event, Iraq declared “Sovereignty Day,” celebrating the end of U.S. occupation and return of full sovereignty to the people of Iraq. In practice, this withdrawal was little more than the departure of a few hundred soldiers that had returned to Iraq in 2014 – at the invitation of the Iraqi government – to provide support and assistance to the collapsing Iraqi Army in its fight against ISIS. Unlike the hundreds of thousands of troops needed in Germany and Japan at the end of WWII, the troops of Operation Inherent Resolve were neither an occupation nor a challenge to sovereign control. Nonetheless, the mission had become a political liability and a convenient excuse for anti-government militias to maintain independence, retain weapons and force its will both in the streets and within Parliament. While some voices in Washington argue for a keeping residual military presence, the reasonable solution is shifting to a diplomatic and development effort. This was U.S. policy after the first withdrawal in 2011 and should remain the policy going forward. The Strategic Framework Agreement, signed by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki in 2008, envisioned this relationship and should remain the policy going forward. Critics claim Iraq’s security forces aren’t ready to handle their own borders or keep internal order. Senior Iraqi officials, including the national security adviser, have made it clear that premise is wrong. A Higher Military Commission established between U.S. Military leadership and Iraqi counterparts conducted a methodical, benchmarked evaluation to measure the capability of Iraq’s security forces. Today, the Iraqi military is one of the largest conventional forces in the region, certified as sufficiently equipped, organized and capable of managing both internal and external threats. There is, of course, no guarantee that this preparation would translate into a political will to fight any given enemy. Indeed, the Iraqi military has long suffered from internal political and sectarian divisions. But it is unlikely that the presence of a small U.S. force would make a difference on this front. A continued American footprint would also have catalyzed continued instability. Illegal, Iranian-backed factions characterize attacks against American troops and shared military facilities as resistance to occupiers, and the retention of major weapons stocks as necessary to fight the Americans. Disarming militias unwilling to answer to the central government is a major policy of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s administration, but the presence of American troops works contrary to this policy.It is unlikely a small U.S. presence will deter further Iranian expansion, as some analysts claim. The Iranians have seen serious blows to the strength and influence of their proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and it is likely they will now push harder to keep — and try to expand — their proxy strength in Iraq, regardless of al-Zaidi’s disarmament program. Additionally, given the current war between the U.S. and Iran, U.S. forces in Iraq would be likely targets of retaliatory Iranian rockets and missiles in the wake of U.S. attacks in Iran. Keeping Iraq and its territories out of the protracted U.S.-Iran war should be a U.S. objective.The U.S. military departure from Iraq need not mean the end of support to the Iraqi military. Defense cooperation doesn’t require permanent basing or massive combat garrisons. Security assistance, intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism coordination, and specialized training can easily be delivered “over the horizon” or with temporary train and equipping missions, as is done around the world. A security cooperation office – Office of Military Assistance-Iraq – will remain in the U.S. embassy to facilitate these programs. Ultimately, debating a residual force presence is an academic exercise, not a policy option. The Iraqi government made it clear that it would not renew the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement in 2012, and it is equally unlikely the Iraqi Parliament would do so in 2027. At the same time, neither the U.S. administration nor the American public demonstrates any appetite for another “forever war” in Iraq. While an existential threat to either Iraq or America might change that dynamic, such a low-probability event should not drive U.S. policy. The U.S. military was invited back to Iraq in 2014 to assist the Iraqi Security Forces in defeating ISIS. That mission expanded when the group’s defeat in Syria was included, but that mission has been accomplished. Going forward, the relationship with Iraq should be focused on diplomatic and development objectives. The 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement (SFA) set out a comprehensive roadmap for the post-military relationship. That framework prioritized:Economic, financial, and trade cooperation; Energy, diplomacy, and political cooperation; Cultural, educational, and scientific exchanges;Health and environmental cooperation; and Law enforcement and judicial cooperation. In Iraq, these objectives are as relevant today as they were almost two decades ago. The lead for U.S.-Iraq relations belongs under the pillars of the SFA, not under the auspices of a military mission. The last quarter century has clearly proven the wisdom of this division of labor. It is best to stop turning to the Pentagon to solve inherently political, economic and diplomatic problems that would best be handled by the Department of State.

[Category: Global-war-on-terror, Iran, Diplomacy, Military-intervention, Iraq]

