Tag: perpetual war

‘Peace Through Strength’ as a Revolt Against Nature

“Peace Through Strength” has been a Republican mantra for decades. The slogan holds that peace can be achieved by maintaining a powerful military capable of deterring potential adversaries. It is said that sufficient military power – occasionally showcased by stomping on those who would seek to question its overarching authority – instills fear in America’s adversaries, leading to peace and safety.

While this concept of statecraft can be traced back centuries, its modern interpretation in the Republican lexicon was popularized by President Ronald Reagan. His version of the strategy focused on maintaining military power, and using it as a tool to credibly deter nations – in his time, the Soviet Union – from expanding and spreading their negative influence.

“American strength is a sheltering arm for peace and freedom in an often dangerous world,” Reagan explained. “And strength is the most persuasive argument we have to convince our adversaries to give up their hostile intentions, to negotiate seriously, and to stop bullying other nations.”

This view of foreign policy has been expressed by Republican politicians and talking-heads all throughout the almost four decades since Reagan’s departure from power. However, if we honestly assess American foreign affairs post-Reagan, peace has been hard to come by.

The way that Reagan originally described his doctrine – build a strong military to deter enemies, thus achieving a lasting peace – is far different from how later Republicans interpreted the concept. The “Strength” portion of the slogan has served as a justification for military intervention, while “Peace” remains the promised destination that never quite arrives. Having already presumed that peace can only be achieved by strength, those who use this slogan risk becoming the proverbial hammer, to which every conflict looks like a nail.

The United States has been involved in a rolling series of military conflicts for decades, all while invoking “Peace Through Strength” as its justification. Whenever a new war begins, we are assured by our GOP political and media elites that the military action is in service of a broader peace effort. “A war to prevent another war,” if you will.

This reasoning has been used just this year, as President Trump and the Republicans have sought to justify this latest adventure in Iran. As is always necessary when selling the populace on a new war, the GOP must create a narrative, one which presents the American people with a false binary: launch this war or face certain attack. We are told that the enemy, equipped with a totally random hatred for freedom and the American way of life, is arming up to preemptively attack us. Therefore, the only rational option is to strike first.

As the war – which was based on provable lies – rolls on without an end in sight, the “Peace Through Strength” message has persisted, with the slogan being used by Republicans to reassure the war-weary public that peace is the end goal.

However, peace has remained elusive for modern American presidents.

The problem is that Reagan’s vision rests on a set of assumptions about government that are difficult to reconcile with the incentives inherent in political power.

“Peace Through Strength” requires some key presumptions in order to logically make sense. For it to work, it must be the case that we live in a system where those in power genuinely, through good faith, seek a peaceful world. Put simply, those with the legal authority to create war must be willing to forgo the temptation.

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US Troops Leak New Iran War Photos Of Gulf Bases: ‘Major Damage Hidden From American Public’

As we’ve been documenting, it is clear that major damage has yet to be communicated to the American public regarding Iran’s major retaliation on US bases in the Gulf and Mideast since the start of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. 

During the same week that a long awaited Pentagon/Department of War Inspector General’s report was released covering the first four months of the Iran War, new leaked photographs have emerged of never-before-seen base damage.

“New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks,” according to a bombshell Tuesday CBS report.

The outlet describes that the photos have been submitted by US service members under strict secrecy and anonymity – given the Pentagon has sought to enforce a crackdown on troops sharing the extent of damage, and amid orders aimed at maintaining operational security. But critics say the Pentagon and Trump administration are engaged in a cover-up and propaganda. 

“This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public,” an actively deployed unnamed service member said to CBS News.

The service member added: “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

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Beware Contrived Scares And False Flags In Europe

On the evening of August 4, an airport employee at Leipzig/Halle noticed a small drone resting on the apron near a parked Ukrainian Antonov freighter. It carried an explosive charge and a detonator. The charge did not go off. A bomb-disposal robot rolled out across the tarmac, and by the account German officials would later give, the device had gone unnoticed for roughly four hours before anyone found it. Then the airport reopened and the country moved on.

