Tag: perpetual war

US scales down commitments to defend European allies

The US will prioritize its own defense and offer only “limited” support to its allies in Europe, the Pentagon has said.

In the revised National Defense Strategy released on Friday, the US Department of War said European NATO members must play a key role in protecting themselves and providing military aid to Ukraine.

“Although we are and will remain engaged in Europe, we must – and will – prioritize defending the US Homeland and deterring China,” the document reads.

“The Department will therefore incentivize and enable NATO allies to take primary responsibility for Europe’s conventional defense with critical but more limited US support.”

“This includes taking the lead in supporting Ukraine’s defense. As President Trump has said, the war in Ukraine must end. As he has also emphasized, however, this is Europe’s responsibility first and foremost,” the document reads.

Keep reading

A Dangerous Year for Taiwan: Converging Pressures Raise the Risk of Chinese Invasion

Multiple political, strategic, and military factors are converging in a way that could make 2026 a uniquely dangerous year for Taiwan. Chinese leaders increasingly believe that asserting control over Taiwan is inevitable and may be achievable sooner than previously assumed.

Xi Jinping’s personal ambitions and political timeline add urgency to this assessment. He has pushed the Taiwan issue more aggressively than any predecessor and may view reunification as a defining legacy achievement. Xi has set 2027 as the target for the People’s Liberation Army to complete its modernization goals, ordering the military to be capable of a successful invasion by the PLA’s 100th anniversary.

While 2027 itself is unlikely to see major military action due to the Communist Party Congress and the regime’s emphasis on internal stability, the year immediately preceding it, 2026, is far more flexible.

Former INDOPACOM commander Admiral Philip Davidson warned in 2021 that the threat to Taiwan would become “manifest” within six years, a warning that came to be known as the Davidson Window. The term refers to a period of heightened risk, roughly between 2021 and 2027, during which China could acquire the military capability to attempt a takeover of Taiwan.

Davidson’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee underscored the pace of China’s military modernization and its narrowing gap with U.S. and allied forces in the region.

According to 2025 and 2026 U.S. Department of Defense reports, the People’s Liberation Army has expanded its missile inventory from about 1,200 in 2020 to roughly 3,500, while missile launchers grew from 800 to 1,500, supported by additional brigades and 300 new ICBM silos. Systems such as the DF-26 enable saturation strikes on U.S. bases in Guam.

Keep reading

Iran will treat any attack as ‘all-out war against us,’ says senior Iran official

Iran will treat any attack “as an all-out war against us,” a senior Iranian official said on Friday, ahead of the arrival of a U.S. military aircraft carrier strike group and other assets in the Middle East in the coming days.

“This military buildup – we hope it is not intended for real confrontation – but our military is ready for the worst-case scenario. This is why everything is on high alert in Iran,” said the senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“This time we will treat any attack – limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it – as an all-out war against us, and we will respond in the hardest way possible to settle this,” the official said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States had an “armada” heading toward Iran but hoped he would not have to use it, as he renewed warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear program.

“If the Americans violate Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, we will respond,” said the Iranian official. He declined to specify what an Iranian response might look like.

Keep reading

Israel’s Netanyahu skips Davos over fear of arrest for Gaza war crimes

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos this week amid concerns he would face arrest in Switzerland under an International Criminal Court warrant, according to Israeli media reports.

Netanyahu was replaced at the summit by Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who travelled to Davos on Tuesday and met German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

During the meeting, Herzog criticised the absence of Israeli officials from the forum and called for the removal of ICC arrest warrants issued against Israeli leaders, describing the court’s actions as “politically motivated”.

He did not address the substance of the allegations against Israel stemming from the crimes committed by its military campaign in Gaza.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza.

Keep reading

America’s war on…sex toys! Pete Hegseth accused of policing troops’ private lives with Pentagon crackdown on use of intimate devices

As US troops carry out high-stakes missions from Venezuela to the Middle East, the Pentagon has waged an unlikely new battle at home: the war on sex toys. 

In its latest culture-war skirmish, the Daily Mail can reveal military officials recently blocked the delivery of sex toys to troops overseas, igniting ridicule and debate over how far the military should police private life.

First came prohibitions on piercings and nail polish for male military members. Then followed a ban on books with LGBTQ+ and anti-discrimination themes in military libraries. 