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[l] at 10/4/26 10:05pm
Late last month, Japan’s defense ministry made an unsettling announcement. A U.S. ground-based missile system, known as the Typhon and capable of firing Tomahawk missiles, would not return to the United States after being deployed to Japan for military exercises. Instead, it would be stored at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, at least temporarily.Tokyo tried to downplay the move, noting that the decision was intended to support training, not warfighting, and that no U.S. Army units would deploy with the missile system. But the reassuring language is unlikely to forestall the negative consequences of the posture change: an increase in military tensions along the first island chain in East Asia. The timing of the decision, following closely on the heels of the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington, may seem out of sync with Donald Trump’s “dovish” outreach to Beijing. But the contradiction is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump administration’s Asia policy. By calling for a “decent peace” but building a “denial defense along the first island chain,” a region that stretches across Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, Trump seems destined to undermine his own efforts to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship and even to increase the medium-term risk of conflict between the two global powers.The paradox in the Trump administration’s approach to Asia is best articulated in the National Defense Strategy published earlier this year. The strategy lays out two aims. First, it calls on the U.S. military to “set conditions for a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific that allows all of us—the United States, China, and others in the region—to enjoy a decent peace.” Second, it declares the U.S. intention to “erect a strong denial defense along the first island chain to…ensure that the Joint Force always has the ability to conduct devastating strikes and operations against targets anywhere in the world.” In the Pentagon’s strategic rationale, the latter aim is a prerequisite for the former. This is wrong. Instead, the two goals are fundamentally incompatible. To understand why, it helps to take a closer look at what a denial defense in Asia requires and its practical effects from Beijing’s perspective. The U.S. interest in building a “denial defense” in East Asia is not new to the Trump administration. In fact, the U.S. military has long used the first island chain as the center of gravity of its military posture in Asia, positioning some 80,000 military forces at bases in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and even Taiwan. The primary purpose of these forces is deterring Chinese aggression toward its neighbors (and especially Taiwan) by raising the perceived costs of such aggression for Chinese military planners and political leaders. To that end, the United States has positioned dozens of fighter jets; warships; artillery and longer-range missiles systems; and air defense on U.S. bases along the first island chain.The Trump administration’s focus has been on strengthening this first island chain denial defense. In addition to the new missile system housed in Japan, Washington is planning to upgrade the fighter jets deployed at bases in the country. It is also building new military infrastructure in Luzon, the island in the Philippines closest to Taiwan, and modifying the types of forces deployed at strategic locations in Japan, the Philippines, and even South Korea. In the future, these personnel will be armed with new anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles intended to prevent China from projecting military power across the Pacific.But while Washington describes this military posture as defensive, from the Chinese perspective, the U.S. position along the first island chain is abrasive and threatening. It is not hard to understand why. Intermediate-range missiles positioned close to the Chinese mainland, fighter jets at bases only a few hundred miles away, and warships patrolling waters off China’s coast can only seem aggressive to China’s leaders. At the very least, such a military presence seems aimed at containing China’s power and interfering with its ambitions in its near abroad—the same types of ambitions that Washington claims in the Western Hemisphere under the “Donroe Doctrine.” At worst, these forces have hostile intent and aim to work against China’s security interests. It should be unsurprising, then, that as the United States deepens its first island chain investments, China accelerates its military buildup, deploying more missiles on Chinese territory opposite Taiwan and expanding its patrols in the South China Sea and closer to Japan. The net result is not Washington’s “decent peace,” but rather a region that is gripped by an arms race, less secure, and closer to war. The United States can achieve a decent peace with China, but it will require a willingness to adjust its regional posture, giving up on regional dominance and accepting a balance-of-power approach that creates physical and strategic distance between the U.S. military presence and the Chinese mainland. This balance can be achieved by a shift in the U.S. center of gravity in East Asia, from the first to the second island chain, made up of U.S. territories and the Compact of Free Association states. Specifically, the United States would reduce and consolidate its military presence, including both personnel and assets, into bases in Guam, Palau, Micronesia, Tinian, and others, leaving at most a small number of rotational forces in Japan and the Philippines. Alongside this change in military footprint, a narrowing of U.S. military commitments would also be required, with expansive mutual defense treaties being replaced by a more sustainable set of narrow security partnerships. There are several reasons why this set of posture changes makes sense. Most importantly, the outcome of the U.S. war in Iran reveals clearly that the current U.S. first island chain presence is not sustainable or survivable. Defenders of the status quo argue that first island chain bases are essential for dispersing U.S. forces and assets for any contingency situation, such as a war over Taiwan, but bases in Japan and the Philippines cannot serve this purpose if they cannot be effectively defended. Pulling forces back to the second island chain would not make them invulnerable to Chinese attack, but they would be more defensible and significantly reduce the risk of conflict with China.A second island chain strategy would have other benefits as well. It would be more aligned with core U.S. national security interests, sufficient to protect U.S. access to regional economic markets against physical interdiction and to balance Chinese power in East Asia, especially with the addition of a coherent U.S. economic strategy. The first island chain denial defense, by contrast, leaves the United States vulnerable to entanglement in unnecessary wars (including one over Taiwan) that the U.S. military today seems unprepared to fight and weakens the incentives of U.S. allies when it comes to investing in their own defense and reaching out diplomatically to China. Finally, the physical space between the U.S. military presence and the Chinese mainland could act to significantly reduce the risk of war between the two countries, creating momentum for the decent peace that Washington says is its ultimate goal. Critics argue that the opposite is true, that if the United States pulls back to the second island chain Beijing will be emboldened, seizing Taiwan and moving on to assert dominance over Japan and others in the region, before pushing the United States out of Asia entirely. But there is little evidence to support such dire predictions. China, a nation dependent on trade, has little incentive to shut the U.S. out of the region’s economic networks, and it does not have the military capabilities to become the region’s sole hegemon, especially if countries like Japan and South Korea invest in their own military development and work to balance Chinese power. Of course, U.S. retrenchment would create some new risks, including possible efforts by Japan and South Korea to pursue nuclear capabilities or to over-invest in offensive military capabilities that increase regional insecurity, at least temporarily. But these risks are manageable with a careful U.S. economic and diplomatic strategy. Changes in U.S. posture and commitments can be gradual, for instance, to give countries like Japan time to invest in their own defense and to avoid feelings of abandonment that could trigger a too-rapid build up or race for a nuclear weapon. The United States might retain security partnerships with current allies that include rotational military deployments and the option for support in a military crisis as well as joint defense industrial projects and economic investment. Finally, the United States should also communicate carefully with China about its planned retrenchment and intention to remain a Pacific power, even while accepting a more narrow remit.It is true that China would like a smaller U.S. military footprint in Asia, especially close to its shores. But this does not mean that a smaller presence would not also serve U.S. interests. In the longer run, the ultimate responsibility for the region’s stability should not fall on U.S. shoulders but on efforts by the region’s middle powers to achieve a modus vivendi with China that accommodates Beijing’s security interests and makes further military competition unnecessary.

