Tag: perpetual war

The Death of Ukraine’s Dream of NATO Membership

Ukraine’s dream of NATO membership is dead. It died, surprisingly, not on the battlefields of Ukraine nor at the negotiating table with Russia. It died in a document written in the White House to be sent to Congress to explain America’s national security vision.

The 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, dated November 2025, was released on December 4. Embedded unimposingly, without fanfare, in a section on The Regions called Promoting European Greatness, and not even in the section that discusses the war in Ukraine, the Security Strategy quietly states the priority policy of “Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Those fourteen words seem to have pulled the plug on a dream that was already on life support.

That policy priority found expression in point 7 of Trump’s 28 point peace plan that states that “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.”

Since it was first promised at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO,” the dream has been an unrealistic one. It did not take into account the real wishes of Ukraine, NATO or Russia, and it did not take into account previous promises already made by NATO and Ukraine. At the time of the Bucharest summit, the U.S. may have wanted NATO membership for Ukraine, but only 20% of Ukrainians did.

In 1990 and 1991, at the end of the Cold War, NATO promised Gorbachev and the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand any further east. But it was not just NATO that promised to stay out of Ukraine, it was also Ukraine that promised to stay out of NATO. Article IX  of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs…” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance: that included NATO. Moscow has recently reminded that Russia “recognized the sovereignty of Ukraine back in 1991, on the basis of the Declaration of Independence” and added that one of the main points for [Russia] in the declaration was that Ukraine would be a non-bloc, non-alliance country; it would not join any military alliances.”

Ukraine’s constitution was only amended to include a mandate for all future governments to seek NATO membership in 2019, five years after the U.S. supported coup. The amendment was made with neither vote nor referendum. At the time, public support in Ukraine for NATO membership hovered around a tepid 40%.

That that amendment could be reversed, and that Ukraine could be willing to do so, was signaled by Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, in the early days of the war. At the start of the war, Zelensky said he has “understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.” In March 2022, he said “For years we have been hearing about how the door is supposedly open [to NATO membership] but now we hear that we cannot enter. And it is true, and it must be acknowledged.”

In April 2022, after the war had begun, polling indicates that only 24%-39% of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership. At that time, the tentative agreement arrived at in Istanbul included that “Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership…” The draft reportedly stipulated that “permanent neutrality” be enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution.

Ukraine was pushed off that path by the U.S. for their own policy reasons, including the “core principle” that Ukraine has the right to choose their alliances and that NATO has the right to expand.

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The Siren Song of War

In October of 2002, I shocked many in my Congressional District and beyond by voting against giving President George W. Bush authorization to use military force in Iraq.

The night before that vote, my older sister told me a Knoxville television station had conducted a poll which found that in its viewing area 74 percent were for the war, 9 percent were against, and 17 percent were undecided.

When I pushed the button at about 3:00 the next day to cast that vote, I wondered if I might be ending my political career. My vote was so highly publicized that it was clearly the most unpopular thing I had ever done.

However, after three or four years and much to my amazement, that vote became the most popular of the more than 16,000 I cast during my 30 years in the U.S. House.

Unfortunately, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) that the Congress passed then is once again relevant because President Trump and his advisers seem to think it gives them authority to go to war in Venezuela without the declaration by Congress called for in our Constitution.

When we went to war in Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein’s total military budget was about 2/10 of one percent of ours. Venezuela’s is even less. Neither of those two countries were or are capable of attacking us in any serious way. Neither has even threatened to do so.

Two polls in late November by CBS News/YouGov and Reuters/Ipsos both showed that about 70 percent of the American people were opposed to going to war in Venezuela, and probably most of the other 30 percent did not really want such a war but just did not want to oppose President Trump.

While the overwhelming majority of the American people do not want more dangerous illegal drugs coming into this Country, far more drugs are coming from China and Mexico and various other places. If we take action against Venezuela, which country is next?

Just before we went to war against Iraq, U.S. News & World Report had a story headlined “Why The Rush To War?” We should be asking the same thing today.