Then Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sniped at overweight troops, those with religious beards and chaplains embracing what he deems as new-age beliefs.

Now the Department of War, as Hegseth has renamed the Defense Department, is taking aim at a new target – adult toys. 

In a glaring display of sweating the small stuff, Hegseth’s Navy sent two testy letters to an adult emporium in Toronto slamming it for fulfilling an order to American personnel on a US base in Bahrain.

The items in question: a bullet vibrator and butt plug.

‘Pornographic materials or devices are not allowed into the Kingdom of Bahrain,’ warned one letter sent from the base with the subject line: ‘Adult item identified during X-ray mail screening,’ along with the returned pleasure goods.

Another letter categorized the items as ‘posing an immediate danger to life or limb or an immediate and substantial danger to property.’

The Pentagon has declined comment on the letters, sent over the summer, which the Navy framed as acts of cultural sensitivity meant to avoid offending the conservative Muslim majority in the Persian Gulf island kingdom.

But official customs lists published by Bahrain’s government don’t explicitly list sex toys as forbidden, although they do prohibit the sale and importation of ‘obscene or immoral materials’ that – by either Bahraini or Hegseth’s standards – could apply to personal pleasure devices.

A Navy instructional publication for trainees explicitly states that ‘possession of adult sex toys in the barracks is prohibited’.

The letters have triggered a host of playful social media posts, including sex-toy war stories about which dildos, penis pumps and anal beads current and former US service members have been using to pleasure themselves on overseas bases.

Troops deployed to Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf countries face strict social restrictions and limited interaction with locals.

One of our Pentagon sources notes that maintaining mental health among troops has been a challenge in the region, pointing most notoriously to the 2018 suicide of Vice Admiral Scott Stearney, the commander of the US Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet based on Bahrain.

Keep reading

The US-Israel Hybrid War Against Iran

The question is not if the US and Israel will attack Iran, but when. In the nuclear age, the US refrains from all-out war, since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, the US and Israel are waging war against Iran through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest, and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. This combination strategy is called “hybrid warfare.”

Both the American and Israeli deep states are addicted to hybrid warfare. Acting together, the CIA, Mossad, allied military contractors and security agencies have fomented chaos across Africa and the Middle East, in a swath of hybrid wars including Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.

The shocking fact is that for more than a quarter century, the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence agencies have laid waste to a region of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and mass refugee movements, and have nothing to show for it beyond the chaos itself. There is no security, no peace, no stable pro-US or pro-Israel alliance, only suffering. In the process, the US is also going out of its way to undermine the UN Charter, which the US itself had brought to life in the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter makes clear that hybrid war violates the very basis of international law, which calls on countries to refrain from the use of force against other countries.

There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-industrial-digital complex of the US and Israel, with firms like Palantir and others profiting from their AI-supported assassination algorithms. President Dwight Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address of the profound danger of the military-industrial complex to our society. His warning has come to pass even more than he imagined, as it is now powered by AI, mass propaganda, and a reckless US foreign policy.

We are witnessing two simultaneous hybrid wars in recent weeks, in Venezuela and Iran. Both are long-term CIA projects that have recently escalated. Both will lead to further chaos.

The United States has long had two goals vis-à-vis Venezuela: to gain control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt, and to overthrow Venezuela’s leftist government, in power since 1999. America’s hybrid war against Venezuela dates to 2002, when the CIA helped to support a coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez. When that failed, the US ramped up other hybrid measures, including economic sanctions, the confiscation of Venezuela’s dollar reserves, and measures to cripple Venezuela’s oil production, which in fact has collapsed. Yet despite the chaos sown by the US, the hybrid war did not bring down the government.

Trump has now escalated to bombing Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, stealing Venezuelan oil shipments, and imposing an ongoing naval blockade, which of course is a continuing act of war. It also seems likely that Trump is thereby enriching powerful pro-Zionist campaign funders who have their eyes on seizing Venezuelan oil assets. Zionist interests also have their eye on toppling the Venezuelan government, since it has long supported the Palestinian cause and maintained close relations with Iran. Netanyahu has cheered on America’s attack on Venezuela, calling it the “perfect operation.”

Keep reading

Mapped: Every country Trump has attacked or threatened from Iraq to Greenland in a year of ‘America First’

When US president Donald Trump began his second term in office, it was on the promise of putting “America first”.