[Category: China, South-korea, Japan, Xi-jinping, Philippines, Enewsletter]

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[l] at 10/4/26 10:05pm
Reports that more oil is getting through the Strait of Hormuz have been heralded as a win for the Trump administration, but experts say this kind of happy talk hides the fact that the war remains in a quagmire. As shipping costs rise and Iran continues to attack vessels, world markets — including fuel — will remain in peril for the foreseeable future.In other words, no matter how much narrative-shaping is attempted to alter American perspectives before the midterms, prices for consumers will not come down to so-called pre-war levels in time for any change. If anything, the diesel crisis continues, as does the impact of ships carrying dry bulk (fertilizer, aluminum, petrochemicals, grains, sulfur, cement, industrial minerals, etc.) still stranded in the Persian Gulf. Moreover, with news that another U.S. carrier strike group led by the USS Roosevelt has been sent to the Gulf, it is almost certain that President Donald Trump wants to keep the naval presence in place to protect these oil transfers (and perhaps support future military operations). But how long can the U.S. military sustain this costly level of activity in the Gulf in order to keep the fuel markets from going off a cliff? And it’s not like these ships are moving without challenge. Despite what Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth say about the obliteration of the Iranian military, attacks on vessels attempting to cross the Strait last week continued, many under the radar of the mainstream press. So while the administration and its social media influencers have declared victory over Tehran, a very expensive cat-and-mouse game continues unabated — one that Rose Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, says may be impossible to sustain for the long term.“We're still in this limbo where Iran can't fully close the strait, but the U.S. can't fully open it either,” she tells Responsible Statecraft. “If the U.S. wants oil to go through the Strait without getting to a peace deal with Iran, it needs to commit a large amount of military force to do that,” Kelanic continued. “Whether that's really sustainable or wise or fair to the American taxpayer is an open question.”Doing the Persian Gulf limboPro-war influencers like Will Chamberlain took to posting on X “daily reminders” that the “strait was open and we are winning” last week, while blasting "doomers" for saying the war policy has failed and is hurting Americans back home.What is really happening? There are myriad ways of tracking shipments through the strait: through ships’ Automatic Identification Systems, radar and satellite imagery, and monitoring actual crude volume. Some trackers use a combination of sourcing. Last week, all industry trackers found an increase in ships entering and leaving the strait since the start of the war, with volumes ranging from 13 million to 17 million barrels per day and 6 to 17 tankers per day getting through. This compares to an average of 20 million barrels getting through the strait before the war.Kpler, a private data and analytics platform, has been the most cited in recent press reports. It said that transits of oil averaged 13 million barrels a day at the end of the month. It is also tracking how much oil is getting out of the Middle East through other ports on the Red Sea on the end of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which went back on line at the end of September. This bypass route has allowed another 4 million barrels per day to exit the region, according to Kpler.Much of the higher volume is made possible now by ship-to-ship transfers, notes Amir Handjani, an energy lawyer and public affairs executive, in an interview with RS. This is where private companies come into ports and with AIS transponders off, undergo the very risky and expensive task of transferring fuel cargo into government “shuttle” vessels that travel through the strait “dark” and then offload onto larger tankers in safer, open waters. Ship-to-ship is also used for shuttling through Hormuz bypass routes.“It’s not moving without cost and without huge investment by the U.S. Navy. Is that sustainable?" asked Handjani. "I don’t know, I guess anything is possible.”Though government tankers can avoid insurance costs, the premiums on private shipping are increasing, in part because of continued attacks, and supertankers or Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), which are needed to meet the shuttles on the other end, are now in short supply.“The paradox here is that physical oil movements are recovering, but the maritime system is doing so through longer voyages, ship-to-ship transfers, rerouting, and extraordinary war risk costs, rather than a return to normal operations,” pointed out maritime expert Sal Mercogliano on the October 3 episode of his podcast. “Add to (that) the ridiculous rates being charged for very large crude carriers — $1.2 million out of the Persian Gulf and $800,000 out of the Gulf of Oman heading to Asia.”The diesel dilemma Any analysis of the situation would not be complete without talking about diesel, which is a refined product of crude. According to experts, the first impact point is the Hormuz chokepoint for oil exports explained above. If and when the crude gets through there are fewer refineries on the other end because of Iranian attacks on Gulf facilities , and refineries in both Ukraine and Russia have been targets in the war there. Moscow has banned exports as a result.The U.S. is a major exporter of diesel, but it’s not making up for the reduction in global supply. Shrinking supply is wreaking havoc on prices (including in the U.S.), particularly because diesel is used for overland shipping, farming, and transportation throughout the U.S., Europe and the Global South.Under pressure from the Trump Administration, the G7 countries agreed Friday to release 100 million barrels of crude and diesel from reserves. This is on top of an earlier agreement in March via the International Energy Agency to release 400 million barrels. Trump said the Europeans were not living up to their end and has threatened to ban U.S. exports of diesel, which experts tell RS would be a disaster for prices — in the U.S. and abroad — in the long term.As for American oil reserves, experts say they are at the lowest point since 1983 thanks to releases of hundreds of millions of barrels by the Biden and Trump administrations during the wars in Ukraine and now Iran. Recent news of vessels getting through the strait won’t make up for all the problems plaguing the system.“It's all still net negative — the amount that's getting out — compared to what the market demands,” Kelanic pointed out. “We're depleting our inventories more slowly, but those buffers are also much less robust than they were in February.”Ezana Tedla, a macroeconomic analyst at the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, tells RS that without a resolution of the war and an end to the threat of attacks on shipping, the markets remain uncertain, which is why Brent crude pricing was still $102 a barrel on Sunday even after all the “good” news last week about the strait.“By looking at global macro financial data, you can see that there's significant pressure by the unresolved part of the conflict,” Tedla said. He points to a recent research note from J.P. Morgan that basically “said we don’t know what’s going on” and therefore can’t make forecasts about prices, he added.It is not clear, either, how long the Navy can sustain the tempo to maintain the blockade and the security umbrella needed for ships to pass through, experts noted. The Navy is already stretched thin, with fewer ships to rotate in and out of the Middle East without compromising its security posture elsewhere.The bottom line is that prices will not come down before voters head to the polls next month. However Trump might spin it, small victories in the Strait of Hormuz do not reflect any end to the war.“Unless (Trump) signs a deal with Iran of course, that would help a lot,” said Handjani. “That is what the market is really looking for.”