Twenty-eight days later, on September 1, the German government told its citizens who had done it. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stood together in Berlin and named Russia. The consulate in Bonn would close on September 18; the lease on Berlin’s Russian House cultural centre would be torn up; more Russians would be proposed for European Union sanctions lists. The attribution was delivered as settled fact. The evidence behind it was not.

Five days after that, on September 6, the voters of Saxony-Anhalt went to the polls with the Alternative für Deutschland polling around 41-43%, within reach of an absolute majority in a state the entire German establishment had spent months trying to deny it. The sequence is worth holding in the mind as a single object. A device found in early August, a public silence lasting four weeks, and then an official enemy announced in the final days of a campaign. Nothing about that ordering is illegal, but nothing about it is accidental either.

Dobrindt’s case, as he laid it out, does not rest on a single piece of proof. It rests on three strands said to point the same way: police forensics, the resemblance of the device to earlier operations, and intelligence reporting. “Taken together,” he said, the investigations, the pattern and the intelligence findings established Russian responsibility. He named no GRU officer. He named no unit. He said the people who carried out the plan appeared to be “low-level” agents acting on behalf of unspecified “Russian state entities.”

What the public was given, then, was a conclusion and a description of the kinds of evidence that produced it—not the evidence. An independent observer cannot test the chain. Even sympathetic accounts noted the gap: the ministers named the state but kept most of the underlying material out of view. NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte pronounced the evidence “clear” without any of it being made public, and welcomed the German measures. The European Union’s foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas went further still, telling reporters in Ireland that the incident bore “all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism.”

This is the ordinary grammar of attribution in the sabotage era. A government states that its services and their partners have reached a judgement, allied governments affirm the judgement, the proof stays classified; and the citizen is invited to supply the trust that the missing evidence would otherwise earn. It may be that the classified material is overwhelming. It may be that it is thin. The structure is identical either way, which is precisely the problem. A public asked to accept an attribution on faith has no way to tell a strong case from a convenient one.

The load-bearing sentence in the German case is not about forensics at all. It is about familiarity. Wadephul said the drone’s configuration, its components, its explosives, and its ignition technology were “familiar to us from other Russian hybrid operations and from Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Dobrindt used almost the same words: elements “known to us,” a device of “high technical expertise” assembled with care. Recognition, in other words, is doing the work that a signature would normally do.

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Ukraine Allegedly Spends $190 Million Daily on War

They are just making up numbers at this point. Ukraine’s parliamentary Budget Committee chair Roksolana Pidlasa now says that one day of war costs Ukraine $190 million, up from $140 million per day in 2024. They present these figures as if somebody can open a spreadsheet in Kyiv and calculate what this catastrophe costs down to the dollar. The $190 million is essentially a budgetary accounting figure. It does not remotely represent the TRUE cost of this war.

Even Pidlasa admits the number excludes weapons supplied in kind by Ukraine’s foreign partners. That alone should tell you how meaningless it is to call $190 million the “cost” of one day of war. Over the first eight months of 2026, Ukraine reportedly spent nearly $42 billion on national security and defense while raising only about $39 billion from its own revenues and domestic government bonds. The state can no longer finance even the portion of this war that it previously funded itself. Yet the weapons arriving from Europe and elsewhere can sit outside that headline calculation.

Do the elementary arithmetic and $190 million every day becomes roughly $69.4 billion annually. But even THAT is not the cost of the war. The IMF says Ukraine’s fiscal deficit excluding budget support grants is running around 21% of GDP in 2026 and is financeable only because of enormous external donor support. The European Union agreed to a €90 billion Ukraine Support Loan for 2026-2027, with €45 billion scheduled for 2026 alone, including €28.3 billion for defense procurement and €16.7 billion for budget support. The IMF now calculates Ukraine’s financing gap at $140.3 billion over 2026-2029. We are no longer discussing a nation capable of independently financing the government and the war simultaneously. We are discussing a state being financially sustained from abroad.