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Top Biden Official Belatedly Admits Ukraine War Truth Bombshell

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is way behind the times. On Sunday he very belatedly expressed willingness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. In place of this, he’s seeking robust security guarantees. “We are talking about bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States — namely, Article 5-like guarantees … as well as security guarantees for us from our European partners and from other countries such as Canada, Japan and others,” Zelensky told journalists in a group chat, as reported in Financial Times.

“These security guarantees are an opportunity to prevent another wave of Russian aggression,” he said. “And this is already a compromise on our part.” But this should have been taken off the table all the way back in February of 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion, or even well before. He’s much too late ‘offering’ this ‘concession’ just as White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner are meeting Sunday in Berlin with Zelensky, and then separately with the national security advisers of Germany, France and the UK.

The open secret has for years been that the Washington and EU establishments know full well that it was historic and recent constant NATO expansion which led to this horrific, grinding war. This reality is so well understood that in their private, non-official commentary even former top Biden officials fully admit the fact. Yet these same Biden officials had while in government pursued policies fueling the Ukrainian proxy war as they wanted to ‘weaken’ Russia. They considered the issue of NATO expansion as a prime rationale of Russia’s invasion to be an off-limits talking point. Indeed for any sincere, independent commentators… to so much as raise the issue would get them smeared as a “Putin apologist”. But watch this recent and highly revealing clip below of Joe Biden’s top official for Europe and former national security official Amanda Sloat admitting the truth…

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Gunman Who Killed Three Americans in Syria Was Member of Syrian Government’s Security Forces

The gunman who killed two members of the Iowa National Guard and an American civilian interpreter in an attack in Palmyra, central Syria, on Saturday was a member of the Syrian government’s security forces, according to the Syrian Interior Ministry.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) first reported that the attacker was a member of the security forces and called for the Syrian government, which is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, to get rid of members who have an “ISIS ideology.”

The Syrian Interior Ministry claimed that, before the attack, Syrian authorities had “decided to fire him” for having “extremist Islamist ideology” and had planned to do so on Sunday. “We discovered him in December and were going to dismiss him, but we didn’t make it in time because it was a holiday,” said ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba, according to The Cradle.

A Syrian security official told AFP that the attacker had been in the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”

According to Wael Essam, a Palestinian journalist who has covered the conflict in Syria for many years, the perpetrator has been identified as Tariq Satouf al-Hamd from the Aleppo countryside. Essam said that al-Hamd was previously a member of ISIS, but after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad, he traveled to Idlib, the former home base of HTS, and joined the General Security.

The attack occurred when US military officers were meeting with Syrian Interior Ministry officials while US and Syrian troops stood guard at a base near the city of Palmyra. According to The Wall Street Journal, a lone gunman appeared in a window and opened fire on the US and Syrian soldiers, and he was pursued by Syrian troops and killed. However, according to Essam’s report, the attacker blew himself up.

“The attacker tried to reach the meeting room in the headquarters of the General Security in Palmyra (formerly the Military Security headquarters) where senior officers are present, and in the corridor he clashed with the American guards and the translator and blew himself up,” Essam wrote on X.

Essam also suggested that other members of the Syrian security forces were involved in the attack. “Security sources confirmed to me that Syrian intelligence, along with the Coalition forces, arrested six elements from the General Security at the headquarters in Palmyra, accused of coordinating the operation with him, and it is said that they are from the group that moved with him from the desert to the General Security in Idlib,” he said.

He added that Syrian authorities were “unable to identify his previous affiliation with the organization (ISIS), and there are hundreds like him, due to the large numbers who joined and which the security apparatus needed after the fall of the regime.”

President Trump and other US officials have called the incident an “ISIS attack” and have left out the detail that the perpetrator was a member of the Syrian military, which the US has allied itself with despite HTS’s al-Qaeda past, and as of Sunday, ISIS hasn’t taken credit for the shooting.

“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He added that Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is “extremely angry” about the attack. Trump recently hosted Sharaa at the White House despite his past as an al-Qaeda leader and ally of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS.

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Land Along Southern Border Is Transferred to Navy To Become Part Of ‘National Defense Area’

The Trump administration said on Dec. 10 that it would transfer roughly 760 acres of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border in California to the Navy for three years to support border security operations.