[Category: Enewsletter, Strait-of-hormuz, Oil-markets, Diesel, Persian-gulf, Iran-war]

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[l] at 10/4/26 10:05pm
On September 21, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq officially announced the completion of the long-delayed unification and reorganization of its Peshmerga paramilitary forces under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs (MoPA). The Peshmerga are Kurdish armed forces, with roots going back to Kurdish guerrillas who fought as a more or less united front against successive Iraqi governments for most of the 20th century. After the 2003 invasion, though, they never came together as one Kurdish national army. Instead, they split into two separate party forces, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), each tied to one of the region's dominant political factions.Kurdish leaders hailed the September unification announcement as a historic victory for the Kurds in Iraq. Notably, the unification happened nine days before the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.The timing raises an important question: as Washington shrinks its direct military presence in Iraq, what security architecture will it leave behind?A unified Peshmerga could provide a key part of the answer. From coalition dependence to security partnershipThe U.S. has been supporting Peshmerga reform for years, mainly as part of the international coalition's support for the Kurdish fight against ISIS . A memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Kurdistan Regional Government in 2022 set out how the U.S. could transform the Peshmerga into a professional military partner.A newly unified Peshmerga could end up on the front line against Iran-aligned militias and a possible resurgence of ISIS. For the Kurds, this may be part of the logic behind the timing of unification itself: a fragmented Peshmerga would be far less equipped to absorb pressure than a unified one.There is no clear indication that Washington planned the September 21 announcement as part of its withdrawal strategy. Peshmerga reform has been underway for years. Still, the timing is hard to ignore, and it makes sense to look at the two developments side by side.For Washington, ending a military mission doesn't mean surrendering its interests in the region, particularly amid a war with Iran. The U.S. interests in Iraq are as follows: first, keeping ISIS from coming back and tempting the U.S. to intervene once more; and second, containing Iran's influence and preventing its spreading into Iraq's state institutions and armed groups, especially with the wider U.S.-Iran standoff still playing out. Going forward, the plan is for Iraqi and Kurdish institutions to carry more of the load for ensuring security themselves. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its European partners will shift to other kinds of support: training, advising, intelligence sharing, and helping local forces build their own capacity. The Peshmerga force is situated to help secure U.S. interests, particularly since the Kurdish region’s territory borders Iran. The real question is whether the reform and unification of Peshmerga forces go according to the plan that has been set by the Kurdish leaders under Washington's watch, or the intra Kurdish division prevents the united Kurdish army from materializing.Can the unification process overcome intra-Kurdish fragmentation?The real test is whether the new structure that has been outlined by KRG officials changes who commands in reality. Critics highlight that the new Regional Command 1 of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces is led by KDP and that the Regional Command 2 is led by PUK. Also, each command can still appoint their own division and brigade commander.This suggests that loyalty and allegiance to political parties remains the decisive mechanism through which each command functions. The MoPA did not hide the reality that there is still significant work to be done for the unification to be concluded. In response to the critiques, the Ministry highlighted some achievements that can elaborate on how the KRG can overcome the obstacles of the unification process. One of the crucial accomplishments of the unification process in recent years is that, nowadays, the payments of the salaries of all Peshmerga forces, regardless of their different commands, have been united through a central ministry account. This means that soldiers’ salaries are tied directly to the ministry, not to political parties. Kurdish officials say they hope to end party influence throughout the Peshmerga by the end of this year. Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region, Masrour Barzani says unification is only “the first phase of a long path.”Whether leaders will truly set rivalries aside is unclear. It has been two years since the region held parliamentary elections, yet it still has not formed a new government. This is due to political deadlock between the two major political parties over sharing the core ministerial and high governmental offices of the KRG. The question now is whether external pressure can help force the two sides to set aside their differences. Washington has long made unification a condition of providing aid, and its military departure will now increase the incentives for the sides to reach a unified front. As it leaves the country militarily, Washington will have to refocus its diplomatic efforts on encouraging unification in order to help overcome political deadlock.The Iran factorIf Iran-aligned armed groups refuse to lay down their weapons or turn them over to the state, this presents another issue for the U.S. withdrawal. The duty of disarming the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq — a key step in strengthening the Iraqi state — now falls on the Iraqis.The American side is leaving Iraq according to a previous agreement with the Iraqi government, which hoped it could disarm Iranian-backed militias ahead of the U.S. withdrawal. However, these groups have resisted calls to give up weapons, saying foreign forces should leave first before disarmament can take place. At this stage, the groups remain too powerful to easily control, and the Iranian government has a strong interest in supporting them, particularly when they can threaten the U.S.-aligned forces across the region. The coming weeks and months will thus bring a battle of wills between the Iraqi government and the militias it has long sought to control.What happens now?The real test starts now that the Coalition has completed its withdrawal.Iraq appears to be entering a new phase, with fewer foreign troops but continued foreign security partnerships. The Peshmerga's September 21 unification could facilitate this shift, particularly if it overcomes the difficulties inherent to any military unification effort.What matters now is whether the United States and its European partners can cut back their direct military presence and still leave behind local institutions strong enough to prevent a return of ISIS and keep regional rivals and militia groups in check.Thus, the U.S. may be leaving Iraq militarily, but the security relationships it spent years building aren't necessarily leaving with it.