Then there is the destruction nobody can accurately price while the bombs are still falling. The World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Ukrainian government estimated in February that reconstruction and recovery would require nearly $588 BILLION over the coming decade. That was based on damage measured only through December 31, 2025. Direct physical damage had already surpassed $195 billion. Transport reconstruction needs exceeded $96 billion, energy approached $91 billion, housing nearly $90 billion, commerce and industry exceeded $63 billion, and agriculture surpassed $55 billion. Fourteen percent of Ukraine’s housing stock had already been damaged or destroyed, affecting more than three million households.

And those numbers were obsolete the moment they were published because THE WAR NEVER STOPPED. You cannot continuously destroy a nation’s productive capacity and pretend that yesterday’s reconstruction estimate represents tomorrow’s bill.

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Fatal Alliance: The Reality of the US-Israel Axis

To examine the unyielding multi-billionaire dollar shield that the United States provides Israel is to confront the coarse mechanics of modern empire.

Washington has, for decades, maintained a posture of absolute defense, supplying advanced weaponry, providing diplomatic immunity, and rationalizing actions that human rights organizations and international courts characterize as war crimes, apartheid and genocide.

The mainstream narrative has relentlessly framed the U.S.-Israel alliance through the comforting lens of shared democratic values and mutual defense. This rendering, however, crumbles under the weight of reality.  Nothing has dissuaded Washington from its entente with and acquiescence to Israel – not the regime’s racist policies; not even genocide.

Every U.S. administration has backed its brutal regimes, because they have buttressed American power and interests in the Middle East. This fatal alignment evokes the question: what exactly is Israel’s role, and whose interests are being served?

Israel has long functioned as an imperial agent for Western powers seeking  regional dominance. Initially, the British Empire was crucial in helping its Zionist proxies secure a foothold in Palestine during and after World War I. In the mid-20th century, the United States seized the geopolitical mantle from Britain, taking control of the resource-rich region and becoming Israel’s primary benefactor.

Since the 1950s, Washington has viewed the Middle East – a vital nexus of global energy routes, trade corridors and geopolitical leverage – through the lens of dominance and resource control.

Lacking permanent colonial possessions in the heart of the Islamic world, Washington engineered an alternative: a heavily subsidized, fortified and technologically advanced military outpost. For the Pentagon and State Department, Israel has functioned as an unsinkable aircraft carrier; a military stronghold to project force, suppress independent anti-colonial movements, and to act as a counterweight to Iranian regional influence.

The Washington-Tel Aviv partnership is reinforced by the military-industrial economy of the United States that thrives on perpetual conflict to drive demand.

Defense spending fuels the domestic economy. The billions in military aid funneled to Israel are, in practice, massive subsidies paid directly to U.S defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. U.S.-Israeli wars have contributed substantially to the financial survival of these industries.

Occupied Gaza and the West Bank have long served as testing laboratories for advanced weaponry, surveillance technology and crowd-control systems.

Surveillance and weapons systems that have been battle-tested on captive civilian populations are subsequently marketed globally as “combat proven.”

This multi-billion-dollar defense network closely connects the interests of the U.S. military sector with the continuation of Israel’s military operations.  It also ensures fierce bipartisan resistance in Washington to any meaningful arms embargo or policy shifts, since almost every congressional district in the country is tied in some way to the defense industry.

American politicians aggressively safeguard Israeli “exceptionalism” and fiercely buffer it from accountability.  Robust networks of well-financed lobbying groups, political action committees and institutional gatekeepers ensure that unwavering support for Israel is a requisite for political survival in Washington.

When elected officials dissent from established foreign policy positions or condemn the slaughter of civilians, they become the targets of well-funded, organized efforts to end their political careers.  As a result, domestic priorities are sidelined as Congress aligns itself with a powerful military lobby rather than the American public; a growing majority of whom oppose unconditional foreign military aid.