While announcing the decision Wednesday, the Interior Department said the land would become part of a “National Defense Area,” or militarized zone, to bolster immigration enforcement.

The land stretches from roughly a mile west of the California-Arizona state line to the western edge of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area in San Diego and Imperial counties, according to the Interior Department.

“This corridor is one of the highest-traffic regions for unlawful crossings along the southern border, creating significant national security challenges and contributing to environmental degradation,” the department said.

The Interior Department said the land was originally set aside in 1907 by President Theodore Roosevelt for “border protection purposes,” and the Navy will use it to “strengthen operational capabilities while reducing ecological harm associated with sustained illegal activity.”

Since April, the federal government has transferred large portions of land along the southern border to the military, allowing troops to detain migrants attempting to cross the border or arrest people accused of trespassing on military bases.

The process began with a 170-mile swath of land along the border in New Mexico before the government expanded into Texas and Arizona.

While the Interior Department referred to the Southern California lands as a high-traffic area for illegal border crossings, arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped to the lowest level since the 1960s as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on illegal immigration.

“President Trump has made it clear that securing our border and restoring American sovereignty are top national priorities,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.

“This action delivers on that commitment. By working with the Navy to close longstanding security gaps, we are strengthening national defense, protecting our public lands from unlawful use, and advancing the president’s agenda to put the safety and security of the American people first.”

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Germany Sends Troops Into Poland ‘To Protect’ NATO’S East Border With Russia and Belarus

They keep beating the drums of war.

Germany is sending troops into Poland! Calm down – it’s not 1939. But it could end up just as bad.

Today (13), it has been reported that Germany is sending soldiers to Poland, in a bid to ‘strengthen’ NATO’s eastern border with Belarus and Russia.

Politico reported:

“Several dozen German soldiers will join Poland’s East Shield from April 2026, with the mission initially running until the end of 2027, Deutsche Welle reported, citing Berlin’s defense ministry.

German troops will focus on engineering work, according to a ministry spokesperson quoted in the report. The spokesperson described this as building positions, digging trenches, laying barbed wire and constructing anti-tank obstacles.

The East Shield is a €2.3 billion program announced by Warsaw last year to bolster security along its eastern border.”

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Western officials ‘alarmed’ over secret FBI-Ukraine meetings – WaPo

Western officials are concerned by the secrecy surrounding meetings between Ukrainian negotiators and the FBI, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing sources.

Kiev’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, has visited the US three times in recent weeks to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and also held closed-door talks with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino.

Several unnamed Western officials said the meetings could be aimed at speeding up Kiev’s acceptance of Trump’s peace roadmap. Leaked versions require Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions, drop its territorial claims, and cap its army at 600,000 – terms which Kiev and its European backers believe favor Russia.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Olga Stefanishina, confirmed the FBI meetings, but declined to provide details. Sources say the secrecy “has caused alarm” among those not privy to the talks over their true purpose.

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Decades of Global Drone War Made Trump’s Caribbean Killing Spree Possible

On September 2, 2025, a small fishing boat carrying 11 people was targeted by a U.S. Reaper drone off the coast of Venezuela. Hellfire missiles were fired. Two survivors clung to the wreckage. Their identities and motives were unknown. Their behavior showed no hostility. Moments later, the drone operator launched a second strike — the so-called “double tap” — killing the final survivors. This scene is shocking, but it should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the U.S.’s drone wars. This tactic is familiar from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and, most recently, Gaza, where the Israeli military has used much worse violence to conduct genocide.

The U.S.’s first drone strike in the Caribbean, and the footage of the incident, reignited a debate about a conflict that Washington refuses to call a war — because it isn’t one. Instead, the Trump administration is using sheer violence to terrorize non-white populations and, as usual, has normalized lethal force far from declared battlefields and without any legal mandate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved at least 21 additional strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, killing at least 87 people. He has aggressively defended the very first operation, insisting he would have authorized the second strike as well — despite claiming he did not see it. Hegseth even misinterpreted the visible smoke on the video as the “fog of war,” seemingly unaware that the term refers to uncertainty in conflict, not the physical aftermath of a missile strike.