[Category: Kurds, Security-assistance, Iran, Iraq]

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[l] at 10/3/26 10:05pm
The current war with Iran and its chaotic unfolding open a door of great danger for the U.S. and the planet. At best, we are condemned to negotiations dominated by personal and political imperatives that seem to fit with a common description of insanity — to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. At worst, the crisis raises the prospect that tactical nuclear weapons could be employed to solve it.The situation has now become so grave, and its implications for the global economy so devastating, that even China — which otherwise is notoriously disciplined in avoiding entanglement in other countries’ conflicts — has indicated openness to joining a mediation effort to end the conflict. Both China and the U.S. are right to be concerned about the crisis. The two have a mutual interest in solving this problem and keeping it from becoming a worse irritant. A joint U.S.-China effort would bring the constancy of oil supply from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and the global damage that it is causing, under careful control. Their cooperation is an obvious imperative. For some, this raises the specter of an unwanted development leading to more confusion and chaos. For others, it offers an opportunity for the emergence of a new paradigm of cooperation.Escalation risksPresident Donald Trump has lost control over the war. He was supremely confident that it would last no more than 100 hours. The assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was envisioned to either cause the collapse of the Iranian theocracy or force it to surrender. A suitable replacement — most likely from within the same theocratic system — was to be appointed by Trump in line with the blueprint from Venezuela. There was no need for a plan B. Things did not go as envisaged. More than seven months later, Trump believes he has exhausted all the options except one: All-out War. By the U.S. campaign’s fourth day, once his loss of control had become clear, Trump began issuing threats to use unprecedented force against Iran; strike Iranian energy infrastructure; invade Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf or take other Iranian territory; and even wipe out Iranian civilization. In the end, he never acted on even one of these threats, apparently recognizing the disaster that would unfold in the region once – not if – Iran retaliated in kind. Among the factors that have deterred Trump are pressure from regional states, concerns about large numbers of casualties, fears about the global economic fallout, and about political repercussions at home. There are now indications, however, that his calculations may change after November 3. No longer constrained by the midterm election, and with little confidence that diplomacy, sanctions, or limited war will provide an exit, let alone victory, he appears poised to pursue a swift and massive escalation. The goal of such an effort would be to bring down the theocracy and limit Iran’s ability to inflict severe costs on the global economy for an extended period of time. As he appears to see it, it’s the only option that enables him to turn a colossal failure into a win that terminates his Iran problem. But massive escalation will most likely only intensify the problems he has faced. Tehran will counterescalate massively. As demonstrated by the recent Houthi advances in Yemen, Iran and its network still have formidable escalatory options. Beyond targeting energy infrastructure, the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces militia could overrun Kuwait or assist a popular uprising in Bahrain. The political geography of the region could change. As for China, Trump‘s gamble may prove to be a bridge too far. Beijing has traditionally opted against mediating conflicts, both to avoid inadvertently assuming ownership of conflicts for which it otherwise bears no responsibility and also to avoid the diplomatic damage that a failure to resolve them would cause. But if President Trump opts to escalate after the midterms, Chinese President Xi Jinping may calculate that China can no longer contain the cost of this war. China’s decision to sharply reduce its oil demand has been the major reason why world petroleum prices never surged to $150 a barrel. This was a balancing act China could play as long as the war only created a bottleneck problem in the Strait of Hormuz rather than a production problem as a result of direct targeting of the region’s energy production capabilities. If the region’s oil production facilities are knocked out and some monarchical governments wiped out, China may still remain the world’s swing consumer, but it will not be able to prevent world oil prices from breaking the $150 per barrel barrier or the global economy from slipping into a much deeper crisis. This may be why Xi hinted at a Chinese diplomatic intervention during last month’s BRICS summit and why Chinese diplomats have told us privately that Beijing is ready to step in if requested by the parties. While Oman, Qatar and Pakistan must be commended for their ingenuity, creativity and persistence as mediators, none of them can assert the leverage over the United States and Iran that the PRC can. It is this leverage that enabled Beijing to secure a normalization agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023. Most of the legwork in that mediation had been conducted by Iraq and Oman over the course of the previous years. But the distrust between Tehran and Riyadh proved too deep. When Xi visited Riyadh in December 2022, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman asked for China’s help to overcome the obstacles that prevented the resumption of relations between the Iranian theocracy and the Saudi Kingdom. Rather than just mediate between the two, China became a co-signer of the agreement and its guarantor. Crown Prince Bin Salman recognized that the agreement required the involvement of a power with enough leverage over both sides to hold them to their commitments. Because China is simply too important for either side to risk a rupture with it, Beijing’s role as guarantor proved crucial, not only to reach the agreement, but perhaps much more importantly, to make it last. Despite all the mayhem and tensions in the past three years, the agreement has stood firm. That was the crucial ingredient China brought to the table. And it may be the very ingredient U.S.