For many of his MAGA supporters, that meant rejecting interventionist policies that had overextended the country’s military commitments across the globe.

His National Security Strategy, published last year, promised that “the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests”.

But since his return last January, the US commander-in-chief has pursued an aggressive foreign policy, greenlighting military strikes on multiple countries, seizing oil tankers and overseeing the shock overnight capture of Nicolas Maduro that led to the decapitation of the Venezuelan government.

Keep reading

‘Nobody Else Has It’: Trump Confirms Mysterious US ‘Sonic Weapon’ Used During Capture of Venezuela’s Maduro

A ‘secret’ weapon was used in Caracas Op, Trump confirms.

On January 3, US special operators realized a jaw-dropping operation that neutralized air defense over the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and invaded the heavily guarded presidential palace of Miraflores, extracting dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife, taking them back to New York to stand trial.

In the raid, dozens of Cuban and Venezuelan guards were killed, while the US suffered no fatalities.

One of the most mysterious aspects of the operation, which US President Donald J. Trump has now confirmed, is that US special forces are said to have used a ‘secret sonic weapon’ during the daring capture of Maduro.

Daily Mail reported:

“The President on Tuesday night bragged that ‘nobody else’ has the weapon, while glorifying the capabilities of the US military.

[…] [NewsNation anchor Katie Pavlich] asked Trump whether Americans should be ‘afraid’ of these sonic devices.

‘Well yeah,’ Trump responded. He then added that only the US military has access to the sonic weapons by noting, ‘It’s something I don’t want to… nobody else has it’.”

Keep reading

CBS News Contributor Killed by Israel Just Weeks After His Wedding

Three journalists, including a CBS News contributor, were killed in an Israeli strike outside a camp for displaced people in Gaza on Wednesday.

Abdel Raouf Shaat – a contributor to CBS News and Agence France-Presse – was killed along with Mohamed Qishta and Anas Ghneim after their car was hit by an Israeli strike while leaving a camp for displaced people.

According to reports, the three journalists were recording footage of the camp while on assignment for the media arm of an Egyptian relief committee.

After leaving the camp, their car was struck by the Israeli military just a mile away.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces accused the journalists, without providing evidence, of operating “a drone affiliated with Hamas.”

“IDF troops identified several suspects who operated a drone affiliated with Hamas in central Gaza, in a manner that posed a threat to their safety,” the IDF claimed. “Following the identification and due to the threat that the drone posed to the troops, the IDF precisely struck the suspects who activated the drone.”

In its own statement, AFP mourned the loss of its contributor and demanded a full investigation into his killing.

“We are in mourning for the loss of our colleague Abdul Raouf Shaat who was a regular contributor to AFP’s production for nearly two years,” said AFP, adding that Shaat was “much loved” and remembered “as a kind-hearted colleague, with a gentle sense of humor and as a deeply committed journalist.”

The news organization continued, “AFP demands a full and transparent investigation into his death […] Far too many local journalists have been killed in Gaza over the past two years while foreign journalists remain unable to enter the territory freely.”

CBS News president Tom Cibrowski also informed staff of the news in a call on Wednesday morning, revealing that the journalist had just gotten married a few weeks prior.

While not on assignment for CBS News at the time of his death, the news organization stated that Shaat “filed regularly for CBS News from the city of Khan Yunis during the war in Gaza, even sending video from the back of an ambulance on one occasion when he was wounded.”

CBS News is owned by David Ellison – a close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and led by pro-Israel commentator Bari Weiss, who has visited Israel more than 15 times.

At least 258 journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of the war in Gaza in 2023, according to the International Federation of Journalists.

Keep reading

President Trump Issues Warning to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney: “Canada Lives Because of the United States. Remember that Mark”

President Trump did not hold anything back on Wednesday during his speech to global leaders at the World Economic Forum.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump announced on Tuesday that he will meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and “the various parties” on his planned acquisition of Greenland, which he described as “imperative for National and World Security.”

“I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you,” Rutte said to Trump in a text message that the President shared.

During his speech, President Trump took a swipe at Canada’s far left prime minister. Trump called out Mark Carney for acting so cocky.

President Trump: We’re going to be defending Canada. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but they’re not. I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. They should be grateful to us. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements?

Keep reading