At its core, the relationship between Israel and the United States is rooted in a shared historical consciousness and legacy.  Both countries developed as settler-colonial states built upon the systemic erasure, confinement and dispossession of native populations.

Allegations of apartheid, genocidal violence, and systemic racism leveled against Israel deeply resonate within the American political landscape, mirroring its own foundational legacy.

U.S. policymakers connect Israel’s regional supremacy directly to the preservation of Western influence and global dominance. Racism is not a mistake in the alliance; it is a core function.  It ensures that non-Western, non-white casualties are viewed as dispensable; essentially acceptable “collateral damage” in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives.

America’s alignment with Israel is a product of strategic utility, not moral blindness.  Washington’s defense of Tel Aviv’s brutal policies exposes the vacuity of Western rhetoric around human rights, international law and democracy. When imperial power, corporate profit and geopolitical dominance are threatened, universal human rights are treated as entirely disposable.

The “indispensable ally” narrative is foundering, as is the U.S. imperium.  Israel’s U.S.-subsidized genocide and devastating wars on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran have sparked intense global outrage and blowback, signaling the beginning of the end of American global dominance.

History will record that when major powers rely on the blunt instrument of war to “manage” a complex world – rather than to live in it as one among equals – they ultimately subvert the stability they claim to protect.

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The Crippling Effects of Unnecessary War

In California, gas stations are facing a unique challenge. The station signs are only configured to go up to $9.99 per gallon and at several stations the price of diesel has reached that maximum. Diesel prices are higher than they have ever been in history.

Worse, according to some news reports the advertising of the maximum price of $9.99 per gallon is meant to signal to truck drivers that they have run out of diesel altogether. Expensive diesel is a hit to the economy, but running out of the fuel at any price is a whole different kind of crisis.

Our highways are filled with semi-trucks burning diesel to bring the products we depend on to the markets. Our freight trains use diesel to transport what is not transported by truck. When the price of diesel increases, the cost of everything moved by that diesel also increases. This is one reason we are seeing much more inflation than the government wants to admit.

The diesel crisis is getting so serious that even President Trump has been forced to admit it. Of course, instead of taking at least part of the blame over his war of choice against Iran and his continuation of the proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, he is blaming Ukraine’s military strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

President Trump is now asking Ukraine to stop attacking Russian energy resources because diesel is a global commodity and the scarcity produced by the attacks is hitting us here at home. But the strikes deep inside Russia are guided by US intelligence, which provides the targeting data for Ukraine.

The Russia/Ukraine war is only part of the problem. Despite President Trump’s bluster about controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the fact is Iran is in control and very little oil – or anything else – makes it out without Iranian approval.

Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis joining the fight only makes matters worse. Over the weekend they attacked Saudi Arabia’s bypass pipeline, taking much more oil off the market.

The real problem here is not oil or diesel. The real problem is that wars of choice spin out of control and destroy the economies of those who launch them. Empires throughout history have been undone by endless overseas wars. No amount of bragging about the size and strength of our military can change this reality.

Now we are seeing the chickens coming home to roost.

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Energy Truce In Shambles: Ukraine Strikes Russian Refinery Despite Trump’s Warning Amid Global Diesel Crisis

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X that Ukrainian forces struck the Syzran refinery in Russia’s Samara region, about 75 miles west of Samara and 466 miles southeast of Moscow. The strike comes days after President Trump urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russian refineries, as average US retail diesel prices jumped above $6 a gallon and alarming disruptions to global refining capacity threaten fuel supplies ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter. 

Zelenskyy wrote on X: 

Russia continues to attack our energy sector, regular logistics, and critical infrastructure. And our responses to them for this are tangible. There are new results from the Defense Forces of Ukraine regarding the refinery in Syzran. There was also a strike in Taganrog on a drone production facility, as well as on a drone preparation and launch site in the Oryol region. Targets were hit in the Black Sea as well. I thank every one of our warriors for the effectiveness of our long-range sanctions!