-Iran diplomacy currently needs. That is not to say that the situation is entirely similar. The relationship between Washington and Beijing is much more complex and sensitive. Neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia views China as a rival or peer competitor. The United States does. But since China does enjoy leverage with both Tehran and Washington, it is able to press for an enduring settlement in a manner that the current mediators cannot. This opens a small window for hope.What could China do?Beijing’s first challenge will be to create a diplomatic opening. Trump has made clear that he has no interest in diplomacy at the moment. In the administration’s reading, the combination of the blockade on Iran and the restoration of much of the flow of oil through the Strait is sufficient to turn the tables on Iran, if only given enough time. This is why Trump has told regional interlocutors that he will not lift the blockade even if Tehran agrees to completely open the Strait. He doesn’t need to use the blockade to win on the Strait; rather, he wants to use the blockade to win on the nuclear file. But this strategy has two fatal flaws: it ignores how the status quo hurt America's regional allies and the global economy, and it assumes Trump can ensure stability in the Persian Gulf and in the oil markets. Ansar Allah’s closure of the Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi ships and the strikes against Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline put this assumption under considerable strain. So does the sheer cost of the U.S. operations to escort ships - a cost that does not appear sustainable. Once again, the U.S. appears to confuse a tactical advantage in the Strait with a decisive strategic shift. And on cue, the administration has dramatically hardened its position even though the underlying reality does not warrant it, and, in so doing, pushed the prospects of a diplomatic deal further away. When Trump met Xi in Washington on September 24, he did not want to talk about diplomacy, but rather how China should go along with America’s extraterritorial sanctions on Iran. China could counter such pressures by putting forward a draft compromise proposal that seeks to meet all sides' key concerns, while offering guarantees to Trump that China will ensure speedy negotiations and offering Iran assurances about American compliance and implementation of the agreement. The proposal should build on both the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding of July 2026 and the 2015 JCPOA. Key elements should include 1) a permanent ceasefire throughout the region — including Lebanon and Yemen — to put the entire region on a deescalatory trajectory; 2) the permanent opening of the Strait with environmental service fees to be shared by all littoral Persian Gulf states to help manage the environmental restoration of the waters as well as reconstruction and humanitarian needs created by the war; 3) the lifting of the American blockade on Iran; and 4) the establishment of working groups to negotiate a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear activities within six months. China would offer to act as a guarantor for all four points. The key must be an Iranian civil nuclear program limited by International Atomic Energy Agency inspections on an enhanced basis. “No nukes” is a great mantra, but it requires vigorous and intrusive inspections to work. Capping enrichment at 3.67% of U235 is an absolutely vital necessity. Moreover, any agreement must entail full IAEA access to all Iranian nuclear sites, as well as to undeclared sites if credible evidence emerges that they are being used for nuclear purposes. This is not easy or simple, but it is necessary to assure the world that Iran is fully adhering to its obligations under the NPT. China can also play a key role in resolving the dispute over Iran’s stockpile of 60% enriched uranium. The U.S. wants all of it shipped out; the Iranians had earlier agreed to ship out 98% of it, but neither side could agree on which country it should be shipped to. Though Washington was earlier cool to the idea of China holding Iran’s stockpile, it may be more open to it if it is embedded in a larger agreement with Beijing. The Strait’s management could be put under a new U.N. agency, which gives it international legitimacy and the possibility of creating buffers against any potential efforts by Tehran to fully control Hormuz itself. Those exporting states, including Iran, would collect the fees and immediately remit them to the U.N. agency. The agency would have the task of managing the fees directly with contractors authorized to carry out projects on behalf of the U.N. agency in all of the region’s states. They would calculate how the funds are to be allocated on a rolling basis based at least in part on an analysis of the humanitarian needs and of a calculation of damage based on satellite photography. All states would be welcome to provide the new agency with information they might have concerning any noncompliance with the agreements on both nuclear and Strait issues, including, as needed, for Bab el-Mandeb. In addition, there would be a ban on using such funds for military activities of any sort. An additional step regarding nuclear power should be given the most careful consideration: the creation of a regional consortium, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, that will jointly plan and carry out all production of nuclear reactor fuel and other sensitive activities. The presence of multiple players with respect to each of these activities would provide a further reassurance to the international community, to which the consortium will regularly report, that the agreement is doing its job well. The IAEA and the new U.N. agency on the Straits would issue quarterly reports to the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly. All the agreements negotiated in connection with this problem would also be approved by the U.N. Security Council. The resolution of approval would specifically authorize the U.N. inspections and control arrangements as finally negotiated.Why China should step forward — and why Trump should welcome itIn truth, what we are proposing goes against some current instincts in both Beijing and Washington. China prefers to stay out of conflicts which do not involve it directly, and the U.S. does not want to offer Beijing a diplomatic role, even less to be saved by the PRC. But absent Chinese diplomatic intervention, the war is more than likely to escalate and intensify beyond what any side can currently anticipate. The escalation thus far has been controlled and calibrated. But a third round of war risks going beyond what either side can control. Both the U.S. and China share an interest in avoiding such a scenario. If Washington refuses cooperation because Beijing would benefit from it, and Beijing refuses engagement because the conflict is not its creation, both states risk allowing a regional war to become a global crisis of unmanageable dimensions. The choice before them is therefore not between American leadership and Chinese involvement. It is between cooperation that neither side particularly wants and consequences that neither side will be able to control or afford.