The details matter because they reveal something essential: the senior leadership overseeing these operations does not appear interested in the law, accuracy, or the basic meaning of proportionality. Instead, it has embraced escalation and mass murder as official policy.

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The Case Against American Intervention in Venezuela

As the USS Gerald R. Ford—the largest aircraft carrier afloat—casts its shadow along the Venezuelan coast, the United States must confront an uncomfortable question: What national interest is being protected by threatening a country that poses no military, territorial, or existential danger to the American republic?

The answer, made clear by an array of respected American scholars, former officials, and ex-military insiders, has nothing to do with security. Instead, it arises from a familiar mixture of ideology, geopolitical control, and the old reflex of imperial overreach. This is not defense. This is theater—one part provocation, one part political opportunism, and no part necessity.

Among the clearest voices cutting through the rhetoric is professor John Mearsheimer, perhaps the most prominent American realist in international relations. He does not mince words: Venezuela is not a threat to the United States. Its military lacks both the capacity and the intention to project power beyond its borders. Suggesting otherwise is “laughable,” he notes, because the true irritant is ideological. Venezuela’s Bolivarian model—imperfect and embattled as it is—represents a deviation from Washington’s preferred political order, a deviation the US has repeatedly sought to crush in Latin America for decades. For Mearsheimer, even if one entertained the fantasy of using force to change the regime, the idea collapses immediately under logistical absurdity and moral bankruptcy. Invading a nation of 28 million people, and then attempting to occupy and “stabilize” it, would be catastrophic in cost, chaotic in outcome, and impossible to justify.

The national security pretext collapses further under the testimony of Sheriff David Hathaway, a former Drug Enforcement Administration supervisory agent with firsthand experience in Latin America. He dismisses the drug-trafficking narrative not just as false, but as deliberately false. Cocaine originates in Colombia and Peru, not Venezuela, and the US fentanyl crisis has nothing to do with Caracas. There is no vast Maduro-led drug conspiracy, Hathaway explains, only a political fiction designed to mimic past excuses for intervention. He is blunt in stating that Washington has repeatedly used narcotics accusations as camouflage for intrusion, sabotage, and coercion. This is not about drugs. It is about dominance.

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Government Unchained: The Year The Constitution Lost Its Guardrails

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”—Abraham Lincoln

We now live in a nation where constitutional rights exist in theory, not in practice.

Yet what good are rights on paper when every branch of government is allowed to ignore, circumvent, chip away at or hollow them out in practice?

Two hundred and thirty-four years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the safeguards meant to shield “We the people” from government abuse are barely recognizable.

In ways the Founders could scarcely have imagined—and would never have tolerated—the safeguards meant to restrain government overreach have become little more than empty platitudes.

America’s founders understood that power corrupts and absolute power—especially when it comes to power-hungry governments fixated on amassing institutional power at the expense of individual freedoms—corrupts absolutely. That’s why they insisted on binding down the government “with the chains of the Constitution.”

In 2025, those chains have been cut link by link.

These links were not severed in secret. They snapped under the weight of executive orders issued without congressional authority, judicial doctrines that shield misconduct from accountability, and a Congress that no longer defends its own constitutional prerogatives.

If Americans are finally learning the true significance of constitutional limits, it is because the government keeps violating them—and daring anyone to stop it. Time and again, the message is being drummed into our heads that constitutional limits no longer apply when they inconvenience those in power.

Any government that treats rights as privileges—contingent on economic status, citizenship, race, orientation, religious beliefs, or political alignment—has already abandoned the Bill of Rights.

And a government that does so with the courts’ blessing is not a constitutional republic.

When rights become privileges, what we are left with is a two-tier system of freedom: those afforded the privilege of enjoying their constitutional rights vs. those targeted for exercising those same rights.

The Bill of Rights was intended as a bulwark. Each amendment was drafted as a barrier against a specific form of tyranny.

In 2025, every one of those barriers buckled under the weight of government corruption, political expediency, partisan politics, and institutional neglect.

The following is what it looked like to live without the protections of the Bill of Rights in the American police state.

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