The day before, the United States also announced a significant decision regarding Russia’s VTB Bank – one of Russia’s systemic banks, which is heavily involved in schemes supporting Russia’s war and, in particular, its relations with the Iranian regime. All such schemes that work against peace truly need to be dismantled. I thank our partners for this useful step!

There is no alternative to ending this war. And all forms of pressure on Russia must create the right diplomatic conditions. Glory to Ukraine!

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America Now Has Weapons In Space — And Just Said So Out Loud

The US Space Force finally confirmed something that the national-security establishment has been hinting at for years: it has put “military weapons” in orbit around the Earth, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink confirmed at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Monday.

“Today we are more ready than ever to face new challenges and we continue to ensure that we are doing our best to counter threats that are evolving, that are located anywhere in the world,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in prepared remarks at the National Harbor event. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”

He declined to offer any information about the on-orbit space control weapons now being deployed, including how many are involved and how long it will take for them to be deployed. He said that revealing too much information would not help to further deterrence. “Me talking about the details of what we’re doing would actually not benefit deterrence. So we’re not going to talk about the specifics of what we’re doing, whether we’ve tested it, not tested it, etc.”

The disclosure of the existence of US space control weapons in orbit marks a significant shift in US policy regarding warfare in space. For years senior Pentagon officials refused to confirm the existence of offensive and/or defensive systems in space. In recent years China and Russia have been actively testing out a range of anti-satellite systems including inspectors, ground launched ASATs and maneuvering spacecraft designed to seek out and destroy enemy satellites in orbit.

Recently Space Force leaders have detailed a growing array of defensive tools such as countermeasures, satellite-hardening techniques and ground-based systems capable of directing powerful energy at hostile spacecraft. Earlier this year the Space Force activated its first ground-based electromagnetic warfare (EMW) station, called Meadowlands, which will target enemy satellites in space.

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REPORT: China Helped Iran Target U.S. Base Before Attack That Killed Three American Troops

Chinese entities allegedly provided Iran with high-quality satellite imagery of a U.S. air base shortly before Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack that killed three American service members, according to a new report.

U.S. officials have linked the Chinese-supplied imagery to Iran’s July 17 attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The imagery was reportedly provided both before and after the attack, giving Tehran detailed views of the American facility.

The strike killed three U.S. troops and wounded four others, marking the first American military deaths of the Iran war since the April ceasefire.

The three Americans killed were First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, and Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28.

U.S. officials reportedly view the satellite imagery as the clearest evidence yet that Chinese assistance to Iran during the war has contributed directly to American military casualties.

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‘Not concerned at all’: CENTCOM commander addresses purported munitions shortage

United States Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper stated that he had no concerns related to a purported munitions shortage as the U.S.-Iran conflict perseveres past the six-month mark.

“60 Minutes” correspondent Norah O’Donnell interviewed Cooper on Sunday, where he provided his view on the situation in a clip aired on CBS News‘ “Face the Nation.”

“I’m not concerned at all. We’re well-armed and ready for any contingency,” he stated, responding to a question about the purported shortage.

“So, even though there are estimates that the U.S. has already fired 45 percent of its Patriot missiles and used more than half of its THAAD missiles, you’re not worried about any future threats?” O’Donnell asked.

“I’m not,” Cooper replied.

Cooper’s stance echoes other U.S. officials’ rhetoric regarding the conflict. In a September 3rd Truth Social post, President Donald Trump declared that the U.S. had “virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunitions, far more than we could ever use for this, or for any other War…”

The president then highlighted production of weapons and ammunition.

“In addition, we are producing Munitions at levels never seen before. We are stockpiling and preparing for any contingency that could happen,” he added.

The administration adamantly denied a munitions shortage following the surfacing of media reports last month alleging the depletion.

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