[Category: Long-read, Enewsletter, China, Xi-jinping, Donald-trump, Strait-of-hormuz, Iran-war]

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[l] at 10/1/26 10:05pm
This Sunday, Brazilian voters head to the polls to decide whether leftwing incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will win a historic fourth term. Lula’s challenger is Flávio Bolsonaro, who has styled himself as a more moderate version of his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, the rightwing firebrand who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for an attempted coup. The tight electoral contest has been defined by the economy, crime, and scandal, as a probe into a prominent jailed banker revealed that he financed a new hagiographic biopic about the elder Bolsonaro at Flavio’s request. If neither candidate receives more than 50% of the vote on Sunday, which is a near-certainty, the race will go to a runoff on October 25. According to an AtlasIntel/Bloomberg poll released on Tuesday, Bolsonaro would receive 47.7% of the votes in a potential runoff, compared to Lula’s 47.6%. But in the final days of the campaign, one question looms large: what will the United States do?Although Trump has not formally endorsed him, Bolsonaro is undoubtedly Washington’s preferred candidate. The administration has clashed with Lula’s government over trade, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as a desire for access to Brazil’s rare earths supply. Trump is also personally close to the Bolsonaros. Often at the request of the Bolsonaro family, the U.S. has engaged in a pressure campaign to weaken the Lula government, sparking fears of further interference. Washington’s pressure campaignTrump’s interference in Brazilian politics started in earnest last summer. Flávio’s brother Eduardo persuaded the Trump administration to impose 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports and sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court judge in an attempt to get Brazilian authorities to drop Jair’s trial, which Trump called a “witch-hunt.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt even indicated the U.S. could use “military might” against Brazil over his prosecution.Those sanctions and tariffs were later rolled back, though in July the U.S. placed new tariffs totalling 37.5% on Brazilian imports. This time, the U.S. cited unfair trade practices and singled out “Pix,” a popular payment transfer system that has drawn the ire of U.S. credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard, which miss out on transaction fees. In May, the State Department also classified two Brazilian crime groups — Comanda Vermelha (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) — as terrorist organizations, partially under the justification of combatting “narcoterrorism” in the region. Flávio himself visited the Oval Office to persuade Trump to classify the PCC and CV as terrorist organizations. “We’ve got to help these guys,” Trump told aides at the time. The move alarmed many observers because Trump has frequently invoked the threat of “narcoterrorism” to justify a campaign of lethal air strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats and the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. James Green, Professor Emeritus of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, told RS these U.S. moves were met with apprehension in Brazil because they indicated that Trump’s threats were not just bluster. “Brazil did not want the U.S.’ imposition of this category on these criminal organizations because it opened the door for many ways in which the Trump administration could interfere in Brazilian internal politics,” said Green. "Even though they haven't overtly said, 'Oh, Flávio is my candidate,' they sent all these signals to indicate that that's who the United States wants to see elected,” added Green. Gunther Rudzit, assistant professor International Relations at ESPM, a private university in São Paulo, explained that, while not all of these actions are explicitly tied to a plan to boost Bolsonaro’s candidacy, the cumulative pattern is “an attempt to shape the political environment in which the Brazilian election is taking place.” In the event that Lula does win, the question will be whether Washington will recognize the victory. In a press conference outside the State Department in September, Eduardo Bolsonaro suggested the U.S. “could perfectly well refuse to recognize the Brazilian elections.” If the U.S. takes that approach, Trump could draw support from newfound allies in the region. Right-wing parties are experiencing a resurgence in Latin America, winning in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Trump openly endorsed candidates in Colombia and Honduras who won their respective elections. “We have numerous people, Argentina, lots of people that I got elected,” Trump said last month. Brazil’s response has been swift. Abin, the Brazilian intelligence agency, sent a report to key government agencies in August sounding the alarm about potential U.S. interference in the election. Brazilian officials also denied requests for visas of two State Department officials, claiming the purpose of their visit was to discredit the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system. The US has taken other actions to place pressure on the Lula government. In July, the São Paulo Consulate took the unusual step of inviting conservative social media influencers for a roundtable to discuss “freedom of expression and the digital environment.” The Guardian reported on Thursday that the State Department also has plans to award $1 million to groups in Brazil that oppose “judicial overreach and censorship by Brazil’s supreme court,” a reference to Washington’s sanctioning of Brazil’s judge, Alexandre de Morães. Lula’s Worker’s Party has also requested that the Supreme Court investigate potential interference in the campaign by Rockbridge, a secretive political advocacy group backed by Silicon Valley investors like Peter Thiel. People close to Bolsonaro pitched plans to secure investment promises from Rockbridge and even form a “Technology Council” made up of people like Palantir’s Shyam Sankar and Joe Lonsdale to advise the candidate. A spokesperson for Rockbridge told the Intercept Brasil that none of these plans materialized. Will Trump’s gambit backfire?It is far from clear that the U.S. pressure campaign will help Bolsonaro since many Brazilians may view the attacks as an affront to national sovereignty and economic independence, causes that Lula has championed since his days as a labor union leader in the 1970s and 80s. After the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Brazil last July, the Lula administration’s approval ratings jumped above 50%, up from 47% the month prior. Camila Feix Vidal, professor of international relations at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, told RS the “U.S. actions towards Brazil — particularly the tariffs, interest in rare earth reserves, and the criticisms of Pix — all fostered a nationalist spirit in Brazil, at least initially.” Lula has even made Washington’s tactics a central focus of his campaign. A new ad for the Lula campaign, set to air Friday, says “Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump’s candidate and what Trump wants is to colonize Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust.” In an interview this week, Lula said “I told Trump: 'Don't interfere in the Brazilian elections because otherwise you'll lose the elections.’” Rudzit of ESPM noted that Flávio Bolsonaro has even had to call for the suspension of U.S. tariffs for fear of nationalist backlash. “The closer the association between external pressure and the Bolsonaro family, the easier it is for Lula to present himself not simply as the incumbent defending his administration, but as the president defending national autonomy,” said Rudzit. Rudzit added that while economic pressure could help Lula in the short term by generating nationalist resistance, the economic costs might ultimately weaken his chances at the ballot box. “Much depends on who Brazilian voters ultimately blame for those costs: Washington, the Bolsonaro family, Lula’s government, or some combination of them,” said Rudzit.Even if Bolsonaro does win, Trump may find an ally constrained by competing national interests and domestic political pressures. Quincy Institute non-resident fellows Andre Pagliarini and Feliciano de Sá Guimarães argued in a recent policy brief that there is reason to believe that a Bolsonaro presidency may still not be as subservient to U.S. demands as Trump would like, particularly on China. “A Brazilian government visibly inclined toward the United States would face its own constraints,” Pagliarini and Guimarães wrote. “Flavio Bolsonaro’s father discovered as much during his presidency, when an initially hostile posture toward Beijing gave way to the practical demands of governing a country whose economic relationship with China could not simply be subordinated to ideological posturing.” Whoever wins, the margins are expected to be slim, creating conditions for a contested election.

[Category: Luiz-inacio-lula-da-silva, Flavio-bolsonaro, Elections, Brazil]

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[l] at 9/30/26 10:05pm
This summer, Microsoft announced that “it will extend its provision of technology support to Ukraine through the end of 2027,” providing technology, cybersecurity support, and other assistance to "help Ukraine maintain essential digital services during the war.” Not only U.S. weapons, but a host of U.S. tech companies have gone to war in Ukraine. This includes PayPal, now one of the biggest multinational online payment systems in the world, which got into the act, cutting off access to all Russian accounts when Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.Palantir initially offered its services to Ukraine for free. Meanwhile is has used the Ukraine War as a proving ground for its emerging technology, has worked with Ukraine to develop AI to sift and analyze battlefield intelligence and plan and coordinate deep strike operations. This now extends to controlling drone swarms and identifying targets. It now has partnerships across numerous Ukraine ministries, including a huge deal announced in May to broaden the use of AI across all military and civilian defense operations. In 2022 Palantir’s market capitalization was less than $25 billion, today it is closer to $450 billion.Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite systems make it possible for the Ukrainian armed forces to communicate, track the movement of Russian troops, and select targets. In his book The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire, Richard Sakwa says the provision of that ability “was crucial for Ukraine’s early success in defeating the Russian advance on Kiev.” While Musk has been opposed to the Ukrainian military using Starlink for deep strikes into Russia — a position he affirmed in August — Ukraine’s use of Starlink for mid-strike drones has clearly transformed the war in Ukraine. Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow & Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities, told RS that “Ukraine would not be able to carry out its current military campaign without Starlink's support.” Last year, Musk claimed that the Ukrainian military’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.”Providing free satellite service to Ukraine became expensive for Musk. A year and a half into the war, Musk threatened to terminate his services unless the U.S. government picked up the tab. So, they did. The Polish government has also said that it pays for Starlink services in Ukraine, contributing $50 million a year.Microsoft’s mobilization for Ukraine has been much quieter. Most of us thought the war began on February 24, 2022. According to Microsoft president Brad Smith, it started the day before. “That’s when we saw 300 Russian-coordinated cyberattacks all seek to down the Ukrainian government.” That’s also when, in the words of the New York Times, “Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe.”As the story goes, “wiper” malware attempted to wipe clean the data of hundreds of server systems belonging to the Ukrainian government. Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Centre was the first to see it, according to Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in their book, Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy. Separated by an ocean, Microsoft personnel “were manning Ukraine’s front lines.” They quickly shared their intel with Ukraine’s cyberdefense officials, and, within hours, Ukraine’s virus detections systems had been updated and the attacking code had been blocked.Microsoft, Farrell and Newman write, had forged “a closer relationship with the Ukrainian government and the national security advisors and team there.” They had become Ukraine’s “shield… against waves of attacks.”As if its own nation, Microsoft announced that they “condemn this unjustified, unprovoked and unlawful invasion by Russia,” and immediately “suspend[ed] all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia.”In 2022, the New York Times wrote how tech executives, including those from Microsoft, were granted security clearances and sat in on secure briefings by the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. Microsoft and Google were the sources behind most of the shared actionable intelligence. At the time, Microsoft had established “24/7 sharing of threat intelligence” so that “work[ing] closely with Ukrainian government officials and cybersecurity staff” they could “identify and remediate threat activity against Ukrainian networks” and “defend against attacks.”In a revealing interview four years ago, Microsoft president Brad Smith said what Microsoft has “done first is, frankly, to support and defend Ukraine.” He said Microsoft had worked with the government to move 16 of the 17 Ukrainian ministries into the cloud. Drawing a military analogy, Smith spoke like a cyberwar general, comparing the situation to a classic military maneuver: “you’ve got to disperse your defensive assets so they’re not vulnerable to a single attack.” According to a June 2026 Microsoft report, the tech giant has spent more than $700 million providing Ukraine with technology and cybersecurity. If Microsoft were a country, that would rank it in the top 25 supporters of Ukraine. The Russian-Ukrainian war has changed the nature of warfare. Rifles and tanks, The Wall Street Journal opines, are “going the way of sword fights and cavalry charges” now that “thumbs on joysticks have largely replaced fingers on triggers and more fighting is done on screens and less in trenches.”Though Brad Smith says Microsoft is “a company and not a government or country,” he has “made it clear,” according to the New York Times, it “is not a neutral one.” Huge tech companies, like Microsoft, SpaceX and Palantir, like countries, have chosen sides and allied with the U.S. and Ukraine, partnering with them as essential players on a transformed battlefield. The technology these companies have sent to Ukraine has been as important as the weapons that allied countries have sent.“Your ability to identify the right technology and implement it will determine what happens on the battlefield,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said in 2023, adding that Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine.” In the same year he said he’s “in favor of a robust posture in America” and that Palantir wants people who want to be on the side of the West, making the West a better society, more able to defend themselves.”When Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.S. and its partner countries sent weapons. Tech giants like Microsoft, SpaceX, and Palantir sent technology, expressed their ideological loyalty to Ukraine, and joined its side in the war. Many might think that behavior is natural, especially when the cause is considered a righteous one back home.Others may believe it crosses a line, that it helps prolong a destructive war that won’t ultimately be won on the battlefield, while bolstering profits for shareholders and salaries for company executives. Somehow, that doesn’t feel right.

[Category: Ukraine, Russia, Microsoft, Palantir, Elon-musk, Starlink, Ukraine-war]

As of 10/13/26 6:30am. Last new 10/13/26 4:33am.

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